Bella does not know what the fuck!

Okay. Raleigh is just going to be over here being very quiet and uninteresting to confusingly cocky maleficers, then. Ooh, a textbook. 

"Hello Marino. I'm Liath. Santa Barbara. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Oh, I just like the look of you. Santa Barbara, that's California, right? I'm from Pisa."

Liath smiles behind her sunglasses. "Yeah, California. Pisa, huh? That explains the fingernails. Mice?" 

"Frogs, mostly. Ugly, but frog eggs are much lighter than baby mice. Also snakes, but those are for emergencies."

She nods. "What's your sacrifice schedule like?"

"Oh, pretty slow. We're not supposed to say too much, even to a friend - lots of wild maleficers would like to steal our secrets and never go rotten, and we can't have that."

She nods. "Can you at least tell me what track you are? I'm languages."

"The same for me! I have French and Greek and Latin, so far. French is my favorite, I think, it's a beautiful language for speaking to beautiful people."

"Mandarin, Latin, Greek, Gaelic. The plan is to continue on to the other romance languages. I could use a French and Italian tutor, actually."

.....Is this conversation incredibly weird? Raleigh feels like this is incredibly weird! 

He stomps on the temptation to say that actually he thinks frogs are cute. It's not relevant, and he doesn't actually want the attention of the weird arrogant maleficer kid, even if they're supposedly being responsible about the whole maleficing thing. 

Yeah let's ignore that whole thing, Santa Barbara can take care of herself. What does the lecture have to say, come on, lecture.

"I would be delighted to help you learn," he says, with a sparkle in his eye, "But I think I may have annoyed some others in the class, so perhaps we should discuss it later."

"This evening, then."

The lecture opens with a discussion of various educational methods, then focusses in on memory aids in particular. Poetry's historical use as a method for memorization of facts, as in ancient Norse rune poems, features prominently. Apparently flashcards didn't exist until 1834??

Huh! Flashcards seem obvious to Bella but a lot of things seem that way to people who grew up with them, she supposes.

This sounds like something Raleigh's dad told him once. Not an especially interesting something, even. Raleigh is going to try his best to pay attention to the lecture, but it's been a really long day and he's not at his best.