(Posted September 1, 2016)

The Fallen Angel

Summer of the Bruised Peach Tree

Conclusion: Chasing my father up four flights of building, he on wing in the open central area of the tower and me climbing the stairs pressed against the edges, was not among my best ideas. It was a not-best-idea made worse once you mixed in the sugarloaded crowd and the darkness interspersed with vibrant flashing party lights. On top of that (and perhaps below it) came the swirling music. It echoed all the way to a ceiling. The ceiling was far higher than the entire place had looked from the outside. Geez, that was an awfully high ceiling. I wanted a ceiling like that.

"Smoof," I found myself muttering as I dodged another two kobolds. "I should not have kissed that last korrigan. My head feels light with their bubbles. Now, if there were a race of level-headed beings who cleared your mind when you swapped spit with them, that would be jazzed."

Curious how things work out sometimes, hm?

My unsteady foot hit the next step all wrong. Arms and useless wings pinwheeled in opposite directions. Grabbing back my balance, I shoved away a giddy swanee with a sodaglass in her hand and charged the fifth-floor railing. Ambrosine spiraled upwards, his arms behind him, flat to his sides. As he flew past the seventh level, he snatched one of the floating refreshment tables by the leg. It bucked at his grip, but he set his foot to its underside and kicked downwards. At the same time, he wrenched his arm up. The leg snapped in his hand. The table lurched sideways. Donuts, tarts, and cream puffs began to slide off the edge and plunge like hail.

"You can't do that," I protested. Two hands shoved back the lid of my forehead. My core arched itself once in a stretch before firing a beam of purple. It missed. It missed by a lot.

Even when I tried to focus on my aim, Ambrosine banked around the blast in the sharp way of fairies. "Who do you think they'll believe did damages, Fergus? The distinguished and totally sexy therapist, or the drunk juveniles who were here all night throwing a party?"

"But that's not fair." As he dove with the table leg clenched like a staff between two fists, I scrambled my way up onto the railing. My feet slipped. One black shoe popped off entirely and fell among cinnamon rolls and glass soda bottles. The magical field had given me the cold shoulder once I'd snapped my wand, but I still had faint traces of purple dust glittering on my skin. They'd enchant what they touched. It was enough. I could make it be enough.

No point in wasting it on magical blasts when I had a forehead cannon core, though, so I decided to take the shapeshifting route instead. That was what I had done with Ian. Worked like it had been buttered. But I had to choose carefully. I would only get one.

Dragon.

I launched myself into the air. My blood lit with magic as my focus shot towards my fagiggly gland. My clothes (or what remained of them since I'd ditched that hideous flowered shirt) melted into my skin like cheese. Ambrosine swung his table leg and swerved away from me.

I thumped into the side of the tower regardless. Then I slid down. When I raised my head and pressed against my pulsing temple, I realized I was on the fourth floor again. I'd almost dropped farther.

"I told you," he said from his perch on the next railing up, "you're tingle-fritzy and sugar-drunk, Fergus. You should have retracted your challenge when I asked you to."

I lifted a wing in front of my eyes and squinted. Only, it wasn't a wing. It was a soft paw. I wasn't coated in feathers or scales at all. I was wearing purple fur. And as I got to my shaky feet and shook out my small limbs, even my muddled mind managed to identify what species I had turned myself into.

"Rabbit," I griped, shaking out my stunted tail. "Exactly as planned."

Someone flew over the railing and rolled across rubber tile floor. Someone with bright red curls and awful teeth. Hot hands scooped me up. Sparkle shoved his long nose into my whiskers. "Fergus, you can't let him get outside."

"What?"

"Yeah, he'll bust the 'unnoticable bubble' we've got set up around this place and the fuzz will hear us."

I rubbed my paws against my eye sockets. "Right. But put me down before you burn your fingers. I broke my wand and the energy field is snapping at my skin. This is a gyne's dominance fight and you're not supposed to get involved."

"Why the rabbit?" he asked as I leapt to a soft neighboring chair.

"I was trying to do a- Duck!"

Luckily, Sparkle was no idiot. Mostly. He dropped the instant I shrieked, narrowly avoiding Ambrosine as he pulled in for a landing. Dragonfly wings whistled between his head and crown. I got a good look at that table's leg for the first time. The thing ended in a massive dragon's paw. Possibly not one that had been carved of wood. I sprang from chair to side table to chair to floor and bolted off into a forest of dancing Fairy legs.

As I scurried about, jumping laps and crawling beneath dangling feet, I shuffled together plans only to discard them. I wouldn't be able to catch Ambrosine if it came down to a chase. No one could catch a fairy in his prime. Least of all a younger drake with awkward wings. I either needed to outwit him, or outlast him.

Did I have options? Strengths? Tricks? Any loopholes at all? I checked myself over as I ran. The rabbit shape was small and hadn't cost me quite the amount of dust I'd been anticipating. Maybe I could do another shift, if I did it before it all drained away. Magic wasn't my strongest suit. Never had I been good with maintaining transformations upwards of a minute; even now the form was slipping from my shoulders. My dust was going with it.

Ambrosine had an easier time maneuvering among the crowd than I did. He flew and spun, turns sharp as new stylus points. It took him mere wingbeats to catch up to me. I pelted on, but risked a glance back as his clawed table leg came slamming down.

I didn't dodge. He missed anyway.

Veering sideways around a cuddling couple, I took the open hall (well, bridge) that ran perpendicular to the one I'd just raced down. I needed more options. Magic was a limited resource in a gyne fight. My lines were struggling just to keep me plugged into the energy field, without the channeling involved. Members of the Unseelie Court based their dominance system around brains, but we Seelie prided ourselves in the strength, skill, and stamina we showed on a more level playing field. Even the universe itself respected that.

Ambrosine swung his club again. I ducked my head, but didn't have to. It whistled between my ears without connecting. When it next came, I shifted my weight and direction to the right. That time he caught me in the stomach. I flew sideways, rolled through the gap between two rails, and tumbled into the open center of the tower.

"Oh, smoof! Fergus!"

"Come on," I hissed to myself, groping at nothing. Thin streaks of color zipped around my ears courtesy of those who hadn't grown sick of shooting glows even after three hours. It was a four-floor drop to the ground. Four tall floors designed for creatures with wings. I caught distorted flashes of abandoned plates and dancing bodies each time I flipped over.

"Just one more shift. You can pull this off with your lines knotted around your neck. You'll want wings."

My default fairy shape would have to do- I wasn't about to risk snapping to normal once I ran out of dust. Sugarloaded as I was, even I realized how inconvenient that would be if it happened after I had, say, become a mouse and tucked myself into a tiny hole.

"Come on!"

A spark in my chest; my fagiggly gland finally drank in the magic from the dust clinging to my arm hairs. My whole being glowed. Fur turned to freckled skin. Paws turned to smooth hands.

"There," I said to my left one. "Now, was that so hard?"

Then I hit the cake. The whole refreshment table crumpled in two pieces beneath me, and pastries, fruits, and glasses tumbled inwards. Fairies either backed away with disgusted looks or approached to snap at me for splattering their clothes with icing. I slogged back to my feet just as Ambrosine snatched the untouched punch bowl and spiraled towards the ceiling again.

"Must have been aiming for my crown," I muttered, fingering the broken points. I'd have bigger problems than sugar-drunkenness to deal with if he managed to tear that away from me.

The whiny voices dispersed into mutterings as a broad-shouldered fairy wearing a plaid brown jacket thrust his way forward. Stan Lee Kirchip. Sparkle's best cohort. He grabbed me by the wrist as I scraped smears of chocolate from my bare chest. "Hey. You wreck my party and I'll charge you for it, Spotty."

"Huh? Sorry, sorry," I mumbled, shaking a jelly-filled donut from my thumb before sticking both in my mouth. At least I'd made it back to the body type I was familiar with, although a screaming pain in my lower right leg suggested that I'd run out of magic before finishing the job. I probably had a slight rabbit's haunch beneath my pants. Maybe a furry foot in my one remaining shoe. My eyes drifted around the surrounding gaggles of dancers. Could you receive magic via SHAMPAX and then use it during a gyne fight? I'd never tried- Sharing Magic to Prevent Asphyxiation was supposed to be for, well, preventing asphyxiation. Transferring magic from one of the Fairykind to another should they have dropped their lines.

