Sadde and Isabella in Eclipse
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The rest of the day is rainy and damp, and Sadde reads and thinks about magic and eats deerthing meat and sleeps (unfortunately the night sky isn't clear enough for a good look at stars and moons or lack thereof). The next morning is sunny and warm—and damp but not wet—so they decide it's a good time to try to find their way back home. They eat, change, and pack their tent, then go, towards the river. It's the one landmark they know about.

They reach it and try to retrace their steps and fail, then try again and fail again, then it's time to eat. They set up their tent by the river, make another fire (they still have a bit of meat left which they eat but it's smart to do it anyway), eat, then try again. And fail. But that's alright, they can explore and try to find the place again.

A giant eight-eyed dinosaur thing tries to eat them once, and they destroy all of its internal organs.

It rains again but at night—the day is annoyingly shorter—the sky is clear enough to show constellations they've never seen before and two not terribly pretty moons.

It's warm during the day but there's rain and the rain sometimes is cold and in the evening it is cold without the fire but there's fire. They try looking for the place again the next day. And the next. And the next.

They run into other animals—comparatively small (i.e. about waist-high) brown fuzzy six-legged things that are reminiscent of a cross between a rabbit and an eggplant, various kinds of bugs (Sadde murders the huge not-mosquitoes with a vengeance after the first time they get stung), things that are kinda like fish and kinda like eels and kinda like neither and really huge, lizards without a discernible head about as tall as them, carnivorous lizards with discernible heads that don't actually bother them—and as time passes decide they can't really only survive on deerthings. Probably.

But berries and fruits and plants are still probably dangerous.

That's the next thing they'll try to learn—how to survive poisons. Their thing is making their body be that way instead of some other way, it's all biokinesis, really, healing is just another application of it. It does mean they learn it much slower than other mages would (on Earth, he's not on Earth right now, is he, how does that even work), but they do try to learn it.

They have a watch. They know they've turned seventeen, by keeping track of days according to their watch, but what sense does that even make when they're probably far enough away that relativity should matter?

They're confident they can deal with poisons after seven months, ten days, and thirteen hours. They've been eating plants for a while by then. Their clothes are in tatters, their knife long gone, their tent barely more than a fond memory. It's damp. And warm. It could've been damp and cold, that'd be worse—and sometimes it is, actually, but there isn't much seasonal variation there, or perhaps the year is just really really long.

And they can't find the goddamned cave.

They turn eighteen.

And two months, five days, and four hours after that—

Total: 1145
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[Pet?]

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[Ma'am?]

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[Pet where are you are you okay -]

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[Is that really you how did you do this are you okay can I send things other than words through this -]

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[Of course it's me - expanded the thing that lets me talk to Alex - just words for now - where are you, are you okay, tell me.]

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[I'm—okay? Ish? Is this thing superluminal how does it work—you won't really believe me if I tell you I'm in another planet will you.]

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[...I have no idea if it's superluminal because you being on another planet did not cross my mind. Okay ish? What does that mean?]

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[It means I spent the last year and three months on another planet and was pretty sure you'd written me off as killed or kidnapped or kidnapped and killed and that'd have been justified and I've missed you so much and I couldn't find my way back and I'm probably sounding like a raving lunatic aren't I.]

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[I figured you ran away at first like your note said - but you didn't call or write or anything - and then your birthday went by and you didn't turn up -]

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[I—did, I was just gonna try to, to not have to rely on your family so much, and I'd probably have changed my mind after a while, I was in this spiral of thinking I was a burden on them and you because of something Tobias said, and I had a lot of time to think here and I'm pretty sure I was a stupid idiot but I did that anyway and then I found a cave and the cave was a tunnel and it was raining and I'm on another planet- I could tell you where the cave is, that'd be some evidence that I've not just gone insane or am not trapped by a psion somewhere—although I might be—but it's a cliff and I wasn't able to find it again after almost a year and a half looking.]

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[But you're all right? You've - been able to eat the extraterrestrial whatevers -]

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[Yeah, they're actually pretty tasty, and I learned how to not be poisoned so I could eat more stuff except I ate more stuff before I got that down but yeah I'm alright. Is this thing specific to me, or did you manage to do generalized telepathic communication?]

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[Not fully generalized, but people I know at least a little. Where was the cave?]

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She describes the location to the best of her memory.

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[That's all you remember?]

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[Yeah, I'm sorry, it's been a really long time. I'm close to the place, probably, I didn't move around too much, but I couldn't find it, it was raining and I had to run away from an animal—animals here are really big—and how're you? I want to know—everything, I want to see you, I'm-] She cuts herself off. It's been so long, does she even...?

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[Oh lovely, I missed you too - I'm all right, I have thirty seconds precog range now and I have an interim job while I work that up to emergency response times, I'm out of school -]

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[Wow, school, I'm of age now, aren't I—I'm rid of Tobias—when I suggested living in the wilderness as the worst-case scenario it wasn't meant to be a challenge.] She sighs. [What are you working with?]

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[I have a little office and I get funneled short term precognition questions, usually just yes-or-no, by text. Nothing very interesting but it pays the rent.]

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[And you get time to think about magic and become the uberpsion. How's your family doing? Did anything interesting happen on Earth while I was gone?]

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[My family's fine, there has been a usual amount of world news but nothing standout...]

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[And -] Pause. [One second I need to kill a dinosaur.]

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[.......okay.]

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[Animals here are really annoying,] she complains after about a minute. [There are these mosquitoes larger than my head and these bug-things almost as tall as I am and these annoying eight-eyed dinosaurs.]

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[Well. At least they're yummy?]

Total: 1145
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