(Posted August 23, 2016)

School's In - Not Much of a Musical

Summer of the Bruised Peach Tree

Ambrosine parted his thin fingers from his deep blue eyes. "Am I crying, Fergus?"

"Not yet."

His wings drooped. "I promise I feel deeply torn up about this. My only nymph, about to turn around and float through the Academy gate and out of my life for centuries. I should be a wreck. Are you sure my face is dry?"

I shifted my wand slightly to the left, causing the three cardboard boxes hovering above my head to dip and slightly spin. "It's fine, Ambrosine. I'm not going to blame you for being emotionally ready to let me go."

"It's the Whimsifinado curse, I imagine. Let me see your hand." When I gave it to him, he kissed the center of my right palm. Then he rotated my hand around and touched it to my forehead. "I heard once that that's how the Tuatha Dé Danann used to say good-bye to someone they wanted to see again, so they would always be in the thoughts of those who traveled."

I massaged two fingers into the dip at the back of my neck and glanced away from this mortifying display. Fortunately, while Ambrosine may be sentimental, he wasn't clingy. He released my wrist, ruffled my hair into twin peaks at the front, then smoothed it down again with a dab of saliva.

"Right. The city's yours. You're signed up for your classes, we've ordered all your texts, and the first semester of your residency is paid for. Now, go in there and learn something useful."

I clicked my heels together, staring at my shadow as I bobbed above the pale pink clouds. A pair of damsels swept past me and into the castle. Reaching into the pocket of my pale blue vest, I said, "I have something to give you, Ambrosine."

"And I have one last gift for you too." He patted down his front, then lifted his eyebrows. "Ah. Why don't you go first? It would seem I left yours somewhere at the house, and I don't trust myself to be able to poof it up first try. I'll just bring it to you when I visit next month. Break up the monotony of daily Academy life some."

"Yeah. Here's this." I shoved my glossy tablet into his hands and took the smallest box up from the cloudstones. "'Bye. See you next month and not any sooner."

I started through the gate, but thin arms wrapped around me and spun me in a circle. The boxes above my head scattered.

"Ambrosine!"

"Sorry, sorry!" He peeled his fingers away. "Learn a lot and leave time for damsels."

"You'll see me again, Dad. It's not the last time you give me a hug." With a whistle, I summoned my boxes again. The one carrying my clothes wouldn't stop bumping the one holding my styluses, scrying bowl, wing brush, and similar such items into the wall. At the double doors beyond the golden gate, I paused and looked back. Ambrosine was reading my tablet note with a hand to his cheek. He looked up, grinned, and pointed at it. Sentimentality. It makes idiots and cowards of us all. I quickly disappeared inside.

The halls, both horizontal and vertical, twisted all around one another like strands of DNA. Fairies of various races crossed my path between every blink of my eyes. After a minute, the passage I was following opened into a large round chamber, empty except for a pillar of spiral stairs in its center like an apple core, leading both distantly up and deeply down. I followed the signs to the left as I hunted down the registrar's office.

"Whimsifinado," I said upon reaching the front of its line. "Fergus Whimsifinado."

The damsel raised her head, and I got a straight-on look at her for the first time. I half-choked. It would never stop being strangely fascinating to me that members born into satyr culture relied on the natural candy-colored fairy-floss fluff around their outer sensitive areas instead of covering themselves with clothes. You didn't see a lot of satyrs around Novakiin.

"Whimsifinado," she mused through pursed lips. With a wave of her wand, she startled a nearby sleeping drawer bearing a 'W' onto its feet. It scampered over and sat down obediently while she fished around inside its top for my tabletwork. "You're a gyne?"

"Yes, dame."

"Mmhm. Are you interested in auditioning for a position in fairy godparent studies?"

A flitty little glorified slave who zipped about doing genie work, granting unlimited wishes to some bratty Yugopotamian or Snobulac or Bodacian or who-knows-what child only to turn around and strip them of their memories and a few of their other choice wishes that would be more difficult for the abandoned young adult to explain away? I wrinkled my nose. "No thanks. Not my style."

"Perhaps it's for the best. Competitive field and rigorous schedule requirements, that one. Well, in that case, stay out of the bunker area on the east side. It's permanently off-limits to anyone not in their third semester of pursuing godparent studies. Energy field's a mess enough with them; magic lines get so thickly tangled over there, people have actually been known to tie themselves up with the invisible cords if they aren't careful."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said, drumming my fingertips on her desk. "Is it true that you keep live Unwinged on campus in there?"

She smiled. "We have three. But, only twelfth-semesters have access to that restricted area. Now, if you aren't training to become a godparent, whatever brought you to the Academy?"

"I'm registered for the psychology program."

The satyr checked my information with the drawer. "So you are. Your semester's text tablets will be shipped to your room once you turn your key in the door. And your key is right here on this pin that attaches to your shirt." But she frowned before she gave it to me. "When you filled out your tabletwork, you registered yourself as a full-blooded fairy."

"Yes, dame."

"Turn around, please. I'd like to get a look at that bit of orange on your wings."

I did so, and she actually stood up with a clicking of hooves. "What in…?"

Smiling in a thin and patient way, I said, "Genetic mutation. It's written there in my records."

"Curious. I've never seen such design." As she scratched her cheek, I heard rather than saw her frown. "You appear to have the indirect muscular wing structure."

"I do. However, I assure you, I am a full-blooded fairy."

"Exactly what species was your mother?"

"Fairy," I answered as I flicked a fingernail against my mangled crown.

"Are you certain?"

"It's what my father always told me, but she disappeared before I could ever meet her." The answer I'd grown used to giving. The easy out.

"Ah." The satyr sat down again, satisfied well enough. "Then, you'll need this." She tapped a pink circular tablet with her wand three times before she passed it to me. "This is the automated system showing all the gynes in the Academy and their general present location. Please keep it with you at all times and attempt to avoid one another accordingly. We understand that instinct is instinct, but if you cause too many problems, there will be consequences; three strikes and you're out. Similarly, when next semester rolls around, I would suggest registering for classes as soon as possible, as the limit of gynes per class is one."

I sighed, but only inside my head. "I will, thank you. And my room key?"

"Room K40-31." She pointed straight upwards and sent me off. Keeping the gyne tablet in my left hand, I made my way along the criss-crossing halls (many of the tunnels so small I was forced to fold up my wings and crawl through them like an insect) and around staircases, avoiding the dots in my clay tablet whenever they began to rapidly blink.

Ten minutes of somewhat-aimless wandering and squinting at faded carvings of maps later, I opened the door to my room. And immediately shut it again. I checked my room key. I checked the number on the plaque overhead.

"Aw, smoof no." After running my fingers through my hair, I pushed the door open one more time.

A pale drake clutching the neck of a glass bottle filled with drink almost the same dark red as his open robe stood in the middle of the rubber-mat floor beside the fire pit. At least he had on a green shirt (if one that hung in waves from his scrawny shoulders, and his plumed pants with their clumsy patches and purple stripes weren't much better). His hair was red too, but a shockingly bright tint of it. Think, well… red. That was his messy hair, thick with curls all the way down the back of his neck and mostly covering his ears. It left the very top of his head rather shiny and bare.

Then there was the long nose that suggested his father was a brownie despite the will o' the wisp sharpness at its tip. His teeth were bad. Very, very bad (even for his species' famous rows of squares)- all yellowed and worn from too much sugar colliding with too much brownie saliva.

