Origin of the Pixies

by FountainPenguin

"I wasn't finished." Setting my glasses down on Cupid's stack of translations, I leaned back on my rusty stool. "The Wolbachia pipientis bacteria changes the entire reproductive system of the host insect. Those who've caught it don't just lose the ability to reproduce with other species. They gain the ability to reproduce parthenogenetically." (Written March 2016 - Ongoing)

8. The Nymph In the Sand

(Posted October 21, 2016)

The Nymph In the Sand

Spring of the Charged Waters

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Pip's maple tree weathered every storm for over three hundred years, until it didn't. It crashed down hard one particularly rough night, so when the sky had shifted into a lighter gray, I took my ax and passed almost two cold weeks moving logs to my storage cave in the hill. Whatever I didn't use myself (I'd soon enough bought a cheap kitchen wand designed purely for lighting fires and coffee-making purposes) I figured I could sell down in Great Sidhe for a decent price when the weather cleared.

When that was done and I couldn't find enough to do, I began a new habit. Every day, and sometimes upwards of three times a day, I would take a few of those logs, nestle into my bed, and gnaw on them thoughtfully and deliberately with my teeth. I found it incredibly soothing, to peel off splinters of wood and chew them until they melted into a paste beneath my tongue. My plan was to carve out animals to decorate my golf course. It wasn't a skill I ever truly mastered, but it kept me moving and awake. I measured the worth of each day by how many carvings I refined to my satisfaction, as I figured that the movement and awareness were crucial to keep the magic particles flowing through my blood, warm and alive.

The years flickered patiently along. Someone must have given me a shout-out, or marked me on a map, or something of the sort, because about twenty years after the fall of Pip's maple, visitors to my hole became more frequent. It seemed that everyone trying to cross the landscape made me a stop for bed or lunch. I lived in the outermost eastern fringes of will o' the wisp territory, in that area that they didn't actually patrol but that most drakes didn't risk settling anyway.

I began watching for them constantly - travelers - since every few months, someone would be wandering out there in the sky or hills as the sun was setting, searching for an excuse to rest. I'd bring them in and treat them hospitably. I strove to treat every species alike and without preconceived judgement. Even the Anti-Fairies. Just not the brownies. When it came to who was in need, I would not play favorites. Mostly.

Since our homes were fairly near, Nephel and I communicated regularly. I was there to support him the March he won his wife, and he threw birthday parties for me on big years when my age ended in double zeros. I won't lie- it pays to have a western elf as a friend, ready to provide you with all the cookies and cakes and various baked goods you desire, free of charge. Western elves have built up near-immunities to being sugarloaded over hundreds of millennia, and Nephel never seemed to mind sharing his replenishing supply of goodies with me.

"You've got a beard starting to come in, I see," he told me once when he and Sasa had swung over to celebrate the Naming of the Seasons holiday with me. We perched on boulders some ways from my hole and up beside a creek where the starry sky blazed, the three of us bundled in blankets and sipping intermittently from mugs of hot cocoa and bottles of soda. The faintest creep of distant dawn glimmered in the east. Did that make it almost three in the morning here? Two minutes to midnight in the Coordinated Cloudland Time zone where the Eros Nest was located. I'd just turned 491,536 years old.

"Yes, it's been growing for awhile and I'm rather proud of it." I massaged my forefinger and thumb along the sides of my mouth. The mustache portion was slight, and dark fuzz ran all the way up to my ears. "I didn't really plan it- I just sort of decided to do it because I've procrastinated paying a visit to Great Sidhe for another 'real' shaving. That happens a lot with me."

"Yes, it does." Nephel leaned back, lifting his cocoa in my direction. "I have never met a fairy who procrastinates more on making himself happy than you do. Have you mended that caving-in gap in your roof?"

"I'm planning to fix it when I get bored with my animal carvings." That was my secret- I was never bored. I couldn't afford to be bored. Then I'd have to fix the roof. I wasn't that obsessive-compulsive.

"And you'd still like to find a wife, right? How's that going?"

I grimaced. "At the moment I'm busy reconstructing my golf course after the snows. As the season moves along, my focus will be on my garden, as per usual. I don't have time to pore over cities and comb the courting pool for unnotched wings. I'll get to that later."

"My point exactly, Fergus. You're smart and attentive. You work hard when you want to. How many animals do you have? Five hundred and eight?"

"It's more like 503. Number 10 was a collaboration, I lost the eighth one, I gave one of them that I didn't like and refuse to acknowledge away to someone who fell in love with it, Number 327 broke, and that small carving of aspen wood I was showing you earlier is just a piece broken off the fifth and I don't count it as its own."

He nodded, kicking a pebble into the creek. "You could probably become really successful if you were properly motivated."

"I have enough to be content," I pointed out over my next sip of orange cream. "I might even say I'm happy. I work to meet my needs. I spend most of my winters working in Great Sidhe to earn some extra lagelyn, but I've worked hard to be as self-sufficient as I care to be. I grow food in my garden, I fish in the river, I hunt small animals when I'm able to catch them, I take fruit from the trees. I've even cut down on sugar except in special circumstances like this- holidays and such."

"Don't you get bored here, especially on your own so often?" Sasa asked.

"On the contrary, m'dear, I'm easily entertained. Sometimes I spot a worm crawling around through the dirt that makes up my wall, and I spend two hours watching it as I carve. The simple things in life like that are fascinating to me."

Nephel smiled thinly. "How's that plan to change the world been coming along?"

My lips twitched. "It's coming. I combat discrimination whenever I see it. I've encouraged others to do the same. But, you should realize that I didn't offer to host a party just to be teased by a drake with sixteen fewer lines to his core, so-"

"Midnight, my boys," said Sasa. She pointed up to the moon glinting behind the gray clouds. "And spring officially begins in three, two, one…"

Accepting the change in subject, I clinked my bottle to their mugs. "Happy New Year. May the wind lift your wings and your wands never snap."

"And may you find starlight even in the darkest skies."

We slid from our rocks and knelt beside the water. "I hope it's not the Year of the Poisoned Creek," I muttered as I rolled up the sleeves of my pajamas.

Sasa giggled. "Nothing will top the Year of the Bloody Skyship."

I groaned. "That was such an awful year for the economy, with all the merchants refusing to sail once they heard the name. Sometimes I swear the recession is still coursing beneath our wallets."

"Bottoms up," said Nephel, plunging his hands into the creek. I followed his lead and raised my first scoop of the new year's water to my mouth. It tingled with the fresh touch of Mother Nature's influence, beautifully burning on my tongue.

Sasa smacked her lips. "Year of the Charged Waters?"

"That's what I'm reading in it. Certainly tastes like it could be."

"Then Year of the Charged Waters it is."

I wiped my mouth on my wrist and tried to stand. The moment I did, my legs wobbled beneath me, then gave way and dumped me face-first to the frosted grass. "Smoof, Fergus," Sasa cried, "are you okay?"

"What?" I mumbled, swiping my hand across my face again. Then I flapped them away. "I'm fine, I'm fine. I got lightheaded all of a sudden." Heavy-headed, more like.

"You're flushed. Here, drink some water. Sasa, get him some more water."

She held the mug to my lips. I gulped down four swallows. After squeezing my temples, I pushed it back towards her. "I think I've had enough. I'm up too late after my bedtime and I'm not as young as I once was. Feel free to make yourselves comfortable among my chairs and and blankets for another night. Or day, rather, seeing as we'll all probably be out cold until noon. I'm going to go lie down."

Back in my hole, I took my pillow in my arms and curled up around it, resting my right wing over my face. By Lugh's spear, it was stiflingly hot. Kicking off my blanket, I reached for my tin water pail and dumped the entire thing over my head. I didn't even care that I soaked my bed in the process. After letting the bucket fall to the dirt, I dragged my fingers along my cheeks so my lower eyelids stretched.

"I feel bloated and dry and sickly. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll pass by morning."

It didn't want to pass. The throbbing in my head worsened every day. I threw up gray sludge on a daily basis, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes all day long. I even stopped drinking coffee, because the smell of it sickened me. I kept within my little room, leaving only once in the evenings to shoo creatures away from my garden, though they took almost all that was there. At least I had my fish and bread and fruit.

There were few passing travelers, thankfully. I think. I was in no condition to provide the hospitality I felt was becoming of me, so I didn't even keep watch for them. Every morning I wondered if I ought to take up my crockeroo-fur coat and head for Great Sidhe or Madigan or someplace to seek a doctor. But mostly, the only money I had came from what travelers had wanted to give me in exchange for a night of food and shelter, and I kept letting myself believe that if I made it through just one more day, the next would come bearing sweet relief.

Restlessness set in as the second month of sickness drew to a close. I tore my bedding from my nest and scrunched up a new pile of it in the corner. Every surface had to be washed, every shelf organized, sharp objects hidden away, that bedding fluffed a fourth time, and perfectly clean towels spread over the dirt floor to keep feet from being soiled, wings or no wings. It all had to be in crisp condition. It had to be ready.

Ready for what, I couldn't answer with my lips. I knew only that my hole in the wall wasn't good enough. It was never good enough. I'd throw the bedding back where it was supposed to go, flap out my hands, and start piecing the pile together again while I crouched on my toes.

Leonard, still in Sparkle's body with all its long-rotten square teeth, came to visit me out of the blue one morning. Or perhaps out of the white, I thought as he shook snowflakes from his scarlet curls.

"How did you find me?" I demanded first, not opening the door any further.

"People talk, babe. Can I come in? I'm freezing my apexes off." He poked out his tongue to indicate that he was prepared to do a submissive licking ritual. I ignored him.

"I don't want any of those brownies from Great Sidhe finding out that I escaped during the riots. If you can track me, they probably can too. Even when I go back, I always wear a careful disguise and always keep my face and wings as covered as possible with a scarf and coat. They called me that at Seven Fairies for a time- Scarfy."

