Annisa does feel better in the morning! She is sore all over and can dump a lot of mana on Daria.

Naima's definitely way less sore than she was yesterday, which is kind of like not being sore. Her backpack is full of all of the textbooks she has so far, her sewing kit and a sewing project, and lots and lots of blank paper and pencils. She's at the meeting point five minutes early.

Oh, god, time to sound like a human being. "How did everyone sleep last night?" 

"Decent. Dreamt of homework." This was completely intentional, she wanted to review the highlights of the first two weeks of Mal Studies readings.

"I seem not to have been eaten and have repaid one thirtieth of the debt I incurred for the wards on my room."

...If he rips off the bandage now, he'll probably be so miserable by the time they get to the gym. Okay, act casual. "Oh, do you have a good source for wards? I may be in the market." 

Malak is up before six, because she has to be for morning prayers, but it's a good habit to be in anyways. She spends twenty minutes chatting up her new spellbook and working through one of the first spells in it before she goes to join her group for morning exercise.

"I slept well but I may have overdone the horrible wall sitting before bed. I have a decent ward but it hides your room rather than actually warding it, you'll want to layer it with a tripwire at the very least."

"That's fine, I have a tripwire. How long does it last and how much do you want to cast it?" 

Bella chooses this moment to jog up to the stairwell. "I tried horrible wall sitting last night! It's so fast! After the first time I switched to doing it against my headboard so I could at least collapse into bed."

"I would refresh it once a week back home. Uh, if you're in Naima's hall she'll have to be OK with it, I already traded it to her for a discount on healing and I'm trying not to sell it to any two people close together. If you spot me the mana for it - mana-variable, but a quarter hour of horrible wall sitting should do nicely - then I'll do it for homework help."

"Isn't it horrible?" she says cheerfully to Bella. "Doing it on your bed is a good idea, I...ended up overdoing it and fell asleep on my floor, but that just means exercising today will be extra unpleasant since I'm randomly sore!"

"I'm not on the same hall as anyone I know better than a bathroom buddy, so far."

"Hoo-fucking-ray, extra unpleasantness! I'm planning to try to meet up with Bostonians and ill-fated-potion-guy today in the library and play evilly difficult card games, which are reportedly also mana-building if they're evilly difficult enough and will make a change of pace."

"Huh, interesting. I'd be tempted to check that out" she has no idea if she's invited, sounds like it's mostly enclavers "but if I don't spend this whole weekend on French I'm pretty sure the school will make me regret it on Monday. Luckily, I hate that too!"

Malak's offer is good, especially since he's planning on spending most of his time on homework anyway, but he really doesn't want to sound like a pushover right now. He's gotta focus and act like he's never had an altruistic impulse in his whole natural life, since that Julian is the Julian who lives. 

"Sounds good to me, but we should define the scope of homework help. I'm happy to let you copy off me in any of the classes we share but I don't want to commit to anything too open-ended." 

And then, to Bella – "I'm supposed to meet up with Boston and some other people to study German this morning. Maybe they'll let me stick around." 

"Could be different subsets of Boston but maybe."

"I spoke to Marcy, but we're meeting in their reading room." And if there were other Bostonians in his German class Julian's not sure he'd recognize them, he's terrible at telling white people apart. 

"I talked to Marcy too. She's cool."

"I'll help you with French if you make my knife first," she says to Annisa. "I didn't bring a real one."

To Julian, "I'm hoping not to need much help, but - I traded Naima for healing, if Annisa wanted I'd trade her for shop help or a weapon, if you're spotting the mana then what I'm trading is my time and expertise, so some time with your big brain seems a fair trade. I don't want to copy anything, but if you're up for doing a couple passes of suggestions and edits on my composition homework that seems fair. They're both ongoing commitments so we can renegotiate later if something about the specifics isn't working for us."

Marcy's pretty great but probably has the good sense to not want Malak showing up everywhere she goes. Malak will have to be content with a shared shop class and occasional meal invites (inshallah).

"That works for me." Also, empirically, Julian can't seem to stop himself from doing other people's comp homework, and he might as well get something out of it. 

What, Naima didn't bring a knife at all? Even as a senior Annisa might not be able to make knives as good as the one she brought in, and if her father hadn't been able to make it for her they'd have bought it, and carried more letters to pay for it. Maybe if you're a healer you need the weight for healing stuff that's hard to get inside. "Sure thing, I'll make yours first. I can probably have it for you in a week, assuming I can find people to go to the shop during work periods with me, or set up an adequate mini-shop in my room."

"I'd also like to spend some work periods on shop time."

"Cool, then I bet we can round up enough of a group."

"I'm fine with at least coming down with you guys at least for the first week, if that helps. There's some bulky stuff I want to grab if the restock hasn't been entirely ransacked."