We-ell okay Sadde will just—it's purely unconscious and not voluntary at all, the way she lowers her eyes and doesn't actually, quite bat her eyelashes. "Hello."

"Oh, hello! You must be new, but you don't look young enough to be a 2001..."

"Oh, no, I'm actually ninety-seven."

"Huh, same. Well, most people who were going to come here showed up a bit sooner after their eclipse, so you might be a bit of a talking point for a little while. Any reason you care to share why you took so long, and if not d'you need help fending of nosy people?"

She struggles for a bit to remember how to words, but then: "It's just that my father didn't want me to go to magic school but I managed to talk him around to it. My name's Sadde, by the way."

"Edie! Lovely to meet you. Mage or psion?"

"Mage! Working on biokinesis and have—"

"—gendershifting down."

"Nice! I'm a psion, I've got telepathy working--just with my sister, so far, but it's pretty tricked out."

And back to girl. "Tricked out?"

"It's, you know, actual thought-sharing instead of just a verbal channel, and she can initiate conversations, and we can set it for default emotion-sharing even if we're not actively talking."

"Sounds really cool! And what are your long-term plans, if any?"

"I'm going for precog for the utility and continuing to work on my telepathy because telepathy is really awesome. I spend most of my meditation time on the precog and just practice a lot with the telepathy. At some point when I've got a little bit of precog working I'll switch some of that to practice to and pick something else to spend a little time meditating on too. Luck of all luck, my twin eclipsed too--she's a mage--and she's going for metallokinesis--she's got a little bit of that yet--going for fine control over sheer scale so as to compete less with generalist teeks--and de-aging, because the more mages can do that the more people can not literally die."

"Wait, what? Seriously? You both eclipsed?—wait I think I might've read a note about you in the papers."

"Wouldn't surprise me."

"I'm honored, to meet someone so statistically unlikely."

"My arbitrary mathematical characteristics and I thank you."

She beams. "My goal's along your sister's, too, I want to do de-aging—but I want to eventually figure out how to make that permanent."

"That would be excellent, of course, although given that that's not known to be possible and de-aging is, it's probably higher-leverage in the immediate future to work on convincing more mages to work on de-aging and improve virtuality so more people want to be mages."

"On the other hand virtuality and psionic tech in general were not known to be possible until only a few years ago and the boom in eclipsed will already help a lot. But in any case I expect de-aging will in fact come before permanent immortality if it's possible—for me, at least."

"Yeah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and all that."

"Yeah."

"I considered working on interfacing with psionic tech and working on improving virtuality but precog appeals to me more than that by a higher margin than that would be more useful than precog, considering that precogs are essential to preventing disasters on eclipses."

"Oh yeah precognition is definitely incredibly useful. If it weren't for the gender thing I'd have preferred being a psion."

"Aha. Makes sense."

"You can get eidetic memories and precognition and virtuality and shared lucid dreaming and all that cool stuff!"

"Mmhm."

"So yeah, very jealous. Anyway, like you said I'm new and you're the first door I've knocked on, so, what can you tell me about Selene?"

"It's mostly like what I've been assured a normal high school is like--sometimes even by people with no incentive to lie to me about it!--but heavy on the fancy facilities, due to our oh-so-generous alumni, and light on the academic requirements so we have more time to think about magic."

"Fancy facilities?"

"Yeah, for just about everything--and the electives are very optional but very varied, you're pretty much spoiled for choice."

"I should go look into those. I wouldn't have expected there to be that many choices, though, it's not like there are that many of us."

"Mind I'm comparing to what I've been able to find about your standard public school options, not to a more reasonable standard."

"What do you think a more reasonable standard would be?"

"You probably don't actually want to hear me regurgitate my mom's Opinions on education."

"Try me."

Well in that case she can have a significant amount of ranting as to Why The Public School System As Stands Is Inadequate And How It Could Be Fixed.

...okay sure she may be regurgitating her mom's opinions but oh my god that is so hot.

She may have noticed, judging by the smirk she develops partway through.

Yeah that makes it even hotter. There may be a lot of eyelash batting going on here.

"You know, I bet you weren't planning to spend your Sunday standing at your door talking to a stranger."

"I hadn't been planning to, no, but pleasant surprises happen."