On top of that, he had freckles on his face. My eye twitched. He slurred, "What's cookin', good lookin'? My name's Sparkle Doubletake, and I already like you," as he stumbled forward.

I tightened my grip around the doorknob. "That's it. I am not rooming with a brownie."

"Aw, relax, toots," he said, drinking another swig. He propped his elbow against the wall beside the breadbox. "I ain't killed no one for the last like, hundred thirty-something years. That's my own personal record. Hic. Come on, you gonna attempt a dominance lick on me or what? It's your right, y'know. You've got more freckles than I do."

My eyes flicked down to my round pink tablet, then up again. I clenched it to my chest. "Are you a gyne?"

"Nah." He ran his middle finger over the three dull brown freckles beneath each unfocused blue eye. "These are genetic, man. Hey, you haven't licked me yet. Does that mean I'm alpha drake here?"

I set my shoulders. Replacing my key on my shirt, I said, "Of course not. You're a brownie. Natural servant race."

"Half-brownie," Sparkle insisted as he thunked his bottle of soda on the counter and concealed a rising burp in his fist. "S'cuse me. Ahem. I got a will o' the wisp crown, see? My inrita poison's kinda watered down, so I can't e'en put anyone to sleep with it. It just makes my teeth sizzle."

"How charming." But, his logic did line up. The acidic saliva could carry for up to three generations and it did prickle against the skin something awful, but only full-bloods had actual inrita that could paralyze and kill.

I stretched out my hand. The awkward drake cocked his head. "Who shakes with their right?"

"Uh. Mostly no one." I switched hands. "I don't know why I always do that. Instinct."

"You really gotta raise your voice with me and look me in the eyes if you want me to pay attention. You gonna lick me or you gonna be an urvogel about it? Bawkity bawk."

Well. I wasn't an urvogel, and I certainly wasn't going to let some crossbreed brownie claim superiority over me. His breath smelled of cherries when we leaned our faces close and exchanged our cautious licks of greeting. Despite Sparkle's big talk, he didn't even attempt dominance over me in our newfound pecking order- he tagged my chin without hesitation and with a fat, slurping tongue, then bobbed his head so I could get him above the eyes.

"Fergus Whimsifinado," I told him when I withdrew. "I come from Novakiin. Small town west of Faeheim without much to its name but the science museum. I was informed that underage new-wings were not to be permitted this much processed sugar on school grounds. Are you really old enough to be in the Academy?"

Sparkle tilted his head far to the right again, smacking the lingering taste of me around his mouth. "Hey, I'm real young, but I'm not stupid. I was too smart for the slicing cave, but my grandmama Corinna says I got a gift for bringin' trouble every which way, and that's why they all sent me packing from the burrow, the wisps. You want a petaltuck?" And he drew a crumpled pink flower from his robe pocket.

"Thanks," I muttered, shoving it behind my right ear as I typically did with flowers. Something about him - perhaps the orange tinge to his magic, or the possible chinks in his story - bothered me just below the first layer of my skin. "Wisp children are supposed to take their surnames from their mothers, aren't they? 'Doubletake' doesn't sound particularly wisp-esque."

"Yeah, but my real name's a flower that sounds a little fluffy. That, and I've had a' go on the run a couple times. I coulda called myself Sparkle Doublecross."

Suffice to say, this did not put him in my favor.

My second roommate turned out to be a far darrig by his bald head, pink cheeks, and the white ruff around his neck sprinkled with dark stains; he was studying the biology, culture, development, and future of the Unwinged Angels. He checked my freckles over and, nose wrinkling, decided he would rather lick my chin now and retain his dignity than pick a fight about it and end up the loser anyway. I was just going for his forehead when he grabbed my wrist and blurted, "The war will begin when night turns to day, when the rose-haired fairy becomes a cù sith, when the Chosen One abandons his family, and the Accursed One raises the shout of passion before he dealeth the first signal to arms."

I recoiled. "What?"

He grabbed a roll of washroom paper from the table by the fire pit and meandered off on foot, muttering.

"Don't get your lines knotted about Polly, Fergus," Sparkle said, poking his tongue around the neck of his empty bottle. "I've been here three days and he always talks jacked like that. Just don't touch interrupt him when he's babbling and it's all good. He spends like all his time talking to himself in the washroom."

"I always wanted to have a sugar-addicted brownie and a socially-awkward oracle for roommates."

"You're a small-town gyne with entitlement issues who's trusting enough to shake with the hand that channels magic," Sparkle pointed out in his Lau Rell drawl that made everything end with an upwards inflection. "You can always correct me if you want, but I don't think we're too excited to see you either, man."

"That's fair." I beckoned towards my faithful cardboard boxes with my hand (the big one still hadn't finished chasing the small one around my crown). "Where do I sleep?"

"That bed farthest from the window. Hope you don't mind it."

"But theoretically if I did want yours," I checked, "you'd let me have it because I'm the resident gyne, correct?"

"Sure thing, dude."

I snagged the large box by one flap and upended it on my bed. "'Dude'. You really are from Lau Rell, aren't you?"

"Technically, I've just hung out there a couple times when I was hidin' from the fuzz. Hey, it's a laid-back place."

Flipping my wand between my fingers, I dragged the base along the ground in a complete square around the bed, my bookshelf, desk, and one of the chairs by the low-burning fire pit in the center of the room. When I closed the shape and tapped it twice, the markings lit up with dull purple.

"This is my territory. Everything inside it, whether it be a stylus, a blanket, a damsel, or especially a bowl of cereal belongs to me. I don't care if the object is freely given, thrown inside, or dropped. It's mine. If either of you cross this line, I'll know."

"And if you steal something of ours and cross inside there, it cancels, right? That's how this works?"

I squinted. "Yes?"

Sparkle shrugged and tossed his empty bottle inside my purple box. It shattered, wedging a dozen glass splinters between the small rubber squares that made up the tile. I raised one eyebrow as he slurred, "Just checkin', man. Hey, Apollo and I are hittin' the Hole for sup in ten. You comin' with?"

I went with, even though I did so silently steaming about the broken soda bottle. Polly turned out not to be much for conversation, or at least relevant conversation, but Sparkle more than made up for him. It seemed as though his travels had led him everywhere, and he'd made it a point to introduce himself to every famous person you could imagine.

I set down my water glass beside my oatmeal as he tied the end of his story up in ribbons. "You went into the Eros Nest? I mean, not in the menagerie area, but the actual control room? You were in the Love Nest's control room?"

"Only like a dozen times, man. Four times all by myself, and once on accident. Never convince yourself you can brownie-proof a building, Fergus. Fairies can rotate their wings individually, nixes can swim, but brownies can get into places. Hey." He cocked his head. "Can you rotate your wings? Yours spin a little bit like an elf's."

"You're telling me that you kissed Venus Eros?" I pressed, effectively ignoring him (Sparkle wasn't good with keeping his focus on follow-ups). "Without being one of her chosen?"

Quirking his brows, Sparkle finished in a sly voice dripping with just the last hint of sugar-drunk tingle-fritziness, "Does it bother you that I broke the rules?"

As I scratched my chin, my mind wandered back to the arrow that Charite had given me in Mistleville 16,863 years ago. I'd never used it, and it was stuffed away even now in the drawer beside my bed that kept my pants. "Kissing Venus Eros is the only rule worth breaking," I decided. "I'd like to see the Eros Nest's control room. Is it true that that's where they keep all the yoo-doo dolls? Since they were banned following the War of the Sunset Divide, I mean."

