"Ech?"

"Magic is frustrating and takes a long time and it's kinda annoying to have to figure it out this way."

"Do you ever think about what you'd do if you woke up one day with all your memories but you were like seven?"

"...I'd definitely work much harder not to eat those cereal bars."

"Oh, lovely. That's not what I meant."

He shakes his head and forces a laugh. "Sorry. I'm in a—weird mood, today. For obvious reasons. Um, what did you mean?"

"I mean, I wind up thinking about all kinds of things like how to convince my family and avert natural disasters and stuff, but if you re-eclipsed you'd have a huge head start."

"Yeah. I mean, I don't think seven, I usually think, if I were born with my current mind. And yeah, all sorts of things like that. Mostly I'd try to get my mother to leave Tobias earlier."

Snuggle.

"And if I knew it was coming I'd memorize a lot of stuff like lottery numbers and, yeah, disasters and terrorist attacks and whatnot."

"And technology."

"Like, how to build it?"

"Yeah."

"That'd take a long time, though. It'd only work if you could postpone the event of returning to your baby-body. And in that case I might want to wait a much longer time before I did it."

"I really wouldn't want to be a baby again. That would be unpleasant on so many levels."

"Seven years old, then. Why that specific age?"

"I think at that age I could have talked my mother into homeschooling me. No way she'd miss out on being my kindergarten teacher and until I'd put in my time in first grade I'm not sure she'd have bought I could benefit from being pulled out."

"Huh. Why'd you want to have been homeschooled?"

"School was kind of a waste of time even then and double so if I'm doing it over again."

"And would you not tell your parents that you were from the future?"

"I would, but I'm not sure they'd react appropriately to the information without some prodding. ...Man, time travel would make it awkward with Alex. Especially me being older."

"Yyyyeah. And, react appropriately?"

"I mean, I think they might still expect me to be seven, with - extra information?"

"Oh. I think my father wouldn't've believed me but mom would've and would've reacted accordingly but been a bit sad that she'd've missed my childhood."

"Yeah, I imagine my parents would be sad about the missed childhood too."