"I'm glad to be a pleasant surprise."

"Just how pleasant can you be, I wonder?"

"What's the scale I should use?"

"Surprise me."

"Hmmm, on a scale from blizzard and hail while late for work and having a meeting in five minutes to a nice breezy spring sunset at the lake cabin after having won the lottery and donated a lot of money to charity I'm a warm afternoon at the beach after reading news about significant advances on a generalized cure for cancer and aging through technology."

"Why, that sounds quite pleasant indeed."

She giggles. "I do try."

She looks her over. "My friends and I are having dinner at five-thirty. Be there. Would you like directions to our table or do you expect to be able to spot us?"

"Yes, ma'am," she says immediately. "I'll find you."

"Excellent. Welcome to Selene."

"Thank you very much."

"You're quite welcome. Was there anything else at the moment?"

"Don't think so. I should explore some more and see you this evening."

"See you this evening," she says, looks at her assessingly again, tips her chin up with two fingers and presses a kiss to her forehead.

And then disappears back into her room, closing the door without another word.

She needs a few minutes in her room to decompress after that. She's pretty sure there's steam coming out of her ears.

After that, she goes to explore the school a bit and look into electives and such, but at five thirty she's at the cafeteria.

And there's Edie, just like she said, sitting at a table with--

--a pretty blonde dom--

--a pretty blonde sub--

--and another brunette, who couldn't be screaming "switch" with her fashion choices harder if she tried. The hair on one side of her head is let fall down her back in waves, while the other is pulled up into very old-fashioned complicated dom braids. She has on subbishly pale pink lipstick, dommishly dark red fingernail polish, a subbishly styled sundress and a very dommish jacket.

Aaaaah so many hot people.

She walks over to them. "Hello."

"Hi! You must be Sadde, I'm Edie's twin sister Emily."

"I'm Allie, mage, pleased to meet you."

"And I'm Anna. Welcome to the Statistically Anomalous table. If you're actually a girl sub then you might be the most 'normal' person at the table."

"Genderfluid switch, sorry, what are the other anomalies?"

"Well, apparently every single person here is either a dom or a switch, which isn't anomalous on an individual level but when we're all at least sometimes girls it kind of stands out. Plus you have the both-eclipsed twins over there," she nods at Edie and Emily, "who are sort of our crown jewel of statistically unlikely."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realize, I told them you were a sub. ...In my defense, you were acting very subby at me. And I'm the last person to judge someone's role by the length of their hair," she adds, fingering her braid.

"It would have rather defeated the point if I were acting dommy while flirting with you, I feel."

"Quite. That doesn't fully excuse me, though, I shouldn't have assumed. I mean, look at Anna." Anna looks pretty traditionally subby at the moment.

"No harm done," she shrugs. "So, what did she tell you all about me, other than the fact that I seemed to sub rather hard at her?"

"You want to scale de-aging and thought her education ranting was hot."

"It really was."

"I can't say I've ever seen it that way, but I suppose tastes do differ."

She shrugs. "I'm not sure it would be productive to try to articulate what was hot about it."

"Yeah I've known her more than a year, I don't think I'm going to suddenly become attracted to her now."

"My being-attracted-to-people meter is probably weird anyway."

"How so?"

"Mmm... I'm not sure there's a meaningful sense in which I don't want to make out with someone, my bar for that seems to be 'has a face.' But when I say Edie's hot I mean a different thing."

"She likes compliments, she'll be flattered if you elaborate."

"Allie."

"Am I wrong?"

"That's completely beside the point!"

She giggles. "It's hard to describe! She's—strong, of will and personality, she might've said those were her mom's opinions but I have the feeling she wouldn't have said them if she hadn't thought them through and agreed with them and that's really hot—"

"Well, you're not wrong about any of that."

She shrugs. "I have a bunch of vague intuitions about the sort of person Edie is and they're based on very little interaction so I'm gonna figure out with time but they imply something extremely attractive."

"Well, I think the things you find attractive about me imply something attractive about you."

Well she'll have to grin and lower her eyes at that. "Thank you."

"Also, you're very cute. In both forms."

She beams. "Guilty as charged. I might've had a hand in designing them."

"Clever biokinetic."

"You're going the biokinesis route too?"

