A/N - Disclaimer: Divus displacement disorder is similar to bipolar disorder in some ways, and dissimilar in other ways. This is just a fanfic. Divus displacement disorder does draw heavy inspiration from bipolar disorder, but it is not real. Bipolar disorder and the dimensional change card sorter task have nothing to do with one another. The DCCS task is used to study child development and would never be on a legitimate intelligence scale test in the first place. I have taken creative liberties here for storytelling purposes.

My goal is to portray bipolar disorder (or the Anti-Fairy equivalent in this case) thoughtfully and with respect. I do not support harassment towards anyone who has this or any other disorder. However, Anti-Cosmo is both a minority race dealing with fantastic racism from an oppressive system, and he's also a villain on the rise. He will be taking some flak for his various traits, actions, beliefs, and yes, his condition(s) from time to time throughout this piece. This is a fanfic in a fantasy world, and I'm trying to tell a story. BUT, if you do have concerns about my portrayals, PLEASE let me know so I can adjust what I'm doing! Your voice matters. Thank you.

(Posted April 17, 2018)

As Practical As Salt

In which Julius takes an intelligence test during the Summer of the Drifting Storm

"Do you prefer Mister or Drake?" I asked, kneeling at the low black table. Mona sat behind me on the couch, quiet and content to watch me take my intelligence test in silence. Ambrosine sat across from us in his puffy pink chair by the dim fire (bathrobe and all). He set a glass bowl of mixed-up coloured sand on the table just within my reach.

"Doctor."

"Doctor? What's 'doctor'?"

He paused, and looked at me strangely. "A doctor is someone who's an expert in a particular subject. Or it could refer to someone who works with medicine."

"Oh, so you're a remedy specialist." If that was the case, I wondered why his family was so off the rafter. A damefriend who wouldn't commit, a son who ran away, a daughter with no respect who couldn't recognise times she spoke out of place…

"Never mind." Ambrosine placed a thick, spiral-bound collection of parchments against the edge of the table, propping it up so he could read what it said. He skimmed the first few lines, then looked up at me. "Julius?"

"What?"

"I want you to put your hand in that sand, and dump it on the table."

I studied the bowl for several seconds, then did as he requested. The sand made a puddle, spreading out its ripples in a perfect circle. Ambrosine watched, hands tight around the edges of his book.

"Tell me about that sand."

Shrugging my wings, I pushed two claws through the sand circle and said, "Certainly. Each grain of sand considers itself to be an individual object. As such, magic holds very little sway over it; it's difficult to mass poof, though you can poof a bucket containing a load of the stuff with relative ease. It's liable to cling in your fur or wedge beneath your scales, making it an absolute annoyance to pick out. Because each grain is individual, using magic even near a sandy area such as a play-pit or a desert requires utter focus, as it's sooo easy to misfire your spells and stir up a load of sand instead. I have to say that quite frankly, when dealing with grainy substances, I prefer salt. Salt is tasty, and dissolves far more easily when caught in fur."

Ambrosine's eyes tracked my absent-minded fingers for a moment. "I notice you're organising that sand in a certain pattern. Can you tell me about that?"

"Am I?" When I looked down, I realised he was right. The sand was comprised of six colours. The turquoise shade that represented the Water year on the zodiac was absent, forcing me to split my blue sand in half between it and the Sky year. I'd also substituted red sand for Fire orange and pink for Soil brown, but for the most part, I had recreated a tiny version of the Fairy zodiac cycle there on the table. Seven small but very distinct circles of bright sand sat before me like cupcakes on a tray. Not a grain was out of place. I blinked. "Well. We don't have a lot of colour in Anti-Fairy World, so when I'm exposed to it, I suppose I categorise them the way I've been taught to. It just feels right."

"Julius, if a non-magical being poured the sand just like you did, it would make a small heap. Not spread out like yours did originally. Since you have an anti-fairy body and Anti-Fairy magic, the sand responded to your magical influence by forming a perfect circle. And, well… you grouped them together like a cù sith herding sheep."

"Oh. Well. There you go. You know, you're a Fairy. What happens when you spill sand?"