"Nah, those are in our storage boxes. They've got files for everyone, you know. But no, yeah, the control room's got too many screens to fit anything like that. Maybe I can take you there someday."

"Maybe… By the way, I grabbed my allotted half of sugar cookie, but don't want to be even a fleck hungover the first day of class. Would you want it?"

Drooling in thick waves, he reached out his hand. I pulled the cookie back.

"First, tell me who's the greatest."

"You are, Fergus."

I smiled as I set the cookie on the edge of his plate, and he tore into it with his fork. Aside from therapy class, maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

Although I didn't much care for his rattling chatter or the routine way he flirted with every pretty but simple-brained damsel (and I think a few of the drakes) to cross his path - Whatever happened to that old wives' tale, 'brownies never make the first move'? - Sparkle was a hard worker in school who knew his stuff. I found myself grudgingly admitting to myself that while he came off as annoying at the best of times, by no stretch of the imagination could he be described as uneducated. He was dumb and emotionally unstable, but well-traveled, and it made him clever. He could drive anything with pedals, and while he rubbed many an animal and Fairy the wrong way, his positive attitude never allowed him to back down from the challenge of friendship.

And not even the grouchiest goblin among us could claim that Sparkle Doubletake, who never took the last slice of cherry pie and spent every Wednesday night baking tarts for the whole floor to taste come morning, was unkind. Our third dinner in the Hole, for example, when he saw my hesitation upon finding he and Polly sitting beside another gyne, he didn't even have to be asked to move. He recognized his error and jumped up to help me find another seat, even while I protested that I didn't require his assistance.

Now, if he would only do something about those rotting square teeth. That was territory of the Tooth Fairies alone, unfortunately, or I would have shelled out the cash to fix them up myself.

Let me make myself clear: I did not like Sparkle. He won himself a fair amount of detentions within our first week alone, he had his wand suspended more than once during my time at the Academy, he constantly toed the line around my section of our room, he frequently came onto me when sugarloaded, and he had no real respect for the rules or Da Rules at all. No. I never learned to like Sparkle. I simply said that he performed well concerning his schoolwork, and I respected him for his ability to get his act together in time for class when he spent his nights drunk or chasing damsels until three in the morning. He and I got on perfectly fine so long as we didn't have to be anywhere near one another.

Although, it wasn't as if I found Polly's conversation much more intriguing. After coming back in the early afternoons, I had taken to bracing my palms against the zinflax door of our room and quite literally beating my forehead against the wood until I convinced myself that it would swell to three times its original size.

"Guess what we discussed in class today," I growled at the far darrig when he cracked open the door to the washroom. "We talked about how the quality of magic is positively affected by emotions and how those who actively express 'love' tend to channel more powerful spurts of the stuff and are capable of holding a magically-formed object together for a longer period of time, with fewer adverse backlash effects on top of that. However, this was treated as fact when it is merely a theory. A theory that literally everyone has heard of, and that we covered in specific detail for two hours. I loathe talking about feelings. I can't take too many more classes like this, Apollo. I came here to progress in my learning. Not to repeat 4843rd-Year material like some of King Nuada's scripture."

"Fergus, it is nae just a theory. Love is the most powerful magic there is."

I jabbed a finger in Polly's direction, causing him to shrink behind the door. "Don't you start. I don't deserve this."

"To fill a hole, there must need be one first, aye?"

"Is that another one of your prophecies?" I asked through a snort. Skirting the fire pit, I skimmed towards my bed. "Polly, have you ever had a prophecy actually come true? I seem to remember that last week you predicted an elf would offer me and Sparkle more pizza than either one of us could eat."

Flustered shrug. "The sight scrambles as it is fading. It ebbs and disappears at times when the magic runs out thickest."

Convenient excuse. He always pulled the same tight face and squeaked, "Sorry, I cannae!" when I tried to coax actually useful information out of him. You couldn't even ask him when it was next going to rain without him breaking down in a heap of tears, sobbing about a flood that would sweep all trees to the ground.

Unfortunately for Sparkle, I was still in a sour mood the following morning. I woke up late, and took it out first on my cardboard boxes (never in all this time had they given up their petty squabbling). As they chased each other about beneath my bed, I reached down to smack them each with my wand. Once they'd dropped dustlessly and disenchanted to the ground, I kicked them to ensure they were out of commission. Then I shed my covers and wandered over to the kitchen cabinet where we kept the mugs.

"Another day, another death wish," I muttered to myself.

"You really don't like that therapy class of yours," one of the others said from behind me, voice blurred by sleep.

I reached for a spoon to stir my coffee with. "It's partially the principle of the thing. Despite being an independent adult, I didn't have a choice. Yes, I worked at Wish Fixers with my dad for millennia, but since I hadn't come here to school and been certified as an advanced multi-species mind and magic psychologist, I was in charge of the tabletwork."

"What's Wish Fixers?"

"Family business where my dad offers emotional support and specialized training to juveniles who struggle with their magic. Where have you been?" That was when I turned around. And instantly flattened myself to the wall as the mess of matted egg-colored fur cringed into the corner. "What the- You're a- cù sith! Sparkle!"

He stumbled into the kitchen, wiping purple soda drips from his chin. I didn't come down from the counter when I shot him a glare more scalding than my coffee was supposed to be. The tip of my laser cannon began to creep from my forehead dome.

"Did you sneak a cù sith on campus?"

It took him a few blinks of his eyes to assess the situation, and when he did, his face paled. Instantly he was on his knees, hands together and lifted above his head. "Fergus, don't tell! Her name's Rosemary and I love her."

"Rosemary" was long and low, stockily built, scruffy white, with patches of orange along her back and ears and an insatiably smug look upon her anxious face. A six-pointed fairy crown hovered above her head, and two sets of long dragonfly wings drooped by her sides.

I covered my face with my sleeves. My chewed nails dragged down my cheeks. "Sparkle, you can't have a cù sith on campus. You're really not supposed to have a cù sith very much of anywhere that's crowded. Do you want to have your soul stolen? Do you want to die a dustless death? Do you want your magic to be swallowed by The Darkness?"

Sparkle clutched the puppy to his cheek. "Please let her stay. She likes me. She makes me feel safe."

"Plus, I'm adorable," argued the dog, wagging the vaguely star-shaped fluff on the end of her tail.

"No." I would not be moved. I turned back to my coffee. "It's against Academy rules. Rules exist for good reason: To keep things flowing smoothly and painlessly, and to keep us all safe."

Sparkle stuck out his tongue, his reflection glinting off one of the pots in the sink. "You're no fun, Fergus."

After checking my pocket watch, I groaned. "I have to get to class now. Take care of the mutt while I'm out." After I came back, I'd comb through his and Polly's wands' respective memory chips and see if he had. "We're supposed to be starting with a really important discussion today, so I can't afford to be late."

Apparently, I could have, because when I walked into class, I paused with a slight skip in my wings and stared. Every desk had been shoved to the edges of the room, and my classmates were all sitting in a circle on the floor. My teacher, whose name I never even bothered to learn and so it's entirely lost from my memories, was a giant-crowned banshee who always wore an annoying pink sweater vest, bowtie, and square blue cap with a swinging tassel. She beamed like lightning, but never seemed nearly as bright in the head.

"Well hello, sweet Fergus, buttercup! I'm so glad you made it in time to talk about feelings this time around. We're going to be friends forever, aren't we?"