"Honeysuckle, cool your tits. I only know that my best buddy Fergus had to be the 'grumpy black-haired fairy gyne who has a squarish face and makes circles with his wings and lives in the valley over yonder' 'cuz I know you well enough, that's all. But most people don't remember you were around when all Darkness broke loose, and I haven't told a soul."

"Please don't talk so loudly. My head's been throbbing for weeks, and you're only making it worse."

"They kinda love me, by the way," he went on, half-whispering now. "The brownies, I mean. Sparkle acted like their hero when he helped lead the rebellion. But your kind hate my guts. They've been spreading their twisted tale of Great Sidhe across all the Worlds, and I'm in it now. I play the nosy freak. Hey, we're friends, right, sugarwings? Can I come in?"

I kept my arm where it was, fingers tight in the grassy edges of my doorframe. "You stink of that 'Wing It' fragrance all the damsels who've passed through my place in the last two months seem to be wearing. It's all over you."

He touched behind his ear. "You can smell that tiny dab?"

"Yes, and I don't want it permeating my hole."

"Hey, you like flowers and I like ladies' perfume. Don't be judging. Sparkle really did a number on this body and I'm trying my best to make myself at all presentable. Seriously, Whimsy, play fair. It's cold outside, and I came all this way to catch up with you and get away from it all."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Fine. You can stay one night. Just this once." Stepping back, I beckoned for Leonard to step through the doorway. Once he had, I licked him between the eyes, and he left a flourishing set of submissive 'Thank you kindly' and 'You will be blessed' and 'I humbly bow to you' marks along my neck, as opposed to Sparkle's sloppy slobber.

"Do you have food?" he asked the instant he put his tongue away.

"Is that what you came here for?" Then I sighed. "Sit down. I'll make you something, since that's what a good host does. Would you like a bit of grape soda? It's nice sometimes to mix it up and not be left to drink alone."

"Yeah, I'll take a shot or two. Can you maybe cook up some bureks?"

"Ha ha. Ha ha. No. Those are disgusting, both in taste and in smell. I've been throwing up all day long the past couple months as it is."

Leonard pondered that statement as I pulled something together for us to eat. When he took in the peppermint and cheese oatcakes I at last set down, he nodded sagely and leaned back in his chair. "Well, Fergus, let me be among the first to congratulate you."

"On what?" I asked dully, sitting across from him.

"On the nymph, of course! You're obviously pregnant. Almost two months down and one to go, I'd guess. Will I get to meet the lucky mother while I'm here?"

I fixed him with my best blank stare. "Does my belly look like it's pregnant to you?"

Leonard set down his shot glass. "Fergus, sometimes the…" He held up his hands and made a sign as though tracing out my shoulders and hips. "… bigger body types have difficulty telling that there's any swelling going on in their middle areas early on."

"Ow, I've been shot." Taking a forkful of oatcake helped me stall for a response, and in addition to that, it was delicious. "I can't be pregnant. I've never mated with a damsel in my life."

"Sharpened senses, weird food cravings," Leonard began, listing them off on his fingers. "Probable mood swings, and from the looks of that second bed made of blankets over there, you've started going broody… Sounds exactly like pregnancy to me."

"No, it does not. Believe me, my father made the symptoms abundantly clear to me, and one of them is that if I were as far along as this, I ought to feel a nymph squirming and kicking inside me." I reached for the soda bottle to refill my shot glass. Leonard took it away.

"Did you miss your last cycle? What's it for fairies; isn't it like, you've got eighteen to twenty months you're fertile every five hundred years? Qalupalik are six months every thousand, and brownies apparently are fertile all year round. It's jacked. I should've stuck with the puppy body."

"Cycles are less precisely regular than you seem to think they are and can fluctuate by as much as five years if there isn't a more dominant gyne around to set us all to his. But for your information, I'm just coming into my usual fertile phase now and yes, I have woken up to blood. May I have my soda back?"

"Seriously, you should maybe take a test, just in case. Remember, cù siths can sniff out nursing milk, and sometimes nymphs too. I've been around the block and seen a lot of pregnant tummies. Your face looks kind of flushed around the eyes."

"Duh. It's zero degrees out there. Faces flush in the cold. Yours is pink too. Pinker than usual, anyway. And it doesn't change the fact that I still haven't gotten with a damsel. Soda."

Leonard shook his head. "Come on, the gift of life is precious. You don't want to damage the nymph's brain or something. I think that's a thing."

"Only if I got seriously sugarloaded, dude."

"Until you know for sure, I think you should lay off the sugar."

"The real Sparkle never would have said that," I sniffed.

"The real Sparkle's living the life of luxury in the palace with Queen Vyanda. You knew she returned to reclaim her throne a few years ago, right? Turns out she likes him just fine when she doesn't have to see any rotting teeth."

That bothered me. I groped again for the soda bottle, but Leonard pulled it a hair out of reach. "Fine," I snapped, drawing back. "I'll take your pregnancy test. Wait here."

"You have a stick around your hole," he mused as I got up and moved towards my back cupboards. "Are you sure you haven't kept a damsel around these parts? And you still insist that you don't want to?"

"When you - I mean, when Sparkle - ran off during the riots, I accidentally grabbed his things instead of mine. I just never threw it out. It's true that these things never expire, isn't it?" After opening and shutting a few doors, I found the box. "Enjoy your food. I'll be back in a few minutes."

My fingers hesitated over the cardboard. In the back corners of my mind, I'd always planned to open this thing with my wife some morning or evening when we were financially stable and this type of thing had been planned. Marriage, copulation, kids- check those off my bucket list and flit back off to the working world.

I'd carried the box in my pocket for over 320,000 years. It reminded me of Sparkle, of the Academy, of Great Sidhe. Of long nights spent studying Snobbish and writing essays. Of gambling over snapjik pieces and rowdy cheering from the sidelines of a saucerbee game before we slipped away for ice cream as the firework shows began. This dumb little pregnancy testing stick was the only thing I owned from my younger days, since Mortikor's canister of salt had been replaced a dozen times and I'd worn out all my clothes. I knew every tiny word printed in the corners of its label.

I'd told Nephel and Sasa I was my happiest in this phase of life where I now found myself. Was I?

Shrugging, I ripped the package apart with my teeth.

Warm and yellow for positive. Purple and cold for negative. I took the test and fetched snow for washing dishes while I waited for the stick to decide my fate. Its lower half came up distinctly purple.

"There, you see? No sperm in my system. Undeniably not pregnant. Thank the stars; I can't stand the thought of taking care of some whiny little nymph for the next two hundred thousand years. I'm not the paternal type. And then, imagine if it turned out to be a gyne on top of it. Not this fairy, thank you."

"Gynes are cute."

I shook my head and said, "You say that because you're not one of us. Gynes tend to kill their parents and other nearby elders in their family. When I was just out of pooferty, my grandsire abducted me from my father's Academy dorm and tried to finish me off for good, and only partly because I sassed him with all I had."

Leonard grinned. "Ah, so your sarcasm's all-natural, then. I've always wondered if you had to take supplements to get this salty."

"Hmph. I don't even blame him, though; I was an illegitimate child born of a school-aged father, and nymphs are nothing but drains on one's resources who'll leave you someday and never look back." I threw the stick into my garbage pit. "Now, give me my stupid soda, Leonard. Trust me, I'd know if my belly was swelling any further than usual. Despite my father's hopes and your insistence, I'm a virgin. Even if I wasn't, although I am, Seelie Courters can't breed with the Unseelie anyway."

His head snapped up. "Wait, come again? I didn't know you swung that way."

"Don't get excited," I said as I poured another shot of grape. "Rhoswen syndrome holds no power over me. It was an inside joke. See? I'm laughing: Ha ha. Ha ha. I had a bad dream about an anti-cherub once."

"Anti-Venus?"

"Oh smoof, I wish. I'd lord it over everyone that I once passed a night exchanging smooches with the ambassador of anti-love herself."

"But… In your dream, right?"

I rolled my eyes and downed my shot glass. "Yes, in the dream, wise guy."

Leonard rubbed his chin. "I guess you could always get in contact with the Anti-Fergus. Since he has to mate with the counterpart of any damsel you do about three months after the fact, he'll probably know soon."

"I'm not pregnant."

"Right, right… Of course, who knows how many damsels he's gotten with? And there won't be a pup if you're not growing a nymph, so if that were me who was on their side of the Barrier, it'd just be a party all the time, so. He might not even know which one was yours by the time you find him." He stood. "Be right back, angel. I'm going to grab you some stuff and we'll throw you a baby shower."

"You're impossible."

"Yeah, but you still love me. You know you do." Leonard flicked his wand (Sparkle's wand?) and poofed away. As he had implied he was about to give me things for free, I didn't stop him.

I finished my food in his absence, then wiped the table and crunched the bucket of snow up for water. As I was cleaning off the last knife, he reappeared with a small wooden chest in hand. "Open it."

"This had better be full of gold and jewels." Putting the knife away, I sat down at the table and pushed back the lid of the chest. Then I clasped my hands to my cheek. "It's a baby rattle, just like the one I've always wanted. However did you know?"

Leonard grabbed the water bucket from beside the sink. "Here comes the shower."

"Don't you dare." I purposely knocked over my chair to slow him down, rushed to my door, and took to my wings outside. Leonard pursued with the metal pail swinging from his arm.

"Come on, Leonard, don't do this!" Wiping the occasional drifting snowflake from my eyelashes, I added, "You're straining me. You'll make me hurt the nymph."

