130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash

by FountainPenguin

Various one-shots related to my FOP headcanons based off a list of 130 Prompts, featuring multiple storylines that occasionally cross with one another as I play with worldbuilding and plot holes. (Written April 2016 - Ongoing) LATEST UPDATE: "Approval" - Sneak peek at 155,000-year-old Foop's life on the student council as he decorates the gym for a high school dance.

51. (92) You'll Never Know

Summary: Foop wrestles with the concepts of love and pity while caring for an injured Anti-Wanda in Anti-Cosmo's absence. If you've ever wondered why Poof is a flower child and/or how "T.U.F.F. Puppy" fits in my united Hartman show timeline, I bring you the war that goes with that.

Characters: Foop, Hiccup, Anti-Wanda, Smoky, Anti-Sanderson, Anti-Cosmo

Rating: T

Prerequisites: "Shadow" and basic knowledge that Anti-Fairy regeneration exists (My one-shot "No Absolutes" is a good pre-read for this too)

A/N: One "fairy year" is approximately 12,000 human years. 1,000 years feels like a month to fae. 80,000 is the equivalent of 7 "fairy years." This measurement is more accurate for older fairies; young fairies develop very quickly (By age 50, babies attend Spellementary School, and they move to middle school around age 5,000). Foop is mentally 11 throughout this time period.

Posted: December 5, 2019

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92. You'll Never Know (~80,000 years post-series)

Spring of the Swirling Fireflies - Autumn of the Smothered Flame

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Father hasn't been home in 77,776 years. "Flitting between scads of licentious women, no doubt," I used to quip when the media asked, but when Mother's sideways glances turned more hurt than scolding, I dropped my jokes and never tried again. Only she can ever make my ears burn so hot (I swear, the dame's disappointed gaze is single-handedly preventing me from tearing a third hole in the fabric of space and time).

On the anniversary of the day his disappearance was marked official, Mother reaffirms her commitment to ruling the Anti-Fairies on her own. She makes a simultaneously pathetic and endearing sight leaning against the amphitheatre's podium. Though I stand beside her, I can see her face reflected in the crystal balls that float like mosquitoes around our heads. The crowd mutters. I keep my hands clasped behind my back, gripping my ba-ba in case I need to use it.

I never saw my people as the bad kind of evil until the war began. Mischief makers, yes. It's our role. I have mass doubts about the pseudo-scientific theory that we are what the universe's storytellers made us, that our fates are marked out by people we've never seen. We weren't bad, any of us fae, really, because, see… It's in our blood, so it's all right. Predators aren't bad. They keep the balance in the world, keep the prey from overbreeding. Being an Anti-Fairy is like that. Energy needs balance because magic left to grow stale can damage everything, and when I was young I never saw us as the bad kind of evil at all.

Then I saw how our people treat my mother when Father's not around. We're all a little horrible, aren't we?

Really, if you were to put a claw on it, I don't think I saw myself as evil until words like betrayal and assassin and coup became part of my daily dictionary when I was barely 1,500. When Mother nearly died, I tracked down the damsel who'd thrown her from the clouds. The thing is, we needed to catch her anyway because she wanted my family dead, so I didn't think anything of going alone. Her name was Heather. I locked her in the tower dungeon and had great fun tormenting her with all matter of revenge plans I'd been dying to implement, and then Father summoned my therapist four times a week instead of twice, and I fell asleep puzzling over this new idea that there were other evils in the universe, and maybe I had strayed from the good kind of evil a little too far.

I gave Heather a break on Saturday, knowing she'd spend the whole day too on edge to rest at all. Besides, I'd been delaying my homework long enough. My father, numb and silent, tapped on my laboratory door. I told him to come in, and to his credit, he waited until I was finished pouring two dangerous chemicals before he said a word.

"Your mother won't wake up."

I paused, crouched close to the Bunsen burner on my experiment table. When he said those words (Who would ever arrange those words in that order?) I turned my head. I wanted to rub my eyes, but didn't dare lift my safety goggles while the fumes were in the air.

"What?"

"It's been two weeks, Foop. Your mother, she…" His throat thickened, sending waves of static fuzz through the energy field. I'd never seen my father remove his bowler hat and hold it to his chest that way. "The damage from crash-landing into Giant Bucket of Acid World has taken an enormous toll on her strength. She's unable to complete her regeneration cycle."

"She can't die, stupid."

"She's injured. She… she may never reform." Father's claws tightened in the hat. "So long as her soul can function, she'll be able to balance Fairy-Wanda's life force. There's a chance she can pull through. But if this goes on too long, her soul may tire. It's an endless fight to keep yourself grounded, you know…"

"And if Mother loses her hold on this world…"

"… Fairy-Wanda will drown in the magic that gets dumped back on her. Then she'll die, and Anti-Wanda will of course go after her."

I nodded, slowly. "Can anything be done?"

Father replaced his hat and exhaled a puff of silver steam. "If her condition doesn't change soon, the acolytes plan to move her to the Sky Temple's echo chamber. If Munn wishes to save his medium, his powers will need all the support we can offer."

It took me several seconds to process that while Father gazed at me, wide green eyes pools of acid themselves. "Wait. The Sky Temple?"

"It's her best chance, Foop."

I braced both hands on the table behind me, because the room started spinning like a centrifuge. I didn't state the obvious aloud: But I was born in the Breath year, and you the Water. We won't be allowed in the Sky Temple's echo chamber to see her ever again. Father gazed as me and I stared at my feet, clenching and unclenching my claws against stone.

"Oh," I said, as Hiccup. "Excuse me. I think I need some time with just me right now."

I regulate raw emotions better when I'm Hiccup. Foop exists to get me out of tight situations and react fast if the body is in danger. Foop can fight without holding back. But sometimes I need to be Hiccup. Father granted me a respectful amount of space, even leaving my lab door slightly ajar in case I decided to shout for his return. Foop would have crumpled to the floor, I think; he shuts down when faced with terror. As Hiccup, I just stood there with my hands plunged in my lab coat pockets, staring blankly at the test tube on the Bunsen burner. The chemicals overheated and fired a shower of red sparks that scorched a coffered ceiling beam, but that could be magicked away. Shame my mother's wounds couldn't. I turned down the flames and waved my bottle to wipe the dark marks clean. Then I rotated it between my fingers, tilting it so the glowing purple liquid sloshed from one end to the other and back again.

On Friday, Father, Auntie Anti-Wendy, Grandfather Anti-Dusty, Grandnana Anti-Florensa, and my kid brother Smoky went to say good-bye to Mother in the Breath Temple's treatment room. I went Wednesday. Winni was the nature spirit who embodied healing, and he was the patron nature spirit the government had assigned me. I was to be his future host body when I became High Count someday. I mattered. On his day of the week, he had to heed my call.

You're expected to bring an offering if you pray in the Zodiac Temples. I'd have liked to catch one of the massive boar that roam Anti-Fairy World's mountains, but their squeals make my ears bleed and I'm a lousy shot. Then I tried roast hog, but we were rationing our animals because of the war. So I made piggies in a blanket and called that good enough.

The Breath Temple lay just over the border in the Fairy town of Godscress. Even with the war raging, it was against Da Rules to prevent me from worshipping there. They slapped some Keeper I didn't recognize on me as an escort, the orange vest clashing horrendously with her pale blue uniform. Fine. At least she was quiet, and it wasn't a long trip.

Godscress was a misty, woodland town bordered on three sides by a coil of Evadne River and one side by Anti-Fairy World. How the Fairies ended up with it, I haven't the foggiest. Two statues of polished white stone, thicker around than the dark trees around us, stood guard at the entrance to the marsh. Both depicted leopards, one alert while the other rested on its side. You could sit an elephant on every paw. A worn trail of grass and broken stones led down the hill to the temple crouched between the trees. I tucked my wings. My escort watched me walk inside, but made no attempt to follow.

The floors were patterned with faded mosaic tiles. More than a few of them were cracked. I avoided those ones, trying not to think about how much I'd prefer a mother with a broken back to one who wouldn't register my presence at all.

I found the High Acolyte's office without much trouble: just find the elaborate gem-encrusted dagger mounted on the wall and follow the point. She opened the door before I even knocked. The High Acolyte was of the common anti-fairy subspecies, like me, and only 90,000 years older. She wore a jacket over her striped acolyte dress. A beryl pin gleamed on the lapel.

"You're here for your mother," she guessed.

"No, to visit you," I drawled, holding up my paper plate in sarcastic emphasis. Topazimi shook her head.

"I'll take you, if you don't mind walking in on her caretakers."

"She barged in on me all the time as a child. It's high time I got revenge."

Topazimi flicked her gaze up and down my tiny form.

"Younger child," I said.

She led me down a rear corridor. My mother's room was locked. Given her status, it was safer that way. Topazimi unlatched it simply by waving her hand, and the door slid sideways into the wall. I'd steeled myself for a body lying unconscious in a bed, a tube feeding purple magic into her arm, her hair tossed sideways and make-up hardly smeared.

Not this.

The room was very cold and very black, the floor tiled and the walls dark marble streaked with gold. There was no bed. Not even a coffin. My mother was a melted pool of white cream dripping down the wall. An anti-selkie and a young anti-habetrot stood on either side of the smear, jotting down notes as though it wasn't a person.

"How long has she been like this?" I asked, not moving.

"A few minutes," said the anti-selkie. "She maintained herself as smoke for an hour earlier, but as for pulling her body together again… I'm afraid there's been no progress."

A white drip plinked against the black floor. I held my tongue as I walked forward, setting my plate of piggies in a blanket on the table that held a tray of medical examination tools. "Hello, Mum," I said, tilting back my head. "I suppose you can't hear me… You're trapped on Plane 23 right now, aren't you?"

Drip.

"It's Foop… I just wanted to see you again before they move you to the Sky Temple."

Drip.

I'd had a speech planned, but not around witnesses. I left without saying good-bye. After a trip to the echo chamber to beg a miracle from Winni (a lot of wallowing, that), I met my Fairy escort at the Temple door. "How are you?" she asked, feigning interest.

"Only 1,500."

"Ah."

Three days after Mother's assassination attempt, Father and Jorgen filed the paperwork to declare war. Mr. Moonbeam hadn't cancelled class and Poof and I had a group project to finish. We were debating poster colours over lunch when my father burst into the cafeteria, shouting for me to haul my rear end to the jet he'd parked outside. I could tell he'd had a fight with Sunnie over it, because he didn't wear his turquoise brooch. He managed to haul me back to Anti-Fairy World, but my patience snapped when he said I wasn't to go back.

