A/N - We have reached our first crossover point between Origin of the Pixies and my Anti-Cosmo backstory 'fic, Frayed Knots. This chapter parallels the Frayed Knots chapter, "Ripples."

Again, Origin is its own story and you don't need to read Knots in order to understand it, but if you like the context and bonus scenes, it is there. All crossovers between the two 'fics will be noted like this at either the beginning or end of the parallel chapter.

(Posted November 21, 2016)

Grand Father

Spring of the White Sun

"Sanderson, wake up. Stay awake for me. You're cold and you need to eat lunch since you skipped breakfast, and if that weren't enough motivation, there's something I'd very much like to show you. And, I'm also at the point where if I have to be awake and unhappy, I'm going to indulge my pettiness and force you to suffer with me."

He whined as I pulled him with both arms from my pouch and into the lightly-drifting swirl of snowflakes. I may have lied about him being cold; as it turned out, his skin was blooming with warmth when I shifted his frail body in my arms. Then it got cold. Bracing him against my shoulder, I patted the back of his neck until he rubbed his stiff eyelids.

"Up, up, Sanderson," I said as he yawned. "There we go." He kept his fingers tight in my shirt when I turned him around by the shoulders. "What do you see down there at the bottom of the hill?"

"Oh," he said, softly, his voice warbled by his open mouth. "Bright colors?"

I nodded. When I started walking again, I drew a wrapped half of kitnut butter sandwich out of my marsupium. No jelly- jelly wasn't exactly easy to come by in the middle of winter, even for those who lived in the town bubbles. "That's right. This is the Rainbow Bridge. We're going to walk up it in a minute, after you eat some new snow."

"Will it take a long time?"

"To the top?" I glanced into the sky. "It's two hours to Faeheim on Plane 5 in good weather. But we'll be jumping off early onto Plane 3. I'm not entirely sure what we'll do after that, but we need to get you out of the snow. Your immune system isn't fully functional."

"Huh?"

"Don't say 'Huh'. Say 'What'. Basically, in short, you're very small and we need to keep you warm so that you don't get sick like River did that one time."

"Chicken poofs?"

Did this nymph ever say much of anything that wasn't a question? Dust, it was annoying already.

"Well, yes," I acknowledged, "we wouldn't want you to contract that either. And we especially don't want you getting nip-rot and switching personalities with your counterpart temporarily. I appreciate your obedience and I doubt the Anti-Sanderson would offer me the same respect." Still holding him in my left arm, I bent down and scooped up a sizable swipe of freshly-fallen whiteness with two fingers. This, I held to Sanderson's mouth. "The season turned today, several hours ago while we were sleeping. The Year of the Charged Waters is over and spring has sprung. I want you to taste this. These are snowflakes."

Obediently, he put his mouth around my fingers and licked the flakes off. "What do you think?" I asked.

"'White Sun'," he said dazedly, and looked at me. "Why do snowflakes make me think of white suns?"

"It's not the flakes necessarily, and this trick will only work today. By tasting this fresh snow, you've gotten in touch with Mother Nature on Naming Day. Year of the White Sun must be what she's named the new year. It might be warming up soon." I crunched through a handful of snow myself and nodded. "White Sun it is. Right, then. We have a Bridge to scale. Dust, you're turning blue again. Come on. One more kiss to keep you warm and safe."

He put his open mouth near mine. I blew a thin stream of magic into it and rubbed his hair. "That's right, Sanderson. Stay awake. You need to stay awake for me. We're so close."

He sneezed and bundled closer to my neck, legs curled. When I reached the Bridge, I lowered him to the ground nonetheless. The snow had thawed around the warm base of the rainbow, leaving a circle of brown grass about two wingspans in any given direction. It called to us, tugging us into the rippling gravitational field that surrounded it like the one between my hair and broken crown, promising us that we wouldn't slip if we simply stayed beside it.

I'd veered my path too far south and missed the town of Madigan on our travels. I'd even had the misfortune to miss Bumblegrass. It had been too long since I'd traveled this way, and the storms hadn't helped. The one town I had managed to find, because it was situated less than half a day's journey from the base of the Rainbow Bridge, had been Millshire. They'd refused to grant us permanent residence due to my gyne freckles. Granted, they had spared us some food, and I'd managed to draw upon my lawyer skills and argue my way in for just a single night. We'd spent it with one of my old snapjik friends who had evidently moved there from Kershaw. He still made a mean phoenix on rye.

And then we'd arrived here. It had been at least three decades since the last time I'd paid this area a visit. I might have snuck up a few times to watch a saucerbee game, although my interest in the sport had waned uncharacteristically as I'd grown older. Although my younger self would have rebelled and denied all relations to me simply for stating as much, time and time again I found that I just couldn't invest myself in the lives of the younger players. I missed the old days of trading Celebrity Families cards.

The five stripes in the Fairy Rainbow were a welcome sight. The reassuring Bridge signaled we had probably reached the middle point of our journey, even if I still wasn't quite sure where the final destination lay. My plan had been to worry about that later. First, I would focus on getting us off Earth and out of the snow.

"Time to climb, Sanderson."

"Climb the rainbow? I can't stand on that. I'll slip when I try because it's melting." He shifted nearer my leg at the thought and shivered.

"Melting?" I repeated.

Sanderson raised his right finger, still holding to my hand with his left. "You can see through it like ice. Ice burns and I'll fall. Melting."

I tilted my head. "So it is. But, logic gap: the Bridge isn't made of ice. It's formed from light and magic. Now, let's walk. No hitching rides in the pouch until you've climbed at least part of the way. Go on. I want you to remember the first time you scaled a Bridge. It's really something."

"You said magic can't work on Fairies," he protested, one foot hovering just above the surface of the Bridge. "Will I fall?"

