A/N - This chapter parallels the Frayed Knots chapter "Cocoa Fever"

(Posted December 16, 2016)

Spoonful of Sugar

Autumn of the Splitting Salt Canyons - Summer of the Jagged Lightning

Lowering myself to the floor specifically so I could tap my worn slipper against the dark stones of the keeping room, straightening my floating mint green nightcap, I cleared my throat. "Mister Sanderson, you have been charged with possession of unreasonable irritability, the robbery of plastic keys from the bottoms of cereal boxes, and the murder of half a dozen well-meaning potted plants. How do you plead?"

The tablecloth had gone to white streamers. Overturned cereal boxes, the cardboard torn in massive chunks, were scattered across the floor among dozens of crushed grain pieces. Potted plants lay uprooted and crumpled, deprived of Earth-imported soil. The tablets I'd been working over late last night had been splintered, along with several of my styluses. Sanderson stayed where he was, flat on his stomach behind the cereal boxes on the highest cupboard shelf, his wings fluttering at his back. He stuck his small tongue out at me.

"Not guilty, fartbag. You can't prove anything. It was Snobulacs. They were working for Cupid. He has my yoo-doo doll. He made me. He probably made you old and dumb and slow too."

I lifted my eyebrows, three assorted sarcastic snips balanced on the tip of my tongue, but Ambrosine leaned over the arm of his chair and tapped my elbow using the tip of his ipewood staff without even looking up from his novel, and I managed to keep my voice even and quiet.

"No more composing concertos for a month, young drake." Or struggling to compose them, anyway- Sanderson wasn't entirely the creative type, and the inspiration for his pieces erred on the side of 'Let me clang my spoon against the table four hundred times until I decide whether this note is an F-sharp or an F-flat or F-natural or multiple notes combined'.

Sanderson bared his teeth in a snarl, and then went through with it. He repositioned himself behind the last of his boxes. "I don't care, you big fat hippie wannabe. You're as old as the Rhymepyrian musical staff. You're not the boss of me without my say-so."

"Do you dare ask what I do with Terrible Two-ers?"

"Threaten me all you like! I scoff at your empty accusations! You wouldn't dare strike me, and you're an urvogel! I am a free and independent soul! I yearn to soar!" So saying, he launched himself from the cupboards and buzzed his wings. He'd taken naturally to flying, even with the late arrival of his wand and his unusual wing structure. We'd found it was easier for him to spin them than it was to mimic the sweeps of Ambrosine's and Emery's. He lighted himself on the counter beside the back door and reached out, clawing at the locked knob.

"I tear off their wings and I cut off their hands, scrambling the connection of the only part of their body that can channel magic," I finished calmly.

Instantly, his personality flipped. Sanderson toppled face-first from the counter and collapsed, sobbing, on the floor. He wasn't kicking and screaming- just shaking and whining about how life is so difficult when you're two and all of us hated him and everything was precious and pure. Ambrosine glanced briefly up to make eye-contact with me. Straightening my bowtie, I walked over and lay on my side beside him. I propped my elbow up and rested my cheek in my hand.

"Me too, my friend. I have so many appointment reminders to write to clients and tax reports to file. You've got a storm coming- you have no idea."

Sniffling, Sanderson crawled over and lay his ear to my chest. "It's so hard, you know, Mr. Fergus. Managing my time. I need to play with my alphabet blocks, and draw a new picture for the fridge, and take a nap, and eat my vegetables, and read three whole story books, and go to bed early. What about my needs?"

"What you need is a bath. You're gross. And, you haven't eaten since lunch yesterday."

Sanderson flopped dramatically over, flinging the back of his hand against my cheek. He slid it down. "What's the point? Why are we here? We all die one day anyway. I've become a slave to routine, another name to be crossed-off on the to-do list of misery authored by the gods of Life and Fate."

"Well, you're a downer today." I rolled back to my feet. "I'll make you some cereal. Do you want a white bowl or an off-white bowl?"

"I want black, to match who I really am inside."

"Too bad. You're getting white, to match how little I care."

Sanderson jumped to his feet, wings bristling. They rubbed together so fast, they chirped like an imp's. "You don't understand me! Get out of my life!"

"Raisin Mix or Circle Snaps?"

"Circle Snaps."

"Go sit at the table."

"Fight me! You don't control me!

I gestured to him with a spoon as I took the box down from the cereal shelf. "Your self-esteem is too high. I'm going to make you do fraction conversions between the Yugopotamian and Boudacian numerical systems until you hate mouthing off. If that doesn't get you kissing my feet and groveling for forgiveness, I might just have to leave you outside in the cold until your twelve hours are up."

"You mean like that time before I lost my flight casings when you tried to send me to The Darkness?"

"Oh my dust, are you still going on about that?" When I realized Emery was staring at me, I finished with, "One of my friends told him a scary story too close to his bedtime once."

Sanderson upturned both hands in my direction as I poured his breakfast. "Ambysine, this is bad parenting. Tell him he's bad and then take me for yourself."

"Please." I sat down with my daily Central Star Region news, printed on threedspiral papyrus instead of scratchy bark strips. "He can have you."

"Not my nymph," he said over his juice. "Before noon on Friday, I'm off-duty."

I looked at Emery.

"Your kid, your problem. Just muscle through it. He's only got eleven hours and forty-five minutes to go."

So this had only been going on for fifteen minutes, then. I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. Sanderson was still standing across the kitchen by the back door. "Eat your cereal," I said.

"Make me, geriatric giant."

I considered making him. Then I returned my attention to my stocks. "I slaved the last minute and a half over a nice bowl of cereal, and this is how you choose to disrespect me."

"Bawk, bawk, bawk," he spat, wings whirring.

Without looking, I spun my chesberry over my shoulder. Sanderson yelped as a cloud of warm magic took him by the ankles, flipped him upside-down, swept him to the table, and deposited him in his chair. As he scrambled to sit up on his knees, both hands flat to the table, mouth accusingly pursed, I brought my coffee to my lips. "So, stocks are down in Sugarslew. They've been tanking for awhile; even my idea of el cost averaging has been taking hits. This could get interesting."

"I suspected they might be. How about Dulcina Harvest?"

I flipped the page. "Struggling with the snows coming on Earthside, but no more than usual."

"Oh!" Emery, still chewing, covered her mouth with her palm. "Check out Glamour Amour for me. It's on the Eros page."

"And presumably dead, like your hopes and dreams."

"Or like your bank account, freckles."

"Or her chances at marrying within our lifetimes," muttered Ambrosine.

I clicked my fingers and pointed across the table. "Kraka-boom."

Sanderson abruptly burst into psuedo-tears. "See, everyone hates me! I wish I was never born!"

"You're not alone."

Ambrosine snapped to attention. "Fergus!"

"What?" I folded up my newsrus. "If you think I'm going to deal with him in this state, you are severely mistaken. I have things to do."