"Gentledrakes' duel," I said, pointing my ba-ba at the back of his head. We were in my room- the private room with my coffin bed since Hiccup and I had a phobia of falling from roost in our sleep. Father paused in the doorway.

"You can't stay in school, Foop. Your mother's just been attacked and still recovering. I can't risk your life too."

"School is my life, Father! I want to be the first Anti-Fairy graduated from the Fairy Academy someday. What message does it send the Fairies if the Anti-Fairies flee the neutral no man's land of Spellementary School with our tails between our legs? They'll lose what little respect they have! We're cowards in their minds- mere cowards."

"Foop, my decision is final. We can discuss this tomorrow, but tonight you need to calm down."

"And what? You'll lock me in my room until the war is over?"

"If that's what I must do to save my son, then yes." His claws tightened around the doorframe. "Don't be difficult."

"I know my needs! What gives you the right to call yourself the boss of me?"

"Spewing your ungrateful ego from my loins comes to mind."

I flew up behind him, never lowering my ba-ba. "Swear on your honour that you'll give me a fighting chance. I declare a gentledrakes' duel. May the winner decide my fate."

"'Honour,' 'fight,'" Father repeated, looking back over his shoulder. "That's not how it works in Anti-Fairy World, child. You can't brute strength your way into taking what you want. My gods, I've raised a Fairy."

He went and spent that night with his ex-wife, Anti-Saffron. Maybe they only talked, maybe they physically paired… I don't know. Though knowing my father, likely both at the same time. I went to confront him in the courtyard when he came home, still stung from the "I've raised a Fairy" comment, and picked up the glitter of her magic on his fur instantly.

"Father! This could be Mother's final day, and you're off engaging with other damsels?"

"I might need a new High Countess," he snapped back, dusting off the place on his chest he still didn't have the brooch. "This isn't easy on me either."

"Gentledrakes' duel," I howled, lashing my ba-ba back and forth. "Gentledrakes' duel!"

He drew his wand with a sigh.

That was the last night I saw him. Father disappeared on Sunday. Mother was moved to the Sky Temple the morning after. The Breath acolytes gathered her lifesmoke in a jar over the better part of the hour and carried it through the halls. Smoky told me as much, though I didn't bother to attend the farewell walk.

For six weeks, I ran the Blue Castle. Oh, I had First General Anti-Poof and the rest of the camarilla court to answer to, but without Father around, I was my own boss. Mother completed regeneration in January. Several days passed before she came home. By then, I'd seen the photos on the news and made my decision to pull out of school after all.

That was 77,000 years ago.

I've long stopped flinching when I see my mother's face, but Giant Bucket of Acid World was not kind to what little beauty she once possessed. A glowing web of knotted scars coats her face. Her right ear is fused now to the side of her head. She's mostly blind in both eyes. Her smile hitches up more crookedly than ever. But her wings are the worst. One dangles from her back, half fried from the bottom up and missing bones. The other wing can lift, but the once tight skin sags, sprinkled with several dozen holes. The Breath Temple's healing waters can't heal some scars, even when a child born in Winni's year prays his core out. "No wonder Father ran," I once snarked when I was 2,900 and she revoked my laboratory privileges, and that was the only time I've ever seen my mother cry.

Nonetheless… That scar tissue is not my mother, and she won't let anyone forget that. Her claws grip the podium, lips shaping every word without a tremble. Icy challenge gleams in the way she sets her mouth. The eyes of the amphitheatre glare down at us from every side like rows of angled teeth.

"There won't be a new High Count this year," she says, firm and patient at the same time, like a snowman packed with ice and offering hugs. "I've got faith that Anti-Cosmo will come back to us."

The crowd grumbles. Mother's declaration hangs in the air like painted frost, and then she continues to announce the plans for the upcoming winter migration season. When she finishes and we sit down in our cold metal chairs, I try to notice if she's crying. She isn't. First General Anti-Poof takes the podium and says something about sign-up sheets and war donations. I barely hear him.

"Those scars are good for something after all, Mother," I tell her as we climb the cliffside path towards the Castle. "Unlike Fairies, our people won't strike a damsel who's been beaten down."

"The people don't fight me for my title 'cuz I'm awesome," she retorted.

I say nothing and kick a rock from the path so her klutzy feet won't trip. A week after her successful regeneration, while I was tormenting her would-be assassin in her cell, Mother visited the Sky Temple to call on Prince Monday. Apparently, Munn appeared in a flash of light to spew poetry about the moon being beautiful even with her scars. His medium had been damaged, but he stayed nonetheless. I've come to respect Mother's belief that the nature spirits care about us… even though all evidence suggests we're only valuable while we're useful. I can't help but notice her deity didn't save her from that fall.

"The people are getting restless," Hiccup whispers when we reach the top of the cliff. I pause to gaze down at our capital city in its crater, every street lit by rows of blue and purple crystals glowing gently in the dark.

"The people can chomp a truck of four-leaf clover burgers."

Mother throws me a puzzled glance. "Hon?"

"Talon's a lot older than we are. Do you think the people might revolt? They're asking for a new High Count… Maybe we should take care of that before it becomes a problem."

Talon is nearly 150,000 and a traitor to not only the Hy-Brasilian nation, but our race as a whole. I walk ahead of Mother so I can hiss as much to Hiccup without her overhearing.

"Oh, yes," he muses. "He took the Pixies' side… But still, I worry, Foop! I wonder if the people will find someone else to love. Don't you?"

"Even with both my parents out of the picture, the high seat isn't mine to take until I'm 150,000. Anti-Poof is First General. He'd breathe down my neck if I so much as looked at an official document."

"Hm," Hiccup says, slithering back into the deeper reaches of our mind. I feel him disappear over the lip that grants awareness of the waking world, fading into sleep… For now.

When we reach the Castle, supper is almost ready. Mother retires to the camarilla roosting room anyway. No one tries to talk her out of it. I hang my coat on the rack, then hover in the entrance hall with a frown. Something about coming home today feels distinctly wrong, though it takes a moment of tapping my claws against my teeth to realize what it is.

"No music…"

Normally there would be piano. Or if not piano, I'd hear the ominous sting of my younger brother mashing my organ's keys. I float down the corridor, pausing to wipe a bit of grime from a statue of myself at the end. Two young voices - probably yet another newborn batch of second cousins - shriek in play a few rooms over. Auntie Anti-Wendy warns them to keep the noise level down. From the card room, by the sound of it. Muttering voices suggest there's a fidchell game in play. I wrinkle my nose. The Fairies haven't attacked us in over two centuries. I for one wish we would keep vigilant nonetheless. That's the flaw in our lifespans… A war can last tens of thousands of years and you'll hardly have outgrown your commitment at all.

I stop in the doorway of the second den. The sofas are deserted. The bookshelves neat. Piano? Untouched. My eyes narrow.

Drawing my ba-ba, I foop up to my private bedroom door. It's ajar, revealing mulberry red stone and crimson curtains. The culprit is, as expected, sitting in my bean bag chair with several digital pages of Da Rules floating around him. They scatter when I stalk in; Smoky grabs for one and misses by a lot. My birdcage swings suspiciously above his head.

"Get out of my room, loser. Unless you wish to taste the fiery scorch of DEATH BY SUDDEN INDOOR BLIZZARD! … Though I suppose 'fiery' wasn't the appropriate word here, hm."

"What?" Smoky lifts his hands defensively, fingertips stained with chocolate. "I'm not going to do anything."

I stalk forward, sticking out a claw to stop the birdcage from swaying. It's empty, the birdseed half-eaten. "Where's Kevin?"

"He wanted out," Smoky says, stretching on the bean bag. I glance at my dresser, where a certain white cat usually perches to stare through the window at the glowing garden out back. Apart from scratch marks and tufts of fur, it's equally deserted.

"Where's Denzel?"

"I dunno."

Smoky is only 1,000 years younger than I am, the result of Fairy-Cosmo's and Fairy-Wanda's wish to pop out a second kid before there was any chance the fairy baby mandate might make a resurgence. Privately, I think they wanted a spare offspring just in case their freckled son ends up being taken down by another gyne (A fate that seems increasingly less likely what with all the grappling classes his grandfather's been pushing him to take, I must admit…)

My brother and I are so close in age and size that in fae society, we could easily be mistaken as twins. Except we look absolutely nothing alike; Smoky inherited the recessive gene for blue hair and shares Father's green eyes (That, and Mother's blunt teeth). In our species, the blue tint of one's fur is determined by how long it takes lifesmoke and body to come into contact; genetics has nothing to do with it. My father often recounts the tale of how anti-cherubs caught his traveling smoke in a jar before he was born, imprisoning him like a genie in a lamp. Out of curiosity, I tried the same trick on newborn Smoky to test if the science was true. Lo and behold, his unmoving body grew darker each day like a ripening banana. Father was furious, of course, but Mother had the decency to add a compliment about my notetaking to her scolding when she took the jar away. Say what you like, but I learned a lot from that experiment.

"You know, I didn't hear you at the piano when Mother and I came home."

Smoky shrugs, still leaning back even though that can't feel comfortable on his wings. "I memorised the books and the recital's only two weeks away. I've got this, so why practice anymore?"

"Because you can always polish a finished product. After last year, you could afford to take a little more pride in your work."

"Why? You're not even going to be there." Lower, "Neither is Mum."

"That's no excuse for a shoddy performance. Perfection is its own reward."

He throws his slipper at me. I take his ankles and drag him off the bean bag. His head clunks on heavy stone.

"Out. I have work to finish."

Smoky takes off his other slipper and smacks it on my chest. "Fine, I'm getting snacks anyway."

I watch him float down the hall and prop my door open with the slipper he left behind. Kevin and Denzel will come back when they want to… They always do, I suppose. They're witches-turned-familiars. It's not like either one can die.

… It's that time of year again. You can tell I thought my father would be back sooner than this considering that I chose to count years instead of centuries. I ooze along the wall and slump through my walk-in closet. A few of my nicer suits hang nicely pressed, though most of the space isn't taken up by clothes. A ribbon of 77,775 handkerchiefs dangles from a hook and loops across the floor. Back and forth, back and forth. In and out of a stack that bulges to my waist. There's nothing else in the closet but two shelves lined with dusty jars, labels faded almost too much to read.

