It's September fourteenth 1997, and a ten-year-old Sadde has not had breakfast. Her mother is resigned to it, but that doesn't mean she likes it. Sadde herself, on the other hand, cannot sit still. "I'm so gonna get magic!" she says, bouncing up and down, to which Laura replies with, "I'm sure."

Her excitement is dying down by dinner time. She's hungry. But she doesn't complain. She just drinks a lot of water.

In the middle of the night, she sneaks into the kitchen. She eats two crackers, suspiciously easy to reach in their cupboard. He doesn't mention it to Laura the next morning, and Laura herself doesn't bring it up either.

He continues drinking lots of water. He naps, ignoring (or trying to ignore) the growling of his stomach. He was happy when he figured out he wouldn't even be eleven at the time of his eclipse. It didn't occur to him until now that maybe being older might have been better for his endurance or something. So his stomach keeps growling, and he refuses to eat anything all day, and Laura refuses to do anything about her child's suffering because it's better this way.

Starvation is not the best for his mood, either. He starts considering that maybe, possibly, he may not be one of the .1% of humanity that gets magic. Maybe he'll be just normal for the rest of his life. Maybe he should just lie in bed and curl up into a ball and ignore the incessant crying of his stomach demanding to be fed. He gets up, gets water, goes back to bed, curls back up again, in a funk. What's this even for? What's even the point? He's 99.9% positive he won't get magic. It's not fair for him to go through this—this shit, just because he maybe perhaps might possibly in a remote parallel universe have magic but not this one because there is nothing that justifies this.

He turns around so he can watch the clock. He wills it to tick faster, wishes the eclipse to come earlier, maybe if he really focuses enough he can get some psion power (or is it mage? how would you even classify that?) to move time faster, make this end. He's just ten!

He naps again, fitfully, and his stomach wakes him up. "Shut up!" he tells it. It doesn't listen. Still growling. "Ugh!" His mother comes to his room, and he's still curled up into a ball, eyes shut, trying to sleep again, because when he sleeps he's not so hungry. She pets him, running her hands through his hair, trying to be soothing without really saying anything. She's been through it. She knows what it's like, to feel horrible for two days, she knows at the end he will feel betrayed, curse the universe for not giving him a gift, for causing this suffering for no reason. No worse suffering, he believes at the moment, and he's so young, not even eleven. But this, too, shall pass. Not tonight, he will suffer because of it for much longer, he is much different than she was when she went through this, but it will pass.

And it's the evening, and the eclipse starts, and Sadde is suddenly full of vigor and energy again, he jumps from his bed and runs outside, and he looks up and then he doesn't because that's bad for his eyes (or was it the other eclipse? he's not sure), and he waits, waits, waits, and hopes—

—and feels. "I have it," he breathes. "I have it! Mom! Moooom! Mom I have it I have it!" The hunger forgotten, he runs into the house—no, she's watching him from the door, okay, he flings himself at her and hugs her, "I have it! I'm a mage! Not a psion but that's okay, I'm a mage!" (And a part of him says, I can be me, I'll work on it and I'll be me, not just half of me, all of me!)

And she laughs and kisses the top of his head and they're in the car, driving off to control school. Sadde's lying on the back seat, listing off all the things he will be doing with his magic, he will change a lot, and he'll fly, and he'll heal people, and they're both going to live forever, together, and everything will be fine, and there's a granola bar under his mom's seat. He grabs it, his stomach grumbles, and he opens it and eats it, because he has forgotten he isn't supposed to, because he's busy ratting off all the things he's going to do and his mind is elsewhere. He runs out of things to list for a while and stops to think about them, and he chews and swallows, and oh my god he was so hungry, except wait, he wasn't supposed to eat! Oops. But that's alright, he thinks, it was just like three quarters of a granola bar, he's fine.

It's not alright.

He feels—something. Laura stops answering. The car starts veering to the right, and he sits up and looks at—

blood. So much blood. Too much blood. There aren't any injuries, nothing visible, but there's blood everywhere, soaking through her clothes and her hair, sprouting from her eyes and nose and ears and lips, emerging from her bare skin as if her pores were fountains of it, and she's slumped over, she's not moving, she stops breathing as he watches, her head turned to look directly at him through blood-covered eyes. He's not sure when he started screaming, but he did in fact start screaming at some point, and calling her, and the car's off the road and it skids into a shallow ditch but he's not paying attention because he can't breathe, can't see, can't think over the horror of what he's looking at, and he can't look at it anymore but he can't stop looking. He has stopped screaming. He hasn't stopped looking. He doesn't know he has a body until it rudely reminds him by telling him it needs food, it doesn't care that the world has just ended and that nothing matters anymore, it doesn't give a fuck that nothing will ever be alright again, this stupid body has the audacity to remind him it exists, it has caused this, it couldn't have just stopped. It couldn't have just killed him instead. It could kill him now. He could kill him now. He couldn't kill him now. She wouldn't—wouldn't—He can't complete the thought for a while longer, he's no longer staring at her but he's not seeing anything either. It's dark, he's alone, and it's not cold, it should be cold but it's not, and he's hungry.

She would want him to live. Of course she would. There's not even a question there. But the thing is, unlike in movies, this won't sustain him. It won't be enough to drive him. It doesn't matter that she would want him to live, because she's not alive, she's gone, and it's his fault. He has to want to live, it has to be himself.

He climbs out of the car, numbly, realizing that some of the blood is on him, on his clothes, and he finishes eating the granola bar, and he leaves.

He doesn't follow the road.

He sets a tree on fire that night. It's an accident.

Back in the old days, people would do this. Go to the wilderness, where no one else lived, live off berries and whatever else. Other people would leave boxes of food, once a week, but no one else knows he's here. No one'll leave him food. He has to live. He wants to live. He killed her, he knows this, but that's no excuse. What's even the point, if she dies and he dies and then, and then what? Pointless. Not that there has to be a point. But he'll make a point.

He's rambling. Inside his head. He stops rambling and focuses on finding stuff to eat. Surely there's stuff to eat.

There's very little stuff to eat.

He makes a shrub with berries on it explode the following morning. That's alright, he's pretty sure they were poisonous. That's what he keeps telling himself, anyway.

She realizes, at some point, that two days without eating wasn't that big a deal. That she was being a big baby about it, that it's nothing compared to a week without food. She wakes up one day to the sound of some animal nearby, and her magic actually cooperates, and the animal's leaking blood

(just like mom did)

it doesn't matter, it's dead. She has not learned to make a fire. Not with magic, not with her hands. She tries anyway, and is mostly successful, and she manages to eat half-cooked half-raw something. She doesn't remember what animal it was, only that it was the most delicious thing she'd ever eaten.