(Posted December 22, 2016)

Hawkins Has a Shower

Winter of the Fresh Tunnel - Spring of the Rushing Hawk

"Here." I tossed my wand across the coffee table so it slid across the nicked and dented wood and into Emery's lap. Sanderson's followed it. "Give our magic to Kris Kringle on our behalf. We're leaving, and we're not coming back until after Naming Day."

"You're seriously running off again this year?" she sputtered, setting down her cocoa mug with a clatter. "It's only the first day of winter holiday!"

I straightened Sanderson's knitted gray hat. "If you think I'm spending a wingbeat longer with you than I absolutely must, you've lost your crown. I have shopping to do and then Sanderson and I are Earthside-bound. I'll see you in two months. 'Bye."

She whined, "But my party! I was going to go all out for it."

I puffed upwards, fluttering my two cowlicks like eddies in the wind. "So you keep telling me every December. No. I've saved up my vacation days for two-plus centuries for this. It's been a hundred and fifty years since I last got to see my actual friends. Anyway, your parties are lousy and you're equally lousy too. If you desperately need us, drop by Notch Town."

"But please don't," Sanderson piped up. "It's not cost-effective."

"And warn us in advance so we can leave before you show up. And Ambrosine knows," I finished as Emery started to open her mouth. "He approves completely. Really. He's sick of Sanderson's caroling anyway. It'll be Sanderson's first time Earthside in winter since he was under a year old, and I'm prepared to squeeze the most out of it."

Emery stuck out her violet-tinted lower lip. "Alright. Fine. That's completely fine. I'll see you in spring."

"As late as possible if I have anything to say about it." I pulled open the door, and Sanderson trotted out, blowing warm magic over his own hands.

"Why does it get so cold in the cloudlands when it doesn't even snow or get super windy?"

"Science. The Sun is lower towards the horizon at this time of year, and the light and heat have a long way to travel since we're two planes of existence above it. I'll show you when we get down to Earth. Now, are you ready to ride the winter tram?"

"Yes! This is the best part of the year."

As a splurging treat, I took the orange tram line that would bring us all the way up to the underside of Plane 8, where we could stare down at the Wanderplains on 7 with all its plants and wild animals and waterways. It was the only plane of existence that, for some bizarre reason, actually brightened and dimmed with the course of the Sun, and had its own weather system (Something about the pressure of the atmosphere, or too many gaps punched in the fabric of space and time by cosmic-powered genies, or from being too near the High Kingdom planes). In the early morning of the current time zone, things were still shrouded in pleasant calm gray.

We had a warm breakfast of scrambled eggs, liquid peppermint, and wintercake. The interior of the small car was decorated in blue and white twinkling lights, which Sanderson and I appreciated more when we suffered a brief power outage and the electric lanterns flickered out. They didn't gleam off the windows that way, and we could actually peer out and enjoy the sights below.

"A sleeping unicorn," Sanderson observed thoughtfully, pointing to a cluster of rocks and conifers.

I placed my pinky to the glass, shielding my eyes, and squinted. "That's right. Sharp eyes."

Eventually our car got moving again. The bright lights flickered on with an irritating hum, and we turned reluctantly away from the window since now it showed only our own reflections.

We disembarked in Faeheim after an hour of travel. "It's the busy season," I said over my shoulder to Sanderson as he whirred through the streets after me. The roads were filled with bustling bodies and the post office was packed. Pity, since the post office was one of the reasons I'd made the detour up here.

He grabbed the hood of my red coat. "Can I have a chocolate?"

"I think you deserve one. You've been a good drake this month. I wanted to buy a box of candies anyway. Go pick your favorite."

Inside the shop, I leaned over a glass case bearing green shelves and chocolate drops springing from little foil wrappers. "Sugarslew used to be a very good brand," I said, "but that was before the war, when it was under Fairy management. They started losing profit after the War of the Sunset Divide when the Barrier went up and they started hiring Anti-Fairies. Fur in the chocolates does not a good business make."

Sanderson winced and touched his right cheek. He'd had first-hand experience with the concept of vats, conching machines, cooling tunnels, five-rollers, and blooming not long after he'd shed his exoskeleton. Ruined an entire batch when he'd reached in and fallen face-first into scalding liquid. I wiggled a finger in my ear, flashing back to the nasally juvenile voice that had scolded me for not watching him while I'd been striking my deal with Anti-Jared. I could still see the lantern light reflecting off his monocle and into my eyes.

"Now, which one did you want?"

"Er, I don't remember what my favorite is. I'll have to taste all of them to make sure I know."

"You like the plain ones with the dashes across their tops."

"But maybe I changed my mind."

I felt in my pouch for my wallet. "One chocolate or zero chocolates."

He pointed to a plain one, and the goblin behind the counter scooped it up and passed it to me. I handed it to Sanderson so he could keep himself entertained while I counted out twelve different pieces for the Dame Fergus.

"They don't have caramels on Plane 19," I told Sanderson when he asked. "Especially not the sea salt kind she likes best."

"She could come down here, then."

"The Refracted don't much come below Plane 13. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to get past the Kingdom Barrier without a special badge. For the purposes of this discussion, it's against Da Rules."

"Oh."

Once I'd taken the simple pale blue box from the goblin, I stopped. Then I turned back. "Sanderson, go pick something for your counterpart."

"Me? Hmm…" He walked around the candy shop before setting his eyes on a molded chocolate wand that, though compact, had to weigh at least as much as a small cù sith. He pointed. "This."

"I think that's what you want."

"Well, maybe he wants it too."

"'She'."

"She."

I shook my head and steered him by the shoulders back to the front of the shop. "We'll get her a small box of treats. Pick four."

"I only got one."

"And if you continue pouting, I will use my powers to travel back in time and make sure you never get it."

"Okay," Sanderson sighed. "I'll never have anything to do with complaints again."

"I would appreciate it enormously."

He selected four chocolates, and I had the small package wrapped in a golden ribbon. We delivered them both to the post office and had them express delivered so they might likely reach their recipients before they could melt. Check. My stylus sibling duties had been served. Now that I'd washed my hands of the task, we made our way to the Rainbow Bridge.

"It's a long walk," I reminded Sanderson.

"I'll keep up. Promise I can do it. I'll stay right behind you."

We descended past Plane 4, past Plane 3 with Mistleville just off to the side, and slipped below the cloudline and into Earthside territory. I scanned our surroundings in search of Unwinged packs or large prey animals that might meet us at the Bridge's base. Sanderson froze.

"Oh," he said, his voice quavering. "Snow." He scooted backwards, pulling at his dusky red and white scarf. Dame Fergus had made him a new one a few years ago, this one decorated with a pattern of squares, after his original striped one had worn away with time and use. A thick one this time, seeing as how, as a drone, he couldn't go into diapause. I was careful to keep one eye on him at all times for any sign that he was turning blue. The fabric enveloped most of his lower face, and a single tug would have brought it up over his pale, wide eyes.

I twitched my lip. "Sanderson, you always do this. You're curious about trying new things until you remember how much you hate change."

