Summary: Wanda and Cosmo, love their son they may, just aren't as thrilled as they could be to learn that Poof is dating a will o' the wisp. They just don't understand him! Surely Foop will back him up?

Characters: Poof, Wanda, Cosmo, Foop

Rating: T

Prerequisites: None

Posted: August 5, 2016

51. Opinion (Far future; post-series)

Fourth Wednesday of Late Winter; Aurora 8036

Year of Breath; Winter of the Two-Headed Fox

Poof knew it was way too obvious that he wanted something. He had tidied up his room without being asked, his homework was done, he'd played Blocks and Fetch with his father, and he'd cleaned behind his ears in the shower and even rinsed all the dirt from beneath the knobs of his wings. But, well… He did want something, and this was the best way he knew how to get it.

And so it was that after the supper dishes had been cleared away from the table - it was one of those lucky days when his father hadn't pierced the magical shield that kept the fish bowl's water out of the door and flooded the whole place - that Poof summoned up his courage with an intake of air through his nose, and released it. "So, Mama, I've asked a girl out to the starshine cotillion next week."

"Have you, sweetie?" After lining a third teacup on the counter, she brought her eyes lower and squinted at it. Then she added a fourth cup to the end and began to rotate them so all the handles pointed backwards. "That's my responsible little baby- no procrastinating for you."

He flipped the tail of his blue headband over his shoulder with his ponytail and nodded. "I was wondering if maybe I could invite her over for dinner, so you could get to know her and learn to like her as much as I do?"

"Well, sure! I think that sounds wonderful. We could have eggs" - she poofed up a plate of eggs - "spaghetti" - poof - "nachos" - poof - "Why not Friday? You and me could have a real mother-son bonding experience getting this place ready for a girl by Friday. What's her name?"

"Um. Well. Ooh." Poof moved his hand from the headband to the small heart charm that closed his favorite pale green jacket at his neck. "Goldie Goldenglow?"

The fifth teacup slipped from his mother's fingers and snapped in half on the hard floor. The sink water ran on, and on, and on in what was otherwise complete silence.

"Please don't be mad," he squeaked.

"So, do you mean Marigold Goldenglow?"

"Yes, Mama. From school."

Wanda hovered a little closer to the ground. "Oh honey, you… you can't do that. She's a will o' the wisp and, well… you're older now."

Poof tasted his chubby cheeks filling with color like a chipmunk in the process of swallowing paint. "Why does that have to matter? If you would just get to know her-"

Her one usually-upward eyebrow arched a bit higher. "Please don't raise your voice with me, young drake."

"Yeah," his father piped up from where he perched on the kitchen table, swinging his legs and dabbing his fingers at crumbs. "Only your mother's allowed to raise any voice in this tiny underwater castle."

Shaking her head enough to bounce her curl like a jack in the box, Wanda enveloped Poof in her arms and lifted him up (Impressive feat, considering the, well, the baby fat he'd never really grown out of around his middle). "I'm not about to sit back and let some will o' the wisp take my sweet son away underground forever. Sport, they taught you biology in school, didn't they?"

His eyelashes were sticking together. And the upper half of his face was mostly eyelashes, so that was a lot of stick. Poof rubbed them with his left wrist. "Yeah, they did. And one of the things I learned is that fairies only fall in real love once in their whole lives. And I love her."

"Shh, baby. Shh. I know. I know you think you do. Better to love than lose, right? No, wait. That's not how it goes."

Even Cosmo clicked his tongue. "Poor, silly, naive Poof. Of course you can't love a will o' the wisp. You already love me and your mama! We're already your family! You can't just replace us like that."

"Your father's partway right. Almost. Well, sort of. Disregarding his logic" - Wanda held Poof at arms' length, hands gripping his shoulders - "I think maybe you'll have to tell the Goldenglow girl that things have come up, and you can't make it after all."

"But she's not like that-"

"Give it up, hon. I'm not budging."

"But if you would just get to know her-"

Wanda set her lips. "Poof, if there's one more word of protest out of you, then the reason why you can't make it will be because you're grounded for a month."