Sighing through his teeth, Ambrosine flew with his dishes to the sink. Then, taking up the kitchen wand and giving it a flick, he turned around. "Don't cry, Sandyson. Come on. What does Ambysine say?"

Sanderson crossed his wings, back to his horrendously-irritated self again. "I'm not a baby anymore, nutcase. I know how to say your name."

"Aw, humor me, speck. What does Ambrosine say?"

He pushed his cheeks together and gushed, "'I love you, Sandy- you look exactly like your pappy and you have the most adorable hair'."

"Don't say 'pappy'," I said over my coffee cup.

"Don't tell me what to do, ugly face. I'll call you whatever I want."

I glanced at him. "I wouldn't have gone with 'ugly face' in your position." Thus far, minus the freckles, Sanderson looked almost identical to me, albeit with less scruffiness in the back of his black hair and cheeks glistening with baby fat.

"And what does Fergus say?" Ambrosine prompted.

After thinking for a moment, Sanderson had his answer. He flew to the counter and braced himself against one of the cabinets as he cleared his throat. "'Sanderson, you blitzing little snattersmoof, you stop pitching a fit or I'll twist your wings, because I'm a big bossy jerk who hates you'."

Emery snickered into her cereal spoon. Ambrosine just looked stunned. "Er," I said as I got up and floated over to pull Sanderson down from the counter, "that's just the Terrible Twos talking. I don't actually tell him things like that."

He thrashed in my grip. "Let me go! Let me go! Don't touch me, you monster! I don't like you anymore!"

"You're not leaving until you finish your cereal," I said, pushing him back to his seat.

"No! I'm not hungry!"

"Sanderson." I wanted to press my thumbs to his windpipe and strangle him. "You have to eat. You haven't eaten since yesterday."

"I'll eat… you!" He launched himself from the chair, knocking it over, and clawed at my face. I shoved him across the table (Emery lifted her bowl so he slid past without spilling it). While he was down, I poofed up a knife.

"Fergus," Ambrosine called softly as I circled around, "don't."

"Do it," Emery said through a mouthful of milk, for once actually in agreement with me and my ideas.

Sanderson scrambled off the table, on the opposite side from his breakfast. His gnashing teeth goaded me on. I shrugged. "You asked for it." After spinning the knife through my fingers, I brought it down with a hard thwack! Being a magically-formed blade it severed bone and didn't draw blood, but Sanderson still screeched as I flicked his limp hand away along the table. The fingers continued to wriggle. His gasping steadied as he realized that he could still control the limb even while it was disconnected.

"My… my magic hand…?"

"It will take a long time for this to heal," I said, pocketing it in my robe with my nightcap. "But I cut it high enough up your arm that the damage won't be too difficult to fix, and you won't suffer quite the mental and physical damage you would have if I'd struck you lower. You can have it back later. Enjoy not being able to fly. And now, you eat."

He tried to run, but I hooked him by the back of the collar with a fingertip and drew him back. Sanderson squealed in a bizarre tone, something akin to "Rararara!" and whirring blades. I wrapped my arm firmly around his torso and, after shoving a spoonful of dry cereal into his mouth, held his lips shut and ran my finger down his throat to force him to swallow.

He kicked, screamed, bit, and spat, but I wasn't about to be bested by a two-year-old. A ten-year-old, perhaps, but not a two-. Smoof, if I'd known then that for the rest of my life I'd be nagging him to eat, I would have milked the opportunity to scold him for being such a child. When most of the bowl had been eaten and not hacked up, I let him go. He scurried for the back door, flightless and clutching the bad arm to his chest, and began to fiddle with the knob again.

"Sanderson, you know you can't go outside," I said, gathering up the dishes. They clinked. "If someone sees you, they could call the Keepers, who will take you away from me and you'll be killed."

"You let me walk sometimes when we're out."

"I let you walk when I'm tired or hungover or just not thinking clearly. Now, move your rear end back here. I think it's time we plopped you in the bath."

After a long morning of dealing with similar chaos, I finally got him washed and wrestled him down for a nap. He always wanted to fall asleep with his cheek on my hand to keep me from slipping away, and this time I let him do it because I was exhausted and really didn't feel like doing anything productive whatsoever. I'm a workaholic when I'm on-duty. Off the clock, I'm a workaholic when it comes to being lazy.

"Ambrosine," I said as he came down the hall, straightening his dark purple vest and heading for the front door, "do Sanderson's Terrible Twos seem… normal to you?"

"Do you think they aren't?"

I didn't answer at first, but watched Sanderson sleep. He always slept with his arms crossed beneath his head. My fingers twitched beneath him. "He just seems so… emotional. I don't remember rapid mood swings being part of the package. Not well into the, what, fifth hour, at least, and even then that was usually Anti-Fairies."

"Don't judge. He's doing his best. You were very similar. Lots of sobbing. Lots of bad poetry."

Reluctantly, I agreed, but when Emery came by a few minutes later, I had to ask her opinion too. "No," she said at once. "That's not regular at all. He's like no case of Twos I've ever seen, and I researched it a few weeks ago since I knew his was coming on."

I fell asleep soon enough, still wearing my glasses and dressed in my 'I got the day off work but I still want to look pretty' slacks and sweater. Sanderson was up and moving again within several hours and showing no indication of slowing down. I heaved myself after him, grudgingly trailing back and forth from one end of the house to the other as he rampaged.

Eventually, after Emery and Ambrosine had returned home and night was coming on, one of his whining moods came back. He crashed face-down on blue-black stone, jarring his teeth. I took a seat in Ambrosine's pink chair, like I usually did when my father was in the bath or otherwise too busy to pop out and catch me in the act.

"You made quite a mess of my tablets," I said, shifting the pieces around on their tray. I could mend them with my wand, but only if I had all or at least nearly all of the scraps in their proper positions. "Pity, seeing as I need them."

"What's the point?" he asked my foot rhetorically, tapping his finger against the nail of my big toe. "It's all meaningless in the end anyway."

"In contrast, I find ends to be quite useful for a variety of things. And if you'll pardon me, I just realized I need to scoot past you to the washroom."

"But when," Sanderson sobbed, repeating those two words over and over as I hovered at the entrance to the hall and ground my teeth, "when will you have time for me? When will you read me stuff and tell me I'm doing a good job when I try at things? Life is so hard and everything is unfair!"

"You're treading into uncharted waters, Sanderson."

"I know how to read! I've read Ambysine's and Emery's nymph brain books, and they say that you're doing things all wrong. I don't think this is right. I think you're making bad choices and you need to change. Stop doing stuff you want to and instead focus on what makes me happy. You don't get me!"

"Sanderson. That is enough."

"Because it's a cruel trick of nature, for you to hate me when I love you this much. It burns inside. Don't you like me?"