He shrank away, wrapping his arms around the sharp corners of his head. "I… I can't do this, Mr. Fergus."

"Sanderson, don't-"

He took a step backwards and fell off the Bridge. I dove after him, catching up quickly and sweeping him into my arms. The distance between the clouds and the ground wasn't large, so I flew him down and placed him on top of a drift. He took a skittering step and dropped into soft whiteness up to his nose.

"Come on," I sighed, pulling him out. "Use your wings."

"Th-th-they're cold."

"Movement will warm you up. Remember, I could have left you with Ambrosine and Emery again this year. You promised me you were a big drake and you could handle an Earthside visit. I don't come down here often, and I want to enjoy it. Don't make me regret this."

Reluctantly, Sanderson wiggled from my grip and fluttered his wings. "It's a day and a half trip assuming we stop to regularly eat and rest," I said, whirring off, "so let's get moving."

"Why didn't you b-bring the w-w-wands?"

"Because I don't want to have anything to do with them, their energy draining, or their cost. Magic near triples in price this type of year, which of course means one's wand feeds off your energy in larger chunks. Makes you go as 'magic mad' as a newborn Anti-Fairy at times. I am on vacation."

Sanderson caught up with me, whirring his little wings as fast as possible. "I think you know everything, M-Mr. Fergus."

"You never know. I just might." After a few minutes of flying, I veered away behind a tree and pulling up sharply, wings snapping. Sanderson kept to my side as I held out a hand to slow him. My finger moved forward. "Aha. I thought I sensed a good spot around here."

The branches of the oaks and fruit trees dipped beneath the weight of their icicles, some nearly as tall as Sanderson and still dripping. My timing was excellent, as it tended to be. An animal with hooves and great scooping antlers chewed at a tuft of frosted grass while its companion bent its neck and drank from a patch in the ice of a partially-frozen pond. The sun was still rising in this time zone, filling the sky with pale violet as it filtered through the trees. It reflected off every crystal, every fleck of snow. There were even hanging sticky spiderwebs blanketed in frost, twinkling. I watched Sanderson's face, tasting his attraction signals light from sweet purple to peppery yellow. His mouth parted slightly, but he didn't say a word.

"And that's the other thing I like about going traditional, particularly at this time of year," I said softly. "If we'd have poofed to Notch Town, and poofed home when we were done, you'd never have gotten to see a little treasure like this."

"But it's beautiful." He looked around, drinking in the sight of emptiness and quiet. "There are F-Fairies way over there, but they're bustling about too fast. No one e-else is watching."

"No. They have places to be. They don't want to sit and look at trees and rocks, or feel the moss or smell the mold and rotting leaves. They think it's boring."

Sanderson took both ends of his thick scarf and yanked them tighter. Wisps of warmth swirled from his mouth and the palm of his right hand. "I like boring."

"I do too. Just wait until I get around to taking you to the seashore in a few years. The ocean is neat, but the smooth rocks and pieces of glass you can find there are something else entirely. The simple feel of soft, wet sand in the wrinkles of my palm or sight of a ghostly crab in the morning is what I appreciate most, more than building temporary castles or splashing about like a loon. You'll like it."

He beamed. "I th-think I will. My name is 'Sandy'."

"Yes, it is. We'll also have to come down here in autumn- I keep forgetting you haven't seen the leaves change color since you were hardly a hundred, and more specifically, you haven't wiggled your fingers into the ground and felt the beautiful dampness of the dirt. I'll teach you how to identify the pawprints of squirrels, as opposed to mice, moles, voles, tibeavers, rats, opossums, rabbits, crockeroos, and shrews. I think you'd enjoy it. And the salt flats are unique. They're flat. Salty too. Well." And I straightened the fluffy collar of my red coat. "We have a lot to see if we want to meet our quota. Let's go."

Sanderson and I reached Notch Town the following afternoon, cold but cheery enough. He'd only nearly frozen and died twice, so we were both in a good mood. Nephel was there to greet us with his new wife, Keziah, and their newborn daughter, Cassia. Sanderson took a liking to the nymph at once, which I found interesting. Perhaps I would have to increase my visits Earthside and prompt further interaction between the two of them. Nephel's family wasn't rich in money, per se, but western elves and their sweets…

We all decorated a seasonal trellis for the upcoming winter solstice, exchanged gifts (I'd brought each of the elves a small carving, along with their first papyrus checkbooks, because it was a new concept and staying up to date was my thing), feasted regularly, played games late into the evenings every night, and just generally lazed about snacking on cookies and catching one another up to speed. Nephel and Keziah took us sightseeing to some of their favorite Earthside locations, which was a hit for Sanderson, and he entertained us often with his singing. It was a quaint vacation, and I enjoyed it immensely.

One evening, two weeks before Naming Day, Sanderson wandered into the kitchen and found me stirring rabbit soup with one hand, and skimming the citations of a biography on the Purple Robe with my other. He watched me for several minutes, then asked out of nowhere, "Where do nymphs come from?"

I pondered the question as I continued to stir the soup, then glanced down at him. Sanderson was chewing on the handle of a wooden spoon he'd taken from the utensil jar. "What brought this on?" I asked.

"What's that mean?"

"It means, 'Why are you asking this now?'"

He shrugged. "I'unno. Keziah told me to ask you. She says I'll have a brother or sister one day."

"Hm." I folded the book - my first book with bound parchment pages - with a snap of my left hand and set it aside on the counter. "That isn't any of Keziah's business."

"So? Where?"

"'Where do nymphs come from', I presume?" Sucking on my lower lip, I stared at the chunks of rabbit bobbing about in the soup beneath my spoon. "Well, nymphs come from drakes."

Sanderson smiled around the splinters of wood in his mouth. "Hey. I'm a drake, I think. So, nymphs come from me?"

"When you're older and have your adult wings, yes." At least, he'd better have his adult wings. Releasing my whisk, I took up the hand towel and massaged it against my knuckles as I dropped to his level. "Do you remember four days ago when I took you to see my hole in the hills where you were born?"

"Yeah. The hole was kind of old and dirty, though. Oh, and we planted that weird spinning seed from the pot. In the strange green grass. And covered it up, and poured water on it, and told some other people about it too."

"And do you also remember how Earthside plants and cloudland plants are different?"

"Earth tree seeds grow in the grass and dirt, and cloudland tree seeds grow in the ice crystals and vapor. You can't plant them anywhere else, or they don't grow."

I nodded. "Nymphs are special seeds that grow inside you, and nowhere else. One day a damsel will give you a seed, then you'll plant it together inside you, and then you'll grow the nymph."

"Mm… No? I don't remember being inside you."

"You were very little. Too little to remember many things."

"Oh, okay." He went back to his chewing and never asked again. I scratched my head and returned to my soup. After we had all eaten that evening, I tucked him into his warm bed in the other room. Then, while I scooped up a third serving of the soup for myself and Keziah set up a fidchell game behind me, I cleared my throat.

