"It does? How does that work?"

"The translations are . . . learning not spells. For spells, better poetry, less good to learn words."

"For translating the spells – " crap. "If you want a good explanation, I'm sorry, it'll have to be in English." 

Oh, so spells are poetry apparently. The ones in that book were fairly poetical, she admits. It's not just for ease of memorization. Maybe she should have paid more attention in Language Arts.

"This is German time not spells time, sorry to distract."

"It's true, the changes over time make it very hard. Learning which might have been spells will have to look at the old tongue, for rhythm and rhyme."

(Theun is more analytical than Marcy, particularly for the differences between the ancestor language and its descendants, and so every ten minutes or so there's a sidetrack from the assignment to explain a grammatical shift or sound change. It occurs to him that this is probably much harder to use for people who are still learning modern German but (a) he actually really likes this part and (b) he doesn't have a good idea of how much harder, nor a better approach in mind.)

Marcy doesn't mind the grammatical digressions; they still have new words in them and she does recognize the virtues of not sounding like she's on drugs sooner rather than later.

Now Julian is going to watch Marcy to see if she's interested in the digressions or not. One the one hand, it's pretty fascinating, but he doesn't want to come across as too easily distractible – unless it's worse to seem incurious. Spending time with enclavers is so exhausting. 

The actual assignment here is "Read the following three passages from different versions of the Nibelungleid, and write a 2-page essay comparing them and analyzing if any of them might have been used in spells."

So when the three readings are done, she comments, "The last one was the most - was the best sound. If any is a spell, it is that one? But I am missing a lot of words in it."

Marcy knows she ought to be tracking everyone's opinion of her and what she's signalling about her opinion of them but it's really hard to do in a new language so all she knows is that Julian is paying attention to her. She sounds out some of the lines in the second passage. "That part maybe good for a spell not be. Very--" she gropes for the word and gives up "slant rhyme, before vowel shift."

Theun is so far oblivious to Julian's predicament, and so his good mood is remaining intact.

"A 'loose rhyme', yes. I know some spells with loose rhyming, but it makes it less likely. Especially for a freshman assignment. Which words are you missing, Wendy?"

She lists them out slowly, then asks, "What is a vowel shift?"

"Tomayto, tomahto, but all people speaking a language."

"...Cool! That would damage poetry, yes."

Normally he'd  launch into a lecture about the relationship between vowel quantity and mana efficiency, but this morning the world gets to meet the new and improved strategic Julian. That means not sounding like he's giving valuable information away for free (and thus a pushover), while also seeming smart and helpful (and thus a good prospect), but not like he's too much of a suck-up. This early in the year, it's probably fine to lean into his strengths, since everyone is establishing their reputations – unless that makes him look condescending? Because he knows he has a problem with sounding condescending sometimes, on the outside. But on the outside the fact that he's just statistically pretty likely to be the smartest person in any given class isn't a valuable survival asset which can be traded for goods and services – 

...Julian may be bluescreening just a little bit. 

Marcy has a question for Julian but he seems to be concentrating hard on something so she'll ask Theun instead and Julian can jump in if he wants. "These lines and these lines can reinforce in a spell, yes?"

Theun goes through Wendy's list of missing words and fills in most of them. One or two he's uncertain of and makes a guess. "I think I know what that means, but I should look it up. May I borrow the dictionary for a moment?"

After he's confirmed those words, he gets back to Marcy.

"That looks right to me. The parallelism is in a lot of spells. That part should still be visible in translation..."

She tells the dictionary that it's so lovely she just has to show it off to her friends, who will be so impressed, and loans it to Theun.

Oh good a concrete problem, he is saved. 

"This depends, I think? I – I'm sorry, okay, structural parallelism is usually good for reinforcing specific effects, right, so you'd expect to see it in sections that talk about what the spell is supposed to accomplish, instead of as a bridge between two sections like it is here. Not that it couldn't be a spell – " not that he's correcting anyone, heaven forfend – "but I don't think it's very efficient? Of course, not all spells are...." 

"Hm, yeah, good point. Does the assignment say there's definitely a whole spell in here somewhere or just elements that could be used in one?"

"It just says to think if they MIGHT be used in spells. That is how I read it at least..."

"So maybe this parallelism would be inefficient used this way but it's still an element that could be used in a different way in a spell."

Julian would prefer to have a high-level discussion about this which would really be much easier for everyone in English but that means he has to decide if he's more likely to offend Marcy by implying her German isn't good enough or impress her by showing he's thoughtful about the fact that she hasn't been studying it for as long. Julian is a pathetic remora who hates his life. 

Oh dear, Julian looks stressed. "Are you annoyed about us lapsing into English? I can try to switch back to exclusively German if you don't mind me slowing us all down." She cannot wait for language lab on Monday, just her and a disembodied voice and sweet sweet vocab.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah note to strategic Julian: look like you're trying less hard. 

"Oh, no, of course not, English is fine! Especially if we want to have a real discussion." 

"It's a good point," Theun says with a nod to Julian when he mentions the bridge, "If this was part of a spell, the bridge would probably be meant to tie two effects together, one from each section, but that seems unlikely."

His response to Marcy is, "The assignment says 'if any of them might have been used in spells', I don't think that it's suggesting that a spell would have used bits and pieces of it. If it's not useful as-is, it's probably not from a spell at all."