"Yeah, already have gendershifting and can heal a bunch of things on myself, but nothing more than bruises on other people."

"Oh, I'm starting external, I can do a couple things with flowers so far."

"What things?"

"I can recolor stuff and do some neat things with pollination."

"Cool! And what are you planning long-term?"

"Well, I'll go for de-aging once I've reached an appropriate point, with generalizing from plants to animals, of course, but what I really want to do is mess around with genetics and stuff."

"Oh? Any special reason?"

Shrug. "Does 'it sounds really fun' count?"

"It does, but then I'll ask why it sounds really fun," she grins.

"Evolution is cool, and positive mutations normally happen slowly enough you can't really watch?"

"That's a good answer! I'm really curious about the sorts of things you'll be doing."

"Probably mostly, you know, supercrops and gene therapy--although, considering that world hunger is mostly a distribution issue at this point, I was also thinking of altering wild plants that are already really virulent, like dandelions, to be more nutritious."

"I like your friends," she tells Edie.

"That's because I have excellent taste," she says, ruffling Sadde's hair.

"That's very flattering." She looks at Anna. "How about you?"

"Psion. Probably going into psionic tech, eventually, although right now I'm mostly just working on improving my memory."

"Again: extremely envious."

"Alas. You shall simply have to content yourself with shapeshifting and ending mortality."

"How shall I endure."

"Distractions?"

"Do you have suggestions?"

"None that I'll share in front of my sister."

"Thank you."

She laughs. "One would think you had inappropriate intentions."

"I imagine it depends on how you define inappropriate."

"Well, that's true of every assertion."

"Indeed, although some are more ambiguous than others."

"I suppose so."

"And it all...depends...on...context. My intentions could certainly be described as inappropriate in some circumstances."

"Hmm, I reckon I've made your sister uncomfortable enough for one day and perhaps ought to not push that."

"Yeah, probably."

"And I should actually get food, too."

"That sounds very wise indeed."

So she gets up and goes to do that.

Selene, being the kind of place it is, has a good selection of delicious food.

Meh.

She grabs whatever and returns to the table.

Well, everyone else is appreciating their food like normal Eclipsed.

While Sadde was gone a pair of coins started orbiting each other in the vicinity of Emily's hands.

"That's super cool," she opines as she takes a seat.

"Yes, I know," she says, a bit smugly.

"Why'd you pick it?"

"Because it...feels right?"

She blinks. "How so?"

"Uh, you know how everyone's magic feels different?"

"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."

"Well, it is a fact about Eclipsing that it causes people to become Eclipsed."

"Fair point, I concede."

"Good."

Grin.

"At least we have virtuality, now."

"Yeah. The wilderness sucks."

"Sometimes I think it's a miracle humanity never got wiped out by new Eclipsed."

"Hmm, likely the Anthropic Principle."

"What's that?"

"Well, if you imagine that there's an enormous number of inhabited planets in the universe, then at least one will contain life that survived their eclipses, and since population tends to grow, the majority of sapients who will ever exist in the universe will be from those planets, so it's not that surprising we find ourselves on one."

"Aha. That does make sense."

"Some people add a term involving eclipses to the Drake equation to explain why we haven't encountered advanced alien civilizations yet."

"Poor aliens."

"Yeah, it's kinda terrible if it's true. But it does bring us to the usual territory of how eclipses work with other moons in other planets, which is basically speculative."

"True, true."

"I wonder whether that's an argument for or against space exploration."

"Why would it be an argument either way?"

"For: for science. Against: because doing science on people is often questionably ethical."

"Well, we can just wait to meet alien species and not bring any twelve-year-olds to Jupiter."

"But what if Eclipsing in space does something really cool that we're missing out on?"

"Well, what are the ethical problems with bringing twelve-year-olds to Jupiter?"

"How do we know that an eclipse on Jupiter would work by the same rules as an eclipse on Earth? I'm less concerned about 'bring twelve-year-olds into space, they become a psion or mage' than 'bring adults into space, woops, Jupiter's age is twenty-five and it eclipses you as some third thing that resists lockdown somehow.'"

"Well, the range of possibilities is literally infinite, there, and with a single data point we can only start with that as a baseline."