"Keziah, I don't intend to come off as nosy, but I have to ask. Was there a particular reason for bringing up nymphs around Sanderson? He's only five hundred and four. That's drastically too young for the wands and the wings, and now it's made my life a pinch more difficult than I would have liked it to be."

"I didn't exactly ask him outright," she said, averting her gaze. Her fingers trailed around the game board. "I asked him if he was excited. I'm sorry. I just assumed you'd told him. That kind of thing is never a secret for elves."

"Excited?" I repeated, leaning my shoulder against the wall.

Keziah nodded. "For the new baby. Actually, Nephel and I have been talking, and we'd be honored to throw you a shower for nymph number two, if you don't mind it."

"I'm not pregnant," was of course my response, miffed as a scoff.

"Aren't you?"

My face warmed just a bit. "I'm just, ah… big. Even for a gyne."

"No, no!" she said quickly, waving her hands. Her turquoise curls bounced in front of her eyes. "That isn't how I guessed. My dust, didn't you know? The smell of it is all over you. You're about third tri."

Hot soup poured from my spoon across my lips and down the front of my purple sweater. I continued to stare at Keziah, taking far longer than I really should have to process what she was telling me, and what her words meant.

"That isn't possible. I haven't interacted with a damsel in such a manner since Sanderson was born."

Keziah considered my statement for a moment while she plucked at a wishy-washy thread on her sleeve. "Perhaps you picked the sperm up while passing through the neighborhood," she decided.

I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling of their little tree-cave. What would Kalysta have said if she heard such news?

"And," she went on hesitantly, playing with the loose thread more and more, "It wasn't really my place, but I did ask him… what he knew about the no-fairy-babies mandate."

"Oh, the mandate." Smoof, I had forgotten to look up the actual details about it. I'd add it to my mental to-do list when I was no longer vacationing. For now, I smiled at her wryly. "If you don't mind it, I'd prefer to keep this whole business hush-hush. I wouldn't want to upset anyone and cause problems, but yes, I am an exception to the mandate rule. No one bothered to take me in because no one expected I would ever get pregnant. You know. Because I'm old and fat and not pretty in the least, even with my freckles."

Keziah slapped me with her washcloth and told me that I had an unhealthy level of self-esteem.

"Nephel," I said the following day, trying to be a polite houseguest and help with the breakfast dishes, "can I ask you a totally invasive question?"

"All right. Mark it."

"What's the menstrual cycle of the western elves, again?"

Until that point, I had never seen anyone perform an actual spit-take through a glass of water. Nephel glanced up at me, looking like he ought to be flushing, or perhaps paling, although the color of his face didn't change.

"What's a men-surreal cycle?" Sanderson asked, cleaning a spoon with a scrap of red cloth.

"I'll tell you when you're three thousand when I tell you why we have our ritual of courtship dance. You've probably wondered why you have that pouch on your stomach beneath your belly-button. The gene is linked to wings, so only winged Fairies have that."

(Sidenote: Wilcox, I included this comment specifically for you. If you're going to be regularly shapeshifting into other races or animals, please take some pride in your work and actually familiarize yourself with their anatomy. There are more creatures in this world than rabbits, and I refuse to be the one who contacts the news crews the next time they need another story on marsupial fire trucks debunked.)

"I use it to hold my styluses and my wand." Sanderson tried to demonstrate this by lifting his shirt and sliding the spoon he had cleaned into his pouch, but I took it away.

"We're all set to the same cycle of coming into heat once a century," said Nephel, scratching beneath his collar. "When it rolls around, we can only produce offspring if we breed in March, although fertilization doesn't always occur. That's why we call it that, March- we have our big march where all three elf subspecies gather together, for the, um…"

"That brawl exhibition thing your people all do to rearrange the pecking order and claim the damsels of your age group?"

Nephel nodded, staring at his reflection on the plate in his hands. Frowning, I massaged my cheek, then poured a bit more of that brackish water from the wooden bucket and into my dirty mug.

"The fairy cycle is one eighteen-month period out of every five hundred, but our entire species isn't set quite so rigidly upon it as yours. Is it possible that if I mated with a damsel while in one of my 'off' years, I could retain her sperm until my egg cycle actually came around?"

He shrugged. "Ask the Anti-Fairies. Did you learn about embryonic diapause in school?"

"Refresh me."

"After fertilization, their eggs go dormant until the following Friday the 13th, unless something goes really wrong. I think. It's been years, though."

Curious.

I asked for a stick to take a pregnancy test with, and paced the washroom scratching my head when it came up bright purple. Negative. Still, Keziah was so excited. And, well… she was offering to give me free stuff. How could I turn her down?

So I had my little shower that evening. We didn't invite any of the other Notch Town elves I knew from game nights, and certainly not anyone from Fairy World. Especially Ambrosine and Emery. I didn't want either one of them finding out about this, especially since the pregnancy test had declared me barren, and surely therefore this was all a big misunderstanding. Perhaps I would need to cut my vacation short, if in a few weeks Nephel and Keziah began to wonder why I hadn't yet delivered. I could tell them I'd had a stillborn.

Because I couldn't have another nymph. I absolutely couldn't be about to have Kalysta's nymph. Midway through the shower, after I'd unwrapped a set of specially-woven hexagonal nymph clothes Keziah had pored over for six nights even though I knew I'd never use them, I excused myself to the washroom. I sat on the lid of the basin, pulled my knees to my chest, and simply buried my face in my folded arms.

"Please don't exist," I whispered. "Don't, don't exist, little moocher." I tightened my fingers deeply into my stomach and twisted. My skin crinkled as per usual, but day after day, still nothing in there moved. I expelled a soft sigh of relief and hugged my legs tighter.

But then my eyes rotated upwards. Swallowing, I pushed back my dome and reached my fingers carefully inside, avoiding the sharp heat of my core.

As it turns out, pregnancy sticks are fickle things. Something soft was wedged beside my egg nest. Something that, according to my anatomy textbook, wasn't supposed to be in there. A packet of rubbery wetness, suspended against the side of my forehead chamber.

I yanked my hand out fast, fighting the bile rising up in my throat. I'd been throwing up grayish goop for some time, but that was winter sickness, surely? Wasn't it supposed to be bright purple? And what about the blood last year that had indicated I was entering my fertile period? The… very limited amount of blood that had died off a few weeks into my cycle. Implantation bleeding? Could that happen even from the forehead? Oh, disgusting.

And then all at once I was sobbing- from all the hormones, of course, and not naturally, because pixies do not cry. My arms moved from my knees to my head, and I held my dome shut and shivered, with my wings scraping against the basin's ceramic back.

"I can't have Kalysta's nymph. I can't. I never liked her, I didn't want to do anything with her, and it's been five hundred years. That's not fair."

