"Hi Julia!" Marian says brightly. Today is a good day and she is in a good mood! The Holden kid made his morning announcement as requested, and her little infirmary clinic has been doing brisk business, all of it easy and straightforward and deeply rewarding; she's given like thirty people medications from the void (and added their names to her notebook) and she's traded more of her meal packets for even more wards, and a few minor magic items. She has a ring that gives her better dexterity, which is INCREDIBLY COOL. Magic is neat, it turns out! 

"Have you asked the Void for stuff for therapy? I made a list of things that I think would be therapeutic!"

plush stuffed animals

floor pillows for sitting on

Scharffen Berger semisweet chocolate squares (for making hot chocolate)

whole milk (for making hot chocolate)

powdered cocoa, Dutch-processed (for making hot chocolate)

assorted chocolates

scented candles

essential oils+defuser

ice cream

Girl Scout cookies

thread for making friendship bracelets

"I did get scented candles! And I got some scented massage oil that fixes muscle soreness - uh, not from the void, that's one of the things I traded food packets for. And I asked for chocolate but I think the void got confused, it gave me chocolate flavored Boost brand diabetic-friendly meal shakes? Uh, I don't know if there's a way to use magic to make those actually good?" 

"You can use magic to make anything taste good but it's not a good use of magic, you won't save any for graduation if you make a habit of that. And things that started out chocolate flavored aren't going to be any easier to turn into candy than a plateful of cafeteria Brussels sprouts. We want a box of assorted chocolates,"  she tells the Void sternly. "Like Godiva or something."

Julia is not the school nurse and the void is not going to give her anything for that request. 

"....I think it usually helps if I say why I need the thing? So chocolates are, like, therapeutic because they....taste good and people associate them with comfort? Do you have any other ideas for what I can say about that?" 

"They'll make people feel comfortable coming to therapy! Because they've internalized that needing support or friendship is shameful, but that doing things because they provide concrete material benefits is respectable. So if they come to therapy and get chocolates, then they'll be able to tell their friends, 'I go to therapy for the chocolates', but while they're there, they'll be getting therapy."

"....I. guess that's fair? I can try it and see what the void thinks." 

Marian will try including this along with her own spiel and the usual flattery and praise about how incredibly helpful the void has been today. (Which is entirely genuine! It's honestly getting to the point where the void is better than the worst-stocked 10% of days in the ICU med room, and nevermind if the void keeps giving her things labeled in Russian or Hebrew or Chinese.) 

The void has chocolates for her!

Chocolate Meditation Experience 

Our Chocolate Meditation experience is a collection of exotic truffles specifically chosen for their alchemical properties. Each truffle is paired with a corresponding crystal and a deck of affirmation cards. 

This collection is an indulgent way to tap into your intuition. Whether you are searching the spiritual realm or practical day-to-day matters, this deck can assist. As you close your eyes and shuffle the deck, tap into your intuition, thinking carefully about the area in your life in which you'd like more clarity. Then select your card. The card will provide an intention, paired with which chocolate to eat, and the crystal to hold as an aid for achieving your intention. Meditate using this collection daily for 40 days to encourage your manifestation!  This is a meaningful experience to practice alone or with a group of friends. A perfect gift for the yogi or healer friend in your crew.

Marian reads this and makes a wide variety of faces. 

"I...uh....sure, I guess...?" 

She offers the box of chocolates to Julia. 

"Amazing! Yeah, this is perfect! Spiritual clarity chocolate! All right, that's enough for today, as one of the group therapy exercises we're gonna brainstorm more things to ask the Void for next week."

"Cool! Okay, so, I don't have thread for making friendship bracelets, and I also don't have...floor pillows? whatever those are? And I don't have stuffed animals either. But, um, I was trying to ask the void for more bedsheets and blankets and stuff for the infirmary and I kept getting....well, have a look." 

Marian opens her bedroom door to reveal a substantial pile on the floor. Most of the blankets appear to be very colorful, either knitted or quilted or with loud animal-print patterns. There's one rolled-up flannel blanket which very clearly has toy trucks printed on it. 

"Holy shit, nice! And I'll be able to tell my rug that they're all hideous next to her, because they are." Julia scoops up an armful of blankets. "I bet we can make my dorm plenty cozy with these."

"Yeah!"

Marian scoops up her box of scented aromatherapy candles (scents include 'Alpine Forest', 'Mountain Spring', 'Ocean Beach', and 'Cottage Hearth'), and her precious bottle of magical massage oil, and she follows Julia out. Hopefully Julia has mal-watching covered, or has someone else recruited to do that, because Marian's hands are sort of full and she can't hold her knife at the same time. 

They're going from the cafeteria to a freshman dorm during lunch period in the first week of school, Julia's not that fussed. But when they pass New York's table she calls "hey Orion! Help us set up for therapy!"

"How do you do that?" Orion asks.

"We carry these blankets and scented candles and chocolates over to my room - and realistically we're gonna spill out into the hallway - while you make sure no one eats us."

"Okay!" He takes an armful of blankets.

Then they can go to Julia's beautiful spaceship room and start arranging the blankets on the floor so there are cozy spots for people to sit. "Take your shoes off, my rug doesn't like shoes," she warns them. "And put the candles up on the shelves but don't disturb my zen rock garden."

Marian will take her shoes off, then! ....And then also takes off her socks and hastily shoves them into the shoes and shoves the shoes into a corner, because she hasn't prioritized getting more pairs of socks OR washing her initial pair since she arrived, and it's now been almost a week, and she has a terrible sense of smell so it's not bothering her but probably they smell objectively awful. 

".....Oh. Wow. Julia, your room is - really classy?" 

"Thank you!!! I think it's transcending the very limiting conditions it was produced under. I'm going for a Buddhist spaceship sort of vibe. Star Trek, if they did a remake in Korea, and it wasn't incredibly depressing like all Korean movies are."

"- Huh, are Korean movies depressing? I don't think I've actually seen any. That I can remember." ....Oh no is this letting slip that she's racist or something? Marian has very little idea how teenagers these days think about social justice things, except for what she vaguely knows from Tumblr, and Tumblr is kind of concerning. 

Rebecca tagged along when Orion was buttonholed; she de-shoes herself and pets the rug very respectfully. She helps fold blankets up into cushionlike squares.

"They're so incredibly depressing! They're all like, this family has been living in desperate poverty to put their son through school, but then he's shot dead by a mugger, so the father goes to shoot the mugger, but kills another innocent person, and then himself, and then it turns out the mugger was actually the son's neglected brother who the parents abandoned in desperation fifteen years earlier. They're all like that."

