Okay, she's not gonna, like, complain about him being antisocial considering. "Okay." Follow follow. She spins around once on each stair landing to see if anything's coming up behind.

No mals are following them, only a few students also heading places. 

Cassie's room, on the sophomore level, is locked by magic but Landon apparently has right-of-entry, and unlocks it. Inside, Cassie appears to have modified her bed into a loft, and set up a miniature combination-lab-shop underneath. The entire opposite wall is crammed with floor-to-ceiling metal shelving, heaped with supplies and ingredients. 

"Stay out there a second," Landon warns her, "Cassie's messy and I'd better check for mals first." 

"You got it."

No mals! 

"Well, come on in," Landon says after a couple of minutes of thoroughly overturning every randomly-piled item with the point of his enchanted knife. "Here, come have a look at this shelf, see if anything - feels right, or like you'd especially enjoy holding it or fiddling with it...?" 

The shelf contains: 

- A stack of balsa-wood slats. 

- A pile of walnut shells. 

- A geode sliced in half, showing a beautiful purplish crystal interior. 

- A glass eyeball, which is a very pretty shade of gold-flecked hazel.

- A single oyster shell. 

- A....dog skull?? (Small. Maybe a chihuaha skull.) It looks bleached an clean, at least. 

- A jar of beautiful beads, some of which are probably glass but some of which look like real gems or amber? 

- A basket of more one-inch tungsten cubes, maybe twenty of them. 

- A cup of half-inch steel ball bearings. 

- An enormous conch shell at least as big as Rebecca's head. 

- A spool of very fine copper wire. 

- A mummified rat??? 

"The beads are pretty... I could make them into a rosary maybe. The shell is also very awesome though..."

"It's a really excellent shell! Hmm. It'd definitely take more time and work to make the shell into a mana sink that wouldn't leak, but if you wanted to invest in that, it would have a much higher capacity. - And if you do want it, I think you'd better claim it here, Cassie found it on Friday and it'll get snapped up soon. ...Also I wonder if Cassie and I could work with Vanya and make it an instrument, too, I think I've heard of conch-shell horns? And the way I do items, having it fit with your affinity can make it work especially well." 

"Ooh if it could be a horn definitely the shell."

"Sounds good!" This earns her an actual smile, albeit a very halfhearted smile. "Right. So - I can get more done in this session if we head down to the actual shop, but also it'll be putting both of us at more risk - I'm sure I can look out for us but if I have to then I can't be working on your mana storage instead. What do you think?" 

Landon is very tired and his brain is mostly full of homework and scheduling and he does not feel especially prepared to make decisions. 

"I could ask Orion to come?"

"- Sorry, Orion who? Is that someone from New York–" Pause. "...The kid from New York whose affinity is literally just for killing mals? I mean, sure, I'd take you up on that, if you think you've got the leverage to convince him to come along." 

"Well, he does really like killing mals. But I'm not sure where he is."

"Most people are still at lunch so he's probably still in the dining hall? We could try looking there, but I don't want to spend too long walking around instead of working on this." 

"No, he left, he finished eating before I did and went somewhere. He could be hunting mals in shop already."

"Okay, well, I don't especially feel like wandering the school in hopes of finding him, so why don't we work in here for now. And maybe you can plan a time later this week and ask him in advance? I think I've got Wednesday work period free." 

"Okay, I'll ask him about then!" She writes that down in the little notebook she scored last language lab and has turned into a makeshift planner.

Landon, who approves of planners, smiles at her. "Right. So, to start, all I want you to do is hold it. Just - play around with it a bit, figure out the way of holding it that feels comfortable and natural for you." 

She picks up the shell, carefully, both hands, tries to figure out which end you'd blow into. Pets the silky smooth inside and runs her fingers over the ridges.

Landon just watches her intently for about thirty seconds. 

"- I need to cast a divination spell," he says. "It's in Mandarin." 

She puts the shell to her ear with one hand and covers the other and hums.

...Cute. It's very her, which should help. 

He casts his divination spell and watches the mana interactions for a minute or two. 

"- All right. Have you ever tried to send mana through a piece of artifice before?" 

"No, I haven't even had shop yet."

"Do you think you have a sense for how? If not, you can try pulling a little bit from my power sharer and then putting it back, maybe, to get a feel for it?" 

"I don't think I can guess, at least not fast - if it's okay to try your sharer that seems like it would help."

She's a freshman, even if she wanted she couldn't pull enough from it to matter. "Yeah, here you go. Try to just do a little, and put it right back, but don't stress if it's tricky to get it precise." 