Those brownie wings certainly were no match for mine- genetic mutation or not, I was a fairy and fairies were the fastest. I went easy on him, tauntingly keeping just out of reach, until Leonard finally managed to splash the bucket over my back. The icy water chilled me so sharply, I forgot to flap and plunged into the snow. He flopped beside me. We lay there wheezing with slight chortles in the cold for several minutes, watching the air and magic we expelled shimmer in front of our noses, and then I rolled over and stared at him. "We seriously need more friends. It's too bad I killed most of mine."

"Well, now we have another on the way, don't we, honey munchkin?"

"Oh, shut up. You're making it weird."

"That's what I'm here for. Certified and everything. By the way, your teeth look a little yellow like the calcium's draining. You should brush 'em more if you don't want them to end up like mine. I knocked one of these pearls loose once and the Tooth Fairy almost didn't take it."

He pushed himself up and started back to my hole. I touched my stomach as he went. Two months along, he'd thought. What an interesting comment. If this were Ambrosine's body, I'd be born a week and a half from now.

And yet when I squished my rounded belly, I could tell undoubtedly that there was no life growing in there.

Leonard stayed the night and left for Great Sidhe again the following morning, or maybe to some other place entirely. I turned my thoughts to the oncoming summer, which the past decade suggested would bring so little snow, the green grass and plants might even flourish. Last year had been good. Sometimes I'd even walked about barefoot and without my coat.

Warmer weather would bring back the crockeroos and perhaps some of the herds. Angels too. And, best of all, will o' the wisps would be out of season by the end of June, and I wouldn't have to plan my excursions and grocery trips to the surrounding small towns in the middle of the night any longer. I had some money stored up from my winters of brownie chores. Perhaps I'd splurge on a cherry soda to welcome the turn of the season. Yes, perhaps I would. Everything was going exactly as planned.

On the very last day of spring, while I was watering my stubble of garden plants that were probably weeds, everything did not go exactly as planned.

It came on so fast. So inexcusably. A strip of heat passed through my skull and sent chills tumbling like slinkies down my spine. I frowned. Landing in the sandy dirt, I set my pail down beside the nearest pond to rub the back of my head with all eight fingers. It came again inside- a biting sensation, like an itch begging to be scratched from underneath. More and more, bigger and bigger, sharper and sharper over the course of five minutes and making me stumble as I tried to walk, until I finally shouted, "All right!" and dropped to my knees. Flipping open the dome of my forehead, I dipped a hand inside. Much to my surprise, it did not slip in as far as it usually managed to. My fingers brushed against a soft and squishy thing. This must be it- the anomaly, the source of my pain. I latched on and drew it loose from the sticky, stringy confines of my head.

My hand had closed around a sort of translucent, filmy red bag brimming with fluid. The presence of the fluid, along with the fleshy cords that still connected the sealed packet to some structure within my head, confirmed all suspicions before I even examined the contents of the sac in any detail.

It was a nymph. A wriggling, living, honest-to-dust fairy nymph. In some impossible way, it had crawled up from my lower body where it ought to have grown and hidden itself away in my forehead. I was pregnant after all.

Or had been, perhaps more accurately. The time for carrying the child was over. The birthing period was evidently now. Taken rather far aback by this discovery, I dropped what could only be the amniotic sac in my lap and shook red strings of forehead material from my hand.

"Oh, smoof."

Clinging to my shoulders as another hot ripple passed through my system, I leaned over and fought to keep my vision from swimming. After a few wingbeats, I took the packet up again and brought it near my face so I might examine its contents more closely.

Yes, there really was a nymph in there. Awkwardly-shaped; almost round, but flat on every surface of its exoskeleton. Its face was squished into a hexagon, like it hadn't been focused enough to finish with the full and protective fairy sphere. When I tilted the sac just right, I could make out the tiny, broken crown pressed to its head by a rubbery wall.

That left me pondering one unanswerable question: How? Pip was a physical impossibility. We'd skipped that part of the dance anyway, of course. Never yet had I engaged in copulation with a damsel. I'd hardly spoken to damsels since coming into my adult wings, actually- even the ones who did stop by my hole. Anyway, shouldn't the pregnancy test have turned up positive? Second trimester was fairly late to be undetectable.

Again, Pip was a physical impossibility. All I'd done was kiss her. My mind flicked back through the events of three months ago. No. I'd been here, managing my garden and celebrating the new year. Sure, there had been those occasional damsels passing through, but I hadn't hit it off with any of them, and there were no blank patches in my memory that might suggest I'd had my mind wiped. Pip was a physical impossibility.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach and pressed in deep, not sure if I felt sick from the nymph or sick from my thumping thoughts. This… this had to be some mistake. The cherubs had sent the stork to visit the wrong drake. Those things happened, didn't they?

A small squeal wriggled past my lips. My tongue slipped across my teeth, rubbing them as they tingled. I sank my fingers into the stubbled grass until I sank myself, lying there with my knees tucked beneath my stomach and legs partly out to one side, my arms across my face. It was a horrifying sensation, having someone drink the magic out of me. The nymph took about everything the amniotic sac could pick up a read on.

The nymph. The nymph was- Well, the nymph was- a bizarre accident. Some fairy godchild or genie out there had thought it would be a laugh to fertilize some random drake's eggs from afar. And… had somehow gotten around the universal law that eggs still had to be fertilized with sperm through physical contact. Some alien species deep among the stars was incapable of giving birth the natural way and needed a host to attach its offspring to. A giant bug had laid its eggs in my ears. All of it made more sense than the child being mine. Forget the fact that it had come from my dome instead of my lower areas- how could it be mine?

I forced myself to lift my heavy, sticky cheek from the grass. My vision, though always blurred these days, grew less blurry the longer I stared at the amniotic sac on its cord, sprawled there beside my head. Horrid, slimy, twitching thing. I had to rid myself of it and forget this awkward nightmare had ever occurred. As I couldn't quite bring myself to squash and grind a tiny wriggling creature into pulp between my bare fingers, even if it was an unwanted parasite, I chose to drown it in the pond. It wouldn't be quick, but it would be easy. I pulled the sac towards me and dragged myself over.

However, within minutes I had run across a new problem: no matter how long I held the nymph under, it continued to kick and whine within its sac. It was feeding from my nutrients; the sac continued to provide the leech with life by stealing magic from me in a steady, slurping drain.

I searched sluggishly for any way to break the sac, but piercing it with the round stones I had around me proved impossible. Perhaps I could have broken it on the wooden spines of a decorative crocodile, but with my strength ebbing away, I could not have made the effort to move so far. I was left with no choice but to split the sac with my teeth. Easily, it tore. Fluid and the awkward nymph itself squeezed from the fleshy material and splattered across my hand.

My blood lit up as though with the stings of bees. What had to be a solid half of my natural stored magic left me in a final push, like scraping at fresh burn scars with one end of a frozen knife, its other end wedged in an electric socket. The force knocked me on my side as I gasped. In some automatic, instinctive way, the thin cords that had connected me to the sac withdrew into my head and coiled up in the base near my egg nest and skull. I lay, heaving and hot against the snow.

"Oh my dust," I wheezed. "Oh my dust, ow."

I wanted my small stuffed megalodon that Ambrosine had given me when I was only twenty-three, his joke supposedly being that I was on my way to being a loan shark one day and ought to have a little shark as company. It's a really stupid thing to say, but I made the mistake of mentioning it to my editor and she demanded I come back and slip mention of it in- obviously because she hates me as much as I hate her. Anyway, it's the one thing that I really remember wanting as my body attempted to rebound from the drain.

And then the situation snapped around. Forget losing my magic to the nymph- suddenly my body struggled to cap off the overloading flow of power that I myself now began to slurp from the energy field. There was so much of it forcing itself on me to make up for what the nymph have stolen that I believe I may have wet myself.

Dust, I wanted that little toy, to shove between my head like a pillow, or to chew on and soothe my anxiety, or to clutch against my chest and simply hold.

My vision spun vertically. I loosened my fingers from the grass. The waterfall of magic slackened. Going from under-supplied to over-bloated with the stuff too fast left me feeling like I was swimming through yogurt, and ironically didn't make it any easier to drink from the field. My lines were popping out of contact like typewriter keys. How fortunate that there was only one nymph. If my lines had tried to compensate for twins or - blitz, I don't even want to think about it, but triplets - I imagine I'd have inadvertently burst them all and then asphyxiated as a result.

(Not-fun fact: I would later confirm that that's exactly how it works. Thank King Nuada for late-night vice president meetings.)

As it was, I spent the next multiple minutes trying to shed the extra magic from my system, whether that be from the nosebleeds or throwing up or emptying my bowels the other way. And to think- all the particles and dust of that leftover power - everything I hadn't managed to stuff inside the tiny body - would clump together in the hopes of becoming the nymph's anti-fairy one day. If there had been a damsel out there who'd had her way with me while I slept, then Anti-Fergus would be mating with her counterpart by midnight tonight. Nothing in the universe could stop him, unless during the three months of my pregnancy, she and her counterpart had died. Then he'd find her closest genetic match. And if that didn't work, he'd actually get to choose who would be mother to his offspring. But that was always the rarest case.

The Seelie Court drew upon the energy field around us, but the Anti-Fairies couldn't function with only raw magic. We were synced. They were capable of using their powers mostly only when we were. They needed us. We were their lifelines. Once magic had been run through our respiratory systems and polished up, they could pull what they needed straight through our matching cores.

So that's where those leftover particles decided to go.

It wasn't fair. I'd tried so hard to get them out of my system, but no matter how much I heaved out my insides, they shook themselves off and swarmed back. My ears, my nostrils, the palm of my right hand, the lip of my lid, the cut I'd bitten in the back of my wrist- every opening was fair game. Although the particles were invisible while I wasn't in my field sight, I could feel them pushing in on me, surging through my system, swirling through my blood, surging upwards towards my head and my core.