I sunk my teeth into my right hand and held them there, pinching my eyelids shut. Just one sharp bite to go tomte. I could do it. One tear in my sensitive palm, a rush of colorful blood spilling down my arm, and it would be over. I wouldn't have the magic to maintain both my system and the nymph's. This close to the time of birth, it would disrupt and potentially even miscarry as the magical particles in my blood redirected themselves to repair the damage; I really would have a stillborn. All my problems would be over. Not sentient, not sentient, not sentient…

An imaginary flash pierced my brain. Nymph Fergus tearing away from the grandfather who'd tried to kill him for his pale gyne freckles, scampering up to a bruised and trembling Ambrosine, diving into his pouch without another thought- only to be wrenched out and clutched to his father's thin chest and squeezed.

Second flash. Sanderson, called Sandy (No- not even recognized by that name yet, or even by his proper sex), pressing his back against the dirty wall of my old hole in Purple Valley, staring up at me as I angled the barrel of my laser canon at his core.

Polly standing there in his full baby blue attire, the ruff rippling about his neck, with his dark palm overflowing with yellow, chanting nonsensical prophecies as Sparkle and I scurried about our Academy dorm and tried our utmost to bandage him up.

The dragon queen from the canyon, recounting to me the story of the tom - the last known tom of their subspecies - who had fertilized only two of her eggs before Pip and I had stolen the largest one for our dinner.

The navy curtains rustled as someone tugged on them with a small hand. "Mr. Fergus? Are you going to come out again soon? There's still cake to eat, and you haven't even opened my present yet."

"… Hm? Your present?"

For his gift, it turned out, Sanderson had gotten me a single blob of chocolate. "When-?" I started to ask.

"Yes, Keziah's friend knows how to make these! She took me over last night while you were sleeping. I bummed the chocolates. That's really what it's called! It's, er, it's not as good as the ones from Faeheim, but I tried."

Fighting to keep my right hand steady, I unwrapped his chocolate and brought it to my mouth. "Orange," I said after I'd thoroughly rolled the flavor around my mouth.

"Duh. I remembered it was your favorite. See, I pay attention. I'm very smart."

Still holding the second bite of chocolate, I reached out and used my left hand to ruffle his black hair. "You old charmer."

"According to ancient Fairy tradition," Keziah told Sanderson after the last two presents had been opened, "all the children your Mr. Fergus looks after that are older than the nymph inside him take a turn dumping a bucket of cold water over his head."

"Baby shower," he realized, taking the wooden pail. Then he turned to me as I settled myself on a snow-topped boulder outside in front of the great tree that the three western elves called home. "Um… Are you sure you want me to do this?"

"I'm not one to spit upon tradition."

So Sanderson screwed his eyelids up tight and splashed me with cold. Then he set the bucket down. "Was that good, Mr. Fergus?"

In a rare moment of idiocy, I hadn't thought to remove my glasses first, so once the icy water had sloshed over my back, I removed them and began polishing the lenses with the sleeve of my sweater. "Ah. Admittedly it isn't my favorite tradition to put up with. Fortunately, I only have you and so being splashed with one pail of water isn't so terrible."

"Well, I tricked you! There's still some left inside."

"Don't you dare-!"

A week after winter had turned to spring, my second offspring was born precisely as Sanderson had been. It came on while I was slicing carrots for dinner. My head pulsed; I touched my left ear, attempting at first to ignore the feeling, but Nephel urged me to lie down in my bed. Since I could sense the itching in my forehead chamber, I requested privacy. Reluctantly, both elves left, but only when I permitted them to linger outside the curtain, and on the condition that I'd allow them to enter fairly soon to see if I required SHAMPAX.

I was alone, twitching and unclothed and keeping my voice muffled. My fingers brought the amniotic sac on its fleshy cords from my head to my mouth, and I nipped the nymph free without hesitation. The birthing process was rough and not enjoyable. I ground my teeth, and this time the explosion of fresh magic firing its way down my lines and into my being wasn't enough to make me wet myself, even if I did fall to my side. It was finished at last. I twisted three of my magic lines into the hexagonal nymph before I even bothered to really look at it. Still wheezing and bleary-eyed, I set it against my knee and blinked through the lingering effects of field-sight.

Another drake. A drake with two thick tufts of hair poking from his head, coiled around one another until they broke apart again. Not being the firstborn, who always received the most magic of one's progeny, he didn't have the extra layers of color blanketing his core. So, no telling for certain who his mother was, then, although Kalysta's core color had been casual, cheery yellow, if I remembered correctly.

My voice strained and soft, I called to the elves to allow them in the room. It was Nephel who suggested the name of "Hawks' Kin", his reason being that Mother Nature had only just decreed upon this season the name Spring of the Rushing Hawk. Keziah offered milk to the nymph, and by the time she'd fed Cassia and gone off with him, "Hawks' Kin" had morphed officially into "Hawkins" instead.

After Hawkins had finished his first suckling session, I placed him at the foot of my guest room bed beside Sanderson and sat back on my knees. Springs twanged. The heel of one hand slid across my eye. This was a fine stall of pegasus dung I'd planted myself in. Now there were two of them who had to be watched over. Where was my vacation?

"No more," I promised myself, drawing an 'X' across my chest. At least in this case, loathe as I was to admit it, there was little question of who the mother was. Hawkins with his black hair and hexagonal shape did look much the way Sanderson had as a nymph, but perhaps as he grew he would begin to take on traits more distinctly will o' the wisp-esque. He still had a broken six-point crown. Something in my sickly body must lack the ability to nourish it completely. Ah, well. It was over now.

"Can I hold him?" Sanderson begged as I picked the baby up.

"'May I hold him, sir.'"

"May I hold him, sir?"

"Thank you for asking. You may. Sit down here on the bed; that's it. Hands out. Bend a little more at the elbows." I lowered the nymph into his arms. Sanderson brought his nose down, clicking his tongue and cooing softly. I drew one knee to my chin and watched, until his childish banter shifted into, "If I had enough money to spend, and leisure time to sit awhile, there is a young drake in this cave, that sorely has my heart beguiled". Then I had to draw the line.

"Why are you singing that?"

He paused. "I don't know. It seems right and I like it."

"Well, don't."

"Why?"

Frowning, "Please don't sing, because I don't like that song."

"Why?"

Instead of answering, I turned my back. There were a few seconds of silence before Sanderson scooted around to see me, dragging Hawkins with him, the bed squeaking. He placed his hand on my thigh.

"Why?"

I groaned. "Because, your mother used to sing it to me, and it makes me very sad."

Sanderson nibbled at his thumbnail, then patted my leg. "I'm sorry I have a very sad dad."

Stiffening my wings, I turned. "Did Emery teach you that word? Cassia? Keziah?"

"What word? 'Sorry'?"

"'Dad'. I don't like to be called your 'dad', Sanderson."

He blinked. "Why?"

"Because… your mother used to say that of me, and it makes me very sad too. I'm not your dad. I'm not your father. I'm your sire. At most you are my offspring, not my child or my son. If you aren't going to call me 'Mr. Fergus', you should call me 'sir'."

"Why?"

"Because if you don't, I'll twist your wings twice every day."

"That's a good reason, sir," he said, and shut up. We passed a quarter of an hour simply sitting in silence, before Sanderson had the nerve to speak up again. "Did everything my mother do make you sad all the time, sir?"

