El cackles - then cuts herself off when she gets a few alarmed looks from nearby kids who are grabbing raisins and potato chips - and puts them in her pockets.

Kareen pulls out more and scatters them across the table with the other things. “Thank you so much.”

Ennis swings by with some other Manchesters a bit later. "Are those Radiant Mind crystals? - they're full? You're proper nonsense, you realize."

“El gave me one, I put a bit of mana in it, and I used powers of two to fill it up.”

"Who's El?"

"The spooky Welsh indie."

"Huh, wonder how she came by one."

“Spooky?” …Actually that sort of tracks. Considering Kareen’s entire everything.

"Did you not notice? I don't think she's a maleficer, or if she is she's managing it incredibly conservatively, but... yeah."

“No, I just thought she seemed nice. Even before she handed me the crystal.”

"Everyone'll be nice to you, you're the miraculous food fountain."

Shrug. “Well, that was the impression I experienced. You know, as opposed to ‘confused’ or ‘intimidated,’ which there was also a fair bit of.”

"Fair enough."

"If I take one of these, I can use the mana for things that aren't worth using ours for, right?" Sean asks Ennis.

"I don't see how the seniors would catch you even if they didn't agree."

Yoink!

She can pull so many mana crystals out of the bag! They are not a meaningfully limited resource!

“I’m looking forward to learning how to use mana for things.”

"If you're a wizard properly now, you'll have an affinity, but some of us come to school still not knowing what it is, it's not trivial to tell till you've learned enough spells to have a pattern of which ones come easily."

“Ooh! I bet it’s something information-related.”

"Huh, why do you think?"

“Because you can take me out of Beholding but you can’t take Beholding out of me. And the notebook powers are explicitly stated to work in a way convenient for the user. …Beholding is another name for the Eye.”

"That makes sense. Hmmm, I could teach you a simple poison detecting spell that I could cast as a freshman? I don't know if 'a freshman' is the right understanding of your magic handling capacity but I don't know anything easier that might be in-affinity for you and you should probably not start with higher-level stuff."

“Sounds good!” She has absolutely handled things that count as poison so there’s no risk of being unable to tell if it’s working.

Bella writes it down in a fresh purple notebook that can be Kareen's first spellbook. "It's okay that it's in Spanish, right?"

“Yep, that’s fine!” She peers at it.