"You won't. I'm right here." I took the first step, and Sanderson followed my lead without another ounce of hesitation. Another. "The Bridge is formed of what we call opaque magic. That means it emits the highest possible frequency on the starpiece magic spectrum and allows us to make physical contact with it and ascend it safely. It's like… if you strike at someone with a magical blast, that's opaque magic, because it will hurt them, even though by definition starpiece magic is incapable of killing or causing lasting injury to a magical being who intakes and filters magic from the universal starpiece magic energy field or anything of equal or superior caliber to it, such as the universal ultraviolet or sodium energy fields of the genies or merfolk, respectively. But a kitchen wand stirring the coffee I sometimes drink in the morning uses transparent magic, because it performs a task - stirring - without introducing new factors into the equation, thereby allowing me to enjoy the taste of my coffee without magic-touching it and draining all its taste and nutrients."

Sanderson grimaced as he stumbled, his chewed-up fingernails nipping my hand. "You sound smart, but that's too many words for someone who is small like me."

"You'll learn more about it in school. In short, you won't fall. So long as you're beside me, I'll be right here to protect you. Keep up with my pace now."

Forty-five minutes spent intermittently walking and flying (on my part- Sanderson hadn't yet learned what his wings were for) rewarded us. I'd allowed him to crawl back into my pouch when the novelty of traveling via rainbow had worn off, but when the Bridge rose above Plane 3, I took a colorful side path and slid a short ways down to its clouds. Now I ruffled his hair and urged him to at least poke his head out.

"We're in Fairy World now, Sanderson. The Lowlands, to be precise. Welcome to your first time in the cloudlands. This is Mistleville. It's not quite Faeheim, the Fairy capital city, but during the busy season it becomes the most populated location on all of Plane 3, and sometimes even all of Fairy World." I peered around the slow-moving fringes of the tourist town as I shook out my wings. "We overshot the cherub migration by about a month- at this time of year, the place will be mostly empty. I'll bring you back another time, perhaps. Yes, I'll stick that on my to-do list somewhere. You'll have to remind me."

Sanderson tugged on my wing as I set him on the cloudstones. "Can I get juice?"

"No. You ate a sandwich, and we have no money. Hmm." As he continued to pull at me and whine, I cut across the town square towards a sheet of threedspiral papyrus hugging a billboard outside the tram station. The papyrus had been dyed an even brighter pink than was natural, which was what first attracted me to it, and I soon deduced that it was a map. A poorly-drawn map if my education with the school system and Cattahan were anything to go off, but it outlined the seven regions of the cloudlands (of course with the focus on the four in Fairy World as opposed to the three that belonged to the Anti-Fairies). I studied it for quite some time, still rubbing my palm against the hairs on my face as Sanderson eventually gave up his attempts to win me over with cù sith eyes and a trembling lower lip, and sat down to sulk.

"We can't take the southbound tram very far into the cherub lands of High North without my baptism medal. And we are not going to the Far East Region." I could think of a dozen reasons why- its skies covered a large portion of the Specific Sea, its clouds were mostly islands that required the crossing of many bridges any time you wanted to get anywhere, and it was just a dangerous area for the flightless Sanderson at the moment. One slip and he could fall down, down until he drowned.

On top of that, there were no golf courses, too many slums, humid weather, lots of brownies who didn't much care for fairies, and I'd prefer to avoid the attentions of the pirates that tended to berth their cloudships around there, thank you kindly. Not even mentioning the thugs and gangs.

"I'm staying away from Lau Rell… And so much area of the Lower West Region is too close to the Divide Gate and Mount Olympus for me to be comfortable raising you, and the climate is horribly dry and doesn't allow for too many clouds… Come to think of it, I don't have a passport anyway, so we're rather stuck here in Central Star. Smoof, I don't know. Should I take you to…"

I had been about to say 'Novakiin' despite my uncertainties when my eyes fell on a different location marked on the map.

Claystrif.

I hadn't been there since that evening Laika and I had strolled past Mother Nature and Father Time's glass shrine, almost three hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Slowing my wingbeats just a tad, I scratched my chin. Could this be my answer? A blessing in disguise? A way to escape responsibility and put things right? Sanderson was my firstborn…

"I know where we can go." I lifted the bottom of my brown shirt. "Sanderson, into my pouch again. And stay still and quiet. I'm more likely to squeeze us out one ticket rather than two."

Sanderson wriggled in, practically folding in on himself as he did so. Honestly, I don't know how he fit; I was large enough as a nymph that Ambrosine booted me from his marsupium before I was even out of pooferty. I tucked in my shirt and smoothed the wrinkles, still trying not to be disgusted. At least with my body type, a bulge around my midsection shouldn't surprise too many passersby. With that, I at last peeled off China's selkie coat, tied it about my waist, and floated into the tram station.

Only one nix was in line, and he scuttled off to hop a green tram. "I have to apologize," I told the brownie damsel behind the front desk as I curled my fingers around the edge of the counter and leaned forward. "I don't have any money with me. I just came from a will o' the wisp's burrow, as you can likely tell from my brown clothes. I really need a ticket for the red route."

She glanced over me up and down. "I'm not allowed to accept IOUs, sir."

"I need help," I tried. "It's one click. That's only fourteen els. Perhaps you could offer me a loan? Surely you have chesberry paper? I'll pay you back- I can promise that. I come from a well-off family, but because of the will o' the wisp…"

"It's tram policy, sir. If I could help you, I would."

"… I have a three-season-old nymph with me here in my pouch."

"I'm sorry." The brownie looked deeply apologetic, but she stood firm. "I can't give these away for free. I'll be fired."

I grimaced and pushed myself away from the desk in a sharp movement. "'Sorry's don't help me."

"We don't get to ride the tram?" Sanderson asked when we were outside again, resting his chin on the lip of my marsupium.

