O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc.: Because Pixalchia pipientis can be transferred horizontally via contact with lifedust, and is incapable of surviving in the damseline reproductive system, no damsel of the Seelie Court is permitted to approach a pixie who appears to be injured or sick, and the Head Pixie and/or vice president of Pixies Incorporated is to be contacted immediately. Additionally, pixies must be kept in isolation within all medical care facilities. Any and all lifedust is to be gathered and disposed of by pixies alone. Killing a pixie [addit: additionally, and poaching [sic] lifedust] shall incur capital punishment. Neither the Head Pixie nor any employee of Pixies Incorporated will be held liable for any drakian reproductive system adjustments or internal combustion and subsequent death among damsels that may occur as a result of contracting the Pixalchia bacterium. The Fairy Council will compensate the O'Weskar, O'Terrae, Delaney, O'Brian, Niven, McLester, and O'Conner families.

I didn't drop any of the glass water bottles as the sky dipped into orange and I hurtled past fields of wheat and sorghum. For the first time in two days, I felt free. Free. Free! Free as a cherub! Free as air! Free as a… as a… simile thought up by someone far more creative than a pixie! What is it that the humans say? No shirt, no shoes, no service? The 'service' part I may not necessarily understand without the proper context, but with my shoes stuffed in my pockets, my muddy gray jacket flapping at my waist, my dark tie still around my forehead, my shades pushed up except for the occasional jerk they made to slap my nose, I could almost make myself believe that my right wing had healed from the bullet wound and I could fly again.

The - could we call it my second bout of "brief euphoric insanity"? - ebbed off fairly soon. My sprint drew into a trot, with the grass tickling the arches of my feet through my socks. Then I returned to walking at a crisp, pixie-esque pace. The sweat beneath my arms brushed against the side of my chest with every movement. The chronic water-sipping returned as Flappy Bob's young wails dissolved in the distance.

Once, in our younger years, we'd questioned H.P. about the official title he'd bestowed upon our home, seeing as at the time none of us spoke the language- None would learn a single cognate or conjugation until he caved and allowed yours truly to accompany him to law school while he obtained that degree he'd dropped out of getting before I'd been born. Anyway, he'd embedded the mysterious phrase into Pixie World's legal name, and when it was finally explained to us we all agreed that it was appropriate for our species and our history: Vivite vitam vestram et nihil paenite. Live life. Regret nothing. The further I went, the less I regretted abandoning Flappy to the elements. He was only a human. They have shorter lifespans than even the Yugopotamians. And I was finally free of his sickly infant smell and inappropriately-grabbing tiny hands.

This- this delightful feeling that surged inside me… Was this, perhaps, that blood I shared with H.P. that coursed through every last pixie vein? That- that instinct, to just… to just… survive. That ability to process. Study. Decide. Declare. Act. Eliminate. Manipulate. Thrive. I could feel it. My future wisdom. My future success. My future (Dare I speak the dream?) pixies of my very own, each one obedient and clever and exactly like me, mine to raise and train and groom as I wanted to. All rolled up in one pleasantly warm and fuzzy feeling in my soul. One… very, very warm… very warm…

"Kansas is so hot," I groaned between locked-together teeth. Dropping to my knees in the gray-green grass, I took a moment to drink a little more of my limited water and dip my tie-turned-headband again in the wetness. Rubbing circles on my thighs, I waited for it to drip against my pores and cool my system.

Kansas stayed hot. And, in the end, I cracked my eyelids open and took up my six glass bottles again - down to one and half a quarter's worth of water - and forced myself to forge onward across the prairie.

Unhappily soon, I understood why Tam had warned me about wearing long sleeves. The jacket had come off so long ago, but the collared shirt I'd simply assumed was meant to be left on. And yet…

The bottles clicked down against a patch of packed dirt. I unbuttoned my shirt and peeled it over my head. My plan was to leave it in the dust, but after I trudged a few more yards, I changed my mind and went back for it. Ensuring that clothes didn't end up getting touched by magic from sheep to shelf was expensive, and if I made it back to Pixie World, there was no reason to spend unnecessary money on a new one if it could be washed and mended.

When I folded it up and laid it over my arm, I lifted my gaze in time to catch a dogged flash of sprinting purple melt away behind a red boulder. Like a rabbit. I squinted. "Wilcox?"

No reply. I stood up. "Wilcox?"

Unquestionably. No other pixie - no other magical being, arguably - would spend a lazy evening down near the Earthen side of Pixie World allowing their energy and funds to drain away where he thought the Head Pixie wouldn't catch him. Not unless he had a fagigglyne addiction and was itching for his regular fix. Only one pixie, of all five hundred and six of us (Sorry - five hundred and four - sometimes even we forget) did. And he practically lived and breathed his rabbit form.

