Once Georgie leaves the room, my first impulse is to check social media, but I decide not to. The last time I scrolled through my feeds, it left me feeling depressed about the superficiality of what used to matter to me. I can’t decide whether my forced distance from those parts of my old life is a relief or a loss.

When Kor answers my call, it’s clear that I woke him up. He tells me he’s been under the weather and that I should give my updates to Alfie Avellino instead. Bluish veins show through his pale skin, there are dark circles under his eyes, and his hair, which he’s normally so vain about, is badly in need of a cut.

“I’m fine.” He waves his hand dismissively when I ask him if he’s okay. “It’s just a cold I caught while volunteering at the clinic.”

I think guiltily of my own coldless, flueless winter due to my Maker inoculations. Why should he be sick when the cures exist here?

We say goodbye and I call Alfie, and it takes him less than a minute to start pissing me off. He bosses me around about things he wants me to do, even though he knows nothing about what goes on here, and he refuses to answer any of my questions.

Our raised voices must attract the attention of Dr. Ambrose, who appears on-screen and gestures away a seething Alfie—who flips me off with both hands before he leaves—to take over the call himself.

Dr. Ambrose listens patiently, peering through his gold-rimmed glasses as I give him my updates about what’s changed now that I’ve joined a guild.

The institute begins a new term after each Quorum, and now, as a journey, my classes are entirely different from when I was an apprentice. It’s nice to be around people closer to my own age, as the journeys are all mostly in their teens and twenties.

I still attend Sire lab and Foundations, but I now must also be a contributing member of my guild. I have Alchemy lab, where we work on projects to add to the guild’s testament, and Phytology, where I’ve been studying plant life in a three-story greenhouse. The other day I learned to use my Ha’i to sprout a full-grown sunflower from a seed in a matter of minutes. I’ve also been studying nondestructive and nonwasteful agriculture methods (I go into depth with these for Dr. Ambrose since they should be perfectly easy to implement back home), and I’ve joined a rotation creating our guild’s high material, glace. So far I just clean and melt down old products, but I hope to soon be able to understand its production enough to be able to pass on practical instructions to the Families.