When she puts it on her eyes go quite wide. "Oh wow! That's a lot!" She takes a sip and then - unsips - "I think I did it."

Landon nods, approvingly. "Not bad. ...Feel free to do it again a few more times, to get comfy with it. It's going to be a lot harder with yours - sorry, I'm just not as good as the best adult artificer in Sacramento." 

"That's okay, I understand." Sip put sip put sip put. Eventually she gives back the sharer.

"Right. Good. So - I need you to at least try to put some mana into the conch. It's not going to work on the first go, but it'll give me a better sense to direct what I work on next. ....The mental image that works for me, to do this, is sort of like imagining that I have a spool of thread in my chest? And I unspool some thread from it, and feed it into the mana sink, and try to start wrapping it around and around and around.... You might need something different, sorry, it's pretty hard to explain in words." 

"Do I have to make it new or can it be what I have from just walking around?"

"- Oh, sorry, right. The first one. Um, do you have good mana building methods worked out yet?" 

"I don't have a specific thing but I've been doing my least favorite vocal exercises and some stretching, when I need some and haven't climbed enough stairs lately."

"...I don't know how much you hate your least favorite vocal exercises, but that may not be as fast as you want. Do you know how to do a plank? If you do it on your elbows, it'll leave your hands mostly free so you can hold the conch." 

He demonstrates. 

"....It doesn't feel all that hard at first, but trust me, thirty seconds in you'll notice." 

She imitates him, conch cradled carefully in her hands. "I don't hate them that much but if I keep doing them for a really long time my lips'll fall asleep - oh, wow, you're right, that was fast -" Mana go IN shell. Like a conch-animal. There is presumably some kind of animal that is a conch, that's where shells come from, and now her mana will go where once a conch was. She decides she will imagine that conchs look like those pretty Spanish dancer sea slugs.

Landon will continue doing plank and building mana next to her, for moral support and because it's just a good idea anyway. 

"If it gets too hard to concentrate you can take a break for, like, ten seconds? ....At some point this gets too easy and then you can switch to doing one-handed or with one foot off the ground." Landon, who's been able to do five minutes of plank at a stretch since sophomore year and can no longer get much mana at all from the normal kind, demonstrates this. 

"Wow. I'm going to get in such amazing shape!" Plank plank plank and now she needs a break. Okay back to trying to make a mana conch.

"You can switch it up with side-plank if you want - it'll give you more balanced core strength, anyway." Landon demonstrates, rolling so that he's planking on one elbow, with the other arm raised toward the ceiling. After a moment he lifts his top leg as well and starts doing plank-side-leg-lifts. "....Anyway, can you feel it catching at all before it slips out? It's okay if not, it takes a pretty variable amount of time before it's attuned enough for that, but I'd rather not cast my divination spell and check until you think you feel something." 

(Landon does not sound even slightly out of breath, despite the fact that he's been continuously in plank position and also doing weird extras since before Rebecca started at all.) 

Side-plank! She tries the leg lift too! Be a conch! "I don't think it's - ooh I think there was maybe a bit there but it's not there any more if I try to get it back out -"

"Yeah, sorry, I should've been more clear - it's definitely not going to be holding the mana yet, I just need to know when you've gotten it attuned to you enough that it....slightly starts trying to hold it? 'Trying' isn't quite the word but, yes, the 'there was a bit there' sounds like the thing. Keep trying a bit longer and see if you keep noticing it?" 

CONCH CONCH CONCH CONCH CONCH "There it was again for a sec -" She switches sides.

"Great! Good. - All right, maybe take a break for a minute now? I'm going to cast my divination spell so I can see exactly how to work on the attunement-to-you, and it only lasts a minute, so I want you to definitely be able to concentrate enough to get it at least a couple of times." 

"Okay!" She unplanks and flops on the floor.

Landon can barely feel the burn in his abs at all, yet. This is the problem with being in excellent shape. He keeps going. "I'd be happy to teach you some other good exercises sometime? And, yep, you'll get in such good shape. I guess toned abs are one of the few actual benefits we get out of this place?" 

"I mean that and learning magic, I really like the learning magic. And I'm meeting really great people."

“- Right, yeah, I guess you hadn’t had much of a chance to meet wizards before this? Fair enough. And the library’s pretty great! Have you had much of a chance to look around it yet?”

"Some, yeah! Chloe helped me find dictionaries for the languages I'm doing."

"Oh, good, I'm glad! It seems like you're managing pretty well here, honestly? Good work." 