"Please stop. You'll be able to answer all these questions yourself when you're older. For now, you're just confusing yourself. I don't- I can't- There's nothing- I could never-"

He picked himself up off the floor. "But Dad, you don't understand-"

I spun around and slapped him. Hard, sharp, undeniably, with the flat of my left hand.

Sanderson's legs flipped out from under him. He fell on the rough floor, first on his rear and then on his side. I didn't much move, but my eyes went down to my hand. I had never hit anyone before. I'd never so much as cuffed Sanderson over the back of the head. I twisted his wings at times, sure, but that felt more like tweaking his nose or bopping him beneath the crown with a bark strip or two. This wasn't like that. This wasn't like that at all.

Ambrosine had lasted so much longer than I had. I'd been 174,172 when he'd struck me across the face for the first time. What a knee-jerk slip-up on my part. I resolved not to let my limited emotions prompt me into fits of rage like that again. Not anymore. It was unbecoming of me.

And just like that, the twelve hours were up with a glimmer. The Terrible Twos vanished as quickly as they had come.

Sanderson blinked. He blinked again. His pale violet eyes swam back into focus. He stared up at me, dazed and mouth sagging, looking bewildered and not upset. He touched his stump wrist to his cheek.

"Sanderson," I began to say, rubbing behind my head as I crouched down.

He didn't let me finish. He threw his arms around my neck and wrapped his legs as far around my torso as he could reach. There he clung, shivering. "Mr. Fergus, I didn't mean- I didn't want- I shouldn't've- I'm bad, I'm bad, it's all my fault, don't be mad, I don't know why I did those things, they were bad, I won't do it again…"

"Shh…" I held him, my chin against his shoulder. The gasping sound he made, with his lips against my ear, sickened me with memories of toting a stiff blue body through the snow not too long ago or even far away. "We got through it together, and we're stronger for it. Thank dust I only had to deal with one of you, or I think I'd have snapped long ago. It's over now, and it won't ever happen again. So don't you dare pull that act a second time. If you act up, I won't excuse you. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, I promise, cross my lines. Never again. I'll be good, Mr. Fergus. I'll be good. But don't hate me. Don't leave me. Please don't ever leave me. I'll do anything so you'll stay."

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. "I won't, Sanderson. I'm not going to disown you. You're mine to look after now, no matter how unexpected you were, and I could never turn you away."

So life moved on. Things happened. Sanderson grew. "I thought you said he'd be too big for the pouch at this age," I said to Emery one time nearly a year after the Terrible Twos incident.

"He's scrawny. That's not my fault."

"Ugh." I threaded my fingers through my hair. It was looking more and more like I was overdue for a cut, and probably a shave. I tried to decide how much I could actually be bothered. "I don't know whether I can justify kicking him out, or if I ought to let him stay another few years… What if he fits in it until Spellementary?"

"Then either you go to Spellementary with him, or you have to dump him out and tell him he can't come back even though he still fits."

Lugh's spear, I could hardly imagine Sanderson leaving me to go to school. There were days when it felt like he and I had never been apart for longer than two minutes at a time.

I dwelt on Emery's words as I floated down the hall, enjoying one of those rare minutes in the day when Sanderson was content to hum to himself in the other room and pick crumbs off the dining table one by one (I'd ended up with a little neat freak, come to find out). I leaned my cheek against the doorframe to Ambrosine's bedroom and tapped my fingers a few times against the wall. He turned away from his desk, adjusting his spectacles.

"Ambrosine, will there be any ill-adverse effects if I let Sanderson stay in my pouch awhile longer?"

"Hmm… That depends an awful lot on his temperament. But, as long as he wants to and you're not forcing him against his will, I think it should be fine."

Was that the answer I'd wanted to hear? I couldn't decide. Instead, I tugged at my black tie (I'd finally ditched that old bow I'd formerly worn even though I'd never actually liked it). "It's easy, anyway. No one will kill him if they can't see him."

Ambrosine shrugged. "Once he's five, he'll be under legal protection in every region of the cloudlands. You just have to keep him alive until five. And the skin-to-skin contact will be good for him anyway. He doesn't get a lot of it."

My fingers twitched.

So it went. The second year down. The third. The fourth. Sanderson outgrew the pouch halfway through it, and Ambrosine let me stay home with him for the next several months because mine wasn't the type of nymph one could safely leave on his own. He was too destructive. Too easily upset. If someone wasn't there to watch him, he'd flip gears. It had taken him less than six months after his first birthday to realize that if he started breaking things and making noise, one of us would come to find him and hold him and talk.

At least he accepted the attention of Ambrosine and Emery as a substitute for mine, and could last for hours on end without zipping down the hall to peek into my room. I'd instructed him to knock. He would, then open my door anyway, clear his throat, and whisper updates about the events of the last few hours while I pretended to listen, until he slid the door shut and crept away (It was fine. He would grow out of it. Of course he would grow out of it).

I had a problem. Wish Fixers was suffering. Every monopoly has its risks, and although there were at least two major players in the world of medicine manufacturing, one of them clearly outdid the other in the eyes of the public, and they knew it. High Song Drugs. With only 39,000 Fairies in existence at that time, and double it if the Anti-Fairies were included, they could afford to provide to every facility in existence who requested them. Sanderson and I had visited the original High Song factory once, and the jabbering little intern had been only too happy to tell me what the parts did and what the similarities were in factories using various systems of their own.

For a long time, an idea had been creeping up in the back of my mind. In just over five hundred years, Wish Fixers would be celebrating its three millionth birthday. Fairies tended to be frivolous by nature, but generations of Whimsifinados and whoever else was in my line on my great-grandmother's side had always been brought up to live frugally and patiently. They rejected lavish lifestyles in favor of pouring the funds they could afford to spare into a savings account for some future rainy day that they might never witness in their lifetimes, contenting themselves with the simple and plain instead.

The concept baffles me even more now than it did when I was younger. I could have been a born and bred aristocrat, golfing and lazing about every day of my life with all the food and friends I could ever desire, having an heir when I was good and ready and not quite this young, but my ancestors lacked the backbones to go against tradition and ditch the little therapy business to please themselves. Pathetic. I'd save them from the shame someday. I'd change what it meant to be a Whimsifinado.

So there had to be more lagelyn tucked within the twenty-two different Whimsifinado accounts in banks scattered across the cloudlands than in most of the rest of the vaults combined. By no accident had Ambrosine been considered a celebrity kid, up until people had grown bored with throwing around the story of how his mother had crashed and burned that fateful day on the saucerbee fields, and with speculating on whether or not he intended to follow in her footsteps in the sport, or his father's in the business world. Oh, if the fairyazzi only knew how much we were worth, we'd get thieves day and night hacking away at the banks. Much easier to never let on to anyone that we could be counted among the richest of all the Fairykind if we'd only chosen to than it would have been to bribe the media to keep their mouths shut.

