2 episodes in I'm still finding plenty to like about Fate, but plenty also that just is criiiiinge. Stella in particular is pretty terrible but I also pity her for being so colorless and awful compared to the real Stella who's so much happier. The worldbuilding also I love it and it annoys me a lot. And I really like Instructor Silva but I'm not sure why. Four episodes to go and I'm looking forward to them!
5 153 Twig ~Dinner~
Friday night I go home for dinner—home to an amazing tower that my Dad built with magic. The magic dimension is so cool.
I get off the bus and wave to Nerys, who's fluttering around the trees in the yard. I pause trying to see what she's doing, and she chirps happily and flies down to me, "Twig! Hi!"
"Hi Nerys. What's interesting in the trees?"
"I'm checking on the bird nests. That one has three eggs, that one only has two but the nest in the big pine tree has four. I'll show you where they are if you want."
"Sure, just let me drop of my stuff."
Nerys zips behind me and tries to lift my backpack from my back. "Oof. How much homework do you have?"
"A lot..." which I don't have to do tonight because it's Friday! "Where's Mom?"
"Cooking. We were in coventry all day. It was boring. And damp." Nerys shakes herself like a damp dog, and opens the door for me.
Delicious smells drift from the kitchen and I hear sizzling onions and peppers. "I'm ho-ome!"
From upstairs comes, "Welcome back!" From Mom and, "Hi Twig!" From Dad. I dump my backpack in the entryway, get my phone out of it, and go upstairs.
The kitchen and living room are the next level up, all in one big room, so you can watch TV while you cook. The kitchen has cobblestone floors and racks of pots and dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. Mom's stirring something in a frying pan while three jars of spices float in the air, sprinkling the food in the pan. "This'll still be a while, you can go wash up."
I do, and when I come back Dad is setting the table while Nerys pours cat food into Hex's dish. We sit down and pass around tortillas and fried up veggies and fake-chicken. Nerys has hers in a little doll-sized plate and eats sitting in one of the hanging racks. Mom and dad are already deep in discussion about whatever is happening on Coventry. It's been months and Mom's still trying to get all the important people to play nice and set up a democratic government. According to Mom it's a "great big pain in the neck."
"You could just sic Amanda on them." Dad offers. Ne's smirking, trying to make Mom laugh and she does, tiredly.
"Don't tempt me. Amanda would love to prove just how unfit she is."
I'm looking at the empty chair across from me and wishing Mom and Dad would talk about something else. At least I wish they'd be a little less matter of fact about Vera having other parents who are magic and royalty and not ok right now. Maybe they'll be ok later, but it's taking a long time and it's really annoying. And this whole thing is the reason Vera's still on Earth missing out on all the magic!
Nerys plops down where Vera's plate should be and does a dramatic droop to the side. "Boring! Politics is boring! And damp."
Mom chuckles. "Sorry. Even I'm bored with it. New subject, any news from Alfea?"
"We're doing edible potions, all those magical teas and Professor Palladium says next week we'll do tea leaf reading to tell our futures. And I joined the aeroslam team!"
"Good for you! Can we come to your games?"
"Maybe not the first few... Cassie gets twice as many goals as me. She and Phe are watching Earth TV on my computer, mostly the cooking channel."
Dad cocks his head in confusion. "Students at a magic school who do magic all day want to watch people cook? Earth cooking isn't even different..."
"Phe says everybody's accents are cool. Amber sneaks in to watch with them and explains the Earth stuff."
"Speaking of..." Dad flicks his hand and conjures an envelope that he passes to me. A fancy envelope, heavy paper with my name embossed. "Double sun crest, it's from the Solarian royal court."
I pass the last piece of chicken from my dinner down to the cat and wipe my hands on my napkin before opening the envelope. It's from Prince Samuel! Just a little note to say he enjoyed dancing with me, but an actual note from an actual prince! My first thought is that this is juicy news and I want to call Cassie and tell her right now, but then I realize it might not be that big a deal. Lots of princes go to Red Fountain so all my classmates have probably danced with royalty before.
We're done with dinner and dad gets up to clear the dishes while I reread my note in delight. He noticed me enough to send a note! Maybe we'll meet again… but then I'd have to decide what to do about the boyfriend I already have, but that's a question for later.
Mom tips her head towards the note, 'One of the boys noticed you? Just remember it's always complicated with royalty. Stella married a commoner for love so the boys pretty much have to make alliance marriages to princesses from other realms.
"I just danced with him a few times, we're not getting married!" I protest.
"Yeah, but he might be looking at you as a prospect. Or not—just remember it's complicated."
Mom's trying to warn me but all I can think is that she said I might be worth it for a prince to think about marrying! That would be so cool! I want to think about this some more, and maybe ask Amber who knows all about royal families. "I'd better… get started on my homework!"
"On Friday night?"