Karen peeks in, not really tagging along with anyone but pretty sure this is the best place to be right now. PROBABLY she should at some point get in the habit of doing her homework during work period, but her sense that the scholomance follows zombie apocalypse rules is telling her that morale and teamwork are going to be equally important for surviving it, and she has more experience with homework than with teamwork.

"Hey! Anything else we're gonna want to do to set up?"

"Hey Karen! No hot chocolate from the Void today, so we don't need to figure out mugs.... oh! We need to light the candles. ...should we light them all or will that just make the room smell confused."

"I'd think one at a time," says a new voice, "unless any are really good combinations? And then if the void's uncooperative later you'll still have some. ...Are you sure this is the best place to host it? It's nice, but it's still a single dorm room."

"I'm not really sure how many people to expect? If it's, like, eight of us, I say we hang out here and get cozy, if it's like twenty then probably we should steal an unused classroom or something. But I'd rather be here even if it's a bit tight, the classrooms are so dreary. Not a therapeutic environment at all. Ennis, Karen, by the way, Karen, Ennis has the best affinity in our year, cosmetics." She realizes belatedly that this is sort of rude to Orion but she bets he's barely listening.

She sniffs the candles and then lights one.

She waves to Ennis! "Hi, Ennis."

She has never used cosmetics in her life, but that seems like kind of an unnecessary thing to say, so she doesn't.

"Lovely to meet you, Karen."

Anemone hasn't been in this area of the dorms before, but she's pretty sure she's found the right spot.

"Hello. Is this where the therapy group is setting up?"

"Yep! We might have to relocate to a classroom if we get too many people but I'd rather do it here, cozier. I'm Julia."

On the one hand: This is probably not a great use of time.

On the other hand: It's a perfectly good way to meet more people, and if the first day turns out to not be worth the time investment she can always just not go to the others.

And on the third, decisive hand, not that she would admit that this is the decisive thing: She's really curious.

"Oh, wow, pretty room. Hi, I'm Ayako."

"Ennis Reilley, Manchester."

"Kyoto. Nice to meet you."

....Okay wow that's so many people! 

Marian looks around. "Uh, hi Karen! Hi Ennis! Hi Ayako! Hi...uh, sorry, I didn't catch your name? Anyway I'm Marian! I'm the school nurse." 

Julia has borrowed the teapot from New York's reading room; she fills it up with water and sets it on her bookshelf to boil it. "Come in, make yourself comfortable! We have meditative chocolates from the Void."

"Hello," she says to Marian. "We met before, I'm Anemone. I brought my enchanted tarot deck, if anyone wants a reading later."

Marian has the instructions packet that came with the box of chocolates! She has briefly skimmed them and they seem TERRIBLE but it's not like she has much of a repertoire of other ideas for how to do this. 

"....Uh, it - comes with meditation instructions? If you want me to read those at some point? - oh, right, hi Anemone!" Oh no she forgot someone's name again she is going to DIE of embarrassment now.

"What makes a chocolate meditative?"

"I'm not sure?" ....She is not going to give a lecture about placebo affects nope nope nope. "I - uh - I asked the void for group therapy chocolate and this is what it gave me? But also Julia's rug is Buddhist and I figured this might be, like, the kind of thing that'd make it happy and less likely to turn evil and murder people?" 

"....well now I'm curious what it means for a rug to be Buddhist." 

....Marian isn't sure either. Julia is going to have to answer that one. 

" - I mean, I don't know exactly, but she's gorgeous and the patterning and style are Buddhist and she was a ton of effort - a senior project, she was supposed to be a flying carpet - and she didn't pan out and no one else wanted her because she's really temperamental, so I thought, okay, Buddhism, I can do Buddhism, and I've been doing yoga and praying to Buddha and I put up the Sutras and she's been a sweetheart for me so far so I guess I'm doing it right. If you know more Buddhist things I am open to feedback! I want to learn to be a good partner to my rug." She pats it. "Relatedly, everyone, shoes off before you come in, please, Orion's guarding for mals so you don't need to be able to run away in a hurry."

(Outside, Orion cheerfully applies overkill to something clinging to the ceiling.)

She takes off her shoes, then.

(Which Sutras, she doesn't see a shrine— none of these questions are the point and asking them in front of other people seems likely to lead to interactions she does not actually want to have and suspects Julia doesn't either.)

"I— hm. I grew up Buddhist, sort of, but we can talk about it later since it's not really the point of the group?"

Oh no this is maybe awkward? Marian feels like she doesn't have a good enough understand of how any of the social dynamics work here to even understand what's causing the awkwardness, though, let alone to intervene in it. 

(If she's honest with herself, it's not like she had a great understand of this in her mundane life either.) 

"...We've also got magic scented massage oil that cures muscle soreness," she adds. Also she got SO MANY therapy workbooks and self-help books from the void - more than half of them Buddhist-themed - and she has an entire mini-notebook full of notes on that in her pocket, but she should probably let Julia lead this, since this is Julia's room and all? 

Expectant look at Julia. 

"Okay. The point of the group is therapy. If you have your parents in the back of your head and they are hanging out going 'trust no one! CONSTANT VIGILANCE! if you give away anything at all for free you will DIE and if you make an enemy of anyone you will DIE and if you fail to make friends you will DIE' - and I bet we all do - then the point of therapy is that the Void will give us nice stuff if we use it for therapeutic purposes, so we're going to get really good at making therapeutic use of chocolate, and tea, and stuffed animals, and fuzzy blankets, and scented candles, and other stuff that's scarce in here, and we can take the leftovers home with us.

But like, I actually think this will be super awkward if we have our parents hanging out with us the whole time, so, to be clear, they're not invited? We're going to hang out, and talk about our feelings, and not be very overtly obsessed with ending up with more than our share of the meditation chocolates, okay?" Julia has been thinking about this a lot. Getting the vibes right is really important. 

"So we're supposed to start with an icebreaker, and I figure we can double that up with brainstorming things to ask the Void for next time. So introduce yourself with your name and where you're from and something that was relaxing or comforting or therapeutic for you, back at home. I'm Julia, New York, and at home I like manicures and pedicures, and spa treatments, and my dog Trisket but we are not asking the Void for emotional support animals because oh my god no, and exotic desserts, and shopping."

"My name is Rebecca and I'm from Chicago and I am relaxed and comforted by music and ice cream and fuzzy slippers and buying presents for people and Disney movies and doing, like, abstract watercolors that aren't supposed to turn out any particular way."

There's a girl - probably a girl, she's wearing a too-large sweater and it's a little hard to tell? - lurking outside the room, now, like she's not really sure whether there's a password to get in.

