Why does she have to take composition. She would be perfectly content to just learn fourteen languages and get on with the business of collecting spells that other people have already written.

Lissa's interested in making her own spells, at least! Although hopefully they won't start doing that right away because she has no idea how to start! And hey, at least El is here with her. She'll sit next to the other girl if there's space, which is quite probable.

"Hi Lissa."

"Hey El! Do you know if there's supposed to be a textbook for this class?" She's not looking at her desk, at least, which is the perfect time for a textbook to actually appear.

El reaches over and picks up Lissa's textbook and bops her on the shoulder with it.

Lissa blinks at the bop, then giggles slightly. "Oh, I guess there is!" she says, taking the book and carefully opening it up.

El picks up her own and gets to studying.

How much of Composition is going to be review? Well, it will be helpful review, at least.

Wow, that girl has an aura. And is the one next to her a mundie? Frick. Don't pick a fight. Don't pick a fight. Don't pick a fight.

He will... sit down somewhere else. And try not to get too distracted watching the scary girl and her oblivious victim.

Let's see, scan the better parts of the room... That girl looks familiar, probably one of his afternoon classes yesterday.

So he takes a seat next to Nia and tries to cover up his concern. "Hello! I'm Theun. I think I've seen you around but didn't introduce myself."

"Hi! I am called Nia."

"Nice to meet you. You have any interesting classes yet?"

"They are all interesting in their own way! For an example, one had Nessie drawn in chalk, and one had pictures of sunflowers in the textbook, and one was geometry, which must be interesting to someone to have been invented."

"Oh, but if we didn't have geometry, we wouldn't know what shape the room was! And then how would we find the door, huh? We'd be stuck."

"It is true, I have spent my whole life here, in this room, looking for doors, only when finals arrive and I have passed geometry will I be free!"

"Luckily, the Scholomance is flexible about 'location', so if we try hard and believe in ourselves we can probably make the door come to us, even without the secrets of geometry."

"How clever an idea! Heeeeere doory doory doory pspsps."

Nia is charming! Theun is charmed.

"If we manage to coax the door into letting us out, there should be lots of we will have many new kinds of interesting things to meet. I'm looking forward to the languages, mostly."

"Languages! Bliss itself. I wish to meet French. Invite it home to watch Netflix and chill."

"Well, it does have a reputation for that! The language of love, or so Hollywood says. Currently I am mostly meeting German's grandparents, and Mandarin. I think Mandarin prefers spreadsheets to Netflix."

Lucy is very nearly late but, thankfully, not quite. 

Oh look there's El and Lissa. Lucy sits down on the other side of El. 

"Hi! How has you guys's day been so far, I had to evacuate shop."

"Two at once right away and one Mandarin! Awful. What terrible things is the school after your blood for?" Nia says to Theun.

"Pretty quiet on the whole. Did you get your assignment made or at least put away?"

"I stashed it in my locker fine. Someone mixed up tin and zinc." To Lissa: "Tin is necessary for the first project--casting a bronze knife--and zinc gives off toxic fumes when melted."

(Montréal arrives shortly before class starts. They scan the room for mals and good seats, and Zed spots Nia and Theun fairly quickly, pointing them out. They take seats nearish them, because there are no sets of three empty seats right next to them. Angie waves, notes that her textbook has arrived, and cracks it open to investigate.)

"Oh, yikes," mutters Lissa. "Is the classroom still going to be usable?"

"Oh, yeah, the vents'll clear it right up after a while."

She sighs with relief. "Will it make mals stay away for a while too? Or do they not care about toxic gas?"

"Probably depends on the mal."

"They don't all even breathe."

Theun gives Nia a wry smile. "I was not very grateful for my void floor, perhaps I should apologize. Though I think my punishment was the two math classes, not the languages. Algebra is no fun, and I doubt I'll find much use for it."

"How irritating to have any classes that are meant to be ornamental only to fail!"