"Well, but that's what I mean by not being sure if it's a good idea or not, if it works basically the same way then whatever interesting differences there might be won't be too dangerous, but we have no idea whether it's likely to do that or not."

"No, what I mean is that we should probably a priori assume that it will in fact be similar, even if with very high uncertainty."

"Except that it's not, like 'would you like this free value with which to space,' going into space has opportunity costs, and I think that the relative value of space compared to, like, curing malaria, is lowered by our complete lack of data on how space will effect eclipses."

"Yeah, that's also part of what I mean, we don't have a priori any evidence that it's particularly good or useful, and the risk that it's not is fairly high given our knowledge."

"Well, we're going to have to do it eventually, once we scale de-aging overpopulation's going to become a much more pressing issue."

"True, but by then we'll have gotten to all the other lower-hanging fruit in terms of expected returns."

"Maybe."

"You don't expect so?"

"There are a lot of problems we could have solved already, but haven't."

"I guess, but we're on our way to, and most low-hanging fruit nowadays is about equally low-hanging, I don't think there's anything obviously correct and easy to do compared to everything else."

"Right, but I'm saying that solving problems isn't as simple as finding a technical solution, scientists have clean energy ready to roll out whenever and we don't have clean energy because oil lobbyists."

"Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the problem is strictly technical, when I want to see how high the fruit is hanging I include every necessary step to get it, not just 'is it technically feasible.' Same for space exploration, I don't think at this point the challenge is very technical anymore."

"Well, exploration no, colonization yes."

"Hmmm, yeah, fair enough."

"She does that."

"Does what?"

"Being right."

"Very good habit, that."

"It is!"

"What do you think our priorities should be with respect to space exploration and colonization?" she asks Emily.

"I think I don't currently know enough about the tradeoffs to answer that question."

"Not even a guess?"

"I think if there are any technologies that can be used both to colonize other planets and make the Earth support more people, that's a really good place to start."

"Isn't the Earth supporting people problem fundamentally a distribution problem, at least at present?"

"It is, but it won't necessarily be once de-aging's solved."

"I think I read somewhere that even if we all turned immortal right now it'd still take decades for that to be a problem bigger than distribution, but that memory's vague enough I'm not sure I should trust it."

"This isn't a problem I researched extensively before having this conversation either."

"It's the kind of problem we probably should research on the way to fixing aging, but there are probably several years before we reach that point."

"Maybe we should be encouraging people to go into politics to fix the distribution problems."

"People as in eclipsed?"

"Maybe, but probably not--politics takes a lot of mental energy better spent on magic. Just, you know, trustworthy sensible people who will attempt to fix distribution problems and not take away people's rights."

"Yeah, that's probably reasonable, but I don't actually know many non-eclipsed that are not my family and that I would trust with this."

"Know any who are in your family who you'd trust with this?"

"No, not really."

"Oh well."

"How about you?"

"Our dad's got too much of a temper and our mom's higher-leverage where she is."

"What do they do?"

"Dad's a structural engineer and Mom's a genetics professor."

"Ooh, cool!"

"I know, right?"

"My father's a preacher and my stepmother's a housewife, nothing as exciting."

"Ah. ...Emily and I are Jewish, by the way."

"I'm actually an atheist," she confesses.

"That must've been a fun conversation."

"For very, very liberal interpretations of the word 'fun.'"

"Yeah."

"Are the two of you religiously or just culturally jewish?" she asks.

"We go to temple sometimes but not all the time and in terms of actual belief we're agnostic."

"Are your parents religious, and if so are they okay with that?"

"Mom's a raised-Episcopal atheist and Dad's got a sort of 'no atheists in foxholes' thing going on."

"Huh."

"Marrying goyim isn't that unusual."

"I guess not, but the 'huh' was more about a religious person marrying a non-religious person. I guess that's also not super uncommon, but my father's left me with a somewhat biased view of that."

"'No atheists in foxholes' also isn't a conventional kind of religious."

"I suppose."

"I don't really get atheism, personally, but maybe someday someone will figure out how the heck magic could arise in a truly randomly generated universe and then it will make sense."

"...I should probably qualify my atheism. Given the way magic works, it's not unlikely the world is artificial, but in a—simulationist way? Like, I don't expect the world's creators, if they exist, to come down here and do anything."