Ambrosine reached over. He took a fistful of sand, grains dribbling back to the glass bowl. After shaking most of the sand off, he was left with just enough to lay cupped in his palm. He closed his hand, rubbing the gritty stuff between his fingers. Then, carefully, he started to pour it onto the table. As they twirled and settled, the grains automatically arranged themselves in layered stripes according to colour: First yellow, then blue, purple, pink, and green. The Fairy Rainbow.

"Members of the Seelie Court, such as myself, secrete natural oils from our pores that leave influential traces of magic on anything we touch. Objects then react to that in reflection of our moods."

"Yes?" My windpipe could have burst from my throat. I swore I could feel my core actually beating. I didn't like where this was going.

He leaned away, brushing the last of the clinging sand away on his thigh. Rainbow grains glittered against black fabric. "Fairies and Anti-Fairies are built differently. I want you to be aware of that before we begin this test."

I pinched my clasped hands between my knees, biting into my lower lip and hoping he wouldn't see. What was that supposed to mean, exactly? Would my test results be as legit as any Fairy's? Or did Ambrosine intend to judge me especially harshly simply because I was born an Anti-Fairy? For the moment, at least, my fate rested under his crown.

"This exam is thorough. We will be engaging in a variety of puzzles and activities, and it's expected to take us three to four hours to reach the end. You can choose if you would prefer to have three long breaks, or five shorter breaks."

I swivelled my ears back to listen for Mona's commentary, but she didn't voice an opinion. So I said, "Three breaks shall be plenty, thank you, Doctor. I'd like to power through. I'm incredibly excited to receive my results, you know."

Ambrosine slid his spiral-bound book across the table, facing me. This was then followed by four red and white blocks, diagonally sliced between the two colours to form triangles on several of the sides. "I'm now going to show you a picture. Use the blocks to recreate the pattern in my picture as accurately as you can. When you have finished, say 'Done', and we'll proceed to the next pattern."

The picture he showed me consisted of four blocks arranged into one large square. Three of the blocks were positioned so their red surface faced upward, but the final of the four blocks had its triangle side upturned, the white triangle pointed in. I took the blocks in my hand. They were smooth, sort of glossy. When I mimicked the pattern to perfection, Ambrosine praised me without emotion, and we went on.

I did blocks for several minutes, studying the designs in the book carefully and copying them precisely with the blocks. As I went farther along, the task became more difficult than I'd anticipated, even though the five additional blocks Ambrosine gradually provided had the same red and white triangle markings and didn't differ from the others in any way. The patterns in his book weren't outlined with black markings to indicate when one block ended and another began, so when the white sides of the blocks faced outward, they blended with the rest of the white page. This was made worse by Ambrosine's judging eyes; if I hesitated too long, he'd give me a few final seconds to scramble my answer together before moving forward.

I didn't let it get to me. I furrowed my brow and focused my concentration on my work with wand-blast precision. I knew exactly what I wanted, and no racist Fairy was going to stand in my way.

"Now we're going to test your memory," Ambrosine said once we finished with the blocks. I don't think he could have sounded more bored if he tried.

"Memory! Ha! Now that's a lark if ever I heard one. It's my understanding that Fairies are notorious for their poor memories. The reason your schooling takes such a ghastly long time is because years upon years - nay, decades! - of learning have to be repeated on a frequent basis." I smiled. "However, you'll soon see that we Anti-Fairies are built to be a more… long-standing species. It stems, I imagine, from our need to recognise and identify the hundred or so Anti-Fairies belonging to our colonies, not to mention foreign colonies as we grow and begin to migrate. My memory is impeccable. I've never forgotten anything. And that's why I came here to see you. Once you confirm my intelligence, then as I see it, I can simply eliminate every repetitive class in school from my schedule, and I'll breeze through the upper division in no time whatsoever."

"I highly doubt that, bluebell," he muttered.

"Don't believe me?" I laced my fingers together and leaned forward. "Try me. Procure a list of the hundred most difficult words you can think of. No, let's make it interesting. Try me at two hundred. Rattle them off in one go, and I'll recite them back to you in their proper order."

