Basira will not sit down but she will keep talking until she accidentally bumps into a chair and flinches.

Zeph, who has been watching Basira closely throughout the monologue, actually notices a second early and gets half a "Chair." out before the bump.

"All good?" she asks calmly.

"Don't seem eaten," she says. Her stomach, hearing the word 'eat', immediately grumbles.

"The complimentary drinks haven't killed me yet," Zeph points out, then chuckles and runs her hand over a deep scratch on the back of her neck.

assuming that Zef is in fact real and so are the drinks.

"I — think I wouldn't even have missed breakfast yet, if I could get there."

—but she did have an idea there, right, she wasn't just—

"—right, though, could you hear the different words at all?"

"...yeah, none of the sounds you described were in the words you were using." 

"What, none of them, even by coincidence?"

Zeph looks embarrassed for quarter of a second, angry for half a second, and then grins.

"Sorry, not enough of a nerd to have been paying attention." And it's—friendly, sharp for show, look at us offending each other and yet being provisionally sure the other is not going to stab us in retaliation.

"Yeah, alright."

Then she turns to the bar. The translation thoroughness is - weird, but if Zef's telling the truth and Basira's remembering it all correctly then it is consistent, and it - it's weird? It's not what you'd get if you were spinning a hallucination out of her subconscious.

Probably.

If this is, somehow, a real place, then the door out is real... and still leads into her room, thick metal on four sides and literal nothing on the fifth.

So. She turns to the bar, and asks "Can you do full meal replacement drinks?"

"Clever," Zeph comments with some genuine appreciation. "...you said your food sucks, but there's enough of it, how does that work? Seems like a weird combo."

"The cafeteria serves nutrient sludge under illusions of food. Not good ones. Also the monsters..."

She adjusts the latest napkin, gingerly.

"Okay, can I have one of those, that tastes... slightly better than Scholomance food does."

"Only slightly?" Zeph inquires, unclear whether rhetorically or curiously. She is now drinking cinnamon tea. Cinnamon tea comes with a tiny Spekulatius on the plate next to it. She keeps having it replaced.

"Bad enough adjusting to it the first time."

She receives her free meal replacement drink. Takes a deep breath and a small sip. It tastes... very slightly better than nutrient sludge under illusions of foodhood.

"If I only let myself get the nice things I could reliably have, I would have them never instead of hardly ever."

"You can only get hot chocolate in interdimensional bars?"

"Could probably have it every few months if my family was less determined to feed every person in town," she responds, except her voice gets quieter and quieter throughout the sentence. She shakes her head. "But yeah, in the districts, especially in my district, something like this would be hard to come by and even harder to afford."

She's eyeing Basira with newfound suspicion.

"...the hell kind of place do you live?"

"Uh, the Capitol and some districts near it have it better?" she adds in a half-hearted attempt at reassurance. "My region just drew the short end of the stick. ...and then my family snapped it in half again." Pause. "You from some kind of utopia then?" Or just from your world's equivalent of the Capitol?, goes unsaid.

"No, it sucks. Just, poor people can afford junk food."

" - in the normal world, I mean. In the Scholomance there's, mn, some vending machines with real snacks, anyone with friends to share with can get something from the 21st century every... other week."

"Glad you got sucky meal replacements I guess?" Zeph shrugs awkwardly, but not entirely unsympathetically. "Who gets sent to the Scholomance?"

She's taking a longer sip of her current sucky meal replacement.

"Everyone who can get a seat. It's not... 's the safest place in world to be a teenage wizard. You'll only probably die."

"From the magic monsters?" Birdsong would ask who gets a seat and most likely give a speech about how unfair the system. Zeph has her own problems. If it wasn't Basira, it would be exactly one other random person. "Glad you'll maybe live, congrats on that." It's honestly not even cynical.

And the other kids.

No, she's going to die.

"Yeah."