The day before term started and Bloom was the only girl in the suite. Stella was out to lunch with her mother and the rest of the girls were still travelling, so Bloom was on her own. She'd been able to send a break down of the events on Earth in writing to Tecna so she could share the news with the rest of the Winx on the group chat but she hadn't been able to read any of the replies yet since her phone was still struggling with the dimension shift. All she wanted was to be distracted from her thoughts but she was stuck pacing her bedroom.

She had left her parents in a good place, thankfully. The man they had found in the building had turned out to be in Brown and Bonner's employ, which wasn't a surprise to any of them. Allegedly he had been given instructions on how and when to set the fire but they had omitted to tell him that the door to the backroom was locked. As such he felt betrayed and abandoned so was aiding the prosecutors.

It was all culminating in a plea deal and Vanessa's insurance company had approved her claim in good time. The insurance money on top of punitive damages award by the court was more than enough to open a new shop and fully fit it out so, in material terms, they were better off than at the beginning of the whole affair.

But with all that settled Bloom was now fixated on the fact that she had been found in a fire with no explanation. How had she ended up there? Was she even from Earth? For the first time ever Bloom was contemplating who her birth parents were. A long time ago she had decided that she didn't need to know why she had been given up because she had found her way to to the only parents she needed: Mike and Vanessa. But at that time she hadn't had all the information.

Mercifully, Flora relieved her of her own train of thought with a text that she had just arrived on Magix and an invitation for Bloom to go out for a bite to eat and a heart to heart. Bloom jumped at the chance to leave the empty suite and be around a friend. Kiko was always good company but he wasn't the best conversationalist.

They met at a little cafe that was popular with students from all three schools and managed to grab a table before it was swamped with a lunchtime crowd of returning adolescents and their guardians. Kiko hid under the table between Bloom's legs chewing on his ball when it got too busy for his liking.

Bloom insisted that Flora go first, so she heard all about how busy her home had been all holiday. There was a lot to do while her mother was still on her expedition and Bloom was in awe of everything she'd managed to achieve despite the extracurriculars she had taken on, especially with her little sister Miele. She congratulated Flora on helping the little girl gain a new badge in potion making for the Linphean Young Fairy Association.

"I'm very proud of her!" Flora said. "She's only a toddler, and it was basically just mixing food dyes together to learn about secondary colours, but she learnt very fast!
Anyway, I'm sure you don't want to hear all that much about my kid sister after the vacation you've had."

"Yeah… I think all the stuff with the shop is being sorted out alright, so I'm not too worried about that anymore. But now I don't know who I am so that's a whole new roller coaster," Bloom shook her head. "I knew I was adopted. And I thought that if I ever wanted to go hunting for my biological parents all I had to do was look through the paperwork from the hospital and I'd be able to find them - I just never wanted to. But now that I know I have absolutely no way of ever reaching them…" Bloom trailed off and looked dejectedly at her partially eaten burrito.

"It's not hopeless," Flora said softly. "Maybe it would be a lot harder but I'm sure it's possible. I've put a suggestion up on the group chat but I'm not sure you've quite synced with that yet."

"I'll have a look when my phone sorts itself out… You know they named me 'Bloom' because I could already say my name? I always thought that my mum had picked it because she liked flowers." Bloom took a sad bite of her food.

"Just because things didn't start out how you thought doesn't mean that your parents have changed. They're still the same people that love you and cared for you all those years."

"You're right… I know." Bloom reached over to squeeze Flora's hand tightly. "You're a really good friend."

Flora was halfway through saying something sweet back when they were interrupted.

A girl a few tables over loudly burst into tears and both Winx paused and looked over in surprise. Bloom realised she recognised the sobbing witch as the red-headed pumpkin girl that had warned them of the attack on Musa. She was rapidly becoming inconsolable while the witch opposite her looked distinctly uncomfortable and Bloom clocked her as the one she'd had seen hanging around the pumpkin girl a few times before; the witch with green hair and a high-bridged nose.

"Come on, Mirta," she said awkwardly trying to look anywhere but at her companion. "You've not been happy either… and after what happened at the pageant the Trix really don't like you."