I had a theory. One of the core attributes of Wish Fixers was its ability to rightfully guarantee that its procedures were up to date and beneficial, so far as Father Time had let us know. This lured in clients to our small town from across the cloudlands, not to mention competitors in the therapy business and schools who were all willing to buy our secrets at top prices, or flash enough lagelyn in front of our eyes to convince us to release the information we held into the public domain.

Six months following my return to Novakiin, I acted. We already had an inter-plane tram station in place. I lobbied the Purple Robe for a bus stop as well, received one paid for 80% by the Council, and spruced them both up. With Ambrosine's uncertain blessing, I contributed not a small amount of funds to the science museum and the surrounding landscape, to the point of importing Earth dirt for the lines of trimmed hedges I envisioned along the walking paths. I started a little hobby on the side, opening a homely trinket shop across the way from the bus and tram stations and capitalizing on everything our town had to offer, from our maps of our constellations to dainty parasols that kept off the heat when the Plane 4 clouds shifted over our heads, and the occasional random lava flows and acid rain that might leak down from the Barrenglades with them.

"Fergus," Ambrosine warned, "you're going backwards. I expect you to pay back all the money you've borrowed from me, on top of my three million."

"Patience is a virtue," was always my swift response. "You'll get everything you deserve."

It wasn't enough. I was a flap away from snapping my own lines when I uncovered an embezzling scheme within our own four walls. It stretched beyond them too, to the traders who brought in the drugs Ambrosine and the others at times distributed to clients they diagnosed.

I cracked my wings down on the matter, only to face the jeers of those half my age and twice my speed. They hacked up their prices. I went whining to Ambrosine, yanking on his sleeve and begging him to switch to a different supplier.

Ambrosine was too forgiving. The alternative option, while its medicines were cheaper and although they hadn't cheated us of millions of lagelyn, couldn't guarantee its products weren't gathered by the labor of children's hands. Yes, how very upsetting. How worth not buying from. Besides, they were so far away, and we'd have to go pick them up each month… Blah, blah, blah.

Still, I paced my room regularly, mulling over my options and daydreaming of the way things would be when I was the one running this company. Apart from escaping Kalysta's burrow, I'd never wanted anything so badly in my life as I wanted to run Wish Fixers. I could turn this place around. I could have access to the funds of generations. I would reap rewards. I craved money and security. Then I would be happy.

I allowed Sanderson outside for his fifth birthday, which was celebrated with crackers and cheese as it typically was. "Well," I grunted to Emery, watching as he tumbled in the glittering purple grass out back, "that's the end of that. Thank Nuada. He's growing up. Now I just wish I could break him off this rotten pacifier he's so fond of." Spoiled kid- I'd never had anything like it as a nymph. It had only taken a few light slaps to the mouth when I'd thrown tantrums to shut me up and learn to channel my irritation into sarcasm instead.

"Oh, that's easily fixed." Emery took it from my hand. Then she rustled about the kitchen for a pair of scissors and deftly snipped a sliver from the pacifier's soft tip. After squishing it a few times between her fingers, she tossed it to me. "That should do it. Next time he asks, give him that and don't let on that we played with it."

"What did you do?"

"Removed the positive reinforcer offered by the vacuum effect. We learned this at the Academy."

I squinted. "Huh."

I tried it out when Sanderson came back in half an hour later, reaching out his hand for it as usual. He put the pacifier in his mouth, then after a few seconds took it out and held it up to me. "It doesn't work anymore."

"Yes, I've heard that happens when you get older."

"Can you fix it?"

"Nope."

Sanderson turned it over a few times in his hands. "I think I could fix it."

"I don't think so. It's pretty broken, and magic doesn't work well on pacifiers. Too much magic in your saliva and such along those lines."

"Hmm… I can make a new one." With a wave of his gingertie wand, an identical pacifier had appeared. He caught it with his hand and, dropping the first, brought it to his lips. I reached out to cover it.

"Don't put that much magic directly in your mouth. You'll make yourself sick."

"Really? You're sure?"

"Super positive. I know things, Sanderson."

So with a sigh, Sanderson resigned himself to his fate. Five years old, weaned off the binky, growing more resistant to illnesses and bruises every day, and well on his path to adulthood.

Later that same evening, while Ambrosine distracted Sanderson with a bath, I warned the rest of the household that I required silence and took the scrying bowl into my room. "I'll get to the point," I said to the ishigaq on the other side of the watery veil between us after the niceties had been exchanged. "I'm the monetary manager for Wish Fixers, and I'm scrying to ask about buying out your speech therapy business. I've made the calculations and it would appear that this is the prime time for you to sell."

He didn't bite. Fine. I looked up a new scry bowl serial number, scribbled it across a piece of tablet, and dropped it in the water. This one was more direct. I was facing a rival company. No messing about. I licked my fingers and smoothed my cowlicks.

"Dm. Holly," I greeted when her assistant had brought her the bowl. "I've been watching your major moves and purchases in the newsrus for the last several years."

"I could say the same of you," the purple-haired habetrot quipped back, yanking a knot of blue thread from around one knitting needle. "I've been thinking that perhaps I ought to pay a business trip up south to see that FairyClipse display in your cute museum."

"It's quite lovely. You'll be impressed." I locked my fingers together and leaned over my desk. "Let's not waste each other's time. You hate my dad as much as he hates you. You are floundering for funds. After that aromatherapy scandal, your name was effectively soiled. You're on your last legs."

Holly twitched her wings. "You spit a mean threat, Whims. But you don't want a business whose reputation just took a major hit."

"And neither do you. That's why my father and I are offering you a way out. We're prepared to buy you for five-point-two clicks a share."

She whistled softly. "No can do, my friend. Can I call you Ferg? You know as well as us that the place has long been in my family line. If it goes, I'm going down with it before I choose to give it up."

I rubbed my temples. "Holly, be reasonable. You realize that Wish Fixers is the better business here."

"Better built, certainly, if not the more aesthetically- or intellectually-stimulating one."

Ignoring the jibe, I ground my teeth. "May I remind you that Wish Fixers is currently and has always been the only mind and magic therapy business to secure a share in the Constant Timestream, allowing us early contact with Father Time on future revelations of therapy and medical procedures at the turn of every million years?"

She laughed so hard, she sneezed. "Bet that does you a whole lotta good in the down periods, don't it? When we've bought your secrets from under your dad's big billion-lagelyn rear? Ooh yes, I'll bet it brings in so much more business after that."

After a brief debate and a tight good-bye, I splashed my fingers through the water in the shiny black bowl and broke off the connection. Then my head fell with a thunk on the table. It stayed there until I heard a knock at my door.

"I can't do this, Ambrosine," I said when he floated in with Sanderson, freshly washed and chewing on a soy cube. "I need a different business to work with."

"You have your shop."