The core always began life as a white dot like that on the face of a die. It was still there, the core of my core, deep within. A wormhole of sorts, if you would, or tunnel opening, or river mouth, where Anti-Fergus lay at the opposite end. All that nymph magic I'd released tumbled through my 'deepest core' and out from his. It would flood his senses. Fill his dome. He'd drink it up. Its magic would be used to fertilize one of his eggs. In another three months, provided its counterpart was still alive (or earlier if the parents were killed off first and the sickly preemie baby left abandoned among the grit and dead grass), then an anti-fairy pup would rise to take its place among the Unseelie Court.

Not that it mattered. There would be no pup once I got through with the parasite that had put me through this nightmare.

Shaking from my crown to my pterostigmata, I forced myself to rise to my hands and knees. My arms trembled. My wings were smeared with soil and snow crystals. My nose leaked horrible purple blood. I hacked up a bowl's worth of white fluid, and then a second.

"That's… not fair. I didn't want this. It wasn't my choice. Why would anyone do this to me?"

Now that I had cut the nymph free, and finally sat up, I crawled over again to drown it. It lay panting softly and trembling in the snow where I'd partially dropped it and partially tossed it. Magic in its natural state struggled to pass through water; it would take considerable time, but the nymph could be rendered unable to draw energy through its pores with relative ease on my part. And, I didn't have far to move. It was a fine solution.

The nymph was soft and limp when my trembling hand closed around its back. Naked and squishy. It sneezed. My arm hovered above the pool. Drowning, as it turned out, was perhaps not the wisest way I could have chosen to go through with this, if it actually made me hesitate. As I crouched over the water, the nymph squirming and mewling in my grip, I could see a warbled reflection of Ambrosine's wide eyes, round nose, and black hair studying my own tight lips and drawn brows.

"And this is why my father told me to drown you when you turned out to be a gyne."

Typical. The universe could throw all its tricks my way, but my mind had been made up, and I should not be guilted out of it. Not my choice. Not my problem. I looked up at the moon when I dunked my hand beneath the surface of the pond. The shock of cold sent a spasm through the nymph's system. It twisted. It bucked. It kicked. It shrieked. It-

"Ow!" Out of impulse, I yanked my hand from the water, spattering droplets. The nymph spit up what it had taken in through its mouth and its wailing went on. In the little moonlight that filtered between the clouds, I tried to find the source of the stinging sensation in my hand. A droplet of pink blood oozed from a miniscule dent in my flesh.

It bit me! The little smoof had bitten me! I pried apart its top and bottom jaw, only to be met with a dozen jagged teeth. Such baby teeth were already in place to protect the nymph in situations such as these, perhaps, seeing as the creature was small enough to rest in my palm. It must have inherited them from me, because it certainly wasn't a natural trait for fairies otherwise. They were just like mine.

"And just what do you plan to do to me next?" I asked the nymph, setting it in the sandy dirt between my knees. It could not, or would not, answer my question. Rather, instead of attempting a second time to fight me off, it fastened its mouth around my big toe and made a valiant attempt to suck, much like I had once sucked on juice pops around this same time of year.

I found myself licking my own lips as I remembered the cold of the air. My limbs were weak. My vision rang with constant fuzz in the edges. Would I pass out before I could finish the killing? Fall into diapause, even? It might be safe to stay out here unprotected awhile longer, but then again it might not be. I was having difficulty drawing magic from the energy field already. Painful as it was, perhaps I ought to move. Much safer to kill the nymph inside my hole.

Pulling myself back there was an effort in itself. I was cold, stiff, suddenly hungry, my head pulsed, I couldn't focus enough to fly in a straight line, or really fly at all, and was still trying to stabilize my body to the overabundant amount of magic in it. Far too much of it was raw and unusable and smothering, so technically I had perhaps a fourth of ready magic at my disposal to function on as opposed to usual until the rest had been funneled through my system. I walked for most of the way, frost nipping at the soles of my wobbly feet. Surrounded by four warm walls, I lit the candle in its dish with my kitchen wand and set the nymph down among the blankets on my bed.

Once I ensured it wasn't about to fall over and smash its small face on hard painful ground, I felt my way along the wall and searched my drawers for a knife or skewer I could use to pierce its brain. I tested each blade against my thumb, then threw it aside in disgust when it drew no blood and the wound sealed itself up. Did I have nothing in my hole that hadn't been formed out of magic?

I took a moment to recover my strength before I limped back out to my pond and refilled my pail with water. The full, dripping bucket I put on the table. Then I returned to the nymph on my bed and picked it up with one hand around its back again.

It was a drake. A drake with flushed red skin and a tiny scruff of black hair. A single soaked curl printed an 'S' shape across its forehead. The flight casings that sealed its wings like brown bubbles clicked a bit when it attempted to flap them. When it blinked, I caught a flash of dusty-pale purple eyes. At least it did serve one purpose, I thought as I looked it over. The brownie nose always skipped one generation and presented itself in the next, and the nymph didn't have it. Happily, I could scratch 'brownie' off the list of possibilities for Solara's species. Not that I'd ever believed Ambrosine would stoop to such a shameful level to seek his mate, but it was nice to have proof that would have cowed even old Mr. Thimble.

The nymph went into the pail of water. My pillow went over the top of it so it could neither escape nor bite. Inch-long palms slapped against metal from the inside. A high whine filled the air. I pressed the pillow deeper, frustrated by the fact that the fabric got wet but knowing it was necessary to keep the nymph under. That simple motion of leaning forward proved to be my downfall, and the reason any of the pixies aside from myself are alive today.

When I moved, my wing brushed against the canister of salt I had left out when I'd been preserving and storing away my meat. In doing so, the salt fell over and white flecks spilled all across the dirt and towels. I stared at the mess as dread welled up in my stomach. My table was stone. My utensils metal or magic. My bed was made of cushions and straw and perhaps a little grass. I kept nothing wooden in my immediate vicinity to knock on, not intentionally but simply because that was how it was. The nearest thing I had would be the crockeroo carving high on my pillow, or possibly my logs stored in their separate chamber behind me, but if I released the nymph to knock on them then it would come up gasping and wailing and I might lose my nerve to try again, drain on my resources it was going to be.

I wasn't left to wrestle with indecision long. Hardly four wingbeats later, an Anti-Fairy materialized in front of me with an audible foop. A tiny anti-imp with antennae that dangled into his eyes and leathery wings that trailed on the ground, looking more like a cape than the appendages they actually were. Hardly more than a mere pup.

Groaning within my mouth, I decided I had better speak before it realized that something within my pail was alive and fading. "And how old are you supposed to be?"

"Three thousand and five," he said, holding up all eight fingers. "This is my first time bringing bad luck. So, um… Let's see." He looked around my hole, picked a towel from the floor, let it drop, and then wandered over to the half-empty can of soda beside my bed.

"Put it down," I snapped. The anti-imp raised it to his lips. "Don't you dare! There's too much left for your underage body and I will not have you hyperactive and drunk in my home! Deliver your bad luck and get going. I said, put it down!"

The nymph in the pail splashed and kicked.

"What's this?" asked the anti-imp after he'd taken a few sips of my drink, picking up the wooden crockeroo from my bed.

"That is mine, and I've been working on it for days, so don't-"

Snap. "Whoops. Maybe it goes back on." Snap.

"That's it. You're finished." Shoving away the metal bucket and ignoring the resulting clang against stone, I took the anti-imp by the nape of his neck and dragged him over to my door. He went tumbling out into the thin layer of slush that had clumped in the divot just outside. "You tell your High Count to send me a real Anti-Fairy next time."

"Is this another one of your things?" the anti-imp asked, shaking frost from his wings as he reached for a rain deer on his left. The second carving I'd made.

"Don't touch that. Don't touch anything!" Swiping at him with my hands, I unhinged the dome to my forehead chamber and pushed out the laser cannon that made up my core. The imp dropped the deer. One of its thinner antlers broke off when it hit the dirt. He squeaked and darted off. His wings flew up, then snapped down, and soon enough, he was gone.

When I stepped back into my hole and barred the door with its chesberry bolt, I found my pail lying on the floor. Partially empty. The pillow had popped out. I took the bucket by the handle, but the nymph was nowhere to be found. Raising my head, I followed the trail of wet dirt into the storage chamber where I kept the logs and my food. Heaps and heaps and heaps of logs, ordered in neat rows and stacked up to the ceiling. Clean, preserved food that would go rotten if its neat packaging was torn apart by desperate teeth.

"Oh, you have to be yanking my lines."

Leaving my cannon drawn, I grabbed my candle from the table and dragged my sore self into the storage chamber after it. I had to lean my hand against the wall or a stack of logs every few steps. The footprints disappeared too soon, turning from mud back into dirt just scuffed enough that I couldn't sort itty-bitty marks from regular rises and dips. I held my candle near the first pile of logs, but though I searched each nook, I didn't find any trace of a stowaway.

"Come on, nymph," I called, whistling a few times and clicking my tongue against my teeth. "You'll turn to dust when you die and I don't want it to get strewn all over my nice clean hole. And especially into my food. You'll magic-touch it and then all the nutrients will drain. And, it's unsanitary."

I moved to another heap of wood, this time touching one of the lower logs and rolling it with my finger. It shifted. Something darted out from under the heap and burrowed into the next one.

"There you are."

The nymph zig-zagged around the room and I followed it on foot, keeping my patience, as I herded it towards the back. There was only one entrance into the storage room. Only one source of light. No cracks. No tunnels. As long as I kept watching which stack it attempted to hide in, I wouldn't lose it until I was close enough to pick it up. Perhaps I could even zap it out of existence with my laser cannon. After all, the 'magic can't kill magical creatures' law only applied if said magical being had magical particles in their blood that would react in the face of an oncoming blast. Officially, that was how I'd killed the Wilcox gyne once he'd submitted to me- blasted him through his forehead after I'd rid him of his lines, and leaving his dust in that box in the lonely house. And the nymph was still a newborn.

