"Picking up a language is going to be so much less fraught after graduation!"

"Rather, yes!"

"D'you think your mom would mind being a non-enclave home base?"

"Depends what that means, I suppose, she likes the quiet life."

"I think I mostly mean, if at any point we do manage to get mana storage good enough to attach power sharers with, could we leave it with her." 

"Oh. Yeah, probably."

Graduation day approaches. 

Lucia spends much of the day before supervising seniors fortifying the shop level as hard as physically possible, helping where needed but mostly just making sure nobody does any especially stupid sabotage. 

She makes sure to hole up in her room well before graduation--well before the mortal flame is scheduled to come through. She stares at the floor and wishes the wards would let her mal-seeing spell through, even though she knows perfectly well why it doesn't. 

And then the flame is done and the doors unlock and she, along with everyone else, spills out. 

She heads for the shop; she's technically an alchemist but Aadhya is a much better artificer than she is an alchemist.

El joins her in the hall, stepping lightly to avoid the hot floor melting her sneakers.

The two of them manage to get in sooner than they would have if people didn't tend to get out of Lucia's way. She starts poking through cabinets, looking for things on Aadhya's wishlist that she hasn't managed to extract from a slain mal. 

El takes down the hatch and honeypot.

"Nothing seems to have made it through. That's some good fortune, at least." 

"If anything did it was turtled up somewhere and probably did not choose the moment when you walked by to emerge."

"Well, the really scary stuff would mostly be too big to hide."

"Mostly, yeah." She sticks the hatch in her locker for later.

Depressing!

But probably a maw-mouth did not come up. Or, if it did, the mortal flame got it. There really aren't that many in the graduation hall, after all. 

Oh, hey, that's not depressing-- "El! Look!" Lucia waves a strip of LEDs at her. 

"Ooh, the sutras will love it."

"Yeah! They deserve it, too, they're so lovely." 

El tucks the lights into the case alongside the book and helps carry everything else.

Lucia takes the other half of their haul. "You know, it occurs to me, we were still almost strangers when you asked Santa for a shirt, and now we are not, and I, uh, have spares." 

"Oh, that would be great, I don't actually... have... a senior outfit."

"Weight limitations or did something happen to it?" 

"Sacrificed it early freshman year in an emergency."

"Yikes. Let's get this settled and then I'll grab one." 

They get their haul to Lucia's room and she pulls out a dark blue shirt with lightning-like silver streaks. 

"Magic, or just snazzy?"

"Just snazzy."