Biting the tip of my tongue, I stared at my fingers in my lap. "No. No, Kalysta was… gentle, when she wanted to be. She was always brutally honest. Never told a single lie as long as I knew her. I did respect and appreciate that; she didn't act fake to me. Not ever, for anything, even though she said on occasion that her friendly attitude was forced when it came to her neighbors. Neighbors are difficult- there was this one place in the back of her burrow where the washing cave was that you could stand in and, if you strained your ears over the rushing of the water, sometimes hear a damsel in the next chamber over crooning to her favorite drake. No one ever bossed Kalysta around or got the better of her. She was clever. Dust, she was clever. And… and, at least, if it weren't for her, you'd have been dead a long time ago."

Sanderson tipped his head sideways. "Are you sure, sir?"

"Mostly sure." Reaching over to tousle Hawkins's two swirls of black hair, I murmured, "Then again, I was anxious most of those nights. I… had dreams sometimes of she and I parting ways. Our last touch would be with her lips on mine and our eyes and hands locked together, pushing me deeper, deeper down. Oh, Kalysta was an interesting one. We'd call her a workaholic in my line of business. She never seemed to relax unless she was talking about those awful books of hers, and was always picking at something if she wasn't off gathering research for it beyond the burrow walls."

"What was she like, sir?"

I frowned. "I just told you." Hadn't he been listening?

"Oh… Sorry, sir."

"You're overdoing the 'sir'," I said, dropping my hands and turning towards him.

Sanderson looked up at me, face twisted with perplexity. "Then what do you want me to do?"

That took a bit of consideration before I landed on a satisfactory response. "Say 'sir' only sometimes. Just when you remember and when you want to, like when it's important that you get my attention."

"Like when I wake you up really early in the morning because I saw scary things in my head at night?"

I had no response for a moment but to stare at him. "You're a manipulative little smoof just like your mother. All right, don't say 'sir'. Give me Hawkins. I want you dressed and in bed, now."

While Sanderson scrambled to comply, I changed my own clothes and lay on my back with Hawkins on my stomach. Once I removed my hands from his sides, the hexagonal nymph crawled into my pouch. Guided by pheromones, I supposed. It was an interesting wonder.

Then I groaned softly to myself. "No sleeping on my stomach for years, again. My wings are going to ache come sunrise. What did I do to deserve this?"

I still had crumpled chocolate wrappers and scraps of old notes stashed in my marsupium, but unlike Sanderson, Hawkins didn't seem to mind. He made himself comfortable anyway, chirring softly to himself before he took my single nipple in his mouth and familiarized himself with the sweet taste of neutral purple magic. He'd been born with nearly all of his sharp teeth. Just like Sanderson. Just like me.

While Sanderson slept and Hawkins settled down, I wedged my left arm beneath my ear and stared at my firstborn across the room through the dark. This was quite the unanswerable riddle. I was 492,048 years old. How does a loner of a drake with forty-three lines to his core end up bearing not one, but two nymphs in such a short period of time? And not even in the natural way, but from the confines of his head?

Dust, my head… I placed my other palm against it as I began to drift off into my dreams. I could have sworn it had grown an entire quarter of a centimeter taller than it had been a thousand years ago.

My eyelids fluttered shut. I dreamed of shapeshifting into my favorite goose form and soaring away from my problems forever, but not for long. A fingernail scraped across my cheek.

"Psst. Sir."

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes to find a square face and two small hands resting on the edge of my pillow. "What is it, Sanderson?" I mumbled.

"Can I still call you 'sir' sometimes?"

"What?" I squinted. "Yes, of course you can. Go to bed. And I'm not going to tuck you back in."

"Okay, sir." He went away. After what had to be only a few seconds, he was sprawled across my legs, rubbing my knees and making puttering noises with his lips. I pinched my nose and used those two fingers to rub my eyes, rolling away from the sunlight streaming in through the window. "Please don't let it be morning."

"Yes it is. I've been awake forever. Sir, Hawkins cried all night. I don't like him anymore."

"Oh, you don't?" I lifted my arm so I could peer at the nymph. He wasn't there. Nor was he under the other arm. Shoving Sanderson away, throwing off the wool blanket, I checked my pouch again. Empty. Why was it empty? Had I forgotten to seal it when I crashed?

I searched the entire bed. I even crouched down on the floor to check beneath it. Then I glanced back at Sanderson, who had sat up on his knees to watch, his face a mask of alarm. "Did Keziah already take Hawkins to be fed?"

"I don't know."

I slammed my forehead against the bed frame. The child was under twelve hours old, and already I'd lost him. This was why I'd never wished to be a parental figure. I left Sanderson in the guest room, flew up the spiral staircase, and pushed past the red curtain there. Keziah and Nephel stirred against their pillows and began to mumble.

I bit my lip as Keziah sat up. "Erm. I'm sorry to wake you both at this hour. I was only wondering, have either of you taken Hawkins?"

Nephel rubbed his eyes. "No… What? Is he missing?"

That was all I needed to know. Letting the curtain drop, I stormed back down to my room and found it deserted.

"Sanderson?" No reply, so I snapped my fingers twice. "Sanderson, I will count to three. If you're not out here before I'm done, I'll twist your wings. One… two…"

Much to my surprise, he didn't come, even when I drew out the three. That meant I'd have to search the room. But it wasn't very big, and I found him tucked away in the first place I checked- beneath a blanket under his bed. He yelped as soon as he realized he'd been discovered, and yelped a few times more when I dragged him out by the ankle. His fingernails scoured lines across the dirt.

"I was going to come out! I was coming! You didn't let me come! Ow!"

After his wings had been twisted, I stood him up on the ground and held his shoulders. "Sanderson, did you do something with Hawkins? Is that a nod? What was it?"

"I- I moved him."

"That much was obvious when I came back and found that you'd hidden. Why did you move him?"

He started to shake. "It was when you were in bed. You didn't wake up. H-he was really loud and I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to bother you to get him to st-stop."

"Sanderson, this bothers me."

Whimpering, he attempted to wrap his arms around my neck. I took his wrists and pushed them down. "No, you don't get hugs for this."

Nephel slipped through the curtain that divided the guest bedroom from the keeping room, rubbing his yellow pajama sleeve against his pointed nose. "Have you found Hawkins? Is he really missing?"

I sighed and rested my palms on my knees. "Apparently, Sanderson hid him somewhere. Exactly where, I'm trying to get out of him still."

Startled, perhaps even horrified, Nephel turned his attention to the little fairy. "Where did you hide him?"

Without speaking, Sanderson gestured through the curtain. Then he crawled underneath his pillow.

"Come on, you," I said, taking his elbow and pulling him back to the floor. "Show me."

As three adults watched in silence, Sanderson slowly crossed the keeping room. He circled the table and chairs, scooted past the loveseat, and pointed to the large black pot sitting on the unlit charcoal lumps and wood scraps in the corner. My shoulders jumped. After the ordeal of yesterday, my wings wouldn't give me the lift to fly, but I limped over nonetheless and lifted the light lid. Hawkins lay at the bottom of the pot, curled up with his thumb tucked in his mouth, his dark green pajamas smeared with vegetables and chunks of meat.