Poof clenched his fists and struggled to shake his way from his mother's straight-jacket grip. "You guys always have to be so stubborn. It was a whole nother new millennium last week! Times have changed from when you were growing up and went to school."

"Change is for humans, sport."

He threw his arms forward. "I don't get it! Why do you always act like this? It's not like I'm asking to date a stupid brownie or something. I'm no pathetic brownie-kisser!"

Silence slammed down around the kitchen. Mother and son trailed their eyes to Poof's father, who had for once let his smile slip and his wings droop. Like they were on automatic, Cosmo's long fingers reached up to touch his nose.

"I didn't mean it," muttered Poof, averting his gaze. He scuffed a shoe in the direction of the floor, even with his wings still twitching faster than his lower lip. "But Mama, please- I really like her."

She let go of him, which sent him dropping to the ground before he could get his freed wings whirring the way they were meant to. His legs nearly crumpled beneath him when he hit. "Go to your room."

"What?"

"Please, Poof, go to your room. You're too upset to listen to reason and I need to find my list of counter-arguments. We'll talk about this when you've calmed down."

Out of spite, he swiped a banana from the fruit bowl before he flared his wings and snapped off. He half-wished he could march, but given how flimsy his legs were since he always preferred flying to walking, he wasn't willing to risk making a fool of himself via face-plant. In the entrance hall, he chose a pink door, then a blue one, then two greens in a row, and finally a purple with red heart shapes and a golden crown painted in the center. When he slammed it shut, he heard the lock click into place.

He whirled around, mouth and tongue dropping. She locked him in! In his own bedroom! Like a prisoner! Like an animal!

And it wasn't like he had a window. Well. Poof could have poofed himself out at any time he wanted, or even turned himself into a mouse and squirmed through the hole in the corner, but unless he was pushed too far he was mostly an obedient child, and he was reluctant to act against his parents' obvious warning that he keep in there until he cooled off.

Tossing aside the banana peel into his laundry, Poof grabbed his shiny black scrying bowl from his desk and threw himself back on the bed, hard enough to splash some of the precious liquid on his sheets and purple hair. It took five minutes for the green stripe around the inside of the dish to load all the way up and fling his intent off to Anti-Fairy World - faster than it would have taken him to contact any other Anti-Fairy, actually, what with them sharing the same core - and Poof watched all of it through a half-lidded stare. He had all evening to burn.

"Come on, Rubik's Cube. Pick up. Pick up."

Splashes bubbled up along the surface of the water like singing raindrops. After another several minutes, the idiot on the other end finally realized he had an incoming message and swished his own bowl. The water smoothed over to reveal a short, thin, awkward, acne-faced figure dressed in a dark blue sweater and a black lab coat that shimmered sometimes between navy and maroon, his head cocked to the right. Two inky coils of hair lay thick and tight as snakes on top of his forehead.

"Poof? I hope this is important. After decades of effort, I finally caught one of the dratted little pixies and I was just about to draw out my tools and perform a dissec- Sorry, would you pardon me for a moment?" He turned around. "Stop giving me that stare, Southmark. Can't you see I'm using the bowl? Any more sass out of you and I really will let that hipposelachi swallow you up."

Still dull-eyed, Poof waved his wand. Distance cost him a solid chunk of energy (and at least a few months' worth of his allowance), but he could see the puff of purple smoke on the other side of the line. The pixie poofed as near to Pixie World as Poof could bother to toss him. Foop gave an outraged shriek.

"Oh, that's quaint, beach ball! You come sticking your nose into my business and then interfere with it! When I tell my father about this-"

"Foop, I just want to talk something over, and you're the only one I can trust to convince me that I'm really wrong. I told my parents about my plans to ask Goldie to the starshine cotillion on Saturday. They didn't take it too well."

The anti-fairy's jaw didn't slacken, and his eyebrows didn't shoot up, but he did stand there staring down into the bowl for quite awhile before he wriggled one claw in his pointed blue ear.

"I'm sorry. Start again, from the part you said at the beginning."

Poof leaned back, bracing himself with one hand. "Yeah, I practically licked their pointed shoes all night tonight, but my parents won't hear it."

