Eventually based on a description she can get pointed to the New York reading room, where they are having a movie-watching party for certain values of "movie". Rebecca can be pulled out. "Um, hi?"

“Hi! I’m Larisa, Vanya’s sister. I heard you were getting along pretty well during work period? You’ve got a music affinity as well?”

"Oh! Yeah! He was really fun to talk to up until the part where he got really upset I offered to sing him to sleep? Do you know what that's about?"

“I don’t know why that specifically, but - you should know this if you’re going to see him more - Vanya is, um, pretty fragile right now. He had a very bad time of it last year and he’s still recovering. A lot of random things will upset him, it’s not your fault.”

A brief pause. 

“But - I came looking for you because it sounded like he really enjoying talking music with you - you were good for him - and he…needs things like that, right now. So, um, Sacramento would consider it a favor to us, if you were up for doing that some more.”

Ugh, Larisa really hates this sort of negotiation, and especially about this. It makes her feel like an overbearing parent scheming playdates for her kindergartner.

"Um, that sounds good? Do you mean like now?"

"I wasn't thinking right now - you seem to be busy with something?" She hesitates. "But, er - so you do have a song that helps people fall asleep?" 

"I don't know how good it is but it always worked on my baby sister? I was on putting her to bed duty because nobody else could get her to go to sleep."

"Well, um, if you were willing to go by his room before curfew - I or Landon can walk with you, make sure you're safe - that could be really good? Vanya...has a lot of trouble sleeping." And she is on babysitting duty tonight, because Vanya is incredibly up-and-down right now and probably it's fine but she can't be sure that he'll be fine if he wakes up alone at 3 am. At least if he's asleep at 10pm on the dot, she'll have an easier time trying to get literally any studying done in between the inevitable mal attacks she has to fend off. And it'll make it more likely that he gets enough sleep even if she ends up waking him by blasting something. 

"Okay, um. I think trading is normal here? - I have to learn Latin and Spanish and German anyway."

"Makes sense. Nearly all of us have Latin and Spanish, Justin and Killian have German. We'd trade you for mana too, or - hmm. Do you have anything for personal mana storage?"

Giving her a mana sink, even a really basic and not especially good one, is worth a LOT more than a night of singing Vanya to sleep, or even a month of that honestly, but there's her goodwill to think about, and it's close enough to in-affinity for Landon.

"For that we'd want a longer-standing agreement," she adds. "That you'll, er, be available for working with Vanya and helping him sleep at bedtime. But it doesn't sound like his company is necessarily a hardship for you, and he could teach you Latin - I bet he will anyway, he does a lot of work cobbling spells out of old Latin church music." 

"I don't have any mana storage and would really like some! And I'm fine with hanging out with Vanya and singing him to sleep for a long while."

Larisa thumps her on the shoulder. "Excellent. A mutually beneficial arrangement, it sounds like. Landon will arrange to make you some mana storage - his affinity is personalized artifacts bonded to a specific person, approximately, so he'll want you to sit with him in the shop for some of it so he can shape it to you. Anyway, I'd better let you get back to your - movie night? Which is a brilliant idea, honestly. Should I come meet you here at...nine-thirty? Ten?" 

"There's like twenty more minutes in the movie, I think? Less, she'll probably skip the credits."

"Ah. I can go grab Vanya and meet you here in half an hour, then?" 

"Sure!"

Then Larisa will pat her on the shoulder again, and duck off to go find Vanya and to inform Landon of his new project! 

Rebecca rejoins the movie crowd and murmurs to Zeke about what's going on in case anything about it is a horrible idea.

“You should, like, figure out a time frame for it, so you’re not paying them back forever, and if he does anything bad then you should super tell me? And you should ask around about whether Landon is good at stuff. But it seems, like, basically fine as a thingy.”

"Okay, like how long a time frame?"

“... two weeks to, like, two months, probably? I dunno.”

"Okay cool."

She smooches him on the temple, when Larisa comes to collect her.

Vanya is trailing along behind her, looking down at the floor, but he lifts his head enough to smile tentatively at Rebecca. 

"Hi Vanya!"

"Hi! Larisa said you maybe wanted to learn more Latin?" 

"Yeah, in language lab I got Latin and also German and Spanish, I think it's because I know Ode to Joy and a lot of Shakira songs. I didn't get French, once I saw I had German and Spanish I was worried but apparently counting to ten and stuff doesn't count, and Italian musical terms don't either?"

