She beams at her demon. She does not take Scythe's hands and bounce them up and down because Scythe is not Isabel.

"I would like us to spend the next two hours collecting and studying things that appeal to us, then we will meet back up."

Then she turns to explore, walking off in a random direction with a bounce in her shoulders. She does not skip through the library nor trace her fingers down the book spines nor try to touch semi-exposed machine. "Hi miss computer," she says with a voice like a curtsy.

What is a cantrip anyway? Does it merit a section or is it a more specific piece of jargon? She picked the field because Isabel seemed to think that Ravi was using a bevy of them, and she bets Ravi has good judgement in magic. It's not important to find the relevant books right away: worth taking half an hour to get the lay of the land.

"Alright. See you in two hours, then."

Cytherea takes a turn into the stacks and is gone.

The library is divided by field of magic; there are sections for necromancy, divination, runes, potions, curses, covenants, wandwork, and so on. The section on wandwork is particularly large and contains a whole subsection on cantrips. 

Marianne sets her laptop down and kneels to comb over the bottom shelf of cantrips. She looks for a new, thin book. Thin tends practical rather than holistic, new implies better.

Always skip the forward; book vendors should just tear those out like packaging. Glance the table of contents, she can compare it with other books' tables to get a sense for what's actually important. Then read the first chapter and try to understand what the fuck this field even is.

She is so so glad she is on point for this and not outreach. It is not at all being alone here, she has the author right here to shape herself to.

The one she picks is a purple modestly slim hardcover with a simple abstract design engraved in the cover. It's one of those that doesn't have a title or author anywhere on the outside for aesthetic reasons, which she hates. Nonetheless she ends up opening her laptop to keep notes and burns through more than one chapter. The author is somewhat dry, but occasionally a choice of phrase will shine through, informing Marianne of a facet of their character.

A Workman's Study of Cantrips
by Reynaudline Adler

— A set-spell is a magical structure tied to a physical structure.
       — At-will. Uses negligible mana.
       — No modifications to spells; small amount of input, relatively larger amount of output.
       — Gemstones are the main example.
             — Each has a unique potentiality.
             — Some of these, mostly the terrestrial ones, have been found while others are still being solved.

— Cantrips are set-spells infused in an implement.
       — Creating the structure demands a permanent sacrifice of power (along several different metrics) that cannot be recouped.
       — Permits access to less common abilities and less common combinations of them.
       — Gemstones.
             — We copy from them pretty much wholesale and call it a day.
             — Black boxes.
             — Not fully general magic — wishcasting?
             — They have random variance, which gives us an idea of how to specify that variance.

It's about forty-five minutes before she next straightens her neck and blinks.

It's an interesting question, deciding whether to occupy herself with the books or the people. Marianne didn't technically order her to go make friends, and she has reason to want to avoid talking with the students too much - but if she doesn't read her mistress' implied command and do what she wants, she'll probably shorten her leash and become more explicit, which is no good either. 

A little investment now could be worth a lot later. She'll just have to be careful. 

She's not as familiar with the academy as she could be, but she's spent enough time as the subject of consortation classes to have a general sense of the dynamics. House Lionfeather carries itself in a certain way among the other students - aloof, secure in its power. Sometimes they wear a golden feather pin at the collar of their uniform or their lapel if they want to show off, that's legal under the dress code. 

She's looking for someone who wants to share their knowledge... That probably means someone who wants to lord it over a less-experienced student, there are few kindhearted souls in Hawthorne. There is the chance of someone who's just so obsessed with magic that they can't help talking about it all day long, she's known one or two of those, but she'd have to get lucky.

She does a quiet circuit around the library, looking over the benches for anyone with a golden-feather pin or a nerd's demeanour.

There is a blonde-haired witch with a gold feather pin at her collar sitting at one of the tables and reading. A small pile of books on wandmaking are piled on the table next to her.