She did this to weed out the slackers. The therapy program was not for the weak of stomach.

"I thought we were having an important discussion," I said hesitantly as I knelt between two damsels who usually spent more time in class flirting with me than paying attention.

"We are! We were just about to engage ourselves in Circle Time. Fergus, since you're actually here when class is supposed to start, why don't you go first?" She leaned forward. "Talk us through everything you remember about your yesterday. Explain only your actions and choices, and never the reasons or your feelings behind them. We'll take notes and discuss all your feelings at the end, okay, pumpkin?"

Leaning back on my hands, I stared up at the low ceiling, its pleasant dull whiteness - the only part of the room that had survived her strangling sugar-dusted touch - stained a bit black directly above the central fire pit. "Well," I said, "I killed Ian Fairytwirl yesterday on my way down to the first floor shop to buy some more soap and a new rubber for the back end of my stylus."

Banshees seem to have this little thing about death. Her lip began to quiver. Her eyes welled up with wetness. The large poofs of pink hair to either side of her face began to droop. "That's so sad," she crooned. "Fergus, why would you do such a thing? What thoughts were in your mind? What feelings swam in your core? Oh, poor frosted cottonball. Tell us everything. I'll give you a sticker."

It was really that bad. I'm not making this up.

"He was a gyne. I'm a gyne. That's what gynes do. We're biologically wired this way. There are no 'feelings' involved. Only logic. I fairly took the last of the soap from the shop shelf, and Fairytwirl got all prissy about it and, as we tend to overreact around other 'freckle-faces', he got carried away. He's the one who decided to challenge me. He lost, so he had to die. I swept his dust into an empty milk box, and I get to keep it as a souvenir because he doesn't have any close relatives we can send it to. No feelings. Just reactions and survival."

"Of course you had feelings, guppy. Everyone has feelings."

I sighed. "Matron Whitestorm actually fixed my wand when it was all done, meaning that unfortunately I'm stuck with threedspiral a little longer instead of ulkroot like I wanted to upgrade to. That made me feel disappointed."

The banshee folded her arms. "You can't just kill people you don't agree with, Fergus."

"Oh, I know. If I could, I would only have one roommate right about now. I follow the rules. I only kill gynes. And, if it makes you feel any better, I've only been the challenger once, and that was when I was nine thousand."

She thrust her lower lip out further as my classmates shifted on their knees all around me. "I think someone needs a Hug of Three Hours. Come sit on my knee, sweetcore, and you can tell me all about what weather you feel like today."

"An upwards rain of puke and lemon juice while everyone around me is covered in thin slits bestowed by the edges of their tablets and tips of their styluses," I answered, withdrawing my hands from the rubber tile.

My instructor reached over to pat me on the largest swell of my normally-smooth hair. "Aw, hotcakes, you're mistaken. No such thing exists."

"Good. Because as far as you should be concerned, I don't." I got up and left the classroom.

After I'd relayed this story to the others, Sparkle shrugged and propped an arm behind his neck, among his stained pillows. "Look, if you want to be in the law program so much, just switch over."

"That's exactly my problem." I clamped my pillow over my ears, wiggling deeper among my blankets. "If I switch, my dad will drink my lines."

"How's he gonna find out? I won't tell a soul, Fergus. I babble, but I don't snitch."

I spent twenty seconds sulking, then rolled over. "Polly, I'm trying to decide what to do about my schooling. What's your advice?"

The far darrig stared through me from where he stood near the open kitchen cupboards, holding a cube of ice between two fingers. "What?"

"I'd like a little of your advice."

"On what?"

"My father and the fate of my lines."

He rubbed his eyes. "Father. Lines. Purple. Aye. The reborn fairy nymph of untapped magic shall cry out triumphantly against the one who gave it lines in the home of his father's shadow."

I studied him as he lowered his hands. "And this prediction actually does have to do with me?"

"Aye, yes, si. I felt your spirit present there."

For three minutes, I tapped my fingertips together as I considered this. Then I took up my gyne tablet and headed for the door. "I'm going to set an appointment with my counselor. I probably won't be back in time for dinner. Don't wait up for me."

Dm. Featherspin had an opening for me to meet with her right then, and after we'd briefly discussed the reasons why I thought the therapy program was not for me, she agreed to change me over. My law tablets were already in my room by the time I made it there.

"So this is all mine now. Four million years of court cases." I hugged the tablet tower, practically tasting yellow magic boiling on my tongue. Maybe the Academy was fine just the way it was.

I missed our Hornets playing the Damselflies and Cockroaches in saucerbee and read through court cases all night, cross-legged against the wall. For once, it didn't bother me to be so close to the snarling fire. When I finished with one tablet, I moved onto the next, until a third of the stack had disappeared.

"Fergus?"

I averted my eyes from Mintwave v. Wandflick to find Sparkle staring at the ceiling. "What?"

"I dreamed I told a bad lie and so Rosemary switched our bodies."

"Acknowledged. Go back to sleep. You did get rid of her, I hope."

"Yeah. It was sad, though. I've had to say good-bye so many times." He sat up. "Fergus?"

"What?" I asked, looking again at the tablet in front of me.

"Do you ever scare yourself sometimes? Maybe, act one way when you were drunk and then regret it later?"

"Nope. Never."

"Fergus?" he whispered.

"What?"

"I feel weird. Can you answer something for me? Are you still in the therapy program?"

"My father thinks I am. Was there something you wanted? I must warn you, therapy really isn't my field of expertise, even after these three and a half weeks."

Clearing his throat, he said, "Polly says there's going to be another war."

"Apparently Polly says a lot of things. Go back to sleep." Mintwave v. Wandflick is the case about triple fines being placed upon those caught practicing magic while sugarloaded, on top of wand suspension. Sparkle always made sure his wand wasn't in hand before he got himself drunk on soda. It kept him from getting in trouble. I hated that.

"He says the Fairies are going to engage in another war, Fergus. My mama fought in the War of the Sunset Divide. Do you think this means we'll be fighting the Anti-Fairies?"

I sighed. "I'm not in a position to relay accurate information about this topic."

"I dunno. I can't stop thinking about it. Have you met your anti-self yet? Mine talks deep and funny and always tries to eat people 'stead of feeding them like a good host."

"I have not, and I don't entirely care to. I imagine he is neither clever nor handsome, and therefore not particularly worth my time."

Sparkle clenched his green blankets near his neck. "I'm a big fat urvogel when I'm not drunk, Fergus. I would do anything to get out of a war."

"Excuse me, Doubletake," I monotoned as I turned my tablet over and started reading the back. "The only war you have to worry about right now is the one I will declare on you if you don't roll up your tongue and drop for the night." Perhaps Polly had the right idea, always hiding in the washroom most of the day. It occurred to me then that I hadn't relieved myself for far longer than I would have liked; I had been waiting for him to come out for bed. He hadn't yet.

So, frowning, I lowered my tablet and walked to the door. "Polly?" I asked, knocking with the back of a knuckle. "Are you still in there?"

He made a small squealing noise and then mumbled a string of words. A scrap of washroom paper stuck out from beneath the door. I picked it up. The scrap turned out to be a lot longer than I'd thought it was.

"You did save some paper for us, I hope. Seriously, how do you even write on this stuff? It's flimsy. The metal tip of a stylus would tear right through. And… what's that sharp burning smell?"

Sparkle pushed himself up on his hands. "What's wrong with Polly?"