"Hi! Are you here for group therapy? Come on in, we're still doing introductions." Honestly if it's a boy that'd be good because their gender balance is a little off!

Marian waves and smiles at the person of indeterminate gender! 

"Hello?" Ennis says to the new girl. "...welcome? I'm Ennis, and conveniently enough I like cosmetics since that's my affinity, and massages, and, hmm, those nature sound recordings."

Anemone takes off her shoes and sits down. "My name is Anemone, and I'm from Jamaica. I like swimming, flowers, fresh fruit, tarot, meditation, and cartoons." 

She waves the girl at the door in and pats the spot on the blanket next to her.

The girl takes her shoes off and sits down by Anemone.

There is also a boy. He comes in too. Everyone has taken off their shoes for some reason so he'll follow suit? And find a place to sit where there's space, although this involves some folding himself up at this point. There are kind of too many people in this room.

"Hi, I'm Leander, I'm from Scotland, I like fiction podcasts and linguistics and Lord of the Rings." 

(He's given thought to what he wants to talk about here but had not anticipated he'd have to come up with interests. Hopefully that doesn't sound too much like he was looking for an excuse to bring up liking languages?)

- oh she has to introduce herself, too!

"Hi Leander! I'm Karen, and I like - hm. I like cookies, and I like writing fiction, and I like history and really old narrative poetry, and I like Nintendo games and specifically really like Pokemon. I actually accidentally brought my old GameBoy in, if anybody can charge it and wants to play it sometime. Oh, and I'm from Illinois, down by St. Louis."

Orion is pacing back and forth out in the hallway and as he goes by the door he chirps, "I'm Orion and I like killing mals! And also Star Wars and sometimes anime with like ninjas in it."

"Me too! - the anime with ninjas part."

...oh no, did everyone else say something already? Did the other Asian girl say something yet? Is she holding everyone else up? What does she like - 

"I'm Ayako, I'm from Kyoto, I like singing and stage shows and drawing. And anime but the kind with magical girls not the kind with ninjas."

"What's your favorite anime." Julia is not actually a huge fan of anime but she has for the last several years only been allowed to watch TV if it's international (for the cultural education) or if she's working on her movie-illusion-spell, so she is no longer the kind of person who has only seen Death Note. Though she did see Death Note. She felt it was lacking compelling female protagonists who were hot and funny and shallow but not mass murderers, which makes them kind of unrelatable.

Oh no!! That was the last person who might not have said something!! She has to think of something, quick!! How many things? At least three things? Three things is a reasonable number, right? Okay. She does like cookies, that's one thing. But she doesn't want to be a boring person who only likes food, that's a bad first impression and you only get to make a first impression once! She likes writing, too, but what if that sounds like bragging, or like she's copying everything that Karen said, then everyone will think she can't come up with her own opinions! Quick, think of an original opinion -

"Bleach or maybe Naruto!" says Orion, pacing back in the other direction now.

"Sailor Moon-- the original not the remake-- but I also like Princess Tutu and Shoujo Kakumei Utena, and I have a soft spot for Madoka Magica even though it's kind of depressing."

"We started watching that one but my mom kept crying through it so I told her I wasn't that into it."

Awww the tiny children are so adorable This is probably not a helpful way to be thinking about the situation? These teenagers can do MAGIC which Marian cannot do, and they've - most of them, at least - been training for this their entire lives, which she also hasn't been doing. 

....Marian honestly has a lot of feelings that she wishes she could talk about but she is the school nurse and group therapy for the students is not the time or place. So she will just smile at everyone as they speak, instead. 

"Oof, yeah, that'd be brutal to watch with your parents past episode four, I am suddenly grateful I didn't try to. Are there any you did like?" 

"Man, you all are going to think that I have absolutely no taste, but I kind of have to say Dragon Ball Z? Just because there's a sense in which it's not very good, right, but there's also a sense in which it's sort of the very height of shonen fighter shows, both in terms of the power levels within the show and in terms of the power of the show itself, because so many people have seen it, and the idea of a godlike protector of humanity in a universe that's mostly full of ridiculously powerful aliens is just really compelling, you know? I promise I also like things that are good, though."

"Hey, what's your name?" Rebecca asks Pentecost.

If Jeremy is stressed and scared less than a week into his time into the Scholomance because he doesn't like lying to Briar, he is going to die. So he isn't going to therapy because he's stressed and scared, because he isn't allowed to be stressed and scared, which means that he isn't. Jeremy is going to therapy because New York is hosting therapy, and definitely not for any other reasons.

Briar and someone from one of her math classes drop him off at the New Yorker's dorm room. He had been a little worried that Briar would want to come and talk about her dead sister and New York would decide they were just lost causes, but she had decided of her own initiative to work on her math homework instead.

People seem to already be talking when he arrives, but hopefully New York won't be too upset with him for being late?

"Hi, um, I'm Jeremy. Are we talking about ... anime? I've heard good things about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure." Jeremy has never in his life watched anime but at least he can name one.

"Hi Jeremy! There's space on the bed, sorry we're a little squeezed in here. We're talking about who we are, where we're from, and what are things that we find relaxing or soothing or therapeutic. I'm Julia and these are Rebecca Karen Orion Leander Ayako Ennis Mary and -" she doesn't know the pronouns of the next kid - "that's as far around as we'd gotten."

"Pen," she says, but it's so quiet that she suddenly worries that not a single person heard her, or if they did they just heard a really vague sound that they couldn't hear any of the parts of. It would be awkward to say it twice if people did hear her? But it was so quiet.

"I'm Pen," she says, making a real effort to speak up this time, so it's a more normal amount of quiet. "And, um, I liked Fruits Basket. But I've only read the manga."

THERE!! THAT WAS PROBABLY ALMOST A NORMAL THING TO SAY!!!

"Maybe we can convince the Void it'd be therapeutic to commandeer one of the history classroom projectors and let us show each other our favorite anime but probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves."

"The library needs more kinds of media! Like come on library all the cool libraries are doing it."

"There you go! New Scholomance improvement plan: tell everyone there's a hidden corner full of manga, believe it hard enough that then there is."

Okay. He can definitely sit on the bed.

"I'm Jeremy, I'm from Portland, uh, which is in the US, and I find it relaxing to listen to music." Hopefully that's an acceptable answer? Maybe not, maybe the New Yorkers are going to judge him for having such an impractical relaxation method.

"Music high-five," says Rebecca, holding up a hand.

"Music high five!"

Are three way high fives a thing. How are you supposed to do this. People who know how high fiving works help. 

Three way high fives are easy! You just high five one person with each hand!

...maybe this isn't actually that easy, but now he's committed to it, so he has to follow through.