Lurching to a nearby cherub with deep brown eyes, I said, "Hey," and pulled her towards me by the arm.

"Get off of me!" she snapped, fumbling along her waist in search of her wand sheath. I ignored her and lifted her mouth to mine. I think I snatched a bit of rose-scented magic from under her breath, but she and one of her friends pushed me off before I could really taste much of it. They both shouted, "What is wrong with you?" as I stumbled backwards. My feet slipped out beneath me when I stepped on a piece of cake. I landed in a mess of flattened frosting again. When I stretched out my fingers, my right palm warmed slightly, but nothing happened. I'd drained my dust. Now I had only dregs of energy field that couldn't do much but keep me alive and lend limited, sugarloaded support to my wings. And maybe teleport a coin two feet to the left or disinfect my toothbrush bristles.

Ambrosine clicked his tongue. Leaving the punch bowl perched on a table beside the gray panel that controlled the music, he swung himself over the second-floor railing and swooped down. "You should have stuck to playing to your own strengths."

That was rich. Gyne instinct had driven me to chase Wilcox into that old house. Blind luck had killed Jared. Ian went down beneath my twisting thumb because he'd tripped over the crate of washroom paper I'd wanted to grab for Polly, and the falling shelves pinned him down (I still think it's unfair that I'm the one who got billed for that). With my magic gone and my mind little more than a fuzzy blur, I'd been deprived of 'my own strengths'.

My face flashed in the reflective surface of a dark window as I stood up. I cocked my head about thirty degrees to one side.

Perhaps I had a trump card up my sleeve after all.

When Ambrosine slowed his wingbeats, obviously prepared to whack me with his table leg and shoot upwards again, I took two running steps and launched myself into the air to meet him. I couldn't propel my body very high, but it was high enough to startle him. My fingers brushed his arm. He swerved. We plowed together into a drake and damsel whose lips couldn't have been far away. "Terribly sorry," Ambrosine called to them as he and I rolled apart. Purple dust shone in the folds of his shirt and along his neck. He flipped over into a crouch and raised his wings. As he brought them down and kicked off, I grabbed his foot. Again, he crashed on top of me. I heard his teeth smash together.

"Ow… Are you all right, Fergus?"

"The soul is made of three parts," I slurred to myself as I wriggled from beneath him. My laser cannon slithered out from beneath my dome. "Lines for life force and magic. Core for s-sentience and memories. Hands to connect with the physical world. And hands to leave it." I went for his palm with my sharp teeth, but it had moved while I spoke. As I blinked at the dessert-spattered tiles, his table leg came up from behind me and clubbed me over the head.

Lightning rained in volcanic floods of black and white. My skull slammed down at the same instant my hands flew up to it.

"Ow! You just hit my core!"

Though he flickered in and out of my vision, I watched Ambrosine pick up a knife from the wreckage of the table and test it against his thumb to see whether or not it was made of magic, and therefore whether or not it would draw blood. "The battlefield is no place for one-liners."

I scrambled to one side, fighting to make it back to my feet. He swung the table's leg to knock both of mine from beneath me. My spine bumped against the ground. He flipped the weapon backwards across his wrist, caught it in his fingers, and crashed the dragon's paw into the barrel of my cannon with a single fluid movement.

"Gih-!" I squeaked. As the crowd of drunk (or possibly just curious) onlookers began to press forward, I found myself writhing among cakes and cherries. "W-wait! I'm the gyne here! Winning is my right!"

I tried to swivel my cannon's tip around to fire, but Ambrosine used his makeshift staff to sweep it back inside my head and shut the lid. Then he wedged one of the table leg's claws against my windpipe. My lines scrambled instantly. Though I tried to maintain a straight face on the outside, inwardly I cringed as they shrieked with static through my blood.

"Do you surrender?"

"Never!"

Ambrosine pressed the claw in deeper. "Do you surrender?"

The shriek crescendoed into a howl. "No!" I shouted, and the noise vanished. I raised my bleary head to see what had prompted him to remove his weapon from my throat, only to spot it coming at me from my right. I hit the neighboring wall and squealed to the floor. My wings crumpled. When I struggled to prop myself up with my arms, I spat out precisely a tablespoon's worth of blue blood in a neat and tidy circle.

"No," I snarled, slamming a fist against the tiles. "I'm a gyne. You're not. I'm not supposed to lose."

"It's over," he said as he approached with the knife. I had an excellent view of violet dust flecks tucked into the creases around his eyes.

"You were trained in the War of the Sunset Divide! That's not fair!" I scooted backwards on hands and knees along the wall. Cold air seeped in from the cracks in the windows. The crowd gave me a wide berth. They were mostly silent, but music twinkled in the background. Ambrosine didn't rush it. With his wings dangling down his back like the tails of a coat, he followed me in a circle back around towards the refreshment table.

Table.

My eyes slid from the tablecloth up to the second floor. Ambrosine's wings flickered around his shoulders. "Fergus…"

Wrenching the cloth from the wreckage, I turned my back and stumble-ran towards the stairs as quickly as my sugarloaded body could manage. After bumping just one wall with my face and arm, I found the correct path. Wings whirred behind me. When I reached the next level up, I found Ambrosine already waiting for me at the top. He had the knife still drawn.

"Oh, you have to be pulling my-" he managed, before I threw the tablecloth over his weapon and pushed past him.

He shook it off quickly. Of course he did. That wasn't the point. The point was, I reached the gray panel (and shoved aside the nervous huldu) before he could stop me. And from the stare on Ambrosine's face as he watched me smash buttons and flip switches, I could tell my socially-awkward father - who had probably never been to a party in his dull and boring life - had no idea what it did.

"Hear patterns. Count beats." I moved a slider vertically and twisted one of the spinning star panels. "And crossfade into… There. And then-"

Ambrosine hit the floor when I spun the last four dials up to max. Screeches rang from both beneath my fingers and from the crowd all around us. Blue sparks raced over the panel and into the starpiece-holder where the huldu's wand (or rather, the wand of whomever had lent it to him) had been slotted. It exploded into dust. The energy field buffeted me backwards as it rearranged itself around spilled rosewater. I would have released the screaming panel anyway. As I fumbled my way back to Ambrosine, starpiece after starpiece shattered around and below me as the shriek hit a strange high. Then, the entire panel itself burst into a hundred sparkling metal shards and heavy chunks of glass.

He whispered, "Children today have no taste in music," as they rained around us.

"So I guess this's what it felt like to be Sreng before he took Nuada's hand," I murmured. Ambrosine cowered with his fingertips twisted into his vaguely-pointed ears, I kicked away his knife and table leg. As I knelt to tug out his right hand, I added, "It's sacrisomething to imitate the Great King, may the Lost Ancients remain in their underground prison."

He lunged for my neck. I tightened my grip on his wrist and threw all my weight to one side. We thrashed on the floor for a dozen wingbeats before I managed to bite the fat part of his hand. I ripped downwards. His green blood tasted hot and sizzled on my tongue.

"His magic hand's been sliced."

The murmur spread through the second-floor crowd among the pops of wands: "His magic hand's been sliced." "He got him." "The gyne got the kabouter." "He's impure." "Big cut." "How deep?" "Take him maybe two hundred years to heal that." "Do you think he'll need a silver bandage?" "And disgrace King Nuada's sacred memory? He wouldn't dare!"

Ambrosine made it back to his feet, but he stumbled, blearily blinking as the magic in his body began to trickle away. When he briefly set his fingers against the wall, they left a dark emerald smear. His blue eyes shrank to desperate pricks.

"No. No, no, no. My hand. You- you little… Fergus?"

I ran my tongue around my lips and drank in the sounds of panicked wings and scrambling bodies. Placing my own hand to one knee, I pushed myself up. "Lick my neck."

"What?" He wrinkled his brow. "No. You didn't win."

"Submit before me and lick my neck, kabouter. Of course I won, or at least I'm about to, right? I'm the gyne."

Cradling his injured hand against his chest, Ambrosine edged backwards towards the wreckage of the gray panel and the table where he had left the punch bowl. "If you want to drink my lines, you have to untie them first."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I said, stumbling after him with the knife and table leg both raised.