"Almost done," I said. "Just one more. You're almost there. You've got it."

It chirped, then squirmed through a gap in the last pile of logs. I heard scuffing footsteps on the other side. Limping around the heap, I found that the nymph had pressed its back against the rear curve of the chamber, arms and wings spread to either side. The lavender gaze darted back and forth as the realization sunk in around it that it couldn't flee backwards any longer. It turned its eyes upwards to me, mouth slightly gaping and tiny brows pressed together. Its entire body vibrated with trembles. The splintered crown bobbed a little lower over its head, broken points bared. It bit its lip. Fingers clenched and unclenched against the dirt wall.

I hesitated, holding the candle in its dish even when a hot drip of wax splashed across my thumb. The nymph continued to blink in silence, flat where it was, tongue poking out as it panted. It looked at me, with its searching eyes.

It… wasn't fleeing from me out of instinct. It was fleeing because it had chosen to dislike me. It had already associated me with the two instances I'd dunked it in cold water and held it down. It was aware. It was afraid. It could process. It was sentient.

Shifting the candle dish to my left hand, I squeezed my nose and rubbed upward for a time. Then I came down on my knees. I retracted my laser cannon. Setting the candle aside, I held out my upturned palms. The nymph didn't move. I really didn't blame it, nor did I make any attempt to force interaction. I had all day and nowhere to be.

After a moment, it took a tiny step towards me, letting out a vocalization and flaring its wings. It flashed its teeth, then returned to panting. "You're asphyxiating," I realized. "You were born with magic in your blood and now you're running out. You can't tap into the energy field. I didn't have to raise a finger, and you'd have died anyway."

He whined and sat down, licking his pale lips. I tucked my wings away. There was a way to solve that problem that I knew inherently. Bracing my hands to the dirt, I closed my eyes.

Melted into the genetics of a drake was the instinct to solve these types of problems and preserve life. There were threads in the universe, invisible, but they had taste. They clung to magical beings and connected them to the energy field expelled by the Big Wand in Fairy World so it might give them life. Upon our ancestors' deaths, their magic cycles back through the universe, available for their descendants to draw upon; when we use magic, we give back what we borrowed from them so it can be purified and reused. Those who don't sometimes suffer… back-up. Lifting my fingers, I pushed back the lid to my forehead chamber and reached out for my magic lines, searching, pressing, tasting…

My eyes rolled back into field-sight. The colors of the world around me shifted. No more browns and blacks and chamber dark. Only the brightness of the Fairy rainbow, set against a backdrop of raw, flowing purple.

Colors. So many colors. My own skin glowed with the lavender pigmentation released by my fagiggly gland. A haze of periwinkle clung around my edges to indicate that I was a member of the fairy race. Due to something with my genetic mutation, my 'base color' had always appeared several shades nearer to purple than those of my peers.

Then the nymph. He was lavender too. Now that was interesting. You didn't see too many nymphs take the fagiggly color of their father. Normally, they ended up a bit closer to the mother, who bestowed the most magic on the egg during fertilization. And purple was a rare enough color as it was. I didn't remember any purple damsels passing through my hole for decades. What had her name been? Cassandra or something?

There was the core of his core, small and white near the base of his dome. The aura around it gleamed more pink than purple, which indicated likely stubbornness in his future personality, along with a tendency to defend whatever he was interested in and display little if any reluctance or remorse. Curious once again. He wasn't the only one present with the pink-purple core color.

I studied the other layers around the nymph's core. The first layer would display the core color of his sire's magic. The outer layer his mother's. Double pink, leaning into purple. That was where he and I finally differed- those who had looked upon me with field-sight had always confirmed that Ambrosine's core color was red and Solara's was deep, dark indigo.

Finally, a single groping finger snagged one of the magic lines that wafted around me, intangible unless I hunted for it. I found another, and a third. While the nymph sat panting, I took my three threads and sharply snapped their connection to my soul. After the burning flash of pain had subsided, I weaved them into the nymph once I'd nudged open his dome.

If there was one thing that Ambrosine had ensured I could do with my hands before he sent me off into the world, it was braid. I could braid the hair of any damsel who might cross my path, though no one had ever asked me to. For the nymph's lines, I chose my favorite triple fishtail pattern. With gentle fingers, I twirled the cords together - that same pinky-purple in field-sight like my core color - and wove them into the gravitational field above the nymph's head, into his broken crown, into his body and mind and his entire being as a whole. Finished, I tugged, hard.

The lines took root. He twitched his wings. Once he swallowed twice, his panting stopped. I flipped my eyes out of field-sight and back into reality. The bright colors faded into browns and shadows once again. Together we sat as I reoriented myself to drinking from the field with three fewer lines, and the nymph tested his connection for the first time. He rubbed his eyes and chirped twice.

"You like that better, don't you?" Keeping my movements slow, I scooped him up. Instantly he was squirming and trying to nip, but I held him far enough back on his hexagonal body that he couldn't sink his teeth into my skin. Then I pressed him to my chest, took up the candle, and brought him back into the main chamber. "I suppose this is for you," I said, placing him in the nest of rumpled blankets in the corner. He relaxed once I let him go and sat there, staring at me as I frowned around my hole.

"No clothing will fit you. I suppose that's all right for now. Is there something to feed you with?"

I brought to the table a bit of fish left over from what I'd eaten the night before and sliced off a chunk. After plucking out a few wispy bones, I gave it to the nymph. He closed his mouth over my finger and chewed, then swallowed and made squeaking noises for more. I cut another piece, but after he got it down, he threw up on himself.

"All right. I understand. I won't give you any more if it's going to go to waste like that. Time to clean you up." I sprinkled more salt over the fish and rewrapped it in its silky packaging and stuck it among the chunks of ice in my lowest drawer. Then I went out to refill the water pail. When I placed the nymph on the table beside it, he fluttered his wings and clashed his teeth and kicked his legs.

"I'm not going to hold you down," I said, picking him up. "You're disgusting and you need a wash to rinse off all this spit and dirt. Just look at you. You're completely - ow! - sandy…" Shaking out my hand, I dipped him in the bucket. He screeched as the cold touched his feet. His legs kicked. He twisted, bucked- everything just as before, at the pond.

"Dazzled," I grunted, withdrawing him before he could bite me a second time. Instead, I pinned him to the table, which stifled his crying, and wet the end of my sleeve in the water. This, I rubbed across his chest and face. Most of the mess had splashed off when I'd dunked him, but grains of sandy dirt clung to his black hair. When I was done, I returned him to his mound of blankets and rubbed my eyes.

Deep inhale. Exhale. I told myself to forget the How?s and focus on the What now?s.

I lowered my hands to find that the nymph had spit over himself again. Evidently, his body wasn't ready to digest solid foods quite yet. He needed milk. Nursing milk, with all the essential nutrients. Without it, he'd starve entirely; that much I remembered from my school days, even if I'd wanted proof. As I cleaned him up and he whimpered, I chewed on the tip of my tongue. Just be hospitable, I told myself. Treat him like a guest. Experience one day at a time.

Not that there would be many days without the cortycus in that milk to power his core. Rather than wash him a second time, I might be better off preparing to sprinkle his dust around the old sprouting grounds of Pip's maple tree.

I did bathe the nymph again, and lay the towels from the floor across his bed so he would soil them and not the blankets. Then I offered him Leonard's rattle. He didn't seem to like it much, and threw it at my head. At last he was quiet once he went to sleep, but in the middle of the night the hunger got to him, and he woke me with his wailing.

There was no place to put him in the cave, and I was terribly stubborn and terribly sore and wasn't about to allow the parasite to chase me out of my own hole and into the snow. He quieted some when I held him, pacing and clicking my tongue, but movement could not quell his hunger. Only milk would stay down in his system for the first several months. By the time he could swallow solid foods, he'd have starved.

So… I made a decision.

I went into my rear cave, set the nymph down, and took up my knife. With a few quick strokes, I'd hacked off a chunk of crockeroo meat and some bread slowly going stale. I warmed myself one final cup of coffee while the nymph cried and spit and generally made a mess of himself. Then, shoving my kitchen wand into the waistband of my thick gray pants, I set the mug in the sink with the plan to get to it and the other dishes later.

Sandy (that was what I had chosen to call him) was bundled in the softest towel I could find. He cried incessantly, quieting only when I held him near my chest. He nipped at my shirt in search of milk he would never find. I let him anyway, because it kept him quiet. For a long moment I stood at the chesberry door to my hole, gazing out into the snow.

"This is stupid," I said aloud. My eyes moved from the sheets of ice and occasional drifting flakes to the warm comfort of my hole. I didn't really need to traipse about in search of a damsel, did I? Why not take the easy path and toss the nymph out to die?

Sandy took my thumb in one of his hands and blinked up at me, his mouth partly open. Sighing, I scratched behind his ear, which he seemed to like, as it made him ball his fists and chirp. He held a spell over me; he was sentient, and as the only adult around I was responsible for him until further notice. Sandy hadn't chosen to be born, and thus it wasn't fair to make him suffer. I had to ensure his survival, although doing so was really my biological code. Nothing more.

My entire body ached. Each time I took a step, liquid sloshed about between my ears. After ten minutes of stumbling among drifts of snow, I began to feel a feeling. A sickening feeling. Yes, even though I did sleep through most of that class like always, I had learned in school that extra blood followed the birthing process.

