They've always looked beautiful to him.

Not pretty. Terrible, twisted, awful. But beautiful anyway. Like home. Like family.

It's all he can do not to run to them when they come to suck his life away.

(He tries, once, when he's eight years old and a kvenlik comes for him, and then again a few months later. They keep a very close eye on him, after that. Years later, he still has the scars to remember it by.)

His parents finish loading him up for induction, and remind him how lucky he is to be here at all.

(Three t-shirts. Two pairs of cargo pants — the one he's wearing is practically falling off him, cinched in with a belt as light as they could manage. Water bags. A small aluminum tin, enchanted to keep everything nice and sterile inside, if not warm or appetizing. A tiny sewing kit. A roll of gauze and healing salve. A heavy silver medallion — his father's, from his own time in the Scholomance, and god help you if you lose it — that he can bank a little mana in. A couple of space blankets. Enough amphetamines to make it through, if he rations carefully. A pair of sneakers that he'll almost certainly grow out of within the month. A straight razor. A crochet hook. ... And the thick bundle of letters paying for his place in this year's class.)

They drill him on his Latin one last time before he goes. He trips over his own tongue. It's one injury too many for his mother — she starts crying, leaves the room to collect herself.

She doesn't make it back before it takes him.