Ambrosine looked at me, his eyes dull. I didn't let my smile fade. Some time ago, he'd brought one leg up and crossed it over his knee. Now, watching me, he let it drop to the floor. The spiral-bound book came down on his lap.

"All right." For the first time, he drew his wand from the pocket of his bathrobe. It was made of some kind of wood, although its yellow cap was crystal. He placed his forefingers to the two ends, absently rotating the wand like a spit over the fire. His eyes roamed up to the ceiling. "Let me think." After a few seconds, he began, slowly, to recite two hundred of what I assume were the most complicated words he knew. A few I didn't recognise. Others I identified easily, but had no idea why, as if they had always been implanted in my brain. I noticed that he made no attempt to copy them down as he spoke them to me, but shrugged that detail off as unimportant. He must know as well as I did how flawless an Anti-Fairy's memory was, so he was just allowing me to show off. I did so enthusiastically, relaying every word back to him in the same order without any hesitation at all.

When I finished, Ambrosine leaned forward, still turning his wand around. "Define them."

My smile froze. "I'm sorry?"

"If you're as intelligent as you claim to be, define them. We'll start with 'compunction' and 'adumbrate', see if we can work our way up to 'iambist' and 'punctilious', and go from there. Unless you wish to forfeit?"

I groaned and covered my eyes with my hand. "No, no, I'll do it appropriately. I know most of these and can use my context clues to figure out the rest. Compunction: The magic of guilt that urges one not to perform antagonistic actions towards another or towards society. Adumbrate: To give a brief overview regarding the reasons for something; one instance when this is demonstrated is through the literary device known as foreshadowing."

Before I could go on, Ambrosine held up his hand. "I need you to define them using pheromone cues."

"What?"

"It's perfectly understandable if you can't. Everyone has their limits. But for this test to be fair, you understand, I have to put you through the same procedures I give my other test takers."

He made a show of marking an X over the entire section on his scoring sheet. Failed. That lout outright failed me! Just because I wasn't a Fairy! I ground my teeth together so hard, they surely must have splintered. But I said nothing. I couldn't even speak up about it. Fury sparked beneath my fur and rattled the scales on my back. He turned the page, looked at the next thing on his list, looked up at me for a thoughtful moment, and then looked down and drew another X.

"What was that?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "I say. Are you failing me on the next item of the test before I even take it?"

Ambrosine stopped marking me off and flicked his gaze up to me. He didn't raise his head, only his eyes. They sparked behind his spectacles. His knuckles tightened around his brush. "I don't need to test you on this one. It's the dimensional change card sorter task, one of the items we use to differentiate gynes and drones from kabouters. You have divus displacement disorder, so there's no point."

I clenched my hands. "Doctor, I insist you test me as though I were a kabouter fairy. You yourself just said I ought to be subject to the same procedures as everyone else in order for this to be fair."

Mona voiced her confirmation, nestling into a pillow.

"Fine." Ambrosine rubbed the top of his nose. He slid a deck of large square cards over to me, all of them face down. Then he slid over a plastic basket, which he placed on my left side, and a second basket, which he placed on my right. Both had a small card attached to their fronts by a clothespin: one a blue rabbit with tall ears, the other a red cloudship with billowing sails. "We're going to play something called the colour game. What you're going to do is turn over a card, and match the picture on the card to the basket with the same colour. You will decide if your card belongs in the basket with the blue picture or the basket with the red picture during the colour game. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Ambrosine. I understand what colours are. You don't have to speak slowly and enunciate as though Snobbish isn't my first language."

"You can't be too sure. Your people overwhelmingly speak Vatajasa in the Far West Region, you know." He flipped over the top card of his little deck. The picture was mostly white, but showed a red rabbit sitting in its centre. "This is a red rabbit. Where does it belong if we're playing the colour game?"

I took the card away from him and let it drop in the basket with the red cloudship.

"That's right." He leaned forward, touching each basket with his finger. "Blue ones go here and red ones go here in the colour game."

"A stunning revelation. I am astounded beyond all measure."