"Dear King Nuada… Come here, you; that's it." I turned, brandishing the lid in my right hand and the groggy nymph in my left, eyebrows drawn. Keziah had both hands folded over her mouth. Nephel's arm was around her shoulders. Sanderson had slunk off behind the blue curtains that concealed the washroom, so only half of him peeked out. "You can't put babies in the cooking pot, Sanderson. That was very, very bad of you. What if we heated up what was in there for breakfast without looking inside, and charred him? What if his lines had fritzed, and he asphyxiated? What if there had been more soup, and he had drowned? He won't develop anything very close to immortality until he's five years old."

He nodded and swallowed and began to shake again, as he typically did when he could taste my attraction signals shifting from purple to blue. As I watched him, I pursed my lips and slid the hand holding the lid of the pot down along my side to my waist.

"I can see you understand. What if… I let you make the call on your punishment this time. Hm. There are two options. Either… I won't twist your wings today, but you won't be getting any hugs from me again. Ever. Or, you can get your wings twisted now and-"

Sanderson leaned over, clutching the ends of his wings as near to his chest as he could get them. "Don't twist my wings! Don't twist my wings, sir!"

That's right. I had a drone.

"All right, then. It's your decision. I won't." As I passed Hawkins off to Keziah, I instructed him to pull out the dishes for breakfast. To my relief, Sanderson shot me a frantic over-the-shoulder glance and scurried off without another complaint, and that was that. Life progressed.

Hawkins didn't come with us back to Ambrosine's. "Keep him if you wish," I told Keziah and Nephel as Sanderson and I packed up our belongings three days later. "I won't be returning for him."

And I never did. After ensuring that they would adopt him as one of their own, I went home to Fairy World. Sanderson was distraught to be separated from the new nymph, of course, but only temporarily. Things resumed as it had before, just him and me and Ambrosine and sometimes Emery. I thought that would be the end of it all.

Reuniting with Hawkins only four years later proved to be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the three millionth anniversary of Wish Fixers, and Ambrosine was hosting a special celebration for it. He had requested that Emery, Sanderson, and I all attend. I kept mainly to the fringes of the party, shifting my attention intermittently between the refreshment table in the foyer and a leprechaun who had caught my fancy for the evening. Chestnut-haired, silver-eyed Skyna came from a wealthy line even for her race; two million lagelyn worth of assets in her living room alone, I heard, and when she picked up on my interest she toyed with me unceasingly. I suppose it was no secret what I wanted from her. It may have even been the reason she remained without a mate at that age; leprechauns are always on their guard when it comes to their gold.

She took a liking to Sanderson, though, which was perhaps why she let me fawn over her for as much of the evening as she did. I was competing against Tupilo, a shorter fellow with dull teal eyes and two sharp cowlicks in his hair like mine but that actually were genetic, and he had the advantage of species similarity.

But he was young and clumsy. Pushy, even. I had tact. "Take a rain check, kiddo," I tossed out to him once as he attempted to disguise his eavesdropping by pouring and guzzling yet another glass of water, clutching the pitcher with a thin loop of rainbow all the while. "You'll drown yourself that way."

It was me who won Skyna's soft, tentative kiss behind the hedges in the back. I'd brought with me a pair of Ambrosine's sodaglasses, and Sanderson fetched us a can of drink, maintaining a straight face and proper poise all the while.

Then, as the sugar began to creep over me, I got sloppy. I was showing off, leaning one elbow against the building wall, just two fingers behind the back of her head as she pressed her mouth against mine, when I lost my balance and the cup slipped from my hand. It shattered against a rock in a resounding burst that made all three of us jump. Orange droplets flew, staining the hem of Skyna's skirts. Glass wedged itself in my leg and drew a stripe of pink blood. I apologized, she laughed it off, and we swept the shards together with careful sleeves.

When I looked up, Hawkins was there. Simply… there, four and a half years old and dressed in swirls of elfish blues and greens. He'd heeded the summons of those buttery-mint pheromones to track me, I would learn in another two hundred thousand years- turns out they travel through pixie blood much like they do in the insect with which we share our wings.

He and Sanderson looked each other over, from their similar square faces to their shiny black hair. Therein lay the largest difference between physical features; Sanderson's was close-cropped, with that tuft at the front that I had never gotten to stay down for very long, no matter how many times I'd attempted to rinse Kalysta's saliva away. Hawkins wore his longer around the ears and down the back of his neck so it curled. Otherwise, the only way to tell them apart was their height. Sanderson was taller, though not by much. Hawkins had a plumper stomach and thicker arms, partially hidden beneath sleeves that extended just past his elbows. No freckles, either. Another drone. They touched each other's faces with their fingertips. Then Sanderson picked him up to squeeze him, and Hawkins babbled nonsense.

"There you are," groaned Nephel, coming around the side of the building. Skyna flipped out her paper fan and flapped air across her cheeks as she focused her gaze on a distant point in space. Sanderson released the smaller pixie, and Nephel scooped him into his arms and blew on his stomach. "You can't disappear on us like that up here, Hawkyboy." Then he saw me. "Fergus! Of all Fairies!"

"Nephel," I said back through a cough, straightening my tie. "Is Keziah with you tonight?"

"She's back at the party." His eyes jumped from me to Skyna, then snapped to my face again. I smoothed down my ruffled hair while he finished, "With our little Cassia and the, um… the rest of the people, and your father and such. We wondered if we might cross your path while we were up here."

"Hawkins hasn't been giving you trouble, I hope?" I asked as I leaned down to tickle his little ear. His dust-colored eyes swelled wide as he realized I knew his name.

Nephel gave a sigh. "That's actually what we hoped to discuss, and what brought us up here to Fairy World when we heard Wish Fixers was having its anniversary. When you have five flaps to spare, could you come and find us? We'll just be floating about the lobby room place."

"Of course." I turned back, slightly grimacing, to Skyna, but the moment was gone. Rather than attempt to pick up where we had left off, I simply bowed out with grace and offered her my arm so I might lead her back around to the door. Tupilo was waiting for us like a hopeless crockeroo. With twitching wings, I handed her off to him and asked if she would excuse me for the moment. She smiled in a grim manner, and I knew we were both aware that whenever I came back would be too late. I'd have to get my money the hard way after all.

Hawkins, as it turned out, was bubbling over with anticipation. In the single minute it took me to track down and then cross towards them, I saw him pop out of his seat beside seafoam-haired Cassia and turn around before being pushed back into place by his milkmother at least three times. His wings - his entire face - lit up at my approach.

"You have to be my real dad!" he said, which told me everything before Nephel and Keziah could begin. Choosing not to correct him in front of them, I affirmed it and allowed him to embrace me. Sanderson looked on with a mixture of bewilderment, hope, and disgust.

