8

Then began a wonderful time of the five of them being friends. Stella and her daddy's gold card immediately solved a number of problems like water and electricity. "And we can't live here when winter comes! Daddy owns some ugly little apartments, I could take some over all in a row, he'll never notice. We'll keep this place as our clubhouse!"

Bloom suggested, 'How about "Secret Powers Club—SPC?"

"Noooo, we're not a creepypasta!" Musa protested.

"Isn't is SCP?" Aisha asked.

Stella said, "I love that you all know about SCP foundation."

Terra didn't. "I don't! It's a creepypasta?"

Musa explained, "It's about a thousand creepypastas. I don't think we should be reading them while we're sleeping out here."

"Yeah let's not. Not a big fan of creepy stuff."

But Musa had noticed something before, 'Stella, if your daddy owns apartments why did you run away to hide out here?"

"Huh. I don't know. It just felt right."

Musa nodded. "Like when I was looking for a safe place to sleep it felt right."

Bloom said, "Was it the place or was it us? I chose the place because it's all metal and concrete, I couldn't burn it down."

As with most of their questions about themselves there was no obvious answer.

It would have been nice to have more information, but the girls were feeling ready to make plans. Bloom's meditation and practice made her feel safe to go home when her mother was released from the hospital. She felt confidant that the fire had started because she want to sleep full of anger, and she could plan for that, make sure to come back and sleep here if she was upset. And she'd keep meditating and working out, and let her father set her up with a professional councilor. And she'd made sure her room in the rebuilt house had two smoke alarms and they had a fire extinguisher in every room. Things were as safe as she could make them.

Terra was flourishing. She'd applied for a job at a garden shop which would pay better than washing dishes. She was learning martial arts at the gym. And Stella had done something wonderful. "You want to transition, right? Want to start talking to a doctor about it? I don't even need Daddy's gold card, I've got enough money for that!"

Terra got all weepy. "What? You can't—could you? What about you?"

"I don't care. Gender's up here, I don't care what's down there."

"I care. I wish my outside could match my inside, things've been awful since I started getting boy-shaped."

And they got on the internet to look up how to make that happen. It hadn't gotten far yet but Terra was buoyant just having the chance.

Musa had been on the phone with her family a lot. She didn't think she was up to moving home yet but they were working to get her into online school so she could keep her grades without having to go back into a school building. But she was pushing herself to get used to tuning out the noisy thoughts of ordinary people. "Step one is 'function in public.' Step two is 'get a job.' Step three, who knows."

Bloom suggested, "Detective. You'd know if someone was guilty without having to look for clues."

Stella's idea was, "Matchmaker! You could tell if people are right for each other!"

"Maybe one of those." Musa agreed.

Aisha's parents had agreed to let her move back home with a complicated deal involving pretending to still believe. Aisha wasn't confidant that this would last long but wanted to try.

She was also wondering if it would be right to use her magic to become a competitive swimmer. "Probably not, but Olympic fame would be really cool..."

Stella was having a wonderful time using her money to help out her new friends. She had an actual income, from posting pictures and things on the internet. "I take photographs and I meet interesting people and write about them. I'm going to graduate, go to college, and become a journalist! Fashion and social news. I'm not sure how magic fits with that."

The girls were sitting in a circle in the warehouse talking. Bloom smiled. "I wish we could learn even more. Maybe we can do more, tings we haven't even thought of yet! Unless we find a book r something about our kind of magic we can only find out by trying until something happens."

"Maybe I really could end world hunger." Terra shrugged. "Maybe. I need to make sure the dirt is still good after I use magic to make things grow in it, and that nothing weird happens to the plants later! Maybe the carrots will grow eyeballs and get up and walk around!"

Musa said, "That needs to be an SCP!"

"I'm not against the idea of being superheroes once we know a lot more about what we can do." Aisha said. "I could be a firefighter maybe, but don't they already have hoses designed by years of technology to deliver the water where it needs to go?"

Bloom nodded. "The hoses are really advanced, whatever it is that makes hoses advanced.. My dad talked about it when the station got new ones. I'm with you on the superhero thing, maybe I could be a firefighter too, if I can learn to shrink fires without touching them. But I'm not up to that yet!"

"But we'll keep learning!" Stella burst out, "We'll keep coming back to our clubhouse and doing experiments and reading woo-woo stuff on the internet until we find out what we are and what we can do. And we'll always be friends because we have that in common!"

Musa applauded, with a little sarcastic twist to her smile

It was getting late and this seemed like a good note to go to bed on. Bloom put out the campfire and candles with a thought, then dumped water on everything to be sure, and the girls got into bed by the light of their phones.

Bloom sent a text to her mother, Having a great sleepover with friends. Looking forward to u coming home! Love u!

That night when the moon rose, the twisted old apple tree behind the warehouse shuddered. The whispering on its leaves almost woke Terra, but she'd worked a double shift and was deep in dreams of heroic deeds.

The tree's trunk revolved, untwisting until it opened into an arch. If anyone had been there to look through that arch they would not have seen the empty lot across the way, but a shimmering field of colors like spilled paint.

A woman stepped out. One minute she wasn't there, the next she was. She looked up at the warehouse and wrinkled her nose. What an ugly structure. But inside she sensed five sleeping minds. They'd been drawn to the portal tree. That was its purpose, to gather the few fairies born in this part of the world. The woman sat down at the base of the tree to wait. No need to wake them.

In the morning she'd tell them what they were and invite them to the school. They'd need time to decide and make excuses to their families, that happened every time, but they always wanted to come.