Instead of answering him, I stared at the door's handle. Then I grabbed it and shook the entire thing. "Polly, is that smell what I think it is? Let me in, if you have the strength… Polly? Polly, if you don't let me in, I'm blasting down the door."

"Technically, you can't do that," Sparky pointed out. "It's chesberry wood. Yep, no busting that thing down with magic. You'd have to be the firstborn of one of the pure bloodlines to do that. The firstborn gets the most magic, and the pure bloodlines are more powerful than we shorties are anyway."

(Again, purposes of education. Not an idiot.)

"Ha… ha… ha… Okay, then I'll kick it in. Polly? If you can, move yourself away from the door." I backed away to the opposite side of the room and straightened out my fritzing lines with a swallow. Then, lowering my head, I flared my wings and charged.

My face and chest slammed into the door. I bounced back and rolled heels over head. Sparkle cringed, then clucked his tongue as he watched me climb to my feet and stumble in a circle.

"Gee Fergus, you're gonna want like a battering ram drill chariot or something. Fortunately, I'm your guy." With a swirl of his wand, he poofed up a buggy with a hefty spike affixed to the front, and positioned himself in the high chair… with me as his draft pegasus.

"Magical objects can't affect other magical objects any more than my solid head apparently can, dummy," I said as I tugged at a strap of my new harness.

He ran his thumb along the handle of a whip, making me frown and lift my wand. "Who said this was made by magic?"

"Are you saying you just teleported it in, then? Where did you even get this?"

"Hey- you get around, you start to meet people, you learn where they keep all their cool toys." He drew back the whip.

"Oh, smoof no. Sparkle, you are not going to whip me."

"Nah, I was just throwing this thing over my shoulder so I can use it as a fishing pole a little later." Raising his voice, he continued with, "Charge, my pony! Mush!"

"Sparkle, I'm going to tear you-"

"Do nae hit!" Polly yelped as Sparkle pressed a finger to his mouth. "I can open! I'll open it!"

The battering ram vanished. Sparkle lighted on the ground beside me, folding up his slightly-square brownie wings with their pointed will o' the wisp tips. The door creaked open. Wand drawn near my cheek, I shoved my head through the doorway. "Where is it?" I demanded as Polly ducked beneath my arm. "Did something attack you? That cù sith better not have been hiding in here all this time."

"Uh…" Sparkle tipped his head. "Fergus? Maybe you oughta turn around."

So I did, not processing where the tangy mint scent of blood and fading magic were coming from until my eyes slid down Polly's right arm. My wand clattered to the rubber floor.

"Oh my blitz." I lunged forward with one hand as Polly made an attempt to squirm away. The other shot to my mouth. "Oh my blitz. Polly, what did you do to your hand?"

His palm glittered with thick swirling colors. He turned it over slightly, and the blood dripped in spurts. Globs of the goop continued to stick to the soft pads of his fingers.

"He has begun his running again," he whispered. "Green on his face, and green in his core. They slit his wings, so he can only run. Run, friend, with your babe swaddled in your red and yellow arms. The child that should nae have been born."

My eyes shifted to Sparkle, who gestured for me to take the lead, being the resident gyne and all. Rather typical. When I found my words again, I sputtered, "Polly, are you trying to go tomte? Dear King Nuada- this is why you can't fly, isn't it? You've been doing this for awhile."

He studied my face. "I watched the wailing cù sith drown."

"Right. Let's try to take care of this." I pulled him over to his low bed and sat him down on the edge. Prying the washroom paper roll from his grip, I began to wrap it around his hand.

"They have broken all his bones. They have cut him open. The child born of a drake has died nineteen times in ten days."

"Wait a wingbeat," I said after a minute had passed. I unrolled another strip of the paper. Then I lifted my head. "Were you writing your prophecies with your blood?"

"No friends for the yellow pup. He stayed with the twins for ten years, and they threw him aside, and they are running now too."

"Dang it, Polly." I closed my eyes and squeezed the top portion of my nose. "It's always the quiet and well-behaved ones who keep to themselves too much, pushing others away until someone happens upon them like this. Apollo, listen." Taking up his hand again, I tried to position myself in front of his vacant stare. "You can't be doing this, all right? If you cut your hand, you can't do magic until it heals. Hands are one of the three points that make up the soul, along with the lines and the core, and they are very sensitive. Each time you hurt yourself there, it takes a bit longer for the injury to heal than the last time."

His eyes slid away from mine. "The Motherkind must nae falter. Why dost thou run so much, grounded friend? Yea, flee. You must always run. They will nae leave him alone. They are going to tear your firstborn apart."

Gripping his shoulder, I said, "Polly, talk to me. Why would you do this to yourself?"

"There is nae escape for the golden one. They fixed him. He's locked up forever."

"Focus on me, Apollo. Is there something you want to tell me? What do you have to say for yourself?"

Polly lay his injured thumb against my cheek. "They skinned him for his color. He cried. He will nae cry again."

"What?"

With some effort, he rotated his head until he could point his nose at one of the stacks of washroom paper on his desk. After following his gaze, I began to unroll one.

"You drew green and yellow people," I observed as I lay it somewhat flat among the wrinkles of his bed. "With your green blood. You even got a bit of cheery yellow. That's disturbing and impressive. How long have you been doing this? Long enough to figure out how to manipulate it."

"Fergus, I'm losing them. My memory does nae keep. No memory. Are you writing this down? I have lost them. I do nae remember. Where is my green?"

"Gone," I said, tugging the two ends of the washroom paper so the thin strips tightened against his hand. "No more green for Apollo. He's going to go to bed."

He shuddered. "No one told this to me, but my theory is that I think the last of the old fairies and the first of the young are green because they are purple."

"What? When did purple become involved? You're rather impossible to follow, Polly. And to think that earlier I was complaining about my life." I leaned back, biting my frustration and confusion away. I felt strange inside, just staring at Polly's blood and thinking about where it had come from and what he'd done to himself to draw it out. He had hurt himself. Why? Try as I might, the answers I grasped weren't ones I could accept. It was illogical.

Polly had lost interest in me. He began to pick at his makeshift bandages. I took hold of his good wrist and moved it away.

"I wonder if perhaps there used to be more greens," he murmured. "But that would have been a long time ago. There's no such thing anymore. Or there is nae supposed to be. The only shadow is blue, born of yellow. The featherwings killed all the greens fifty million years ago. Perhaps the Motherkind was born in blue. Or perhaps there is no purple at all. I do nae know. Colors might nae matter. It could have been an accident, si."

Resting my hands on my knees, I called, "Sparkle, Polly's been trying to go tomte. See if you can squeeze anything else out of him and stay with him until he calms down. I'm going to search the library for clues on what else we can do."

I wasn't planning to visit the library. I just had to get out of that room. That unpleasant feeling was choking my throat. Images of Polly hurting himself. The way he sat there staring through haunted eyes, covered in various colors of blood. I wanted out. So I grabbed my gyne tablet, slipped through the door, worked my way through the tunnels, and at last spiraled into the sky and settled myself on the shingled roof beside a waving flag. There I stayed. My arms around one knee as my awkward wings rustled over and over in futile search of a comfortable position.

"He needs something I can't give him. Something empathetic. I'm just not cut out for this. I'm so glad I switched programs." I stared at my own unblemished hand, and curled it into a loose, drooping fist. "Why would anyone ever want to go tomte?"