I abandoned my bottles and ran around the rock, shouting his full name of Mister Wilcox and begging for the physical touch of his forehead, my forehead, our foreheads, his shoulders, his cheeks, his twitching whiskers, his tall black ears- I would take anything that would prove he was real. One flick of his starpiece and I'd spring up to H.P.'s office. After a week of Nevada, of Utah, of Colorado, of Kansas, it was time for me to taste the kiss of home.

My eyes fell upon a golden-haired will o' the wisp who knelt in the dirt, with a cone-shaped damsel resting in her lap. Both wore yellow and green from crown to toe like the wheat, the grass, the sunshine. Both had brilliant butterfly wings sweeping cape-like towards their ankles, but the nymph's were bright scarlet tipped with magenta. The larger damsel's violet and black. She wore a short, mulberry-colored dress and a very familiar pale blue knit cap topped with a bright green pom-pom. Backpedaling mid-shout, I corrected my- my mistake and ducked back behind the rock. I did not pant. I did not twitch. I merely pressed myself flat, and stared skyward.

"I can see your hair sticking up, Sanderson. Last I checked, only four pixies have the double cowlick mark, and you're much too small to be any of the others."

Without coming around the other side, I leaned my head back against the stone and closed my eyes. "There are six of us, actually. Newman, Hamilton, and Faust are easy for any non-pixie to remember from their size, and I'm the world-renowned poster child, but it seems your people always forget that Iris licked Millburn's hair that time in the ninth-floor washroom and Canary tagged Saddler the first Krisday beneath the mistletoe down in Labby. He's still furious about it; you'd think it's all he could talk about sometimes. You ought to keep records. Contrary to popular belief, we're not all the same." I debated the question of if I should wrestle my shirt over my wings again. Whether sunset was approaching or not, it was too hot to make a decision. Perhaps too late, anyhow. Biting the tip of my tongue with sharp pixie teeth, I buried my face in the sweat-stained fabric. "Fancy running into you, Mrs. Idona. Whatever brings you up from your burrow at this time of year?"

"Rains are coming. You can smell the difference in the dirt. Mama makes sure we always stay out in the rains these days if it's not coming down too heavy, ever since the Fairy Elder 'forgot' to tell us and y'all about the Great Flood. But, I assume you already know all about that. Where's H.P.?"

I crossed my fingers. "Nearby. Several others too, their starpieces brimming with rosewater."

Holding the little wisp to her hip, she came around the rock. I edged away, dirty fingertips scraping, as her hounding eyes bore into my every point and facet. "Where's your wand?"

"We don't use those anymore. Sparkletail v. Whimsifinado, yadda yadda yadda. I have a pen."

"Not with you, I see." She studied my wing. "You can't fly either."

"Pixies are below you on the social ladder," I pointed out, taking two more steps back. "Even if the cross-species drake tax died in spite of the efforts of Ivorie v. Goldenglow, I'm not worth your time."

Idona braced her palm against the rock. "Will o' the wisps don't care about the bottom of the ladder, Sanderson. We're low on its rungs ourselves, even if we're not brownie-low. You and they may be the only ones under us. But…" Her tongue slipped across her lips. "Don't you still have half a fairy crown under that hat?"

"No- Idona, Idona, please. I'm only passing through. I have important business. I live here. Whimsifinado v. Caudwell- I have to go back to Pixie World. Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle- I'm a neutral party on Earth." I glanced down at my bruises and scrapes, then up again. "O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc."

She clucked her tongue and said simply, "You're a lucky pixie tonight, Sanderson. You could traipse all over will o' the wisp country in that beaten condition, and none of us would dare stand within a quarter mile downwind for long. Your kind are natural misogynists, you know. One pinch of lifedust is all it would take to kick up a genocide, and we're still recovering from the Flood. What was the name of your martyr who trimmed down the leprechaun population? Mama says H.P. played the 'oopsie' card when he wrote his book."

Licking my lips myself, adjusting my flappy shirt in my arms, refusing to rise to the bait, I shifted my eyes to the little red-winged damsel. "You, erm, you finally got that daughter you wanted. Red, even. Red's desirable among your people, isn't it?"

She ran her fingers through the wisp's sunshine hair. "Mmhm. Took me a few thousand years, and now Kerani's four months next week."

"Congratulations," I said, reaching to adjust the tie that wasn't around my neck. My fingers twitched in empty air. "Normally in Pixies Inc. we say, 'Pleasure doing business with you' before we part ways with a client. However, seeing as there was no business nor client nor real interaction involved here tonight, I shall simply take my leave of you. Enjoy your rainstorm."

She set the nymph aside. "You're falling apart at the seams, Sanderson. Would you like some water and some shade? My burrow is only minutes north from here as the dragonfly skims."

