Summary: Anti-Cosmo is having problems with his fagiggly gland, and Anti-Wanda attempts to comfort him from the neighboring cell.
Characters: Anti-Wanda, Anti-Cosmo, Jorgen
Rating: K
Prerequisites: None
Posted: July 19, 2016
38. Weakening ("The Gland Plan")
Sunday March 13th, "2005"
Year of Sky; Autumn of the Frozen Planet
That Jorgen von Strangle feller leaned on his real big wand thing as he skimmed his eyes up and down and around someplace. "And then, I suppose you want another sandwich for dinner? With extra tomatoes and thick white cream cheese, and spider legs between the lettuce leaves?"
Anti-Wanda licked her dry lips and nodded. So, with a shrug, Jorgen pointed his giant wand, and some weird red bottle thing and a completely normal, dull, boring, average hotdog appeared on a plate with a pink poof of dust. Maybe it had been invented by the gray people. "You realize those newt eyeballs will go straight to your hips."
She stretched her clawed hand between the bars and flapped it as he started to move away down the prison hall. "Mr. Jarhead? Could I also gets one a' them nice tall ladders in here? These purdy red pajamas ya put me in make it so my wings don't work, an' it's been real hard tryin' ta get sleeps 'round noon without hangin' upside-down from this here ceilin'."
"Ha! Ha ha!" Crinkles curled up around his eyes. "Oh, now I am laughing at that. Sure, and I suppose you wish to run round and round underneath it to generate 'just a pinch' of bad luck for no apparent reason? I will not be falling for that trick ever again." He stopped in front of the cell on her left. "Ooh, you look as though you are upset. And in pain! Don't tell me. Is Cosmo still having troubles with his fagiggly gland on the other side?"
Her Anti-Cosmo hissed. There was a thud like he'd slammed his whole body to the glass wall. But, that's what Anti-Wanda would have done too. Heck- it's what a lot of Anti-Fairies would've gone and done.
"Okay. Here you are, Anti-Cosmo. I believe snakes are fond of eating mice. Isn't that how it goes?" There came another poof of magic. Anti-Wanda could feel the dry heat of it even from where she stood, so different than the typical, comforting Anti-Fairy chill. Something - multiple somethings - squeaked and scuttled. Jorgen chuckled as he moved along to the other few thousand awaiting their last meal of the day. Even Anti-Wanda had noticed that he only bothered himself with the prisoners on ground level. Some other fairy-type folk would sweep through to take care of the rest, like maybe that elfy Binky person with the funny purple dress and belt that made it look like he hadn't changed or even taken baths since the In-Between Ages. He still had wings.
"That was a good try with the ladder, dearest," Anti-Cosmo murmured once the big fairy had disappeared around the corner.
"I weren't really tryin' anythin'. I just wanna get a good night's sleep in this trappy place. I got achings 'tween my wings." Anti-Wanda took hold of the bars that sealed her in her cell. "Iss't true, Anti-Cossie? Is yer flagoozit gland goin' good?
He whinnied like a horse. A moment of quiet. She could read the 'yes' in that.
"Um. How's them mousies taste?"
"I wouldn't know. Rrright now, I'm a streetlamp from the 1800s."
"You should try turnin' back to regular or somethin'. Lamps don't eat mice."
"Yes. I realize that."
Anti-Wanda frowned, thinking hard...er. "You need a' get a fancy-schmancy gland transyplant or somethin' to put things right again. Don't you got a big brother? Couldn't ya get one a' them trainplants from him?"
"That ol' goody-goody?" Anti-Cosmo snorted, either out of disdain or because he had accidentally morphed himself into a pig. "If I rrrecall correctly, he's so deep in the anti-pixie corner of Anti-Fairy World, always offering to clean up their messes and sort them back into their own homes when they stumble from their parties high off Skittles and lemon bars, that we may never be seeing him again."
"Y'oughta call him sometime," she persisted. "Don't ya got that shelly phone from the gray folk somewhere?"
"Yes, it was the last thing I stole from H.P. before we left that dinner party of his about seven years ago. Or… was that perhaps earlier this year? Hm… I don't quite remember. I suppose it was earlier this year. Yes, that must be it." One of the mice squeaked again. "But firstly I left it back at the castle, and secondly the pixies have a magic lock on all of them anyway. The thing is utterly useless until requests have been approved, and unless policies have changed in the last couple years, I believe he screens them all himself."
Now Anti-Wanda was thoroughly confused. "Then how're ya gonna get better again? Don't broke Anti-Fairy flaglilies settle in after a bit of a while and freeze ya inta somethin' sweet'n good? Forever? Ain't that where shiny mirrors and black kittens'n salt shakers come from?"
"I won't get better," he told her, sounding as satisfied as a fat cheetah after devouring a gazelle. "Not unless that dunce Cosmo shows up trrrying to convince Jorgen to let me go free so we can have our fagiggly glands transplanted into each other. Fortunately, the chances of that happening grow less microscopic with every passing hour. Thus, dearest, I am not worried."
At first, Anti-Wanda didn't say anything. Then, haltingly, she asked, "But, don't ya think Cosmo's gonna be gettin' a transplant from his big brother too?"
"Oh, Fairy-Dr. Studwell will try, if he finds about big brother Schnozmo, regardless of whether Fairy-Schnozmo himself is even in need of a transplant and will come off the worse after such an ordeal." The word ended in a chicken cluck. "But my hope is that Fairy-Cosmo, boob that he is, is at least bright enough not to reveal his existence in front of a doctor seeking out a gland donor. Even the most idiotic fairy in the universe ought to know better than that. Fairy-Wanda won't let him."