I groaned into my sleeves. "That's not what I meant. I could do great things if you let me, you know. I could change the universe as we know it. But therapy is useless to me. There's nothing tangible here that I can use. The only tangible thing that comes out of therapy is the drugs you hand out, and recently we've been losing so much more money there as opposed to what we're gaining. If I'm going to legitimately earn back what I borrowed from you, I can't go on like this. If only there were a way to…"

"Uh-oh," Ambrosine muttered to Sanderson, buttoning up his pink pajama shirt. "He's got that crazed look in his eye."

Sanderson tipped his head. "The right or the left?"

I spun around in my chair, scattering bark strips to the floor and jarring the scrying bowl so water sloshed. "That's it! I know what we can buy!"

"What exactly do you propose?"

I flapped him away, pushing past him to my bookshelf and wrenching down binders, maps, and stacks of notes. "Give me a few days. Give me a week. I have an idea."

Soon enough, I met Ambrosine over the black coffee table in the keeping room. He'd brought cocoa, which he only ever drank when he was bracing himself for a migraine.

"We're in agreement, I presume," I burst almost immediately, stumbling a bit over my own words, "that it would be beneficial to the company if we increased our income and reduced our expenses as much as possible while still holding true to all your morals about child labor and slavery and whatever."

"I won't deny it."

"And if it were in our power to eliminate the middlemen jarring up the prices of the medicines we buy off them, that would be in our best interests."

"Go on."

My fingers shuffled across the bark strips and scrolls of papyrus I'd brought to the couch with me. Finally, I found one map and unrolled it. Keeping a hand against it to brace it down, I lay my finger on Luna's Landing. "If we can buy out the Sugarslew factory, we could capitalize on all the drugs we could want, and haul them directly from the plant to Wish Fixers, thereby keeping prices low."

"Not happening," he said at once, replacing his spectacles. "Luna's Landing is Anti-Fairy territory. Not even just a little Anti-Fairy territory- you're talking their capital city here."

"No, but Ambrosine, you have to listen to me! They're not bad people, really. Not necessarily. I've met Anti-Fairies. You know I've invested in a few of their more promising companies. And it's paid off, hasn't it? They have their own culture, and they're a lot like us. I've made the calculations and I wouldn't suggest this option if I didn't believe it was our best one. This is our future!"

Ambrosine stirred his cocoa with his spoon, then raised it to his lips. "Why can't you build your own drug factory here on this side of the Barrier? I feel it would solve a fair amount of problems."

"We don't have that kind of money. I mean, we do, but-"

"But I won't let you touch the savings your ancestors have stored up to donate to the Fairy Elder and the Council in the case an absolute Fairy World crisis should occur or an eventual descendant should need it to bring about new life and future to the universe, as declared in her will by your many-times-great grandmother Windshine who served as the Purple Robe once over a million years ago and who claimed to be an oracle, and you're lazy anyway."

I shrugged defensively. "The Sugarslew factory already has all the needed machinery in place and running. It has workers, it has technology, and it has a reputation for quality. It's worth the extra money, effort, and the distance costs as opposed to setting up a place here in Novakiin, when there are so few Fairies around, and most of whom wouldn't be interested in turning away a job at the museum or the corner stores or the sugar bars and cafes in order to perform menial labor. Besides that, we'll get to start work much sooner than if we commissioned the place to be built and sat around waiting while the clouds are solidly prepared. It's more efficient like this, Ambrosine- you know that!"

"The answer is no."

Crushed, I curled my fingers and nodded anyway. It was only fair for him to have an active part in the decision. I wasn't owner and curator of Wish Fixers. Not yet.

So I continued making calls, waving Sanderson away with a "Not now. I'm scrying" mutter every time he wanted something. Dead ends, dead ends, dead ends. After a month of it, I impatiently confronted Ambrosine again.

He groaned as I hovered there in the kitchen, barring his way to the icebox. "You truly believe this is a good idea, Fergus?"

"Yes. I've told you why. And I know you don't like it, but we'll have to dig into the family savings if we're going to pull this off."

"One time I pulled my crown off," Sanderson said, for once actually eating his breakfast without prompting.

"Yes, and we know now why that was a bad idea, don't we? You didn't much like throwing up and the dizzy spells."

Ambrosine closed his eyes, the tips of his forefingers hovering before his lips. "All right," he sighed at last. "You can ask these Anti-Fairies if we can buy the factory. If they agree, you can have all the money you need for it. But please, for the love of the Lia Fáil, try to argue the price as low as you can."

It took months of bargaining. Rumors flew from the lips of big names in the business world like sprites at a picnic. Curious eyes began to turn. Investors swarmed, buying up all the stocks they could muster. Stories flickered up and down in the news. Calculations. Risks. Moves made while the world held the magic behind its teeth. A game of urvogel. Anti-Jared, who ran the place, shrank uncertainly back. The pressure was on.

But every Fairy has his price, and evidently that goes just as well for Anti-Fairies. All my efforts eventually paid off. I purchased the entire factory of Sugarslew with a grim smirk on my face, sold my trinket shop to one of our neighbors, and bought us a cloudship immediately.

"I'm all for doing today what you know better than to put off for tomorrow," said Ambrosine when I'd returned to Novakiin after signing the tabletwork for it, "but was it necessary to buy the boat right now?"

"I could have rented one for us," I pointed out, buttoning my coat while Sanderson watched, "but I did the math and even including hiring the crew and paying regular passage and taxes, this will pay off in the long run. And the long run isn't going to be that far off. Part of the reason I was able to buy the factory for as cheap as I did was because Anti-Jared wanted to keep his ships when he bowed out."

Ambrosine said nothing. But, his preferred parenting policy was always to let me make my own choices first, and to step in and lift me up if I bit off more than I could swallow and crashed metaphorically to Plane 1. Thus far, I was riding the eddies of success, so he would wait and watch.

"What do you think, Sanderson?" I asked, crouching to fix the gray and purple scarf around his neck. "Do you want to go see our new boat? She's simple, but she's all ours."

"I've never been on one before."

"That's the ticket. Let's go."

I'd docked her at the outpost- the first Novakiin cloudship to ever nestle between the rowboats and skeeters. Really, the boat wasn't pretty. She was small and a bit square, streamlined of course at both ends. The hole bored at the front and at the back would let her travel the air currents and stay on course. The hull was yet unpainted and a dull lavender color. Sanderson touched it as he hovered above the ramp, then turned back to me. "I'm on a skyship."

"Technically, although you could call it a skyship, its official name is 'cloudship'. This one only travels through Fairy World and Anti-Fairy World. If it went starsailing to the alien planets, then it would be a skyship. Starsailing skyships are owned by major companies, and cloudships can be owned privately, although the term 'skyship' is overarching and technically covers both, but you wouldn't use that word in conversation."

"Oh. That's dumb."

I chuckled. Sanderson went back to stroking the side of the vessel's hull. "It's cold and hard."