A quick check through my memories turned up nothing that declared I was permitted to take up the offer. H.P. hadn't raised me to be lured into the cool underground like a sailor overboard to the sirens. I told her so and moved away. After a time, I even became brave and turned my back.

"You're going to get heatstroke if you stay out here."

"Not before I reach Pixie World." I pushed my squarish, wasp-like wings through the holes in my shirt one at a time. Not nearly so pretty as hers, even if mine were translucent and semi-lovely. "Earth's rotating. Sun's setting."

Idona took to her own black and violet wings and followed me in that silent way of will o' the wisps; buzzing was, evidently, unbecoming of them. "And that rain will be pitter-pattering down eventually."

"I walked through snowstorms in my nymphhood days."

"With the rain falling and the wind whipping, your magic lines might disconnect. You risk asphyxiating. That's not even including the possibility that lightning will set them sparking. Your Bridge's two cloudlengths off still. Suppose night falls before you go much farther. It gets chilly in Kansas."

"What part of 'chilly' was not included in 'snowstorms'?"

"I'm reaching. We both know I won't touch you when you're bleeding all over like this. Probably. I only fret because, as a mother myself, I'm concerned for your safety and state of mind." She sighed. "Remember when we were betrothed, Sanderson?"

I traced a square across my stomach. "Mmhm. I was promised to you because H.P. and I were your mother's prisoners and we weren't given a say in the matter. You and I had hardly four seasons of age between the two of us. Our nymph memories have long since rinsed away. Neither of us can confirm it even happened, except-"

"Except your Head Pixie wrote it down in his autobiography. So technically, there's proof and it's binding."

There was no reply to that. Technically it was (so I couldn't risk dragging her to court- no way she wouldn't whip out Epipole v. Fairy World), even without a magical parchment or if we'd never acted upon it. Too young back then. Too spiteful in our adolescence. Too uninterested now, too busy, and particularly after H.P. had convinced the cherubs that we were incapable of reproducing in any way other than. Mates were unnecessary expenses. Marriage was pointless except for the tax benefits. The drake tax had died despite Ivorie v. Goldenglow. There was literally no value in a union between us. And it wasn't as though I'd have real rights if I accepted. Not the way her kind ruled the underground that spread between humans on the surface and the Molpa-Pel deep in the core.

"Of course… I have blankets and plenty of room for you. You're not that close to death. There's at least one night of bright life left in there. Get a few full meals in you and you'll recover within the week."

That made me turn around, keeping expressionless even though nearly a full third of me would have enjoyed a good strong huff through my nose. "You can't lure me through fear. Don't think I forgot your venom sacs are drained now that it's not the season for will o' the wisps to be in heat- I know I have a fighting chance if you grab me. Pretty lashes and silky words may wrap Bayard or Hamilton or Longwood around your pinkie, but my shift doesn't end until 19:00. I have business to take care of. If I don't stop, I can make it; you said yourself that it's only a cloudlength before I come into official Pixie territory. If you're still tailing me when that happens, I'll press charges. After that, it won't be long before I can see H.P. again and sleep in my own bed with my own sheets and listen to Hawkins try and fail to suck his thumb and eat whatever I want for breakfast in the morning. Go kiss a brownie."

Idona's eyes had gone distant when I mentioned Longwood, but then they eased back into focus. As they did, I nodded once and began walking again. She said, "You know, most damsels wouldn't even kiss a pixie. I've met a few who claim you ought to be the lowest and the least desirable on the ladder. So, if you're telling me to kiss a brownie, what's wrong with kissing you instead?"

I flung out my hands. "I'm clearly busy, it will lead to nothing useful, and I am physically incapable of feeling affection towards you. Why is that a question? There is literally no point. Forget the brownies- Maybe you should talk to Anti-Sanderson. He finds your counterpart entertaining enough, from the distance she keeps him at bay."

Apparently, I'd left my water bottles behind. Well. I adjusted my shades and tucked my hands beneath my armpits, then spun on one heel a second time. Idona drew up short, and it was actually she who pulled away upon realizing our faces had come so close. I was unflinching.

"Ask yourself this if you're still confused, Ivorie: Why would I ever want to spend any time around a being who isn't the Head Pixie? He raised me. He looks after all of us. He ensures the survival of the Pixie race. Simultaneously, he is my past and my future. I want to learn all that I can from him. He spared my life as a nymph after his first two attempts to drown me failed. He cared for me at his own expense when he could have abandoned me to die. I am eternally indebted to him because of that."

Idona raised her eyebrows. "I'm gonna take a wild stab and guess you still parrot that like scripture these days, don't you?"