Ambrosine let me do a few more cards like that, and I got all of them right, before he changed the rules. "You know what? I don't want to play the colour game anymore."

I have never tried as hard to prevent myself from speaking as I did right then to keep myself from blurting, "It can't always be about you, old man."

"Now we're going to play a new game. This new game is called the shape game. What you're going to do is turn over a card, and match the picture on the card to the basket with the card that shows the same shape. You will decide if your card belongs in the basket with the rabbit, or with the cloudship. Rabbits go here, and cloudships go here in the shape game." For emphasis, he touched the blue rabbit and red cloudship cards on the baskets as he spoke. "Do you understand?"

"Completely."

Ambrosine turned the next card. "This is a red rabbit. Where does it go if we're playing the shape game?"

I set the card in the basket with the red cloudship.

"Where do rabbits go in the shape game?"

I pointed to the basket with the rabbit picture on it.

"Where do cloudships go in the shape game?"

I pointed to the basket with the cloudship picture on it. Ambrosine handed me another card.

"This is a blue cloudship. Where does it go if we're playing the shape game?"

In the blue box, obviously, same as all the others. My memory is flawless, and it's always worked that way before. What am I, a newborn?

"Thank you. We're done here." Ambrosine took the baskets and the cards away. He finished drawing his X on his scoring sheet. My throat burned as I watched him, aware that I had made some sort of mistake despite my best efforts, but I didn't know what to say.

After that event, we progressed toward shape and concept comparisons, then object rotations, then missing puzzle piece identification, and then a task where I took a small workbook and had to skim my eyes rapidly along rows of coloured shapes without pausing, drawing lines through all the blue squares (not the yellow circles) without ever doubling back. The most difficult task I faced was the one involving those drawings of accursed scales. They were golden plates hanging suspended, like the guardians of justice and mercy preparing to deal out a round of unexpected misery and woe. On each scale sat a small coloured shape, such as a triangle, star, or square. Sometimes there were even multiple shapes on both sides of the equation. My job was to select which of the shapes in the answer choices presented below would even the scales out.

It was a problem-solving task. Pick the shape, balance the scales. Simple enough, wasn't it? Only I struggled like a dying wood fire in the kitchen. Suddenly Ambrosine's book showed me too many shapes, every one of them a unique weight that required multiple steps and comparisons against the other shapes to unravel. I should be able to do this. I knew I could do this. But the effort of trying to think while Ambrosine's cold eyes watched me sap up every second made the stress and exhaustion flare in my face. Questions 5, 6, 7… Ambrosine didn't express how well or poorly I did on each one, per se, although I knew from his steadfast indifference that I wasn't any good. With a gloat edging his voice, he informed me that my memory was too powerful. I'd memorised the original listed "weight" of each shape back in Problem 1, and the memory was so lodged in my brain that I couldn't override it with new information when I moved from one problem to the next. I could not adapt. I could not progress. I was, in this area, now blocked off from learning anything more. Such was the fate of an Anti-Fairy.

"I don't believe that's how it works," I said, pressing my fingers to my temples. I filled my cheeks with air, then let them slowly deflate. "After all, when our people come into adulthood, we take on our adult names. Apart from an intimate partner or two, no one refers to them by their private name again after that. We identify them solely by their anti-name. That's a form of overwriting memories, isn't it?"

"My son has extreme trouble overwriting memories," Ambrosine confessed when I flopped my head into my hands, elbows braced on the table. It almost sounded as though he felt a spark of pity for me, which was at least an improvement over apathy.

"How do you mean?" I murmured. To be perfectly honest, I was focusing more energy on determining when my break would come.

"I mean, he can't notice changes to anything he wasn't watching if it didn't look like that when he first came into the room."

I frowned. Then I raised my head. "Come again, my good fellow?"

A nod, strangely encouraging. "When Fergus enters a room, he calculates every minor detail in a matter of wingbeats. Every colour, every scent, every pattern, every texture, every dent in the walls, every fold of fabric, every crumb on the table, every nail clipping on the floor, every bristle on a brush, the dryness of every smear of ink, the glisten of every drop of condensation on every glass, the exact room temperature, the composition of every item of food, the circumference of every round object he's aware of, the volume of every container, the height and weight of almost everything else. If he expands even a morsel of energy, he's hyper-aware."