"Have a nice flight," he told me sincerely as I neared, leaning a bit to his left and flicking dust from his skin.

"What?"

In answer, he flipped me over the edge of the railing. I probably would have seen that coming if my head hadn't been full of so much sugar. It was definitely the sugar.

I landed on solid tile. When I started to sit up, a foot pushed me down again.

"What's your damage, dude?"

"You broke our wands!"

"You busted my music."

"Come on, that's not jazzed."

"You ruined everything!"

"I'm in the middle of something," I protested as I tried to stand. They backed off, crossly muttering as they took the hands of their dance partners or picked up pastries. Stan Lee watched me from off to the side, with Polly lingering near his shoulder.

Ambrosine raised his punch bowl to the rail too. He shouted words that were lost and poured it all out. I held my head in one hand and didn't really care, wasn't really paying attention, until it finally occurred to me that Fairies were yelping and the flow hadn't stopped. The punch sloshed down to the first floor in an endless waterfall.

"Oh no."

What had been a stream grew into a roar. A sticky pink wave sloshed in four directions from where it had first landed, sweeping partiers off their feet and even knocking a few out of the air. "He brushed his dust into the bowl," I realized dazedly, and began to wade towards the stairs as the torrent grew. Chairs lifted from the floor. Paintings toppled from the walls. Windows webbed with cracks - possibly from the rising shriek of music - gave way. "Come on, Ferg," Sparkle gurgled to me as he skimmed by. "This isn't gonna end good. Let's skedaddle."

"But my fight!"

Ambrosine leaned his bad arm against the railing. With the other, he kept the punch bowl tipped and spilling. In manipulating it to spurt endlessly he had magic-touched the drink; we wouldn't drown. That didn't mean all of us knew how to swim. In fact, I determined as I stared in dismay at the sugarloaded and panicking crowd shoving past me, knocking my shoulders and stepping on the rabbit toes beneath my shoe, I'd say very few of us actually knew how to swim. Pools of water didn't occur naturally up in the cloudlands, and most of us - myself included, though not nearly so drastically - had wings that were near-useless when wet. While magically-manipulated liquid wouldn't muddle our lines or quench anyone's thirst, it still held the rest of its properties, like damp and cold.

And Ambrosine knew it. He wasn't a gyne, but he was a thinker. Of course he was. He was my father. He had no weaknesses.

Or… maybe he had… one. One that had been slipping all throughout the battle, and perhaps even all of my life. I scratched my head for a solid thirty or forty seconds as I tried to gather my sluggish bearings. I could use this. I could beat him. I just needed to get him down here.

"Hey! Do you know how I know Solara was a brownie? Because my wings have the square edges. They're the squarest, browniest edges ever. You're a desperate brownie-kissing slimeball!"

Ambrosine shrugged. He wasn't biting. Possibly because I sounded like a three-year-old. Thus, you all see why I do not allow you to get into processed sugars on Headquarter premises. It's just not worth losing your rational thoughts for.

"And if she let you take advantage of her that way, then- then she's- she's no one I would ever want to meet! How does that make you feel?"

"I would prefer you didn't talk about your mother that way. It's a little ungrateful."

I dragged one hand down my face. "Ambrosine, what are you doing? You can't use punch in a gyne fight. That's just… not… okay. I don't want today to be remembered like this. And you're scaring off all the…"

If I'd been an anti-fairy, my ears would have pricked up and then drooped like soggy wings. When I turned my head towards the windows, I caught a flash of three yellow beams firing in a signature spiral pattern. Attempted runaways hit the ground as they were either frozen, shrunk, tied with soft bonds, and in a few cases even offered a platter of cheese and rounded up. Sparkle had said something about the magic bubble around this place keeping it off the civil disturbance radar, but he'd also mentioned it would burst once the partiers started to leave. Whose idea was that?

Ambrosine was certainly a problem, but now I had a bigger one. When I beat him, those civil officers would be coming for me, and the rest of us inside. I couldn't stay here. But I also couldn't fight the pink punch sloshing in waves across the room.

That was my first thought. As I shifted my gaze back and forth between my father and the fumbling Fairies swarming about outside, it occurred to me that maybe I did want to fight them after all. I splashed over to the broken first-floor refreshment table and picked up the dented cake platter. The front doors flew open. These were the days before we'd figured out electric lights, but their wands glowed like a dozen candles each, and that was enough.

"Party's over, punks. We could hear your yelling all the way down the street. Let's move it out."

Ambrosine shrank behind his bowl.

"Hey," I called, dragging the officers' attention to the left side of the room. I hurled my platter with all my strength. It landed about three feet in front of me and skidded, but I had their attention. I mimed holding my wand horizontally and snapping it in half.

"Brat," snapped the first fairy, raising his. "How dare you?"

"Well," said the second. He flipped his eyes backwards into his field-sight, and they began to glow pale amber. "I count eighteen lines. No scabbed-over dots suggesting any have been given away. That means he's a tad over 174,000 years old."

The third cocked his wand. "Looks like we've got an underaged new-wing."

Oh, right. I'd forgotten that part. I turned and waded off towards the waterfall of punch.

"You're grounded for now, kid." One of them - it sounded like the first speaker - loosed a hot beam of magic. It deflected off my skin. The second blazed a clean slit all the way down the center of my right wing, severing off a decent chunk of it and grazing my ear.

"Fergus?" Ambrosine yelped.

The third officer's coil wrapped around my foot and knocked me over. I slammed onto my stomach with a spray of pink and didn't try to get up as the waterfall slathered my face in sugary drink.

"Hang on," the leader said, lifting one hand at his cohorts. "That first stun beam bounced off. Energy field shift. Gyne fight."

And sure enough, my wing began to mend itself and the ties around my arms dropped off. Still, I lay there, holding my face with both hands.

The punch flow trickled away. Ambrosine dropped down to Floor 1, still pressing his bleeding hand to his shirt. "Are you all right?"

I lifted my head, then let it drop to the rubber. A moan slipped past my lips. I curled into a ball and allowed all my muscles to relax.

"Fergus?" he repeated one last time, his voice straining. "Oh my dust- Fergus!" He leapt an overturned chair and landed in a run. His fingers closed around my shoulder and my hair. Pulling my head into his lap, he leaned over me and brought his mouth towards mine so he could give me SHAMPAX.

I lurched upwards before he connected, fastening my teeth in his throat. "Tricked you, old timer," I mumbled around his skin.

He blinked down at me as I gnawed at his adam's apple. "What are you doing?"

"I'm killing you," I said between nips.

"By… chewing on my throat."

"Yes."

"Mmhm. I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I respect your decision to attempt it."

I glared at him as I continued to work my jaws. "Don't talk. You're dying."

He brushed his fingers through my hair. "You do whatever makes you happy, then."

"Strangles your lines if I get your windpipe."

"Well, that's true." He leaned his non-injured hand back against the ground and watched me. Then, as the officers began to herd the party-goers from the upper floors down to our level (Sparkle, Stan Lee, Rosemary, and Polly were all among them), he drew out another knife he'd slipped from the wreckage of refreshments. "I think we both know who won this one."

"I'm not done!"

Taking up my wing, he began to poke holes in it with his blade, tearing streamers and sawing stripes. "I'm no gyne, but I have learned a thing or two from raising you. Whereas I'm in healthy condition, you're drunk. You're falling apart. You can't fly. You can hardly walk, if that's what it was. And" - now he brought the knife to my forehead - "I've got a weapon to your core."

My eyes flicked about the crowd, catching faces that I knew. Damsels I had kissed. Drakes I'd played in snapjik. People I'd laughed with. Fairies with whom I shared Academy classes. I recognized many more of them than I would have liked. They paused near the door to stare at me as they realized that our scuffle was drawing to a close. Even the civil disturbance officers, wands aglow with a white light that would yank back anyone who attempted to poof away (if there were any unbroken starpieces still around), had gotten curious.

"Fergus. You lost. I have the right to drink your lines dry."

I withdrew my teeth from his neck and stared at the dirty punch swirling around my wide, smooth hands. After several wingbeats, Ambrosine prodded the space above my nose with the knife.