"Yes. It's made of metal. Aluminum, as it were, manufactured by the Anti-Fairies and held together by stitches of magic. If it were made of wood, the hull would rot as it moved through the wet clouds."

"Doesn't metal turn red when it's wet, though?"

"Does it?" I considered that, then shrugged. "Then there must be a way to fix that problem. I'm not familiar with cloudships. We're learning this together."

"What's her name?"

"I don't really know. I've never named much of anything before, aside from you."

"And it shows," muttered Emery, who apparently had nothing better to do then float around with her arms tucked in the pocket of her purple hooded sweatshirt and mock my life choices.

Sanderson thought about that. He faced me again. "Can I pick the name?"

"If it isn't already taken by some other cloudship, I don't see why not. Would you like to help me think up a design for her too?" Neither of us was particularly creative, but I thought we could manage something if we brought our heads together.

He took his duty seriously, and we visited our ship at the edge of the Novakiin cloud every day to admire her against the streaks of sunlight that filtered upwards from the lower planes. Sanderson had come to a decision soon enough.

"I want to call our boat Allegro!" He made horizontal, flowing wave motions with his arm. "That means to go very, very fast, which is good. Or that's what Emery says. She plays the springcase, so she knows stuff. Oh! And if we get another ship, we can call her Andante, and if we get another she can be Vivacissimo, and if we get a really big ship she can be Larghetto-"

"Sheathe your wand, little manticore. You'll burn your core out young." I straightened his crown, which had slipped partly out of the young gravitational field above his head with how cheerily he was bouncing. "Allegro will be fine."

Sanderson promised that the design he had in mind would be simple, so I'd brought brushes and paints so we could work by hand instead of draining magic. He drew me a reference of music notes on a strip of bark, and we got busy. I found myself watching him more than I actually worked, studying his designs. Finally, when he'd made it halfway down the hull, he took a flap backwards, set both hands to his hips, and looked over his work.

"Satisfied?" I asked from above.

He flew up to check how I was doing. His lips tightened. To my amusement, he pushed down the hand that held my brush. "You're doing it wrong."

"How am I supposed to do it?"

"Like this." Still holding me at bay, he leaned past my arm and painted a few stripes and circles of his own on my perfectly-straight musical staff.

"Those look exactly the same to me."

"No they don't," he squeaked. "You're smart! You pay attention! You know they're different from the ones you were doing. Yours were wrong."

"No, no," I protested as he brandished his brush at me, "I think I did a great job. But you missed a spot right… there!"

"No! You'll mess it up! Stop! You're not good at this!"

I left him to his work while I slipped off to grab us lunch. He was so enraptured by his musical notes, he didn't even notice I was gone.

Things took off. I had a crew of fairy employees to fly our ship. Perhaps it wasn't that much different of an arrangement from what we'd had before, but even including the fine of crossing the Barrier, now we were paying minimum prices for a superior product, and I trusted my small crew who traveled only for me, as opposed to the old ships that had gathered grocery requests from dozens of sponsors at a time and sometimes 'forgot' until after they'd been paid who had sent them out for what.

Sanderson sprinted out to check on "his Allegro" each time he'd heard she had rolled into the outpost. The crew would stand at attention with wands presented while he examined his painted musical notes on her side. If they'd been dinged and dented, he'd have fifty wand-ups off all of them. If everything was in order, he'd give them two thumbs up, and they'd send him back to me with peppermint candies and translucent soaps shaped like stars. The traditional Anti-Fairy gift package.

When Sanderson was forty-five… I sent him to Spellementary School, as the social clock instructed. Knowing he would not take the separation well, I did not let on to him that I was leaving until I had delivered him out front and told him to head in there and ask where the 'S' surnames were supposed to be.

"I thought my first name was Sanderson," he said in surprise when I told him this.

"Your first name is Mister. Spelled out- not an abbreviation, like a title. That would be stupid. You're a Water year and I was feeling extra uncreative that day." I raised my eyebrow at him, holding eye contact. "And one more thing. Don't ever forget that no matter what else you hear in your life, as far as I'm concerned, you are Sanderson."

"Oh. Um. Okay. What about legal records? For my name?"

"No one keeps records like that, except the Eros bloodline and perhaps the High Count and Countess of the Anti-Fairies. Possibly a Refract. Whatever. That's why no one cares that I chopped the last three letters off my old name to become 'Fergus'."

I noticed, as I watched him take to his wings and buzz up to the open double doors at the front of the old school building, that there were no other fairy kids around. Crowns, certainly, passed down by fairy mothers, but no one had wings of the direct muscular variety. The closest at all were the yellow-winged sylphs.

"You left him?" Ambrosine asked quietly after I had left the teleportation-lock bubble around the school and poofed myself home again.

"Yes."

Emery lifted both of her eyebrows, raising her spoon to her lips. "How did he take it?"

"He doesn't know yet. He thinks he's just running an errand. I didn't even bring him there to meet his teacher or see the place for the open house- I didn't want him to suspect."

Ambrosine nodded thoughtfully as he took a sip of his coffee. "I think he'll be fine. He's smart, and he's older now. Although he is fixated on you, it seems as though he fears being alone in general, rather than being apart from you in particular. So long as he has his teacher and classmates, I think he'll do fine."

"I hope so. He's a drone. His brain works differently than those of kabouters and gynes. That worries me. He's fighting an uphill battle his other classmates don't have to."

Shaking her head, Emery drank the milk from her cereal bowl. "He may not entirely understand the concept that you don't necessarily know all of the things that he knows, but drones have survived school and progressed to good, steady careers before. He'll manage."

I looked her in the eyes. "He is the eventual heir to Wish Fixers. I need him to do more than simply manage."

She squinted.

It was… a foreign sensation, to head off to work at Wish Fixers lacking someone who usually contributed to our short journey with humming and the occasional childish comment that only a bizarre mind can churn up. I worked alone at the front desk that morning, checking in clients, scheduling future appointments, organizing files in the background, and occasionally skimming books on child development. Quiet. Simple. No one rhythmically tapping a stylus against the desk beside me.

I knew it wouldn't last. By noon, my scry bowl began to bubble. After the exchange had ended, I put on my jacket and contacted Ambrosine as he stepped from his room with his last patient before lunch break.

"Sanderson got in a fight. They want me to come in and talk to him."

"He'll adjust one of these days. You'll see."

"Here's to hoping."

It was my first time walking into the small school since I'd graduated hundreds of thousands of years ago, and my senses tingled uneasily as they dredged up old images of walls and layouts. Gone were dirt floors strewn with straw. The tiles were dirty, but not overwhelmingly so. Paintings hung in the halls.

Muscle memory guided me to the visitors' office, where I was then sent to one of the classrooms. The students were all at lunch, I was told, and I'd find his teacher preparing for the second half of the day.

The door to the classroom opened when I knocked on it, and I flinched inwardly. "You have to be yanking my lines."