"Oh, we're riding it." I tore a random advert for an event that had already passed down from the billboard and crunched it into a ball. "I'm not dressed warmly enough for long travel by wing, meals usually come with a tram ride and I gave all my food to you and am now very hungry, I've been on the move for days on end without a rest and have been looking forward to kicking up my feet for awhile now, when you're older like I am then flying for long periods becomes difficult and I'm not willing to risk plunging from the cloudlands back to Earth or - Nuada forbid, the ocean - and frankly, now I'm annoyed. Who runs this system? We need help, and I promised to pay back a loan if I took one out. I know I would. I'm an honest fairy, so she should make an exception for us. She should be able to afford sparing a single click. I don't see why things have to be this way. If I were in charge, I'd ensure taking out loans were options for just about everything."

"Why can't she poof us?"

I scratched his dirty hair as I leaned against the wall of the tram station, examining each tourist shop and high-end restaurant around us with narrow eyes. "Because it's very expensive, more so than if we poofed ourselves with wands registered to our DNA, and Claystrif is far away and it will make her feel dizzy and sick to send us there from here."

"Oh… And if we used her wand ourselves-"

"-our imprints will be registered and we'll have to split the cost with her, and it's still expensive."

"Why can't we poof for free?"

"Because if the government set up cheap public poofing stations, taxes would spike so ridiculously that most of the population would give up on working altogether."

"I don't know anything you said, so I'm not going to ask questions to you again. You know things, so I will just listen."

"No. There's something I want to say to you." Lifting him from the pouch yet again, I put Sanderson down on top of an upturned wooden crate painted pink and crouched until our eyes were level. "I'm about to do something that some people would not be happy about if they found out I'd done it. They might tell you it's bad, but it's not, because you and I are good people who usually follow the rules, and this is an emergency. Do you follow me so far?"

"I follow you everywhere."

A thin smile crossed my face at his innocence, but I let it fade into seriousness again. My fingers tightened against my knees. "I meant, do you understand what I said, Sanderson? I'd appreciate a response if you do."

"Yes."

"Good. Now, listen to me. Stealing is okay in emergencies. It's not illegal if you don't get caught."

He squinted. "I know some of those words, but they're weird all together. What do they mean?"

"It means that you should always try to follow the rules to get things first because no one will be mad or try to stop you, and rules help a good system work better. But if the rules won't let you get what you want, then it's okay to break the rules as long as you're not hurting anyone and no one finds out."

"It's okay if no one gets hurt?"

I nodded. "If no one gets hurt, then it's only bad if you get caught. If the rule is important, then people will be watching you, and they'll catch you in the act. If they don't, it's their fault, not yours. Now." I pointed across the street to a shop selling tourist goods. There were no customers inside, and no passersby roaming the streets that I could see from here. Only one lone kobold behind the counter, spinning his yellow top hat around on one finger. "Do you see those small trinkets on the front table in there?"

"Yes."

"They're made of dalia wood. I know that, because I've been here before. A little bit of dalia wood is present in all lagelyn bills and coins, preventing them from being duplicated, but not from being teleported unless they're in a special type of lockbox, or a bank, or safe."

"Yes."

"We're in the first town found straight off the Rainbow Bridge. That means there's guaranteed to be a currency-exchange system somewhere around here. I think we even passed one. If I have those dalia trinkets, I think I can cheat the system to give us money."

"Yes."

"Now, this is what I want you to do." I moved my hands from my knees to his to be sure he hadn't yet gotten bored of my voice. Of course he hadn't- this was Sanderson, for crying out loud. He stared at me in rapture as I continued with, "We're both going to go inside the store. I want you to take one of the trinkets from the table, as quietly and sneakily as you would take things from Kalysta's room. Don't let that drake in there see you have it. Hold it in your left hand, and stay a wingspan behind me the entire time. When you hear loud noises, I want you to fall down on the ground."

He scrunched his nose. "Fall down?"

"Fall down and start to scream. You're a nymph. Pretend to be scared."

"Will it hurt?"

"No. You'll be fine. But there will be noises and lights. Do you think you can do that?"

Sanderson held up four fingers. "Follow you. Take trinkets. Left hand. Fall down when there are noises. Scream a lot."

"And why is it okay for us to steal?"

"Um… because no one gets hurt, and we won't get caught?"

"That's right." I patted his head and stood again. "Come on."

The plan worked exactly as well as I'd wanted it to. We entered the tourist shop, and in passing and without the slightest pause (and without glancing sideways or giving off any tells at all, he would later brag), Sanderson slipped one of the cherub archer figures into his left hand and continued to follow me among the tables and glass cases and rocking chairs and shelves. I struck up conversation with the kobold behind the counter as I made like I was browsing, and eventually pretended that the perfect anniversary gift I'd been seeking for my damefriend wasn't to be found. I stepped from the shop, with Sanderson stepping after me, a deliberate wingspan behind.

The alarms exploded. I spun around, feigning shock, while Sanderson's face flipped into pure terror that I don't think was entirely faked. He dropped to the ground, howling and covering his ears. I rushed to him and crouched down, pleading for him to be okay, and when I did, I slipped the dalia figurine from his palm to mine. Then it went into the slight pocket created by the sleeves of the selkie coat tied around my waist as the kobold shooed me away.

"Let me see your hands," he ordered as the alarms faded out. Sanderson extended his arms, the hands turned up and empty. After receiving my permission, he slipped his fingers into Sanderson's small marsupium and felt around. There was hardly enough room for the pouch to reach his knuckles, and reluctantly he drew back.

"Young drake, did you take anything from my shop?"

Weeks of training in Kalysta's burrow had taught him to speak calmly, clearly, and deny it. I'd watched him sneak a lot of toys back to our nest when the other nymphs took naps or paid a visit to the waste cave, entertaining himself with his stolen goods only when he knew they weren't watching. He'd pull an innocent shrug and squeak a "Poof poof?" if they confronted him about the toys' disappearance.

