The trip to the record store (affectionately named 'Fuck You, Ms. Man') was relatively uneventful, though Hoshi nearly pissed herself over my ride. Most faeries are accustomed to flying places, naturally, but with my unusually petite wings for my body frame, my flight was limited to glides and short, chicken-like sprints. To compensate for this, the science department had helped me create a vehicle that ran on clouds, sunshine, and rainbows (I kid you not), a commodity in vast quantities in Faerieland. The vehicle was something like those human-made Vespas, only instead of running on pavement, it took to the air.

"You're shitting me," Hoshi said when I headed towards the bike instead of taking flight.

"Nope." I reached into the passenger compartment for the helmet, slinging the headstrap over my finger. I held it out to her. "Put this on. You're gonna need it for a first-timer."

Hoshi approached the Moltenore (for that's what we had named the bike, making it live up to its name by applying lamely ironic flame decals) as if it were a wild beast she sought to tame. I slipped onto the driver's seat and jammed the key into the ignition, starting her up with a loud snap and a cough from her engine. Hoshi flew back timidly at this, unused to motor explosions.

"What is it?"

"We call it the Moltenore. It's a vehicle. Kind of like the Fae downtown, only without all the motion sickness." The Fae was our public transportation, primarily used by graying faeries with weakened wings or those of extreme laziness. The Fae was a semi-organic machine with wings affixed to each car, allowing it to fly while simultaneously making for a nauseating ride. Fittingly, puke bags were affixed to the bottom of each seat.

"It only seats two."

"Yeah, usually only one, but I hooked up the passenger cart for Jew yesterday. She was too wasted to fly home."

"Jew?"

"Jhudora." 'Jew' was a common and affectionate nickname for Jhudora at the time, while she was still in her young, impressionable punk phase. Upon the pronunciation of that name, though, Hoshi's face turned several shades paler and twisted into an unfittingly ugly grimace. She seemed even less likely to hop into the cab next to me.

"You know … you know Jhudora?"

"Of course I do, she's my co-worker. Coke dealer too, you would like her." As she faked vomiting motions, I smiled curtly. "Of course, you seem to already have had an experience with her."

"She's my ex-girlfriend." My stomach dropped down the elevator shaft of my intestines.

"She's your what?"

"Ex-girlfriend."

"Oh, sweet shit. You're kidding me, right?"

"I really wish I was."

"Hoshi, that bitch's slept with everyone."

"That's why I broke up with her."

"You get yourself checked for STDs?"

"No."

"Word from the wise—you might want to get that looked into," I advised, giving her a worried look. "Don't worry about it, though. We can probably perform it on you at the lab." This wasn't entirely true, but thanks to the look Hoshi was giving me, I would've lied to the Faerie Queen to make her feel better. Such a tragic look on such a beautiful face was invariably heartbreaking. "You still want to come with?"

"Yeah. It's fine." The phrase reeked of falsity.

Hoshi nodded numbly, finally daring to approach the Moltenore. Perhaps she had given up on her fears in the face of a possible genital disease—a fate, perhaps for her, worse than death on a synthetic flying machine. Without speaking, she took the helmet from my hands and mashed it down on her head, crumpling the waves of her hair distressingly beneath it.

I revved from the handlebars and took off, the wheels treading hard against the thick sidewalk of clouds before sputtering and angling up from the ground. I dug into the accelerator and the Moltenore took flight, thrusting itself high above my house.

There's one thing about the Moltenore—it gives a faerie a whole new perspective on flying. Faeries often forget what a gift they have, born with wings, a gift for which the groundbound grow green with envy. Flying as transportation, for faeries, is so much like a non-pleasurable walk in the park. It requires strength and endurance, and for the few faeries out of shape, flying is a laborious, unseemly task. Even those gifted with fitness and a love for exercise often grow weary of flying, the task now so commonplace and worn of charm.