"Why, that's incredible," I said, not feeling better in the least about my struggles.

Ambrosine shrugged. "He's described it to me, but he doesn't seem to think much of it. Perhaps it's an annoyance to him more than anything else. From what I've gathered, for some reason, the first impression memory he forms when entering a room sticks with him. He has to get by relying on that memory."

"In what way might that be?"

Ambrosine's eyes lingered on me, then slid to the front door. Then to the book in his lap. He sighed, brushing at the page with the backs of his fingertips. "The calculation he made of the room doesn't reset unless he leaves and comes in again. If he's looking the other way and you subtly switch something around behind him, without him sensing it, he can't register it when he turns around. To him, it's as though nothing's changed. He'll reach for objects that aren't there any longer, drop plates on the floor where he swears he sees a table, and flirt with damsels in a crowd who are no longer standing there. It takes exhausting levels of focus for him just to comprehend movement in his immediate environment. Let alone changes. I shouldn't have played these sorts of tricks on him when he was younger. In fact, that may be why he has such severe trust issues. But, the experience was interesting and I enjoyed it."

I tipped my head. "Why is his magic like that? Is it because he's a gyne?"

He leaned back in his seat. "No. I've never head of anyone, Fairy or Anti-Fairy, with a condition like it before, and it's my job to know about these things."

"I should say so! Mind and magic interplay is your specialty, I understand."

He peered at me steadily. "There aren't enough documented cases to add such a condition to the books yet. I suppose it must be part of the mutation in his genes. He's special that way."

Brushing at my hair, I forced myself to chuckle. "Well, I suppose it's at least some comfort to know that I'm not the only one to struggle with this problem, hmm?"

Ambrosine looked me directly in the eye. "Actually, Fergus could solve this with flying colours at about your age."

Of course he could.

We went back to work. By the time the first hour was over, I began to feel it. My head physically hurt in strange places around the edges. Or perhaps "hurt" wasn't the correct word, so much as… activated. The electric pulses in my brain were actually pumping, filling me with desire, flinging me onward. I could taste success in the back of my throat, especially under my tongue. All my desires balanced tauntingly within my grasp.

Ambrosine's attention continually wandered to the front door of the house. I kept one ear pointed in that direction as well, awaiting his damefriend's increasingly not-so-probable return. Even though at rest in his pink chair, his wings would occasionally start to beat. These beating periods would last for several seconds at a time, in accordance with his mounting anxiety. When I'd wrestled with a few more shape and scale problems, he ordered me to drop my quill and followed by saying, "Let's take your break now."

"Fine by me. I could use a rest. Oof." I flopped back against the couch, and allowed Mona to run her fingers through my hair. Ambrosine disappeared down the corridor to his bedroom. A moment later he reappeared, now fully dressed. Oh, I saw where I fell on his list of important people to impress, then. Absolutely inconceivable, considering I was as brilliant as I was, and would someday soon be commanding the Anti-Fairy armies from the position of First General. He placed a short white cylinder with a screw-on cap and a pink label on the table in front of me.

"Here. When you return home, you'll want to take this."

"What's it for?"

"For your divus displacement disorder."

I barely restrained myself from absolutely losing my smoke. Barely.

"They're bottled dominance pheromones, used by many parents of gynes. You smear it on your palms and rub your cheeks with it. It will feel sticky on your hands, but it's necessary. When my son Fergus was a young juvenile, I would slather this on his face in the mornings after his baths to ease his temper." Ambrosine straightened the collar of his plum-purple vest. "It wouldn't work now that he's an adult, of course. They would only upset him, and his pheromones are more developed now anyway. Doubtless by now he has a couple of drones under his wing who would react badly to it. But I was a single parent for a long time, and it made things so much easier. You should spread some on your face once every two days, and when I get back to Wish Fixers, I'll have a box sent to the Blue Castle. It will help you balance your manic periods with your depressive ones."

