Ruby puts the magic out and grins at him but doesn't reply.

He was, in fact, showing off. He had a reason for it, but he was doing it.

As soon as they've grabbed their food and have found a table to eat, J'zargo starts showering Ruby with questions.

He answers some of them, but: "I think some of it is just straight-up practice. I can walk you through some of the stuff going on in my head when I do it, after dinner, but I expect it won't immediately make sense."

The khajiit adopts a calculating expression (or so Ruby assumes) then nods. "Acceptable."

"Are others welcome in this lesson?" asks Brelyna. J'zargo bares his teeth a bit and she sighs. "No one else here cares about becoming the most powerful wizard, you don't need to worry about competition."

"Sure," says Ruby. "We could go back to the arena and I'll try to show you guys how I did it."

Everyone nods and then the conversation turns to a mostly-theoretical discussion of alchemical principles. J'zargo gamely attempts to participate in it in a more social fashion but Onmund mostly abstains.

After the topic dies down, Onmund finally ventures: "So was that... in the lecture hall... normal?"

"'That'?" wonders Brelyna.

He blushes a bit. "The way the, uh, orc and the human were... you know. In plain sight."

"Mating is not a shameful activity," says J'zargo. "This one thought you understood, given that you did it, too."

Now he's blushing very much, and doesn't really have a counter to that.

"Wherever my mysterious intuitions come from, I had one that this was surprising," says Ruby.

"Maybe in Skyrim?" suggests Brelyna, uncertainly. "I suppose if Skyrim has cultural taboos around nudity it stands to reason that it would about sex, too, though I don't understand why."

Onmund tries and fails to come up with an explanation. On the one hand it seems self-evident; on the other, as he tries to examine the thought he can't pin down any actual reasons for it. "Maybe something cultural about the cold," he suggests. It seems as likely as anything.

"J'zargo often finds himself confused by humans. He does not understand, either."

J'zargo is participating in a conversation that is not about magic! Amazing.

"About your... mysterious intuitions," asks Brelyna, looking at Ruby. Then she pauses and can't seem to come up with anything more specific to ask.

"I don't know," he answers anyway. "I assume I wasn't literally created from scratch three days ago. There were things I had to be reminded of—I didn't know what it meant, to die, until I was reminded of it by Yisra's corpse—" She grimaces a bit. "—but I seem to have a lot of, uh... Background knowledge? I know the language, is the most obvious."

"And magic."

"And magic," he agrees. "But given everything else I kind of think that I'm... from some particular place, I seem to have specific intuitions that seem to me to be the kind of thing you'd only get from being raised somewhere and getting them ingrained in my mind."

"I guess that makes sense."

"Have you asked any of the Wizards about whether they can restore memories?" asks J'zargo.

"...no. I assumed they'd offer but there's no harm in asking anyway."

He doesn't do that immediately, though. After dinner the four Apprentices go to the practical arena and Ruby tries to explain his magic intuitions to the other three. When he wonders aloud whether an Instructor wouldn't be better at this, Brelyna explains that while they might, Instructors of the College take a very hands off approach and mostly don't go into that much depth to teach students individual things; magic is a very broad subject, and it would be infeasible to teach everything one knows especially when the areas of interest of individual mages are very unlikely to perfectly overlap.

Plus, of course, as Ruby himself observed, a lot of it requires individual development. Magic, being an expression of the soul, has many indelible aspects that need to be worked out by each mage on their own.

Their practical on the next morning is an introduction to Restoration with Colette Marence. The lesson proper is reasonably short, and after Ruby has determined that he seems to already know the basic exercise for this class too (a trait shared with Brelyna) he excuses himself and goes to find Tolfdir.