"Immortality," Sparkle told me later when we'd put Polly to bed and hidden all our sharp objects inside our socks and beneath our drawers.

"What?"

"Immortality, Fergus. I'm taking a biology class this semester, and we talked about it. Alien-types age with the passing of time. The Fairykind age through magic usage. Which is kind of like the same thing, because we use a lot of magic every day, especially for like, keeping our lines connected." He climbed beneath his blankets. "Tomtes have just enough magic in their cores to stay alive. They age slower than regular Fairies do. If you don't use magic…"

"Your core will never give out from overuse."

Sparkle nodded. "Presto- immortality. I wonder if that's why Polly was trying to go tomte."

"Or to stop his visions," I murmured. "They're driving him mad."

His voice turned absent when he mused, "Maybe I'd go tomte too, if I didn't have to give up magic. And if it wasn't going to mess up my kids' brains and stuff when I did."

As I poked the embers of the fire, I shook my head. "I don't think there's anything that would ever be worth killing my magic to me."

We tentatively placed the incident behind us and went to bed. Polly wasn't exactly 'bright and chirpy' the following day, but he never was. He was a thoughtful, serious type by nature, and in that respect, at least, it seemed as though he was back to normal.

"We should celebrate us all being alive, happy, and good friends," Sparkle decided, swinging his arms around our respective necks as we headed to the Hole for dinner as usual only three days later. "Kirchip's throwing a hush-hush party next Tuesday. Let's hit it up."

"Parties aren't my thing. And don't touch me."

"Come on, Fergus," he wheedled, pulling a polite distance away. "It's a full-on rave."

I hesitated. "With music?"

Sparkle nodded.

"And colored lights flashing here and there in the dark? And dancing?"

Sparkle nodded again. My left hand moved to the back of my neck. "And… sugar?"

"Not much of a party without sugar."

I fingered the collar of my vest. "What about damsels?"

"Duh. Does it scramble an imp's lines if you touch the balls on their antennae together? Fergus, be a pal. Bawk bawk."

"What about gynes?" I asked, already guessing the answer.

He shot me an annoyed glance for that. "Look Fergus, I may be a brownie, but I've worked hard to get in with the cool kids. I asked them if I could run an invitation by you first. If you say yes, there won't be any other gynes."

"You really did that? For me? Well…" I looked to Sparkle's other side. "Polly?"

"You are both going to get much wasted."

"And?"

"Not very sure. I cannae prophesy on command."

I clapped my hands once. "All right, Doubletake. I may have fibbed- parties might be my thing after all. Let's do this; now that I've dropped the therapy program, I don't have an early class tomorrow. But Sparkle?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't touch me."

"This is fine," I kept repeating to myself the following Tuesday as I eased each button through my vest. "You haven't been to a rave in a decent handful of centuries, Whimsifinado, but that's not terribly long, is it, really?"

"You aren't seriously going to wear that," Sparkle said as I slid off the bed. Like a command, not a question.

"Apparently not," I answered, studying his face.

"What about that summer shirt your dad packed you? With the flowers on it?"

"Oh, smoof no. I am not wearing that shirt in public."

He plucked at my vest. "Well, you're definitely not going to wear this. Seriously, everything else in your drawer is long sleeves. You'll overheat. You gonna pay the price to whip something up, or you gonna wear the flower shirt?"

"Flower shirt," I grumbled, snatching it from my drawer. "Don't laugh. He made this thing himself when Rheather got him hooked on weaving ages ago."

"I think it looks fine on you."

"It's too big." I flipped my arms over, studying my shortened sleeves. Exposing my arms was still unfamiliar to me. All the rosy red-brown freckles along them looked like smudges of dirt and made me itch for a bar of soap to scrub them down with. "But I guess it's not as bad as I thought. They're violets and purple's my color. And it has dragonflies on it like my pajamas, which is what I was going to wear tonight if I wasn't going anyway. Polly, come on. You can leave your ruff behind for one night. Don't give me that look- I know it's far darrig culture, but it'll get torn to shreds on the dance floor."

"I do nae dance," he mumbled as he placed it beside his pillow.

"I used to think that too, but you'll enjoy it once you're there."

"I'm supposed to be studying Unwinged up close on the east side for the next days."

"Homework later. Party now."

As the others headed out the door, I cast one more glance at the drawer where I kept my pants, along with Charite's arrow. Maybe…

"Come on, Fergus," Sparkle called, and I left it behind.

He led the way, darting through side tunnels I'd never before cast a second glance at until we popped out through a back entrance. From there, we skimmed down the road, weaving between buildings in the little college town, until he found the place he was looking for (And no, I'm not specifying its location. Academy kids use it even now and raves are the one thing it isn't in me to crack down on).

Sparkle stopped us at the door. "First, the rules."

I pricked my ears. "You're yanking my wing. You? Have rules? And about a party?"

"I like fun. Not getting too messed up in the face. Safety first." He crossed his arms. "Rule 1: The party is for enjoyment purposes. I get that gynes like to commandeer and redirect stuff, but try to keep that whole business under control, seriously. This is a place where everyone is supposed to be equal. Even my people. So don't ruin it for us."

"All right. I'll let you kabouters do your thing."

"Rule 2: Don't put anything into your mouth that someone else gave you without running a check on it first. If you give it a shake and it drips purple dust, dump it. It's been tampered with. The guys didn't use any magic in the treats. Rule 3: If you don't know how to dance, just pretend you're being electrocuted or drowning and you'll do fine. And there's no sitting down, ever. You gotta stand or float."

"I know how to dance," I snuffed back, stung. "This isn't my first rave."

He chuckled. "Aw man, and here I thought you were a stuck-up rookie, Fergus. Now, come on. We'll do it together." Sparkle placed a hand to the door. Polly and I followed his example, and together we shoved inward.

Turns out, our simple spot was bigger on the inside. My mouth fell open. "Oh my dust."

After only one step forward, I felt my entire mind shutting down around my ears. The thumping music like unicorn hooves- the colored lights zinging from wands through the darkness- the underlying laughter- the sharp tang of sugar- Exactly six and a quarter floors of it, it seemed, with the stairs around the edges of the room and the center of the place a giant open chamber for flying. It was simply too much, even with my past experience. I turned around, but Sparkle grabbed my collar and yanked me inside as the door fell neatly shut behind us. It began to glow with a faint magic barrier to keep the party off radar of all those who weren't specifically seeking it out. "Are you jitterlines?" I hissed at him. "It's absolute chaos in here. I can't do this!"

"No." He reached across my body and took my other hand. "It's fine, Fergus. You're fine. It's organized chaos. Look for the pattern."

"The pattern?" After rubbing my eyes, I glanced around again. Sparkle was right. On the main floor, the social chatterboxes had all grouped as if of one mind on the right-hand side of the building. The wallflowers clung leftward, beside the floating refreshment table. The smoochers were in the back beneath the shadows of the stairs. The dancers spun about in the middle of it all. All of them had a place. A place that made sense. I found my shoulders relaxing.

"Okay. It's just a bigger, louder version of what I was used to up in Serentip."

"Bigger is better."

"Yeah… yeah. Bigger is better."

Polly let out a throaty whimper and clung to my arm. "I cannae do this- I cannae!"

We murmured our condolent comfortings and pressed forward anyway, ducking the swinging feet of those in flight and occasionally floating over those on the ground. The air was warm with summer heat and the packed sweaty bodies. Everything so smelled of soda, I half-expected to get sugarloaded off the wafting scent itself. Sparkle grabbed our hands and flung both Polly and I onto the dance floor. "Alright, prophecy boy," I said, standing the far darrig up again. "Show me how we'll all be dancing in the future."