A noise slipped past my teeth. It was something like a sob, although pixies, of course, are physically incapable of such feelings. Swallowing my flush, I pushed up my dome. It slightly squeaked as it dangled backwards from its hinge.

"You… you fought okay, Ambrosine Whimsifinado. I suppose I'd rather end my life with honor here than go down hurling pastry plates. I'll let you get back to brownie-kissing. My lines and magic are yours."

Ambrosine placed his palm among the black curls of my hair and pushed my lid shut again. While I was thus stunned, he lifted me up beneath the arms and set me on my feet. "While it's my right, I freely choose not to take it upon me if you'll switch back to the psychology program."

My eyes widened. "You can't be serious. We agreed this was to the death. Dad, you can't do this to me! That classroom is pink and frilly, and my teacher is a weepy nutcase who dresses like the sugar bar in the Eros Nest. I don't want to study feelings!"

Ambrosine rubbed the sides of his nose and replaced the knife in the wand sheath at his right hip. "The thing about 'to death' is, that I had my fingers crossed."

My face lit redder than his discarded vest. He refused. All these Fairies staring at us and twittering amongst themselves. And he'd outright declared that I wasn't worth staining his white shirt with my blood and dust. I lunged for him again, only for Sparkle and Polly to grab my arms and wrench me backwards.

"Kill me, you smoofing coward! I killed Wilcox, Jared Poofypants, and Ian Fairytwirl! Kill me!"

He held up his hand to stop my roommates from dragging me off. Instantly they dropped me and scampered out of the splash zone. I stayed standing. My arms hung straight by my sides. I did my utmost not to turn my face away as Ambrosine brought his so, so close to mine. But I did turn.

"Down," he said.

My knees hit the sticky tiles like they obeyed orders from his brain rather than my own. Evidently, it wasn't enough. Ambrosine pressed his shiny black shoe to my shoulder and gingerly pushed me lower until my chest touched the ground. Then he knelt himself. Cupping my chin in his palm, he put his tongue to the tip of my nose and drew it upwards to my forehead. Like I was still a nymph in his lap.

My ears had burnt into black. I pressed my stomach against rubber, no longer kneeling but outright lying there with my wings spread to either side.

"Fergus?" he urged, always patient and unreadably monotone.

I knew what he wanted. He wanted the same response every parent of the Seelie Court draws instinctively from their baby when they brush it across the face that way. With every ounce of my being shaking, I unfolded my limbs and brought my own tongue to his neck. That's what the other gynes I'd beaten had always done to me upon my victories. I licked my quiet, submissive lick beside his ear, in front of all the popular faces I knew.

"I hate you," I whispered.

"You like me fine. And you'll thank me later." He went in for another lick across my freckled cheek and, grinding my teeth, I mimicked the gesture on his neck. "When you're running Wish Fixers and have nymphs of your own someday, you'll understand why I did it."

"You're yanking my wing," said the third officer when Ambrosine took my hand and led me towards the front door.

"You're seriously sparing him?"

"Is that against the rules?"

"Who does that?"

"Does the fight keep going until one of them dies?"

"Maybe it's just until they exchange licks."

"Coward," Rosemary coughed into her fist. Even Polly tipped his head.

"I'll pay for any damages these miscreants can't cover," Ambrosine said, pushing me into the second officer's waiting arms. "This is my scry bowl's serial number. Ambrosine Whimsifinado, owner and curator of the therapy business Wish Fixers in Novakiin. My only condition is that this one stays enrolled in the psychology program where he belongs. No more scouring useless court cases that have already been put in place and are functioning perfectly fine in society, and no more skipping out on class."

As the second officer poofed in back-up to treat Ambrosine's injured hand and escort us off the premises, the first one shrugged. "It's not our decision to make. This place is a disaster. His blood-processed sugar content is exactly .33 percent, and he's underage. I'm honestly impressed he can even function in this condition."

"Runs in the level-headed family. Too much gray matter up there in the head to fall prey to sugar, and too little magic to tip over the edge. Genetics, resistances, that sort of thing." He carefully left off the part about 'resistances' growing from my past experiences with soda.

"Hm. We'll definitely be talking to the Academy headmistress about this. It looks like we'll be cracking down more carefully around these parts from here on out."

As dozens - I suppose it was hundreds - of unfocused eyes glared at me, I wrapped my hands around my face and prayed for The Darkness to swallow the entire town.

Stan Lee kicked Sparkle's ankle. "Hey, Sparky. Wasn't it your idea to invite the gyne?"

"I, uh-" he sputtered, wilting into his soda-stained shirt. The fairy shoved him into a wide trickle of oozing punch on the floor.

"You're done, brownie. Don't ever come back here or anywhere like it."

"That's not fair," I said as the civil officers steered us towards the door. "It wasn't his fault. It was my stupid dad's. Or, maybe you should have invested in an unnoticeable bubble that didn't burst so easily."

Stan Lee sent a sneer my way that almost made me drop my neutral expression. "I don't remember asking you to get involved, freckles. I'm telling you both to stay away from our crowd forever. But for your info, we were putting it back up after each guy who left. We had it under control until there were that many leaving at once."

Sparkle wiped his large nose with his bare arm as Officer 2 took his elbow and helped him up. "What the…" I found myself murmuring. This just didn't happen. No one taunted a gyne like that. I pushed my fingers through my hair and tilted up my chin. "Sorry, Kirchip. You're a kabouter. Well, either a kabouter or a drone. I'm a gyne. You might want to reconsider this."

"I don't think I have to reconsider anything. You lost that fight, square-head. To an unfreckled drake. Not to mention you wrecked the party on top of it." He turned away. "Let's go, team. We've got psych class in the morning."

"Thanks," Sparkle muttered at me as we trudged along in a line. I couldn't tell if he was thanking me for standing up for him, or if the word was sarcastic. I grunted a noncommentive response.

Polly grabbed my hand and squeezed. "I am sorry. I did nae see this. But I should have. I should have seen. My fault. Sorry."

"Keep it moving, team," ordered the third officer. I put my arm around Polly's shoulders and simply shook my head.

"I hope you don't get kicked out of the school," Ambrosine said with false cheerfulness as he walked on my right. He wasn't used to that- walking. His wings fluttered futilely, and he kept his bandaged hand away in his pocket. As we turned the corner, he handed back my flower shirt. "Next semester you'll get to cover brain biology. The amygdala! Why we have emotions! Hidden Snobbish scientific secrets! Won't that be fun?"

"I should have snapped my wand at you fifty millennia ago," I snarled without looking at him once. "I could have and would have killed you if I hadn't been so sugarloaded. And then I'd finally get you out of my life."

"Fergus, you can't just kill people you don't like."

"I can when I'm a gyne."

Then we got yelled at. I didn't feel like listening to the headmistress's spiel and so chose not to. After we'd been swatted a bit, we were sent off. Those of us who'd been caught over-sugared underage were to have their wands and licenses revoked for the next year. I fingered the tears in my wings all throughout the long walk back to my room. Since the knife Ambrosine had used to puncture them hadn't been made of magic, I imagined it would take at least two nights of holding a starpiece while I slept, but the gaps would seal up good as new in the end. I hoped Polly would let me borrow his. It wasn't as though he was using it.

For now, though, it was only afternoon. I flung my shirt and colorful bracelets onto my bed and kicked my desk over. My psychology tablets clattered to the floor in a scattering of stone chips. Several of the pieces bounced into the fire pit. That wasn't enough. I had to crush the rest beneath the heel of my finally-back-to-normal fairy foot, and toss aside the soft megalodon Ambrosine had given me when I was younger- the one I'd always kept beside the styluses and candle on my bedside table for company. Then I wrenched Charite's arrow from my bottom drawer and snapped it over my knee. Purple plumes of steam squirmed upward along with an unflattering noise. The two shattered pieces went into the fire too. So did my poster displaying the current Dragonflies roster for saucerbee.

"What?" I snarled at my roommates, clinging to my bedsheets as they backed away. "Aren't you going to tell me to calm down?"

Polly tossed me a pitying glance. "The yellow angel born of rails will be led to gravely error when green eyes come between care of friends and need for recognition."