Then he'd help them go on a scavenger hunt and sometimes even suggest where to look and beeline towards the hiding place without thinking. Whenever he and the other nymphs did find the stolen cloudship or unicorn figure or alphabet block under a dirty shirt or wherever he'd stuffed them, he'd act shocked like he'd forgotten it was there. Then he'd honestly get upset towards the toy, and scold it as though it had gone against his orders to hide and had revealed itself in front of the other nymphs to spite him, even when he'd been the one to walk over and flip over the blanket. I thought it was hilarious. He still does this if I catch him sneaking cap erasers, post-it notes, or bars of soap from the world beyond his own office, and I still think it's hilarious. That's drones for you.

Fortunately, Sanderson didn't squeal on himself today. "Hmm…" The kobold glanced at me, perhaps considering searching me next. I maintained my cool, still apologizing on behalf of Sanderson's error, if there had been any. Fortunately, I had taken care to leave the place while he'd been watching, and far in front of Sanderson. The alarms hadn't gone off for me. The kobold looked up at the roof of his shop. "I suppose he's clean. The silly thing's gone cuckoo. You can both go."

We went. Around the corner from the shop, I reached down and ruffled Sanderson's hair. "Good boy."

When we found the currency-exchange machine back by the Bridge, I studied the design of the el, click, and lyn coins printed on its sides. Then, very carefully, I used my teeth to whittle the closest duplicate of a lyn coin I could manage. It was the right shape, the right size, seemed to have the right pattern of grooves and rises on its surface, and the machine registered dalia and didn't think twice, because that's how they used to make them, before I fixed it when I had the power. I pressed the metal keys and was rewarded with the clinking of three click coins in the deposit slot.

"Fourteen els make a click. Three clicks make a lyn. Twenty lyn make a lagelyn bill." I turned one of the coins between my fingers. "We're not affluent yet, but one of these will buy us passage on the tram."

That was how we secured a ride to Patio World and a warm dinner later that evening. The small tram car lurched into the air, swinging gently from its cable and the air currents. I stretched out on one of the two benches (fabric now- they'd been wood in my youth) and Sanderson, giddy from the thrill of earning free money and experiencing travel in a way he'd never tried before, instantly fell asleep across my stomach.

I couldn't join him in his blissful dreamworld. I had to work out exactly what I would say to Mother Nature and Father Time. In exchange for my firstborn, undo it all. Take away the will o' the wisp burrow. Take away those cold last few days I've traveled. Take away the blisters on my feet. Take away my hypothermia. Take away the months of sickness and the aversion to coffee's smell. Give me back my hole in the hill, when life was simple, and I was happy. Take away the nymph so he was never born, so I don't have to feel guilty for choosing not to raise him. Turn back time and make it so it never happened, and make sure it never will.

I just had to be careful. I could only summon them once.

Against all odds, we'd ended up with an anti-fairy for a passenger. I'd had contact with quite a few Anti-Fairies over the years - there had been a time once when they'd raided a massive will o' the wisp burrow system in present-day Tennessee - and although I didn't trust him enough to let my guard down when I had Sanderson, I decided not to call attention to the fact that I'd noticed his species.

Truth be told, he did a fair job disguising himself anyway. His claws had been concealed with black gloves. A hood hid his furry blue face. His pointed ears were carefully tucked away beneath an enormous knitted cap. With his leathery wings hidden under his dark red coat, his most notable feature were two small, round, glassy structures held in place with the muscles around his eyes, but I don't think he even looked at me once. He kept his front facing away from me, gazing only out the window. But there was no denying the anti-fairy tang in the energy field. It clashed with my attraction signal pulses and filled the whole car in a blur of cinnamon and brass. Leather and strawberry ice cream. Eggs and onions. I'd heard that Anti-Fairies can't taste energy field signals, but they hear them instead. I wondered what he picked up in my vocal signature when I woke Sanderson up and told him to taste our delivered lidérc dinner.

It was six long hours and two time zones to Claystrif, even though the coasting tram was certainly faster than flying would have been. Sanderson and I bid the anti-fairy and a púca who had jumped on at the ninth stop our farewells and disembarked.

"Hey," Sanderson said as we left the station. He took five steps towards an intricately-carved archway, then turned back to me with a grin. "That bent tree over there has big holes in it. I could fit through them."

I avoided his eyes. "Yes, you probably could. That's not why we're here, though. Let's go find the shrine."

"Wait. I want to climb in the holes first."

"Sanderson, don't…"

He went anyway, squeezing his undersized body through narrow gaps in the carved arch that I would never have been able to fit myself through at his age. I watched with my hands in my pockets, fingering our remaining two click coins.

It took several minutes to urge him away from his game, but I managed it at last by threatening to leave without him, and then going to do so. He scampered up to me, cheery as a fat valravn. As I tried to float in a straight line towards the outskirts of town, he darted away and back and away again, examining carvings of animals or Fairykind or landscapes and proclaiming that they weren't half as good as the ones he'd seen me do with my teeth in Kalysta's burrow. I didn't hear most of what he said.

"Hey," Sanderson said again when we reached the door to the glass-walled shrine. "This is like that place in my nursery song."

"It's based on a true story." I pushed my way through the first of the two rooms, making eye-contact with the fairy refract behind the high desk and ignoring Sanderson's fascination with a decorative tree blown from glass. "Pardon. I'd like to get a ceremonial knife."

She squinted at my face. "It's not too late to change your mind, you know."

"I don't want to change my mind."

"Hmm…" Her fingers, tipped with black bird talons longer and more sharply curved than those of the Anti-Fairies, trailed over to a drawer. "You're ready to go through with this?"

"I came, didn't I?"

She presented me with the long white knife and waved me through. I clasped the handle with both hands and steadied my wings.

"Come on, Sanderson. We're going into the next room."

He couldn't miss the knife. His eyes went straight for it. They moved from it to my face and back again. He stopped playing with the glass tree and became quiet, following me through the doorway. His sharply-angled feet that had long stopped bracing all weight on their toes in that silly, childish way slapped like ocean waves.

