Kyuma watched the two little girls duel with inanimate sticks. How did they get to be so silly. Glanced at the stellar watch, a special little present from Mama Amandla, Inyanga's grandmama, and sighed.

Sighed because Star was later than late. Extra late. Beyond late. Already Kyuma had had to take the girls on the underground to get to campus while Amafu's umama sat in a "million meetings" she "tried and tried to get out of, sorry love!"

Yet Star had promised to join them all for a summoned lunch from the Cloud Cafe, a picnic of divine magic cast sandwiches, by meridies, and that damn woman had yet to pop out of one of those hundred solidae single-use link portals she treated herself to whenever she wanted to, as if a hundred solidae were pocket change.

If Kyuma had a hundred solidae to blow on something that would be gone after ten seconds, it wouldn't have been necessary to get the two mischievous sprinters all the way to Constellation Univasiti on a bus, the underground, another bus, and on foot the final two blocks where Amafu almost got lost when she decided to start a hiding game among the parked motos on the city streets.

Or maybe Kyuma would have still done the journey the mundane way and saved the money for a trip to a stylist magician to make the temperamental hair Amandla had passed on gleam like that of a movie queen. Shiny braids for a few days might be worth the cost of the trip they just had — for half a solidae bus fare each. Constellation could be faulted for many things, but at half a solidae each for bus fare, the magic public transportation provided by the magic company was cheap and stellar.

Still, the fact remained, Kyuma didn't have a hundred solidae to blow away, magic cost too much to perfect the hair, nails, clothes, or anything else the mundane life had gifted, and Star was stars damn late today.

In the middle of Kyuma's musings, Star appeared out of the clear blue air in the middle of the shady courtyard under al-Maysan lecture hall, and under the colorful flowers of poppywood trees too. No portal, either — which must add even more expenses to Star's magic bill. Since it was just her, she could pop around directly, without two children and her childhood friend to coral along with her.

How very nice and convenient for her.

Kyuma didn't even throw her a "you're late." Star would be expecting that. Instead, "I'm going to destroy you at weiqi stones, whip you until your brain gets sore," was promised, with a gesture at the table for two set with a board and piles of white and black pebbles. "The children are playing over there," waving a vague hand. "Or there," with a head nod the other way. "They're around. Somewhere."

"I don't care about them, let me take a look at you! Stand up!" said Star, rushing over, and Kyuma did. "Are you with child?" As Star examined, Kyuma did a little turn around with hips swinging, and a smile lit them both up. Eternal youth kept both Star and Kyuma young. Really young. Their grandparents, too, looked little older than teens did, including Kyuma's mother, Grandmama Amandla.

And as Kyuma did a hip-wagging circle, Star took in the new curves.

It was important to enjoy the moment before it was necessary to say, "No, of course not. I am not with child. I threw down the payment for a fertility spell. That's all I have saved up for. Who knows when I will have enough for a starborn."

Star shook her head and made a tsk sound. "If you get pregnant now, the baby will take your immortality."

"Get pregnant?" Kyuma scoffed. "My husband's no longer with us, how am I to get pregnant? Madness. Don't worry about me. I made the first payment, so the funds wouldn't burn up a hole in my savings account. Taken care of."

"So now I must call you by new pronouns, aeh/aer?" said Star. "My best friend Kyuma, aeh is so stubborn and at times aer brain does not work so well. How will aeh pay for Univasiti tuition for aer daughter if aeh throws away all the money to make more babies with in vivo magic?"

"I have ten years before we need to pay the tuition. Time enough."

"And your best friend loves you and will not let you be returned to mortality, despite the pride that has prevented you ever taking a fraction of a solida for anything."

"Pride." Kyuma spat. "Me? Who takes money from their friends? No one. It's not done, and it's not needed."

Star put a hand down on Kyuma's, scattering a few weiqi pebbles. "Promise me that if it's life or death, you will take the solidae, love. Promise me if the day comes when you would lose your immortality if you can't pay, you will come to me."

They never talked like this, out loud, about their differences in finances, and it made Kyuma want to spit and scream. Kyuma almost pulled aer hand back.

Making aerself look Star right in the face, and thinking of Inyanga, Kyuma made aerself say, "I promise."

Star's eyes danced and her head tilted side to side. "Promise what?" she prodded.

