Stasia was hoping to save the drugs.

People will do a lot for them when they're exhausted, webbed with cracks and drilled with holes. Freshmen are bright-eyed and cautious. Even the upperclassmen will be basking in an abundance of new supplies. She'll get less for them now, but either she liquidates assets quickly or she dies — and there's a prime mark right in front of her.

It is — probably better to talk to this girl than to die. So she stands up from where she's sitting against the cafe wall and forces herself to walk over, setting the edge of her tray against the edge of the table with a clink.

"Anyone sitting here?"

"No, take a seat. Who are you?"

She sits.

"I'm the rightful king of Spain. Yourself?"

"Oh, in that case I'm the queen of Portugal."

"Portugal's a shit country. My condolences."

She cracks open her carton of milk.

"I caught you popping a pill a minute ago. Was it anything exciting?"

"Stimulant. Why, do you want one?"

She shakes her head.

"How much stash do you have?

"Why do you ask?"

She hoists a Rainbow Dash backpack up onto the bench next to her, unzips it, and lifts a large bag of colorful pills slightly out of it.

"Hundred twenty Adderall in here. Are you interested?"

"Nice. I have healing cookies, trade you three for the whole bottle."

That's... that... sounds really good actually. It doesn't get her a step closer to having school supplies, but. She has never held a single magic item before and now she is being offered three.

Her heart is fluttering like mad, because she may have just... succeeded at something?? She had an idea and then it panned out?? Is this what adults feel like all the time?

"Sure," she says as neutrally as she can.

She is probably going to need to spend the rest of dinner sifting through for orange and white pills, so she downs the rest of her milk and starts to pick them out and drop them in the carton.

"Anastasia, by the way."

She shrugs. "Hannah. Is that bag all Adderall?"

"---ambien, buproprion, morphine, phentermine, isotretinoin."

She's asking questions! What a good customer!!

"How many of morphine?"

She eyeballs the red ones. "I think it's thirty."

"One more healing cookie for the morphine too."

She starts picking out the little red pills too.

This is dumb to say and she feels dumb, but this girl has been so useful already.

"I'd rather do school stuff for it. Pencil paper, eraser highlighter binders stapler index cards---"

"I only have the basics, but I can give you a pad of paper and a pencil for the morphine instead of a cookie."

What. This girl just has no idea how much anything is worth. Either that or everyone else is scrambling for pencils too right now, she's not very tapped into the economy yet.

"That and half a cookie, can you split them without breaking the spell---"

"Yeah, they work like that. Not as strong but it'll work."

"Alright. Deal then?"

Please say yes, idiot girl. You're so dumb just say yes it'll be so easy you won't have to look at me anymore you know you want to say it.

She smiles. "Deal."

"Cool," she says, and keeps sifting through the meds. It's so finicky. She really should have used more than one bag.

"So where you from?" If idiot girl is from an enclave, it seems good to check if her buddies are equally economically challenged.

She watches as she fishes through the pills. "I'm with the Toronto Enclave."

"Oh, Ohio? Quiet state, that."

She feels gross doing this whyyyy does she not have gloves.

The manaflow from being observed has slowed to a bare dribble. Just thinking about it though makes it come a little bit faster.

"Canada. But I wouldn't expect an American to know that."

"I was just testing you," she says archly.

Toronto sounds like it's from Ohio, that usually steers her right.

Okay here is a used milk carton filled three parts amphetamines, one part opioids.

Ana has the dignity to look slightly sheepish about the choice of packaging.

She just smiles and takes the carton and stashes it in her pack. 

Then she takes out a tin of cookies, counts out three and a half, saves the remaining half, and adds a pen and a pad of paper to the stack. 

"Here you go. Incidentally, do you have any booze?"

"Nah sorry."

She is not... totally sure where to put the cookies in her backpack without risking crumbling, so she places them in one of the small pockets without much room to bounce around and vows to be extra careful on the way back to her room.

...baby's first drug deal is a success!!

Unless those are actually just normal cookies, she doesn't have much way of telling. She gets up, picks up her tray.

"Not sitting with the other Torontonians today?"

"I'm meeting with them in like five minutes, actually. So I'd better be off."

She pauses. 

"How about condoms?"

"---yeah actually. Twenty four packets."

On the first day, really? Holy shit.

"I'll trade you a mana gem with everything I've scraped together today for a dozen."

"Lemme see?"

She should probably agree regardless, because she's already making a tidy profit (she's pretty sure??) and now she wants to be on an enclaver's good side.

At the least Stasia can act impressed about the work, inflate the girl's ego a bit.

She shows her a thumb-sized ruby. It's got a decent amount of power in it for a single day.

"Oh wow. This is all from today? Holy crap girl, were you... setting yourself on fire or something? Love of Christ."

...that was kind of halfhearted and lame. She tries!

Twenty-four condoms go on the lunch table, then pushed over.

She passes over the gem and pockets the condoms. "Thanks."

"Kay peace."

She's not done eating yet, but it would be really really lame to go and sit back against the wall again, so she slings up her backpack, dumps out her tray, and heads back to her room.

Ana lets out a long shaky breath, covers her face, and yearns to turn blind-spot on.

And Hannah goes off to her enclave meeting.