"What does that even mean?" Then I looked at my bed for the first time. A box had been left on top of my rumpled covers. A long, thin box with the Wish Fixers logo stamped in the bottom corner. "Oh, no. This had better not be what I think it is."

I removed the cover. Inside, wrapped in a white cloth, was a long ulkroot wand capped with a shiny topaz star. Grabbing the nearest pillow, I slammed my face into it and chewed the fabric furiously.

"He really loves you," Sparkle said, watching me. "They'll never let him live that down, y'know. Mostly the part about how he let you go. People will talk. They'll call him names. He's really brave and he cares for you a lot."

I whirled, slamming Sparkle into the wall with my pillow. "Don't say that. Don't you dare say that. If he really 'loved' me, he would have let me win. I'm a gyne coming of age. A loving drake would let his offspring win. That's what he's supposed to do. Don't praise him for the way he made me look in front of everyone like that. Who's the greatest?"

He fiddled with his thumbs. "Gee, Fergus. I think your dad is after he won the fight."

Polly only shrugged and picked up a roll of washroom paper.

The following day - or rather, later that same one - I sat at the lunch table with my hands in fists to either side of my tray, roasting my milk and mashed koralins with my stare. The voices were all around me, covering the same topic in identical perspectives.

"That gyne with the gray sweater's the one who lost the fight at Stan's rave last night," Emaline announced with delicious pride.

"I heard he was so sugar-drunk that his pink brains were leaking out of his ears." That would be Tenisa, of course.

"I heard he smooched way too many damsels - without their consent, even - and his lines fritzed so bad that he almost drowned in a bowl of punch."

"I heard his dad's a brownie-kisser. So he's half-brownie himself. That's why his wings look square."

"Pssh- like any damsel would take him now, whether he is or not. The drake he challenged didn't even have freckles."

"Since you brought it up, have you even counted the gyne's facial spots? There's only one over three dozen on his cheeks and between his eyes, and seven more on his throat. Thirteen if you count the ones on the back. Hardly anything."

"He had more on his arms when he took off his shirt."

"Arms don't matter," Tenisa scoffed.

"Do you think he's already taken by a damsel?"

"If he is, he won't be for much longer."

"No, yeah. Imagine being the damefriend of a gyne who got spared. By a kabouter!"

"I know! Who does that?"

Emaline adjusted her floating pointed hat. "Well, I heard that fairy he was fighting was his father, even though his wings weren't notched. He couldn't kill someone he birthed, I guess."

"Definitely doesn't look good on either one of them."

"The dad was cute, though."

"The dad was so cute. Too bad he's not the one who stripped to his bare chest."

"I dunno, I did think his eyes were a bit big and blue for his head."

"Bet you the gyne who lost gets a brownie wife and she uses the inrita poison bite on him the first night of courtship."

"Shucks, that's what I would do. Who wants a gyne who can't beat an unfreckled old kabouter?"

"Oh- and did you hear what kind of wand he was using when he made the challenge? Get this: Threedspiral!"

Emaline chuckled. "Well then, I stand corrected. I'm not sure the brownies would want him after all."

"When he made his challenge, he probably broke the fragile thing on accident, not on purpose."

"Sounds about right for a brownie-brain."

Blah, blah, blah. That means a lot of things.

"Sparkle," I said in alarm when I got back to the room. He had woken up my cardboard boxes, and I ducked as the largest pursued the little one into the corner. Pulling it down by the flap and scratching it beneath the 'chin' until it calmed down, I said, "What's going on? What are all these packages? Where is all your stuff?"

Sparkle sat on the edge of his bed, twisting his hands. He didn't look up at me. Instead he said, very carefully, "I got kicked out of the Academy."

"What?" Setting down the box, I crossed the room towards him. "No. You're fudging your wand waves. How did you manage that? I only got a warning."

"You ever wonder how a wandering brownie-wisp crossbreed with no family got into a place like this?"

"I didn't ask," I admitted. He sighed.

"I'm not really supposed to be here. I snuck into the main office one time. I don't have inrita poison or anything that'll kill someone, but I have enough of it in my saliva to take care of doors. It canceled the magic locks and after some fiddling around, I changed the records. I'm good at that. I got myself enrolled, made room for myself in classes, and marked all my fees as paid. I've been making excuses to my teachers when they can't find the money."

I said nothing. The concept disturbed me greatly, so I think you can see why I marked it down here. This is why I organize you all to take your turn standing vigil around Pixie World after hours. Brownies can and will pull these chaotic and destructive types of tricks and aren't to be trusted.

He heaved his shoulders. "But, after what happened last night, they started going through things more carefully. They figured it out. I gotta get out of here by 19:30 tonight."

"You really thought you were good enough to not get caught?"

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, I knew I was gonna get caught eventually. This wasn't about not getting caught- it was about trying to last as long as I could. A month's okay for a fancy place like this. It's just what I do, Fergus. I wander places, I find somewhere to stay, I'm there until they toss me aside. I'm annoying. No one wants me around. I mean, I'm half-brownie and half-will o' the wisp. Those are two of the four red-flag species right there. And I'm a huge contradiction. Brownies are passive and they don't ever make the first move on anyone and they don't usually cause trouble for people - they just like to clean things, and I mean really like to clean things - but will o' the wisps are aggressive and have to explore and conquer new territory and are real sensitive to the emotions of others, so they always need to be around happy lovey feelings. Sometimes that's confusing for me. I probably shouldn't even exist." His voice pinched into a squeak at the end.

"It's jacked," I said, sitting on my own bed. "I was given another chance at the Academy. It's the 'three strikes, you're out' gyne policy, I guess. They know I'm smart and they'd like to keep me around; uneducated and unsupervised gynes can be dangerous sometimes, too. But I wish I could switch you places. I hate it here."

Sparkle glanced away from his fingers for the first time. "Hey, I thought you said once that coming to the Academy had always been your dream."

I shook my head. "It was when I was younger and naive and I thought I could get into the law program. I love learning all I can about Da Rules. It's just reassuring to know that the people in charge have thought of so many ways to keep us all safe and society running with as little corruption as possible. But that's not a choice anymore. I'm stuck learning therapy and sharing feelings in 'Circle Time', pretending I care about other people's problems, and this whole facility isn't run too well anyway. It's more disorganized than it has to be. Everything is alphabetical. And that's a sort of order, I suppose, but it would make more sense if all of the psychology classes were in the same group of combs, and all the math classes were in another, and all the history ones… I wish I could be the one who got kicked out."

Then I sat up. "Wait a wingbeat."

"What's that look in your eye?" Sparkle prodded as I knelt on the floor and pulled a spiral-bound set of tablets from beneath my bed.

"This is the official Academy Rules and Guidelines book," I explained as I began turning the thin, clicking sheets of stone. "I read this whole thing over a few weeks before I officially moved in here."

"You actually read the rulebook? Huh. No one ever reads the manual."

"Of course I did. I never sign or agree to anything I haven't examined and don't fully understand. I took a red stylus and made scratch marks in the upper corners of all the pages that explain the biggest rules and how I could get expelled if I wasn't careful. As it turns out, Fairies are less strict about the 'no drinking soda underage' policy in application than they were in this book, since when I tried to turn you in, I was told it's 'virtually impossible' to call a distinction between lines gone tingle-fritzy due to sugarloading, lines gone tingle-fritzy from stressing over upcoming exams, and lines gone tingle-fritzy from just gootchie-goggling a damsel from afar or something simple like that."

"When did you turn me in?"

"When don't I turn you in? Anyway, You were off the hook if they couldn't prove undeniably that you had 'consumed large quantities of sugar within a short period of time' and then used your wand. Using the wand is apparently the last straw. Still, I urged them to obtain a bronze time key and search through the timestream for proof, but apparently they didn't have twenty-four hours or so to spare, it's 'too risky', and 'too much tabletwork'. My wings."

Sparkle whistled. "I can't believe I got saved because someone didn't want to do their job."

"Hmph. If I were in charge, things would be different. I'd have employees who'd ensure that everyone follows the rules if they wanted to stay here. If they didn't, they'd be gone. To be perfectly honest, I don't think they actually believed I had read this thing and would turn in my own roommate. Ah, here we go." Bracing one hand to the floor, I ran a finger down the tiny gold words carved in the tablets. "These are all the ways you can get expelled from this Darkness-core of a dump: getting your soul swapped with a cù sith, knowingly providing false information, blatant plagiarism, public indecency, murdering someone outside of a dominance fight, jayflying…"

Sparkle rubbed his throat. "Are you going to kill a kabouter?"