Awww, Julia feels like so far the vibes are excellent. "Okay! That's everyone. Welcome to group therapy! I'm thinking we'll alternate the presents from the Void and the talking about our feelings. Marian, do you want to read the instructions on the meditative chocolate?"

Marian has mostly been occupied by feeling WAY TOO OLD to be in this room - she’s never watched anime in her entire life? Probably? Unless the Howl’s Moving Castle movie counts? Anyway she is so culturally unprepared to be supportive to the tiny children incredibly brave and impressive magical teenagers…

- oh good she’s being given a thing to do! Yeah she can read the meditation chocolate instructions out loud. …While trying really really hard to keep a straight face.

HOW TO EXPERIENCE

A Guided Tasting of an Exotic Truffle:
Our truffles are infused with a healing sound frequency to raise your vibe.

Breathe
Close your eyes. Take three deep, ujjayi breaths. Listen to the space between thought and prepare your palate to experience chocolate.

See
Describe what you see. What is the shape, color, sheen and texture?

Touch
Run your finger against the chocolate, noticing its texture and releasing the aromatics.

Smell
Bring the chocolate to your nose. Close your eyes, cup your hand around the chocolate and inhale deeply.

Taste
Enjoy your truffle in two bites. In the first bite, you are just getting to know the truffle, and in the second, you delve deeper, searching out the aromas and nuances. You become immersed in the experience of the chocolate and the sensations. After you’ve eaten the truffle, take a breath and taste the air. The aroma should have a long, lingering finish that is layered with perfumed notes.

"What is an ujjayi."

"infused with a healing sound frequency to raise your vibe."

"Are the chocolates magical? Sound-infused chocolate wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've ever heard."

"I feel like this is the sort of question that can only be answered by experiencing the chocolates."

"Yeah, all right, let's pass around the chocolates. There are sixteen, so that's not quite two apiece? There are also some, uh, meditation crystals, in the package, if you'd rather have a crystal than two chocolates take one chocolate and a couple of the crystals and it'll even out."

"Do the crystals go with specific chocolates? I want to get the full intended experience."

At any point before the last week, Marian would have said that 100% of what she just read out loud was complete bullshit and obviously the chocolates aren't magical! 

...Marian is now much less certain that she has any idea how anything works. Maybe the chocolates are magical? - Maybe the way magic works means that if enough of the kids here expect them to have healing sound frequencies, whatever that means, then that'll be true? 

She can attempt to consult the instructions and figure out if particular crystals go with particular chocolates. 

Pairing Crystals:

Amazonite - Olio D'oliva

Amethyst - Chef Pascal

Chrysocolla - Ambrosia

Fluorite - Woolloomooloo

Lepidolite - Viola

Malachite - Black Pearl®

Moss Agate - Wink Of The Rabbit®

Ocean Jasper - Soul & Motown

Pyrite - Oaxaca

Rainforest Jasper - Absinthe

Red Jasper - Budapest

Selenite - Giandiua

Shungite - Rap

Smoky Quartz - Naga®

Marian can read this off! 

"....Uh, I don't know what half of those are - do the crystals come with labels....?" 

"Well amethyst is easy, and malachite?"

"We can probably figure it out via process of elimination if we have to? But there might be pictures somewhere. Let's see, pyrite and malachite and smoky quartz are easy, the jaspers have convenient descriptions, amazonite should be light green, amethyst and lepidolite are easy to confuse for one another but they're not quite the same, selenite is usually white..."

"What kind of flavors are those - wink of the rabbit -"

"Okay, what do I need," she asks her cards, and then draws one randomly.

Seven of coins. The seventh thing on the list was a moss agate and wink of the rabbit. Also, there is a tiny dog on this version of the card that looks sort of like a rabbit.

"Moss agate and wink of the rabbit!" she says immediately. "I guess I'll let you know."

Marian has managed to find the bit in the instructions insert that describes flavors! 

"Wink of the Rabbit is, uh, soft burnt caramel and 45% cacao deep milk chocolate and New Mexican pecan– ok wait what - sorry, nevermind, go on..." 

She has been distracted by the quote labeled 'Inspiration', which she is not going to read out loud because she cannot possibly do it with a straight face.

"What if chocolate could manifest your desires? Chocolate meditations were ritualized for thousands of years by the Mayans and Aztecs. Our cacao rituals have specific and important processes that necessitate daily consistency, true belief and a willingness to banish skepticism. Focusing deeply on desired outcomes has the power to unlock your growth. These meditations are self-affirmations that are further amplified by the power of energetic infusion and taste in the chocolate. Stay the course, and commit to having faith that your intentions will manifest."

"Well, this one's the moss agate. Which one's wink of the rabbit? - oh, the one with the pecan, on it, duh."

She takes the pecan truffle. She holds it up to her face and takes three deep breaths.

"- Uh, right, here - I think there's a picture in the insert that'll let us match up which chocolate is which - wow they're really pretty, actually?" 

"They are! If no one else is mad for white chocolate I'd rather one of those."

"Okay! Hmm let's see what we've got. You could try the Ambrosia - it's Australian macadamia nuts and white chocolate and...Cointreau TM whatever that is, and, uh, 23-karat gold leaf? Apparently? For some reason? Is that edible– moving on. The other white chocolate one is Olio D'Oliva, which is - Tuscan olive and green olives? ...Who has the pairing sheet, I don't remember which one of those goes with what crystal." 

"Can you do a draw for me, Anemone?"

Ennis takes the Ambrosia and, when the sheet is found, the corresponding crystal.

"Sure! You'll want to shuffle the deck, so the cards have a chance to feel your energy and see what you need, and then I'll read what's on top."

Julia takes the deck and closes her eyes and shuffles.

"Page of swords!" Okay, you can't count for this one and the page and the swords are not going to have anything to do with the chocolates, what does the card have on it, random cow - all of the chocolates have milk in them so all of them fit that - and a butterfly, the butterfly is almost a monarch but not quite actually, scientific name lepidoptera - "Lepidolite and Viola."

"Oooooh, the one with the purple flower petal on top," she says, after consulting the guide, "that was my favorite, excellent - matches my eyeshadow -"

Ennis laughs softly.

She's pretty sure that none of this is Buddhist?? She is not very religious but this really doesn't sound familiar at all. Maybe it's a different kind of Buddhism that isn't the kind that made it to Japan??? 

"I don't think I'm allowed to do... tarot stuff? Uh, I guess I can take a matching chocolate and a crystal if that'll avoid messing it up for everyone else, though. What goes with the one that has coconut on it?"

"Hmm, it's not obvious from the names which one that is."