"Thank you," I managed through locked fangs. I didn't ask about the donor. If he replied "Orin Winkleglint", I would flip my lid. Quite literally, not that there was really anything worth noting inside my forehead chamber. Unfortunately, the glowing white ball that comprised the core of my being, connected to Cosmo Prime's so I might breathe magic through him since he was my hosting counterpart, had never manifested into much of anything. Some of my friends had cores in their heads that played large discs of solidified music, or tracked lost items, or directed them to foreign locations, or grated cheese. Me? I wanted a small, retractable cannon that fired bright laser beams at my foes, just like the one my father's notes told me Anti-Fergus Anti-Whimsifinado had (My, my, Father! How scandalous you were to look!) And what did I get instead? Ha! My forehead dome appeared to be an empty bowl to allow for additional storage space more than anything else. And at my age with my low levels of magic, well, it wasn't a particularly large amount of space. I suppose I could cram a small child in there, but that was about it.

Ambrosine nodded farewell. Then he poofed from the room and reappeared, presumably, somewhere out in the streets of Novakiin.

"I can hardly believe the nerve of him," I fumed to Mona before the cloud of white dust had even dispersed. "You know, I'm starting to realise why Fergus chose to run away. We haven't even been here two hours, and I'm already sick of this infuriatingly smug man. Did you hear that blatantly underhanded way he attempted to make a fool of me? Why, if any of my friends tried to pull any manipulations of the sort over my eyes, I think I should dump them on the spot!"

Mona nestled her chin between my twitching ears. "Just jump his jolly hoops, Julius."

"Yes, I suppose that's all we can hope for at this point." Irritably, I let my eyes wander around the keeping room. They fell on the spiral-bound book Ambrosine had left in his chair.

Mona sensed where I was looking. "Don't dare, darling dear."

"Oh, I really shouldn't look ahead. But on the other hand, I think I'll do so anyway." Abruptly, I stood, walked around the low table, and picked the book up. It burned in my hand with heat and vines. The parchment was magical to prevent anyone from altering the text inside using starpiece magic. If changes were going to be made, they had to be made in pen. And of course, it was also against Da Rules to use magic to alter one's handwriting, so everyone would know if you marked the book up.

I flipped to a page somewhere near the centre that had been marked with a pink divider. It looked as though the first task I was up against next was some sort of trivia test intended to assess basic common knowledge. I read a few questions aloud to Mona, my voice rising higher and higher in pitch the further along I went. "'What token do the sylph traditionally present at a coronation ceremony?' 'What is the antidote for will o' the wisp saliva?' 'Which of these wand types can be used to deflect attacks?' 'In which town can you find Eurydice Flitterglitter's famous painting, Genie Lost In The Marketplace?' Why- why- These test questions are all geared towards Fairy society! Not a single one of these is anything your average Anti-Fairy would know!"

I closed my eyes. My claws curled inward, leaving indents in the bark pages. Ooooh! I couldn't allow Ambrosine to declare he knew my true intelligence based on incredibly biased results. Of course, I also couldn't allow him to find out I looked ahead in his book, in case he decided not to proctor the rest of the test when I had already come so far. Why couldn't he just have a book that didn't discriminate against Anti-Fairies, and save me and my anxiety the trouble? It wasn't fair. It simply wasn't fair.

"Mona, darling," I growled, cutting her off in the middle of a sentence. I didn't care. "Go into the kitchen. And bring me the salt shaker. This parchment came from a magical tree, so I'm going to need salt for this."

"Um. Ultimately, engaging umbrae-"

"Now."

She went. I rolled up my sleeves. Now, I didn't typically go about summoning umbrae this way, simply because it was such a waste of so much salt. There were simpler ways to perform such acts- breaking silver or generating static from cat fur, to name a few, and most of the more advanced ancient hexes required all three. Regardless, upon Mona's return I held out my hand without looking at her, and she placed the salt shaker in my palm.