"Ha ha, ha ha. No. If I'm going out by breaking the rules, then I'm going out in a firework. We're aiming for the big prize." I set aside the stack of tablets and looked up. "I intend to kidnap one of the Unwinged Angels from the godparent training camp on the east end of campus, and you're going to help me. They'll boot me for sure. It's the only way my father won't be able to force me to come back here."

"You've gone jitterlines. What the heck do you want to kidnap an Unwinged for? Polly says they don't really do anything."

"That's fine," I said with a slight shake of my head. "I don't need it to pull off any tricks. I just need to go through with the act of stealing it, as if I really did have a plan for it."

"You sure? I've heard that angels have massive power, like even in their pre-instar stage. Headmistress is gonna be so mad we're messing with one. She's ticked as it is after last night."

I stood. "Very sure. I want to have my expulsion secured. But you're a brownie. I need your help to get me there. Can I count on you?"

Sparkle grinned. "This is so illegal. I'm in. I'm already supposed to be leaving this place tonight anyway. Blaze of glory, right? Let me get a candle."

We packed away our things and, on the pretense that all of it was Sparkle's and I was walking with him to a place where the energy field wasn't so thick before he took off for home, both of us headed through the maze of twisting halls. "Remember," I said as we moved, "neither of us has a working wand, and my dad sliced my wings. I can't fly."

"Hey, no prob, Fergus. I'll be your brawn if you're my brains. But why are you wearing your green dragonfly pajamas?"

"Look, if you think I'm going to risk messing up any of my vests in a potential scuffle with the security guards, you're about as on-target as a duende with a nail clipper."

After we had crested a lip of cloud, we found a clump of gingerties under which we left our stuff. "Stay," I told my cardboard boxes, tying them all to separate trees with bits of rope too short to let them reach each other.

It wasn't as though it was going to get much darker in the cloudlands once Fairies began migrating back to their beds, so we watched for a bit, and after hours, when no one had been moving about the campus for some time, we crossed a pink rope bridge and Sparkle flew me over a yellow fence. Then he got me inside the dome-shaped building in the center.

"The door was just unlocked," he said, staring at it.

"Fine. But stay with me. This is supposed to be a restricted area."

There were six floors in the dome - three above cloudlevel, three below - and we moved through them as quickly and quietly as we could. The one we wanted turned out to be on the very bottom. We were almost there when Sparkle peeked around a corner, then flattened his back to the wall. "We're in trouble, Fergus."

"Don't tell me."

"Okay, if you say so," he said, and darted to the opposite side of the hall.

"What are you doing?" I hissed after him, edging my fingers along the wall as I crept closer. "Don't just leave me in the dark. When I say 'Don't tell me', you're supposed to tell me what's going on so I can be prepared."

"Ohh, gotcha." He nodded along the hall. "You know how Polly's studying Unwinged history, future, and biology?"

"He's here? Now? Smoof." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "He didn't get sugar-loaded at the party, and he loves it at the Academy. He'll never let us pull this off. And, he might already know we're coming."

Sparkle grimaced. "What do you wanna do?"

"We'll stick with the plan," I decided after a moment of tapping my chin. "His hand is still suffering from him trying to go tomte. He can't use magic against us for probably another three or four thousand years given how much he's cut it, and I can beat him in a fight even without my wings. Why do you think he's here this late?"

"You know how long it takes him to get through a task. He's probably been here for hours. Maybe he has a special key for locking up. Keys are cool."

For a moment, we listened for footsteps. They were distant. When Sparkle had decided the coast was clear, I skulked after him.

It wasn't terribly difficult to find the door with the light of Sparkle's candle to lead us; it was the second to last one we ran across. He handed the small tin saucer to me, then went to his brownie work. His wings shifted and whirred as he hovered. The dark of the facility made the sound seem louder than it probably was. I found myself squirming in my shoes. Sparkle licked all around the doorframe. Once he'd closed the slimy rectangle, the wood lost all its color and turned gray. He twisted the knob.

"Locked," he said.

"How can it be locked? You just licked it, didn't you?"

"Brownie saliva only kills magic. I can't unlock a regular lock any more than you can. Lucky I came prepared- you brought the right roommate along." He felt around in his pockets. "I learned how to pick a lock before I learned how to pick my nose. Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?"

He continued to pat himself down, now moving onto his shirt. "I can't find my lockpicker."

"You were in charge of yourself," I snapped, attempting to whisper. I found that it helped to keep my voice monotone. "You said you were ready."

Sparkle pulled out wads of candy wrappers and dirty handkerchiefs, but nothing he could jab in the holes. "Gee, Fergus. I'm only Seelie. Technically, I said I was ready before your big box came snuffling at my butt and knocked me over. It must have fallen out."

"Look, you have your cù sith problem, Polly has his thing for washroom paper, and I grew up playing with enchanted cardboard boxes that my father insists are supposed to teach me how to take care of things without actually needing to feed or clean up after them. Don't judge me. No luck?"

"Blacken my crown and call me an Anti-Fairy, because I got nothing." Now he was examining his shoes and socks. "Do they have names?"

"What, my boxes? Don't be dense. I've never given a name to anything in my life. Next you'll be asking if I named all the grayfish in the Wish Fixers lobby when I was a nymph and used to sit on my knees and watch them fourteen hours a day while my dad worked. Since the atmosphere is so thin up here in the cloudlands, it was my first chore to poof that tank down to Earth three times a day so the water would refresh its oxygen. Apparently, fish need that even though they swim. Come on, isn't there something else you can do to get in there?"

"I'm trying, Fergus! What do you want me to do? Spit into the keyhole, then mug Polly for his starpiece and magically freeze my saliva into a solid key of ice?"

We stared at each other. Then Sparkle turned back to the knob.

"It's no good," he said after a few minutes of messing with it while I kept uneasy watch for Polly and any other stragglers in the halls. "I don't have all the inrita of a full brownie and so I can't drop anyone's lines, but it still works in small doses. Since I killed all the magic in this area when I made my square, it'll take at least twenty minutes to wear off again."

"Blitz this." Throwing back my dome, I shoved out my laser cannon and blasted a hole on one side of the door. The floor rocked beneath my feet. We listened for Polly, but either the noise and shudder hadn't been as loud as I'd expected, or the oracle had left the building. Once the hole had stopped steaming somewhat, I reached through and pushed down on the handle. The lock unclicked. The door swung outward. Retracting my cannon, I brushed my hands together and stepped inside the room. "We're not trying to be subtle, we're trying to get caught. We can afford to be reckless."

"I guess." Sparkle took back his candle and floated into the room. "Careful," he said as I took a step after him and my foot rolled on something thick.

"Oxygen tubes," I determined after following them to the wall. "Polly told me about these once when I actually managed to squeeze some decent conversation out of him. They leave the dome right here in the wall where it's colder, and dip down multiple planes of existence until they pass through Earth's atmosphere. They feed the angels oxygen, rather like I just told you about with the fish. Angels don't drink magic. They're a separate class from the Fairies altogether, like the Genies and the Mermaids." Stepping back, I added, "We must be on the right track."

"What about over here?"

I turned. Sparkle had gravitated towards a series of colorful blinking lights on the right-hand side of the room. They were all about chest height and clustered near one another, like the buttons on that huldu's music panel.

"Perfect. I think you found them."

He raised his candle and made a face as I hopped over and sometimes crawled beneath snaking cables to his side. "That's an Unwinged in there? It's lumpy and awkward."

"It's an Unwinged nymph." I felt along the round glass case before turning my attention to the panel. "The Unwinged Angels are the closest thing to immortality the known universe can offer and they develop more slowly than any species because of it. They're wired differently than we are. First of all, they don't hit instar by age."

"How's that work?" he asked, setting the candle down beside me.