"It's scrawled across a plaque on every floor of every building. It's the Pixie way of life. But it's the words, Idona- the words!" I almost stopped walking again, just to lift my shoulders and release them. "Even if I didn't read them twenty times a day for tens of thousands of years, it wouldn't make them untrue. H.P. is my Earth and my cloudlands. He's my sun and my sky. He's my knowledge and my physical world. He's my magic and my wings. No one could ask for a more calculating, more efficient, more clever boss than he. He's my entire universe. And I want to be exactly like him one day soon." Gesturing to my outer self, I stumbled to the end with, "I've already come this far. It's mostly just his mannerisms and his cleverness that I'm left to pin down."

"I suppose you have," Idona agreed, sizing me up. "Well, back to my needs, what about one of your coworkers? All y'all are identical; I can settle for one of them. I'm not as stuck-up and picky as I was during my younger days, or so I like to imagine, when only you were worth my time. That wasn't my best idea, trying to fawn over you all day when y'all had your jobs to do. And you kissed like you taught yourself the whole careful process from an instruction manual."

"I did. Most everything H.P. doesn't teach us, we read manuals on like that, or Wilcox tells us from what he learned in school. It isn't as though these things come by instinct to us. We don't fall in love. Mates are unnecessary. Marriage is pointless. Also, you jumped me. I wasn't prepared. If you'd approached that stairwell kiss the Pixie way, every piece of it outlined and scheduled and discussed beforehand, I'd have done it better than Longwood. Very easily. Should I have wanted to. Which I didn't. Because you slammed me into the wall and lost control of your paralyzing venom. Bad execution. Very unprofessional. Totally beneath me. I've been groomed to be the best at everything, Pixie prince and all."

"I didn't mean to let the Kiss of Frost slip. The Head Pixie and my mom made me panic."

I curled my lip. "And you stole my wand while you had me pinned and forced us to throw all magic in the company on lock-down. You and the rest of your people wreaked chaos. Pixies dropped like fruit flies and some of them didn't wake up for days."

"Yes, well. Admittedly not my finest hour. I was going through a phase." She twitched her small pointed nose, then rubbed it. "I oughta be getting back now to Kerani. Come visit if you change your mind about the smooching- Just straight-up call me a pixie-kisser through and through. I embrace it. Good Bridges make good neighbors, and I see y'all come romping and flitting down here every other week. What can I say? Squares are my favorite shape."

I tossed all the icy acid into my voice when I said, "If you really do want kisses, schedule an appointment with Vice President Longwood. He might be able to squeeze you in. He always seems to find the time, and more often than not it's on work hours."

"Nah. I get awful flashbacks. Well, I'm nuts and moonshine, I'm sure, for not holding you to my lips while I have the chance. But my mama only wants all y'all to be happy, and she'll really chew my ear if I show up at the hatch with you kicking and squirming. Or she won't. You've got the Ivorie brand in your hair, after all. Maybe next time. Have a nice walk." Idona shrugged and darted away with some comment that she wanted to show her daughter a patch of soil soft for digging in, and earthworms to play with. I went on alone. After a few minutes of it, of spitting on my palms and rubbing the saliva along my sliced arms to chase away the dirt, I turned back a second time. "Idona?"

Whispering trails of wind. I took another step. "Idona?"

One lone pixie on a hilltop. Two hands scratching at the buttons that dabbed his limp white shirt. Three teeth chewing on his cheek.

"Idona, I didn't mean what I said, about pressing charges. You're welcome to accompany me to the Bridge. I could use someone to talk to, to help me watch for snakes and spiders. Come back!"

Nothing. After gritting my teeth and cursing myself for my own inabilities, I yelled one more time for her return. My feet started back in that direction. My head eventually set them on the correct course again. Almost there. Almost there.

Since Idona refused the offer, I held intelligent conversation with myself. Mostly relating to my lack of water. Where was that stream? Wasn't there supposed to be a stream? Perhaps it had dried over the summer. Maybe I'd see it once the rains came on.

There were rhymes. I made them. My only annoyance of belonging to a race called Pixies was the fact that 'Pixies' didn't rhyme with much. My personal favorite was 'Fix these', but it loses luster with overuse.

Okay, where was that stream? Had I strayed too far north?

The sunlight drained in the deliberately pretty way it liked best, first from the bottoms of each hill and rise and then from the top. After some consideration, I squirmed from my shirt again. The fabric was still stuffy and damp, and not wearing it allowed me to display the marks that hopefully would make the will o' the wisp damsels recall O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc. and think twice or thrice about bothering with me out of season. I spotted one with pale pink and white wings, but she kept her distance and our paths crossed from yards away.

Had I gone too far? Perhaps I ought to double back.

Puffing, I hauled myself onto a tall stone and placed my hands on my waist. Hmm. This area looked familiar, but not that familiar.

I still didn't run across the stream when I tilted my direction southward, so after following that trail for about ten or fifteen (Who cares about details anyway?) minutes, I wandered back.