"So that's why you're breaking up with me? The seniors don't like me so we can't be seen together anymore?" Mirta's mascara had travelled down her face to her chin.

"Look, you're making a scene…" the other girl got up and grabbed her bag. "I don't want to be stuck in rut, Mirta. I don't want to be the same loser I've always been, I don't want to be satisfied by being mediocre for the rest of my life, not like you." She sighed at her ex-girlfriend and then left the cafe quickly without looking back or giving Mirta a chance to respond.

The room was almost silent and Bloom felt bad for joining in the staring. Mirta was so upset that she couldn't stop crying even though she was now the centre of attention and clearly hating it, the napkin she was wailing into didn't do much to dampen the noise.

"We should see if she's alright," Flora said. Both the fairies moved over to the other table, Bloom taking the vacated seat and Flora dragging her chair over so that the three of them could sit together. Mirta looked at them warily but was too busy trying to stifle sobs with her tissue to say anything in protest.

"Hey," Bloom said gently, trying to ignore the people still staring at them by convincing herself that they'd get bored eventually. "I saw you at the Day of the Rose parade, right?"

"Yeah," Mirta said. "I was on the pride float. Lucy didn't want to join me on it because she doesn't want everyone knowing that she's gay."

"Lucy is the girl who just left?" Flora asked. Mirta nodded.

"She used to be my… well, you saw what happened. She really wants the Trix to like her, for some reason. I don't know, maybe she thinks they won't bully her any more if she's cool enough." Mirta dabbed her eyes dry.

"The Trix?" Flora wasn't familiar with that name for the three witches they kept crossing.

"Icy, Darcy and Stormy… they really don't like you." Mirta used her finger to gesture between the two fairies as she spoke. Flora looked genuinely hurt that she might have offended someone so badly that they would actively dislike her.

"Why is that?" Bloom asked. She couldn't really remember how it had started. They'd found her watching them and then… unnecessarily extreme violence followed. She struggled to imagine anyone else she knew jumping to a fight because someone was looking at them the wrong way.

"They hate fairies, most witches do. But I don't know why those three hate you that much." Mirta shook her head. Talking had stemmed the flow of tears a bit so she could breathe properly and she was able to wipe the streaked mascara away without more immediately replacing it. "The Trix are up to something, and they've been using Lucy."
Somewhere in the recesses of Bloom's brain she could remember the conversation she'd overheard about 'just a bit of code'.

"…Do you hate fairies?" Flora asked, still focused on that bit.

"No…" Mirta looked guilty for having mentioned that. "I only really chose to become a witch because Lucy did. And now I'm at a school I don't like, surrounded by people who hate me, I'm studying how to hurt people, single and with no friends."

Flora reached over to squeeze Mirta's hand as the witch started to cry again, although it was softer than before.

"That's not all that witches can do, right?" Bloom pointed out scrambling to remember anything from the witches' code that might be useful. "It's about self-sufficiency and independence, so there's other things you can use it for, surely." She sounded way more confident than she actually felt. Bloom had learnt about this only very briefly and she had no idea what was actually taught at Cloud Tower. Her phone beeped with a text from Stella but she flipped it face down.

"Doesn't feel like I've been given any tools to help people," Mirta shook her head. "No one cares about learning any magic that isn't in some way aggressive.

"Have you talked to Griffin?" Flora asked.

"There's no way that she would indulge me, she's made it clear that she thinks I'm quite weak." Mirta sniffed and then looked over at the phone on the table as it beeped again with a reminder that Stella was still trying to get her attention. "Are you going to answer that?"

Bloom went red and muttered some platitude while she checked her phone. Flora leaned over to have a look too, which didn't help Bloom feel any less self-conscious. Stella had finished her lunch with her mother and was wanting to catch up with Bloom about what happened over the holiday, she was offering to go to a nail bar while they talked.

"You don't have to stay with me," Mirta sniffed, lip wobbling.

"Well… I," Bloom felt put on the spot. She didn't want to leave Stella waiting but she also hadn't planned on stepping out on the other two either. It wasn't right to just abandon crying girls that had just been dumped.