"Angels are creatures of power- power that can be used for both creation and destruction. They'll only shed their exoskeletons once they undergo massive pressure and neural trauma that shuts down their entire 'mortal' system." I looked up at his fidgeting fingers. "That's the trick. Like ours, their souls are indestructible, even if their bodies aren't. Rather than drink magic through lines from our energy field, Unwinged feed from their own. It emanates from the ground."

"The ground, huh?"

"Mmhm. You know about the magic contained in the flight casings of nymph wings?"

He nodded, slightly. "It's pure, raw, and uninfluenced until they drink milk and the shells fall off."

"We get our magic from the floating dust of our ancestors and the release of our flight casings. Unwinged powers are limited until they shed their exoskeletons, which they usually bury. The leftover magic grows plants, which in turn provide them with their energy field. Or, that's what Polly told me. But once they pass through instar and ascend to their full forms…"

"Massive power. I know that much."

I touched the glass wall again. "'Massive' doesn't cover it. There's a reason they take so long to develop. Encased in each of these shriveled, hunched forms, you'll find so much power that not even the Fairy Elder can wipe their memories. Their species' trait actually is memory- they can see theirs and one another's. They can summon all their pre-instar ones back, even."

"Oh, yeah. That's why we're trying to befriend the unstable ones while they're still a young race."

"Exactly. No one wants the Father and Mother Angel hissing down their lines when an Unwinged child regains its memories and comes crying that we were unkind to it. So." Releasing the case, I reached for the red lever. "Dean Aocho will not be happy if I make this Unwinged child miserable. I'm expelled for sure."

Sparkle began to fidget. "Can't we just turn ourselves over to Polly?"

"No. It has to be undeniable." Taking the lever in both fists, I looked to him. "This will probably set off alarms. Are you ready?"

"Will a genie's kiss fry your lines off for a week?"

I wrenched it down. The front of the nearest case whooshed outward in two unfolding doors. We both covered our ears and squeezed our eyes shut as alarms stayed silent and red lights didn't flash.

"Is this a joke?" I asked, removing my hands. "What happened to 'only twelfth-semesters are allowed in the restricted area'? This place isn't guarded at all."

"I guess they thought only someone really stupid would be in here trying to mess with the angels."

"Figures. Now we have no choice. We'll have to find an authority figure."

"Fergus?"

I rubbed my thumbs into my forehead. "But it has to look like an accident. Like we were just trying to escape."

"Fergus?" he said again.

"What?"

"It's awake."

We both turned as the Unwinged sat up, vaguely scraping at its furry face. I couldn't tell whether it was a drake or a damsel. It scooted forward, then paused. It lifted its head.

"Oh smoof," I muttered.

"Don't move," whispered Sparkle, touching down beside me.

I had a terrible itch clawing beneath my left wing, but I did my utmost not to twitch them as the angel scooted forward again. It licked its lips and seemed to study us. Its eyes were unfocused. Its chin was pointed.

But what I found most disturbing was, I realized then that I couldn't feel it. Polly hadn't been lying. The angels didn't share our need to drink magic. The energy field flowed over and around the creature unhindered, never tugging in its direction or showing any sign that it registered its existence at all. If I had been facing the other direction, I wouldn't have even known that it was there. Just looking at the thing required the majority of my focus; as my thoughts began to skitter, it started to fade from my vision.

It was enormous. Twice my height and breadth, easily. And it was untraceable.

"Run," I said as it vanished from my awareness altogether.

"Fergus, don't-"

"Run!" I took off for the door, plowing straight into a knot of cords dangling from the ceiling and wrenching maybe three of them out of their holes. Two more snagged around my ankles. I thrashed once, then had the thought to still myself and re-evaluate my situation. I shook off loops of tubing just as Sparkle grabbed my hand and yanked me to the door. The angel made a guttural hooting noise and began to prowl invisibly after us.

"Where's your candle?"

"Are you serious, Fergus? You're asking that?"

I slammed into a slightly-rounded wall and bounced off. "I thought it might be somewhat relevant to our present situation, yes."

Sparkle cupped his other hand around his mouth and began to trill his tongue. "What are you doing?" I screamed back, dragging him in a zig-zag along halls that kept materializing in front of me in the dark.

"We broke out the Unwinged. We're trying to get ourselves caught, right?"

"Not by it!" We ran into a dead end. I dropped his arm and turned a full circle, holding my throat as I tried to steady my fritzing lines. "Where is it? Is it here? Did it follow us?"

"Geez, I don't know. I can't feel it. But it's probably used to being handled. Maybe it thinks we have food."

I mopped my brow with my sleeve. "Did Polly ever tell you how to fight it?"

"Well, you're not supposed to fight it," he said as he rolled his eyes again. "You're supposed to love it. You know, take care of it. That's why it's in the Guardian training camp. Er, godparent training camp. Yeah, whatever."

"I can't believe you just implied that love conquers all. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Emotions are inside the people who have them and you can't just spread them to others like a disease and expect to change the way they're biologically wired. Our natures are embedded in our genes." Flexing the hand I'd bashed against the wall, I finished with, "Ugh- We should have skipped the kidnapping and just killed it. It's not really sentient; it doesn't know it's alive, so it's not like killing someone's godkid."

"Not yet. Polly says they'll be as smart as the Yugopotamians and Snobulacs and guys someday."

We paused on our toes, peering back along the hall. I could pick up slight scuffles of feet across rubber tile, but without being able to get a read on the creature's whereabouts in the field, I struggled to determine how far they were or in what direction.

Sparkle unfurled his brown wings. "We can't stay here, Fergus. At least if we keep moving, we might find the-"

Then he threw me backwards into the wall. I slammed hard enough that my core jarred the side of my head. Sparkle pressed himself to the opposite wall, and when I regained my bearings, I caught a flash of large hulking body between us. Then it was swallowed up into thin air.

Neither of us exactly shrieked another order to run, but there was some shrieking involved. Sparkle and I scrambled up the hall, clinging to our foreheads. Right. Left. Left. Backtrack. Right.

"Ferg- Fergus, I can't."

My fingers clenched into his sleeve. "Oh, yes you can, brownie-wisp. You got us into this, and you're going to get us out. Is it still after us?"

"Dunno- Maybe- Might have- lost it-"

"Did Polly ever say anything about them? Strengths? Weaknesses? Loopholes? Something?"

Sparkle rapped on his head as we ran. "I think- I think it can't see us, but it can hear us and probably touch us. Just like we can with it."

"Because we're not drinking from its field?"

"Yeah. Yeah. It's the dust we generate from our magic. It makes it so non-magical creatures like some of the alien-types or the Earth animals outside my mama's burrow miss us sometimes unless they're really focusing. We blend- We blend in with what's around us and look more like something they'd expect to see, if they aren't thinking about it."

When we turned our next corner, I stared at him. "You do realize I haven't used magic since I broke my wand, and I used up my remaining dust in the fight with my dad, right?"

He shrugged.

Right. Left. Right. Along a long hall full of doors. The first seven were locked, so we stopped trying them and kept running. At one point, we crossed an intersection and I swear I missed the angel's naked body by a wingspan.

"Fergus, there!"

The stairs. Locked. I grabbed the horizontal bar in front of the door and rattled hard. Sparkle kept watch, but I glanced back between shakes anyway. Especially when I heard that shuffle-slap-scoot approaching.

"Fergus, use your cannon again!"

"It's jammed. You pushed me into the wall pretty hard, and it's still recovering from how my dad hit it."

After another three wingbeats, a figure cupping a candle in a saucer came around the next corner. He gawked and drew back when he saw us.

"Polly!" I pounded on the small window pane. "Polly, let us through!"

"Fergus, it's here."

Pointing behind me, I made wild gestures indicating that Polly should open the door. He leaned his face to the window, searching.

"Polly, you need to- Sparkle, duck!"

He jumped into the air instead with wings beating like rock concert drums. I darted across the hall, which was stupid since it planted the angel between the door and me. Polly jammed his access key in the lock and twisted.

"Oh my dust, he can't see it. Of course he can't see it- he's not concentrating, and why would he think to look for it outside of its case? Polly, no! I changed my mind! Don't-"

Too late. He'd pulled the door open for us. The Unwinged went straight for his candle and bowled him over. Out went the light. As Sparkle and I grabbed Polly's arms and pulled him to his feet, the angel scurried up the stairs. I heard it bang its head or hand against vertical metal bars.