Or, I tried to wander back. In a twist of fate that didn't come as a shocker to me, I managed to lose myself in a random field of drying flowers along the way. It was much easier to march through them than go around. Eh. Littering's a crime as far as I'm concerned and humans shouldn't be sticking stuff all over our territory.

No rabbits. I stuck out my lower lip. I wanted to see real rabbits in the flower field. Why weren't there rabbits? Shouldn't they be here and allowed to feast on clover and blossoms like in "Banjo"? They deserved to enjoy themselves too. Didn't they? Rabbits are just people, same as us. Sometimes they talk to you, if you listen. I couldn't listen today, though. There were no rabbits for me.

I met the Easter Bunny once. The Easter Bunny doesn't have to pay taxes and the Fairies forgot to tell us that until after we humiliated ourselves in chasing him. And he always had this thing about leaving us baskets of chocolate. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate. Everything chocolate.

Pixies like vanilla ice cream, though. When Wilcox was still mostly a nymph, Hawkins and I made vanilla ice cream every week with China. It was very good, but sometimes she added rainbow sprinkles and that made it weird.

Water. Please, water.

I'm not vice president because of China. The position was Longwood's by birth, even though he was the fourth of us. Pixies Inc. didn't even exist back then. We didn't even call ourselves the Pixies back then. But there are rules, and because of China, we always knew Longwood was going to inherit stuff. We used to snark at him that he was made in China. But it stings too much now.

I've slept with H.P. Lots of times. He always used to let me sleep with him before Longwood was born. Only on weekends, but it was every weekend, so it was okay. I'd wiggle into my pajamas that fit just right and I'd crawl into that big white bed, and even though he refused to lay his wing across me like he did when we slept in Kalysta's burrow with her other drakes, I'd hug my pillow and we'd drift off around the same time. Except I always stayed up longest so that when I knew he was asleep, I could squirm under his limp arm for a snuggle. Then I had to make sure I woke up before he did so I could sneak away before he found out. But in the years before Longwood was born, I wasn't allowed to at all. After a few centuries, I stopped expecting it like I'd stopped expecting him to give me baths and cut my pancakes and help me stuff my wings through the holes in the backs of all my shirts, and that was fine.

We always fought over who slept with the boss. When we were older, Longwood whined for comfort during the War of the Angels because all the wrestling and snapping teeth and bright beams of magic made him want to go pacifist. He stole my blanket and begged for cuddles to chase the nightmares away. H.P. wouldn't let either of us sleep with him because the bunks were too small. Even on weekends.

That's what he says, but it was because Longwood had no tact. He showed emotion. He was to be punished. And then we got older again, and someone spread a story about how Longwood got to be vice president, and someone spread a story about why I was the only one to ever accompany H.P. beyond Pixie World.

Longwood moved on to his damsels and people backed off, but I was too dumb back then to realize what he was doing, and even when I tried to spare H.P. from the rumors by flirting with damsels too, I got blanked. You don't kiss above you on the social ladder unless someone reaches down to you first. And H.P. took me by the back of the collar and stopped me from hunting down the brownies. Good. Because I would have done it.

So they forgot Longwood, but no one ever forgot to taunt me. "Sanderson's 'friend'", the Fairy media liked to claim. As if they thought I needed friends. Peh. Not so long as I had H.P. My relationship with him was something deeper than regular friendship. It was something deeper than regular fath… Er, paternal connections. He had absolute trust in me to keep watch while he slept and defend his back if it came down to a fight. He let me handle his money and even his starpiece and he ran all his plans through me first. Show me many… drakes who trust their… drakian… offspring in the same way the boss trusts me. You can't.

I loved being treated as a drone in his company because he never threw me out to go to school or to find a mate and he was going to let me stay and work for him forever and ever and ever. My life was perfect and I wouldn't ask for it to be any other way.

Except I'd like to find that smoofing stream.

Just when I was considering angling my course even further south, I caught a glimmer against the approaching rain clouds and twilight sky. A purple dash glinted like a scar.

First I pursed my lips. But… it was it! The Bridge to my Sprigganhame! My wings flicked up. H.P. wasn't pacing there awaiting me, but I stopped caring after the first few wingbeats. The aches melted from my arms. I may have shouted once, and I took off in a sprint with my tie flapping around my ears. I made it only part of the way before I had to stop and rest my feet and regret the abandoning of my water bottles again, but the next time my pace slowed, I found myself standing at its base. Mushroom Rock, big and balanced on a point, lay a few dozen feet to my right.

I drew in a gulp of unneeded air. My shoulders squared of their own accord. As much as pixies could square any squarer, that is. All of a sudden, it didn't matter that I still looked entirely unprofessional. Five stripes in tints and shades of glowing purple from orchid to mauve arced upwards into the sky. I was home.

