Lissa blinks, before smiling at him. "Oh, sure! I think I've seen you too, though I never got your name." She glances over the food, carefully trying to pick out the items that seem the least nibbled and the most selected by others.

"Theun. You've looked a little lost, have you been settling in all right?"

"I think so?" says Lissa. "I guess it's true I didn't have as much background as everyone else, but I've been trying to catch up! El's been really helpful in looking out for me too." Ooh, eggs. She'll grab one after jabbing it slightly.

"Oh, good for her! She seemed pretty prickly to me. There's a lot to catch up, really. Like 'don't trust anything with a computer unless you've enchanted it', not something you're going to guess from a fresh start."

He grabs his own eggs and some mashed probably-potatoes that's had a lot already taken.

"Yeah, that." A pause. "I...haven't actually broken down my phone for metal, yet." It would feel weirdly final, for her. She's cracked the case open a few times, looking down before plucking out the battery and putting it back together again. "I...I'd miss it, you know?"

"Yeah. I mean, my parents didn't let me have one, but I get it. You're probably good for another couple weeks, but probably not two months. Enough time to write everything down, at least."

She nods as she grabs the last of her food. "I guess some of it's probably backed up on my laptop too, at least. Too bad there isn't a projector so I could host one last anime watching before it goes totally dark."

"I wonder if someone will try enchanting one and bringing it in some year? Star Trek would be my choice, but why choose, right?"

"Something for every genre would be nice," agrees Lissa, looking around. "Did you have a seat picked out already?" she adds.

"Yeah, over there," he says with a gesture to a table that's about half-full, with similar artifices on the arms of the people sitting there. (Theun's matches, though his is higher on his arm, half-hidden under his sleeve.)

He starts to say something more a couple times before he actually continues, like he's double-checking his words.

"...There's a couple things I wanted to talk to you about, but maybe I should get the unpleasant one out of the way first. I'm not trying to badmouth El, I don't think she's a killer and she's doing you a good turn. But... maleficers don't usually stay trustworthy, even if they start out that way."

Lissa bristles slightly, but doesn't immediately get up in arms about it. Probably at least partially because she's holding a tray.

"She's not a maleficer. She got checked in shop class on Wednesday and everything!"

"But she's got... It's possible to get an aura like that without maleficing? ...Well, good, less to worry about."

"I dunno about the aura, but it's not like it's that creepy once you get to know her." Lissa may not be an accurate judge on how creepy the aura is specifically.

"I'm not so sure. I mean, I never met a maleficer before the Scholomance, enclaves generally don't allow them in at all. But I've met one other here - well, that I know of - and she's got a creepy aura like El but not half as strong, and she's from a family who everyone knows are expert maleficers. Pisa, there's exactly one exception to the rule about enclaves allowing maleficers and it's the Pisa enclave. It's been that way since before the Scholomance, for reasons I don't follow."

"Huh, is there some particular sign that someone's from Pisa, specifically?" She pauses. "I guess just whatever sign you use to show you're in an enclave would work there, actually," she adds quickly as she thinks about it.

"Normally I'd say you recognize an enclaver by the fact that they have a power-sharer and by the fact that they generally are richer, but you probably won't be able to distinguish those from any other artifice, or pick up on wealth, terribly soon. The other good way to recognize enclavers is by watching where they sit; at meals with a consistent group of people at a fairly good table, and in the library they have a consistent reading room. The way I mostly notice is the fact that everyone else who isn't an enclaver acts like a kiss-ass to them.

But Pisa, specifically, are a bunch of unusually pale Italians. That table there."

One of the other people at the table with Theun and Lissa does one of those coughs where they're covering saying something else. Theun almost smiles.

Lissa glances over. "I noticed the grouping up at tables part." That's just what normal high schools are like too, except it's mostly personal social rankings driving that. She also remembers something about when they were decorating Julia's room. "Is having a lot of luxury items an enclave thing too, or is that just New York being extra-rich?"

"New York are the richest of the rich, and even they mostly don't have a lot. New York, Shanghai, London, Kyoto, those are the really big names. Having a couple luxuries a person is possible for most people in most established enclaves, you can have them accumulate slowly, one or two coming in with each freshman class or the occasional shop project where someone gets something frivolous and takes that project instead of something useful. I have - reminders of my family, and useful things with added sentimental value, mostly. But I'm - pretty weird, especially for an enclaver."

He shoots a dirty look at the cougher, though most of the table is upperclassmen and finishing their dinner by this point. When he glances back to Lissa he looks a little happier than before he did.

Well, if that makes him feel better she won't begrudge him it. She'll follow him towards the table as they talk, as well. "Weird how? Um, if you don't mind me asking."

"Well, I try to help random mundanes who get sucked into the Scholomance get on more even footing with the rest of the school and don't ask for anything in return. This is a fairly stupid thing to do and yet I keep trying it."

She seems to be thinking for quite some time before going, "Oh! Um, is that why you're talking to me now?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I talked with Wendy - small, redhead? - on the first day, tried to give her what warnings I could. Kept an eye out since." He glances over at the emptying table, continues a little quieter. "And also a couple basic spells. A wake-up ward, a fire spell, the basics you need to keep the mals away for the first month or two. If you don't have those already, same offer's open. No strings attached."

"Oh, I don't have a wake-up ward yet. I got a ward spell from the Void but it wasn't about waking you up, it was about keeping the mals from coming in in the first place. And I don't have a fire spell yet, either." The offensive spells she did get seemed to be more about direct forces than any fancy elemental stuff, so far.