"Whimsifinado," he said, the pleasant overtones sliding smoothly over the dry flavor beneath. "I was expecting someone with the surname of Sanderson."

"Mr.… Thimble. I, um, didn't realize you would still be teaching here after all these hundreds of millennia."

"Exposing young minds to the truth is my passion, same as it ever has been. I shape the up-and-coming generations. There's a certain satisfaction to be gained in that." His filmy blue-gray eyes wandered down to my feet and then up again. "How did that plan to move to the North Pole and work for Kris Kringle turn out for you?"

I twitched. "I was stopped at the border when the Keepers found I hadn't been baptized and didn't have a passport. Ambrosine came to pick me up. But that was almost five hundred thousand years ago. I've since matured. What's this about Sanderson having behavior issues? It must be bad if even you in your boundless wisdom and experience can't bring him in line."

His wrinkled lip tightened. "Mister got into a fight."

"Yes, I figured that. That's why I showed up. Will this take long? I was in the middle of doing my job."

"'Mister'," he scoffed. "You never were much for creativity, Whimsifinado. Preparing him for the business world early?"

"Yes, but that's unrelated. Mist. It's Mister. Spelled out, not abbreviated. Literally translated it means 'One who brings the mist'. Don't beat yourself up over it; everyone gets it confused. He was born in the Water year. I could have named him Fog. Please respect my decisions. With whom did Sanderson get in a fight?"

He shrugged. "One of the will o' the wisps."

It dawned on me then. "Ivorie?"

"How did you…" Thimble moved his eyes up to my cowlick. "Oh. Oh. I…"

"Drake or damsel?" I pressed. No need to reveal Idona or Dip's names if I didn't have to. Of course it would be Dip. Sanderson always fought with Dip.

"A drake. Youthful rivalry in pursuit of a damsel, perhaps, although… Given their shared cowlicks, I'm no longer quite sure." He squinted. "You know about the fairy baby mandate, I should hope?"

"I'm aware of it. Sanderson of course is over five years of age, and all is in order." I'd been so busy keeping him concealed for his first several years that I'd completely forgotten to ask Ambrosine what all the fuss about fairy nymphs was actually about. Well. I would get around to researching it later, when I wasn't so backed up with my work. You know, eventually.

The words were hardly off my tongue when I heard a gruff command and turned to find an ugly finwife storming up the hallway, yanking Sanderson after her by his elbow. "Sanderson," I sputtered, my wings flicking up. "Where did you pick up all that blood?"

Needless question in retrospect, but hearing that he'd been fighting versus seeing the aftereffects, all yellow and purple, were two separate concepts entirely.

"Ees thees leettle pest the spawn of yours?" Without waiting for an answer, the finwife flung him forward so he stumbled. "Thees cheeld has no respect for authoreety and has deestroyed the lunchroom. You're the therapeest's boy. Figure out how to control heem." She turned on her heels and stomped back for her kitchen.

"It wasn't the entire lunchroom," muttered Sanderson, shoving his gingertie wand back in the sheath at his right hip.

Ignoring Mr. Thimble, who remained hovering where he was and didn't bother to speak, I crouched down in front of Sanderson and lightly took his arm. "I see that you have smears of blood on your nose and hands. Did the other kids hurt you?" My fingers strayed towards my own wand. Wing for a wing and all of that…

(Note: I find it necessary to clarify that my concern for his well-being stemmed not from the emotional attachment of Fairy myth, but from the mere fact that Sanderson was at this point my only (and I thought last) offspring, and I would soon be approaching my infertile phase for the remainder of my life. His survival was embedded in my genetics. No, I'm not going to let this go.)

Sanderson shook his head. He moved one hand across his face, and I began to understand where the stripes of blood on his cheeks had come from. His hands were still wet with it. I swore behind my teeth and took a handkerchief from my pocket.

"You have broken glass in your palms. Dust, why didn't anyone take care of this for you?" Not willing to risk damaging his nerves and cells, I slid the pieces out one by one and handed them to Mr. Thimble, who at least had the decency to poof me up a wastebasket while I worked.

"They were going to hurt me," Sanderson said softly.

"Yes, I'm beginning to realize that. Don't wriggle so much. You'll trigger your healing reflexes and only make it worse." One of the glass splinters was wedged in there pretty deeply. I studied it, then drew my chesberry and gave it a flick. The shard dropped into Mr. Thimble's trash bin. Bringing Sanderson's finger near my eyes, I squinted and determined that I hadn't caused any damage he wouldn't soon recover from. It would take longer for the magic particles in his skin to mend there now that I'd brushed magical residue across them, but it was better than the alternative of letting his skin seal over. After I'd lowered his hand, I turned my head. "Have the other kids been picking on him?"

"I haven't witnessed any such thing directly. Of course, he'll only sit in class for twenty minutes at a time, fiddling with his styluses, before he begins to act up."

"Act up? How so?"

"Well…" Mr. Thimble tapped his heels. "He already can't handle being touched as it is. I can't float down the row without him flinching and shuffling his wings. But he withdraws mentally the longer time passes. Before his 'trance' begins, he's a good student: He answers all questions, although I would prefer if he refrained from blurting them out when I've moved on to someone else. He's above proficient in his fine motor skills. But as time passes, he folds into himself. He crosses his arms and whistles through his teeth and mumbles to no one. Then, all at once, he jumps up and makes a run for the door or perhaps the window, shoving and biting anyone who gets in his way."

I watched Sanderson's face throughout this exchange. He studied me in an expectant fashion, like he thought he'd done something right and was now awaiting the upturned-hands signal to confirm it. I still held his right wrist.

"Frankly," Mr. Thimble pressed on without a speck of pity, "his behavior is incredibly disruptive and I might suggest you bring him back to start again next year. Teach him how to behave in public. He is a drone…"

"Were the other kids hurting you?" I urged again, ignoring him.

Sanderson shook his head a second time. I pushed my fingers through my hair.

"Then why did you hurt them?"

"I don't like school."

"I suspect it's embedded in his genes, what with him quite possibly having an elf mother. Did you replace his elf hat with that broken crown? His wings would suggest he could be either part elf or half-brownie, although with you living with a wisp, then…"

I looked up. "Did you tell Sanderson he was a crossbreed?"

Thimble inclined his head. "He questioned why his wings didn't resemble those of the fairy children I drew on the board, so I took it upon myself to enlighten him."

I closed my eyes and bit my lip. I didn't let go of Sanderson's hand, and he squirmed as my grip constricted. After a long pause, I opened my eyes again. "I think it's best if I take Sanderson home early."

"And I entirely agree."

Mr. Thimble skimmed with us to the front door. Once we'd moved a decent distance from the unsturdy old building and the hundred or so magical beings inside it, I poofed us back to Ambrosine's, accompanied by the familiar ringing noise and cloud of scattered magic. "Well," I said, flat-voiced, "that was certainly an enlightening visit. Sanderson, why don't you fetch yourself a bowl and spoon, and I'll give you a scoop of ice cream."

