"Thank you Orion!!!" Julia tries the thing to salvage mana from that shield when you put it away but it's finicky and she fails at it. Whatever. The fourth cabinet contains cardstock and plaster and sand. The cardstock is now all singed and gooey and the whole thing smells horrid. She closes the door on it, holding her nose.

"Plaster and sand!" Orion calls out helpfully, in case anyone wants those, and he lopes back over to his wax knife.

The next cabinet has two foot by two foot by four foot blocks of marble and twelve-gallon bottles of epoxy resin and a ball of raw wool sheared from some kind of animal. The one after that has a large block of beeswax, identifiable because there is a single squished bee in it, and a bunch of pieces of bamboo, and four wine barrel lids, smelling faintly of wine.

"I guess wool... can also be turned into thread, which can be turned into cloth." She kind of feels like they're going backwards, at this point, and idly wonders if the next cabinet will have a whole live sheep in it, even though this is ridiculous. But she takes the wool anyway.

"If you know how to spin wool, yeah. Do you know how to spin wool? I don't know how to spin wool. We were supposed to pick an easy useful mana-building activity but we all picked drawing, except Orion, who picked 'killing mals'."

The next cabinet is overflowing with pine cones. Beneath the mountain of pine cones it has acrylic containers of fine black dust, unlabelled, and 12 "Michigan Gems Discovery Buckets", with price tags still on them.

"I miss Amazon," Julia says. "Someone should've seduced Jeff Bezos. I bet if his kid was a wizard he wouldn't put up with all these terrible supply cabinets."

"I don't know how to spin wool. It seems like the kind of thing one might be able to learn around here, though? Maybe? - uh, are there any particular uses for unidentified rough cut gemstones?"

"Trading to someone who knows how to cut them? Gemstones are useful for various stuff. They're on our list, though I won't take all of them."

She empties eight of the Michigan Gem Discovery Buckets into her backpack.

Okay HE CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE. And he thinks the Chicagoite might have approached Julia first?

"I know how to spin wool," he says. "Among other things. I think we met on Thursday, I was with my sister, you had a cool room," he adds to Julia, "and I don't think I got your name," to Karen. 

Karen is in the middle of taking two buckets of unidentified gems. Including the bucket part of the buckets, she doesn't have any good-sized containers and they might be useful for storing water or something. 

"Oh, that would be cool. I'm Karen. It seems like spinning wool into an entire outfit would take a really long time, but I guess if the only other option is burlap it might be worth it eventually? And it does sound like it would build mana."

"My affinity is thread. It'll take a while, but the end result will be good. I mean, for a freshman." 

He's probably not the MURDER MALEFICER but he might be. He does have a kind of murderous vibe, now that she thinks about it. Julia resolves not to let her guard down. When her backpack is full of rocks she stacks the eight containers and picks up those too, without turning her back on that kid. - what's his name.

"You haven't introduced yourself," she says.

"Sorry. Wilbur. I thought I remembered Lucy introducing me on Thursday, I'm the one who's making your pillowcase and made your slippers. Although probably you don't want to accept a pillowcase enchanted for better sleep from an indie until they catch the murderer."

"Uh, I'd love a second outfit but I don't really have that much stuff to trade for it, yet?"

"Don't trade anyone until we catch the murderer!" she says brightly. She doesn't remember thinking he had a creepy vibe on Thursday, so maybe he doesn't actually.

        "Julia," says Silas, looking at the backpack full of rocks, "do you want me to try to sort through them for the valuable ones now before you lug them all upstairs?"

"I'm going to use the ones that aren't valuable to make a zen rock garden! On my desk!"

        "Right, okay then. Just don't throw out your back."

"Okay Mom."

The next cabinet has ...a lot of stuff. Animal hides, in big heaps on the upper shelves; 34" strands of uncut amethyst beads coiled around vats of tanning solution; corks; paperclips; staples; polished ivory; grey alpaca fleece, lumps of unidentifiable metal.

"Okay, leather it is at least possible to make clothes out of in fewer than a thousand hours." She takes the animal hides and the alpaca fleece. ...she will look up how to tan animal hides in the library after Latin practice, maybe. - she should really think about the possibility that Leander is the murderer, but also if Leander were the murderer wouldn't he have murdered her already? Was she ever actually alone with him without Val? Ugh.

"Ivory is on your list, right?"

"Yup! Hey Chloe you should fill your pack with whatever you want before I stick you with all this ivory."

-Riley doesn't know what he can do with plaster, but the whole point of coming over here is to find supplies. He takes some of that and the sand in case he finds a use for it later. He'll just embarrass himself if he trails behind the enclavers- Americans, which means New York, given how many of them there are. He'll take whatever they don't want, though, it's not worth saving face during the first week. This is probably his best chance to use shop time without getting himself killed. Enclave girl seems like the type to appreciate obsequiousness. It's obvious what he can offer- he moves close enough that she'll be able to hear him but not anywhere near enough to threaten her orbit.

"Need any help lifting things?"

"Oh, that'd be great!! Yeah, I overfilled this backpack and now it's super heavy." She's adding ivory to it. "I'm Julia, you?"

"Riley."

He waits until it she's done filling it and then lifts it more easily than someone of his size and build should be able to.

"Just tell me where you want it."

" - wow, cool, do you have a spell for that? That's so useful! Next to my stuff on the table for now, probably?"

(Zeke has wandered away from his existing pile of stuff, so as to add more stuff to it; he takes a handful of paperclips and three strings of amethyst beads, and returns to his desk to turn them into bracelets and a necklace for Rebecca, knifemaking process forgotten.)

"Potion. I'm going for alchemy. Stronger, faster, and all around better than the other guys."

Next to her stuff it is. Riley will not linger if she doesn't seem to want to talk about the potion, but as long as she does he'll read her enclavemates to find out what they think of her. Spoiled brat with connections back home? Useful affinity but not much going on upstairs? "Face" of the freshmen? He focuses on the blond kid and the guy she was telling about her zen rock garden.

Silas is watching Riley with mild suspicion on the principle that he ought to watch everyone with mild suspicion until the murderer is caught. 

Orion's opinion of Julia is that she is not a mal.

"That's so useful!" Julia is saying. "Can you make it for other people, or only yourself?"