"I'm really lucky I met Zeke right off! Instead of, like, the murderer or whatever!"

"...Yeah. All right, that's probably long enough. Ready to have another go at mana-building and feeding it into your conch, so I can watch you?"

"Sure thing!" Okay little conch-animal it's lunchtime for little conch-animals and you eat PLANKS.

Landon turns and walks to the opposite end of the room so he can whisper some words under his breath without risking Rebecca picking up a new language. He watches for the entire minute that the spell lasts, without saying a word. 

"- Yes. Very good." 

"Is it working?" she asks, flopping again.

"Yes! I got everything I needed to keep working on this until our next group session!" 

"Group session?"

"Sorry, I meant with both of us - I'm going to keep working on it when I have time until then. I did think I might grab Vanya for the next time, and Cassie if he wants her there for it. I think he can figure out how to put in some finger holes and make it an actual instrument for you, too - and given your affinity, that could well make it work more efficiently for you as mana storage, too." 

"That'd be great! Maybe I could use it as a pitch pipe, since my pitch isn't absolute."

"Almost no one has absolute pitch! Vanya does - well, he would say that sometimes he's off by an eighth of a semitone, not that I really know what that means. But, yeah, if it'll be practically useful to you as well, that should actually work with my affinity here." 

"A semitone is the smallest amount of pitch difference used in Western music."

"- Right." Landon's expression hints that he isn't particularly following this and also doesn't care very much. "Good, then. Any questions for now?"

"Should I find you at some time or will you find me? Also should there be like, a plan, for when I'm hanging out with Vanya?"

"Er, for activities to do with him, or like, times and scheduling?"

"Times and scheduling! The activity's gonna be music obviously. And Latin and hugs and I guess maybe planks."

Nod. "Vanya....doesn't really do mana-building activities specially. Just so you're aware. We're not sure how this ended up happening, but for the last, uh, three months or so, he's been providing more mana to our enclave sink than anyone but me or Larisa - and sometimes more than either of us - and just by, well, living his day to day life." 

"Wow, that's weird. I guess I will do all the planking that needs doing then."

Shrug. "I mean, if you want to get him to plank with you, we could see if he builds twice as much mana that way or something." 

"That would really be something. Getting older lets you do it faster, right?"

"...I mean, not forever, but in the Scholomance that's basically right. ...The figure I heard is that our mana capacity doubles every six months? Though I'm not actually sure how that compares to how fast you can build mana, and - I guess I'm also not sure who got that number or how, so take it with a grain of salt." 

"Okay. ...does that mean it makes sense to try to get way ahead on school stuff and only build mana this early if I'm gonna use it soon, and then do less school and more mana, in a few months?"

"I think the exact rate isn't that predictable? And also you want to make sure you've got enough to survive a mal getting into your bedroom during the night - that's not likely to happen during the next couple of weeks but you can't count on it not happening after that." 

"Okay, that makes sense. And I guess I'd rather exercise for an hour a day than for like five hours a day for fewer days."

“To be clear, there are non-exercise drills for building mana! How are you on mental math? Or mental imagery?”

"...not super good?"

“Great! Then you can probably get a year or two of those being good for mana-building even once you’re too worn out to move. Um, I - don’t really feel like explaining the mental math puzzles right now but you can ask later, we’ve got a book on it. And I find trying to mentally re-imagine my favorite movies in as much detail as I can, soundtrack and individual shots and all, my is great for mana-building and….also just satisfying?” 

"That doesn't sound like it would be annoying enough to build mana but I can try it and see! Maybe when I'm trying to fall asleep."

“Annoying isn’t quite the thing? It’s more just - effort? And trust me, trying to mentally pause a movie you’re imagining in your head and then count all the ceiling lights you remember in that shot is a lot of effort.”

"I will try to do mental harmonic dictation from memory for every song from Cats."

"- Nice! Yeah, that sounds like an excellent mana-building technique, and there might even be more than three people in the school who'd trade you something for copies of the sheet music you got from it!"

"Huh! If I'm doing it in my head I won't get any sheet music but if it'd be worth writing it down I can try!"

"...Right, sorry, I'm really not a music person so I wasn't sure what to picture there. But - I do actually think that could be worth something, in here, though I guess if you were planning on that you might want to ask around first and pick the musical you know well enough that the most people would be excited about. We're - kind of short on fun entertainment, in here? And most kids can't afford to trade for just that, obviously, but sometimes the big enclaves can. It's good for morale and all." 

"A kid from Paris was talking about making a place acoustically nice so I can sing there."