Shrug. "Could be. Like I said, agnostic."

"I'm Buddhist, for the record."

"Really? That's more unusual."

"My parents aren't, but--it's one of the only religions on the planet, it has really good moral teachings, and it's not actually incompatible with any particular state of affairs from 'kind and loving god' to 'nada,' so I converted."

"Huh. Yeah, guess I can see it. Although 'kind and loving god' doesn't... really seem to jibe with the way eclipses work."

"And Buddhism doesn't care!"

She grins. "You'll have to tell me some more about this Buddhism thing, then."

"I am happy to commit proselytization if and only if solicited."

"Sensible."

"Buddhism is good at that! ...Better than Christianity, anyway."

"Not a terribly high bar."

"Well, religions are made up of people. Any group of people large enough is going to mess up."

"So is Buddhism fated to that if it grows?"

"Buddhism's pretty big already, and it has messed up, just not as badly as Christianity."

"How has it messed up?"

"Most obvious thing I can think of is having been big in China while China was all, you know, break little girls' feet for the pretty and suicide if you don't pass your imperial exams."

"Isn't that sort of a natural consequence of it not having very strong opinions on things?"

"Yeah I actually was not really expecting this conversation and didn't do my research."

"Oh good, I like being unexpected."

"Then you'll love the Statistical Anomaly table, I'm sure."

"I'll fit right in," she agrees.

"Welcome to the geek chic nerd herd."

Soon they finish eating, although the cafeteria is still fairly crowded (for a loose definition of the word that allows a school for eclipsed to be called crowded) by then. Some people still linger to talk, while others go to a club or other or just return to their rooms to think about magic (one presumes).

"So, I think this went very well," Edie says before they part.

"I think so, too," she says meekly, looking very much like the eyelash-batting and the smallness is entirely involuntary.

(It's not.)

"Do you have any food allergies, other restrictions, or strong preferences?"

"No, ma'am."

"There's a decent Indian place in town. Meet me at the bus stop at five-forty-five sharp."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good girl," she says, presses a kiss to her cheek, and walks away.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

And the next day he's at the bus stop at the indicated time.

"Hello," she says cheerfully. "How was your day?"

"It was lovely, if a bit long."

"Is that so."

"Yes, the clock insisted on telling me it was not yet five forty-five. Rather stubborn, the clock is."

"That wicked misbehaving clock."

The bus arrives.

"Eventually it learned its lesson and showed the correct time, though."

"Good for it."

She boards the bus, considers the available seats, and elects to remain standing.

Then he probably will, too. The wistful look at the kneeling pad lasts less than a second and could very well just be her imagination.

"If you prefer Mexican to Indian there's a decent Mexican place right here, by the way, the Indian place is close but I'm flexible."

"I'm pretty indifferent to food choice."

"Indian it is, then."

The Indian place is a buffet-style restaurant. Most of the food is unsuitable for hand-feeding, but there are kneeling cushions.

...does Edie look like she'd like it if he used the cushion?

Might do.

Then he'll kneel.

She smiles at him.

He grins and bats his eyelashes at her.

Grin gets slightly smirkier. 

Of course, he's going to have to get up from kneeling in order to get food .

Yeah he is. But he'll be able to return, yes?

True.

So there he is, kneeling very innocently next to this gorgeous astoundingly hot dom. So innocent.

Innocent. Of course.

"So, what do you like to do when you're not thinking about magic?"

"Read. I like reading a lot. And I like meeting people and going out. But I think about magic a lot."

"Makes a lot of sense."

"How about you?"

"I read, and I think about magic a lot, and I try to convince mages to learn de-aging, and there's a couple of low-commitment social justice groups I'm a part of."

"Oh?"

"A subs' rights/switches visibility group and an anti-racism one."

"At Selene?"

"Yeah."

"Could be fun to join."

Nod. "You can be a member without going to all the meetings or participating in all the things that require commitments, it's totally possible to join and just show up when you don't have anything better to do."

"What do you do there?"

"Mostly organizing on-campus awareness events; sometimes there are fundraisers to give money to larger groups that are doing more productive things; sometimes we organize going to protests and so on."

"Huh. I've never been to a protest."

"They can be really fun!"

