Oh, hey, Lucy recognizes that girl, it's Doom Socks. 

...

She may have forgotten to ask her actual name. Oops?

Well, no time like the present to fix old mistakes. 

She carries her tray over, Wilbur trailing in her wake. 

"This is super embarrassing but when I was mistaking you for a maleficer I forgot to actually ask your name," she says, setting her tray down and sitting across from her.

(Bobbie skedaddles as soon as it's clear Lucy's planning to sit.)

"It's El. Or, well, that's what I'm called anyway."

"Cool, I was just calling you Doom Socks in my head, El is much more suitable for a human being."

"...that's even worse than my real name, I didn't think it possible."

"I can think of loads of things worse than Doom Socks!" she says brightly. "I probably shouldn't, but it's possible."

"It's 'Galadriel'. My mother knows what she did."

"Oh no, I'm so sorry."

"I just hope there aren't too many people going around sounding like an alphabet book. Listening at corners has told me we've got both a 'zee' and a 'zed', if there's six other Ells what am I to do?"

"Call yourself Q? --No then people would think you were the asshole alien from Star Trek, you don't need that with your weird-ass vibes. Uh, W would be a bit of a mouthful, X is too generic, if we go into other letters in your name G just sounds like Gee Whiz...do you have a middle name?"

"If I did don't you think I'd use that?"

"Hi Lucy and Wilbur! Hi El!" calls Lissa, scurrying over when she sees several people she considers friends sitting together. Apparently Bobbi isn't joining them, though she supposes that makes sense. She slides into a seat next to El, smiling as she sets down her tray.

"I dunno, El's fine," she shrugs. "What about a surname, some people have surnames they can go by. I guess this doesn't work if your surname is Wintersonchester or something like that. --Hi Lissa."

"Am I interrupting something?" she asks, head tilted as she pokes at her cornflakes. "I think El's a fine name too!"

"It's a nickname," El explains, "and sounds like a letter. Last name is Higgins, I think it'd be more confusion than it's worth."

Lucy starts to say something, then stops. Her eyes flick to the crystal hanging from El's neck. 

"Huh, I think my mum actually mentioned you once, she went to visit a commune in Wales with a well-known healer when we were seven and when she came back mentioned a surly South Asian-looking daughter about our age." 

"That's me. Surly South-Asian looking daughter about your age."

"Well, she didn't know about the doom socks." 

"Did she think I was maleficing when I was seven, that would be a trick."

"No, she thought you were cranky and probably either kind of a brat or really going through something and she didn't have the evidence to judge which." 

"Mm. I don't remember her at all."

Shrug. "Loads of people come to see your mum, I doubt being an albino is enough to make one of 'em really stand out. But if you're ever in a pinch and need healing in a hurry we won't stiff you afterwards; Mum's healing goo trebled in potency after she came back from that trip."

"Good to know."

"--I'm not gonna try to suck up to you about your mum or anything, if you were worried, she kind of famously'll see anyone and you seem, uh, difficult to suck up to. Not that I don't like you but you're--prickly? Which is fine. But would probably not be good for my lips' long-term health if I tried any kind of butt-kissing." 

"You lost your metaphor somewhere in there and it'll only get worse if you keep trying."

"You know what, that's fair." 

"Did you have any classes you liked yesterday?" That is PROBABLY a safe question, unless her doom socks got her put into a lot of doom classes. 

"Welsh myth looks pretty easy and like it'll have Welsh spells in it later on."

"Poetry was nice!" adds Lissa. She pauses, poking slowly at her breakfast before taking another bite. "Um...what's maleficing?"

"Taking energy for spells out of something else. If it's just like, germs, mosquitoes, your furniture -" Shrug. "If it's mice, let alone people, it fucks you up. I'm strict mana, which means no germs mosquitoes or furniture for me, but most people aren't."

"Most people call the germs mosquitos furniture version 'cheating' instead of maleficing. It's not different in terms of how it, like, works, but nobody ever got brain damage from it."

"Can be hell on the furniture though." 

"Does that make it go bad like knives can?" she asks. "It sounds like it's not a very nice way to treat your furniture..."

"I don't think so, but if you put enough holes in a chair and then sit in it it'll collapse."

"I have never heard of furniture going bad. --I bet you're right, though, it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if people who are strict mana have a lower rate of stuff going bad on them than people who aren't and nobody ever bothered doing statistics about it."

"Mum's spellbooks leave, but I think that's a different thing and they do it weird. She's never had an angry thing but we didn't have many... things."

"Yeah, spellbooks leaving is different from stuff going bad, they aren't worse wherever and whenever they show up again."

"Spellbooks leave and show up again? Do you mean, like, how the Void dumps spellbooks on you, or do they disappear and show up in the same place again?"

"Mostly they leave. Mum has them show up, sometimes, but that's weirder than leaving. You can make them do it less by being careful with them and keeping track of where they're supposed to be so you'll miss them right away if they do it - not that missing them helps, just being aware does."

"There has to be some way of making them show up, because the Scholomance does it. In our rooms through the Void and in the library. If it happens to your mum on your own then I'm less surprised than I would be if it were someone else but yeah I've never heard of that either."

Lissa nods. "Do you know why they show up more for your mom? Does she have, like an extra-fancy shelf for them or something?"

"She keeps them in a box. And when one shows up she lays them all out and gives them her blessing to leave and when she puts them away and it's the same number as before the one showed up."

"That is seriously cool. I always wonder how complicated spellbook cognition is."

"Awwww," says Lissa, eyes going a bit soft at the description of the blessing to leave. "Does the kind of spells they have matter any, you think?"

"It probably has to do with affinities but I don't know really."

"What's your affinity, I don't think you've said." 

"Why do you reckon."

"--Ah. Doom socks. Wow, that sucks. Uh. It'll probably be useful on graduation day?"

"With enough mana."

"Hm. Noted. Well, it could be worse, we never did figure out my affinity, maybe I'll turn out to have an affinity for chickens." 

El snorts.

"And too late to bring in any fertilized eggs! Which I'm not sure we'd've bothered with anyway, I'm not sure what I'd even do with chickens and an affinity therefor. It's not like thread and spiders. I guess maybe spiders aren't the obvious response to a thread affinity for everyone. I guess I could...make something with the feathers? That sounds so much worse than making things with spidersilk."

"Even if you do turn out to have a useless affinity, I sincerely doubt it would happen to be chickens in particular." 

"Excellent point! And they're not even the most useless possible animal. The only good thing about an affinity for mola mola fish would be that there is no chance anybody ever wrote a spell about them, so I could just cast off-affinity without the void trying to give me spells about them all the time."

"I guess even one chicken'd be too heavy to bring? Even if that would mean real eggs," says Lissa. She pokes hers and sighs.

"--Okay, that'd be a valuable trade good," she admits. "Chalk one up for the anti-mola mola side."

"Well, at any rate I'm probably always going to be in the market for the kinds of basic spells most people can have for the asking in any language they want and I can trade you, uh, I got a variable fire spell last night that I can't find a good use for but it would be fine for anyone else."

"That does sound useful! I'll see if the void gives me anything good in Welsh or Marathi." 

Lissa nods in slight agreement. "Can you ask for specific languages?" she asks. "Or just for some purpose you want?"

"--I guess I'm not sure, but I can at least try." 

"You can but it'll tend to make the spell worse in other ways than if you let it pick. Don't ask it for languages you don't have and aren't even learning, though, Lissa, it'll get confused."

Lissa nods. "Yeah, I won't do that then. Thanks for the advice."