My prediction was correct. Hawkins was restless among the elves. He did not resemble them in either looks or natural behaviors. He completely lacked their ability to teleport through their tree passages. His wings snagged in low branches and made him too noisy of a hunter. He struggled to conform to their social hierarchy. The elves - particularly his rival drakes - picked on him mercilessly, which explained the light scars I'd caught glimpses of across his stomach and arms. He spent unhealthy lengths of time floating around the perimeters alone, studying the crowds and sucking on his thumb. He chewed every piece of wood he could stick between his teeth into pulp. He asked questions about me on a constant basis. He'd even made several attempts to run away and hunt me down. Would I, Nephel and Keziah wanted to know, be at all interested in taking him back?

"Only if it's your will," Keziah was quick to reassure me. "We know you left him to us, but since we thought it likely you would be here, we thought we'd just pop in and see if we could snag your opinion."

"You'd really hand him over, after all the time and effort you put into caring for him?"

She rubbed her shoulder, forcing a smile. "We only want what's best for our little fairy. But we think it should be your place more than ours to make the call, eh?"

I looked down at Hawkins, who had wrapped all four limbs and his wings around my left leg. This was a conundrum: On top of him being too young to qualify for legal protection from the no-fairy-babies mandate for a few more months, I had been living tightly and couldn't particularly afford to have him draining my resources. And I didn't think the elves would take that as a viable excuse. They claimed it was my choice, but the valravns' feet around Keziah's eyes and the expectant twitch of Nephel's sharp nose told me which option they hoped I would take. Hawkins had become a burden to them; I would be rude in rejecting him after they had come all this way, and while he showed me such genuine affection.

And so… I accepted, feeling my wallet empty itself and my freedom disperse in smoke even as the words left my tongue. The milkfamily exchanged their good-bye hugs and kisses and went off to enjoy the party with, I imagine, a lighter flutter in their step.

"I still can't believe it," Hawkins said over and over as I strayed back towards the refreshments table in pointless search of Skyna. "It's finally happening- this is real- I'm going to live with my real dad now, and you're my real brother, and we'll be a real family and do real things-"

I got down on one knee and removed my glasses. "Hawkins, I'm glad you're excited to be reunited with us. I too will be interested in hearing all about your four years among the elves. But if you're going to live with real fairies, you need to understand that I have this rule. We don't use the words 'brother', 'family', or 'dad' when we refer to one another."

He nodded, hopping from foot to foot like too much pressure upon one of them would cause him to implode. "Sometimes the other elves said stuff like 'sibling' and 'father'. Do we use special fairy words?"

"We do. This is Sanderson. He is not called your brother, he is your companion. In fact, you are both my companions, and even my assistants. You may address me as either 'sir' or 'Mr. Fergus'. Never 'Father' and especially not 'Dad'. Those are elf terms. If you're not going to live with the elves, I don't want you to use them."

"Oh, okay. I can do that, sir. What should I use instead of 'family'?"

"We're coworkers," I answered simply. That was all that needed to be said.

I attempted to forge connections with another couple damsels while Sanderson and Hawkins caught one another up on their lives, but my head simply wasn't in the game. I was warned backwards with hard wing flaps multiple times, and even splashed in the face with some fairy's drink. Still wiping the lemonade away from my freckled cheeks, I gathered the pair up and we headed for home.

It was mostly Hawkins' first time seeing buildings not formed out of trees, and he was fascinated by everything from cobbled pathways to shingled rooftops to signposts. After one more street of pestering questions, I picked him up by the nape of his collar and held him level with my face. "You don't stop talking, do you?"

Startled, he slipped one wrinkled thumb in his mouth. "Does that make you mad? Don't send me back to the forest! I want to live with you forever!"

Shaking my head, I replaced him on the ground and let him scramble through the front door of Ambrosine's residence. "Just cork it when I'm working or when someone else is speaking and we'll get along fine. Sanderson, fetch him a clean change of your clothes. I'm going to give him a bath. You smell like an elf."

"Can we burn my elf clothes?" Hawkins asked, instantly out of his green shirt.

"No. We can sell them, and if we can't find any buyers, we'll find some other use for the cloth. Waste now, want later. Give those to me, and then come jump in the tub."

He stopped moving. "Tub?

"In there," I said, and he was down the hall and in the washroom before I finished lifting my finger to indicate the way. Through the doorway, I saw his wings droop.

"Oh. I got really excited for a minute because I thought fairies took baths in butter."

"What?"

"You said 'tub'. So I thought, like… butter comes in tubs, right?" Hawkins tapped the metal with his fingernail so it rang in a piercing way. "Elves get washed in the river."

I came after him and switched on the lanterns. "Off," I said, gesturing to his pants, and when he'd removed them, I lifted him up and swung him into the washtub.

"But there's no water in here."

"I was getting to that," I said, taking one of the pails from its hook. "Don't flap your wings dustless."

Hawkins stood with his eyes closed and arms stretched to either side, prepared to embrace the spray. "Look up high," I said, and dumped the bucket over him. He yipped and grabbed his shoulders.

"It's icy!"

"Yes," I said, setting the pail aside and squirting yellow soap in my hand. "It's rainwater I fetched from the well last night. I'm groggy and drunk and Ambrosine took all the kitchen wands to the party, effectively preventing me from starting a fire to heat it up right now, so you will have to grit your teeth and stick it out."

"C-c-can't you use non-domestic magic?" he asked as Sanderson came in with clean pajamas and perched himself beside the sink.

"I could, but I choose to perform most tasks the mundane way because wands read personal imprint codes and at the end of every month, I'd have to pay the bill for each time I waved a non-kitchen or non-firefighting wand." I finished rubbing the soap into his hair and moved to his neck. "You happened to come into my life at a time when I'm attempting to save money so I might someday move out of this place, which is my father's house. If you don't like to live this way, you can go back to the elves."

He shook his head. "It's not that cold. We went out and broke chunks out of the frozen pond once. That was worse."

"Arms."

He offered them to me, and I paused again over the pale scars, dripping soap from my fingertips. "You didn't get along very well with the other elf children, did you?"

Hawkins hesitated before coughing up his answer. "Only sometimes. I tried to be nice mostly. They just didn't like me very much. Maybe because I chewed on their trees and burned the cookies and flew away when they played Tag and stuff."

"Did the damsels give you the cold shoulder too?"

"This shoulder?"

I rubbed my palm over his stomach and rephrased myself. "Did the young damsels ever fight with you?"

"Oh. Um, no. I don't remember. Maybe."

"I expect it's just typical youthful rivalry. Your existence offended the gynes. Perhaps you're more familiar with the concept than I am, but elf drakes compete for breeding rights when they're older. They only come into heat for one month a century, and the whole clan makes a big ceremony of it all. Since drakes bear children - show me your other leg - they like to have their pick of the fit damsels. Winner gets first choice, second follows, so on down the bracket. Loser is left with whomever remains, if they're lucky. If their gender ratio is unbalanced and they can't claim one, they either mate outside their species or have to wait until the following century to compete among their age group again. With your wings, they knew they likely didn't stand a chance, so the gynes gained up against you in an attempt to establish dominance while you were young and impressionable. You bit them with those little buck teeth of yours, I presume?"

