"Oh. I guess, okay." He holds out his harpē.

She takes it briefly and hands it back. “Thank you!”

"No problem."

What an odd but nifty person.

He maybe spots something in the distance and charges after it without another word.

And it’s not terribly long after that that the cafeteria opens for dinner and Kareen goes down to supplant its offerings.

Unless she objects to this Bella will take up a position beside her to provide context and cultural translation as necessary, though this is probably less necessary than it was a few hours ago.

No, that’s fine.

“So I did in fact Dragon Fairy Elf Witch the school,” she mentions.

"...well it's very subtle, you don't look any more dreary and educational than you did this morning."

“Well, if I don’t look educational then you’re not looking hard enough, but that was true before. Does the Scholomance look dreary from the outside?”

"Nobody ever looks at it from the outside, because it's in the Void."

“Oh, I didn’t mean spatially, I meant wherever it’s anchored to the Earth.”

"Oh. I have no idea what it looks like from that end, its location's a secret."

“What I was trying to get at is I have my own pocket dimension now. Although I don’t think it’s very dreary either.” Although she also doesn’t find the Scholomance dreary, but that might just be how much she likes the library.

"Luckyyyyy, is there anything much in it?"

“Yes! I haven’t gone exploring, much, I’ve been too busy reading—I have a separate body inside and outside, I’ve been using that to multitask—but there’s stuff visible just from where I am.”

"That's also from dragon-etcetera-ing the school? I don't think the school has one body, let alone two, though I guess it is very good at multitasking."

“I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I can pass stuff between outside and inside the pocket dimension, but not myself. Each body is stuck where it is, relatively speaking.”

"You are so lucky," Bella repeats. "...have you ever had jambalaya, my brain has caught up to the 'real food' thing, I don't count myself unusually bothered by the cafeteria slop but real food is so good..."

“I have not had jambalaya, sorry. The pocket dimension is the kind of magic I can share, if you didn’t find being part Scholomance too philosophically disquieting.”

"...you might get more uptake with freshmen who haven't had years to become sick half to death of the place, though I might take you up on it anyway, I'd just have to think about it and maybe not be patient zero. I guess you're patient zero. Patient one."

Wryly: “Yeah, you’re the second person I offered it to and that was more or less El’s reaction also.”

"You could try Caio's little brother, maybe? I don't know him that well but he is a freshman I have met and who Suze won't tell me off for proposing."

“Maybe! But if it’s that difficult a sell maybe I should start with something else.”

"Like what?"