I'd only climbed the Bit Bridge on foot once in my life, when H.P. returned from the hospital where the Fairy Elder had carried him after he'd scalded his hands and cheek to the bones with raw magic (He still had those scars, actually- the one trait besides the notches near the pterostigmata in his wings that I might never share). The slope was steep enough to slide down on a plastic tray from the food court (which Bayard and Michaels did once and spent a month on laundry duty with Rosencrantz for it), yet stable enough that it held my weight as I scrambled up, useless wings fluttering, and wriggled above the cloudline.

Glorious, sweet, open sky! I made the attempt to bundle it all in my arms as I spun in a circle. My blind foot stomped on the fingers of one pixie on his knees, setting out purple, square flower pots of daisies beside the crisp Pixies Inc. billboard and angling them precisely. The only pixie who ever bothered to, since it was literally what he'd been born and bred to do, and it showed in the name H.P. had given him.

"Jardine!"

His face went blanker as he drew back his injured hand. "Sanderson? What happened to your shirt?"

"I'll put it on later. First-" I snatched him up and tried to spin him around in the air. That did not work. Us being genetically identical rendered us about the same size (I am not shorter!), and we crashed together in the road. Jardine pulled away, cuddling one of the flower pots to his chest. His lavender eyes darted behind tinted lenses.

"We, uh… we probably shouldn't let anyone catch us in the act of, erm… What do you call it?"

"Hugging?"

"Yes, that. It's too… fun." He removed his shades and squinted. Then, with a shrug, he set his wings buzzing again. "Tensions are thick with the Las Vegas incident burning in everybody's minds. Caudwell's still blowing off steam somewhere- thought it would go through and finally be his ticket out of here. What took you so long to get back? Where is your starpiece?"

"We'll have story time later." I rolled to my feet and searched the blocky, scattered clouds for my dirty shirt. "Did H.P. make it back?"

"He's in his office."

"Is he? For long?"

Shrug. "I was about to head up there myself with the daisies." His eyes drifted towards the Bridge, then to me again. "When I was down there fetching dirt, it looked as though it were going to rain soon. I hope we don't get infested with will o' the wisps again; Hirschi broke the lock to our apartment. Would you like me to ping you with?"

"Please do. I'll pay you back tomorrow."

Jardine withdrew his pen from the inner pocket of his suit coat, but frowned at my bare, bruised chest. "You may wish to dress yourself first. I don't think H.P. would much like it if you showed up in there unpresentable like that."

"Of course." First the shirt. Then the tie. I flapped some of the dust from my jacket before pulling it over my shoulders. Licking my palm, I ran it through my hair so my cowlick stood a little taller. That was better. Jardine stuck his thumb in his mouth, then brought it to my cheek and swiped off a chunk of dirt. At my nod, he made a writing motion with his pen, ended it with a flick, and we pinged to floor eighteen of the Headquarters building.

"Ohh," I sighed, staggering backwards against Madigan's secretary desk.

"Is something wrong?"

"Not a thing. It's been days since I felt the magic particles in my blood light up with clean, pure pixie magic. Feels like a week. I could drink it for an hour straight right now."

Jardine nodded as if he understood, though he didn't, really. I scooted past him to half-drown myself in the water cooler (Ha, ha- That was a joke, you see), and together we waited until Madigan slowed his typewriter clacking and glanced up.

"Madigan, Boss wanted me to bring him more of his things." Jardine lifted the flower pot. "It's going to rain and will o' the wisps are out. Gotta be presentable and stuff."

"Eh, let's hope they don't come. Rosencrantz fell asleep on sentry duty back in March and Delaina slipped straight past him and got me with the longest Kiss of Frost I've ever had to take over by the central fountain (ID tags, please? Yes, these check out). Left me paralyzed from Thursday to Tuesday. Thankfully Longwood showed up and distracted her before she could carry me back to the Bridge." Finished with his typing, Madigan took off his shades and replaced them with his glasses. He studied us both, one brow high, and as was proper policy flipped the switch that briefly diverted the energy field away from the room.

All at once I was two hundred thousand years of dizzy and sore, and found myself attempting to draw magic through my mouth rather than my limp and severed lines. Jardine's wings buzzed out of instinct, but he dropped to the floor regardless. Every magically-formed item dissolved, as did the curls Jardine liked to put at the front of his hair. No disguises. We were the real deal.

Then the field was allowed to sweep over us again. Changing the glasses back for the shades, Madigan placed his fingertips on the metal bar beside the intercom on his desk. "H.P., Jardine and Sanderson are here to see you."

"Are they?" he answered mildly through the speaker. "Curious. Send them in."