With some fumbling, I find the end of the chain and withdraw a new handkerchief from my pocket to mark another year. I don't know why I've counted them, especially in such a needlessly expensive way. But I don't know why I do a lot of things, so I guess we're even. "It wasn't supposed to be this long," I mutter, holding the tail in my hand.

"I don't like it," Hiccup says.

"Me neither." I stay a moment longer, fingering the cloth, then drag myself out and double check that the door is locked. Unless I desperately need one of those formal suits, it'll be a while before I have to face what's in there again.

Before Mother called on me to attend today's conference, I'd been scribbling out a plot to sneak into Pixie World and hex their scales so they always tipped in favour of the customer. It's what those cone-domes deserve. Now, taking my seat again, I scowl at the map of Planes 2 and 3 pinned across my work desk. Everything was so simple when I was young. I had pixie friends and we teased the humans because they outnumbered us two million to one and they were absolutely everywhere. Now that our war with the Seelie Court has seeded the land with toxins and magic, most of the survivors have shifted south. You won't find many in the northern hemisphere anymore. The Animals sure took over quickly…

The first time Mother and I heard of Dimmsdale's destruction, she shouted for us all to get our butts down there in a flash. That was only two hundred years after my father's disappearance… How foolish to expect his return so soon.

"It had to be him!" she yelled, practically yanking Smoky and I out the door. "I sure din't order this! It's gotta be your daddy!"

News coverage was immediate. Fairy World's capital city, Faeheim, had been struck with a direct spirit bolt "sent by the nature spirits themselves" (though really manufactured by the brightest minds across the cloudlands, I'm convinced). It was magic-touched, of course, so no Fairies were harmed directly, but the entire city fell to ruin and the energy field distorted into knots. It was only 20,000 years ago they started using magic safely there again. Giant Bucket of Acid World and the human city Dimmsdale, lined up neatly in a row, were caught in the blast radius… Dimmsdale's population, non-resistant to both magic and acid rain, didn't fare as well as Faeheim.

Smoky asked if it was my doing. I told him no.

Shrieking Fairies blamed my mother for the spirit bolt. Revenge, maybe, since that's where she got her scars. I shot back accusations that the Fairies cast it on themselves to paint us as the villains, and I was vocal enough that confusion spiralled through their ranks. The Head Pixie publicly congratulated our universities' science program, strongly implying in the process that I'd been the one to press 'Fire.' I stuttered in a press conference. My people praised their gods more than ever before. And all that time, Mother clung to her belief in Anti-Cosmo.

"Anti-Cozzie?" she asked that day in Dimmsdale, standing still on a blackened sidewalk. A few Fairies here and there were picking through the wreckage, though the majority were more devastated by the loss of Faeheim. Others figures scuttled off at our approach. The energy field had tattered into threads. Raw plumes of magic bled through the gashes in the veil. Stinky magic pooled up to my thighs, thick enough we had to wade. Mother was already injured, of course, but even I couldn't fly weighed down by this stuff. It wouldn't be long before mischievous demons here took on solid form and preyed on anyone who'd somehow survived.

The tall letters were gone long before the spirit bolt, but Dimmsdale's hillside bled familiarity the moment I saw it. I turned away, only to stare across a sea whose salty sting I'd never forgotten. The sight of clear blue water hit harder than the bare mountain. The ocean shouldn't be that colour. Already the stinky magic from the spirit bolt had begun seeping into the water supply, killing bacteria and plants alike.

Chloe Carmichael and I had walked along the twisting coast once or twice. Now some of the rocks hung suspended in the air and the sand had taken on a hot pink shine. A battered billboard bumped against the shore. "I guess no one lives here," Mother said after a moment's pause. "I wouldn't. It's all broke."

"Yes. It is." I drew my foot through a mound of ash. Once upon a time, after yet another spring break my parents didn't bother to show up to, I'd run away from home. With Chloe's mind wiped at age eighteen, she didn't suspect any trickery in the little boy she and Kevin adopted out of foster care. My parents were only too glad to get me out of the Castle, I'm sure. Not that I remember most of those years in full clarity. The decades I spent with the Crockermichaels are merely a drop in the vat of my existence, and Hiccup's shifts blur the days even more. My species is famous for our memories, but we find exceptions to every rule. We scientists pretend outliers don't exist.

Chloe would have found beauty in the damaged city anyway. She could spot a flower in a field of landmines and call it a happy day. We would clean that beach. We'd import new sand from, I don't know, Egypt or somewhere. She'd have connections for it. We'd hire bulldozers to scrap what remained of the city and architects to build it more beautiful than before. Rooftop gardens on every apartment, grocery stores a few blocks from everywhere, no more bus stops because there would be no more buses because through the power of faith and love, everyone would fly…

Would Chloe have spent her life picking litter off this city's streets if she knew only 1,700 years later, it was going to come to this? Probably. That's how she was. Even if she couldn't make a better world for her great-great-great-great-great grandchildren… Just making it beautiful for one or two "greats" was enough.

I can't imagine the city cemetery is in good condition, so thank smoke I had the foresight to steal Chloe's body beforehand. I'd have hated to go searching for her now, surrounded by layers of stinky magic that made it tough to breathe while hungry demons closed in around me. Among my people, it's tradition to wrap the core in mistletoe and lay it to rest in a temple burial chamber. Humans leave their shed husks behind when they move on. Chloe had been annoyingly popular when she died at age 99. She'd asked to be buried near her parents here, even after all the overcontrolling torments they'd put her through. I'd had to wait until her funeral ended before I could dig her up and take her heart. I'd never seen one in real life before, and it had sagged instead of floated in my hands. I still have her bones sterile and organized on one of my shelves.

Gazing over the Dimmsdale ruins, I tucked a sprig of hair behind my ear and tried not to grimace enough to be noticed. I never had looked at Dimmsdale fondly. We lived in Las Vegas when I was a Crockermichael. Our quirky family blended in much better there.

The world reeked of scorched meat and stomach acid. Wrinkling my nose, I tugged the High Countess towards the single building on the street that had slightly survived the impact: a lone shop selling ashy fabric that had probably once been trousers.

"Let's go, Mother… The humans will be sending helicopters and news taxis before long. We shouldn't stay."

… Everything was so much simpler before the war. Now, as I un-tack the map from my desk and roll it in a cylinder, we're nearing the 80,000th anniversary of the spirit bolt that proved the war wouldn't end easily. Frantic under pressure, the Pixies had ushered in waves of new technology by the oceanful. Smoky keeps on top of that stuff; I lost interest long ago, preferring an old-fashioned wand to newfangled, untested gadgetry. Pixie World today is certainly far more impressive than the single city it boasted throughout my youth. Apartment buildings loom from the forest, hosting huldufólk, will o' the wisp, and lawn gnome refugees from Earth right alongside the aristocrats from Faeheim. Goldie Goldenglow lives somewhere in Pixie Woods now. When she and Poof aren't at school, I mean. They hadn't pulled out when Father and Jorgen declared our peoples enemies again. Their uninjured mothers hadn't needed them.

I never envisioned myself as a dropout, you know. My father didn't graduate. There were a lot of things he did that I could never dream of measuring up to, but Fairy Academy graduation is a dream no one can take away from me. I've been out of school for millennia, but I've never skipped a day of studies. Can't afford to. The war will likely keep borders tight for the rest of my life, so I have to prove myself one of the few worthy of crossing into Fairy World. People used to be afraid of Father. That kept the Fairies off our land, but it also kept him off theirs. Where has being feared by all the cloudlands gotten us? Nowhere, even after all this time. We've prevented our borders from shrinking, but haven't expanded an inch. Someday, I'm going to walk the Fairy cities without an escort. They let the Pixies wander. Why not us?

"The Pixies contribute to society," Hiccup points out.

"So do we. Anti-Fairies have accomplished so much."

"For our society. Not theirs. Maybe instead of plotting to knock their buildings down, you should plot to build up something great. A monument."

"They don't deserve that."

"We can pretend."

"I won't pretend! When the Fairies apologize for cutting us out of society and sealing us up inside a wasteland, then I'll stop trying to destroy them all."

"When who apologizes?"

"Everyone!"

"Even the babies?"

Scoffing, I smack the rolled map against the edge of my desk, then shove it inside its tube. The tacks fall clinking in their tin. "They're the worst."

"Goldie apologized that you were sad. She was nice to us from her very first day in class. She didn't judge."

"Goldie doesn't count. She's not a real Fairy. She grew up in Tennessee."

"We grew up in another dimension. And jail. And on Earth with Chloe Carmichael."

"We're done talking."

Denzel meows, materializing like a milky puddle in my doorway. He stretches his legs, crooked whiskers twitching. "I wasn't addressing you," I mutter.

That had never stopped him before. Denzel doesn't purr, but he does blink at me from his place on the floor and roll onto his back. Even thumping a heavy book on my desk doesn't startle him. "And how do you feel about the war?" I ask. "You must think the fae are terribly stupid for letting it last this long."

The cat may have been human in his past life, but he's entirely feline now. Denzel lies on my floor, chubby and happy and utterly useless. He stretches one paw. I rest my cheek against my hand.

"I don't know why I keep you around. Really, I don't."

Denzel clearly has no intention of moving and I prefer to work with my door shut. I walk over and scoop him under the arms so his body dangles. Only instead of returning to my desk… I flop into my coffin. A lump digs into the uncomfortable place between my wings. Skullbeary. The evening is young and I'm still wearing my shoes, but I cover my face with cat butt and pretend to fall asleep.

"Rrrrrr…"

I lay sprawled for a few minutes until Hiccup gives me a mental nudge. "Mama's calling."

She is. I struggle to sit up, holding a cat and one leg dangling from my coffin, to find her in my doorway with her teeth embedded in a chocolate bar. Dark chocolate. Dear me. She breaks off a square.

"Foop," she says. "Come downstairs. We gotta talk."

Talk?

Denzel is content to nap on my dresser. I wash my hands, stalling for time, before I slink down the stairs to join Mother and Smoky in the great hall. Every beat of my wings echoes in the cold. A tray of cheese, grapes, and crackers sits out on one table. The enormous mural on my left flickers with movement as painted nature spirits shift around, but no one else is there.

"You know the Traditions and Customs book?" Mother asks the moment I float in. I wrinkle my nose and walk around the edge of the table to sit across from her, next to Smoky.