"You're pulling my 'stache."

"No, they won't even listen to my-"

"I mean about actually wanting to ask Marigold Goldenglow somewhere as- as undeniably un-platonic as that. You're turning this relationship more and more serious, aren't you? You are. Why not just notch her wings now? Though I suppose that's only a fairy thing and a wisp wouldn't go for it. Drat." Foop patted his pockets. "I've actually been meaning to talk to you about this. I've just been busy. For. The last thousand and twelve years. Oh, snake oil- it would seem I've misplaced my list of counter-arguments. No matter. I don't need it." Clucking his tongue like an anxious dolphin, he twirled one end of his thin mustache around a finger. "Poof, buddy, my best friend… You'd truly like my opinion? You know she's a will o' the wisp, don't you?"

"What's the problem?"

"The problem? What isn't the problem? Where would you like me to begin?" He set his palms facing each other and moved them from his left side to his right as he plowed onward with, "Her people's habit of killing drakes who aren't in heat or the fact that they keep harems?"

The purple fairy lowered his chin to his chest. "I don't think it would be so bad. Not as long as I was with her."

Pushing away the bowl on his desk with a force that sent the water shivering, Foop grabbed the tips of his mustache and flattened them to his cheeks. "Oh no. Ohh, no. This flirty business has gotten to your head. Curse my hunches always being correct! … Also, curse my dratted hunch and constant squint. I really ought to invest in a charming pair of spectacles. But you really do want to date her seriously now! Seriously! And at your age too, oh no oh no oh no. No. Please, please don't do this to me, Poof. You know I have no choice but to get with the Anti-Marigold if you, y'know… mate. With her. Especially if she takes you down to her burrow."

"How is that my problem?"

Foop's eyes moved back and forth over the watery image of Poof's face, his claws now embedded in the dark hair on his head. For the moment he was speechless. Then, "I- I'm the High Count's son. I have an image to maintain- my reputation! What are people going to say when I end up tangled in some random harem off in the dreary forest someplace, sharing my wife with three or four other drakes and raising half a dozen pups who aren't necessarily my own?"

"That your counterpart's a wisp-kisser. They can't hold that against you. Hey, at least she already likes you. You'll probably be her favorite. Lucky you."

"But my father will disown me!"

Poof crossed his arms behind his head. "Still not my problem. Try harder. I'm not convinced."

"That's it! You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? A-attempting to cost me everything I desire and have worked this long to obtain. But that's not fair."

"Am I usually fair to you?"

He watched as Foop briefly disappeared from the bowl, then came back, and left again. He was pacing back and forth, clinging to the floppier of his two large curls and muttering under his breath. The lab coat billowed behind him like a shadow. Then he took up the scrying bowl.

"All right. I warned you, Poof. If that's the way it's going to be, I have no choice but to call off our ceasefire and torture you until you see reason."

"What, don't you like Anti-Goldie? She's like the only one of your people who doesn't cower at the sight of a boomerang. She drives a jeep. A tiny pink battery-powered jeep she stole from Anti-Longwood, but still. She does that spinny baton flippy thing with her wand. She chugs lava by the gallon. And she cooks a mean burrito."

"She's an anti-will o' the wisp! Do you know how they get when they're in heat? Ask any one of my people and you'll hear a thundering chorus of agreeing voices that there is nothing more horrifying on this side of the Divide! And if they're not in heat, they're having pregnancy mood swings. No, no, no. Literally anybody else would be fine. But not the Anti-Marigold. Dear Rhoswen-" He pinched his nose. "Why are we even having this conversation? This is the kind of talk you have with 650-Years! Not a fairy a couple weeks away from finishing upper school for good. I mean, look at you! Look at us! We're practically ready for high school, and yet here we are quibbling about something that ought to be entirely obvious."

At first, Poof hugged his knees and did not answer. Foop ranted on for several more minutes, and when it became obvious that he didn't plan to wind down before morning, the fairy finally cut him off with an obligatory, "I love her".

"Pah! Even other will o' the wisps don't like will o' the wisps. And you know your parents are going to find out."

"My mama and dad eloped. They know what I'm going through, and they can't boss me around like this."

