Where are you, Marianne? I found you a nerd.

That's great! You get a promotion. You are now brigadier general Sintongue.

A few moments later she wanders back and doesn't take Cytherea's hand.

I'm "Mio Winterblossom", just to keep our story straight. 

"She's over this way, we're doing a review of the artifice literature."

You can spoof identify?

"What, all of it?"

She walks.

Yeah, it's part of the succubus package. I told you that already.

"Specifically looking for ways to craft things particularly efficiently, time-saving methods, that kind of thing."

Marianne sure doesn't remember that, but there's a lot going on lately.

"Hey."

Her eyes flash with excitement, and it is felt. The only way Marianne knows how to fake something is making it real and undoing it later. Beaming while keeping her voice soft: the amount of stimulus for dorks has to be carefully parceled out.

She leans over the chair beside the taura, don't sit until you set the frame. "Mio told me she bumped into an utterly brilliant witch to study with, maybe the class frontrunner — but didn't think to catch her name. She's an incredible person like that. I'm Mari."

"Uhhhhh hi. It's Talia."

Marianne sits down, lifts her feet up on the chair, knees not far from her chest. She reaches out to pick a random book, rests it over her thighs, and starts looking through.

This bothers some models of the collected person-data so far and makes others more comfortable: intuition leans towards the latter. Either way, it's obvious that she has a very limited talk-budget but can regenerate it by reading quietly and making intelligent observations.

Mio pulls up a chair as well and starts reading.

"Occultism can offer creative insight into specific problems — and in tandem, seven days and nights of heightened motivation towards solving that problem. I don't know how much of magic craftsmanship creativity is useful for. If not the whole thing, then perhaps some subtasks."

Unlike divination it's not literal sourceless information: it's direct communication with an otherworldly being. Also unlike divination the spell can be shared: you don't have to have ranks in the magic, just be a participant in the ritual. Presumably Marianne's companions already know these things, but even the context occultism is being weighed against is new to her.

"That's Hespatian magic, closely kept and not taught to outsiders. You probably don't want to get involved with them."

"It would go faster if you used an existing blueprint for the foundations, rather than making a new design top-down. You might," it seems to hurt to say, "lose some innovation points for that. But it could give you more time to work on the more complicated aspects like a seal or rune."

"I'm pretty sure the shop has a metallurgist on duty if you need help with the physical object, too. If you used a standard pattern they might be able to turn it out pretty quickly."

I have only a vague vague idea of what a pattern is, is what she'd like to say, but she doesn't want to drive her friends to despair over her ignorance. She chooses another question, equally basic but more important.

"Right. I'm sorry, but what is the precise scope of the project? Are we expected to use everything in the syllabus? Ravi wasn't so kind as to give me the assignment in paper form."

"The assignment is to create an implement that can serve well for the foreseeable future. It needn't be made a certain way, no. I gave Mio the rubric."

"Thanks, Talia."

She returns her attention to her book.

"We could also requisition more materials to make a prototype. Instead of double-checking, go as recklessly fast as possible until there's a mistake, then repeat the process."

"Why are you in such a rush? This is hundreds of thousands of dollars you're talking about turning to slag! When did she say your project was due?"

"Same time as everyone else's."

"That makes literally no sense. Why?"

"My first guess is this is an experiment on how students perform under pressure. My second guess is that she doesn't want unscheduled students and this is her way of telling my sister and I that we can kiss her ass. My third guess is she believes she can alleviate the lack of time with one-on-one teaching."

"Whichever it is, it's been a fun first day at school." She looks earnest as she says this.

"Oooooh, you get one-on-one time with Miss Ravi. We don't, ever."

"Never?"