"Do you even need to ask? Father made me read that thing a thousand and one times simply because I once talked back to him. And it's thicker than Da Rules by fourteen pages- I numbered them all to prove it." Though I must admit, I learned quite a few useful laws from studying it, so it wasn't all wasted time…

"Shoulda guessed. Well… Next year is 77,777 since Anti-Cosmo went disappearing. The law is, that's the longest the High Count or High Countess can ever rule alone. I need somebody standing at my side. So if your father dun't show his face by this time next year… I'm gonna get hitched."

"… What?"

Mother leans back on the bench and swings one foot on the table. Her boot lands with a clunk. "In case Anti-Cosmo don't show, we gotta start planning the ceremony. Probably a wedding, unless the person I'm asking don't want a ring. Thought my kids should be first to know." With her hands folded against her stomach, she frowns hard at me, then at Smoky. "I don't want any whining, boys. I've been real patient with your daddy. Tarrow knows I love him so, but I ain't gonna ignore the facts. If he don't want alllll this after all this time, he don't get alllll this. Anti-Cozzie did a lot for me, but if he shipped out, I'm shipping myself with someone else."

My ears press flatter with every word. "Married?"

Sure, polygynandry is traditional… Father had an abundance of partners and Mother I've long suspected still spends her nights with one or two (though honestly, I don't know which of them has the Head Pixie wrapped around their little claw… Quite possibly both). I myself expect at least three weddings by the time I'm 300,000. But…

"Mother, is that wise? I mean, the vast political power you're bestowing… We must take care the High Count seat goes to someone worthy of it, not merely a passing infatuation."

She shoots me a scornful sideways smile that twists her glowing scars an uncomfortable direction. "Y'all don't trust your own mum? What's the world come to, huh?"

Hiccup bubbles beneath my skin, squirming with congratulations but unable to pop out front. "Will there be kids my age?" Smoky asks.

"Reckon so. We need new blood in these empty halls."

"Well, if it's blood you want," I mutter.

Marriage.

Step-father.

Other kids.

I bite one knuckle, then drop it to my lap when my fang nicks too deep. "Um… Mother, I… There's something I should perhaps… About Father…"

Nothing. For a long while.

"Foop? You got somethin' to say?"

My palms blur with smoke and blood. I clench them to fists and shake my head. "No… No, Mother dearest. Just that you deserve better than him." Lifting my chin, I say, "I am nothing if not your obedient heir, and I shall support you in your every act as High Countess. I'm here for you all hours of the night. Let's plan a wedding, then. Who's the groom?"

"Who's the other bride," she corrects. "Y'all know her well. Remember Anti-Saffron?"

I flash to my feet, pounding my palms down hard. "Absolutely not! Mother, you can't be serious! The people will never accept an ex-High Countess returning to the throne! She knew what she was turning down!"

Smoky's no slower, slamming down his own hands. "She's a goody-goody and she always forces me outside!"

"She already married Father. Don't mix our family tree more than it already is."

Mother waits with eerie calm until we finished. "I's just joshing ya," she says. "I'm really gonna marry the Head Anti-Pixie."

Smoky laughs. I spit a word that earns me a bemused stare.

"There… Doesn't seem too big a shock after that, does it?"

I clench my teeth, digging my claws in the old wood of the table. Ooh, she had me there. Make no mistake: I'm no fan of H.A.P. Anti-Sanderson. He's hardly a drake you can count on in a crisis, and I'm referring to his personality just as much as his delayed reaction time. But watching my mother marry the dame who walked out on my father and her country without looking back would be the worse of two evils as far as I'm concerned.

I withdraw my leering wings. "That's still a horrendous choice, Mother. You're too good for any anti-pixie, especially him."

"Which is why they don't fight for us." Mother steeples her fingers and waits to be sure I see it. I avoid her stare as long as I can, but finally, unhappily, draw it back again. "We tried paying 'em to fight the Pixies while we took on the Fairies. That din't end well."

"Handing money to a clan of sugar addicts and sending them into the largest shopping district in the cloudlands totally backfired," I drawl. "Who knew?"

"Yep. We's already outnumbered fighting the Fairies and the Pixies together. If the anti-pixies swap too, we's in higher over our heads than we'll ever get." Mother pushes down her crooked finger as she counts off this point, then a second. "H.A.P.'s got some political know-how-to already, so I won't need to be training him straight from the ground level. Three, it's good for morale if all Anti-Fairy World sees their queen accepts even those who grow up rogue. Four, he's a Water year like your daddy so we won't have to redo the camarilla court or office decorations. 'Sides that, he's always been a li'l sweet on me since I passed him the virus."

She gestures to her coloured eyes. Frost sizzles in my cheeks. Shoving that mental image from my head, I look to Smoky for back-up. He shrugs. Fine.

"Mother, let's not rush into these decisions. H.A.P. is a drunkard and a known addict, and you intend to crown him as High Count."

"Ain't rushing, sweetpea. I've had 77,000 years to think about it. My choice is made."

"It isn't appropriate for a dame of your status to marry such a low-ranking individual. The people won't accept it. I certainly won't."

"Nah, I think they will. It's the law that they gotta."

"He's greener than Thurmondo's temple," I say, grasping for every ad hominem I can reach. "He carries mutated genes. You don't want him."

"Beggars don't get choices."

In the back of my mind, Hiccup stirs. I bite my lip, fighting down the nerves swelling in my throat. After discarding a few similar insults, I say, "You're hardly begging. You're the most powerful Anti-Fairy in the cloudlands. You could have any drake or damsel you want."

"With this face?"

I blink. Mother's never asked my opinion on her scars before. When I was young, I actually thought she was too oblivious to notice them. Now she's glaring, and my skin crawls like I have fleas.

"You know what I mean, Mother…"

"Hap don't judge me. Didya know he's the only one who's nice to me at the Council meetings anymore?"

I do know, because I'm always her Plus One. I've seen the way he handles her, keeping his teasing polite while never treating her like she's fragile. He looks her in the eyes. There are a lot of people who can't claim they do that.

"The Pixies will never forgive you." It's all I have left to say. Arguably, the conflict between the Pixies and the anti-pixies marks the point the May Blossom War first began to bubble up. H.P.'s right hand man was taken captive during what was supposed to be a peaceful visit to Anti-Pixie Isle. Tensions have run thick between their races ever since; it was only 520 years later that the cloudlands dissolved into war.

The Pixies don't trust me after the Cavatina Project, which is the burden I must bear in exchange for scientific progress. So, true, admittedly the Pixies do not favour our family. But compared to what the Head Anti-Pixie did, I'm a saint. Mother wedding H.A.P. will secure our place as the Pixies' enemies for life.

But by not marrying him… We'll remain in the same disadvantaged position we are now, with the Pixies hating us anyway and the anti-pixies despising us too. I suppose that at least this way… We were winning some powerful allies.

"Maybe he got rid of Father so you'd marry him," Smoky suggests. "Ever think of that?"

Mother pauses for the first time, lips pressed tight. "Guess I didn't. I'll ask."

"Ask?" I repeat incredulously. "H.A.P. won't admit to kidnapping the High Count."

"I'll say please. But, I don't think he dun it. I've thought the best I can, and I think Hap's the High Count for me." She taps her cheek with one claw. "Plus, it'll be nice to have a partner I can play with in the open. I always worry I'll have to sneak a lover in after you both gone to roost. You stay up real late, y'all. Go to bed sometimes."

"Mother!" I shriek. The world tears between my feet, slicing an invisible canyon between my half of the table and hers. "What? You can't have secret paramours! That's- But you're-"

Pure amusement glitters on her scabbing face. "Am what? Can't want lovers 'cuz I'm a damsel?"

My mother. My own mother dancing through passionate nights tangled up in strange cheap company all this time. And my poor father, wholly unaware… Though I suppose he had his own string of affairs to answer for…

I yank one of the large curls dangling in my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts and keep Hiccup suppressed at the same time. "I see no reason to court the Head Anti-Pixie. The title is not inherently romantic, and you could just as easily win his people's favour without, um… without…" I make a grasping gesture with my hand.

"Blitzing him."

"Ah, yes. Wow… Mother, it's indecent. Not to mention it offends Father's memory just as much as it offended yours whenever he would go off chasing tails behind your back."

She tips her head, a ripple of navy blue light flickering down her neck. "I didn't take offense he did that."

"Well, I did. Bloody smoke- we're supposed to be a family!" I crash my fist against the table, rattling the cheese and cracker tray. "Isn't that what you and Father always tried to beat into my head as a wayward child? Smoky and I don't want our family blended!"

"Actually, I kinda do," Smoky says. "Summers on the Isle with candy and step-brothers sounds full mint."

"Your feelings don't matter. If you must pick a High Count, Mother, the least you could do is respect the memory of your and Father's relationship by not turning this relationship carnal when there's no need for it to be." My cheeks flush again and I glance away, clearing my throat. I clasp my hands behind my back. "Lechery was Father's sin to answer for. You see where that got him."

Mother lifts a brow, chin resting in her cupped palm. "I don't know how to tell you this, hon, but I ain't never been purer than your daddy. Anti-Saffron didn't teach him nectar kissing, I'll tell you that."

"Nectar ki- Gods, have you no shame, woman?" I fling my hands to either side. "You're a damsel. One of status."

"'Course, we'll never beat the night we had you," she muses in sing-song. The cold fire in my cheeks spreads up and over my nose, icing my entire face. My, ah… My parents aren't exactly subtle when they're, um, doing that. Or they weren't, rather. I've borne witness to more than enough evidence of their public passions (both in and out of the honey-lock) to imagine how wild their private lives must be. Were. But even if their adoration for one another topped the charts of revolting displays, at least I'd always retired to my bed secure in the knowledge that my parents' love was genuine.

Next year, the Head Anti-Pixie might be crawling over her at roost, sinking soft fangs into her skin and whispering crude pleasures with that sugar-dripping mouth. She might wiggle in his grasp, giggling like a bashful maiden…

"You're above this," I spit, "our family is above this- Smoke, I need to think. Can you excuse me? One moment." Clutching my elbow, one hand pressed to my mouth, I pace in a circle between the table and the wall. Silkworms writhe inside my stomach, sealing my throat shut and threatening to heave out anyway. I clamp my eyelids shut. "If you insist on a carnal partner, isn't there someone else? What about Anti-Juandissimo? I know he courted you most your lives. Surely there were reasons?"