"Do I have to go back to school tomorrow?"

I turned to face him. "You know what? No. Thimble taught me when I was in Spellementary. I'll give you just as good an education as what he can. I'll skip the junk and teach you useful things. Things you'll actually need to know."

He brightened and scampered off across the kitchen. I scryed Ambrosine and explained the situation in as level a voice as I was able to manage.

"Bring him in," he suggested, to my surprise. "My 14:00 cancelled. Let me talk with him instead."

I did so. Sanderson went quietly, holding his head high, and I filled out tabletwork when he was in there. After the appropriate length for a session - not a minute more nor a minute less - Ambrosine released him back into the waiting room and motioned for me to come and talk with him.

"How do I put this delicately?" he mused, rubbing his forefinger against his chin.

My wings chirped once. "What did you learn?"

"Well, let's see. He figured out fast to lie to my puppet. The one that always takes the sticker that the child says he wants? That's something, at least. Most drones can't do that even when they're older, without considerable prompting each time. He's undeniably smart. But he couldn't pass the second round of my sorting test."

"The one with the rabbits and the cloudships? Colors and shapes?"

Ambrosine shrugged. "I'm not surprised. That's standard of drones. But he's…"

My eyes moved to Sanderson, who had ignored the colorful toys in the room and gone straight behind my desk where he kept his bark strips. "Yes?"

"He's sadistic. That's the only way to say it. I've been wondering about it for awhile, and in light of what you told me about what happened in school and what I spoke to him about, I'm confident about it. He hurts others with little to no provocation."

"But it's stupid. He's the smallest fairy ever. Of course he'll lose."

The eyebrows went up. "He hasn't lost."

"What?"

"He told me. He said he'd never lost a fight. He enjoys the power. And if he's anything like you, he'll be well-built when he's older."

I rubbed the space between my eyes. "King Nuada did not want this life to be easy on me."

"Evidently not," Ambrosine agreed. "Sanderson seems to think that if he doesn't hurt them first, they'll strike at him while he's unprepared. He's trying to scare the other kids so they'll leave him alone. That's why he took on the biggest kid in the class he thought he could win against. And he took on a bigger one in the lunchroom, even breaking his plate so he'd have a second weapon on hand."

"Oh," I said softly, thinking back to the large white shards in his palm.

"That appears to be the situation, yes. And…" My father turned his notes over in his fingers before he handed them to me. "Sanderson informed me more than once that he wishes… he could have been the one that I raised, instead of you. He announced he wants to get glasses and start working at Wish Fixers too. I just thought that was interesting."

"The only adult drakes he really knows wear glasses. That's why."

"Either way, he's feeling unhappy with his own body. It's having adverse effects on his magic. You know as well as I do, assuming you paid attention to this class in school, that effective channeling requires that one be true to oneself. Lies, regrets, conflict in close relationships, and discontentment are all issues that muddle one's abilities. If he continues in this line of thinking, he'll skip out on a crucial period of magical growth and his powers will never be very strong."

"But you can fix him, can't you?"

Ambrosine shrugged. "I'm a fairy, not a miracle worker. Limitations keep us all humble. Just watch him. Let me know if any more serious problems start to crop up. Teach him to restrain himself and act properly when in public. Unless he has your utmost support, there's nothing I can do."

A/N: Text to Life - The tasks that Ambrosine gave to Sanderson there at the end are called theory of mind tasks. If you search the Internet for "theory of mind monkey puppet" and "dimensional change card sort", they'll come up. YouTube videos on theory of mind are always hilarious.

And given that we didn't get to witness Ambrosine talking with Sandy and this is our last chapter before we introduce our next major character, I thought I'd take a moment to sum up our Sanderson psychology! It's also what I'm majoring in and I love it, so let me have this.

The reason why H.P. makes for such a poor parent can be boiled down to one simple problem- He has no idea how to extinguish an undesirable behavior. There are four steps to this process: Identifying the reinforcer that maintains Sanderson's behavior (H.P.'s attention or presence), determining whether you can eliminate the behavior (you could if you started slowly), asking whether it is safe to extinguish the behavior (not if you've left the kid for the first time with no preparation, evidently), and questioning whether an extinction burst (a tantrum) can be tolerated.

H.P.'s flaw lies in his inability to handle an extinction burst. He doesn't have the patience, he doesn't have the attention span, he doesn't have the training, and he struggles to care about long-term effects over short-term ones. That's sadly typical of immortals for obvious reasons given the rate they age and develop at. To him, punishment (wing twisting) or threatening punishment (snapping fingers twice) gives him the results he wants, so he sees no reason to change his methods, and eventually he can afford bribery to get his pixies to leave him alone too. The proper response to this situation would be to train Sanderson out of his separation anxiety the same way you would a dog: Stop giving him clues that H.P. is leaving.

It's all the fault of that jacket. H.P. always puts on his jacket when he goes out (or in Kalysta's burrow, he'd physically hand Sanderson off when he left to wander somewhere, so the hands of others became the conditioned stimulus). Sanderson, perhaps unconsciously, has picked up on this. What H.P. should do is put on his jacket, pick up his keys, perform any other behaviors he usually does when he's getting ready to leave (straightens his desk, turns off bedroom lights, shuts bedroom door) and… stay in the house instead of leaving. Sit down and read a book. Water a plant. Walk around. Clean. Leave only sometimes, and come back shortly, before Sanderson's panic begins to set in after about twenty minutes. Eventually, Sanderson would stop associating these pre-departure behaviors with H.P.'s departure, and after awhile could potentially be cured.

But we have this doofus for a narrator, so we get this instead. Neither H.P. nor Ambrosine has ever had to train a dog out of separation anxiety. This isn't part of therapy training; it's a situation that baffles even our dragonfly grandpa. My veterinary science teacher actually taught me this concept, and he brought his yellow lab that suffered from separation anxiety to class every day because he'd have torn apart the apartment if left alone. I based Sanderson's reactions off those I observed in this dog last year- so long as anyone at all was in the classroom with him, he was fine. But if we all stepped through our door and into the lab or surgery room and more than three seconds passed, he panicked and would scramble around, bashing into things (Sanderson, at this point, hasn't fully generalized from "H.P., Ambrosine, and Emery" to "anyone at all" bringing him comfort, but he will eventually).

So if someone in this story had just swung by a veterinary clinic or something, all future problems involving Sanderson's separation anxiety could have been avoided. Or, y'know, if someone realized that Sanderson is being reinforced by H.P.'s presence and not in fact from pleasure gained from hurting others, and had adjusted the situation accordingly, that would have worked too.

Basically the moral of this entire fanfic is, don't be like H.P. He's a smart idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.