A violet-haired girl with an equine lower body sits on the floor a few tables down. Thick-rimmed glasses, bulky headphones, polished feather pinned to crisp uniform. She seems engrossed in a reference book, with seven of its peers stacked up neatly beside, and lavish many-colored cursive notes.

Purple-haired Taura looks like a good bet. Only absolute nerds color-code their notes, and the crispness of her uniform and the polish on her feather suggest she's by-the-book. Having money to spend on a genuine gold pin in the first place suggests a sponsor in someone more interested in the magic than the status. Or perhaps she wants the status and is searching for it through magic. 

"Excuse me," she says, glancing at the stack. "Is that Peryton's Modern Consortation I see there? I've been looking for it, I'm on an eccentric contract and I want to reassure my summoner that it's up to code. And I realize I could ask a doll this, but you seem to have good taste - do you know a good reference on implements? My summoner just joined the academia and has three weeks of work to catch up on. She's Lionfeather, like you."

The headphones come off, set down on the table with an even click. "Huh? Oh. Yes, this is Peryton! I'm on volume vee, you can use the others. I didn't mean to hoard, sorry. Um."

"...iiiiimmpllements." An opaque lilac panel opens in the air above the table. A few seconds pass before it closes, nothing emerging from it. Her lips purse. "Greenburg is checked out, I guess. Let me go see what's still there."

She stands up and trots to the section on wandwork, pulls a book partway out with two fingers and examines it. "Is your summoner working on the project or the extra credit?"

Cytherea pulls out volume I of Peryton and goes through the table of contents quickly, then moves quickly to volume III, where she flips to the section on long-term contracts.

"I haven't seen a rubric or anything yet; if you have notes on the specification I think she'd be grateful. The impression I have is that she just came from a session directly with the professor, who basically gave her a list of books and told her to learn everything in them. So she's doing that."

"There is a rubric, but it is somewhat nebulous. I think you're usually supposed to pay for notes."

"But on seeeecond thought, I don't actually approve of that methodology very much."

"It's twenty points for applicability, how useful the implement is. Ten for innovation, how scientifically novel it is. Ten for quality of make: durability, longevity, security. Extra credit is an additional ten points, a post-mortem essay explaining design choices, describing failures and how they could have been avoided."

Cytherea nods seriously and comes over to the wandwork section with Peryton III under her arm. "I'll pass that along. Anything here you'd recommend on the topic? She's working with a lot less time, but she doesn't want to sacrifice quality, obviously - so she needs something really solid for the basics, and then anything that deals with accelerated work."

She hands Cytherea a heavy tome, once sky-blue but having lost some of its color to time. Foundations of Artifice 2nd ed. by Tonia Abeyta.

"Accelerated work? There are books on meeting deadlines, but Hawthorne doesn't carry self-help."

Cytherea accepts the book. "In the sense of good technique and labour-saving methods, not self-help."

"I haven't read everything here, but that sounds more like a chapter or section than a whole book. I guess I could help you look?"

"If you wouldn't mind, that would be helpful, thank you."

"Sure. It's a smart thing to do, looking for shortcuts. It's just that they don't always exist. Or they might be advanced techniques you shouldn't try."

Every couple of minutes, she'll pass a book to Cytherea. Once there's an appreciable stack, she trots back to the table to curl up with her legs under her. The desk is a bit low even sitting down, her neck bent at an awkward angle as she flips through the selection.

Cytherea starts looking through the books in parallel to the Taura girl, reading through their tables of contents and noting anything that looks promising.

Tables don't tell all. It's not unusual to see something promising, skip forward to read, and see the chapter isn't what was expected. None have really stuck out to Cytherea as having something to them.

Talia seems to disdain skimming. She goes page-by-page, cover-to-cover, and is rather fast for the density of the material — although she hasn't finished one yet. She neatly copies down the practice problems to solve later, many require a lab setting.

She's an incurable nerd, alright. 

"I think this might go faster if I went and fetched my summoner, do you mind if I do?"

The taura blinks owlishly. "No...?"

"I'll go fetch her then."

Cytherea heads back to where she left Marianne. 

Not there.