Mother crushes a grape between her claws with a squelch. "Pardon my Boudacian, sugar, but I'd sooner slather my naked bum in liquid rump roast and blitz a fairy than talk with that fire-rutting crook ever again."

Smoky slaps his hands down. "Buuurn!"

"Must you always be so crude?" I pause to rub my hair furiously with both hands, scruffing up my perfect shiny curls. "Is there no one else you'll consider?"

"Hey," she says, standing up. "Your daddy knows the law too. Maybe he'll get back just in time. Then we'll call the wedding off."

I can't meet her eyes.

"What?" I ask when I realize she's addressed me again.

"I said, I'm gonna make my proposal to H.A.P. tomorrow. You wanna come with?"

"Hmph! I'd better, lest he lure you into his love nest 'til morning."

Mother bares her crooked teeth in a wicked grin, lifting her good wing high. "I was hoping you'd say that. That means tomorrow's a dress-up day, doll."

"Oh gods…"

"Fashion parade! Up at dawn, breakfast quick, ballroom 'til I say you picked right."

I massage my temples with both hands. "Mum, you wound my tender soul with a thousand and one stinging barbs."

She pokes my cheeks to show affection and limps off, humming the theme song of some fashion runway show on the tellie that was probably out of date before I was born. I spend the evening in my closet, knocking my head softly against the wall.

I wear purple to meet the Head Anti-Pixie. Mother and I take the fastest chariot. It still takes hours before we're there. I spend the flight running calculations in my head, trying to figure out how marriage legalities worked with the whole "identical clone genetics" thing. Would this wedding wipe every anti-pixie off the list as a sexual partner for the rest of our dynasty? If your ancestor marries an anti-pixie whom they can't reproduce with, is it immoral for your descendants several generations later to have an affair with some other anti-pixie? I drum my claws against my knee, staring through the chariot window. I still need to settle on a High Countess of my own someday, and I prefer to keep my options open.

Mother had an excellent point: the anti-pixies were worthy allies thanks to the sheer number of their race. All their drakes produced offspring on a regular basis throughout adulthood, their population exploding higher and higher every millennium. Now that the Pixies had declared themselves our enemies, we couldn't afford to see the anti-pixies go the same way. For well over a hundred thousand years, they'd occupied a floating island known as The Cusp of Infinite Sunshine, or Anti-Pixie Isle. The city didn't have a lot of land. Like their counterparts, the anti-pixies had built skyscrapers to house their exponential population, but for how long would it be enough? They wanted out, and Mother held the only key. As we step from the chariot and face the bright pink gate, I multiply several hundred pixies each producing offspring every five hundred years for the last 77,000. I lose count.

Smoke, I'm getting a lot of step-brothers.

"Bow's crooked," Mother says as the gate begins to churn open. I take off my tie and redo it, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

"Better?"

"Other bow."

"What?"

She points at my shoes. One is single-knotted and the other is a triple.

"Meh. They're unbalanced. Like me."

I don't know what prevents the anti-pixies from leaving their island when the gate is open, but I assume something does or they'd be lined up at the door. Or, maybe they like it here. After all, it exists in a pocket space that actually gets direct sunlight. I lift one hand to shield my eyes, making a mental note that this caught me off guard and is definitely something to prepare for when I become High Count in the future.

"No one's here. Do we just…" I look at Mother. "Go in?"

"Huh." She sets her hands to her waist and looks up and down the street we find ourselves on. The stone is purple, the buildings pink. One is white with fat green spots. "Guess so. Reckon I oughta make an appointment next time."

The gate rumbles shut behind us. I take a step closer to my mum.

I've seen pictures of Anti-Pixie Isle, but never visited before. Mother knows the way, taking an immediate left down the first street. Oh, duh. The Lotus Palace sits by the drop-off and the lake. She makes no attempt to draw her wand as we go, but I have a harder time keeping my hands by my sides. I shove them in my trouser pockets instead, moustache twitching.

A few anti-pixies pass us by, but most avoid eye contact even through their shades and none make an attempt to talk. I was able to float for the first few minutes, but the farther down the road we go, the heavier my wings become. I drop to the ground even before the lack of surrounding magic forces me to and keep my eyes pinned to my mother's pegasustail bouncing between her wings.

There aren't exactly guards at the Lotus Palace (a large vanilla pink building with soft curves in place of every hard edge), but there are three escorts playing cards on the front steps. Old soda cans (and I do mean old) roll in the gutters. Candy wrappers fill the road, and the two "guards" don't pretend they aren't contributing. I keep my face straight, but inwardly, I cringe. I may not hold tightly to traditional Zodii beliefs, but… Ooh. Disrespecting the land bears is something even I would never dare try.

Music drifts through the open palace doors. There's maybe a party going on, or there isn't. I glimpse people milling about, though no one's dressed up and anyway, it couldn't be an anti-pixie party because no one's yet lying passed out on the floor. Mother greets the trio of guards with more respect than I can be bothered to summon, so it's a good thing I'm only expected to nod. The Head Anti-Pixie is in. I guess he would be; what else is there to do in this trash town besides clean and dirty it? The isle is famous for its greenhouses, though I didn't see a single one on our way through the city. Nor that alleged amusement park, actually…

Mother and I aren't left waiting long. In just a few minutes, the Head Anti-Pixie elbows his way through the doors and onto the front steps and greets us both with hugs. "Aw, Anti-Wanda, you shouldn't have! … Seriously, you shouldn't have waited so long to visit me again. Come in! We'll have soda, if you want to drink. This is your son's first visit to Anti-Pixie Isle, ey? Well, just remember my name is Hap, not H.A.P." He pats me between the wings before I can even decide if I want to respond. "Saves you two syllables, bucko. Don't say I never gave you anything."

"I know who you are," I say, stumbling for balance. "I see you at the Council meetings."

"Is that where I know you from? Here I thought it was too many mugshots."

We file inside and down a short corridor, finding a table to eat at easily (though referring to it as either "great hall" or "dining room" seems inappropriate). The table is cluttered with arts and crafts that don't seem to have been touched in a week, a puddle of glue frozen to the wood, but Hap tries to be a good host by gesturing to it anyway. He scoops a bundle of scrap paper in his arms and dumps it on the floor. I glance around, half surprised that the insides of the palace actually don't clash colours as much as the buildings or people outside. A few smashed gourds and a large dead fish lay on the floor. I catch my mother's eye and indicate it with a tilt of my head while Hap's back is turned. She shrugs like Whatcha gonna do?

Wonderful.

After shifting several things from the table while Mother and I still stand there, Hap calls for one of his underlings to take over and guides us on a tour of the palace for an hour instead. He and Mother fall into a pattern of conversation with surprising ease, with Mother pointing out any minor detail that catches her fancy, like the light switch covers, and Hap enthusiastically relaying stories about them that are definitely not true. I'm not kidding, they stood in a beautiful den of hand-carved furniture and discussed the importation of the entire lighting system for not only the room but the world in general. The lighting system is this plane's sun.

Admittedly, I pause with interest in the door of the art gallery. "Whoa. Is that a Mayfleet original?" I motion with my hand towards a sculpture wider at the top than the base, two swirling arms stretching like squid tentacles from the floor to clasp a sort of bowl. Hap spares it a glance, tearing his and Mother's attention away from the grate on the floor.

"It was a housewarming gift for my dad, honey biscuit. You can have it if you want. I'm tight with your uncle Anti-Schnozmo, you know, so just send for him when you're at home and he can pack it up for you."

The tour got a lot more interesting after that. Suddenly it occurred to me that the Head Anti-Pixie was just as wealthy as our family and way less protective of his stuff. I noticed most of the damage to the walls, including paint splatters and broken windows, seemed to have been confined downstairs. I wondered if up the staircase was off limits to everyone except the highest roosting room.

Mother popped the question during a late lunch, after a very winding tour that had shown us only half thus far of the rooms inside the palace (I was now the proud owner of a Mayfleet sculpture, a stunning gingertie desk, three similar but different paintings of Planet Earth's oceans, and a pool noodle Hap sarcastically said belonged to anyone who could defeat him in a sparring match while looking straight at me). We were eating in the gardens out back at a wobbly wireframe table, just the three of us apart from the two anti-pixies who occasionally brought us more macaroni and cheese or fruit they'd determined wasn't as bruised as it could have been.

"Wait," Hap says, stiffening on his cushion. "You want me to get married, icepop? To you?"

"If you'll have me." Mother ticks her fingers off again. "My husband's gone 77,776 years and there's gotta be a new High Count. You know how to keep a crowd happy and it's our want to bring your people into the good light of society that you deserve. Gotta pick someone and I don't hate you."

"What."

"High Count."

"Like… the political position? The one that makes me king over everyone on this side of the Barrier who ever kicked me down? Da fritz?"

"Yeah, that one. You and me. It'll be fun, like a sleepover, except this time we're the bosses of the war instead of shoved in a camp together. Want to?"

I look up from my bowl, rather amused at the puzzled tilt of the anti-pixie's head. The tail of his stocking cap slips from his shoulder, sending its jingle bell ringing.

"Uh… Wow. This is so… sudden, High Countess." Hap glances at me as if to accuse me of not letting slip any hints of why we'd come. Why else would we put up with you all morning? I want to ask, but don't, my mouth full of macaroni.

"So is that a yes?" Mother asks.

I literally watch Hap's eyes go up and down her figure. "Yeah," he says, bringing his pointer fingers together below his chin. "Heeere's the thing, sugar gleam. I'm already chasing the dame of my dreams, and I've kind of sworn of mating with everyone who isn't her. I've waited a hundred thousand years for that dame and I'm not going back on my word now." Taking up his spoon, "I'm happy to claim the High Count title, Miss Boss Queen. Honoured, really. I assume there are benefits to blending our people together, and I'll take it if you want me to, but I wanted to be upfront about the lines I don't want to cross at naked time, okay?"

I try to hide a smirk in my next bite. My mother wouldn't be thumping around with another drake any time soon, then. But when she doesn't move, I look up. Her slanted jaw twitches a little, eyes rapidly growing dim, hands limp in her lap.

Oh.

She thinks it's her scars.

Telling her she looked beautiful would seem ingenuine from her own flesh and blood. So I keep eating and don't say anything at all. That's kind of a thing with me.

Dishes are left on the table, and I have doubts they'll actually be cleared away. We continue our tour of the palace, which is surprisingly different from the Castle, actually. I don't pay attention for most of it, though snap to attention when Hap indicates the hallway with the room where I'll be sleeping.

