"Yeah?"

"Mine feels kind of like magnetism."

"Ah. Makes sense. And you didn't have any plans on what to do if you turned out to be a mage when you were little?"

She shrugs. "De-aging. Beyond that, nothing beyond ephemeral whimsy."

"Fair enough."

"It's sort of like winning the lottery, only you don't have to waste resources on your chance."

"Well, there are the several years' buffer before you can really do anything with your lottery prize, but granted that's only after you've already won."

"Yes, a lottery where you only have to pay for your ticket if you win would be a different thing indeed."

"Rather steep price, too."

"Yes, I doubt many people would be willing to do virtuality just on the off chance that they'd eclipse."

"Yyyeah, probably not." Pause. "I would've, though."

"Good for you."

She beams.

"For me it'd probably depend on if it actually worked like the lottery in that less people means a greater chance."

"What would be the cutoff point?"

"Hard to be sure. My ability to model what tradeoffs I'd make for a chance at magic are imperfect since I never bothered making them before I had magic already."

"Fair enough."

"I would have done it."

"To be completely honest, though, I whined for the whole forty-eight hours before my eclipse, I'm not sure ten-year-old me would've actually gone for it."

"Not being a mage was so boring, though."

"Yeah but I was a very whiny and dramatic child."

"Well, fortunately that's not how Eclipsing works."

"I'm not sure I'd call anything related to eclipsing 'fortunate.'"

"In two hundred years not one person at this table is guaranteed to be dead. I'd call that pretty fortunate."

"Well, I'm not sure I'd call that a fact about eclipsing as opposed to a fact about eclipsed, but granted."