"There are schools for eclipsed - training doesn't help us, but it's a thing some places specialize in anyway, the alumni predictably get rich. They have career fairs. You can catch one aged fifteen and suggest it and offer the loan deal for it. Or ask someone more established, if you know someone."

"Do you think your magic could reverse whatever brought us here?"

"Eventually, yeah, in principle a mage should be able to do it. I'm... still surprised that no one has gotten results on your kind of spirit if they exist here, it's possible but only just that nobody's ever tried, so I can't rule out that it's impossible for some unclear reason."

"I'm assuming hiring a mage to develop a skill like that would be absurdly expensive?"

"Yep. Uh, you might be able to convince one it'll be valuable on spec, to have a dimension hop power, but..."

"Oh, Sun - the other Mariam, we picked nicknames, it was getting confusing - would do it, I just can't in good conscience ask her until she has deaging."

"I dunno about that, you've got necromancy, maybe there are other worlds with more abundant deaging."

"- other worlds, I didn't even think about that."

"If there's one other universe there almost has to be more, it'd be so utterly implausible if it was us and the eclipse kink people and nowhere else."

"Please don't call us kink people."

"- right, it's normal for you, sorry." She isn't particularly, if it weren't for the magic she'd hate this world and its stupid social roles, but she likes Isabella - or at least can get interesting answers out of her, which for a first meeting rounds to the same thing - and she has occasionally heard of tact.

"Yeah. And we don't actually know what the norm is yet."

"I would be very surprised if it's - your thing - but admit it's not really for any reason other than the - strangeness."

"I assure you your thing sounds weird to me too and I've even met nondynamics before."

"Well, sample size of two. - Mariam, do you think if I got Crescent to do the asking and led with the thing about even more universes we could persuade Sun to start on the dimension travel now?"

"If her family's anything like mine, her grandmother is - too old for her to wait long on the deaging. She could pay another mage to do it, maybe? I assume that's available, though maybe she can't afford it even as a mage?"

"It's available and she should be able to do it unless she currently can't do anything lucrative at all - and Crescent's a precog, we make bank."

"That's true. I should ask her, then, even if she can't -" she looks at Daria for a moment "Crescent will pay for it."

"There you go then."

"Dimension hopping!" says Daria, waving her hands in the air in front of her from excitement. "Bet Crescent wishes she was a mage now - actually, no, totally doesn't, precog and eidetic, but still. Worlds and worlds -" she dissolves into wordless grinning.

"Precog and eidetic is a good package. Most things where it matters whether you personally are the one who can do them or not are psion things. Except flying."

"I'd love to fly, but being able to improve my brain would be - necromancy is fascinating and we're finding more that it can do all the time but I'm so jealous of her."

"Eidetic can be done for other people and doesn't call for ongoing magic to maintain, but it's a separate skill she'd have to add."

"She can, touch range, she'll probably tap me with it before I even say anything."

"There you go then."