"Do you have a coffin I can use?" I ask. Hap pretends to think about it, even though I realize before he even says it that the answer is "Just the roosts." I rub my forehead, debating the pros and cons of sleeping on the floor among the candy wrappers and shattered soda bottle glass. Stupid magic-free island. Stupid magic-free and boarded-up-from-the-rest-of-the-world-with-no-furniture-shops island.

Mother is cordially invited to join Hap roosting in the upper branches of the central array, but although I'm a prince, I'm still a child. I'm sent to join the middle creche down the hall. I bathe in the lake first and brush my fangs agonizingly slowly, trying to delay it as long as I can. But mother insists on putting me to bed before she retires for the night, and the third time she checks on me and finds me still picking at my teeth, she threatens to drag me into the roosting room and dress me herself. I put on the traditional anti-pixie pyjamas, which are striped teal and orange and no less hideous than the spotted yellow and red suits they usually wear. They're also too small for me. When I walk into the roosting room and get a good look around, I decide that's typical here. From the looks of it, it's notable that I have anything to wear at all.

The entire isle is hexed to prevent the majority of magic usage, including most of what we need to fly. The array fixture in the middle creche is designed like an elm tree, with thick handles bored into the false wood like steps on a ladder. At least twenty branches sweep above my head, all of them dangling chittering anti-pixies. Children. Blech. And all of them noisy, the energy field tingling with bemused conversations. I pause with one hand on the trunk.

As the senior ranking member of the middle creche, it's expected that I sleep at the top of the array. Roosting makes me uncomfortable, and Hiccup doesn't fare much better. Occasionally we shift overnight, especially when one of us is exhausted and the other accidentally slips into control. Anti-Fairy feet normally lock in place at roost, but…

… what if they don't?

My name echoes around the room as curious anti-pixies shuffle about for bed. I grip the first handles and heave myself up the array, focusing on the swirling patterns in the tree bark and not on the floor below. When I reach the first few branches, I risk a glance down and nearly baulk. It's higher than I expected.

Dangling. All night.

… There's no room for me to squeeze on the low branches. I climb higher, and higher, my wings squirming, and finally decide that if I'm already three layers up I may as well make it to the thirteenth at the top. That's where the oldest members of the middle creche roost, after all, and they're much closer to my size than the young juveniles below. I count seven other anti-pixies on the upper two branches, but none of them is Cavatina Sanderson's counterpart.

"I'm Foop Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle," I say, claws still curled in the climbing handles, and oh gods I do not want to look down. Is it hot in here? Wearing long sleeves was a mistake. I'm not accustomed to so many bodies and so many squeaks and the swaying of the array beneath me might make me toss my cookies fast. I never realised how uneasy I am being the only blue-furred Anti in the room.

The anti-pixies greet me with little interest, which I suppose is only fair since their primary counterparts are sort of suck-ups for my family as far as I recall. I press my ears down, then snap them up again and try to keep them there, keep my eyes up, keep my chin steady and don't look at the ground. I wonder how many of them are Hap's offspring, and which of them will technically be mine and Smoky's step-brothers in a year's time. Do anti-pixies even distinguish each other as siblings when there are so many of them and they're all so alike?

"She doesn't have to marry him," a sleepy Hiccup whispers in my ear.

What do you want me to do about it? I snark, but I'm never sure how well he can pick up on my nonverbal thoughts. I examine the two branches, but neither appears notably sturdier than the others. I crawl out on the emptier one. My three roostmates are half asleep, their fuzzy green and yellow heads peeping out from the wrappings of their wings. They shuffle aside for me anyway. I close my eyes and… and…

I look down. My wings seize up, then flare and flap with several sharp smacks. An "Eep!" jumps from my lips. A memory I don't remember living snaps across my eyes - falling, falling, crash - and then Hiccup's spitting and shoving himself into control, trying to wrench it away from me, and I think I wet myself and the anti-pixies are awake and it's all a mess and I can do nothing…

… As Hiccup, I handle the embarrassment better than Foop, even though I definitely wet myself and I'm sure at least four of my neighbours know it. I nod in silence, avoiding eye contact, ears low, and climb back down the array. "Shh," I tell Foop in the washroom, rinsing our face with a damp cloth. Though a bit battered around the edges, it's a beautiful washroom nonetheless… Heh. I guess that's why they call this place the Lotus Palace.

I clean as best I can, then wake as Foop again standing there at the sink with the cloth in my fist, blinking at the mirror. At first I think I'm crying, until I realise the soft sound is coming from down the hall. I poke my head from the washroom. It's a long corridor. At the very end is a balcony with its double doors flung open. A figure slumps over the rail. Wind whips down the hall and carries the muffled sob back towards me, so I know immediately that it's my mother. Wind is rare in the cloudlands, especially on the isle surrounded by its massive wall. Mother belongs to the Sky spirit. When Munn is empathetic, the wind responds.

The balcony overlooks a direct drop into Lotus Lake (Hap had even affixed a diving board out there just because he could). A more appealing view than the dirty city streets. I'm not even that close when Mother's good wing goes rigid, her working ear flicking up in alarm. She stays frozen like that, trying with every quiver of her being to hold still, to not call attention to her pain, praying that I'll heed the unspoken etiquette and leave her alone to grieve. I'm not one for following rules.

"Mother? Can I sleep with you?"

Mother turns her head. Her acid scars glow red tonight, and for the first time in my life, I wonder how her roostmates sleep. Do they ever turn off?

"Somethin' wrong, sugar?" she rasps.

"I wet myself."

Talons tear through my chest when I admit it, but I don't try to take it back. Even though I look like a baby. Mother gives a slow nod. In the end, I roost between her and Hap, bundled tight in both their scoops of wings.

… I can't sleep. Not just because I despise hanging upside-down, but also because we're out here in a strange sunny chip of land trying to find a new king and the king wants to be the jester and this wouldn't be happening at all if my father hadn't disappeared and someone's snoring too loud and someone else is shifting so hard the whole branch is bobbing and Mother's new lover doesn't want to mate her and I don't even know how to start feeling about that. Relieved? Offended? I keep my arms around her waist, nuzzling my cheek into the thin fur of her belly. At least if I had to roost, I'm the right height to lean my head against the place she has neither scars nor scales…

Mother is careful not to hug me, cupping me in her wings but not squeezing tight. Even after all these years, I'm sensitive to touch. And I sort of realise then that I don't know what to make of my biological mother. Maybe she gave me a little too much space growing up.

I press against her stomach, half tempted to scratch and mewl like the pup I never got to be, tossed into Abracatraz and later the Pivotverse like I was. Her face glows indigo in her dreams. She's still… strange to me. I ramble most my private thoughts to her, especially back when Father was around and we were constantly at each other's throats, but… I've always held some part of myself back, even at my most vulnerable. Breathing in the soft touch of her fur, I try to remember that she is my real mother, and the Anti-Wanda I met when hurled into an alternate dimension as a pup wasn't this woman at all. Even when my brain knows better, sometimes I flinch on instinct when she turns a corner or when her fingers graze my head.

Her scars blink again, shimmering from indigo to lighter blue. I close my eyes and try to philosophize myself to sleep. Is the feeling I have for my mother really love? Or is it just… pity? What does love feel like anyway?

Chloe, I think as I finally drift off. Love is riding in the car with Chloe to her pottery class after work, and she lets me use her cell phone so I can text Kevin about how we're going to surprise her for her birthday.

My mother may not be able to fly anymore… but I wonder if she'd like to drive a cloudcar. She can't travel like she once could, and sometimes you just need a little control over something to get back on your feet. That's what works for me.

We stay another day with the anti-pixies before we take the chariot home. Smoky apparently ate an entire cake while we were out and spends the next week too sick to move. While Mother looks after him, I pass weeks in my closet, counting 77,776 handkerchiefs and staring at dusty jars on dusty shelves. And then it's real.

"Smoke. Next year Mum's going to marry the Head Anti-Pixie."

"Mmhm. Should I take over, Foop? You've been out a long time. Maybe let me shoulder some of the stress?"

"I didn't want this," I whisper, pulling my knees under my chin.

"What did you want?"

"I thought it would all blow over. I wanted to go back to school." I drag my claws down my cheeks. "I didn't want him to come back until I was involved with my studies again and there was no more war, no more danger, no reason to yank me out again."

"Hm," Hiccup says.

The year passes in a blur. I spend most of it studying abroad on another plane, but come home on the holidays. Mother can't seem to decide whether she's ecstatic or distraught by the impending wedding. Hap doesn't notice. The next few times I visit the Lotus Palace, I keep walking in on him in his office, hunched over blueprints and muttering incoherently about children and feathers and crackers until I make a sound and he jolts upright.

On my second visit I meet Hap's eldest son, Klangfarbenmelodie, who comes up to about my chest and is no less dead-eyed than I was told he is. Klangfar is even clumsier than my mother and you can hear him shuffling his feet from two rooms away. After we're introduced, he sticks to me like a bee in a bulletin board. Figures, since his primary counterpart is Cavatina Sanderson. You would think the opposite of someone who's selectively mute is someone who chatters constantly, but apparently that's not their main defining trait and honestly that concerns me a little. Most of the young anti-pixies run and jump, climbing things to jump off and screaming well into the night. Klangfar ignores them even when they plow into his side. Blinking curiously, he tails me from room to room. Standing. And staring. He'd follow me off the Isle if given half the chance, I swear.

"Is he coming off the Isle?" I ask Mother when the wedding date is only a month away. It's the day before the announcement will go out and I still haven't decided if I want Father to show up or if I'd rather see how this all plays out. Hap is still coming to terms with the fact that he'll be living with us now and his brother Anti-Bayard will take charge of the Isle in his absence. I ask my question in front of Klangfar because at this point I'm seriously doubting I could offend him if I wanted to.

"Ask yer step-dad," Mother says, digging through a box in the storage room.

"You know," Hap says, appearing in the doorway with a bag of grapes, "let's not call me step-dad. Call me… Count… High Boss."

"That is the stupidest name ever and I will not call you that."

"Then Hap's fine. Anyone want grapes? No? I also have mangoes. Klang?"

No response. Hap tosses him a mango anyway. It bounces off his head. "Oh, fruit," the kid says, which is the first thing I've heard him say in a year. Hap wanders off down the corridor, and Mother sits back on her heels and stares after him with a look in her eyes almost more haunted than Klangfar's.