"...who's gonna stop you from doing tarot?" asks Rebecca.

"I think Christians aren't supposed to? I haven't really thought about this since I got whisked off to magic school, it could be that this doesn't make a lot of sense anymore."

Marian can read the insert to find the one with coconut! 

"....Uh, I think you want the Naga? It's got....toasted curry masala and coconut purée and milk chocolate. - Also, oh man the Black Pearl sounds amazing! It's got ginger AND wasabi AND matcha in it. Anyone interested in that?" 

"Well, I want the amethyst one, whichever that is, but I don't think it says anything about tarot anywhere I've read."

Jeremy kind of thought Christians weren't supposed to do magic at all? But probably you aren't supposed to just tell them that, if they think you're insulting their religion they won't want to work with you.

"Well, my grandma is a devout Pentacostal and she's the one who taught me to read tarot, if you ever want to talk about what she says about how it works," she says, and hands Karen the one with the coconut on top. And a smoky quartz, since that's what goes with the Naga.

"Amethyst goes with Chef Pascal." She hasn't looked at the list at all, just heard it read out the one time.

Pen would honestly just like two chocolates instead of a chocolate and a crystal? But she's pretty sure there's no way to say this, and possibly no way to say that she wants chocolate at all.

Rebecca endeavors to find out what that is.

Wow, Anemone has a really good memory. Marian has managed to set her hands on the reference sheet again but she has to carefully read through it again. 

"Chef Pascal is....okay what the heck is that. Schwarz-wäld-er kirsch-wasser? Does anyone have any idea what that is? ...Oh also dark chocolate and tart cherry."

"Schwartzwälder Kirschwasser is-- cherry-water?-- from a region of Germany that makes a lot of cherry and chocolate desserts, I'd guess it's some kind of alcohol thing."

"Ooh yeah kirsch is cherry! I'm learning German. I looked up all the German-sounding last names I could think of so the vocabulary would be easier to remember and that was one." Chef Pascal: nom.

"Oh, that's a good flavor combo, liquored chocolates are tasty." Julia's going to endeavor not to remember the German, though; now that she's creative writing track she has more languages than she would strictly prefer.

"Anybody else wanna shuffle and draw?" she asks, and holds her cards out to the room.

"Sure, why not." 

King of cups.

Hmm. Her king of cups card shows a guy hanging out on the beach with a vast ocean and a ship behind him, that's actually easy. "Ocean Jasper and Soul & Motown."

"Cool! Thank you." He has no idea what a chocolate called Soul & Motown is and is sort of skeptical that any of this is going to have meaningful psychological benefits that talking about anime wouldn't have on its own but whatever it's fine. Probably.

Soul+Motown is Sweet churned cultured butter ganache + 45% cacao deep milk chocolate + Fleur de Sel sea salt.

"You can just cut the deck a few times and pick something out of the middle, if that's easier," she says to Pen, quietly, because she's pretty sure that Pen is dying inside and could use a chocolate.

Um - she's not entirely sure she's supposed to do tarot things either but now there's a deck in her hands and - okay fine she can cut it. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. It's just cards, and she was going to end up getting a random nondescript chocolate anyway. Draw - aaah!! why does her card have a guy being stabbed to death with ten swords at once!!

Oh good, they can just count this time! "Rainforest Jasper and Absinthe."

That doesn't sound very much like a chocolate flavor but okay.

"Absinthe is a great writer's drink, you know! Are you creative writing track?"

........nod?

"See! It'll be good for you, then."

Pen is really confused. Mostly. She nibbles her chocolate. It's....... okay.

If the other indies are drawing cards that probably means it's okay for him to draw a card?

His card has nine five-pointed stars on it. He doesn't actually have any idea what that means.

Okay the obvious thing is to count, does the thing you get when you count make sense. Sure, Oaxaca sounds like a rain foresty sort of place and the lady is surrounded by plants. Also there's something about the nine of pentacles symbolizing refinement and pyrite being mistaken for gold, and she doesn't quite have it worked out yet but she'll have it in another six seconds. "Pyrite and Oaxaca!"

"Thank you!" He smiles at her.

This is mildly disappointing since he's pretty sure pyrite isn't very valuable, but at least the chocolate is tasty. 

That leaves Ayako and Orion. She offers Ayako her deck. "Do you want to draw, or just pick a chocolate yourself?"

"I'll draw."

It's the Lovers. 

- oh, this one is hard! Do any of the remaining stones have an association with love? If they do, she doesn't think she's heard that about them. And there are more trees here, which could mean Amazonite, but that seems lazy, doesn't it? Lots of the other cards had trees, and she didn't say Amazonite for any of those...

Okay, the lovers in this deck are clearly Adam and Eve, and they're naked, so they haven't sinned yet, and they have an angel over them, so they're still basically perfect and connected to the heavens...

"Selenite and Gianduia," she says, after puzzling over it for a moment.

"Thank you." 

She has no idea where Anemone is getting these associations from but does kind of admire her confidence. Gianduia, apparently, involves hazelnuts. 

"Sure thing! Hey Orion, do you want a chocolate? And do you wanna draw a card for your chocolate?"

"The chocolate comes with cards? I thought it was crystals?" Pace pace.

"They come with crystals, but we've been asking the enchanted tarot cards what chocolates we need, as a way of deciding. You can also just pick one from what's left over, though, if you'd rather."

Orion peers into the room. "What's in the green one?"

"I think that's the Black Pearl - 'Organic Wakaya ginger + freshly grated wasabi + 72% cacao dark chocolate + ceremonial matcha'."

Marian sliiiiightly wants that one but isn't going to ask. 

"Weird. What's there that isn't weird?"

"The Dulce de Leche is pretty normal."

"I'd take that one then."

Marian glances around. "Right - was that everyone?" 

"I think so! There's, uh, Julia Ennis Karen Rebecca Orion Jeremy Anemone Ayako Pen nine of us, sixteen chocolates, so there should be seven left?"

"It's everyone except you! You're stressed too, right?"

"I....guess? At least I don't have homework that will try to kill me!" 

"Enjoy one," says Julia generously. "And then everyone can have a second except New York, counting Rebecca as New York, 'cause New York's got a secret chocolate stash so we need it less."

"Does that mean I get access to the secret chocolate stash?"

"On the same terms I get access to it which are I explain to the seniors why I need it and then they're like 'no you don't! you are weak and won't survive the winter!'. But if you seriously need it, yeah."

"...what would be a seriously need it reason?"

Marian will accept the offer of chocolate, and try the weird wasabi Black Pearl one, since it sounds both interesting and less likely to be popular with teenagers. 