He took his thumb out of his mouth. "They deserved it."

"Good thinking. Here comes the second bucket. That's it; all done. Hop out and let's dry you off."

As I was scrubbing him down, the front door popped open. Emery floated inside, scratching at a mark on her cheek with distaste. Ambrosine hung his tie on its hook, then stopped and squinted down the hall.

"I'm overdue for an update on my prescription. What is that in the towel?"

I placed my hands on either one of Hawkins' shoulders. "This is Hawkins. He's my second offspring, from several years ago. A clan of elves I know have been raising him all this time, but they can't care for him any longer, so I had little choice but to take him back."

He slid his spectacles down his nose and said, "You never mentioned a second child."

"I assumed it wasn't important. I expected the elves to keep him."

"Not important," Emery repeated. "Ever heard of the baby mandate, rule breaker?"

"Ever heard of minding your own business, Dame Couldn't Court a Cardboard Cutout? At least one of us in this family knows how to play the field."

She sniffed. Hawkins snuck his thumb back into his mouth as Ambrosine ran his fingers through his graying hair, drawing a sigh in through his nose.

"All right," he said finally. "But that's my limit until you introduce me to your lawfully-wedded wife. Don't let it happen again. Hawkins, was it? Get some good sleep tonight. You start work tomorrow at seven."

His wings began to flutter beneath the towel. "I get to work? Like, in a real job? With real people and real money?"

Emery lifted her face away from her scratching fingers. "Sure do, crockeroo."

"And a paycheck of your very own."

"Which goes to me," I interrupted before Hawkins could begin to daydream about petty frivolities. "I'm saving it up so we can move out of here, if you remember."

"Okay, sir. But, I get to move out with you, right?"

"You'd better," Ambrosine said, and with a sharp nod flew off to his room. I helped Hawkins change and led him over to mine.

"You can share Sanderson's bed," I said, indicating it with a flick of my hand.

"But-" Sanderson began to protest, then bit his lip when I turned my head. "Yes, sir," he said. Then to Hawkins, "I get the place by the desk and the lamp, closer to Mr. Fergus and the door."

"That works for me. I always got to sleep next to the window back home. I mean, back with the elves."

I tossed him my pillow so they didn't have to split the one. As I lay the blanket atop them and dimmed the lights, I found myself thinking that maybe I could really pull this entire lifestyle off. After all, there were only two of them. Two nymphs wasn't so hard.

Sanderson woke me up in the early hours of the morning by planting himself on my chest and holding my cheeks. With his forehead to mine, he said, "Please. Give. Him. Back."

"What?" I pushed myself up on my hands, wishing that I'd had more water before I'd clocked out. My forehead throbbed at the temples. "You don't like him anymore?"

"No one said he would still talk in his sleep."

I hooked Sanderson beneath the armpits and replaced him on the floor. "Put his thumb in his mouth; he'll probably suck on that. If that doesn't work, turn your jacket inside out and throw it over him."

"Why?"

"Because if he's anything like you and me, it will shut down his system almost as though it were a butterfly net. Cattahan used to pull that trick with me all the time when I worked for him before you were born, and I used to use it on you when you were in your two-hundreds. Now, go play nicely and just ignore him."

"You're going to be saying that a lot over the next few centuries, sir," he griped, and he was right.

Hawkins slept late the next morning, so after the rest of us had eaten our fill of pancakes, I sent Sanderson to wake him. "You've got to get up with the bugs in this business," Emery warned when he saw there was but one pancake left and his face fell. "Slow risers get cold food and no bananas or syrup."

"No jatican juice," Hawkins murmured, reaching for the milk carton. But otherwise, he didn't complain. Sanderson and I bathed and dressed while he ate, then brushed our teeth and hair while he put on his clothes, and made the attempt to leave without him just to see what he'd do. "No," Ambrosine said as he scampered to join us. "You don't skip the last steps. You make yourself presentable or you don't show up at all."

When Hawkins finally did finish combing the tangles from his curls, we headed down the street. Ambrosine rubbed his chin as he unlocked the main entrance and both light and magic flooded into the building.

"Let me think. Where can we put you…? There's a place I could squeeze you in budgeting, I believe, or we could stick you in reception…" He examined the small fairy, from the way he kept forgetting he could fly (Thank the stars Keziah had had the sense to switch him to a milkmother capable of producing buohyrine) to the white scars showing around his wrists. "Budgeting it is, then. This way. You'll report to Emery, and she'll show you how to lock onto the small pool of importation magic around my basket so when you poof things to my office, they land where they should."

"Um," he piped up, "am I going to have to use a wand in this job? No one ever taught me how."

"If he wants to, Fergus can buy you one this afternoon."

I paused with my hand on my office door. "What if Fergus should choose not to do that?"

Ambrosine looked directly at me. "Then he never learns how to channel magic, will never fly without regular milk intake, let alone shapeshift or poof, and will suffer chronic spells of magical back-up."

So Sanderson and I went to work. We spotted Hawkins during lunch and afternoon break, and he looked bright and cheery in both locations alongside Emery. When eighteen o'clock drew near, I went to fetch him. Emery had left to use the washroom, so Hawkins showed me the final piece he'd been working on for the day.

"What the-?" I muttered, picking it up. "I can't even read this."

His right thumb went between his teeth. "I can fix it, I promise."

I crumpled the sheet up and threw it in the wastebasket. "See that you do. This handwriting is much too elfish and pretty for a fairy drake. Start again, do it with pride, or don't do it at all."

He redid the outline of his day, and Emery lent him her wand so he could deliver it to Ambrosine's basket. After several strained attempts, he managed to do so. We left for Twinkletuft's then, with its walls and countertops that changed colors every few wingbeats and furniture and boxes that whizzed through the air. Hawkins's eyes jumped from his face.

"Don't set your hopes too high. We're getting you a training model with an approval mechanism that connects through mine."

"Not through Emery's?" he asked.

"Through mine," I said again, and that settled the conversation. "I'll register it in my name for now, too. Now, what if I bought you a milbark? It may have the slowest recharge time of any variety, but its blasts do hit the fastest, it's entirely water-resistant, and well-balanced. Can I trust you not to chew a milbark to splinters, Hawkins, do you think…?"

A/N: Text-to-Life - Leprechauns can only have kids once because they universally suffer from magical Rh factor. For those of you who don't know what this means, basically only their firstborn child will survive, because leprechauns have a magical "mutated" blood type and long story short they don't mix well with each other or other Fairies. I thought it would be a good way for them to pass along their massive fortunes. And speaking of families, Tupilo's double-cowlicked hair is indeed genetic and he looks exactly like his dad, who looks a lot like his dad. He also has a small, rounded hat and not a tall, squarish one. Not that that should sound familiar or anything.

Fun Fact: I wouldn't be alive if my grandmother hadn't gotten the "cure" shot for Rh factor after her third baby. She'd gotten the shot after her first and second children, and almost didn't get it again. If she hadn't then the fourth baby - my dad - wouldn't have survived. Thus, I exist.