This… is my life now.

Two weeks before the wedding, I ask Hap the same question I asked Mother, following it with, "Do you even know which kids are yours?"

He points down at my head with two fingers. "DNA test, sucker!"

"No you can't."

"Oh fudge, you're right. I didn't think this through. Eh, weh, meh." Shrug. "I'll draw straws. Now, where should I put the maps I brought? I also have questions about my wrapping paper collection, but I do not have answers."

"The High Count's office, I suppose."

Hap doesn't move, hands still templed before his chest. "Does anyone else have an opinion?"

The only other person in the room is Klangfar, so no. I lean back on my heels in the air. "Nothing's going to bite you. I store all my junk in there." Hap still twitches, so I shrug. "It hasn't been Father's office in a long time."

"It's still a 'Yikes' from me."

And… that's why I didn't hate my step-father. I could have stopped the wedding. Easily, with just a twist of my hand. But I didn't. Because Hap might have overthrown his own father to seize the Head Anti-Pixie title, but I'd seen him tone down his playful teasing during the points in Council meeting discussions he was most passionate about. When he first showed up at the Blue Castle with a backpack containing his favorite valuables and three anti-pixie kids behind him, I watched from the stairs as he looked around the entry hall, gripping those backpack straps and looking absolutely overwhelmed. It took a few weeks before he could remember how to fly after being deprived of clean magic for so long, and Hap didn't scream or cry every time he got upset. He would chuckle and, sheepish and bruised, ask the next person he saw for a lesson. Something about his laughter stopped my cheeks from burning with secondhand embarrassment. He felt no shame.

"I don't like this," Hiccup murmured.

Hap had skittish feet outside his own territory. I noticed early on that he followed my mother whenever he thought it wasn't weird. His whole presence was weird. He always stood crookedly with wings slightly open in a way that drew attention, but he didn't force himself into the centre of a room. He spoke when he wanted to and didn't when he didn't. For someone who wore bold red and yellow, he could certainly melt into the background when he wanted to. He walked the halls sometimes at night, hands clasped behind his back, and… not a single gram of anxiety shot through me if our paths crossed while I snuck midnight snacks upstairs.

"Take a scoop of vegetables with you," he said the first time he saw me, and I stopped dead.

"What?"

"Veggies," he said, walking right past me. "They're good for you. If you don't eat them tonight, get a lot tomorrow, yeah?"

"You're hardly the boss of me, Head Anti-Pixie."

"You got me there," he laughed. Never stopped. Never tried to push it. I saw the way he coloured pictures with his anti-pixies and listened in while Smoky played piano, offering advice and critiquing the bends of his claws. I saw how he spoke to my mother, keeping a respectful difference and trying not to overstep. I saw him stare some nights at the portraits of Anti-Cosmo on the walls, copying his posture for a few seconds before drawing a cloth from his pocket and wiping a bit of grime from the frame. He didn't try to take those pictures down. I saw him hesitate to seize my father's office, balancing on the heels of his feet. And that's why I don't stop the wedding.

"Can I have this?" I ask Hap three days after his coronation, pointing to a silver wand sheath lying on the High Count's desk. My father's own, if I'm not mistaken. Hap barely glances up from the weird golden bridle he pulled from the closet.

"Sure."

I buckle the sheath on. My ba-ba won't fit, but just wearing it makes me feel more like an adult. "Could I also get a little spending money for a camping trip with my friend Kelsia?"

"Mm, depends. Are you on a healthy diet?"

"Mostly."

"Then you sure can, pudding tin."

"Does pudding even come in tins?"

Hap points two fingers at me. "It does if we make some tonight!"

We do. Me and Smoky and Hap and the three anti-pixie children I keep not learning the names of since they rotate between the Castle and Isle every week. And it's fun. It's a lot of fun.

I fall in my coffin that evening without bothering to unclip the wand sheath, hands folded behind my head and feet kicked in the air. "Ah… Now this is the way a prince should be treated."

"Foop," Hiccup whines.

"What? You know I'm right. A father who respects Mother and gives Smoky and I anything we want is way better than a father who runs off with other lovers behind his family's back. Mother deserved better than him. We all did."

"This isn't fair to Daddy."

"What do you want me to do about that?"

"Are we ever going to tell Mum about the fight?"

"Why should we?"

"I don't know… I just don't like doing this."

I snort. "Nothing's ever good enough for you, Puck. I spent my formative years under so much distress that our mind split apart. All these years later, we're finally getting a normal childhood. For once, can you be happy for us?"

Of course it wouldn't last. Hap disappears five years later. Hiccup has the decency not to say I told you so.

"You can't leave!" I scream, flying into the tea room where he and my mother have been talking. Father's wand sheath smacks against my leg. "Everyone always leaves!"

"Foop," Mother says without looking up. In her lap, Denzel gives a hiss.

Her earrings are on the table. Why are they on the table? I've never seen her without before, and I flutter my wings wildly, trying to process all of this. Why isn't he wearing Sunnie's brooch? Did they have a fight? Did the nature spirits have a fight?

"You have to stay!" I yell.

Hap leans back, eyes closed, waiting for me to spout on. I heard his explanation to Mother already- "Too many anti-pixies, sorry, I tried my best, I gave it a go" and he knows I overheard so he doesn't try explaining it again. I stare at him, huffing, fists bouncing against my shaking sides.

"You're stupid."

Hap never uses his sarcastic, tongue-dangling, hand-pressing-down-head-and-ruffling-hair voice on me, but from the glint in his eyes, I can tell he wants to. Tell it's taking all his energy not to lean forward with his chin propped on a teasing fist. My wings thud. I go for my ba-ba, ripping it from its clasp at my side.

"Gentledrakes' duel!"

"Foop," Mother says again, stronger now. I quiver, keeping my arm outstretched.

"If I win, you have to stay. You can't go."

"Fine," he says, giving in like he always does except when I really need him to. He doesn't wave me off, doesn't say I'm trying to solve problems like a stupid violent Fairy. Just stands, drawing his wand. "Let's take this to the courtyard, yo-yo. Give your ma some space."

That's how Hap disappears. I don't tell Mother where. She's in pieces, though. I come back downstairs and find her in the tea room still. Broken mirror on the floor, knees on the floor, fists on the floor, mucus and tears all mixed on the backs of her hands, body heaving. Denzel sits nearby, soft tail curled around his paws.

"Why don't they stay…?"

I crouch behind her, wrapping her thin shoulders in a hug. "He's gone, Mother. Just let it go. We'll move on."

Mother turns her head, scars pulsing deep red. She lifts her hand to touch my face. "How d'ya do it, Foop? You lost your human friends. You lost that family you lived a human lifetime with. Are you hurting all the time? Is this you?"

Am I hurting? I tighten my arms. My brain whirls in circles forever, comparing and contrasting, searching for the better option, striking out first drafts and clinging to revisions, shrieking all the time.

But am I hurting?

"Do you want to stop?" I ask quietly. I still have the knife I used on Hap wedged in Father's wand sheath.

"I'm so tired, Foop…"

Hiccup? I ask.

"… I guess this one's okay."

I stand again. Mother's still on the collapse, the brave front she put up for her High Count crumpling like smoke in her fingertips. Too late, knife slicing down, do I realise I can see my reflection in the shattered mirror. Mother's horrified eye. Jerking up, wild fear.

Then she's gone. I clutch the knife, staring down at the shards scattered across the floor. I brush a knuckle down my cheek.

"Foop, quick!"

Right. The wound wasn't bad and she'll regenerate in seconds. I snatch the teapot from the table and catch her smoke in that. My sock is tied around the spout. It'll do.

Denzel mrrows at my feet. "Shh," I tell him, twisting on my heel. All is quiet except my thumping wings. I steady myself, then carry Mother's lifesmoke up to my room. The cat sits back on his haunches to watch me unlock my closet door.

Don't trip, I think, stepping carefully over 77,782 handkerchiefs. I blink up at the other half dozen jars on my shelf, leering down at me like pickled moonbeams from on high. I find a bare place between the new jar containing Hap's lifesmoke and the dusty one that holds my father's. Mother's slides between them as neatly as a song. The twisting smoke in Father's jar snuggles closer when I set her there as though even unconscious, he knows his wife deserves the best greeting he can give.

I need to go. The people will look for me when they realize their High Count and High Countess have disappeared. Does that make this a coup? Focus. Smoke, I need to run. Run like I ran to rent a room at Denzel Crocker's, run like I ran to Chloe's, run like the Darkness is snapping at my tail, but my fingertips refuse to slip away. They press closer, warm and cold, and I stare and stare and stare at the faded label on my father's jar.

Dad.

"Huh," I say. "Three letters. Just three."

It's a meaningless observation. Nonetheless, I pause. Why did I write 'Dad' when I always called him 'Father?'

Hiccup used "Daddy" more often than not. I found it cringe-inducing, but it came so naturally to him. I'd been in a panicked rush when I'd scribbled that label on the jar, desperate to get out of the kitchen but also wanting to ensure I didn't misplace it. I suppose "Father" is a bit of a distance name, isn't it?

Dad…

Denzel mews. Inhaling slowly, I bring my hands back from the shelf and hug the teapot containing my mother to my chest. Some muffled noise leaps from my throat, because I can't do this again, not again… I lean against the wall until it pinches my wings, then slide to the floor with a thump. My feet push forward and are buried alive in creamy white handkerchiefs. The teapot burns like splintered ice beneath my fingertips, and I clutch it like a fragile thing.

"I just… We were a family. We used to love each other like a family… You even loved me. Impulsive egomaniac though I was."

I'm surrounded by silence and handkerchiefs. No one answers me. Even the cat stretches out, content with quiet.

"I ran off with Denzel and Dark Laser, and you still welcomed me home. I ran off again with Chloe and Kevin to live like a human child, and you both let me go. You still loved me… in all my stupid flaws."

It runs in the family, I guess.

"Hiccup, we can't do this anymore."

"I guess not."

Mother's teapot goes back on the shelf. I leave for an hour to take a walk, then come back and pull Father down instead. The jar isn't very big. Dark smoke hovers within, occasionally somersaulting or gathering to one side. It doesn't look like much at a glance, even three letters' worth. That seems to suit him.

I close my eyes and twist the lid open. Why? Why now and not millennia before? Ha. Gods… Do I look like I know anything?

