Feels like only minutes have passed, and then she sees him enter the library as well.

A young, dark haired and somber-featured lad with a solemn look of constant contemplation, his brows at a seeming permanent raise in what she can only assume is either confusion or concern. She raises her hand nervously to her best friend from behind her pile of books. He looks about, waves back, and joins her in the little enclosure of bookshelves.

"Afternoon, Clare," he says with a light, almost chivalrous trepidation.

"Afternoon," she responds with a deflated bleat. "This is it, I guess," she scoffs as though her life were the punchline of an eighteen year old joke.

Waine sighs. "I'm... I'm really sorry you're going through this."

Still with that empty grin, she looms further over the study table, like an oaken pond reflecting back her monumental failure as a living creature; given such promise and so many opportunities to succeed, for it all to fail. "Yeah, well thanks," she says. "I guess getting carried away was my end after all, you said it."

He would chuckle and give her his usual playful shove, but this is no laughing matter. "Surely there's something you've thought of?"

"It has to be an original contribution, Waine. If I can't think up something by tonight, there'll be no way I'll be able to do enough research to push it out in time."

He brings up his knuckle and gently crosses it over his chin for a scratch. "Well, when I was researching for mine I just asked myself what is something important that no one's thought about? Maybe it's something the ancestors had that we've forgotten. Everhold's really old, after all; twelve whole generations now. What's something that people want to know about, something that effects them?"

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Clare stares deep into the desk, reflecting her thoughts off it with a fatalist contemplation; as if the question where written on the surface, and it were the most important question to even be asked.

"I said it would be on infrastructure. It has to be that," She says after a pause.

Waine smirks. "So what... logistic improvements? Routing?"

"I don't... I don't know."

"Well that cuts down your options a little, but honestly you could stretch the definition to mean anything." He sighs. "Have you thought about agriculture routing? Those autos could always do their job a little bit faster."

She shrugs. "That's not my expertise at all, and that's what half the class' projects'll be about."

He draws back. "Are you sure? I'd..." he looks across the library, making sure no one's nearby before he leans in. "I'd give you my notes for my project. It had a pretty good side-line and it'd be an easy out. I've practically done the whole thing but presented something else."

Clare glances up to Waine. "You'd... you'd let me use your research?"

"Sure. You deserve it, and I wouldn't publish it if you needed it."

"That's..." she smirks with a wince. "That's really, really nice of you, but it wouldn't be right."

"Come on, if you don't come up with something to present you'll get kicked out of the academy. You'd be a Class two!"

"W-"

"Do you want to be a mechanic for your whole life?"

She looks away bitterly. "...No."

He draws in with a firm gaze. "Then take my research. Make your own project out of it, present it, and become the class five we both know you deserve."

"But I don't deserve it if I didn't do the wo-"

"Clare."

"..." She sighs, bites her tongue, and looks back to him. "Let me think on it."

"Alright, fine," he smiles back. "Take your time, you wouldn't need more than a couple of days to put it together with my notes."

She gets up and gathers her materials.

"You're leaving?"

She nods. "I need to go home. It's late."

"It's barely four."

"I gotta try to do this myself. I'll let you know, though."

He stares her down a moment, and then lays back with a lean. "Well, alright. You know what you're doing. You've always made your stuff work one way or another. Keep your chat-stone on you, though."

"Will do. Thanks again."

Waine scoffs. "Get out of here. Go think up a thesis idea." He waves her off with a shooing motion, his smile relaxed, only until she waves back and leaves the library. He takes a deep breath. "Alright, good job, Mister Brightmoor. Good job," he recites to himself with relief.