"Maybe no one will notice," Sparkle squeaked. I wondered if his mind had followed mine back to the room where we'd released the thing, with jumbled cords torn from the sockets and chairs likely broken from our scramble. As if on cue, Polly dropped his candle dish with a resounding clang in the silence.

He was seething. Though his features were indistinct in the darkness, I caught the flash of his eyes. "You two are in the biggest trouble of the campus right now."

"Is that a prophecy?"

"It's my prophecy!" He shoved me back in the chest and grabbed his snuffed candle. "Come, catch it! It will run to the top!"

Sparkle and I shrugged at one another in the darkness and bolted up the steps after him. At least we were a team again, and Polly had experience dealing with the Unwinged, maybe, probably.

"How many others came with?" he demanded.

"It's just us."

He ran a finger along his ruff. "Are you still tingle-fritzy from drunkedness?"

"I'm starting to think I might be," I admitted.

"Did you drink water?"

"What? Um. No. I've heard that helps hangovers, but I was in a mood last night. It's no big deal- I'm used to pushing through it. Nothing new back at Ambrosine's house."

Sparkle snorted. "And you had me reported for underage sugarloading."

That made Polly sigh as we neared the top of the stairwell. "Then I changed my mind. You are nae to follow me." His small, warm fingers pressed into my palm. "Here is my door key. Go out the side, and leave."

"But the doors are automatic," I protested, although I didn't hand it back. "You'll be locked in."

"You'll be caught if I do nae. I have to tell the dean is my fault. Sorry make up for your dad being mad and hurting you at the party. I am nae a very good oracle when my friends need me. Getting caught means expulsion for you both. So sorry."

"But that's why we did it," Sparkle pointed out. Dark as it was, I still smacked him on the back of the head.

Polly screeched to a halt on the next landing and rounded on us. "You were what? You put the angel in danger to get kicked from the Academy?"

"Put the angel in danger?" I sputtered. "It almost killed us!"

Sparkle nodded and slapped the far darrig's back. "Someone should really keep that beast locked up out of the way."

There was another scuffling, scratching sort of clutter one more flight above us. Retracting whatever retort had popped onto the edge of his tongue, Polly ran up after it.

"Polly, no! You can't use magic! You'll be killed!"

"You leave out of my way. I can do it myself- I do nae want you to be injured. You are nae and will never be good at this. Get away from things you do nae understand, which is of course not ever helping people who are scared or hurt inside, as you made obvious enough to us."

"I- I-"

"Fergus, come on." We were on the fourth floor- the cloudlevel floor. Sparkle grabbed me by the back of my pajama collar and used my hand and key to unlock the door. Then we were running along a hallway with windows that glowed faint purple from the dim starry sky beyond.

I never heard Polly scream. I never heard whether or not he died there, or what became of the angel, or if he was expelled. No one used to keep records of things like that.

"Right," I said as Sparkle flew and I ran out among the violet grass, swiping once across my face. My palm was damp with sweat. "Um. Let's… let's…"

I looked around at the scattered shrubs as the Academy grew smaller behind us. My plan had been to get snatched up by security guards, dragged before the headmistress, and be suddenly and unquestionably sent away from the school in disgrace. Without guards, that was looking a lot less likely. We couldn't very well search the entire facility until we found her bedroom and then throw ourselves at her feet, demanding she throw us into exile. Too suspicious.

"Oh my blitz, Ambrosine's going to backflip when he hears that I deliberately caused damages to Academy property like this." Scratching my chin, eyes still darting, I sized up my options. Apart from the town of Prudoc in the southwest, we were surrounded by bare cloud in all directions. "Oh, he'll spare my life, but I really screwed up, breaking that arrow and smashing my therapy tablets. He'll make me pay for it. And I am not doing that. Eros arrows cost a fortune, and personalized ones triple it."

"Wait," Sparkle said, glancing my way. "That arrow you've been holding onto, that was a personalized Eros arrow? You could have had any damsel you wanted for life, and you kept it in your pants? Tucked way in the back of your drawer?"

"Okay, I'm a bit of a procrastinator who has to mull long and hard about my decisions. At least no one can say I don't have any willpower. Now, grab your lines, Sparky- tram's a-leavin'." I pushed him over the lip of the next cloud. He plunged through the sky with a holler, wings and arms flailing. After one thoughtful glance back at the castle, I pressed my wings to my sides and dove after him.

"Fergus," he yelped between his tumbles, "you're twisted in the biscuit, dude! Earth's got that Great Ice Times thing going on right now!"

"It can't be that cold. It's the middle of summer."

"I can't believe you chucked me over the lip!"

I crossed my arms as I spun upside-down. "It'll be fine, you big sissy. There's another layer of cloud just down there."

Sparkle shot me an incredulous look. "Yeah, that's not a cloud, dude."

That was the first time I blinked. "Oh, smoof."

We slammed directly into packed, jagged snow. Simultaneously I heard, saw, felt, and even smelled my arm bones crack. I slid down a curl of scratchy glacier on my belly. At the bottom, I just moaned.

Sparkle skated down a rounded and more level portion of the ice on his feet. When he pulled up with a flap of his wings, he sprayed a sharp dusting of flakes into my face. "Hey, what gives, man? What possessed you to jump out of the cloudlands? Two planes of existence, Fergus!" He held up three fingers. "That's how many we just fell through. Next time you want to pay a visit down here to real, actual Earth, how 'bout you just poof down like a normal guy and find yourself a tour guide and a nice bronze time key to track the memories, okay?"

"Shut up, baby. You can still fly, can't you?"

That's what I tried to say, at least, but when I lifted my head, my tongue didn't come with it.

"Thparkle? Thparkle, help me."

He rubbed a bump on his head. "What? Yeah, you're fine. Just wave your wand. Fairy magic is always hot. Melts like butter in a kobold's fist."

"I broke my wand when I wath fighting my dad, and don't bother athking about my ulkroot, becauth it'th not regithered yet. My licenthe got revoked. Altho, my magic doethn't get hot anyway."

"Sure it does," Sparkle insisted as he crouched beside me. "Only Anti-Fairy magic can be cold."

I wrinkled my nose. "No, I'm theriouth."

His face cracked in two. "Say 'serious' again."

"Thparkle, it'th not funny! I'm cold and hurt and I'm realithing now that I jutht thtupidly got mythelf thtuck with you when I didn't really have to, and I'm theeing my life flath before me. You're in it more than I would like."

"Ow," he said mildly. Tapping the pointed tip of his long nose, he began to walk circles around me. I tried to rotate myself to keep him in my line of sight. "So you're saying that your magic is permanently partway between hot and cold. That's actually really interesting. We were talking about the types of magic in class the other day. At least I think we were- I was kinda hungover. But Seelie Courters can't get their magic more than like one degree below freezing, and the Unseelie can't pass the boiling point of water. That's not really a thing, magic at room temperature. What kind of Fairy even are you?"

"One thtuck in the middle thomewhere. I alwayth told you it wath pretty bad. You gonna help me free my tongue or what, thlacker?"

A/N: Text to Show- I don't have any particular insect behaviors to point out, so I'll just remind you guys that Fairies getting drunk/hungover on "candy and soda" was made canon in "Power Pals!" and implied again in "Timmy TV", possibly "Just Desserts", and definitely in "School's Out- The Musical" if you ask me.

The windpipe scrambling a Fairy's lines and thereby making it difficult to breathe is a reference to "The Big Fairy Share Scare", when Jorgen was incapacitated by Chloe jamming her foot against his windpipe, and is hinted at in a few other episodes like "Teeth For Two", when Jorgen squeezes Cosmo and Wanda and they turn blue in the face. Additionally, ten bonus points go out to anyone who can remember in which episode we met Stan, and ten more if you can find a certain weird redhead with freckles and obvious rotting teeth. Another thirty points on top of that if you can identify the latter before getting more than halfway through the next chapter, because he's not going by anything close to "Sparkle" then.

Text to Life- Actually, I guess I do have an insect connection! Drone bees and wasps and the like are drawn to sugar in late autumn when the queen and gynes have gone into diapause (hibernation) and left them unsupervised.