"Like, if someone dies, or a project you've spent a month on explodes, or you find out Zeke is cheating on you with the freshman murderer or something. - that was a joke. He wouldn't do that, even if it's a girl and she's hot."

"...oh good."

"Anyway, you know, everyone reportedly has a breakdown at some point and is like "I can't do this! I'm going to die!" and actually this does not presage death it just means you need hugs, and chocolate from the secret stash, and a weekend off snuggled up in the reading room with Karen's GameBoy or something if it hasn't gone bad, though it actually is bad if you do that repeatedly so save it for when you really need it."

"Okay. I will try to budget my freaking out. I'm actually pretty okay so far I think! Like I'm homesick but in a year my family'll know I'm here, right, somebody can give them a letter, and I get to learn magic songs and stuff so that's cool."

"That's the spirit. I'm actually pretty okay so far too, everything is pretty much how I was told except how ugly the place is, I'd seen sketches but it's even uglier than that. It's like living in a warehouse. All the people are really nice though! Except the murderer, but they'll catch 'em sooner or later."

"I've mostly been pleasantly surprised in that it's somewhat less unpleasant here than I was led to fear. It's going to be a grind, though, and I'm not sure how well any - psychological... posture? will hold up over the years."

"Yeah, I think - I'm actually doing okay so far? Like, sort of in a holding pattern, but like, a pretty solid holding pattern. Still need to figure out what else I need to be ready for when things get more dangerous, though."

There was almost a war within the first three days and I have no idea how I'm going to get good enough to do this as fast as I have to would be an inconvenient way to be shaped right now so it's really fortunate that she's already in 'relatively chill social interaction' mode.

"Things are going pretty much fine for me? More chaotic than I had been expecting but I can live with chaotic." 

"I'm a little freaked out by the serial killer? Classes, fine, learning Akkadian right out the gate, fine, terrifying monsters, when they show up, that'll be as advertised, but a teenage serial killer with a gun is a little heavy, this early in the year, you know?"

She runs her finger over her chocolate, because that's the step she's on in the chocolate experience.

"Curiosity" is not the attitude you're supposed to bring to group therapy, Riley thinks guiltily. He shouldn't be wondering what the other participants are going to say, or what they're thinking or feeling- curiosity about human psychology is a waste of precious mental real estate. He needs to cut it out. But he is curious. He wants to know what everyone else is going through. It's less about what he expects to get out of it- maybe he'll cement his face and name in Julia's head- that would be a plus. Mostly, though...he just wants to know what people are going to group therapy for in a place like this. Most people will probably stay away, anyway; his sense of self-preservation is screaming at him, that this could be some kind of trick- but he's ignoring it. New York isn't going to be providing cover for the murderer. The main threat is mals, and he can handle those. Riley arrives just as they're...eating chocolate? That isn't exactly what he expected 'group therapy' to mean, but he's not going to complain.

"Sorry I'm late. If it's too crowded, I can wait out here."

Oh no, now there isn't enough chocolate. ...that's probably not a very mature thing to go around thinking.

It's what Julia is thinking too. But she says "come on in! And tell us your name and where you're from and what things you find relaxing."

Riley comes in!

"Riley Finn, Kansas City. Heart of America, they call it. Lifting and carrying things is relaxing, because I can just turn my brain off."

(Julia giggles.)

Apparently New York wants people to pretend they don't know what the death rates for random indie freshman are. That's fine. He can do that. He's going to be so good at therapy.

"Things are basically the way my parents described them so far. I've got a pretty neat class on Theory of Artificing, too, I was worried all my electives would be boring."

"Huh, good for you! What about you, Pen?"

Oh no!! Why are they making her talk just because she showed up at therapy specifically so that people would force her to talk!!

"I'm - kind of scared?"

"That makes sense!" Julia says supportively. "High school can be scary! It's a time when we're trying to figure out who we are and what we're capable of, and also there are monsters trying to eat us!"

He is not jealous of the person who's actually talking about her emotions! That would be a completely ridiculous way to feel, and so he is not feeling it. Why would he be jealous of her for doing something stupid like talking about her actual feelings in front of New York.

"...yeah," she says, and she kind of wants to say that she's mostly scared of that last thing, except that come to think of it maybe that's not actually true? Or - that's not all she's scared of?

"I'm not - very good at talking to people. I think."

Julia waits a minute to see if anyone is going to say anything.

Then - "well, Pen, do you know the plot of Legally Blonde?"

"...no?"

"Okay! So, Legally Blonde is about a girl from LA. And she's the president of her sorority and she's a fashion major, and she's dating this guy, and she's head over heels for him, and he keeps saying things like 'we're not kids anymore, we should start thinking about our future', so she thinks he's going to propose. And then, instead, he dumps her, and tells her that he's going to Harvard Law School and she's not a serious person and he needs to marry someone who is a serious person. And she's so devastated and then she's like 'wait a second - all I need to do to prove I'm worthy of him is to go to Harvard Law School!' And she's not actually stupid, right, so she asks her guidance counselor for advice and she gets the whole sorority to help her study for her LSATs which are the test you take to go to law school, and she gets a good score, and she gets into Harvard Law, and she goes there, and - 

- it's awful? Everyone there is a complete alien to her. She tells them she's a fashion major and they laugh at her. They've all done things like build schools in third world countries or invent new high frequency trading algorithms or invent new high frequency trading algorithms while building schools in third world countries, and they all know all these legal things and also all the unwritten rules for - who to talk to, who to steer clear of, how to present yourself, how to dress - and she doesn't. She wears pink when they're all in maximally New England prep outfits. She takes notes with this pen that's all fuzzy and pink. Everyone's making fun of her all the time and she's only catching it half the time but that's still often enough to know they hate her! She gets invited to a party but someone tells her it's a costume party, and it's not, so she's the only one dressed up. 

And she ends up telling her whole sad life story to her nail stylist, who is the only person who'll listen to her, and her nail stylist's life sucks even more, and they conspire together to go steal a dog from the nail stylist's ex, and she gives the nail stylist flirting tips, and eventually the other students stop being such dicks and realize they were writing her off too fast, and then her LAW PROFESSOR TRIES TO HIT HER UP AND SHE REALIZES THAT HE WAS ONLY BEING NICE TO HER BECAUSE HE WANTED SEX and she decides she's giving up on this whole thing and going home. And by then everyone has realized that she's a good person, and good at what she does, and deserves better, and they convince her to stay.

Anyway. She wasn't very good at talking to people, not the people she was surrounded with, and they were outright mean to her, but she kept going, and she didn't compromise, and she got the asshole teacher fired, and it all worked out in the end - she does not get back together with the boyfriend, she's too good for him. 