"Yeah, that makes sense. I've got Spanish too, I don't have German but some of our upperclassmen do and could maybe help you with that. But Latin's a really good start. French and Spanish and Italian are all pretty descended from it, right?" 

"I think so! Almost all the Latin I know is hymns though. I was going to take Spanish in high school and - well, I guess I'm taking Spanish in high school, but."

"Hymns are a good start! Even if God isn't real, you can get a bunch of inspiration for good spells out of sacred music, it's often really musically good." 

"I mostly learned them by going to church, the choir director let me join the grownup choir early and gave me recommendations for things to bring to voice lessons." Is that a sufficiently diplomatic way to not, like, hide being a Christian, you're probably not supposed to hide being a Christian and she can't really ask a priest right now. "Since I have to do German anyway I might get into more Bach!"

"That'd be neat! I love Bach but I had to sort of not listen to the words, before - and here we don't have recordings of anything so I'd need to look at the sheet music. I'd thought maybe I would learn German this semester, but...." 

He trails off. 

"- Anyway. Do you play any instruments?" 

Wow, Vanya really does get along with this freshman! 

Unfortunately she's one of the poor Chicago mundie kids, so she's probably doomed. Except - maybe a lot less doomed that you'd expect? She's already in with New York, she clearly knows how to play the politics here. '

And anyone who can make Vanya smile that many times is worth their weight in mana storage, to Sacramento. 

Larisa mulls on this while she steers the two of them towards Vanya's room. 

"I play piano, but, uh, will probably be out of practice soon, unless there is a secret piano somewhere? Or I can... build a keyboard in shop with magic?"

"A full-on keyboard would be a huge project! I'd actually recommend a virginal, if you want to apply your piano skills - it's a relative of the harpsichord but a lot smaller. And simpler, so easier to keep it from going bad on you, and more room to sneak in extra enchantments for stuff like resonance. ...I brought a piccolo in, but I only learned it for the weight allowance reason. I made a guitar first semester in shop and I'm going to learn violin next, string instruments are a lot more my thing than wind instruments."

Pause. 

"- Though if you'd be interested in learning brass instruments, I have a three-person spell I wrote in comp that needs a trumpet or French horn - brass instruments are good for channeling a lot of power -"

It's so good to see her little brother animatedly talking about music again! 

"It's called a virginal? I've never heard of that, what a funny name. I don't know if I'd be right for brass instruments, you can't sing at the same time - I wanted piano so I could sing at the same time..."

"Oh, that's fair. Singing plus playing an instrument at the same time is also really helpful for musical spells - though for sophistication and complexity more than for power..." 

Vanya can talk about for the rest of the time it takes them to reach his room. 

"You kids good for now?" Larisa asks. "Vanya, why don't you go to bed at ten-thirty today, that way Rebecca can help you fall asleep and I'll still have time to escort her back to her room before curfew." 

"...Mmm." Vanya ducks his head, looking self-conscious. 

"How do you tell time around here, I haven't spotted any clocks - do you have to guess by the bells? Do you make hourglasses or magic watches?"

"I have a music box clock that plays a different tune every hour and chimes on the quarter-hour. ...Cassie and I made it together in shop as a group project, so we could use both our affinities on it." 

"Oh cute! It doesn't keep you up?"

"The volume is adjustable, I just turn it way down at night. ...It helps, if I am asleep it doesn't bother me and if I can't sleep then it tells me the time without me having to look at a clock." 

"Okay. I hope the lullaby lets you stay asleep long enough. Babies don't usually sleep that long so I don't know if it would be different for a non-baby."

Shrug. “Still better than not having it, I think. Anyway do you want to see my guitar?”

"You have a guitar? Yeah I wanna see it!"

"Yeah! Her name is Gloria. I'll introduce you!" 

Gloria lives in a beautiful velvet-lined case that Vanya explains he also made in shop. "And I polish her every night with sandalwood oil - Larisa found some for me in the lab once. It's a good idea to be nice to your instruments, in here." He lifts the instrument out of the case and strokes it, or her, whatever, almost like he's petting a dog in his lap. "Gloria, this is my friend Rebecca. She's very good and you can trust her." 

To Rebecca, "- want to hold her?" 

"Hi Gloria," murmurs Rebecca, and "yeah, please!"

Vanya passes the guitar over, carefully and reverently. 