That's the biggest problem with the faerie population, in my opinion: how they fail to stop gazing groundward after their first trial flights. Unlike them, I've never had the opportunity to grow accustomed to flight and have its gimmick rubbed thin in weeks of a fledgling flight. They fail to register the grandeur of laughing at gravity, feet dangling like hot air balloon ropes.

With the Moltenore, I was given the skill to fly without the taxing nature, and thusly the ability to revel in my distance from the ground, string clipped in liberation. From the vantage of my marvelous machine, the sight of tiny faerie heads beneath my feet never fell out of fashion. And Hoshi, gazing down from the side of her car with jaw unlocked in awe, was now stripping back those assumptions of flying ingrained in her memories, seeing sky for the first time.

We flew in an understanding silence, only the Moltenore making a sound of a soft, Kadotie purr. Hoshi seemed in perfect peace until we gently landed in front of Fuck You, Ms. Man, wherein an itching seemed to overtake her bones.

She shed the helmet automatically, throwing in my barely-ready arms. Jumping out of the car, she gave a quick look around, her nostrils flaring as if to smell the air for danger. Her red eyes were blinking like ambulance signals, the threat of death in the air.

"I have to go," she declared shortly, and didn't even wait for my response before turning her back to leave. I abandoned the Moltenore momentarily in need of an explanation.

"Wait, wait, Hoshi. You can't just leave me like this. Where're you going?"

"Far, far away from this … this aura."

"What aura? Look, Hoshi, it's fine if you want to scram, if it's about Jew. My shift ends at six, Jew gets off a little bit earlier than that—even if she doesn't, I'll stick around. You'll meet me here, right? Then you can see the lab." I threw out my last bargaining chip, a pawn I had no real right to deal.

"So, Frankenstein—is this your new girlfriend?"

At that point, I felt every muscle in my neck tighten in a mix of aggravation and fear of being caught with Jew's ex. I turned around gradually to see Jhudora in the doorway, her body leaned against one side of the frame and one green-polished hand set against the opposite.

Later in life, I would've burst out laughing at her appearance—at that point, Jhudora was religiously committed to gutterpunk fashion, and wore it with a heightened obnoxiousness. Her hair was cut into a female hawk with one side of her bangs purple and the other a noxious green; a strip of hair from her forehead to her spine stood erect care of Aquanet and Elmer's. She wore hooked-lace boots that came to her ankles and were beaten up at the toes, and a tartan skirt that barely covered her privates. Wrapped around her shoulders was a self-studded shrug that boasted patches of flagrant name-dropping, with an army-printed tank top containing her breasts beneath.

For the time being, though, Jhudora seemed like a femme fatale: a force of a dark faerie that was not to be trifled with.

Because I was an ass hole with suicidal tendencies, I trifled with her anyway.

"Why, yes it is, my precious Jew bag. And what, pray tell, would that have to do with you?"

Jhudora snorted, giving Hoshi a thorough look over with her eyes. "I never figured you had a taste for damaged goods, Frankly," Jhudora replied, directing her sentence towards Hoshi. It was laced with insult. Hoshi didn't reply—she seemed to have been petrified in place, paralyzed by a former flame.

"Of course I do, Jew-das. Why do you think I fucked you last Friday?" I replied with all the saccharine in the world.

Jhudora raised her lip to reveal a crooked fang. "Don't get smart with me, Frank."

"That's kind of easy to do with faeries with an IQ of fence poles. But don't worry, I'll dumb it down." I pretended to look into the air innocently, placing a finger mockingly on my bottom lip. "Oh by the way, Jew-dy, do you think I should consult my doctor about the burning sensation I get when I pee now?"

"Frankenfurter, do you like your penis?" Jhudora asked calmly.

"It has its moments. Why?"

"Because if you don't shut the fuck up, I'll be permanently detaching you from it." Jhudora curled her fingers into a semi-fist, her nails seeming to grow three inches instantly.