"Um." He fiddled with his thumbs, and with the wings that still wouldn't lift him off the ground for the following few hundred years until his hand healed up in full. He slid to the right, bobbing his head a bit, then spun around and clapped once. Twice. As the music continued beating like leathery Anti-Fairy wings, he repeated the movement in the other direction. "I think like this. I've seen this before."

I shook my head, but after a moment of watching Polly's flushed face, decided to help him along. Yes, I danced, because that's what was expected of me. It was a different time back then, and I not entirely the pixie I am now. Back then I was young and knew little. As it turns out, you understand things from another couple angles when you're older. There are proper, careful, meticulous ways to go about these things to ensure that everything is orderly and perfect.

Regardless, never forget that I have been there, in a party we did not control. I have personal experience. So when I pick you all up by the backs of your collars and pull your heads down from cloud nine, never protest that I "Just don't understand what it's like". By the very nature of your existences, there is no desire you could ever think you have that I haven't tasted first. I set curfew rules and tab your locations because I stepped outside my comfort zone and studied these things so that none of you have to. While I have allowed surface-skimming in the past - swiping the cream from the milk - for the most part my decision stands: Leave the wild partying to the anti-pixies. That is not our world. You neither need nor want it. It is unbecoming of you to think otherwise.

"Woo," I gasped out as I stumbled to one corner of the room where Sparkle hovered with three cookies in hand. "Well, Polly sure showed me up out there. I'd call tonight a success thus far."

"Good. Poor guy needs a little glitter on his wings." He tilted his head in the direction of several Fairies who sat around a barrel, staring at a piece of board covered with about a hundred checkered circles painted across it. "Do you know this game, Fergus? You play it in teams of three and you can't talk to each other."

"Yes, Sparkle, I know how to play snapjik."

"Wanna call Apollo and join forces? Win a bit of dough on the side."

"Maybe later." I nudged his ribs with my elbow. "Listen, I wanted to ask you something. You're a sweet-talker and you seem to know everyone. Do you think you could introduce me to that northern elf damsel over there? With the cherry-red eyes? White scarf?"

"I thought you weren't interested in that kind of thing," he said, blinking.

"I'm… not sure. But sometimes I get curious. I like to study all my options."

He shrugged and skimmed over to make polite conversation. The damsel kept casting unimpressed looks my way that made the hairs on the back of my neck wither, but with every sentence Sparkle let pop from his lips, he moved slightly closer to her. This sent her stepping backwards, until he'd slowly and quietly maneuvered her towards the rear of the party, where the flirtation in the air hung nearly as thickly as the dust flecks and shiver of sugar. Then he motioned for me to join them.

"I should've brought Charite's arrow," I muttered, and whizzed over. Sparkle introduced us face-to-face over the tremor of music before breezily exiting the scene. The damsel was in the middle of telling me about her last few weeks when it all clicked in my head, and I pulled my wandering hand back from her silver hair.

"Rosemary. Your name is Rosemary."

"Ooh, now it comes to him." She flicked my chin and spread her wings. "Let's just say that since you threw me out of your room, there ain't no way I was planning to let you into mine tonight anyway. Hunt your cetus elsewhere."

I excused myself and, face burning, tracked down Sparkle again. When I had him, I shoved him into a closet and slammed the door behind us. "What exactly did you do with the cù sith?"

"We hung out in town for most of the morning until Rosie detected a pretty thing spilling lies to her gal pals. Got their bodies swapped lickity-tick." He stuffed the rest of his brownie in his mouth. "Why?"

"Why didn't you bring this up before I made an idiot of myself?"

"Keeps you humble," he said with a shrug.

I shook off my hopes about Rosemary and drifted about the party outskirts for awhile, ducking the occasional colored blast from a starpiece. When on the second floor I ran across one of the huldufólk mashing buttons across a wide gray panel connected to his wand, I had to ask.

"It's the music controls," he explained, and demonstrated by changing the volume from a roar to a simmer and back up again.

I tilted my head. "Can I try?"

"Please do. Hey, think you can hold it for three shakes? I've been craving powdered donuts nonstop since I set up."

It was oddly fascinating to float there flipping switches, sliding bars, spinning dials, and staring at a dozen blinking lights. The fate of the entire party rested in my hands. And for the ninety seconds that I was back there, I relished it.

Gathering that euphoria against my chest, I snatched a grape soda and plunged back into the thick of it all with light wings. I was a dancer - always had been - and it was the spinning that I enjoyed most of all. Admittedly I took more breaks beneath the stairs than I wish I would have, but I wasn't simply in the party- the party was in me.

"Good to see you loosening up, Fergus," said a drake on the other side of the refreshment table when the world around me slowed back into focus.

"You too," I answered over my shoulder, pouring myself another round of orange cream soda. "Sacred smoof, I am so sugarloaded right now. Lost a fat chunk of lagelyn over snapjik, but it's all good. My dad'll poof me more. What a night. Kissed a couple damsels real deep. Actually, I just came from one- both of us were so sugar-drunk, we couldn't remember whose soda bottle was grape and whose was cherry. She told me her name twice, but I never heard or never remembered and fast became too embarrassed to ask again. The other couples under the stairs with us booted us when we started to get too annoying, so she's scouting us a quieter corner while I'm grabbing another drink, and I think I'm planning to notch her wings about a year from now if you know what I mean. Raves are fantastic. You don't forget them, but you can let yourself forget they happened, y'know? If you take care to watch your footing and you don't hurt anyone, you're not really doing anything wrong, which means no consequences."

"Don't you have psychology class early tomorrow morning?"

"Nah, I dropped out of the program. My dad's going to squeeze my core, but he can kiss a brownie for all I care." And that was when I turned around. My sodaglass lowered to the table like a pendulum. "Oh. H-hi, Ambrosine. How did you find out I'd be here?"

"You left your room right as I was coming up the hall from the other direction," he said, prying my fingers from the glass and raising it to his own lips. "I just thought I'd follow and see where things went from there, though I have to confess your roommate is good at shaking people off his trail. If you saw the red rabbit slinking around the shadows, that was me. It looked like you're an embarrassingly sloppy kisser when you're drunk, by the way. I raised you better than this. Do you know why I'm really here, Fergus?"

"Um…" Geez, I was hearing hooves again. I placed a hand to the side of my head and squinted. "To maybe deliver that present you left at home the day I left for the Academy?"

He held up a tablet in his left hand, not looking at it. The thin stone was covered with my careful court case notes. "What's this?"

"My dream journal?"

"The thing about the mind and magic therapy world is, we're a close-knit bunch who mostly keep up with each other. I heard you were skipping class." Ambrosine's lips trembled. "And, I know your handwriting. I told you I would pay for you to study psychology. And instead, you're out partying here. You deliberately acted against me. I don't even know what to say. You took advantage of me and I am beyond disappointed in you."

I stared down at my speckled arms, wrapped in colorful strings of fat beads and tattooed with scry bowl coordinates in bloody cuts of yellow and pink that would heal by morning so long as I kept my wand on hand. "Maybe you should be."

After replacing the glass and tablet on the drink table, Ambrosine folded his arms and leaned against it himself. "Fergus, Wish Fixers is everything to me. Our family has helped so many people. And lawyers don't make a lot of money anyway. Would you, please, switch back to the therapy program? For me?"