The body is wood, clearly several different kinds of wood; he must not have been able to find enough of any one variety. It's sanded to silky smoothness and polished to almost a mirror-bright finish. The strings are steel, except for one which is nylon. 

"It's gorgeous," says Rebecca. She strums experimentally.

The chord rings out as clear as a bell and considerably louder and more resonant than it seems like it should be from the size of the instrument. 

"Have you ever played before?" Vanya asks her. "I can walk you through how to tune her - she should be in tune already but it's good for getting comfortable. How's your ear?" He has perfect pitch, but he does have a tuning fork somewhere. 

"I've never played guitar, just piano. My ear's not perfect but it's good, I can tell if it's in tune with itself even if I can't tell whether the A is 440 or, uh, 441 or what."

"Perfect - then you'll just need to tune the A string from my tuning fork, and then you can check the rest?" 

He gets it out for her, and then shows her how to turn the pegs to tighten or loosen the strings. 

"So this one is the A string, though you'll want it an octave down from the tuning fork's A. I use standard tuning most of the time, that's E, A, D, G, B, and E." He points out the relevant strings. "You can tune it different ways, though, makes some songs easier to play."  

Rebecca nods, strikes the fork, plucks the A. She knows to twist pegs tighter for higher and looser for lower and does this very conservatively to be gentle on Gloria.

Then in a few minutes she'll have a beautifully tuned instrument and also a bit more familiarity handling a guitar. 

"Want me to teach you how to play some standard chords? You really don't need many, for some songs - any chance you know that one by, um, I think Bob Marley? That goes -" and he sings:

Don't worry, about a thing / Cause every little thing, gonna be all right

"I've heard it but don't know all the words for sure. I know the chorus though."

"We can do it together. Here, you only actually need three chords, A, D, and E - let me show you where your fingers go for those..." 

Vanya is a very patient instructor. One of his first pieces of advice is that she's definitely going to want to cut her nails. 

"I don't have a nail trimmer."

"I can ask Cassie for you later. She's better at keeping sharps from going bad." Also, importantly, she's ALLOWED to have any in her ROOM. She's allowed to have more doses of meds like ibuprofen, too. Vanya doesn't even have any idea if you can overdose on ibuprofen (and has not actually tried to find this out) but Larisa isn't taking any chances there. 

"Okay. I can tell it'd make it easier here but I don't want to bite my nails, they'd get raggedy." Rebecca is clearly very unfamiliar with how to handle a fretted instrument but she's musical as all get-out.

"Fair enough!" It's going to be a little awkward pressing the strings down against the frets with longish nails, but it seems like she can manage for now. "Don't overdo it," he warns her. "Your fingers are going to get sore. If you play a lot you'll get calluses." 

And once she's drilled all three chords, and transitioning between them, Vanya gets out his book of songs and chords! He memorized a lot of songs before coming here, and wrote them down before he could forget them. 

Rebecca has at least seen people playing guitar before and has the general idea. She strums through songs she knows and sings them.

This is fun! Vanya does not normal get nearly enough opportunities to SING with PEOPLE. He sings along, occasionally making up harmonies.  

- and then, in the course of flipping through his songbook (a LOT of which is in Russian), she lands on On My Own from Les Mis, and Vanyel freezes, goes rigid, and then two lines into it bursts into tears.

- Rebecca flattens her hand on the strings. "Vanya?"

He holds up a hand in what's probably meant to be a reassuring gesture or possibly just a 'leave me alone' gesture, and keeps sobbing. 

She sets Gloria gently in its case and hugs him.

Hug! Vanya will absolutely accept a hug! And then end up sort of clinging to Rebecca while sobbing on her shoulder! 

This part is not as fun as the singing part but she is getting paid for it and it's not that bad. Pat pat.

Vanyel manages to get himself calmed down after a few minutes of hug and pats. He sniffles, and pulls away from her. "Sorry. You - it's not your fault." 

"Is it - Les Mis, or just that song, or -?"

"I - I - I can't talk about it, please -" And now he's right on the edge of crying again, just from thinking about trying to answer that question. 

"- okay. Sorry."

"It's not your fault." He says it in a very small voice. "I - you can keep practicing if you want..." Vanya, for his part, is going to huddle on his bed and hug himself until he feels calmer and more able to exist in another person's presence. Right now it feels like his skin might peel off if she looks at him too hard, which is one of the many, many feelings he really hates. 

She picks up Gloria again and finds the next song in Vanya's book and strums along. Figures out another chord on her own. Her fingers are starting to hurt and she can feel mana accumulating, now that she knows to look for it.