"Stop it!" demanded Hoshi, suddenly breaking from her stony fate. Jhudora and I both looked over to her unexpectedly—the fight had quickly grown between Jhudora and me, and had no real air of seriousness to it anymore. With Hoshi re-involved, however, Jhudora honest spite re-entered to the conversation.

"Well, I guess you and the half-breed should go start making you crack babies now. I'll give you two some privacy," snarled Jhudora, flashing her fangs at me threateningly. "Oh, and Hoshi, honey? Please don't leave your baggage lying around here." With that, Jhudora whisked back into Fuck You, Ms. Man and slammed the door behind her, sending the "Open" sign swinging back and forth.

I gave a low whistle as I turned towards Hoshi. "Shit … I'm glad I'm not Jew's ex-girlfriend."

"You should've seen her when I broke up with her."

"I can only imagine." There was a brief pause as I considered whether to ask her something. Finally, I gave in to temptation. "Do you mind telling me what she meant by half-breed?"

"Oh, that?" Hoshi smirked. "Not only is Jhudora a prize-winner in personality, she's also an elementist."

"And that concerns you … why?"

"I'm half-light, half-dark. I like to think of myself as milk chocolate."

"I thought you said you were … ?" I pointed towards the sky.

"Nah, that's just what I like to tell people when I'm high. Speaking of which …"

"Nope. I don't know any other dealers of that besides Jhudora." A lie made for her health's benefit. Her face fell momentarily, but I guarded myself against sympathy for her disappointment.

"Ah well. I guess I'll talk to Wery today then." She looked warily towards the door of the record store. "You still have to work today?"

"It's not as bad as it looks. She should be calming herself right now." I heard a crash from inside—the familiar sound of vinyl-against-glass. "Yep, there she goes right now."

"As long as she doesn't kill you."

"She won't kill me. She hasn't fucked me yet."

"I thought you said--?"

"It's a face-off, Hoshi. You say anything you have to."

"Oh." She chewed on this for a moment, a flicker of nearly let-down in her eyes. Something lingered on her lips before her departure—she bit at them, and then looked back at me. "Just out of curiosity, what element are you? Earth?"

"You say that because of my wings?"

"Pretty much."

"I'm going to disappoint you. I'm a light faerie."

"No shit?"

"No shit at all. I'm pure, though, so Jhudora has less to bitch about at me. Plus the fact that she still thinks I'm an earth faerie."

"Hmph." A cross between a smirk and a laugh slipped from Hoshi's lips. "You have any more cigarettes I can bum?"

"Only at home."

"Damn. I guess I'll see you later then."

I didn't say good-bye—I was too focused on watching her leave, the retreating sway of her hips. Unlike most faeries, she didn't immediately leap to the air for flight—she bided her time on the ground, sinking her feet into the cloud before springing into the air, her wings a blur behind her. Curious too was the fact no residual magic dust flaked from her wings as they moved—even mine, small and virtually useless, emitted particles usable for minor spells.

While I was glad Hoshi's upset mood had evaporated, I could only imagine what Jhudora had in store for me as soon as I entered the store. Still, I knew I would be in for a harsher whipping if I skipped out on my shift, so I reluctantly turned back to the door and snuck inside.

Jhudora's mood had lightened once I got inside, but that hardly prevented her from hurling a shard of a vinyl in my direction. I nearly gave her a tonguelashing for such a blatant waste of merchandise (despite her being my supervisor), but then she informed me that the LP had been of The Beatles, and we both agreed it was for the best.

Jhudora's rage appeased, my shift went fairly smoothly with an encouraging lack of customers. Those that dared interlope on our domain were thrown to the door with pretentious jabs at their music taste, unless their eyes first wandered to what we deemed a worthy album. That ended up being all of one faeries—four others were turned away with scorn and elitist snipes.