And I wasn't wrong. When I knelt down and, leaning over, cracked open the lid to my forehead dome, I was greeted with a stain of sloshing purple against the snow. It dribbled past my ears, along my nose, and caught in the ends of my hair. After emptying my head, I stared at the contents, then emptied my stomach too. Sandy clung to my foot as though in apology.

"You did this to me," I hissed at him. He squeaked and hid his face behind my big toe.

I brought one fist down on a chunk of ice. "This isn't logical. A nymph born from my head? How did you even get up there? That isn't where my uterus is, and yet here you are, healthy as can be. And on top of that, I've never blitzed a damsel in my life." I reconsidered my words, then turned to Sandy and propped my chin on my fist. "Pardon my language. Don't tell my father I let a nymph hear me say that."

(Take your thumb off your chest, McKinley. You're not going to The Darkness just for reading such things. And if you come knocking at my door with King Nuada's scripture in hand insisting that you'll show me the path back to righteousness, I'll chuck you off a cloud from Plane 12.)

Sandy lay his head on my arm, and I let him for a time because I hurt too much to move. But eventually we had to. Although the breeze wasn't anywhere near strong enough to disconnect my lines, it was too cold to lie about, even with summer supposedly on its way. Movement offered warmth. After taking up Sandy again, I trudged north.

Had to obtain milk. Had to find a lactating damsel. But where? I couldn't go to Nephel and Sasa; even if I did attempt to seek out one of the other western elves, word spread fast and they would certainly find out. They'd be upset I hadn't told, upset I hadn't known, upset that I'd been consuming sugar while expecting. I prized Nephel's friendship, but I knew his feelings on candy and soda. He always made me swear with my thumb on my chest that I hadn't so much as kissed a damsel for the last three months before he would break out his stash. No matter how much I pled with him now, he'd believe I lied to him to feed an addiction. It would shatter his core.

No. I was willing to break the trust of anyone else, but not Nephel. I still remembered the days when he was young and cute and innocent, his pointed teal hat so big on his head that it kept slipping down to his nose. I couldn't face the look of betrayal in those same wide green eyes. Not when he admired me. I wouldn't let him think I was weak.

Which town was nearest my hole? It always seemed as though most of the smaller bubble-dwellers were poor and sleazy, so I didn't often bother with them. Great Sidhe in the distant southeast and Madigan in the northwest were my main places of business. I'd compared and contrasted for centuries, and their prices and paychecks were always the best. But which way was I to head when it was a damsel I needed to find, not a well-paying job?

I turned to an old tree I knew for my answer. Although giving birth to Sandy had left my brain fuzzy, and although it had been centuries ago that I last consulted the tree or one of its long-gone neighbors, eventually even my poor eyes could make out the conifer with its bristled top sliced cleanly off in the universal symbol for 'signpost'. Heaving myself towards it, tucking Sandy between my neck and other arm, I brushed frost from the lowest section of the trunk to find nine carved arrows pointed in a variety of directions among the crevices and lumps of bark.

Great Sidhe, twelve hours as the dragonfly skims.

Pumpkin Hill, seven and a half hours.

Ginger Peaks, six hours.

Slicing River, five and a half hours.

Caribou Town, four hours.

Little Sidhe, one and a half hours.

Ice Falls, one hour.

Mid-Northern Reaches, one hour.

Purple Valley, quarter of an hour*

*Permanent residence of a gyne who offers rest for travelers

Why had I decided that owning a wand wasn't worth the monthly payments, again? Ah, yes. The big stubborn snattersmoof had boasted to himself that he was capable of living by his own means, essentially swearing off magic and relying merely on a kitchen wand to stir his morning coffee. Wow, I was super dumb. I was so dumb, I deserved a promotion for my lack of planning abilities.

Nephel's home of Notch Town wasn't even on this list. Too far and too small.

I was the gyne in question. Scratch that.

The Mid-Northern Reaches was the burrow system of the nearby will o' the wisps. Scratch that.

Ice Falls wasn't a town so much as a tourist location. Even when I arrived, it could be a week before anyone showed up, and longer still before I met a damsel with milk who would agree to nurse such an ugly, hexagonal child. The nymph would die before then. Scratch that.

Ginger Peaks, Pumpkin Hill, Caribou Town, Great Sidhe- all so very far. Scratch that.

I'd never been to Little Sidhe before. Few drakes lived in the town- mostly it was damsels and occasionally their partners, whom they always kept a close eye on, notched wings or not. The place was situated dangerously within the borders of will o' the wisp country, and the rumors were that if ever they needed to grocery shop, Little Sidhe was where they went. The residents had turned a fair profit that way, selling to wisps Earthside when few others would, but few drakes ever walked those streets alone without a hand on their wands. Every extra hour spent making the visit to Great Sidhe had been worth it to me in the past; I was always looking for swell ways to kill time above ground rather than below it.

Moving westward from here would drive me into the territory of the will o' the wisps. Theoretically, I ought to be able to avoid them if I moved first south and then cut westward, but it still ran the risk of crossing paths with some sort of wisp damsel patrol. Then, upon arrival, I only needed to avoid the attention of any wisps, deliver Sandy to a milkmother, and preferably ditch the scene afterwards. Surely they had some precautions in place to protect drakes who wanted to avoid the attention of the wisps, didn't they? They had to.

Caribou Town. Little Sidhe. Caribou Town. Little Sidhe.

Four hours or an hour and a half? Risk of wisps or guaranteed safety?

As I wrestled to make a decision, Sandy bit his thumb and started to cry. I stared down at my feet, clutching the nymph to the warmth of my chest, hearing wind and magic rasp in the back of my throat every time I opened my mouth. Icy spring rain pattered in my hair. I lifted my wings and attempted to summon the pink magic that would allow me to fly, only to find myself still drained physically and magically from the mortifying event of the night before.

If Sandy had been wished out of me, or if it hadn't been so cold, or if I'd been younger, or if the wind wasn't picking up, perhaps I could have done it. But my lines were still bloated halfway shut and vaguely strangling me, causing me to outright wheeze. Every limb and every place where I didn't have a limb ached and sang.

No pink magic. Grounded. Flightless.

Walking would triple the time.

Nymph was hungry and loud.

Okay. Little Sidhe won the ticket. I'd go. So I went.

That was a rough journey. In some places the snow was up to my knees, and in others it nearly reached my waist. Every step was mostly a stumble. I had to rest multiple times, bleary and aching. Sandy slipped in and out of wakefulness every few dozen minutes. I did my best to keep track of the mountains, but I hadn't traveled this area in centuries for a distinct reason. According to the signpost, Little Sidhe lay southwest of me. Southwest? Were my directions right? Gray clouds shielded the sun. Had I been turned around in the wind that had picked up as I dragged myself along, swirling snowflakes and stinging my skin with sharp rain and flecks of hail?

Dust, where was I? Why hadn't I brought more food? Sleep tugged relentlessly at my eyelids, but whether it was natural or something deeper, I couldn't afford to let it overtake me. I couldn't let myself slip into diapause. Not here. Not again.

"Stop crying," I burst when Sandy picked it up for the sixtieth time. I clutched him to the fuzz of my white crockeroo coat, my wings beating wildly but uselessly without their magic. Did I know this area? Where was I? A third of the way up a brown cliff, with a sloping path of slippery rocks that seemed to skitter at every step. North? Was I north?

No.

Oh no.

No, no, no.

The wailing continued. I smothered the nymph's mouth in my shirt, turning desperate circles. "Sandy, I'm serious! This is the dead center of will o' the wisp country! You have to stop or they'll find us."

Disobedient brat ignored my warnings. I managed to quiet him by allowing him to suck on my thumb as I fumbled my way in the direction I thought might be east, but it didn't satisfy his hungry belly for long. The screaming returned, even when I muffled it with a corner of the towel and my palm.

"Sandy, don't you get it? If they find us, bad things will happen- not the least of which is that will o' the wisps don't know how to make a decent cup of coffee. I can't handle caffeine withdrawal for the rest of my life. I'm not a god quite yet."

The energy field wrinkled around me as some foreign magical being drew near and our attraction signal auras melded around one another. Faintly, I began to get a taste of swamp water and roasted bird in my mouth. Even in the wind, I swore I picked up the rustle of approaching lepidoptera wings.

I ran every foul word in every language I knew across my head, removing my thumb from Sandy's mouth to trace my fingers through my damp hair. Sandy would break into screeching again at any moment. There was almost certainly no way I could slip away from her.

It was me or him.

Fortunately, it wasn't a difficult choice in the least. I placed Sandy down in the snow and began to back away as I bundled my numb hands in his towel. He whimpered two or three times, holding out his stubby arms. I shook my head.

"No, Sandy. I tried to warn you, but you chose not to listen. You're too loud and I can't let the will o' the wisps find me. I can't. I can't. I never wanted to have a nymph, and if it comes down to the two of us then I have the right to think of myself first. If you're unlucky, the wisps will take you in and raise you until they don't like you anymore. You can hate me for the few short minutes you have remaining, but this is how it has to be."

On those parting words, I turned and zipped off along the rocky path, stumbling as best as my sore body could take me. His wails reverberated off the stones and new summer air, but as young as he was, there was no way he'd be quick enough to follow me.

Will o' the wisps. Will o' the wisps. Had to shake the taste of their magic, had to put up a fight, had to get away.

Was she closing in? Were those butterfly wings in my ears, or the squeals of magic muscling down my clogged-up lines?

Sandy's crying broke off. My core dropped from my head to my stomach. I grabbed hold of a spire of ice until my vision cleared again.

Dead, quite possibly, and with the flight casings still on his wings. Dustless death.

I signed the pattern for Safe travels across my chest anyway.

When that was done, I made an attempt to launch myself into the air, and crashed against rock. Even now that at least one will o' the wisp was likely in pursuit, I found myself lying there for a solid twenty seconds before I heaved myself up to unsteady feet.