"What?" I jerked up my head. "No! Blitzing snattersmoof- Drag me home if you want to, but don't make me go back to that Darkness-swallowed place."

"Fergus! Who taught you such language?"

"Eugh. Oh, dear King Nuada." I scraped my thumb fast across my chest as I said his name, then wrapped my arms and wings around my shoulders as I shrank back into the crowd. "You're serious. You're going to force me to do it. You always force me. Ambrosine, please. Don't make me go back there. I hate that place. I hate that teacher. I hate that class full of damsels. I hate pretending I have deep feelings. I'm a gyne, Ambrosine. For the most part, I don't have feelings. I'll give up studying law if that's what you want. Just don't make me go back there."

His eyes softened. He reached out for my chin with one finger. "You would give up your studies?"

"I don't want to go into big business anymore. I don't care if I never do. That life's not for me."

"Then what will you do with yourself?"

I stared around the party, with its kisses and spinning dances and Sparkle acting like his usual drunk self and dragging a frantic Polly towards a tittering cluster of damsels. Then I turned my attention back to him. "Look, I'll worry about that another time, okay? Just let me have tonight. Maybe a week. I'll think about it later. For now, I don't ever want to leave this place."

Ambrosine upturned his hands. "We need to find a solution. I want the business to stay in the family. You are my only offspring." His eyes trailed along the same route mine just had. He sighed. "I never did like these kinds of events. Give me a discreet tree stump where I can stand and sing my core out, but you're your mother's drake. Flitting about amongst the loud ones, too hesitant to tether herself down. She never got an actual job, either. Her prettiness was enough. She only leeched off me. My money, perhaps, is what what attracted her to me in the first place. Maybe that's all I was to her, anyway."

"I'm not a leech," I protested through a mouthful of mint chocolate chip cookie. "Hey, just go outside or something. I don't want any of these guys to realize you're my dad. No one brings their dad to a rave. Especially when that dad is standing there calling them names. This isn't a phase, all right? Just let me put aside the unwrinkled vest and mess up my hair and be myself for one night in my life. Ever since I was a nymph, you never let me do anything I wanted. It's always had to be you, you, you!"

On that last 'you', I splashed the remains of my orange drink across the front of his wine-colored shirt. Or rather, the white sleeve he raised to deflect the spray. The bright stain made even my sugarloaded mind realize what I'd done.

"I'm your father," Ambrosine said, shaking droplets off like they were nothing, although they were everything. "I carried you in my womb for three months. I brought you to life. I spared you when I could have abandoned you to die. I faced all the insults regarding my unnotched wings for you. Solara-"

"Solara wouldn't be proud of you for this! If I'm really so much like her, she must have hated you. You must have tricked her into mating with you. I'll bet my mother was a stupid brownie!"

Ambrosine snapped his hand across my face so hard and fast, it knocked me into the thicket of dancers. The first stumbled, and the second set me upright with a mutter and moved off where the crowd was thinner and the music softer. I dropped my sodaglass with a clink and gazed upward with limp wings as my father curled his fingers into the spotted tablecloth. He said nothing. Only stared, looking confused and conflicted and resigned and alarmed and furious all at once in that swirling way only Ambrosine could.

"You hit me," I said quietly. Ambrosine had cuffed me over the ears and swatted the backs of my square corners at least twice every week that I could remember. It was different to be struck from the front, with his blue eyes glimmering with challenge.

"I think, Fergus," he said without parting his teeth, "that I should escort you home now. You're up past your bedtime."

I threw him off as he reached for my elbow and lurched to my feet on my own. Swiping cookie crumbs from the purple flowers on my shirt, I groped about for words and finally sputtered, "Ambrosine, when are you going to get it through your thick head that I don't want to be like you? I don't like you! When have you ever cared about me if it didn't directly benefit you? If I had nymphs, I'd make sure they always knew they could explore their own interests, and it wouldn't matter to me. But you always pushed me around like a shopping cart. What kind of therapist are you?"

"Fergus," he warned as he watched me. His long wings rustled in an uncertain way.

My throat closed over. My tongue found a collection of powerful phrases they'd last spoken before I'd taken down Ian Fairytwirl. Like an instinct, I drew my wand from my pocket and held it horizontally before me in two clenched fists. His eyebrows shot up at the insulting implication, but he kept his voice level. Always, always level.

"This can wait until we get you safely home, Fergus."

It couldn't. After wrestling with myself for only two more wingbeats, I tightened my grip and jerked my hands downwards. The energy field parted somewhat around me. When I let go, the two split pieces of my wand clattered to rubber. I flipped my hands over so the world could see they were bare.

"By the blood of the Aos Sí which courses through my veins, I declare my right as a gyne to challenge Ambrosine Whimsifinado to the death for the position of head of our household and curator of Wish Fixers."

The ripple of magic produced from a broken starpiece would have turned all heads even if my furious words were lost in the thumping noise. Ambrosine sighed and pushed the fingers of his left hand through his hair. "Fergus, you're drunk. I promise you don't want to do this."

"Then I win by default. I broke my wand. It's made of magical wood and full of purified rosewater, and my hands are dripping with its power, and I cried the sacred words and it's binding. You have to answer it."

"Please retract your challenge. I'm your father. You can't beat me. I have no weaknesses."

The crowd was beginning to titter and scoff as the music thrummed on. I was the stupid gyne who thought he knew best, and I hated the way it made my wings flutter. "Fight me!" I shouted, tasting the burn in my eyes. "Do your duty! Our ancient ancestors expect it of you. Our traditions are what make us better than mere animals. You dishonor their name! Bawk, bawk, bawk."

"And this is why my father told me to drown you when you turned out to be a gyne. I won't pretend I don't deserve this." Shaking his head still, Ambrosine pulled out his ipewood wand and held it in front of him. I hadn't seen him do that since he argued over the question of my being a crossbreed with Mr. Thimble outside his Spellementary classroom. He said, "By the sacred water of Kiiloëi, I accept the challenge of Fergus Whimsifinado to the death for the right to my business and say in his life," and broke his wand in half. The field shivered again.

Now we had the entire room's attention, or at least as much as we were probably going to. Voices were jumping up- various starpieces and similar items like hammers, boomerangs, shillelaghs, and knitting needles were raised with shielding spells poised on the wielders' lips. Some of the more kindhearted (or miserly) folk dragged a few pieces of furniture to the walls and out of our way. They wouldn't touch us, of course. They couldn't touch us so soon after snapping wands. In essence, we had rendered ourselves near-total deadzones like dwarves.

"I'm not really the brawling type," Ambrosine said absently as he stripped off his red vest. He tossed the thing into the crowd. It's possible that some random damsel caught it and held it to her nose, though I partially missed it in the middle of wrestling with my own shirt. His white one stayed on his thin frame. "Please forgive me if I'm somewhat rusty."

"It was my understanding that our family line neither forgives nor forgets."

"I'm more lenient with the first part." He waited with crossed arms while I stumbled out of my purple flower shirt. "Mark it."

"You mark it."

Shrug. Ambrosine thrust down both pairs of wings and launched himself into the air. When my sugarloaded self struggled to float more than a foot and a half from the ground, I barreled across the dance floor and raced for the stairs.

A/N: Text to Life - Gynes fight amongst themselves and - often - with the queen to the death. Sometimes multiple gynes engage in a fight at once. The loser is either killed or leaves the nest forever.