Between our games with customers, I gently eased Jhudora onto the subject of Hoshi. While it involved several more smashed albums (Abbey Road, The White Album, and Sergeant Pepper respectively), I managed to squeeze valuable information out of her. From Jhudora, I gathered that a) Hoshi was an avid coke user care of none other than Jew-dy herself; b) while Hoshi had no official home, when she wasn't crashing at a friend's pad she snuck to and slept at the Faerie Queen's telescope; and c) rumors had been circulating that she had some kind of a destiny to fulfill, as if she were a savior for faeriekind.

"That's fucking ludicrous," I insisted at the final comment, taking a hit from that pipe we had started. So few people came into our store, either still scarred from a previous humiliation or overlooking the sign in its obscurity, that we could afford to really relax. "If she's some sort of savior, why isn't the Faerie Queen looking over her? Why's she out snorting coke?"

"Who says the Faerie Queen isn't looking over her? She doesn't do her own work of course—not only is she royalty, she's already a trillion years old, and she's gonna give up her seat once she actually has a kid. She's got a fucking million spies. They could be watching us right now, waiting for an excuse to kill us."

"Shit, somebody's had one too many tokes."

"Shut up and pass me that pipe."

Other than the hoax I assumed Jhudora had created right at that moment, my shift was uneventful, besides some slow hippie dancing with Jhudora to the Grateful Dead. (Our music taste declined drastically when we were high.) Once Jhudora and I had chased all of the collar, multi-colored bears out the front door, I managed to scam Jhudora out of the rest of her shift as well. Admittedly, it wasn't that hard—closing at seven was a laborious task, and more often than not we played poker to determine who would be the unlucky employee. As record store employees are never the brightest crayons in the box, a simple cheating system had guaranteed me a clean record until now. However, Jhudora wasn't going to let me go down willingly.

"No way, Franky. We're playing for tonight, whether I win or lose. I gotta feeling the stars are in my favor."

I rearranged the constellations in her favor that night, purposefully drawing a hand of shit and putting a straight flush in her green-clawed hand. I bit my tongue to prevent myself from exposing my fraud as she flaunted her winning hand in my face. Even if we had been playing poker for real, I would've been out as soon as she picked up her cards. Her poker face was a mixture of giggles and squeals of delight with a bit of brow-furrowing tucked in depending on how stoned she was.

Jhudora finished her gloating after a period of ten minutes, and then lost interest. Packing up the makeshift pharmacy she laid out under the cash register every morning to get her through the day, she checked the money box and pulled out a few bills, muttering something about a night on the town. I bade her farewell and she hardly gave me a gesture of the hand for good-bye, humming an inaudible tune in her head.

Hoshi seemed to appear moments after Jhudora's exit, pushing her face against the window goofily. Her fine features mashed against the glass, and she blew at her mouth, inflating her cheeks to obese proportions. The door was open, but chivalry hadn't entirely died for me yet, so I jumped over the counter and opened the door. She stumbled in, falling into my arms, smelling the soft, cancerous smell of cigarettes and coke.

"Where've you been, Hosh?"

"Around," she commented, rubbing at her nose and giving a hard sniff. I noticed the knit bag by her side had regained its depth. "You said you'd show me around the lab, right?" she insisted, grinding at her eyes with a knuckle. This only served to further the pale blue lines streaking her eyes, indicating a bloodshot condition.

"Yeah, I d—"

"Frank, you smell like weed."

"It's just the record store." This was partially true; like a headshop without bong or bubbler, Fuck You Ms. Man retained the characteristic smell of marijuana, trapped in the cardboard of old gnomer LPs.

"Sure," Hoshi snorted incredulously. "Anyway, let's go."

"I have to close up shop."

"Do it quick. I'll be in the Moltenore."

She exited without an offer for help—I was briefly annoyed, but soon lost myself in taking stock of the albums and the minimal cash in the register. The smell of greenbacks never failed to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, sending almost hypnotic shivers through my nerves. Though from a young age we are taught greed's negative effects, the tempting, golden apple of money always dangles before us so sumptuously. Up until that point, I had been virtuous in keeping our profits in tact—there were so little that it was pointless to nab them anyway.

