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Julia is uncharacteristically sullen at dinner.
The seniors are uncharacteristically present at dinner; they usually leave by the time the freshmen sit down. Today they just squeeze everyone in, and tell outsiders that unfortunately there's no space, perhaps tomorrow? For some reason they want to give everyone a Talk about information security, the importance of defaulting to not sharing enclave business with outsiders, the importance of maintaining formation in the hallways and not letting random people in, and the catastrophic events of last year. You can tell it's a serious talk because Atul, a junior with a sound affinity, has a spell up against eavesdroppers, and because Julia stares at her food the whole time.
Julia, Zeke, Orion, Rebecca, interlopers to be determined
requiem
Rebecca is not sure how this applies to her! Is anything she knows enclave business? Wow last year was scary but it seems like everyone thinks that wasn't normal.
"If you're travelling with us then you're going to pick up a lot of things outsiders might love to hear about, and you shouldn't tell them," Annaka says. "There are some maleficers targeting the freshmen; even harmless-seeming information, like who is friends with who or who had a fight or who hates casserole, can be used to isolate a target."
Most years aren't like last year and they are working VERY HARD to make sure this year isn't like last year.
requiem
"- okay, but is it still okay to hang out with that one Sacramento sophomore and trade spells with him and talk about music?"
"Yeah, that's fine. - frankly, it's not the US enclaves we're worried about. But don't spread that around either, sometimes the fact we're worried about someone itself causes them to anticipate a fight and kill people preparing for it..."
"Yes, go ahead." Annaka does not specify this is partially only because she doesn't particularly care if Rebecca dies.
Okay, big conversation, rough on morale, so now they're going to break out some treats to make up for it! It's close enough to Atul's birthday, everyone have a slice of chocolate cake! And they can drop the sound barrier and sing to him!
"Isn't his birthday in the middle of August?" asks Julia.
"Shut up," her sister says.
the-truth-will-out
A wild Holden approaches.
"Hey! Happy birthday Atul! Been quite a year, hasn't it?"
" - Oh, I'm not here for your cake or anything, I just want to make sure the freshmen are settling in well and have everything they need."
Two dozen people stare at him silently. Twenty three of them just got a lecture on not telling people things and one of them just gave a lecture on not telling people things. Most of the sophomores and juniors suspect Annaka arranged this deliberately to make a point of some kind.
requiem
...unfortunate that "the casserole here is terrible" would be a complete non-sequitur.
mornings-of-gold
... Zeke hasn’t been paying attention to anything that’s been happening, except for the bit where everyone was singing and it would’ve been weird if he didn’t sing along, and now he... still doesn’t know what’s happening. Probably he can just continue eating? He continues eating.
"Well, great catching up with you, Holden," Annaka says with satisfaction after another solid minute. "We'll have to do this again sometime! Bye!"
"I'm very proud of you all," Annaka says once he was gone. "That was the easiest test in the world, but still, getting twenty-four kids to pass the easiest test in the world is no small thing! We already had cake, though -"
"If you and Claire co-cast with me and we're willing to blow a lot of mana on it I could probably do a movie on the wall in the reading room," says Julia. "It'd have to be one I've seen a million times. ...it'd have to be Legally Blonde. That's it, that's the only one I can do, and the soundtrack's on the mp3 player, so -"
requiem
"Ooh, did you know there's a musical of Legally Blonde? - it leans kind of hard on the Greek chorus, though."
" - yeah," says Annaka. "All right. Movie night in the New York reading room, thirty minutes, invite your friends. - I didn't know you could do that even co-casting," she adds to Julia, "that's really cool -"
"It was the only way I could get Mom to let me watch movies for the entire last year, if I told her I was practicing. Did you go see the musical on Broadway," she asks Rebecca, "I have been to one show in the last three years because of mals and it's been killing me..."
requiem
"Yeah! It was for my birthday, we went to New York and I saw two musicals a day for a whole long weekend, that one and Phantom and Les Mis and Lion King and Wicked and Hamilton, it was the best."
"Oh man, that sounds incredible - this is going to be a really shitty rendition, I can do 'these two people, saying these lines of dialogue' but I can't do, like, zooms and camera cuts and stuff except when I'm watching it on one wall and projecting it onto another. But the only way I'll ever get that good is if I practice."