"I don't have to go," Flora pointed out. "The invitation is just for Bloom, I believe, so we can finish our food together, Mirta, and then maybe we could do something else after." The witch looked at her gratefully and Bloom excused herself to run over to join Stella at a nail bar a few streets over. She took her burrito with her and managed to cram the rest of it into her mouth before she got to their meeting point.

It seemed as though no one was having a good time today. While Stella wasn't crying she was stoney faced and irritable as she aggressively sifted through the swatches of polish colours. She immediately began recounting how she had spent her mother-daughter lunch date, the last time she'd see her mum before the next vacation, being told about her parents' fracturing relationship in uncomfortable detail.

The princess angrily dunked her feet into the little perfumed bath at the base of their chairs, and threw her head back into the massaging headrest.

"Urgh, and this holiday was going so well too," she groaned. "You saw I won the pageant, right? And I spent all vacation with Sky pampering me and taking me on dates."

"Yeah, I did. Did they give you a crown and a sash?"

"They did! I got a sceptre too, but did Mum want to hear about that? Nooo, she wanted to talk about Dad and his new personal secretary, as if she doesn't spend all her time sunbathing and watching the pool boys."

"That… sucks." Bloom didn't know what else to say. She struggled to even imagine a scenario where her parents weren't completely in love; every year Valentine's Day was a sickly sweet event filled with fuss and a heart-shaped cake.

"Sorry," Stella sighed, jumping a little as the pedicurist massaged her feet. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable, I just really, really needed to decompress after that."

"I understand, parents fighting is rough."

"They're… getting divorced," Stella said quietly. She wasn't looking at Bloom anymore, just staring down at her lap where she was clenching her hands together.

"Oh Stella, I'm so sorry."

"It's probably for the best… please don't tell anyone. I'm not ready to talk about that yet, I just wanted to say it out loud and now that I have I want to completely forget about it."

"I won't say anything," Bloom promised. "Is this going to be all over the news when it does come out?" She was aware of how royalty was treated in first world countries back on Earth and she was wondering how scrutinised Stella and her family would be. Although, for a princess, she didn't seem to suffer much media harassment.

"It will when they announce it officially. I'm not looking forward to that - my parents will both probably want to do TV interviews with me to show that I'm still a well-adjusted young lady." Stella shuddered. "I'm only allowed on chat shows when it's official business or an announcement, never for anything fun."

"Would you want to go on chat shows for other reasons?" Bloom couldn't think of anything worse. She often forgot what to do with her hands if there was too much attention on her.

"Hell yeah, but until I'm twenty one I can't engage with the media without permission and they're banned from photographing me outside of specific events. Although the rules on some planets are different and I got stung on Espero once for a week-long party."

"Oh, that's why no one bothers you here then?"

"Yeah, that and it's Magix - you throw a stone and you'll hit some royal or politician or celebrity," Stella laughed and turned to the woman who was starting to paint her toes. "Hey, Margaret, how many famous people have you pedicured in the last month?"

"Three in the last week," Margaret said without looking up. "And four more wanted their hands done too."

"Am I the most famous person you've worked on?"

"You're not even the most famous royal," she scoffed, grinning up at the princess.

"See," Stella said. "No one cares. Now tell me about the shit that went down over your holiday."

"I think I've covered most things in the group text," Bloom said. "But I do feel like I am still in limbo about my mum and dad. It's all I can think about now."

"Are you mad at your parents for lying to you?"

"Yes and no," Bloom said after a moment. "I get why they didn't tell me before last summer because I doubt it would have been believable, but after you showed up… I think that should really have been the time to tell me that my first known moments on Earth were highly unusual."

"Do you think they'll be mad if you do go looking for your birth parents?" Stella asked.

"I hadn't thought about that." Bloom didn't know how Mike and Vanessa would feel, they'd always been very supportive of everything she'd tried to do but this was a bit different. As far as Bloom was concerned they were her parents and that was the end of the matter. She hoped they wouldn't think that she was trying to replace them.

"I don't think it should stop you if they are angry though, this is something that you deserve answers to," Stella said firmly. "And I'm not just saying that because I'm dying to know too."