"There's nothing in this room," he said when we'd gone in, keeping his fingertips lightly pressed against the wall. Beyond it, the dim, purple-tinted sunlight of the cloudlands streamed through the glass, casting only two shadows on the tiles. Most of them were white. Others had been stained various colors of the rainbow.

"It's a prayer room."

"And that's a prayer knife?"

"Don't be ridiculous. There's no such thing as a prayer knife. Tell me, what are knives used for?"

"… Making sandwiches?"

"That's right. Now, come over here."

He didn't move. I snapped my fingers twice and then he did, placing himself in front of me. Back straight. Hands by his sides. His eyes flicked to the empty, cloudy hills beyond the shrine. "There's no bread in here," he said after a moment of watching the stars twinkle high above. "No kitnut butter either."

"None of that. I won't turn you into a sandwich, if that's what you're worried about." Instead, I put my hand on his shoulder, which made him twist around. "That song that Kalysta taught you. The prayer for the shrine. You can sing it, can't you? I thought I heard you once while we were making our way towards the Bridge."

"I can sing it…"

"Please do."

Sanderson turned his undefended back to me again. I wouldn't have done the same thing in his position, but he was a drone, and maybe he didn't know. As uncertain about the situation as he seemed to be, maybe he didn't know. He raised his right hand to his forehead and kept his eyes towards the hills. When he spoke the first few words, his voice cracked.

"Dayfry, Saturn, Sunnie, Munn. Twis, Winni, Thurmondo. Seven sons for seven days. Elements to guide our ways. Love and Fire, Water, Sky. Soil, Breath, and Leaves that fly."

I stared down at him, bewildered, as a light, impossible breeze began to pick up like a swirling seashell in the center of the room. Why didn't he turn around? His magical senses couldn't have completely developed. He couldn't read my movements behind his back. Why wasn't he watching me with his eyes? He knew I had the knife.

"Balance for to heal us. Energy may lift us. Focus now will guide us… Acceptance comes to teach us. Devotion knows to push us… Commun'cation there to aid us. Cur'osity then will test us…! Balance for to heal and start it all again. Love and Fire, Water, Sky. Soil, Breath, and Leaves that die."

As the warm wind picked up, Sanderson's chanting grew to an end, and he left the stiff pattern behind in favor of the slow and lilting curls of the nursery song.

"Okay. Then you go… There's a shrine between the hills… said to shelter lost ones still. Where the walls are made of glass, just one request you may ask."

He sang purely, vaguely high-pitched, with the winds buffeting his dark hair down in front of his eyes and out from behind his ears. His brown, short-sleeved wisp clothes fluttered around him. His cowlick dipped. He pushed it up. It seemed we had the attention of the two nature spirits.

Sanderson hesitated.

"Don't stop," I ordered, lifting the knife behind his back. It was a long knife, with a smooth ceramic blade that curved upwards at its tip.

Raising the haunting softness of his voice, he continued, "In the season's fading light, answer swiftly, hear my plight. Lowered soft on bended knee, bound by fate to comfort me. Mother Breath and Father Time, won't you accept this prayer of mine? Blood and bone, lines and soul. If I've found favor, let me know."

"Do you remember how to sing the next part?" I whispered as the wind shifted, becoming simultaneously electric hot and earthly cold. In response, he went on.

"Sanderson is how I'm called, whose middle name is yet unknown. Sire Whims'finado born, lost dam's magic through me flows. Ah'ne ah'ne ah'ka, ah'ne ah'ne ah'ka."

I could see the faint reflection of his face in the glass, frowning, his eyes angled towards the floor and sliding back and forth. Calculating. He started to turn, brows bushed, the question on his lips.

"Keep forward."

"But-"

My grip tightened on the knife. "Keep. Singing."

"Oh. Oh. Okay." He swallowed. When he recentered himself before the window, he tilted back his head. "I am Water-born and focused; let Sunday heed my cry. I'm proud to serve mine heritage e'en if it means I die. Kalra kalra keiko, kalra kalra keiko."

While he droned on, I held the knife to his wings and positioned the blade just above the jugal fold on the left. Square, brown-tinted wings that had no flight casings. Not anymore. They dangled from his back, the membranes pure and pale lilac, bordered with a tiny stripe of orange down the costa of every one.

"Fergus Whims'finado brought me here, who bore me in the spring. Grant his wish and take my soul; I give myself to he."

… I didn't understand. The nursery rhymes, the history books, my classes at school- They'd all taught me that dozens of Fairies each decade surrendered their firstborn in return for an audience with Mother Nature and Father Time. One opportunity. One chance to request interference with your life if you were unhappy with how things had been, or were, or could be.

So why couldn't I make the motions? Slice his wings from his skin, sweep upwards for the neck, catch him from the back and keep the knife swinging forward and up, spill his blood across the floor?

A thousand others had done it. A thousand more were to come. Did I merely refuse because it wasn't fair to Sanderson? Was that all? Or deep down, perhaps… Was I an urvogel at my very core?

"Um." Sanderson was still standing there with his nose hardly a wing's breadth from the windows, his left arm outstretched to one side. His right palm lay curved against his forehead. "That's the end of the song."

No. I was no urvogel. But with a twitch of my lips and a squirm of my wings, I lowered the knife anyway. The warm and the cool winds faded swirl by swirl until they had retracted into nothingness. "Sanderson," I said, very calmly. "Get back to the pouch."

"I'm looking at the orange flowers out there. I didn't know there were orange flowers in life."

"Now. We're leaving. Consider this a portion of the next stanza of your story."

"Changed your mind after all?" the fairy refract asked as I returned the unstained knife to her desk.

"Yes, thank you," I said, not even sparing her a glance. With one hand against my eye, the fingertips of the other resting lightly on the nymph in my pouch, I floated through the door. Dust, I was such a coward back in my youth.

