The last group from the Kiev enclave had graduated two years ago, and usually they spaced them out by seven years. But Dasha had been almost a month premature, and so instead of being one of five Kiev kids she's the only one, going in with no older enclave kids at all, almost an indie. And she isn't strong, she would have noticed even if her parents hadn't drilled it into her, letting the smallest mals past and watching her fail to kill them. She can do better wards than half the graduated wizards in the enclave and that means nothing when she can't do them fast and she can't do them strong. When the rest of what should have been her class comes through next year, she'll have a power-sharer and she'll make wards for all of them and they'll watch her back and she'll be safe, but that's a year.

She has hair cropped to her ears, short enough to be practical and long enough to say she isn't counting grams. It's stupid, she wants the extra weight, and she nearly said so but she's been biting her tongue because she'd won on not bringing mice and that was, after all, the only fight that mattered. Everything she had, she'd gone through with a knife and cut off the tags, shaved off extra plastic from her multitool handle, cut out the straps and interior pockets of her backpack that her parents had condescended to go out to a mundane hiking store for. Her clothes are stitched all through with the delicate, intricate wards that are all that she knows how to make and every single thing she has is warded and enchanted and blessed. She'd say that her family loved her, to spend so much on her, but she knows that if she dies too quickly that's all anyone will remember of Kiev, the stupid enclave girl who died first semester, and then her brothers and cousins will have it that much harder.

Most of her weight after absolute necessities is amber, for mana and the lightest anchors for her wards she can still use. She has healing potions and patches for blood loss and more mundane medicines and she doesn't think it's going to be enough. There are letters for St. Petersburg in her pack and gems for trade but she's never understood how to make people want you around and her affinity for wards won't matter while she's a freshman with the channeling capacity of an eleven-year-old. Kiev gives each cluster going in a guaranteed enclave spot to hand out, but Dasha missed her year by two days. She can't promise it on her own and no matter how good she is at languages or how clever with artifices or how many spellbooks she has memorized it is not going to be enough.

"I'll see you next year," Sasha says in Ukrainian, though today is an English day, and their mother doesn't even correct him. Her brothers hug her, her parents don't. If she says something she thinks her voice will crack so she keeps her mouth shut and looks at them steadily. It's five minutes to nine and she has the stupid, stupid urge to run back to her room and hide beneath the covers. When the pull comes it's almost a relief.