behave

[mrmage]

There's a total lunar eclipse two weeks later, the first one since January 2001. That semiquarter and most of the next pass without much more noise. Jackson is occasionally sad because of his dom's electric toy, and he's occasionally more stripey than he wishes to be, but there's not a whole lot Sadde can do about that. Against his hopes, Mason doesn't dump Jackson, and nothing gives.

Sadde continues socializing with people, but no one new. And as the semiquarter approaches its end and summer break gets closer, Sadde receives an email from Tobias, saying that he fully expects his daughter to come home and tell everyone all about her first half year at magic school.

The email tells Sadde to behave.

Sadde is not in a good place.

Comments

[mrmage]

"Yeah. Y- yeah I can probably do it. If you tell me to. I'd- rather you didn't, though. Right now, I mean. W- wait until the last moment. Um."

[eclipsi]

"I wasn't going to jump the gun, pet." She kisses his temple.

[mrmage]

"Right. Of course." He sighs. "I hate him so much. And I kinda hate myself a little for wanting you to have figured out telepathy with me."

[eclipsi]

"I'm sorry, lovely. I'll miss you." Pet pet pet pet.

[mrmage]

"I'll miss you, too. I wonder if he'll even give me internet access."

[eclipsi]

"I was kind of assuming he wouldn't."

[mrmage]

"Yeah, me too, but if I'm particularly well-behaved..."

[eclipsi]

She wraps her arms around him and squeezes.

[mrmage]

Well, being squeezed is certainly very nice. "I love you."

[eclipsi]

"I love you too, pet. I don't want to let you go. I wish I didn't have to."

[mrmage]

"Me, too. I'm yours, not his. That won't change, no matter what he does."

[eclipsi]

Nuzzle.

[mrmage]

Sigh.

"Anyway, uh, speaking of your magic, d'you know when you'll get eidetic? Should be pretty soon now, right?"

[eclipsi]

"Yeah, I think I'm coming up on the last or maybe second to last breakthrough." Snuggle.

[mrmage]

Snuggle! "What'll you do next?"

[eclipsi]

"Precog. I don't think I could count on having telepathy generalized before you turn eighteen anyway."

[mrmage]

"Yeah, I didn't think so. But I thought you'd do other things before precog? I dunno if there's anything more you can do that'd help bootstrap after you have eidetic but I suppose you'd aim for that instead if there was."

[eclipsi]

"There's some things, but mostly things I can sort of aim at just over the course of thinking in general. Like, I'm stopping formally concentrating on eidetic memory once I have it going forward; but I can still try a little bit harder to force memories to the surface when I remember earlier events, and eventually it might stretch to cover that. I can try to think faster and more clearly, whenever I'm thinking about things. I don't want to fall into the trap of self-optimizing so hard that I can't do anything anyone else can verify in a decade."

[mrmage]

"Yeah, that's a good idea, I suppose. Still jealous that there isn't anything like that for mages. Can psions push eidetic memory onto other people?"

[eclipsi]

"Probably, but it's not a staple of the discipline..."

[mrmage]

"Huh. I wonder why not."

[eclipsi]

"Because having enough eclipsed for collaboration to be viable is kinda new?"

[mrmage]

"...that's a terribly good point, yes. Man, we're gonna see an explosion in magical advances over the next few years, aren't we."

[eclipsi]

"I'm excited."

[mrmage]

"You and I, we're gonna spearhead that explosion. They're gonna actually make movies about us."