....how about now we all go around the circle and talk about a - show we liked or story we heard - about social anxiety and not fitting in. For advice for Pen."

"Ummmm... okay so in Fame - the stage musical not either of the movies - there's this shy girl called Serena and she's in the drama program but she has a hard time speaking up and stuff because she's so shy. And eventually she works up all her courage to tell this boy she likes him! But then it turns out he's not interested and just wants to focus on acting. And she's really pissed off and thinks he might be gay or something and eventually decides that she's not just a girl with a crush she's an actress and she's going to put all those feelings about being rejected into her art! And she sings a song about that and then at the end of the musical after she's played Juliet opposite a completely different guy who's not taking it seriously and showed that she really cared about the craft then he admits he likes her back and she gets the boy. So maybe you can concentrate on other stuff for a while and you'll be able to, like, find the right people who care about the things you do?"

If he'd known that school was going to require this much pop culture knowledge he would have prepared differently!

"There's a book called Dear Evan Hansen that I read, about this guy with social anxiety, and he doesn't have any friends, but he pretends that this other guy at his school who killed himself had actually been friends with him, and people start paying more attention to him. Except then, people start to figure him out, and he realizes that he has to come clean, but people don't all decide to hate him, and at the end of the book he still has some friends. So, I think what the book was saying, is that if you just don't randomly lie for no reason, most people really aren't that scary.

There's also a musical but it's not as good."

Jeremy is pretty sure that literally all of this is better advice for mundies than for wizards who might literally die from being too honest or too dishonest, but hopefully that's still okay? The book is about social anxiety and not fitting in which is both of the things Julia asked for.

Pen kind of feels like all of these examples make more sense in a place where you are not going to literally die of not having friends before you get to be really good at other stuff? But - maybe they're right and having friends is less important at the beginning, as long as you don't go places alone?

Marian lifts her hand. 

"So - uh, to be clear this story is pretty depressing overall, but - personally I think depressing stories can actually be really good for processing awful things that happened in your own life, and this school is kind of full of awful things, so. There's this fantasy series called the Last Herald-Mage, and it starts with a kid who's the heir to his dad's medieval fantasy castle and stuff, but he's - really different from his dad, he doesn't like fighting and he likes books and playing music. ....Also he's gay, he doesn't even know what 'gay' is but his dad suspects and just goes even tougher on him to try to 'make him a real man', and all his siblings bully him, and his older sister is the only one who protects him but she ends up leaving to go train to be a soldier and he has no one. And eventually his dad gives up on toughening him up and sends him to the capital city to live with his aunt, who's - someone important in the government, and also has magic, it's kind of complicated how their government works - and he's really scared that it'll be the same as before or even worse and he'll never fit in. So he - deals with that by sort of putting on this mask and acting like he doesn't care what they think, and then all the magic kids training with his aunt think he's arrogant and being all superior to them. Except, actually it turns out that once he gets past the really scary step of - admitting that he has feelings and that it hurts when people are mean to him - he ends up actually making friends, and his aunt turns out to be pretty stern but not just a horrible person like his dad, and - okay, actually everything is still kind of a mess and lots of bad things happen, but he...learns how to talk to people and open up to them a bit, and that not everyone thinks that being the way he is means he's useless? ....Sorry, I guess that's not selling it very well, but I think it's a really good series even if it makes you cry a lot." 

"There's a play called The Glass Menagerie. One of the characters, Laura, quit school and doesn't have a job because she can't handle the outside world. All she does is takes care of her collection of glass animals. The play is about her brother, Tom, who invites someone over for dinner- a guy who dances with Laura and makes her feel special. But then he tells her he's engaged, and leaves. Tom's mom yells at Tom for not warning them his friend was engaged, and Tom ends up moving out. We don't see what happens to Laura.

It's a good play."

Ennis doesn't really read a lot of fiction and can't think of an example that's any good. Not that Riley's was any good, but still.

...well she's not going to be able to read The Last Herald Mage, even if it is helpful? Also it sounds like the person in it has different problems than her. But apparently the advice from the only adult around is that you need to... admit that you have feelings and that it hurts when people are mean to you? Nobody is actually being mean to her and she's pretty sure she's not pretending not to have feelings, though, so she's not entirely sure that this is an adequate description of the part where you learn to talk to people and make friends.

She... is not sure what she's supposed to get out of The Glass Menagerie as an example at all, really.

"You know what else is a totally reasonable thing to do, if you're having trouble making friends, is to bribe people to be your friends," says Julia cheerfully. "On the outside people will say things about, like, authenticity, and you can't buy friendship, and if someone doesn't really like you for yourself then it doesn't count, but in here everyone's got their shoulder parents telling them DO NOTHING FOR FREE so it's, like, fine to have them be your friend for money? You'll bond anyway, from spending years enduring this place together, and there isn't a rule that your feelings have to be This Authentic to support each other!"

Julia that is a thing you can do if you're from New York and cannot do if you are a random indie.

"...the only example I can think of is Martin Blackwood from the Magnus Archives, which, fair warning, is a cosmic horror tragedy podcast. But.

So he takes a job he's wildly unqualified for, because his mother's sick and he needs to pay for a nursing home. He lied on his resume to get it, he's a high school dropout and he claimed to have a master's degree, and the first thing we hear about him on the show is that his boss thinks he's--" here Leander switches from his natural Scottish accent to an imitation of Oxford-educated RP-- "'unlikely to contribute anything but delays.' And the job is horrible, he's an archival assistant at an institute that researches the supernatural, his boss hates him, his coworkers make fun of him behind his back, at one point he gets trapped in his apartment for two weeks by a horde of parasitic worms and nobody notices, and he can't leave because he's not going to get a better-paying job anywhere else so he's just-- stuck there.

And-- a lot of things happen in the meantime but the important thing for Martin is that it turns out they can't quit, like magically they cannot quit, everyone who works in the Archives is stuck there with each other until they die, and they all start to kind of hate each other because they're trapped there together-- and for other reasons, the constant horrible things happening to all of them definitely don't help-- and Martin is just stuck there, making people tea and trying to do his job even though he's incredibly unqualified for it and everyone knows, and trying to be helpful, because you have to do something and making people tea might not be the most useful job in the world but it's better than just raging at everyone about how unfair things are, even if you're right.

And eventually Martin starts isolating himself from all of the others, because he thinks he can do more good that way, and it turns out they miss him. The boss who used to hate him is constantly asking about him and where he is and if he's okay, and the coworkers who made fun of him worry about him, because-- even if you're stuck and just doing the best you can in a horrible situation you can't leave, sometimes that's still enough to be the kind of contribution where people rely on you? Martin had been going 'well even if all I can do is make tea and write research notes in margins that's better than nothing, right' and now he's going 'all I ever did was make tea and write research notes in margins, they don't actually need me' and it turns out that, no, he was right the first time.