Bloom laughed. Stella's curiosity was something that she had been expecting, the instant a secret was mentioned the princess had to know and was not going to let up until she was included.

They put on their flip-flops once Margaret and her colleague were done with their feet and Stella muscled Bloom out of the way so that she could pay for both of them. They stepped out onto the street and Bloom's phone lit up with over fifty messages in the group chat.

"Look," said Stella cheerily. "You've caught up."

The newer messages revealed that both Musa and Tecna had arrived at Alfea and were unpacking in the dorms while Flora said that she was still comforting Mirta so Bloom and Stella headed back on the shuttle without her.

Stella was overly chipper on the ride to Alfea and Bloom knew that she was hiding how she felt about her parents' relationship. Stella didn't like to be seen as anything but cheerful and funny so she was struggling to express anything that detracted from that. Bloom wanted to hug her but she didn't think that was what Stella wanted right now.

"I bet that we'll get back and Musa will already have a textbook out so she can study for the next lesson," Stella predicted with a laugh.

She was right too. When they arrived Musa was sat in the common room of their suite surrounded with old books while Tecna lounged next to her on her palmtop. They both looked up when Stella and Bloom returned, and Musa waved them over to sit with them.

"Hey guys," Musa said, flipping the book in front of her closed. "How was the city?"

"Oh, you know," Stella said as she flopped into an armchair. "Busy and full of shops I want to visit. How were your journeys?"

The other two filled Stella in on their travels while Bloom tried to catch up with what the others had been talking about and then procrastinated starting another conversation Brandon. Tecna mentioned that she had shared a transport from Zenith with Riven who had been having an animated conversation with a woman the whole time, pacing about the ship while he spoke and generally making a nuisance of himself.

"Is he cheating on Darcy?" Stella asked gleefully.

"I doubt it. It sounded like she was family," Tecna shrugged. "I don't know much about Riven's home life but I know it's not good."

"His mum walked out when he was six and just kind of pops back up whenever she feels like it," said Musa, and then went bright red when they all looked at her. "What? I talked to him during our summer activities… I mean, he didn't tell me that, I overheard two of the instructors talking about it, but we did speak."

"We'll unpack that later," Stella said. "But right now I wanted to get your opinion on Flora's suggestion: the Cloud Tower archive."

Bloom was clearly missing some context because Musa and Tecna made noises of realisation and approval respectively and she frantically scrolled to find the relevant message.

"That could work," Musa said. "They have all sorts of fancy spells hidden away there. The only problem would be actually getting there to have a look."

"We could put in a request through Faragonda," Tecna suggested. "She has sway with Griffin and it's hardly for frivolous reasons."

"Hang on," Bloom had given up trying to read everything and instead held up her hand in an effort to stop this conversation before it really ran away from her. "I'm lost, what are you guys talking about?"

"How you can find out about your heritage and genealogy," Tecna said. "You remember that junk room we were in when we broke in? Well there probably actually is a book that can help work out who your closest biological relative is. Although I doubt that it will with vines."

"Oh." That seemed far more straightforward and simple than Bloom had been envisioning. She hadn't considered that she could just go to a library and ask a book, but it actually wasn't all that surprising given what she knew about Magix and its schools. "That sounds easy."

"Well, Cloud Tower hasn't exactly been friendly to Alfea lately, downright hostile actually, but they are a school and their purpose is the transmission of information."

"You should talk to Faragonda," Stella told Bloom. "She's your tutor so she should be on your side."

"I'll, er, bring it up when I check in with her later." She knew that the headmistress would want to see her soon to check in.

Thankfully that assurance was enough that the others moved on to other topics and once Flora arrived back the focus shifted to her afternoon with Mirta. Stella was amazed that a witch and a fairy could peacefully buy some seeds to feed to the birds in the park while they talked and Flora seemed a little bashful about the whole thing. She even flushed a little as she described how the witch had perked up a bit during their time on a bench together which seemed odd to Bloom as she'd never seen Flora get so bothered about another girl. Maybe it was just Stella's interrogation-style questioning that was getting to her.