I paid another click coin and we hopped back on the tram. New plan. This time we went up a tram-Bridge and into Faeheim, and I finally had the chance to sleep, one arm braced between my head and the wall. It was a long, slow journey, but thankfully we had at least a bit of food to hold us over. The majority of our journey was had across Plane 4 for the aesthetic of barren wastelands morphing suddenly into Cherish Jungle. Our tram swayed from the underside of the Plane 5 cloudlevel. Sanderson watched through the windows for most of it, I think, pointing at random birds and dragons and Anti-Fairy farmlands and telling nonsense stories, most of which began with, "One time in the water there lived the number five". Five is, apparently, the god of the numbers, and is why we so often count in increments of five despite having only four fingers on each hand and slapping high-fours. Who could have guessed?

Then it was up a tram-Bridge again, breaking through the cloudline. As Faeheim eased into view on the horizon, and with it the famous yellow, pink, and blue Fairy World signboard sparkling with stardust that was replenished on a daily basis, I pushed myself up into a sitting position very slowly.

"Sanderson, we need to talk." He left the window and turned his attention on me. I took up his small hands in mine. His fingers wrapped around my thumbs, but not completely- my nails poked out. Rough, dirty, bitten nails, exactly like his. I studied them for several wingbeats as I drew my thoughts together, and then met his eyes. "What I'm about to do is very hard for me, because it goes against my own long-standing morals."

"Are we going to rob another store?"

I smiled thinly. "No… No. Sanderson, listen. I need you to know that what I'm going to do isn't your fault."

The tram hit a bump in the cable and swayed. The lights flickered, playing shadows across his face. "Oh," he said, because he wasn't one to leave my words unanswered.

"I always wanted a family, or at least I used to think I did, but that was when I expected I would have a wife, and money, and a home, and a job. But I don't have any of those things, and I doubt I will soon. I'm afraid that I won't be able to give you food, or keep you warm, and you will always be sad."

"You give me food," he said in surprise. "And it costs one coin to ride the tram. We can eat here every day."

"Trust me, an anti-fairy did that once and it didn't work out. The same thing happened to me too- I came back from a weekend spent partying in Serentip and they threw me out because my friends and I abused the system. The trams read magical imprints of the passengers, which is how they disable loose magic in them, as you might remember me telling you when we first got on. We could ride them places, but if you've ridden too many times in a row, the system will know and we won't be served food. It's the one thing that actually is organized in our society. That's Cloudjump v. Anti-Shale."

"I don't get it," Sanderson said softly. "Why are you talking?"

I traced my thumb over the larger of his two cowlicks as our tram car ascended into the station. Unusually quickly, I remember thinking, since I'd never really ridden a tram to Faeheim on a Thursday, when everyone had the day off and rush hour was nonexistent. And especially with it getting so late. But then again, it was an unusual moment of an unusual day.

"We're going to go into the social services building, and I won't see you anymore. I'm going to give you up to the nice people, so they can help you live with a good family."

He squinted. "But I already do."

What a messed-up nymph. I took him by the chin and tilted up his face. "No, you don't. Kalysta's gone now. You won't see her again."

"I have you, though," he argued, reaching up to peel my fingers away. "You're my favorite, so I'm glad you took me when you left."

"Oh. That's irrelevant. I can't keep you safe or happy, and you really should have figured that out for yourself by now. You need to go to live with someone who can feed you, give you good clothes, and wash your napcloths."

"I don't need napcloths anymore."

"Hm. You might, if you get stressed from the separation." Taking Sanderson onto my knee, I finished in my level voice, "Do you have questions?"

Sanderson took the front of my brown shirt in his fist. "What about you?"

"Me? Oh, don't concern yourself with me. I'm not worth anyone's care. Sassy saltlick of a brat, did poorly all throughout school, ran away from home, dropped out of the Academy, lost nearly every friend I ever made, regularly commits tax fraud, not half as pretty as anybody else, overweight, morally gray. We should be talking about you."

"But what will you eat? Where will you go? Now I'll always worry."

"I'll manage." Our tram door peeled itself open then and unfurled its stairs to the ground. "No," I said when he reached his hand towards my pouch. "Not anymore. You don't live with me any longer. If we should ever pass on the street after today, I expect you to act as though we've never met."

Outside, I rose to my wings as quickly as I could. Sanderson, flightless and no longer prompted by my words to participate in the conversation, remained silent but attentive below my bobbing feet as I scouted the city. After nearly half an hour, I pinpointed what I was looking for.

"Our building," I told him, lowering myself to the cloudstones. "One push of the door, a few quick personality and health tests, and that's the end of our story."

"They let you do this in one day?"

"Usually within an hour or two." I lay my hand on the bar handle of the door. "But if there were a court case, it would take up an entire morning. Anyway, I'll finish the tabletwork, and when I have, the kind drakes and damsels here will keep you clean and fed until they find a real family to slot you in. Then, you'll be happy and safe."

With a single sniff, Sanderson took hold of my worn hand and lay it against his cheek. "I'm glad you took me with you when we left the glass shrine. I'll miss you."

I clucked my tongue once and stroked his cowlicks with the other hand. "I'll miss you too, Sanderson. It's certainly been interesting. But it's better for both of us this way. Let's go."

One of the brownies behind the desk turned her attention to me immediately, setting her stylus down on her bark strips. Her gaze went from mine to Sanderson to me to one of her coworkers, who sat with his back to us as he jabbered into a scrying bowl. Her fingers tightened against the counter.

"I've come to relinquish my care for the drone nymph I have with me," I said, leaning against it too. I kept one eye on Sanderson as I spoke. He kept both eyes on the floor, his arms around his stomach.

"Sir, are you sure about your decision to come here?"

"I know exactly what I'm doing, I assure you."

