Sadde and Isabella in Eclipse
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She eats the bag of chips and the apple and the donut, and stars and heavens she had not realized how much she'd missed actual sugar.

Tobias answers, listens in silence, then says he's on his way.
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The cop thanks him and goes back to other things. The psion keeps sitting with Sadde. He may also be doing other things, you never know with psions, but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

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Sadde has sort of mastered the ability to not do anything, what with spending long stretches of time not doing anything.

And eventually Tobias arrives, and he's so very clearly a dom it's practically written on his forehead. His eyes scan the scene, and pause on Sadde—

—and she's paralyzed. She meets his eyes for only half a second, then lowers hers.

    "Well, there you are," he says, and smiles.

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The psion wants to see Tobias's ID - can't be too careful, you know - and advise him on reintroducing Sadde gradually to normal quantities and kinds of food, and after that they're free to go! Happy reunion!

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Yes. So happy. Yay. Much joy. Tobias is courteous, but uses more imperatives than usual. Not enough that it really makes people too uncomfortable, but definitely on the higher end of normal. And he smiles, and talks to Sadde like he's missed her, beaming at her and putting a hand on her shoulder and being overall very affectionate.

    Then they get in the car, and he's silent like a tomb for fifteen minutes, after which he asks: "What happened to your mother?"

She doesn't answer.

    "Tell me what happened to your mother," he repeats, and she finds herself telling it all, everything from the moment she started fasting to today, about what happened in the car and her two years alone, how she survived, what she had to do. He listens to all of this without uttering a word. She's sobbing quietly by the time she's done, still not looking at him. He doesn't say anything until they reach his place.

She finds she has two half-siblings, Johnathan and Sarah. She doesn't speak to them—whenever it looks like she might try, Tobias looks at her, and she remains silent. Her stepmother—Bethany—is polite, but that's the extent of it. Bethany only speaks to Tobias when he speaks to her. She doesn't leave the house, and wears a collar all the time. Sometimes, on weekends, even a leash.

(And Sadde thinks that there was a time when her mother was wearing this collar and she shudders before she can stop herself.)

    The evening of the day they arrive, Tobias shows Sadde her room. It's small, probably a guest room or some such, but better than anywhere she's slept in for the past two years. She asks him something, something innocuous like where the bathroom is or what she'll wear, and the next thing she knows she's on the floor, her left cheek burning from the slap. "You will only speak when given leave to do so," he says, calmly. "Now. Do you have any questions?" She looks at him, shaking, and he furrows his brows slightly. "Answer me, child." She shakes her head. He nods, and leaves her in her room, and locks her there.

And what follows are the three worst years of Sadde's life. Tobias patiently and systematically tries to beat the dom out of them. They are not allowed to physically look male in the house, they are not allowed to use imperatives, they are not to meet anyone else's eyes, they are to only speak when they're spoken to. They are female. They are submissive. They learn quite a bit about how to magically heal bruises, at least on themself.

They do not comply.

Sadde slowly connects to their half-siblings. They're not allowed to talk to Sadde, at first, but they do it anyway. Beth speaks when she's spoken to, and that's it.

At some point, Tobias just gives up, and continues mistreating Sadde more out of habit than out of any hope of changing them. And at some point, Sadde manages to, deferentially enough, ask for the umpteenth time to go to magic school, and he accepts. If they're going to be a freak of nature, they might as well be one far away from him.

Better late than never, but late it is, and Sadde's sixteen.

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There are three magic schools in the United States. Any of them will be happy to take any given mage who has their certs and doesn't literally have a criminal record, tuition waived entirely for promising talent and deferred until later for everyone else. The alumni are generous.

The one that Sadde winds up at is called the Selene School. Most kids from 2001's January eclipse are already out of training, and a lot of them wound up here; the place is crammed with thirteen year olds; but there are plenty of people Sadde's age!

Sadde has to take placement tests for academics, and talk to the residence director. There is not a shapeshifter dorm but there is a co-ed dorm where they can put them in a single. The residence director is very understanding about the shapeshifter thing.
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Really. Are they. Well, he'll take what he can get and wonder about ulterior motives later.

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He's not the only shapeshifter on campus. Sometimes people play around with their sex. It's a thing.

He can go on a tour with the six most recent arrivals from the 2001 January batch. Dining hall! Dorms! Classrooms! Fancy gymnasium! Psionic tech lab! Bulletin board of work study opportunities! Library! Lovely greenery and landscaping! Student health center, littered with pamphlets about using condoms and about what's fun domming versus unsafe abuse and about the age of consent (it's 14 for doms in this state, 15 for subs)! Various administrative offices! Student organizations! Auditorium and music practice rooms!

...The alumni are so generous, you see. It is thanks to these generous alumni that we have all these nice things. Hint.
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He doesn't really talk to the six most recent arrivals from the 2001 January batch. He keeps this cool and aloof air, a few paces from everyone else.

(14 for doms, 15 for subs...? What about him...? Well, he's 16, doesn't matter anyway.)

Such nice facilities. Such nice people. He starts slowly remembering that not everyone is a horrible person.
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The tour guide helps them all find their assigned dorm rooms. It's rolling admission, but they might be the last newcomers on their hall for a while; there were no total eclipses in 2002.

Sadde lives on a hall inhabited by three girls' names and three boys' names and him, everybody in singles. They do have to share the bathroom.
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Hmm. What are the names?

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Isabella, Janet, Myeisha, Victor, Roger, and Jackson.

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Alright. Maybe he should... like... try to talk to one of them or something, maybe. He's under the impression stuff isn't... really... very organized here? Like, not much in the way of magic classes and such.

...

Knock knock.
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There is a tapping noise, and the door opens, and a dom leaning on a rattan cane with woodburned spirals all up and down it regards Sadde. "Hi."

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And Sadde has to do a triple take because he's pretty sure his heart has just stopped a few times. "Hello," he says, practically batting his eyelashes and lowering his eyes, even though he's taller than she is.

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"...What brings you here?"

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He shrugs, then raises his eyes back up to properly look at her face. "Just arrived. Supposed I should probably meet the people around here."

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"Ah. Well, I'm Isabella. ...You don't look like a January 2001. Took a while to get back into magic after training?"

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"...kinda. I'm September '97, actually. My birthday was one year and one month after that, and one year and two months before the next one."

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"I'm January 2000." Pause. "Between your haircut and..." She doesn't actually say 'the way you batted your eyes at me'. "- I can't tell your role. Switch or just don't like fussing with your hair or what?"

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"Switch," he explains. "And also don't like fussing with my hair."

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"And what's your name?"

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...he laughs, lowering his eyes again. "I actually forgot to say, didn't I. It's Sadde. I'm the only person in the country called that."

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"Nice to meet you."

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"So you've been here a year?"

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