She liked hearing stories about her counterpart - it seemed, sometimes, that Anti-Cosmo knew almost more about her than she did - so Anti-Wanda pressed a little harder both at his question and at the stone wall standing between them. "What d'ya mean by that-a-bit, 'xactamundo?"
Her husband's laugh was drier than Jorgen's poof had been. "My little teacup, no Fairy doctor would ever operate on an Anti-Fairy if he learned he didn't have to."
Of course not.
"Why's that 'xactly, pum'kin?" she asked as she scratched behind her ear with one foot.
"Because we're Anti-Fairies," Anti-Cosmo answered simply, his voice high like a bicycle bell. "They can't rrreally help themselves. It's biologically wired in those free-spirited fairies to avoid aiding us even in the smallest of ways. Even if the other option is hurting one of their own. As the Fairies always say, their instinct is to kill us on sight. The Finella reflex, they call it. Reflex, as though it came naturally to them. It's why the Fairy Council created the Rule that automatically disables their wands whenever they attempt to interfere with us dirrrectly."
"Is it, though?"
He considered for a moment, then corrected himself. "Well. I suppose in theory, that instinct could be one of the traits dragged out of them and into their anti-self once he or she is born. But I would hope that to be an uncommon occurrence. It wouldn't do for an Anti-Fairy to be so vehemently bent on wiping their counterpart from existence. They would only kill themselves once the job was done. But, if Fairy-Cosmo has any love or respect at all for Fairy-Schnozmo, he won't let Dr. Studwell transplant his bad gland into his one and only brother."
This was all starting to make her brain swim with fishes. Anti-Wanda picked up her hotdog for the first time, but lowered it again without taking a bite. She replaced her foot on the floor. "But you think Fairy-Cosmo won't tell this doctor feller 'bout Sch… Sh… His brother?"
"I really don't think he will. But even if he does, I think Fairy-Wanda will quickly put a stop to that. She'll come up with something."
"Ya do? Really? Ya sure? What makes ya think she gonna do that? Don't she dislike this Fairy-Schnozits the way I kin't stand Anti-Schnozits?"
He smiled, and touched the wall that divided him from her. Though she couldn't see him do it, or even hear him with her sharp ears or her echolowhatsit when she bounced it off the opposite wall, Anti-Wanda could feel the action deep inside her throat as he said, "Why, I think she'll protect Fairy-Schnozmo because she's partly you, crumpet! In the same way you have always looked beyond boundaries and attempted to befriend her, I believe she will swallow her own instincts to hate we Anti-Fairies, her instinct to bring pain to we Anti-Fairies - to leave us suffering - and she'll coax the others to seek out me, who in a perfect world should be the obvious choice for a transplant as this would be an operation that benefits both of us, as opposed to Schnozmo who would end up stuck with a bad fagiggly inside him. That is why I'm not worried over what might happen to me. Your soul is filled with love, and I've always thought that the two of you may not be quite so opposite after all, ahahaha!"
His voice turned into hissing smoke and the crackle of a campfire at the end. Anti-Wanda rested her forehead against her cell bars, arms dangling. It wouldn't be so bad if only she could see him. But hearing him grunt and whimper, not being able to mime holding his hand or even wave so he could see, that was the worst. Instead, she could only listen as he phased through shape after shape.
And that was hard, too. The way she'd been raised, Fairies were the ones who shifted shapes a hundred times a week. It was their culture. They turned themselves into noisy, flashing alarms to signal danger, or into crickets to signal. Why make animal noises with their own mouths when there was a shape that made it even easier?
It was against centuries upon centuries of Anti-Fairy tradition to lay claim to more than one animal form. Her family honored the scent hound, and Anti-Cosmo's honored the rat. Anti-Fairies valued such committed family ties. If Anti-Cosmo rejected their beloved culture, shifting through shapes as disloyally as a Fairy… even if it weren't his own fault… it was all too likely that their people might not even want him back. His days as a respected Anti-Fairy would draw to an end.
Were the people to shun their own High Count, what was she, the High Countess and his legal equal, left to do? Take up his reins of leadership and oversee those same folk who had spit upon her husband's head? Or hand power over to the camarilla court and end the Anti-Fairywinkle dynasty when it had hardly even begun?
Abandon her beloved, or up and walk away from the people who were her friends, from the culture that she adored, and follow him into exile for the rest of their days?
She didn't know.
And that actually really hurt, that she didn't know what she would do. Stay, or go?
Weary and cold, Anti-Wanda leaned there against the wall, reaching pointlessly into the quiet and the dark. If she only had the feel of his clawed hand in hers, that would take her fears away. She listened as he pretended not to weep. She listened as he smothered the grunts of his own pain. She listened until finally, he landed on something that could eat mice, and swallowed them. Though, being her husband, he shortly thereafter hacked them up like hairballs.
And then the door at the end of the chamber creaked open. Anti-Wanda pricked up her ears. Four shapes. One of them was Fairy-Jorgen. That much was obvious. The others were far smaller. One stood on the ground like a human, big head cocked. It was the two who floated like guardians on either side of him that made her brush off her tears and crack one of her wide smiles.
Fairy-Cosmo and Fairy-Wanda had come to save her husband after all.