Tariq can go on the list of people who should be cleaning up their own messes, it's not like Omar wants to barge into anyone's kitchen, even at home he knocks on the doorframe and waits because he was raised proper Tariq handling this conversation would have been a disaster and they both know it.

"There is not apologize for.  Many things different with Cheliax and Osirion, it is not to know this thing is the same."

"Men were previously allowed in the... I should just put up a sign." He grabs a piece of paper and starts writing out a sign. "Do you have any other questions?"

"Only this question is important one.  If one here knows snow plant and beasts, I like to speak them?"  He holds a hand out to Noor and makes quiet chk-chk sounds to call her away from her epic battle.

"We don't have a proper ranger on hand, but I can arrange you an appointment with the fellow who teaches the most nearly relevant orientation classes."

He nods, scoops up Noor and settles her in her usual place on his shoulder.  "I thank you this, and for talk also."

"If you ever have anything else that needs my attention please meet with me again."

Omar nods and departs to update his party.

Khalida stays on dish duty through most of the dinner rush, since she got up so late.  When she finally emerges, stew in hand, her party isn't in the mess but she spots Txell with a lingering group and heads over to that table.  She doesn't join in the wizards' conversation much, though, because finally finally she has time to get back to her new spells!!!

This looks, to the outside observer, like Khalida eating her stew one-handed while staring fixedly at the same piece of looseleaf for minutes at a time, occasionally making some expressive faces.  Even if her dinner companions had happened to have Detect Magic up, it wouldn't have revealed anything more interesting- she hasn't had time to ink any of them into her spellbook yet, and just charcoal on scrap paper won't hold arcane energy long enough to do anything. They have the context to know what she's up to, though; it's possible to 'visualize' an empty spellform without channeling energy through them to cause effects on the world, and Khalida has very, very good geometric intuition.  Sketching the spells the day before, she hadn't fully converted them out of the unfamiliar Chelish notation, just made sure she got each individual piece and understood the signifiers correctly- it would have taken too much time to translate the spell entire into her own system with everyone watching.  Now, finally, she can work on building up from the notes to the shape of the spell itself, focusing in on each individual section until she understands it and then leaving a mental 'placeholder' where it fits into the whole, then deconstructing it again until she can 'see' how to compress it down onto, by necessity, separate finite-sized two-dimensional pages.

This is beyond any doubt the best part of being a wizard.  Some people might pursue arcane knowledge as a means to an end, for worldly power, or acclaim, or never farming ever again- Khalida can't understand them.  (Well, she can be fairly sympathetic to that last one, anyway.)  This moment here, holding the keys to the universe in your hands and you can hold them because they fit in a human mind, that flash of insight when you notice that Alarm has the same underlying structure as Message beneath all the details of their different implementation and knowing that helps you hang both of them faster... it's the best rush she's ever known, the most important thing in the world, spells easing your work and buying you nice things and occasionally saving your life is a minor side benefit in comparison.

Wizards are wizards everywhere. Wizards are wizards even if Txell is now telling a story about kicking her classmate in the stomach till she wasn't pregnant any more so she would be able to pass finals.

Khalida is pretty focused.

She's not that focused, though, at least once she's figured out what's up with the weird bit in Abundant Ammunition, and she doesn't know all those words (again godsalldammit) but the gist of it is pretty clear from Txell's tone and gestures. 

(Three times in two days, maybe she should put up Comprehend Languages tomorrow and pay one of the cooks to tell her all the sex words and swears she can think of so she can take notes.  Except then it'd be just her luck if something important hinged on different types of arrowhead or something.)

She's doing a decent job at keeping her eyes on her own paper metaphorically as well as literally, but a Chelish Sense Motive won't have any difficulty in picking up that she's got Some Concerns.

"More bugs than usual in your stew over there?" Txell asks her.

"No, no, merely I-"  Concentration thoroughly lost, she puts down her paper with a sigh.  "I have still poor Taldane, and I do not know all the words for the question."  Seriously, sex words are fair enough, but how is she not even coming up with 'midwife'.  "Lay dedicates of Pharasma, but not the gravetenders, those who- help new mothers?"

"Well in Cheliax they won't admit to too much Pharasma-ing but you want 'midwife'."

"Mid-wife."  She nods thoughtfully.  "In Sothis, if one knows how to ask, one may find midwifes who are- not dedicates of Pharasma, who will sell- certain plants?  Or, um, other things, if the plants have scant effect."

"Oh, maybe, but we didn't know where to find one of those and kicking's free."

"Ah, I understand.  I'm sorry to hear that."  Was that rude?  That was probably rude.  She passes her Wisdom saving throw closes her teeth on trying to explain herself further.  Any sentence involving 'what Osirian men say about Chelish girls' is right out.  "Did she pass?"

"That time yeah but she washed out the next time."

"Oof.  I'm sorry."  There... doesn't seem to be much to say to that.  She contemplates her stew for a bit.

"Yeah, dunno what happened to her after. Maybe I should drop her a note. Dear Aspexia wherever you are I bet you're warmer than me."

"One could be scarcely colder," Khalida agrees fervently.  "...I suppose there's a chance she joined as a cook or some such, and is at some different fort equivalently cold."

"Oh nah, I don't think so. Washout wizards usually go and teach school or something, they don't do servant work."

She nods understanding.  "Certainly warmer, then."  And unless Txell wants to keep talking, Khalida will go back to her notes until her bowl is empty.

There's a parable in the Abadaran secondary scriptures about a hungry man equidistant between two exactly identical dates.  The fool who believes himself cunning cannot find any reason to prefer one over the other, and so starves to death in arm's reach of food; the pious man flips a coin and chooses randomly, preferring any date to none, and thus exercising his free will.

Khalida feels like the man from the parable stumbling into a whole orchard of dates.  Not everyone was interested in swapping, of course, but there are quite a few wizards here and she's the only foreigner with spells from a different tradition and a lot of them are very bored, and she has been gleefully greedy about mutually beneficial exchange.  She's got notes on Rope Trick and Abundant Ammunition and Mount and Acid Splash and Summon Minor Monster and Disrupt Undead (she'd never even seen a necromancy spellchart before) and Alter Musical Instrument and Infernal Healing and Resist Energy (she is so excited about trying out the fiddly bit that polarizes it to a specific energy type) and Animate Rope and Reduce Person...

...and she's got enough ink for three of them, maybe four if one is a cantrip.  If she's very careful and draws the thinnest possible lines that will still hold the scaffold and doesn't make any mistakes she might be able to stretch it enough for Rope Trick and nothing else; more likely she'd wind up with a completely useless seven-ninths of a spellchart and have to try to barter for a scarce nonrenewable resource everyone knows she desperately needs.

She hasn't been able to decide which to ink first by the time she's scraped her bowl clean; she heads up to their guest room still boiling with frustrated temptation, makes a list on one of her remaining pieces of scrap paper, makes another list, tears up the first list so she can rearrange it freely on top of the blankets, yells at Omar to fuck off when he comes in even though he's not making any more noise than usual and she hasn't even started working yet, he drops Noor on her head in response and she takes a few minutes out to breathe and pet her and crumple up the pieces for her to practice chasing.

...maybe Noor can be her tiebreaker, she's as good a source of randomness as any.  Khalida's completely lost track of which piece is which by now, what's the next one she brings over?

Alter Musical Instrument

...okay, well, not that one.