"I think I'm more concerned with whether the individual people are good for studying with than about where they're from, if we're talking about people we want to invite every time the Group gathers to do anything. For individual class study sessions - I think I'm fine at least trying sessions with most enclavers as long as we don't know of any specific reason to avoid them? I dunno, we should maybe refine any future plans based on how things go with Bella."

"I don't think we have to go out of our way to snub enclaves to establish our reputation as not suck-ups, just being selective on academic merits and not sucking up should do it. Also, I have already snubbed New York so I think my reputation is established enough."

"You have what now? That - seems bad!"

"I mean, I did not do anything serious enough that they'd want revenge or anything like that, I just sat somewhere else in homeroom and made it clear why. I think it helped us get the invite to breakfast with Boston."

"Huh. Fair enough. ...does anyone know any things about New Orleans?"

"It's in America."

"It's in Louisiana. Towards the southern edge."

Is Louisiana part of America? Probably, America has a lot of weirdly-named states and it doesn't sound spanish so it's probably not in south America.

"My German class has one of the Boston enclavers – Marcy, I think? – and I'll be studying with them tomorrow afternoon, actually. Do we have reason to believe that Boston's especially good?"

"Marcy seemed - I was taught to expect that some enclavers are running circles around you at complicated social games, and some enclavers are just very, very competent and noticing whether you are, and apparently there's a third kind of enclaver who is just a blundering mess who shouldn't even be here being carried along by their truly excessive resources, but anyway she's the second kind."

Julian has certainly encountered some blundering messes today but thinks it's more politic to keep that to himself. Unless telling the Group would make it clear that he's not a pathetic suck-up? Except he kind of is a pathetic suck-up, is the problem – unless sucking up pathetically to Shanghai makes him look smart and strategic, because he's in the position to be sucking up to a powerful enclave at all. It's all very confusing and he would really rather just talk about German poetry. 

"I should brush up on my Middle High German, then, so it looks like I know what I'm talking about. At least I'm not going to be the most clueless person in the class, apparently half of them don't even speak modern German." 

"What makes some German High German. Is there High French. Is there Low German."

"Yes Low German, no High French. I think it has to do with where they speak it and literally how high up it is, like if it has mountains or not." 

"Did German dialects just... naturally segregate by elevation?"

"Well, some parts of Germany are very flat and some are very tall and different people lived there? Probably? I'm terrified that all the medieval poets we're going to read are from different places that spoke different Germans and I'm going to have to learn all of them." 

"What you should do is learn the vocabulary for metaphysical speculation in German, Marcy likes metaphysical speculation."

"Oh, that's perfect, Germans love metaphysically speculating, it's just about the first thing you learn." 

Annisa can't tell if he's serious but she laughs; it works either way.