A tremor started in my heels. I could have melted. He was here. He really had made it back in the flesh! Madigan released the bar. As he returned to the typewriter, one hand flicked towards the solid white door. I took the handle and held it open for Jardine. He gave me one last sideways glance for encouragement, then ducked in. The square pot of daisies went down on the edge of H.P.'s desk, near his tall purple swivel chair, before Jardine slipped into the hallway once again. I let the door fall shut behind him and waited for H.P. to finish writing.

He was in far better condition than the last time I'd seen him. His cap had straightened back into a point. His suit was free of wrinkles. The bandage on his forehead had long since shriveled up and fallen away to reveal not a scratch. Bumps and bruises remained on his face, along with the exposed cuts on his cheek and neck, but another restful night would likely be enough to take care of those. A thin whine tickled the back of my throat until he'd come to the end of his paper. Licking his finger, he flipped to the next page of whatever it was he was working on and glanced up.

"Sanderson," he said, pleasantly surprised. "I see you managed to return to Pixie World in a single piece. Well." He studied my cut shoulder, exposed by some gap in the sleeve I'd never noticed, then made a motion with his finger for me to turn around. "Nearly in one piece."

I bounced on my toes, waiting for him to summon me to his side for my usual bedtime pat on the head before I headed off to my room for the long night without him. When he said nothing more, I pushed my shades closer to my eyes and faced him again. "How long have you been in Pixie World, sir?"

He plucked up the small clock on his desk. "Let me think. I was here all Saturday. I drove on Friday until it grew dark. I imagine I reached the Bridge around 17:30 that night. Then I had Longwood organize a search party for you. They've been searching Jetmore ever since."

"Longwood?"

"Yes, though they did not alert me that they'd located you. I was beginning to wonder if the will o' the wisps had dragged you underground after all. It's likely to rain by morning, Caudwell tells me, and they prefer to be out in it to reassure themselves there won't be another Great Flood to wipe out seventy-five percent of their entire species. They can't swim, if you remember that…"

"What about Flappy?"

"The humans took him from the car while we were each occupied with the effects of Anti-Naelita's black cat hex, and I couldn't sneak him back. Madigan pops in on their farmhouse every several minutes to scan the perimeter, and I'm at this very moment working on an outline for how we may retrieve him. We can't simply launch a direct attack, or the Fairy Council might consider that an antagonistic action and press charges, as they would not violate Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle in doing so. Possibly we could offer the humans a bribe, but I'm concerned that they might attempt to shoot at us, seeing as they already did catch you and hunt for me while we were there. Sending a fairy wouldn't necessarily work, as they might turn on us regardless of any money we promised-"

"I spoke to one of the humans, sir. The damsel - Tam - she brought Flappy to me and allowed me to go. She feared he'd been kidnapped and did not want to get involved, and she thought we were taking him to a place of safety."

"Oh, did she? That solves everything, then. Where did you put him?"

I rubbed my left knuckles with my right hand. "I… I had to leave him behind, sir. When I was halfway through the grasslands. I had to make sacrifices in order to keep going."

H.P. paused, his pen hovering like a fairy over his page. He looked up again and at last made eye contact with a rush of warm pins and needles. "You left Flappy Bob in open Kansas regardless of whether the coyotes and the scorpions and the wisps and whatever else might come across him in your absence?"

"Yes, sir. I had to, sir, or I wasn't likely to make it back myself before the wisps or the rains got me. Sir. Those clouds were awfully dark and heavy by the time I reached the Bridge and, if the will o' the wisps watched me lose my footing on the way up and slide back down like we often watch them do, I wonder if they might have pursued me and claimed me simply for entertainment. I imagine Idona still believes she's entitled to."

H.P. clicked his pen into the wire cup on his desk and beckoned me closer. I circled around to his side, almost tripping over my own toes. My fingertips tapped along the unfailingly sharp lip of his desk. Both wings peeled themselves from my sweaty back and took to fluttering. Without moving from his chair, H.P. reached up and leaned his dry palm against my cheek. I placed my younger, softer, but genetically identical hand over it and drank its warm brush through a coffee straw- the shining silver hairs waving on every knuckle, the chipped fingernails speckled with blue ink droplets and smelling of newspaper and orange-cinnamon muffin crumbs, the way each crease and wrinkle and scar molded to my skin like they were intended to lie there and no other place, the way the freckled liver spots were as if by some magic I'd never learned perceptible to eyes alone and not to feel. My hands were destined to be precisely like this someday, my hair just as white and feathery. I wanted it.