Music. Music is always a good thing, even when everything hurts and he just wants everything to go away and stop and leave him alone so he can curl up and go to sleep and never wake up. 

Another song later, Vanya actually feels okay enough to give Rebecca some halfhearted feedback on chord fingerings. 

That's very helpful!

And when it is his prescribed bedtime, she keys her lullaby to the chords she can play, and sings, with "Vanya" swapped in for "Judy" and the rhymes adjusted to fit.

Vanya takes longer to fall asleep than her baby sister, and even once he's asleep he looks kind of tense and kind of miserable, curled up in a ball with his blanket. 

She lullabies him a third time in case that helps, and zips Gloria into its case and waits to be picked up.

It maybe helps? His breathing slows and his expression looks less like he's in pain. 

Larisa arrives shortly to walk her back to her room. She casts some sort of clearly-very-powerful spell that involves chanting in Latin and definitely contains the Latin words for 'watch over'. 

"How was it?" she asks, in a low voice, once the door is shut behind them. 

"He cried one time when I sang a song that made him sad? Otherwise it was great, and the lullaby worked but I think it took all the mana I got hurting my fingers on the guitar."

"- Oh, I'll spot you mana for the amount it took." Rebecca being a freshman, this will barely cost Larisa anything. "And...yeah. A lot of things upset him. It's not - personal, or about you." 

Rebecca nods. "I'm in room 303B."

Then Larisa will make sure she reaches her room safely! She's quiet on the walk, clearly preoccupied.

(Mostly she is mentally planning out her strategy for night shift duty. Last year was brutal, but she's stronger now, and she invested even more in warding Vanya's room. Her affinity leans toward defense, not offense, which is inconvenient when she gets jumped in the hallway but actually makes nighttime babysitting a lot less exhausting. Most of the mals that crawl or ooze or skitter or float up to Vanya's door are going to be turned away well before she has to take any actions about it. And she has the new, better spell for layered tripwire wards, which means she can afford to be paying less than 100% full attention to what's outside the door, trusting her systems and preparations to alert her. She might actually get some studying done, this time, though she's not holding her breath for it.) 

"What does mana storage look like when it's not a powersharer? I've mostly been hanging out with New York and they just have sharers."

"They've got a mana sink too! It's just kept somewhere safe and out of the way, and all the power-sharers feed to and from it. ...For standalone mana storage, you can use a pretty wide range of things. Gems or crystals or semiprecious stones are common, but some people use wood or metal. I knew a girl once whose affinity was liquids and she used a vial of fancy scented oil. The important part is mostly your own magical investment in something - the more you put in to building it, the better it tends to hold mana." 

"But Landon is going to make some for me?"

"It doesn't have to be made by you - in enclaves, usually the adult wizard with the best affinity makes storage for all the kids, since we can't do anything nearly that good at fourteen, and then we just have to...sort of get to know it? There's a wizard in Wales who makes mana storage crystals that're famous practically worldwide for how well they hold mana. And Landon's not that good, but his affinity is especially useful for - well, making artifacts that can be as well-suited to a person as though they'd put in all the love and care themselves, even when he did most of the work."  

"Okay. What's he going to make it out of?"

"He works best in wood, but you should talk it through with him again, if there's a material you might have a closer affinity with." 

"Wood will be fine! Probably. Since I don't have a material affinity. Where should I find him and when?"

Ugh. Scheduling. 

"- Come find us in the library tomorrow? Sacramento has a room there." 

"Okay! Thank you! How do I take the mana for the lullaby -"

"Have you ever exchanged mana with someone before?" 

"Nope!"

"Okay! Um -" Larisa has never, actually, had to demonstrate how to exchange mana with someone who didn't know what this was like, before. "...I'll send you some and you tell me when -?" 

"Okay!"

Larisa reaches out to touch her hand, and then it feels - 

- a bit like how it felt when the guitar-strings were hurting her fingers and the mana was slowly but surely building inside her. Except it's much more, much faster, than that. 

And it has a different flavor - metaphorically speaking - it's not like it's an actual taste she's ever tasted before with her literal tongue.

It's still flowing into her. Very fast. 

"Whoa I think that's about the amount."

“Great.” Larisa stops. “Well, there you go.”

"Thanks! That's more than enough for the ward song the void gave me."

"Great!" 

And Larisa leaves her at her room and heads out.