Wizards must have been much more integrated with mundanes before, which makes sense of course mundanes hadn't learned not to believe in magic so casting around them wasn't a problem...

Bella mostly does not consult the textbook except for the index to know how to spell things, though "Samarkand" she can work out on her own. The textbook she can walk out with and the lecture she cannot.

Julian is still on the question of ancient wizard sexism (and what can be gleaned from archeological evidence thereof).  

Well, when the lecture wraps up (homework: read a (translated from Middle Egyptian) ancient account of a battle and list out the probable uses of artifice by both sides, and then check on these reference pages how widespread artifice of that type was at that time and how rare or valuable it would have been) he can discuss it! With his group!!!

"Do you guys wanna meet up again after last class, do the homework together?"

"I hear that's what groups are for. What've you got next, I have language lab."

"Mystical German verse." 

"History of Alchemy. Guess the school is making me do breadth before depth. Healing could really go either way, of course."

"Incantations" She is glad everyone is going along with her 'we are a group' assertion.

"Room for another?" So far practically nobody she'd met already has been in any of her classes and it's easier to stay on task with company.

Paris has old homework assignments but they might not have this specific one, and anyway they're usually only B and C papers and he'd like to have more slack than that for later in the semester.

"Anyone who wants to write mine can sit with Paris in the library to do it," Jean announces to the room at large.

Well, you can't say no to an enclaver who wants to join your study group, but you also can't just say yes to anyone who asks - and she's not sure if Bella is an enclaver or not - and anyways to invite someone to your study group you need the rest of the group to agree and there's not really a good way to check with everyone else -

- And of course she has to take into account that New Orleans is probably not as cool as Marcy Boston and she looks better to Marcy Boston if she's not clinging to every enclaver that crosses her path like a sad lonely lamprey -

So, the thing is, a group of five is for most purposes better than a group of four, especially once it's hazardous enough that you want to have someone keeping an eye out so that everyone else can work without trying to also be keeping their mind on the mals. But the other thing is that once you have a group, then your group starts to feel special, exclusive, and it is kind of exclusive, like, not very exclusive, but Malak's one of the two most promising people Annisa met on the first day and she's pretty sure Malak made the corresponding assessment and that the other person Malak thought highly of was Naima, and that Naima etcetera etcetera and found Julian, and that's enough exclusivity to make it feel like distinctly a 'competent smart people group', and they haven't assessed Bella for competence or smartness especially, beyond that she checked the lockers. So that would suggest a response of "tell us about yourself?" which establishes the Group even further, as a Group which can assess other people for suitability for membership, which people want to join and which has to decide which are the best ones for it, not as good as an enclave but - not far short of it, as a thing to have on the first day, and regardless of who else they let in they'll have it as a fact about the four of them, that they're the people who decide who's in the group, at least assuming Annisa handles things with a modicum of social competence which she's pretty sure she has, and she's pretty sure Malak is on the same wavelength as her most of the time? But then there's the massive complication that New Orleans has an enclave. An American enclave, the kind of place Annisa and presumably also some of the others dream about getting an invite from when they graduate, the kind of place that'd guarantee their own children a safe school experience where you have a Group from the very start, and a mana-sharer. Bella doesn't have a mana-sharer. Some of the smaller enclaves don't. But if Bella's an enclaver, then 'tell us about yourself' is an insult, a really blatant one that makes Annisa look like an idiot who hasn't managed to figure out who the enclavers in her year are, and the only correct thing to say is "yes, absolutely!" But if Bella's not an enclaver and Annisa says "yes, absolutely!" without checking with the rest of the Group then she looks like a pushover and moreover like someone who isn't taking the Group seriously, someone who thinks its entry criteria are just asking nicely, and that is the sort of thing that makes itself true, not in a magical way but just as a fact about humans. But Annisa cannot actually think offhand of a single strategy that splits the difference, that conveys 'we matter and we selected our members and we would like to work with you if you're competent and have something to add but we are, for real, in a position to filter, no matter how much you might not assume that of four indie kids from four different countries who obviously met less than twenty-four hours ago' while not being super offensive if Bella is an enclaver and her value-add incredibly glaringly intended-to-be-obvious from the moment she said "New Orleans", which Annisa is not 100% sure is even in America but is definitely 100% sure is an enclave - and also, there's a group dynamic, and what if it got WORSE, and also what if she's being a COMPLETE IDIOT and turning away potential allies on the VERY FIRST DAY OF CLASSES because she happens to like the social dynamic with the first three not-very-selected-stop-kidding-yourself-Annisa people she HAPPENED TO EAT LUNCH WITH because of FEELINGS which she was definitely warned against -

- no, no, this is fine, there's a strategy. The strategy is an INITIATION. "Our study carrel is pretty well-located - if it stays - but it's tiny, we're rather squeezed around it. If you wanted to help us grow it we'd have room for more. - I'm imagining by finding another one that's willing to sit nearby, unless you've got an extremely convenient affinity for, uh, carrel-coaxing." Smile? To make it clear it's a friendly offer? And if you happen to have a cozy spot in the reading room with your enclave that you're offering us then hopefully I haven't just torpedoed the offer.

Annisa's heart is trying to MAKE SURE ANNISA'S CHEST IS RATED FOR HEART CONTAINMENT.

"Metamagic isn't not carrel-coaxing but I don't have a carrel-coaxing spell or anything. Though that's an idea for things to ask the void, object-coaxing." She flips to a different bit of notebook and writes that in.

" - We could also just save this conversation for dinner, dinner tables are bigger than study carrels."

Oh that works and is much less complicated.

"Sure, my clavemate's been passing me her table when she's done with it, it's generally by the food counter with the big gouge in it."

Days in the scholomance: 1
Meals at enclave tables: 2

"Sounds great, we'll see you there!"

Great! That worked out great! No one was horribly offended!!!! ...maybe Paris enclaver is horribly offended? Shit! She completely forgot what Paris enclaver wanted because she was busy having a breakdown.

Maaaaan she really wants to offer to do that Paris kid's homework but she also kind of actively doesn't want to sit with Paris in the library right now? Also wait that offer is actually only helpful to make the thing that you're doing for Paris less inconvenient, it doesn't actually have any inherent benefits on its own. If this were a normal indie kid she would be like "not interested in that, do you have any other offers", but that sounds maybe offensive and she really needs to avoid offending Paris. Like, it's kind of fine if they don't know that she exists until junior year, and it's really bad if she offends them in particular, so she should really just not engage.

This is very annoying. She knows ancient Egyptian and would be so good at this homework.

Julian has the vague sense that something just happened here, like a whale passing in the depths too far down to see but just close enough to the surface to feel a slight swell. 

Right, Paris asked for - homework help! Annisa - has a way to handle that gracefully! "Elizabeth - over there - was doing the homework for Julia from New York in exchange for sitting with them Saturdays, I bet she'd do yours too. Though New York was advertising tea."

- Wait, oh no, she got the table invitation and just accepted right away without even thinking about what Boston will think - no, this is fine, actually, being seen to get table invitations reliably shows that she has value and also Marcy knows she's not just sucking up to enclaves because she was rude to that New Yorker -

Paris kid does not appear to be terribly offended. Paris kid is packing up his stuff, not particularly looking around for a response, as if he'd simply been informing everyone that tonight was taco night at the cafeteria and if they got there early they could grab two.

He looks up at Annisa's comment. "--ah. She's certainly welcome. Any friend of New York."

Is. Is Annisa supposed to go convey this to Elizabeth herself now.