And-- he's offered the choice to vanish into a dimension of ultimate aloneness, which I swear sounds less stupid if you have a hundred and fifty episodes of exposition building up to it, to try to save the world, and he takes it. And Jon, his boss, the boss who used to hate him and yell at him constantly and think he was incompetent and useless and deadweight, goes in after him, because in fact they need each other, they work better as a team, and they both know it, or they would if Martin hadn't been isolating himself for months and convincing himself nobody needed him anyway.

.....and then the next episode the apocalypse happens anyway, and going into the aloneness dimension not only didn't help anything it made things worse, because this is a cosmic horror tragedy where the world is set up against you and making decisions that are smart and sensible with the information you had at the time is not enough to save you, and he and Jon have spent the last fifteen episodes wandering around a post-apocalyptic world trying to figure out how to fix it or at least do something to help and most likely when it has an ending, which currently it doesn't, the ending will be that they both die. I-- care about this story for a lot of reasons but it's really not escapism at all."

Is the advice that..... if she dies people will miss her? That's not really advice?

Pen nods solemnly.

Marian is mostly feeling like she lacks any experience at the social skills required to steer group therapy being run by Julia specifically with a bunch of teenagers in a death school, and so she's mostly feeling super unable to say things. But - she is definitely starting to feel like Pen is in the sort of situation that the school nurse is supposed to try to help with? And so she should....figure out a helpful thing and do it? 

Maybe she can try to discreetly grab Pen afterward and promise Medical Confidentiality and try to get the full story of what's going on with her, because - it seems like it's probably weird and relevant? 

-Riley isn't actually sure how to explain what he meant without making the whole thing about him. He settles for addressing what other people have said, that seems like a better way to help Pen.

"Julia's right, about finding people you can work with." At least, it sounds like that's what Legally Blonde is about? He's never seen it. "Even if you're not like anyone else here, you can still find people who'll help you, as long as you help them. And Leander's right about- how good it is to have people who'll stop you from disappearing into the aloneness dimension. It's not like the mundane world, where people have to like each other. We're all in the same boat here. It's about forming a team you can work with."

This feels a little bit like proselytizing the power of friendship, which he hopes isn't how it comes across, but it's too late to take it back now. When he graduates, he can work on giving better advice.

"If the problem is just talking to people you could - write a note that says 'hello, my name is Pen, I have X Y and Z skills and resources, I don't like to talk but would you like to accompany me to such and such a place', so you have people to walk with to classes and the bathroom, and that's most of the survival advantage of having friends early on, and you'll have a few years to try to relax around someone enough, or outgrow the anxiety enough, for an alliance."

...well, that is an idea she hasn't thought of, which is at least better than the other ideas, which mostly didn't sound like they were going to address the problem?

It sounds like something that people would think was extremely weird, though, and maybe kind of awkward, and she's pretty sure that people generally don't like hanging out with weird and awkward people? But maybe this has been exaggerated and in real life it usually works fine eventually? 

She's not sure whether this would actually be any easier than talking to people, but maybe she should think about it more.

"Okay if we have switched to offering advice directly and not in the form of recounting story plots, I've been doing group language tutoring, if there's any of Latin, Mandarin, Japanese, Classical Chinese or pretty much any Romance language that you need to learn we can probably get a group together for that and then you have at least found a group of people that meets regularly which is admittedly not quite the same as friends but it's a place to start. —that also goes for everyone else in the room, prices negotiated individually." 

Oh no she took too long to produce words and now she's behind. Oh well. Probably better 

"I think the thing Ennis said was actually a helpful way of framing things in general?" Marian offers. "Like, okay, so - there's a thing, right, where a lot of times you have a problem and the permanent solution to that problem is to - just learn a bunch of skills that let you do a totally different strategy and have that work? But you can't just jump right away from here to there, you have to - have intermediate steps - and so it can be really really helpful to come up with an intermediate step that you can do at all? Even if it's bad relative to where you want to get someday, and even if it kind of feels like cheating." 

This is definitely not about her entire experience of nursing school. Definitely not. 

"The language lab threw me Gāndhāri, probably because I'm spell-competent in my existing languages and had been asking for a bunch of Buddhist spellbooks, if anyone wants a study group for that. It's Indo-Aryan, and I've got Hindi but that's it so I'm expecting it to be totally tedious."

Oh hey wait that sounded useful! - not the thing about coming up with intermediate steps that you can do at all, the thing where Leander offered to let her hang out with him.

How do you say that that sounds good. Do you just say that sounds good? No, you have to say something else because the nurse said a thing in there. Oh no, can you still talk about Leander's thing after the nurse has said a thing? Did she miss her chance? How does she find out how to go to the thing now? Uh - uh - 

"When's the language tutoring?" she asks, and she THINKS this time she was PROBABLY loud enough to hear, but only probably. Hopefully this isn't being rude to the school nurse and the school nurse won't hate her if she ever needs help from the school nurse. Nobody ever actually said that you needed the school nurse to think well of you, though, they said things like 'in the scholomance there are no adults, so you have to be able to take care of yourself', which is really kind of at odds with there even being a school nurse, really.

"The Latin group I've been doing meets every day right after dinner, and if the language you need isn't Latin we can work out a different time after group?" 

Nod. Pen... doesn't actually need a specific language that he listed, but she could stand to brush up on her Japanese, especially if she gets some people to ever talk to out of it.

Julia glances around to see if anyone else has anything to say on this or if they should move on to giving our more stuff.

Marian takes a deep breath. 

"- Just thought I should mention - I'm on really good terms with the void right now and I bet I could get it to give me particular works of fiction. If you could tell me some, you know, therapy-relevant keywords for why it's going to help you process your experiences here in the Scholomance." 

Hopefully Julia will remember how she has massage oil that fixes muscle soreness? Marian feels like now isn't quite, yet, the time to bring that up. 

"I'd like the Red Badge of Courage. It's a good book for getting the perspective of a soldier in war. It's about- bravery when things are hard and what to do when you can't run away from the things that scare you. Think you can make that therapy-relevant?"

Marian considers this. 

"- Yeah, I bet I could. I - think it helps in general when I'm asking for something for a specific person?" That may or may not be just a superstition she picked up after a string of good and bad luck? But as an ICU nurse, Marian is very familiar with picking up that kind of superstition and doing her best with it. "....But - yeah. I can try to ask for that. I'm pretty curious about it, now, actually!"