Every sliver of skin, both inside and out, screamed with the fury of firefighting wands. My vision blurred with pain. My limbs were stiff. I'd lost so much magic, so much strength, in bringing Sandy into the world, and it had taken nearly all my effort just to come this far. I simply didn't have enough left to fly. There was only one more option: run. Swallow the pain and just flat-out run. I took a single step and tripped into the snow again.

"No, no, no," I groaned, sinking my fingers into the powdery white. This couldn't be happening. I'd left Sandy to lose his soul to the Darkness, and now he was killing me. It wasn't fair.

With my hands on the rock wall, I dragged myself up once again. Razzle dazzle. One step at a time. Cradling my head, I lurched my way along the cliffs. My limp became a hobble, and a shuffle, and a rush. I scrambled my way upward, trying to seek out some crack in the rocks, or cave.

Higher. Higher. That became the word I chanted, tearing my hands on jagged ledges as I surged upwards. My frozen wings crackled. Blood spilled from my knuckles and crusted in the creases of my palms. The gray snow shimmered with green and red.

I paused for a break after nearly ten minutes, one hand against the dirt and rock of the cliff, and gazed down at how far I had climbed. My bloody prints were distinct here and there, but although the energy field dripped with wisp, no one was following the trail as near as I could see.

My core swelled. I'd done it! Sickly and sore as I was, I'd shaken off a will o' the wisp! And to think that Mr. Thimble had once made me explain to the whole class why even fairy drakes struggled to escape their long-fingered clutches. Satisfyingly satisfied, I turned around and took another single lurching step.

It crunched. I swayed. Overhead, the sound of falling hail chunks shifted as sweeping wings blocked their path to the ground. They weren't my own.

They were cinder black, popping with bright flecks along the edges- all pale circles of orange and swirls of blue and dashes of white. A little tail curled off the edge of each one. I remember the sight of her descending still, especially when the human cities are aglow with those same colors in the night. Her bright pink sweater had pockets. Thick skirts of purple and navy blue spilled out around her feet. The curls in her long hair followed a similar gradient pattern, lightly golden in the center before transitioning to amber and scarlet and finally ashy-gray at the tips. Though she floated, I could tell she was taller than me by several unpleasant inches- four feet to my then-three-foot-nine, maybe. In her arms, she held Sandy. I leaned my head back against the wall of the cliff and fought back a scream. My fingers scraped across rock. Nothing loose to throw. Nothing wide enough to support my weight should I climb. I gave up and pressed my hands into my cheeks as she descended.

"My… fair lady?"

She slipped her hair back behind her pointed ears, showing a dimple on either cheek when she smiled. "Well addressed and well received, drake. Gyne drake- look at that. With only three words, you have taken your first steps on the path towards gaining my favor."

My left wing gave a twitch.

"I am Kalysta Ivorie of the Mid-Northern Reaches."

Figured that. My other wing offered up a second twitch for good measure. Forgoing the attempt at politeness, I drew my kitchen wand and pointed it at my stalker's face.

"And you come with your own cooking utensils. Even better. You can put that away- I know we're both aware it won't help you here."

I continued to brandish it nonetheless. Its domestic magic may prove worthless against her, but the points of the orange star might still blind her if I stabbed them in her eyes hard enough.

Sandy stretched his hands again, his fingers opening and closing upon empty air. Setting him to her hip, Kalysta leaned her shoulder to the rocky wall of the cliff and studied me from my lower half up to my top. "I was doing some research on this weather and the frozenness of streams and ponds at this time of year for a project of mine. One of my fellow damsels called out and alerted me to the presence of this nymph left as though abandoned in the snow. I happen to know a thing or so about nymphs myself, so I flew straight out to have a look at him."

I bit my lower lip. "I imagine you did, my fair lady."

"This one," Kalysta said, flipping Sandy on his head in her palm, "still has the flight casings on his wings. He won't shed those until he tastes his first sip of nursing milk. I saw him and I thought, 'I wonder if I might chance upon some drake in his nymph-bearing years out wandering in my realm?' Lo and behold, to my delight, I did. Presto. Here we are now. Is this not a most lovely day for us?"

"He isn't entirely mine."

"No? Then it's fortunate I found you anyway. If he hadn't been sitting out there, I never would have known you were around before you froze off your cute little wings. You'll give yourself hypothermia if you stay out here any longer. What has led a drake like yourself to cross this barren landscape on your own?"

Cold as it was, a bead of sweat trickled down my upper lip. My fingers tightened around the kitchen wand's shaft. "I'm only passing through, my fair lady. My apologies if I disturbed you from your work."

"I require no apologies in my little kingdom, drake." She placed Sandy on the ground. He raced directly towards me and grabbed my ankle, whimpering and trembling. I made an attempt to kick him from my foot. He clung on. After a moment of this, and at a loss as his whines began again, I knelt down to stroke his head. He quieted.

"It's a shame he isn't yours," Kalysta said, studying me as I slid Sandy into my arms and shifted further along the rocky wall. "He seems to like you well enough."

I shut my eyes. "He is the firstborn of a drake bearing the name of Sanders, and is called only Sanders' son. His sire intended to have him drowned, but I spared his life and we have only just left that place. That is what I know."

"Oh!" Kalysta placed one dark, glistening wing around my shoulders. "Then you have nowhere else to go now. I think I could make arrangements to take you in."

"Your kindness is implied, my fair lady. There is no need for you to go through such trouble. I was on my way westward; I'll find the Rainbow Bridge that way. My father is in a town called Novakiin, and he'll provide the child with the wand he'll need to learn to fly-"

Shaking her head, Kalysta took my wrist and, gentle as a flower petal, guided me back along the trail. "You're a drake, you're in my territory, and the nymph will die if he doesn't receive milk before too long. I think we can help each other. Don't you?"

I tore my hand free. Doing so sent my arm crashing against the wall of the cliff, but once I caught myself and dabbed some of the green blood from my palm on my knee, I held Sandy out to her. "Dear lady, he's not my son and I don't care for him. I entirely offer you him and give my full legal permission to take and betroth him to any daughter you may have if you'll so kindly allow me to move on. Do as you wish concerning his fate."

Kalysta brought her forehead to mine so our floating crowns clicked. Never once losing her smile, she said, "My kind are creatures of hospitality, drake. As you have crossed into my territory, you are under my protection as much as Sanders' son is. I insist on taking you back to my burrow. We can do this either the easy way, or the hard way. Please make your selection, and let us proceed."

The "hard way" turned out to involve shoving her open mouth against mine and forcing down a light Kiss of Frost. It was full, and enveloping, and terribly, terribly cold. It stank of swamp and lasted for an entire minute. After Kalysta relieved me of my kitchen wand and peeled me away from the cliff face, she slung me over her shoulder and absentmindedly retreated back down the slope. Sandy curled in the crook of her arm. I could do nothing but lie on my stomach as the bone in her shoulder dug into my neck and right wrist. For the most part, I couldn't even twitch my nose or blink when her wings slapped my face.

Hidden among the bushes and brown grass, somewhat sheltered by the cliff face, marked by a pointed stone, Kalysta found her burrow. The hatch was structured from material that resembled the cap of an acorn. My eyes could rotate enough that I could see it as her hand lifted the cover away. Then she dropped through with a fwoosh.

We landed in a cave of blue-black rock and packed dirt. It smelled like centuries of thick waste. Kalysta placed me on the floor with Sandy and sprang back up to shut her hatch against the snow. The light from the outside faded away, leaving only the white stones set along the walls, glowing. There were dozens of them, spaced low and in a line so they functioned as a handrail, but they were dim.

Kalysta carried me into the next cave. I caught one glimpse of fluffy blankets before she lay my back down on them. Feathers and puffs of wispy white smothered my head and trailed over my nose. Propping up my head, Kalysta brought her lips close. I could do nothing except widen my eyes. But, her lips did not brush mine again. They closed over the tip of my hair, and when she was done, the front curled upwards in two tiny tufts.

So that's why they call it a cowlick, I thought as I watched her do the same to Sandy.

"These are my personal quarters. I expect you'll be spending some time here." Kalysta, still holding Sandy, examined me for a moment. Then she wandered away from my circle of vision. I threw all my effort into kicking my legs, but the most I could do was cause one of them to jolt like it had been smacked just below the knee. My eyeballs dried and seared.

After a couple of minutes, Kalysta came back with a warm, damp cloth and began rubbing the last snowflakes from my cheeks. She did this until I began to blink in response to her hand flicking too close to my eyes, and then at last I sneezed and shook my head.

"There we are," she said, tugging me to my feet. "I brought you a bit of applesauce if you're hungry. No? I thought you might refuse. Let me know if you change your mind. We'll have dinner later with the others. You know, I never did get your name yet, drake."

I tried to scrape a pseudonym together, but I didn't want her to see my hesitation and I wasn't sure if I even needed one. "Fergus Whimsifinado."

"Whimsifinado…" She said it as though it sounded vaguely familiar. "You'll find that surnames become irrelevant down here. I do like 'Fergus'. I had a character once named Fergus, half a dozen millennia ago. Bit of an inquisitive troublemaker, which will remind me to keep my eye on you." On that, Kalysta passed me Sandy, took my limp hand again, and led me on foot from her room through a small office, a cavern with a long glass table and boulders for chairs, and into a hall. Each step had to be done slowly; between her kiss, my body half-frozen from the cold, and the fact that I was still recovering from giving birth to Sandy, I wasn't in the position to run. Run where… I didn't know.

We turned right. The light was no brighter in that tunnel than in her quarters. The ceiling was too low. If I flapped my wings, I'd bump my head against it. I had to walk along the dirt floor, and so did she. As we went, I made an attempt to press down my now-tufted hair, still goopy with her saliva. It wouldn't stay.

