"Are you sure messing with your age when you're a teenager will generalize effectively to de-aging people who need that?"

"I'm not sure at all! But, uh, what I'm focusing on is kinda having my body be in a state I want it to be. Remember the splits metaphor? It's like the opposite of that."

"I'm trying to imagine the opposite of the splits and it's not pretty."

"It's the opposite of the metaphor. Like, when I want to change something physically in my body it feels kinda like doing the splits. Making my body stay in a certain state or revert is like... un... doing the splits? Uh. Yeah the metaphor's not very good for this. And the difference might just be in my head."

"I don't really get the metaphor either."

He shrugs. "This is kinda like trying to explain vision to someone who was born blind, I can sorta appeal to the other senses but nothing's the same."

"Oh well." Pet pet.

"I should ask around to see how other prospective healers and de-agers do stuff, whether they do an internship or something to practice small things on people with appropriate supervision."

"There's probably something like that, but it might be a scarce opportunity - Selene's rich but they can't casually hire adult mages for everything."

"Yeah, but there must be some way for us to practice this on other people without risking turning their insides into goo."

"I mean, the traditional way is you think about it a lot for a decade and do it perfectly on the first try. If you want test subjects and a more advanced mage to spot you I expect you to have to compete for some kind of internship."

"A decade is too long," he whines.

"I know, pet." Pat pat.

He sighs. "Well at least I never stopped thinking about magic, even while I wasn't in school yet. Even though I didn't have its nurturing environment."

"I feel very nurtured by the Selene environment."

"It's... certainly surpassed all of my expectations."

"What were you expecting?"

"Not you."

"I am not an official part of the supportive Selene environment, pet," but she kisses the top of his head anyway.

"I couldn't know that, both things happened at the same time, and everyone knows correlation implies causation."

"You're not gonna pass scientific literacy with that attitude."

He laughs.

"You'll also notice I'm not listed in the glossy brochures."

"You could be, like, a secret bonus only the VIP get to unlock."

"That is how video games and possibly casinos work, lovely, not schools."