"Do we know you?" says one of the girls, but another girl elbows the boy next to her in the ribs and says, "Not yet! Hi! This is Sean!"

"H-hi," says Sean around a bit of green bean that he nearly choked on when elbowed.

Introducing someone before you introduce yourself is...kinda odd. Fortunately Alexius does not have the problem of who to introduce first. "Alexius, pleasure to meet you. I've been going around looking to scare up some trades - spells, homework, languages," potions that don't work, "et cetera." 

Elbow Girl gets up, carrying her heel of bread with her, and heads for the bus station, leaving space for Alexius. Sean gestures awkwardly at her vacated seat. "She wants me to meet more people," he says.

Not one to pass up an opportunity, Alexius takes the offered seat. "It's a good policy, here." And in general, really. "You never know who's going to be an important ally later - or just someone you'd want to trade with." 

"Yeah, I know she's right."

"...when I was younger, I had a lot of trouble talking to other kids. My parents made me socialize - part practice, part being surrounded by kids who don't believe in mals - and for a while, before the mana spurts started and I had to be sequestered away more thoroughly, I promised to meet at least one new person every day. I hated it - my affinity is myself, see, and that's no accident, I still have trouble understanding how other people think - but damn was it worth it." 

"Every day! Wow. Poppy's getting on my case now because it's the beginning of the year, I think she'll back off later."

"It's good that she's looking out for you. What's your affinity, if you don't mind sharing?" 

"Water. It's good for out, but..." Shrug.

"But what? That sounds useful, actually. You could trade people for protection in the showers, keep oozes out of the faucets, detect impurities, ward off toxic or corrosive solutions, and maybe even store up enough for a nice mal-clearing flood during graduation. There are shrinking spells, I've heard; maybe they work on water storage? Not to mention all of us are mostly water. Ever tried any spells to staunch bleeding?" 

"I mean, you mostly hear about it being used for reservoirs and stuff, but I guess some of that sounds good. I don't think blood counts as water though."

"Oh, purity matters. That's interesting. Do you want to do some tests in the lab to see how pure? I'm doing alchemy, we could join a brewing squad. I bet you could do something with aqueous solutions." 

"I mean, I can cast out of affinity like most people, I just don't expect it to help me with things that aren't water."

"True! I have a harder time than most casting out of affinity, so I just sort of got into the habit of going, 'how can I play to my strengths here?' I figure, everybody can do the things that everybody can do, you know? But there are going to be things you can do better and those are where the mana's at, so to speak." 

"I don't think I'm better at hardly anything than most people. It's not even that uncommon an affinity. But I'm an enclaver so that helps, I guess, as long as they don't, I don't know, kick me out on behalf of Ennis's mum for falling behind in Latin or something."

"Well, we are freshmen, it's hard to really outshine most mages yet." Not that he doesn't plan to, Friday's debacle notwithstanding. "Latin's a good choice to learn, I bet you'll find some useful spells once you've got it down." 

"Yeah, it's one of the standard Manchester ones. All our old spells are in Latin or some kind of Gaelic or French. Though some of the newer ones are Hindi, since, like, colonialism."

That is one way to put it, huh. "Got any interest in trading spells? - with permission for enclave spells, of course. As you might expect, I've got some good personal ones." 

"I'm not supposed to trade enclave ones till junior year. But I have some that are commoner. Generic wake ward, generic zap, generic shield. And some water things, one for moving water around - range of like five feet, one mass of it at a time, has to be at least a drop, can't be more than your mass and kind of sucks mana if you get bigger than a bucketful. One for boiling it, if I ever come by some tea. One for freezing it."

"Ooo, another shield would be neat, especially if it has different strengths and weaknesses than mine. I have an ice spike I traded from another student, you might like that one, and an envelope shield that's easy to maintain but not very efficient per attack. Trade you zap for zap and shield for shield? I wouldn't mind a water-mover too, for fiddly alchemical solutions and such. I also have...hmm, a generic antitoxin, a small reflexes boost, a stimulant...? Or fast-cast skin-toughening, or an incorporeal mal solidifier that I probably can't cast yet but you might." He likes offering people spells that make them more likely to survive. For...selfish reasons. Yeah. 

"I don't think solidifying mals is watery so I probably can't if you can't but the antitoxin sounds great - it's a spell not a potion? I thought antitoxins were a potion thing."

"It's sort of alchemy-adjacent, I suppose. It's a kind of transmutation spell, it turns a bunch of common toxins in the caster's body inert. It's cheaper if you know exactly what you're neutralizing but it works even if you don't. I wouldn't necessarily trust it against some of the nastier magical or mal toxins, or, like, drinking pure mercury, but it'll save you from, say, food poisoning or lesser mal bites, maybe a young numbing scorpion." 

"I think I want that one. In case any young numbing scorpions are hiding in my shoes some morning."

"My thoughts exactly! Three for three trade, then?"

"Sounds good!" Sean has some paper. He starts writing his out. "Mine are all English."