I was hesitantly presented with a stack of tabletwork. Sanderson surprised me with how many letters of the Snobbish alphabet he knew, even pronouncing several of the words I wrote aloud as he leaned against my shoulder. I'd seen a lot of anxious parents pass through the doors of Wish Fixers, and I'd never known any nymph to learn to read as early as he seemed to, although Ambrosine used to speculate that I myself would have started earlier if he hadn't been swept off to war. It must have been Kalysta. She'd read to Sanderson frequently, pointing out the shape of hundreds of words. Yes, that was it.

"It's done," I said as I filled the last blank. After I'd returned the tablets to the brownie, I lowered myself to Sanderson's level one more time. "Good luck, speck. I know you'd rather have stayed with me, but that's too bad. I know what's best. Things will make sense when you're older. I know you'll do dazzlingly in your new circumstances. Everything will be okay. I'm doing this because you're important to me, and I want you to be happy. That's why I do a lot of things. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," he said, dully. "Sounds dazzled."

"Much of the time, bad things happen in life. But good things happen too." I rubbed my knuckles into his hair and bobbed to my feet. "I don't believe in nepotism, but look the Whimsifinado family up if you decide to go into mind and magic therapy one day. It would be a pleasure to work with you."

He turned his back, arms by his sides. I suppose it was easier that way.

I fingered my one remaining click coin as I left the social services building, rolling it over my knuckles. Pocketing it in China's coat, I glanced around at the surrounding buildings. With it being Thursday, the streets were mostly deserted. A wooden sign for the Swan Feather Postal Service rattled above one door. I drifted in and requested my box to be forwarded from Great Sidhe to here. It arrived five minutes later in a poof of blue. Still fanning the stinging smoke away from my eyes, I thanked the swanee behind the counter, took the heavy stack of bark strips therein, and moved outside where the light was better. Then I sat at a floating wireframe table and began.

I was a drake, so of course the first thing that caught my attention was the small package wrapped in shiny cloth, rather than the dozens of assorted letters. As I'd anticipated, it was from Plane 19. The Dame Fergus. Like a lot of Fairies, we were on-and-off "stylus siblings" and sent one another Krisday gifts most winters. Mine tended to be soaps and sweets imported from Anti-Fairy World and that she as a Refract had limited access to, and hers were usually homely and handspun objects embedded with passive-aggressive pleas for me to give her children. I rested my fingers on one corner of the box. She had the Dame Sanderson now. I'd have to write her a letter to inform them of her name.

When I opened the box, thankfully, I was not greeted with any molded food. I did, however, get a pair of thick farming gloves that I'd mentioned I'd wanted some time ago when I'd thought about chopping down another tree.

There was even something in the box for Sanderson. Dame Fergus had knitted him a deep purple and pale gray scarf with black and white tassels dangling from either end. Hmm.

I skimmed through the rest of her letters: I have a chick now! A pyramid and feathery and just as bizarrely-colored as myself. It certainly took you long enough to find a lucky damsel, but I'm happy for you. Fatherhood will be the most fulfilling time of your life, although it is a shame the child is left to grow up in such a sinful world. I seem to be lacking a name, however. It would be most helpful if you would give me one soon.

Next, Also, could your perchance offer clarification on her father? My memory seems to have gone blank.

Then, I was approached by a refract-wisp. I know what this means, and I'm so dreadfully sorry. Are you all right? Where are you?

I know you're not getting these, but I have to rant because you've gotten me inappropriately involved with a lunatic. Help me.

So many awful puppet shows.

I destroyed all his puppets. The chick and I are now on the run back to my tribe's farmlands. Of course, unless you leave your wisp, it's only a matter of time before he comes back. I'll take advantage of what time I have.

He got a new unicorn puppet.

Et cetera, et cetera.

I traced my finger again over the last click coin in my possession. I couldn't afford to send any response. Not if I still wanted to ride that tram. Another time, perhaps.

Then I took up the scarf, and sighed. After tucking all the bark strips away in my pouch, I slung the scarf around my neck and started back for the social services building. I was hardly three flaps from it when someone grabbed my elbow, and someone else grabbed my other shoulder.

"Fall to your knees. Hands flat to the vapor. You're under arrest."

Don't panic, I told myself. Perhaps they were here because I'd cheated the currency-exchange box in Mistleville. Keep your cool. Find any patterns. Focus on details.

The pair of sylph drakes were Keeper officers by their light blue and white uniforms, here to enforce Da Rules on behalf of Cadence von Strangle. Still, I wrinkled my brow. Lowering myself slowly to the cloudstones, I asked, "May I hear why?"

One of the Keepers thrust his wand in my face. "You had a fairy baby."

So, that was not the answer I'd expected to get at all. I squinted upwards at the sylph. The chesberry wand shook in his grip. He was young. The brim of his tall pointed hat tipped a bit in front of his eyes. Maybe twenty lines old. Possibly his first day in the field. Good to know.

The second drake was much older- older than I was. Their angled faces and lavender hair bore such a resemblance to one another that they must have been related. Also good to know.

"You don't like nymphs?" I asked.

"We received word that someone had arrived here with a fairy baby," the older sylph said calmly. He too had his wand tilted down at my nose. "Worse yet, that the nymph has the indirect muscular structure in his wings. You match the description we were given. You know the rules. We were sent to untie his lines and take you in for tube plugging."

… Hmm.

"I chose to spare his life rather than sacrifice him in the Claystrif shrine, entirely forgoing godly intervention in my life might I add, and you're here to kill him anyway."

"He's a fairy crossbreed," sputtered the younger drake, lip trembling. The energy field took on a spicy taint. "We have to. The Mutation scare-"

"Confound your crown, Brad!" The older drake turned his head. "You're turning green. We went over this. Show no reluctance, or your magic will will be utterly usele-"

I flipped his arm upward with my right hand, snapping my left around at the same time. As I lunged forward to grab his wand by the transmitting tip, I jabbed my elbow into his chest and shoved him towards the edge of the cloud. Gravity tugged at his shoes. Before he could react more than spinning his arms and wings, I twirled the wand through my fingers, aimed, and turned him into a boring rock. He was a very nice dull and gray rock - dull and gray was a specialty of mine - except gravity really did take over full-force then, and he plunged over the lip of the cloud to the planes below.