"I promise I will take your money if it's that or be killed by this insane ruling of the stars that a mother must pass aer immortal life on to the baby and die if aeh cannot buy a second immortal animus. I promise I will let you save me and lord it over my head for the rest of our immortal lives. Promise."

They set into their weiqi stones game, and Kyuma had a drive to tear Star to pieces, now more than ever. At times Inyanga and Amafu rushed by, screeching, "Love you, Umama!" "Love ya, mwah!" and swishing colorful twigs.

Only one rule was given the girls by their umamas. Their umamas watched them play from their seat in the shade, and that meant no hedge maze today, not unless the four of them went for a walk through it — a slow paced, civilized walk — together.

The girls' voices carried, "When I'm a magician, I'll turn you into a butterfly!" "I'll turn you into a worm." "A worm? No fair!"

Kyuma frowned. "If I hear them say 'when I'm a magician' one more time . . . like it's such a sure thing . . ."

"When I go here, I will be the top of the class. I'll study until my eyes fall out," said Inyanga.

"When I'm a MAGICIAN," Amafu bellowed, "I'll give everyone in Soliara a million million solidae each! Everyone will be rich, we'll print money with a spell!"

"When I'm a magician, I'll give them a billion billion each," said Inyanga.

Their mothers watched and fretted, the mood of their game growing somber. But then Star gently tapped down one of her matte black stones and said, "Your daughter is getting my daughter's hopes up."

Kyuma kept aer purple fiery eyes on the board and shifted aer weight to one side, tempted to put one hand on aer hip, and answered, "That so? Huh, I see. Inyanga is getting your daughter's hopes up." Then nodded as if thinking about it and deciding that makes sense, all right, let us go with that.

"That's what I see," said Star, placing three more black pebbles down and frowning at the white stones Kyuma had played in an extraordinary 'novel atari' invasion. "Are you saying I can't see and hear, my eyes and ears don't work?"

"That is not quite what I am saying. I am saying that your daughter has every advantage. I am saying that we have worked every minute of every day since our girls were born to foster their knowledge. It may border on the abuse of children, the way we forced books into their craniums. And now you say Inyanga is getting Amafu's hopes up, as if she and Amafu should not expect to go one day." Kyuma stopped and shook aer head and refused to place another stone, becoming a bit overwhelmed and maybe a bit stubborn.

Much went unsaid between them, as always, because Star could as good as read Kyuma's mind. Every advantage? Amafu Lizulu would get in because Amafu Lizulu has connections. Star Lizulu has connections. That's what Kyuma was thinking. That's what aeh meant by that. How many of Amafu's progenitors have attended the Univasiti? How many Lizulus and how many Satiris?

Both Star Lizulu, and Amafu's father, Dale Satiri, came from a long, long line of licensed magicians. A long line of mahias. When the admissions board looks at Amafu Lizulu, they will see a network, a whole web, of productive, accomplished, professional mahias. If Kyuma had said that out loud aer voice would have dripped equal parts honey and venom, praise and cynicism.

Letters of reference? The eight-year-old must have eight or more lined up already, and if Star can cozy up to anyone more esteemed in the coming decade, she'd have her pick. Perhaps the Magician General or the President of Constellation herself? Though surely, Kyuma would have said, if aeh had to say it out loud, surely Star has had a drink with President Julia Mars before. The only question that remained was whether a drink would be pretext enough to ask the President herself for a recommendation.

Kyuma was spitting fire now and it was because of the fuel simmering underneath the coals. "Inyanga's hopes may be the one thing that will get her in here. Crush those and there is no chance. Without the passion, without the dreaming, without hoping against hope, they will certainly never make it."

"I merely think we should temper their expectations," said Star. "Do you not think we should prepare them — both of them — for the possibility that they may never get a chance to study magic?"

"Well," said Kyuma, throwing the next stones, one by one, down on the board, "I happen to disagree, and if that is how you plan to guide your child's course going forward, I may have to restrict my child's interactions with her. Don't you dare starve the motivation, that drive, that is my daughter's only shot. If you do that, you will seal her fate. Without a dream, a yearning, a burning hope, she will undoubtedly never be good enough. I have my doubts, but I will never pass them to my daughter. She will need to believe in herself above all else."

A hand reached out and tackled Kyuma's, and the eyes Kyuma looked up into were warm, forceful, and just as stubborn. But full of support. "That will not be necessary. They are still young, let us let them dream."

The two umamas watched their little girls play and for years they would wonder, like every parent in the history of being, whether they were making the right choices.