A plume unwinds from the jar like the tail of a startled cat. Speaking of which, Denzel darts away. I clench the lid until my fingers pinch. The smoke gathers in a cloud above my head, then rapidly takes on solid form. With a soft puffing sound, my father - my father - springs back to life, wand in hand.

He hasn't aged a day. His hair is as thick and messy as ever, drooping in a flop so off the mark from royalty it's almost laughable. The gash down his torso is gone, though the golden blood is still wet. It soaks his shirt in a clump just above his stomach. His hand oozes with the stuff. Father stares at me with quivering lips, then reaches out to touch my cheek. Withdraws, and he's shaking.

"Foop?"

I don't try to justify it. Nothing justifies 'You tried to pull me out of school and also may or may not have had an affair with your ex-wife while Mother lay on her potential deathbed and we had a fight about it, so I killed you and caught you in a jar while you were mid-regeneration so you'd be trapped just like you were fine sending Mother to be trapped in the Sky Temple since you were going to bring the ex I can't stand back into your life and then I realised I liked being the boss of me without your constant nagging in my ear so I kind of never let you out again.' There's no point in trying. I rocket forward, crushing him against the wall, arms wrapped in a hug around his waist. Father seizes up with a squeal of pain. Bloody smoke, I can't imagine how sore his neck must be… Or would he even feel it if he spent that time as smoke? He clearly didn't age while trapped in regenerative limbo. I suppose pain wouldn't affect him either.

"Foop…"

His voice doesn't rasp. It's the same voice. He hasn't aged. He hasn't changed at all. My father who couldn't tell a wall socket from a socket wrench… Gods, he'll be so lost in the technology of the world today.

The closet's dark, but I can still tell he hasn't changed. Some part of my brain is trying to calculate the value of this discovery, but I shake it to the rear drawing board. That doesn't matter now. Nothing really does.

"You're grown," my father whispers, and it's not the same voice anymore because it breaks. His palm grazes my cheek, his thumb sliding up to press one of the thick, ink-black curls of my hair back from my eyes. The last time he saw me, I was barely 1,500 years old.

I choke on my own spit. Splattering tears from my eyes with my lashes, I peer up at that fuzzy face with its long-forgotten cheekbones and oversized fangs, his one blinded eye. It's twisted in agony and confusion and anger and fear. There's still blood on his nose from where I scratched him almost 80,000 years ago.

"Foop?" he asks again, still unsure. He notices the golden magic dribbling from his hand for the first time. "Am I-? Did you stab me?"

I press my nose into his vest and I'm spluttering and I'm howling because- because- "That was so long ago! I was just a kid. I-it was the fire poker. In the camarilla dining room with the fire poker. I knew you weren't kiff-tied- That's so rare, knew I'd never get another chance as long as I live-"

He wants to sit down, but there's nothing to sit on except the handkerchief heap. He sort of slides from my arms, oozing to his knees. He tries to speak and he can't make words. His lips are fitted to his face just fine, but they aren't moving well. With his hands braced, he leans over and coughs a thin trickle of blood, this time pink. It spatters my foot. I pause, realising then that I shouldn't be laughing.

"How long was I up there?" he whispers.

I don't want to answer.

"You're real, aren't you?" Father sees his hand for the first time then and scowls. "This old song and dance… Blue again."

"It's been a long time. Um. The war is still on. Smoky and I would be in middle school now if we hadn't pulled out. Anti-Theodore is still on the Anti-Fairy Council. Oh. And Mother got remarried."

Father scratches the center of his forehead, closing his eyes. "Is he now? I expected him voted out millennia ago." His hands slide down to his elbows. He tilts back his head. "So… do you have a step-father or a step-mother?"

"Father."

"Hmph. That's the thing about your mother. She locks hard on what she likes and doesn't experiment beyond that. There's no creativity in that woman, Foop. Make sure you marry a High Countess who has it in spades."

I half blink, trying to remember why I expected him to have anything of substance to say.

"Am I still High Count?" he asks, standing again. He rubs his eyes. His monocle is smudged.

"No. Not for five years now."

"Well, out with it then. Who replaced me?"

I hesitate, Hiccup stirring too inside my head. "H.A.P. Anti-Sanderson."

"… Him?" Father looks like he's swimming, shaking his head and blinking so much ever since he took solid form. "Of any drake or damsel she could have chosen as her High Count, she picked him?"

Relieved tears brim over in my eyes. "That's exactly what I said!"

Father's crying too, but it's all rushing out of him instead of bleeding out like mine. He bends partway over, one hand sliding backwards down the wall as he stumbles, second hand shoving through his hair- I can't tell if he's going to fall. He lets out a long, thin squeak. Then, "I'm too late…"

"Not exactly. According to the Traditions and Customs book, you can be reinstated any time if he chooses to step down. He sort of left anyway, might be gone a while-"

Father clenches his bangs. "Why couldn't I have been here a few years earlier?"

"… I don't know." I really didn't have a reason.

"She wanted Anti-Sanderson. Bloody smoke. Laughable, really. Isn't it? Your mother's simple, Foop. Of course she picks a man who breeds like a damn rabbit."

I flick back my ears. "Father!"

He shoves me aside and flashes from my closet, flying down the hall. I stand stupidly with one hand in the air, wondering how a paralysis-by-analysis kid like me could possibly be related to an extinct-by-instinct creature like him. Did I not shut my bedroom door? Apparently he's not as clumsy as I remembered if he didn't trip.

Then it hits me that he ran.

Oh gods, he ran.

Father's still glittering with post-regeneration magic, and he vanishes in a puff of smoke before I can question where he's going. I take a guess and somehow bet correctly. Just over the mountain, not far from one of the lesser castles, he stands with his hands dragging down his cheeks.

"Where is my boat?"

I cough into my hand as I fly up behind him. "I, ah… I borrowed that. A few thousand years ago. Several times."

His eyes turn towards the edge of the sky that's more pink than red. My fur prickles. I grab his wrists before he can go for his wand and hold his gaze until his struggles stop.

"Let go," he says, very tired. I do, but don't back away. He touches a button on his vest. It's long out of style now even by Anti-Fairy standards. "I… need to visit the Water Temple and speak with Sunnie. That's what got me into this mess in the first place, isn't it?"

"You can't visit H.P. while you're there. We're still at war. The Pixies took the Fairies' side; we're mortal enemies now."

"The Pixies?"

"Mother secured the loyalty of their counterparts. She did it for us."

"Foop, please…" He pushes his hand up along his forehead. "I need some time alone to process this."

"Time alone?" I shriek, throwing out my hand to grab his shirt. "All you've had is time alone for the last 80,000 years! What about us?"

Father massages his forehead with his knuckle instead of the fat part of his hand, just the way I do, which I never noticed before. He closes his eyes, and I try to remember what life was like in the beginning of it all.

"Um… Planet Earth's northern hemisphere is overrun by Animals now. Faeheim blew up. Dimmsdale too, if you remember that old town. The Animals built a new city on top of it… Petropolis… But you didn't miss much."

"Yes I did," he says. His hand slides up my arm to brush my cheek. "You got a lot taller. Give it a few more millennia and you'll overtake me."

I force a smile. "Not even in high school yet, old man. You missed a few awkward growth spurts, but like I said, not much."

His voice drops low. "You did this, didn't you?"

Acid prickles behind my eyes. I don't say anything to that either. My foot twists into the soil. Father's stare doesn't soften, and I know I'm in for a world of punishment for the next few thousand years at least.

I don't care.

"Okay… I'm going to sit here a while. Tell me everything."

"Everything?" I jerk away from his hand. "Starting with what?"

"You. Smoky. Hiccup. Talon. Fairy-Cosmo. Your grandnana…"

"And Mother?"

Pause. Father scrapes his hair to one side, and I realize with a jolt that he hasn't seen her yet. Not her scars. Not her wings. Nothing at all.

"Not her. Smoke, Foop… I need time." He tilts back his head. "I was up on Plane 23 for the last 80,000 years… Though it felt more like 8,000 lives. This world is going to take some getting used to, isn't it?" He throat cinches. His hand squeezes the lapels of his coat. "I want to see it for myself. Tell me everything, then give me a month to learn everything else. Maybe two, maybe a year. I need… time."

I blink. "Will… you come back?"

Father looks left, drinking in the mountains and the stars, then right at the lake and a castle on a hill. "I always do, don't I? … Maybe five years. Maybe ten."

My mouth is dry, unquivering. Part of me wants to beg, though I also don't, and I don't want to cry but I think I might anyway. I sit down in the long curves of grass and stare across the water. Father does the same, and the way he waves his hands about when he babbles all his questions is so familiar, but the way he pauses and twitches to give his arm a closer look and say "Oh yes, I'm blue again," is so wrong, and I want to ask what it was like on Plane 23 where the nature spirits play, how much of this world he remembers, what the world of the dead did to his mind…

I lay back in the grass, tuning out half my father's words even though I should treasure every one. I link my wrists above my head. I think… I'm supposed to feel something. But I don't know what to feel.

There should probably be regret.

There should probably be relief.

I was sort of expecting guilt.

Maybe you're a convenience, I muse, staring at the back of the High Count's head (or do I call him ex-High Count now?) My father might be bossy, but at least he could keep the Castle running so I didn't have to.

Father says again that he needs a sabbatical more than he needs immediate time with the rest of us. I wish him well. Mother's teapot still sits on my closet shelf… And for just a few years, until Father's ready, I think I might keep it there. She's been tired so awfully long. Anti-Sanderson can stay locked up a while longer. My parents deserve some reunion time without him. As for whether I'll let him out again before or after the anti-pixies choose a new leader… Who can say? Depends on my mood that year, I suppose. I wonder if there's a way to make money off that with the public: Prince Foop will freeze your soul until the war is over…

I chuckle. It's not even funny, but it sort of is.

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A/N - Poof, Sammy, and Finley finish Spellementary and go on to attend Alberich Middle School with Finley's new room assignment. At age 130,000, Foop enrolls in Carl Poofypants High and after some issues with his new roommates we'll get into another day, he's reassigned to Poof's, Sammy's, and Finley's room again.

Poof and Foop were more buddy-buddy in their Spellementary days, teasing each other for fun and bonding over the struggle of having Mr. Crocker as a teacher (recall Prompt 124, "This Is a Box"). They don't speak much during the war ("Tools of the Trade" and "Opinion" being the few times they do). When they reunite, there's awkward rivalry between them again (Prompt 93, "Unwelcome"). They can coexist as roommates, but they're not close friends.