What? It's a great affinity. If Manchester doesn't see that then sucks to be Manchester when New York steals him. (Julia is aware you can't actually steal enclavers from other enclaves.)

"Hey, Orion, I want to go down to the lab, want to bodyguard?" He will; he's been jumping at any chance to accompany anyone on any errand that involves leaving the nice safe quiet library.

"Yeah, sure!" Up he hops. He's been studying Greek for like thirty consecutive minutes, awful.

Julia feels that Orion Lake is maybe a reincarnated puppy dog. Off she trots down the stairs.

They don't find ANYTHING on the stairs. What a bummer. Orion starts prowling the lab once they find the one Ennis is in.

Ennis looks up. "Oh - it's Julia, isn't it?"

"Yeah! Did you know that Manchester is undercutting their 'yeah, Ennis is really busy and has a lot of interest' with, like, 'for his weird affinity'? If it's on purpose as a strategy or something then whatever but I would absolutely put sand in my clavemates' beds if they were insensitively undercutting my market value like that!!! You want them to just go "yeah, he's in the lab, he's in very high demand'. Full stop. So then I know I'd better bid high. But if I'm missing something, okay, none of my business."

"That was probably Liam, his is fire and he puffs up a bit about its combat value." Stir stir. "What can I do for you today?"

"Combat value?? We're not soldiers, we're high school students! Having something everyone wants is having everything. I have the samples of the makeup I brought in, and I'll trade you those for a new batch - I didn't bring in any eyeshadow, so maybe that, or some blush? Or eyeliner but I'm not actually any good at applying it without a good mirror and I haven't got one yet."

"I have a compact. Is your eyeliner a pen or a pencil?"

"Pencil, it was lighter." Eyeroll. 

"Makes it harder to reuse the casing; Isla's making boxes for me, though, and that'll do for eyeshadow. Do you want nonmagical eyeshadow, or the alertness kind for which I'd want you to front the mana?"

"We're strictly forbidden from fronting mana till they catch the freshman murderer, not that I'm worried it's you but my sister's threatened to cut people off the powersharers for it. - she's on a bit of a trip right now, I swear she's super chill normally. So I guess just nonmagical for now?"

"All right. I'm seeing you in periwinkle, what do you reckon?"

"I'd try it? My favorite shadow back home was a turquoise, but it's hell to pair with outfits and now that I'm down to twelve outfits it'd be hopeless."

"Gold would also work on you if you want something more neutral."

She bites her lip consideringly. "I think I can swing periwinkle, just let me think - you know, I was hoping to arrange a clothing swap with someone here, double both our wardrobes, but I haven't found anyone to take me up on it?? I'm friends with Karen and Rebecca and Lisa who're all penniless, and then we have some support people who're all the very serious type, and then everyone else is boys. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just, mostly they don't appreciate the necessity of having more stuff to pair with my makeup. I did meet one gay boy but he's the goth kind of gay boy not the well-dressed kind - is that homophobic -"

"I'm not a queer studies professor and I do not have a Tumblr. Have you looked for spells to change the colors of things?"

"You're a GENIUS is what you are! No! Why didn't I think of that! I've been combing through the library looking for something that'll let me do mocktails for therapy day and I didn't think that I could just CHANGE THE COLOR OF MY CLOTHES - you know, you are a genius, but that's actually more me being an idiot. Okay. Periwinkle."

"Periwinkle it is. Is your friend... looking for mals? Does he also do supply cupboards?"

"Sure!" Orion starts flinging open supply cupboards.

Wow that's really... something??

"Nothing," says Orion, having opened all the cupboards and then left them that way.

Well then. Ennis goes over to pick up some blue things of various sorts and anything else that looks good that he'll be able to fit into his project locker after making the eyeshadow.

Julia doesn't even have an alch supply locker yet but she has passed endless tests on what's scarce and what's tradeable, ugh, and once Ennis has grabbed everything he wants she'll go through and acquire various emulsions for putting other things in, and some bottles of oil and some cinnamon.

Ennis mixes up her nonmagical periwinkle eyeshadow quite cheerfully. At one point he wants to put a swatch near her eye so he can see how it does against her eye color and then add a pinch more of something.