But now a sinister something whispered inside of me, pushing me to pocket the money. I had heard that voice before—a voice spoken with a forked tongue and bad intentions that caressed my inner ear. It appeared in dreams—dreams of a distant future shrouded in dark nebulas as in a clouded crystal ball. Its voice was quiet now, only the mangled voice of a child that committed petty crimes of forgery and five-finger discounts. Yet deep in the future I could hear its resounding echo played behind that obscuring curtain, played loud like an imperial march of French horns.

For now, I took the cash. It was only a few crumpled bills, but my heart felt a burden lifted from that hoarse consciousness with the money nestled in my pocket. I reasoned that I needed the money anyway—I hadn't had a decent meal in ages, and Hoshi certainly deserved one as well. In the present, these convoluted means led to a brighter end; yet as I groped towards the future, I could only wonder if upcoming intentions.

Calmed, I grabbed the key and slid out the door, shutting off the lights and closing the door behind me. Hoshi sat half-asleep in the car of the Moltenore, her eyelids lifting slightly at my arrival.

"Let's go, Frankly," she murmured, strung out and mellow.

"Just Frank is fine, really," I insisted, throwing a leg over the bike.

"Dr. Frank?" asked Hoshi, slightly muffled by the cracking start of the Moltenore.

"Nah, you've got to put the doctor before a surname."

"Faeries don't have surnames. That's reserved for pets."

"Maybe so," I shrugged, lifting the Moltenore into the air. Once we had reached a decent cruising speed, I reached into my pocket again—my hands grazed past the bills to a pack of crushed cigarettes and matches, just barely usable for smoking. I lit up as Hoshi lounged, myself with one hand on the steering bars. "What do you think about Dr. Sloth?"

Hoshi lifted one eyelid, hardly hearing me. "What?"

"Dr. Sloth. For a name and all."

"Like from your band?"

"Yeah."

Hoshi held up her hands, as if framing the name against lights. She spoke in a deep, smoky voice with an official twinge. "Doctor Frank Sloth, Ph. D." Her nose crumpled in distaste after saying it. "I don't like it. It hurts the tongue."

" 'Frank' is always going to sound like a swear word to faeries."

"It's not just that. It gives me this … creepy feeling. Like there's worms in my stomach."

"You're just high, I think it's good."

"You're not going to refer to yourself as that from now on, are you?"

"Oh, hell no. Though I may have it plaqued in gold on my desk," I replied sarcastically.

"Frank," mumbled Hoshi, tracing the name in cursive in the air. She repeated it several times before cringing again. "Who gave you that name?"

"Orphanage."

"They didn't love you much, did they?"

"I was a runty boy faerie. What do you think?"

"I'm going to rename you."

"Oh?" I answered with a roll of my eyes.

"Yeah. But not a real name. We've gotta have code names, like spy operatives."

"God, now I know you're high."

"Listen to me! So I'm gonna be … hmm … I'm gon-na-be … I've got it!" She pointed up to the heavens, as if using them for evidence. "I'm going to be the Space Faerie, savior of Neopia, and live on the moon."

"Cooookehead."

"Shut up, I'm still thinking of yours. Wait, wait, I've got it! The Happiness Faerie!"

"What the fuck?"

"It's supposed to be ironic."

"Oh, I see. And where do I live?"

"In the aeroplane over the sea."

"Laymans terms, Space Faerie."

"In a space ship circling Neopia. See, because the Happiness Faerie's a scientist, right? And we have grand visits every so often, where we invite each other to dinner."

"Ahhh, I see. Do we ever fuck on these occasions?"

"Only when the moon is full."

"Then I'm gonna love months with blue moons."

I continued to courteously listen to Hoshi's inane ramblings until we landed at the lab. While I parked the Moltenore, Hoshi hopped onto the ground and smeared a portion of powder against her nose.