Foop frowned. "Oh. Well. My father asked my mother's father for his permission to court her."

"I love Goldie, and I'm going to ask her out, and one of these days I'm going to move to Tennessee and live in her burrow-"

"No, you won't." Foop lifted his obsidian wand and pointed it at the curtain of water between them. The tip glowed a deep, sparkling crimson. "Not once I get through with you this weekend. You can't just- Please, Poof! Don't throw away our lives like this! Seriously, who does that?"

"-and we'll have a whole bunch of beautiful crossbreed babies, and you can't stop me!" Poof splashed his hand in the water and broke off the connection. The bowl he slammed back in its place. His head thumped against his pillow. When he closed his eyes, he was there again. That day she'd let him hold her hand on the field trip to the aquarium, even during lunch. That day they'd moved on from playing cars and blocks during indoor recess to playing footsie beneath their desks. That day the power went out and she'd clasped his hands to her chest and held them until his gasping trickled away. That day he'd let her flaunt his green junior letterman jacket to her damsel friends. That day he'd ran his thumb down her cheek while she played with the swirl in his hair. That day she'd perched at the mouth of the cave where they'd sought shelter when they were hunting for toads for their biology project and the storm swept in. She'd had her arm bandaged up in her cast, and sat peering at him over her shoulder as the rain pinged down and her wings glistened in the wetness.

They'd had their first kiss in the saucerbee dugout, and their second, and their twenty-eighth. Poof knew every board and nail of that dugout, and he knew Goldie loved him from the way she caressed the curve of his thick neck with her pale fingers and licked at the saliva still glimmering pink on her lips whenever she pulled away. She always pulled away at the worst of times, right when his magic lines were jittering with a tingle-fritzy high and he wanted to kiss her most. Oh, she made him gape and whine like a nymph again, a nymph wanting his mother's milk, and she'd tickle his nose and step backwards and lure him closer with that wiggling index finger. If he could catch her around the waist and spin her into the air, she'd let him kiss her again. He was a full-blooded fairy. Fairies were the fastest. He always caught her.

He knew Goldie loved him because she always played board games with rapture and teased him when he tried to throw the game for her. She'd smack him with her cards and game pieces, and he'd grab her wrist and pull her into his lap. Sure, he'd spent many a breakfast scribbling in the answers to problems he and Goldie were supposed to have worked on together the night before, but he was clever and attentive and his grades never slipped very low. They worked as a perfect team in self-defense class. No, he definitely didn't mind shielding her back, even if it sometimes took one or two slaps upside the head from Foop to remind him that he was supposed to be looking the other way.

They partnered on everything the teachers allowed, as they should- being the two most popular kids in school meant they had to maintain their image, act as was expected of them. Perform all the expected public displays of affection, have all the expected fights in front of the crowds, get caught tangled in one another's arms in all the expected places. And when his mama had gone off on a weekend camping trip with his godsister once, Poof had even convinced his distractible father to allow Goldie inside, and the three of them had spent the whole night together in front of the TV before they'd poofed her home. It had been a very nice doorstep kiss. Foop had come into history class positively purple the next day, and they'd gotten a good laugh out of the way he flushed and stammered when he and Anti-Goldie accidentally bumped shoulders in the lunch line, freezing the both of them eye to eye unblinkingly, and finally thrown down his tray and wrapped his leathery wings around his face.

Goldie was beautiful. How could Poof not drool over a damsel that beautiful? What did it matter that his eyes glazed over when she babbled on about the acting career she hoped to pursue? What did it matter that she'd never gotten him a present on his birthday, or anything for Christmas besides a deep smooch beneath the mistletoe? As long as she whispered into his ear with that sweet Southern accent - like something straight out of an action movie - when he held her against his neck, what did it matter if she was a will o' the wisp?

Bubbles signaled that Foop was trying to call him back, but Poof yanked his covers further over his ponytail and left the bowl to simmer. What could he possibly have to say? Anti-Fairies thought love was only a name to give the relationships that were forced together among their kind courtesy of their primary counterparts on the other side of the Divide. Foop had never been in real love. He could never understand.