find gainful employment

[mrmage]

The following day, Sadde goes to town at a reasonable time to buy a tiny cactus with some of the proceeds from his terribly tedious job, and sneaks it into the bag with his clothing he brings to Isabella's room. It is inside a cute little box, which he offers Isabella the following morning when she wakes up, saying, "Happy three-month anniversary!"

Comments

[eclipsi]

"Well, it really depends on what you're aiming for, but I'd be sort of nervous about the terms on which any of these people are offering to sponsor your further magical development. It's not all on the 'generous alumni' model, and a lot can change over time."

[mrmage]

"Change enough for me to not want to be a healer anymore?"

[eclipsi]

Shrug. "Someone discovers they can do time travel and you get excited about that instead. The company you signed on with is revealed to have abhorrent practices or workplace conditions of some kind or you just can't get along with your boss. You try healing and the first time you have to look at a severe prolapse you want to go hide under a table."

[mrmage]

"I'm pretty sure I'm immune to body horror by now," he protests weakly.

[eclipsi]

"Bodies can get really horrifying, pet, I don't think you've seen everything, but maybe that wouldn't faze you, I don't know. I still wouldn't lock in the next twenty years of your life the minute you're legally able to sign a contract."

[mrmage]

"Yyyyeah, no, I mean, you're right," he sighs.

[eclipsi]

"But something shorter-term might not be a bad idea, at least compared to courting student debt and overscheduling in college," she acknowledges.

[mrmage]

"But apparently, at least when it comes to healing rich people, there isn't anything exactly short term."

[eclipsi]

"Well, there would be if you could already do versatile or heavy-duty healings. But if they have to take you while they can't charge huge amounts of money for your services they have to make sure they hold on to you to get their investment back."

[mrmage]

"Does anyone even have that at my age? I mean, my two-year detour through gendershifting isn't standard, sure, but I've been working on healing nonstop since then, and besides the way my magic feels I think the gendershifting thing might not even have been that much of a detour."

[eclipsi]

"No, nobody has that at our age, which is why they're pushing the twenty-year contracts; but if you learn to heal independently I bet you they have different arrangements for twenty-five-year-olds who can cure cancer."

[mrmage]

"Enh, but what I wanted was to start healing as fast as possible."

[eclipsi]

"Healing, or getting money for it?"

[mrmage]

"Healing. The standard way to do it has a large security time margin which could be spent working on immortality if I could figure out immediately when I was good enough to fully deploy."

[eclipsi]

"Well, there's really not a way to tell for sure if you're good enough to deploy, in advance of internal certainty, without trying live subjects, but you could probably find somebody who can fix your mistakes who'd supervise you for a test or two."

[mrmage]

"Yeah, what I'd hoped existed was something like that but for a longer time, smaller things, and progressively more of them, but that might not be a realistic desire."

[eclipsi]

"I think the consensus is that if you don't get it right it's not worth trying again for at least six months, probably longer."

[mrmage]

"Yes, aforementioned huge security time margin."

[eclipsi]

"And unless you can do something ridiculously high-leverage public-safety-ish like a precog..." She waves a hand. "Nobody's going to pay you a living wage for trying something every six months. I guess in theory you could just live with me with my folks until I can avert eclipse disasters and rake in the big bucks, but it's probably a bad choice in principle for teenagers to make life plans on the assumption that their relationships are permanent just because there's no obvious reason why not."

[mrmage]

"Prrrretty much. We've been together for three months, it wouldn't be prudent to plan for any length of time farther in the future than that."

[eclipsi]

"Yup." Hair ruffle.

[mrmage]

"But we're totally gonna work out and be together forever," he adds.

[eclipsi]

She laughs and kisses him.

[mrmage]

Kiissss!

"I wouldn't feel too good about mooching off you and your parents, though."

[eclipsi]

"It's not like you couldn't pay them back if they'd let you," she points out. "We're going to be insanely rich, we just have some awkward intermediate time."