"I want to go look at nests with Nerys, and there's a livestream from earth I want to watch later." I get my backpack and scurry upstairs where I unpack my homework and then don't do it. It's pretty interesting homework: a series of stories about potions that went wrong and we have to pick out what the imaginary brewer did wrong and why that caused the bad result. It depends on knowing details, like what order operations usually go in ad which ingredients are easily mistaken for each other.
Instead of doing that I climb out the window and Nerys shows me all the birds' nests in our yard and then I text Princess Amber about the note. She replies casually, You'd be good to marry because of who your father is.
Wow. I am both flattered and a little freaked out. I don't want to marry anybody yet! Tetsuo is sweet and fun to hang out with but we're not ready for anything serious!
I have to drag my brain away from that to turn my computer on and find the livestream. The head of Phonebox Games is going to do a reveal of the newest game on its release day. And I'm still excited to see it even though I'll have to wait until we visit Earth to play the game. Or maybe Magix has compatible gaming goggles somehow.
It takes a few minutes to get connected to the Earth internet. I catch up on my friends' facebooks and make a post about procrastinating my homework. All my Gardenia friends think my whole family is in Paris so I can still talk to them as long as I don't post about magic. We had a long family talk about how magic needs to return to Earth naturally so it's not a good idea to tell everyone I'm a fairy. Maybe later, when I'm grown up and have my Enchantix I'll be able to go to Earth and help my friends find their magic.
But that's later. Now: video game. I open the stream and there's Mr. Ishida, still looking kind of nervously goofy in front of the camera, with his messy hair and his rectangular glasses reflecting the lights of wherever he's recording from.
"Haha! Welcome everybody to the reveal stream. Now while you all download, let's see the trailer again..."
The video splits into the trailer in one window, Mr. Ishida in another and some figures showing download rates for the new game. I'm not downloading; my connection to Earth internet doesn't have the bandwidth for a whole game. But I get to watch the trailers and read livechat about everybody's guesses about the plot. Will the hero's best friend return from captivity or has he been turned to evil? The hints are that he's evil now and we're all going to be helping the hero turn him back. Mr. Ishida talks on about development and the physics engine and all that programming stuff.
Partway through there's a crash and Mr. Ishida jumps. "Sorry, a light fell over. Can we..." He steps back from the camera and—he doesn't have a shadow.
I jump, then lean forward and skip the video back. It really does look like his shadow vanished. But he's recording in a studio with special filming lights. If one of them is pointed the wrong way… I'm seeing things, right? Just because my sister's headmistress in Paris lost her shadow that doesn't mean it happens to random people all over Earth. Mr. Ishida lives in California. I watch the whole rest of the stream barely hearing about the game because I'm trying to catch a glimpse of Mr. ishida's shadow. But I don't see it. Even when he points over to one of the other videos his hand doesn't have a shadow on the table. I don't think anyone else watching the stream would notice, but it's all I can see.
I open the door of my room and call out, "Nerys?"
A questioning chirp comes back and a minute later Nerys drifts into sight and announces, "They're talking about boring things again."
"Come here and see if you can see his shadow in any part of this video."
"O...kay." Nerys chirps confusedly but floats in next to me and watches. "Who is that man? Is he from Zenith? He talks like Zenith."
"That's Naoki Ishida, he makes video games. I was watching about the next Legend of Ages goggle game and his shadow disappeared. I think."
So we watch the whole thing again and Nerys keeps leaning closer and closer to the screen. But by the end neither of us has seen Mr. Ishida's shadow after the time I thought it disappeared.
"That's bad isn't it." Nerys says.
"Yep. If we're not just seeing things… it doesn't make sense though, it's supposed to be hard for your shadow to fall off accidentally but now two earth people in the same month?"
"Maybe it's an evil witch!" Nerys suggests.
"Maybe, but hardly anybody uses shadow magic even here in the magic dimension. I read about it." I droop back in my desk chair and let my arms hang down.
Nerys floats above me and looks down at my face. "We should tell Mirta, she'll help figure it out."
"Mom's busy with all that boring stuff, so we shouldn't bother her. Not yet anyway. If Mr. Ishida starts acting really weird so we know his shadow is mission, then I will."
"Ok." Nerys sounds disappointed and suddenly I wonder about her feelings. She and Mom were… adventuring buddies I guess. Then Mom left, then we all came back but now Mom's our Mom and not having as many adventures. But I still don't think we should bother her with all this shadow stuff while she's so busy on Coventry.
"Hey, you can help me figure this stuff out if you want, only on days Mom's doing boring things."
All Nerys' fluffs slick down making her a lot thinner, whatever that means. She slowly puffs back up and she chirps an enthusiastic, "Ok! Can I read your scary book?"
"Sure. You can read it now if you want, I'll send Vera a message about Mr. Ishida."