The familiar floating sensation settled beneath my stomach and drew me, without a starpiece, nearly an entire inch into the air. My eyelids flickered shut. I nibbled several times on my lower lip, no longer making the effort to keep the quickening from my wings. As they started to rub and chirp, the Head Pixie's fingers inched up behind my neck, where my dirty hair swirled in faint curls that had once graced his own head. There he held me rooted - his loyal firstborn, his favorite protégé, his flawless replica, his crown prince, his perfect son - as my fingers tugged down the ends of my sleeves. Nearly of its own accord, my tongue dabbed at the inside of either cheek as he tightened his grip. I'd long missed those days when I was small enough that he could hoist me up by the nape of my neck, when it was undeniably obvious that I was his nymph, that I belonged to him, and it was entirely acceptable in my young mind for me (if behind his back) to refer to him as my-

My nose slammed into the edge of the desk. Against every instinct howling for me to touch the stinging spot between my eyes, I calculated the situation and rerouted all energy into keeping my face expressionless. At most, my eyebrows moved upwards a millimeter. A millimeter is far too much in Pixies Inc.

"Sir?"

H.P. withdrew his hand from behind my head. He shook it once as though it were sore, or soiled. "I'll be docking your paycheck before the first of October, Sanderson. If you should ever come into possession of some item that I have informed you will be useful to me, and that I hope to use to propel an upcoming thirty-seven-year plan, I want it brought back to me and not tossed aside like a pencil worn to the stub. Wheedling another human baby away from its parents may not be easily done. You've ruined everything again."

Still low and clinging to his desk, "But I did the right thing! I put the survival of the Pixie race before all else!"

H.P. opened his mouth. It stayed open for several wingbeats. A gnat could have flown through one fuzzy ear canal and crawled up the other, perhaps, without him stirring. He shut his lips again. "Did it occur to you, perhaps, to wonder what I would have done in your position?"

I narrowed my eyes. "You've abandoned me in the snow before, sir. Twice. Once to spare yourself from the will o' the wisps. Once to spare yourself from the blizzard."

"That's…" H.P. removed his glasses and massaged his nose. "That's entirely different. He's a human, and you're a pixie. Can you define the divergence?"

"His words call upon the power of the universe whereas I am a drone, unskilled and replaceable."

"Precisely. Humans are imaginative. Have been since the days we actively referred to them as the Angels. For reasons no one has ever been able to explain, they forge deep bonds with those who simply are around them, to the point where they form actual emotional connections. This - you know I disapprove of the word, but we'll call it that - 'love' is how the humans express their magic. When a human acknowledges and expresses a true desire, what can we, and all the Seelie Court, do with it?"

"Springboard off their magic with our own to call upon and then channel the higher powers that our ancestors the Aos Sí once held in the days of the Great Dawn, sir. We briefly achieve the second level of ability and thus the opportunity to dramatically alter the lower reality."

He inclined his head. "Humans, and in particular their wishes, are a valuable commodity. Don't forget that." Then he rose to his wings. "We had best go and retrieve Flappy Bob."

My wings thrummed back into action. "You're coming with me?"

"Of course I'm coming. Evidently, I can't trust you to manage the simplest of tasks on your own."

"I don't make mistakes on purpose, sir," I told him, sprinkling as much innocence into my voice as I could possibly manage without breaking out of monotone.

"You don't make many mistakes in general," he grunted. "That's why I allow you to accompany me anywhere at all."

Of course I didn't. If there was one thing I understood better than any other pixie, it was tact.

"Sanderson," H.P. called as I opened the door for him. I pushed my eyebrows together, and he moved his finger up and down to indicate my upper body. "Shirt. Tie. Jacket. Shoes. Missing sock. Everything is dirty and you've bled over every bit of it."

"Yes, sir. Should I retrieve my backup starpiece from my office?"

"No, I'd prefer not to wait around for you to grab it and have it unlocked and synced and registered. Do that on your own time. I'll ping you up to standards myself." He did, with magic softer and more organized and not nearly as stiflingly hot as the stuff the Fairies pulled out out of the air. Clean clothes. Straight hat. Smudgeless shades. Purple sparkles ran along my arms and face, doing the best they could without a night of rest. I'd nearly forgotten about my chipped front tooth. "But this comes out of next month's paycheck. Was he far from the Bridge?"

"Two and a half cloudlengths west, roundabout."

Shaking his hand in an exasperated fashion that drove an invisible javelin through my stomach, H.P. reached behind him to his desk and lay his hand on his intercom's metal bar. "Madigan, have Monroe send me the coordinates of Longwood's active starpiece."

After about twenty wingbeats, a scrap of paper pinged into the wire basket at the edge of H.P.'s desk, beside the daisies. He picked it up, paused, removed his glasses, stared a little longer, and then passed the note to me. "What do you make of this, Sanderson?"

When I read the location, I almost chuckled aloud. Forcing myself to smother my rising mirth, I said, "That looks to me like his starpiece is in the Ivory Wand & Comet Blood soda bar, sir."

"That is what I thought. Fair enough, then. We'll be making a quick detour to the Oklahoma skies. But I would prefer to move fast, so-"

Ping!