The cave roof of our destination, reached after a mere thirty wingbeats or perhaps as few as twenty, was no different in either light or height than the tunnels, but at least it was wide. It sprawled for exactly sixteen paces in either direction from the door (as I would become very familiar with), and precisely that much back. Very square. Very orderly. Very enclosed. Several cone-shaped nymphs played together on the dirt floor, letting out small vocalizations that caught Sandy's interest and flaring their wings. The little damsel's were violet and black, while the other nymphs were all decorated in various tints and shades of brown and gray.

Against the far wall, in the dusty dimness I made out what appeared to be four nests comprised of straw and blankets and maybe a couple of feathers and wide leaves. Each one was occupied by an older wisp drake, all of whom had identical cowlicks to mine and Sandy's. One of them raised his head, and smiled at me. He even waved.

"Tobie," I murmured. "Oh, Tobie…"

When their damsel snapped her fingers twice, all the wisps sprang up and came scampering over. They aligned themselves in a row, with the little ones positioned in front of the one who must be their sire. All eight of them, the exception being the only damsel (wearing pink like her mother), were dressed in loose-fitting haggard browns clothing and wore no shoes, just as Tobie had always looked back in our Spellementary days. Kalysta nudged me another step into the room.

"That's Walt, that's Jakey, that's Tobie, that's Otto," she said of each drake, and of the four children, "Ellowi, Idona, Tick, and River. This is Fergus, and the nymph doesn't have a name yet and is simply called Sanders' son."

"My greetings," I mumbled. Tobie waved again, a bit more impatient this time. I refused to return the gesture.

Kalysta placed her hand over my left shoulder and held her thumb and forefinger a wing's breadth apart. "Here's the tiddly issue before any of you get too comfortable, dear. I only have enough milk to support four sucklers through weaning. One nymph in this room has to go."

I tightened my grip on Sandy, but I nodded. "That makes sense, my fair lady."

She smiled. "I'm glad you think so, drake. You know, I do like you. You're a fairy, and fairy drakes tend to be… How should we put this? More dominant? Desirable? Clever, than will o' the wisp ones? You have an education, and on top of that you're a gyne. I think it's only fair that you get to choose which one I lose."

Their startled eyes swiveled to me. I could feel them, even though I did not turn my head. Nor did I blink. "What?"

She gestured into the room. I stayed as I was a moment more, then shifted my feet so my wings drooped between us like a curtain. All the drakes had stepped a bit back, anxious-mouthed, their hands on their respective offspring. Doey eyes gazed up at me. One of the nymphs turned and pressed his face into Tobie's leg.

"You really can't make me pick, my fair lady," I protested, glancing to her again. "You know their personalities better than I, which ones exhibit the greatest strengths and strongest weaknesses and best deserve your resources."

"That's true," she acknowledged, "but you're our newest guest. I asked you to choose what would make you most comfortable here."

My gaze fell to Sandy, silent and still supported with my palms. I shook my head. "I must refuse, my lady."

Kalysta studied her drakes, then folded her arms. "All right. Clearly, we need to start all over again. Bring the nymphs out to my chamber, Otto. I have some kissing to do."

"What?" My eyes flashed around the low room. "All of them? For- For- You have no reason for that."

"Then pick just one."

I looked again to Sandy, then to Kalysta, and then to the drakes before me. They crept backwards again, their dully-colored wings (looking rather undersized, I remember thinking) prickling up along their backs.

Well. I didn't like having to say it, having to imagine the dripping blood of a sentient being turning from default purple to anxious green to even brilliant red between my fingers as full desperation set in, but at least the choice was an obvious one.

"My fair lady, if you're making me choose, I'd have to pick Idona."

Jakey tightened his fingers into her thin shoulders, his violet eyes sharp, but Kalysta merely shook her head. "That's a nice try, Fergus, and I see where you were going with that line of thinking, but I must rephrase myself. My one damsel must live. Take a drake."

That left me at a loss. Walt, Tobie, and Otto studied me with uncertainty, all of them holding their offspring a little more closely. The one in front of Tobie - Tick - reached a hand out to either side, and Ellowi and River entwined their fingers with his. Sandy made a sort of mewling noise in my arms and attempted to squirm away. I looked back at Kalysta, my wings twitching. She wasn't intending to cave in.

I set Sandy on the floor and, swallowing, took a step towards the nymphs. Everyone moved backwards again, but then Kalysta snapped her fingers twice and gave an order for the drakes to withdraw to their nests. The nymphs were to stay, still clinging to one another in a pointy bundle of cones. "Show me your arms," I murmured, taking one of River's. I examined the limb, flipping it forward and back, and moved on to his legs. Then I looked at his mouth and the tiny teeth just poking through the gums. He was in healthy condition, considering their circumstances. As was Tick. As was Ellowi.

My gaze slid again to my own hexagonal little offspring, who had become upset after sitting alone and come over to chew at my pant leg. Covering his face with my wing, I took the blue-haired nymph I still held by both hands and looked him in his dull green eyes.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "If I had a plan, I'd save you all."

He pressed his wrist against his cheek as I led him back to Kalysta, but he didn't cry. For that I was grateful. It meant I didn't have to hear it. Kalysta scooped him into her arms and rubbed his hair, then returned her attention to me.

"Get as situated as you are able to, drake. When I've finished taking care of Ellowi, I'll see about materials for your bedding."

She left, slotting the wooden door into place. I kept close to it with my back to the drakes, then eased it open when I was sure Kalysta had gone. She hadn't, but still leaned against the opposite cave wall, cradling Ellowi and tickling his stomach.

"I thought you might try that," she said, and used her arm to gesture to the tunnels. "You're welcome to go anywhere you wish, unless I should instruct otherwise. There's no way out. This path to your left leads for a bit, then turns left again into your waste cave. I presume you know what that's for. This path to your right, which I'm sure you remember is the one we followed to get here, will bring you to a crossroads. Straight ahead is the cave Idona will be moved to after weaning. Take the right and you'll find the bathing cave, with its little waterfall."

Maybe I could-

"The water tends to pool around the ankles, but don't be concerned- there's never enough that one could submerge themselves completely and drown."

Well.

"Take the left and you'll enter first into the dining cavern, then there's another doorway beyond that into my work and personal storage area. At the very tip you'll find my own quarters, if you recall. We'll be eating tonight two hours from now. The others will show you around the kitchen that leads off from the dining area. I'm thinking we'll have omelettes."

I leaned my forehead against the wall. "What's this door for?" I finally asked. I thought it was a legitimate question, if it neither kept me in nor her out.

"Too heavy for the nymphs," was her reply. "Please don't let them wander unsupervised. I don't like them getting into my things and making messes, especially in my office where I keep my bark manuscripts. I try to keep a clean burrow." She thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers just once. "There is a locked door I didn't mention that you might get curious about. It's in the back of the kitchen. I request that you stay out of it. It's food storage for the winter, and I ration it carefully. Otherwise, yes. That is the burrow."

"Big place."

"It's really a simple dwelling compared to, say, Gabbi's, but thank you. It suits its purposes and I like it. Are there any other questions? No? Then I leave you." On that note, she did, carrying Ellowi off with her. He glanced over her shoulder for a quarter of an instant before turning his face forward once again. That was all I saw of him.

Though I wanted to take Kalysta up on her offer of exploring, I decided to hold off until I knew she had finished with Ellowi. So rather than leave the nesting cave, I closed the door and turned around. Sandy, the other drakes, and little Idona had wandered off to the opposite corners of the room, but one - the wisp with the powder blue hair - stood just in front of me, kneading the dirt with his toes. He crossed his arms.

"Why did you pick my son?"

"Don't take it as a personal attack," I said, sparing Sandy a glance as he darted over to grab my ankle. "It wasn't as though I had many options, and I really don't know any of you."

Walt turned his face away. "Of course you'd save your own."

I bit my lip. "It isn't like that. You have my apologies. I had to. As long as she's regularly nearby and nursing him, releasing chemicals and hormones and such into the energy field with her imprint and attraction signals, I might manage not to come into estrus again before my cycle wears off; fairy drakes are only receptive for eighteen months every five hundred or so years. With your child dead, you will, and she won't be so interested in me. It'll be months before Sanders' son is weaned. I need that time to plan my escape. Getting out of here is going to be a lot more difficult if I'm pregnant and sick."

Still keeping his arms folded, not even turning around, he said, "We have warm shelter from the snow, more food than we can eat, and all the mating we could want. You can be happy here. Why would you want to leave?"

Mostly at a loss, I stared into the ceiling as I tried in vain to flatten the branding tuft in Sandy's hair. "Because… for almost the last five hundred thousand years, I've scheduled my weeks meticulously, even if the days and times when things actually get done may vary. And without seeing the sun, I can't keep time. If I stay down here for very long where it's always this dim and vague then I'll lose my mind completely."

"Maybe you already have," Walt grunted, and trudged off to his nest.

---

A/N: Text to Life - Kalysta has the wings of the eastern black swallowtail butterfly and Idona has the wings of the purple emperor butterfly (a result of taking her color, purple, from the eyes of her father, as wisp damsels do). About a decade ago, a black swallowtail butterfly ended up in our house and I thought its wings were gorgeous, so I've been waiting for the chance to give them to a character ever since.

Also, real-life black swallowtails can't paralyze anyone with their saliva, but they are territorial and females are larger than males. I only found this out after this chapter was done, but apparently the sex ratio of swallowtail males to females is 4:1, and females find the best mates on top of hills. Excellent. They also can't fly if they're too cold, so I made sure I took up my keyboard and knitted a sweater for my zero-sugarcoating princess here. With pockets, because I'm pretty sure that in a world ruled by women, all sweaters and dresses would have pockets.