A bright green beam blasted me from the left. A searing welt rose on my arm. The younger sylph.

"No more moving! I'll shoot!"

I glanced back to find the Keeper-in-training whirring his appropriately-named amberwing wings, the red pterostigmata flashing. He had both hands around the shaft of his wand. When I turned, he fired another emerald beam at my chest. It stung, but I'd taken harder hits in gyne fights. Injuries caused by green magic would heal within a few hours. Sighing, I reached over and closed my large hand around his throat. The young drake dropped his wand at once, hands flying to his windpipe. I formed a magic rope and used it to tie him to a nearby post, painfully aware all the while that I was defaulting on the automatic magic payments and tapping into my own life force stores as I did.

Sanderson was sitting in the soft chair of the social services building exactly as I had left him, gazing at his feet and making ineffective repetitive motions with the top of a colorful puzzle pyramid. The brownie damsel knelt on the floor beside him, speaking softly. About to kiss him with a heavy dose of inrita, possibly, but she broke off and turned her head when I pushed through the door. Rising quickly to her wings, she said, "I hoped you'd be back."

"Something came up." I shoved her away. "I'd like to rescind my paperwork."

"I can't help you."

"Can I talk to someone else?" I snapped, snatching Sanderson out of his chair and positioning him on my hip. He leaned his face away from mine, the tip of his left wing in his mouth and the color pyramid still clenched in his hand.

The brownie locked eyes with me. "You don't understand. I 'can't'" - air quotes - "help you. You should leave. I never saw you, and you never came. I won't tell my coworkers who scryed the Keepers any of this. They're all in the back on break. Now is your chance."

"Oh… Is it that easy?"

"No one ever looks at the records anyway. Easy to pretend they got misplaced, easy to forge. The system is chaotic." She walked her fingers across her other palm. "I might take the tabletwork with you so no one can prove it was here. Skedaddle now, and no one will ever know."

Her words bothered me, and I had to give her a disgruntled stare for a moment, but Sanderson's safety was my first priority. I pried the puzzle pyramid from his fingers, took the tablets as she'd suggested, and swept through the door with him.

"That guy is tied up," Sanderson said, turning around in my arms as I floated past the squirming sylph in his bonds.

"It's a grown-up thing," I replied. "You'll understand when you're older. Now, don't stare. That's impolite."

He turned his focus on me instead, slipping his pinky nail into his mouth. "You're here with me again."

"Yes. If I hadn't come back for you, bad people were going to take you away and hurt you."

His wings let out a startled chirp. "Bad like Kaly's stories?"

I wasn't sure if he was referring to her love of sarcastic arrogant protagonists with questionable morals or to her writing style in general, but I affirmed it. Sanderson became very still for a moment. Then a single great twitch rippled through his scrawny body, and that was all. He moved on.

"No more social services," I said, sighing through my teeth. I set him down on a bench and pulled Dame Fergus's scarf from around my neck. As I tied it loosely around his instead, I squinted upwards into the eternally-purple sky with all its stars. Ancient warriors, defending Earth and the rest of the cosmos. Faintly, I could just make out a dark smudgy cloud indicating Plane 6 overhead. "Sanderson, I have a big surprise for you."

"Big?"

"Not the word I was expecting you to focus on, but we'll ignore that." I turned him around so his sharp lavender eyes uncrossed and settled in on mine. "I don't trust anyone else to raise you anymore, so I'm keeping you for myself."

He stroked the fuzzy scarf with his palm. "Um. Yeah, duh."

"No, not 'duh'," I argued back, bewildered. How could he possibly act like he'd suspected as much all along? Hadn't he been there just as often as I had, every time I'd tried to kill him? I gave him a very light shake. "This is big, understand? A big surprise. You're mine now, and you belong to me."

"Yes."

"Good. I'm glad we got that cleared up. Dust…" As we moved through the city, I traced my fingers through my hair. There were a dozen things I needed to do. Sanderson needed food and water, vaccinations, a training wand, shoes, warmer clothes that actually fit his thin body…

Triaging it, I decided that leaving Faeheim was my best option here. I'd broken the sylph's wand so he couldn't use the LCD function to call for back-up once I left. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep it for myself since it wasn't registered in my name; especially with him being a Keeper, it more likely than not would track my location and magic activities.

As I hovered in the tram station, I rolled my last click between my thumb and middle finger. Somewhere I might could go unnoticed. Somewhere I could obtain a wand. Somewhere I could find someone willing to help me raise a nymph. Someone who would truly, honestly care about me despite the flaws I had then in my younger centuries.

Ugh.

A/N: I recorded myself singing the "Sacrifice at the Shrine" song, and if you're really interested you can find it on my FountainPenguin Tumblr, tagged somewhere under "Riddle used Round".

Text to Life - I… I did not find out until I was almost finished with this chapter that trying to give your child up for adoption because you honestly believe you lack the ability to care for them and truly want them to have a better life is technically considered child abuse through neglect and you could possibly be arrested for it. The more you know! Although neglect is not the reason H.P. here was threatened with arrest.

Note: Although I said this, please do not abuse, abandon, or kill your children as an alternative to putting them up for adoption. There are ways to do it that won't result in being arrested. Probably. And please don't steal or try to counterfeit money either. And although various forms of abuse will come up in this story, abuse is not a good or romantic thing and the author does not condone it

Let's go with the idea that Fairies are immortal, there are a lot fewer of them in existence, and Fairykind children develop at a much faster rate than human ones, so social workers will bend an ear and help a parent work things out (especially when fairies can't have babies by this point and many would love to adopt).

I mean, come on- Fairies work with godchildren who have miserable lives. The last thing they want to do is leave a child in a bad situation.