"What do you do at those? I have this probably inaccurate picture in my head of a bunch of people yelling and carrying signs."

"There is a lot of carrying signs and and a significant amount of yelling. And it varies, of course, but there's really something about a really good, well-organized protest."

"What kinds of things does it get? Like, when you protest things, what tends to happen?"

"Not always anything concrete in the short term," she admits, "although one time I went to a protest that basically blocked the Westborough Baptist Church from harassing a funeral, that was good."

He giggles. "That must've been fun."

"It so was."

"Okay I'm in that sounds cool."

"Awesome."

"How about convincing mages to learn de-aging, how's that go?"

"Well, there's a bunch who say they will, now, but it's hard to know who's going to follow through."

"But I mean, how do you do it? Do you just randomly ask people to?"

"No, it's more complicated than that--you have to have a reason to talk to them, first of all, people aren't very likely to listen to random proselytizing strangers no matter what they're proselytizing for. So I have to approach them in a context that makes sense, and generally I have to get to know them at least a little first so as to figure out what arguments will be effective..."

"That sounds fun."

"It's very rewarding! The fun of the actual getting-to-know-and-persuading varies wildly by who it is one is getting to know and persuading."

"Hmmm, I'm not sure I have a mode that doesn't like getting to know people."

"If you can genuinely enjoy getting to know someone who thinks switches are all just subs who want to enjoy the social benefits of domhood more power to ya."

"I can! People are wrong about all sorts of things, I still like getting to know them."

"And that is an admirable trait, but not one that I have so far managed to cultivate."

"Well I guess I could help you proselytize, then."

"That would be fantastic."

Eeeeeeeee. Eyelash bat.

Acknowledging smirk.

"I'm not sure I'd really say I cultivated it, though. More like it's a thing about how I... am?"

"Right, but I'm not naturally that way, so if I want it I have to cultivate it."

"Yeah, makes sense. Have you convinced many people?"

"Some. Not as many as I've tried."

"Well I bet that together we can more than double the efficiency."

"Well aren't you lovely."

He lowers his eyes and grins. "Thank you, ma'am."

"You're quite welcome."

"What more is there that I should know about you?" he wonders.

"Hmm...I love kids, I have a vicious temper when provoked but I'm pretty good at keeping it under control, my parents are both only children and my grandparents are all dead, my favorite color is blue..."

"What does provoking you look like?"

"Um...hm, it's never occurred to me to sit down and compile a list before...threatening people I care about, expressing the opinion that some group of people doesn't deserve human rights, acting like subs don't have the right or inclination to independent agency, saying switches don't exist...this isn't a comprehensive list, mind."

"Didn't expect one, and did expect a list more or less like that," he nods.

"Oh, good."

"I wonder what you look like when something ticks you like that. Somehow the words 'force of nature' come to mind."

"You are a flatterer," she accuses.

"Slander, I say! I tell only truth!"

"Oh? Are you saying flattery isn't truth?"

"I'm saying any flattery here is strictly incidental and just happens to be a consequence of the fact that the truth is incredibly appealing."

"Good answer."

"So was I right?"

"Wait and see."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa. He has to lower his eyes again because he is extremely overwhelmed right now and his brain has stopped.

Gosh he's cute.

Eventually, though, they finish their food, and it is time to return to school.

...This time Edie sits in a seat next to a kneeling pad.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee. He kneels.

Almost absently, she puts a hand on his head and lightly pets his hair.

melt

So adorable!

Yeah he will probably just kneel there with a blissful look on his face for the rest of his trip, thanks.

Sooo adorable.

He'll notice when they reach their stop and she stands up, right?

Well he'll notice she has stopped petting him and pout but get up.

"Sorry, but we need to get off here," she says, gently hooking a finger into the neckline of his shirt and leading him off the bus like her arm was a leash.

Aaaaaaaaaaaa

And then they are back on campus!

She looks at him speculatively, then threads the fingers of one hand through his hair, tightens slightly, and pulls him into a kiss.

Oh look it seems to be possible to melt even more.

Lovely.

Eventually she stops kissing him and says, "So I don't know about you, but I had a great evening."

Takes a couple of seconds for him to recover the power of speech but once he does he says a very emphatic "Yes."