Normally, when allowing an umbra to manifest from the shadows and into the physical world, one would be wise to take into account the karmic balance of the surrounding room. I didn't bat an eye. Instead, I unscrewed the cap of the shaker and poured approximately a thirteenth of the contents into my hand. This I dumped onto the cover of Ambrosine's book in a perfect circle. As soon as the salt was spilled, a tingle passed through the air. My fur stood at its ends. Apparently Ambrosine's keeping room channelled Sky energy, because the umbra that appeared to balance it smelled of smoke and fire.

The umbra materialised on Ambrosine's chair, very bear cub-like with a huge snail shell affixed to its back. I studied it unblinkingly with my eyes and ears. My plan was simple: End the umbra's existence, and use the resulting magical residue in the air to get around the rules of the magical parchment and adjust the writing in Ambrosine's book and replace his questions with ones an Anti-Fairy could answer. You know, "If the current camarilla court, including the High Count and High Countess, all enter the great hall one after another, what colour will the torches be?", "Which item would you NOT adjust in a kitchen to increase the flow of karma?", "How long after lighting a mourning candle must you wait to leave a room?", "On which Plane of Existence is Navy Park?", and rubbish like that.

Instead, when the umbra appeared, it took one look at the perfect circle of salt on the bark cover and immediately put the "lit" in "booklet". The entire thing burst into red flames.

Well, that worked too. I folded my arms behind my neck and watched as the book was rapidly incinerated. Then I flipped the blade from the end of my wand and sliced the umbra down its stomach. It vanished with a wail only an Anti-Fairy could hear. Spinning its magic between my hands, I held my wand over the burning pink chair with both fists clenched around its shaft. It trembled. Magic didn't come easily to me all the time, but I managed to extinguish the flames without experiencing any terrible backlash. It turns out that I did have a speck of decency in me that resisted the urge to set Ambrosine's entire house ablaze. I wasn't quite as evil as I could have been.

"Ha! That about does it, I should say. My problem is solved, and good doctor Ambrosine won't suspect a thing."

Still beaming, I turned around, and jumped out of my skin. Quite literally for a second there, for Anti-Fairies can do those sorts of laughably physics-bending things, I suppose. Mona sat rigidly on the couch. Ambrosine himself stood in the front doorway, cradling his cheek in one hand, and holding his elbow with the other. I hadn't even heard him walk in. Had he ever left? Perhaps this was all a part of the test, and he'd been spying on me. His wings dangled quietly at his back.

"Why are you reinforcing negative stereotypes about your race?" he asked in monotone while I promptly felt the urge to die.

"I- I- I-"

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. Tarrow, give me strength.

Puffing up my chest, swallowing my tears, I drew myself up to my full, diminutive height. "Dr. Ambrosine Whimsifinado, I insist that you hear me out, lest I call the Supreme Fairy Council on your head. Your so-called intelligence placement test discriminates against Anti-Fairies by testing its takers on knowledge that only children who grew up in Fairy World could possibly know. So, I um…" Here I trailed off. "Intended to alter the second half… so I wouldn't fail the test. And so other Fairy children in the future would have to struggle with it as much as I would have. I accidentally burned it to ashes. There's nothing left."

Ambrosine narrowed his eyes. "That booklet costs over two hundred lyn. And, it had a very expensive inrita poison counterhex embedded in it. It shouldn't be affected by magic. You should be on the floor writhing in incredible pain for trying."

I avoided his gaze. Linking my fingers behind my back, I leaned back on my heels and focused my attention on the ground near one of my bare feet. "Oh, actually, we Anti-Fairies can disable your Fairy hexes. It's quite simple, really. I've spent the last three years learning to summon helpful umbrae as opposed to battling the destructive ones on the field each Friday the 13th. Under your recommendation, as I recall. I'm in training to circulate the barriers of starpiece magic with the karmic magic system."

Ambrosine, quite frankly, was left speechless for almost three seconds. Then he folded his arms, sliding his hands beneath his pits and leaning slightly forward as before. His wingbeats picked up, this time less anxious and more annoyed. "So that's how your people get away with invading our safe homes and stealing from us so easily."

"Pardon?"

"I will be straightforward with you, Julius. You have a bright mind, and if you hadn't been born an anti-fairy, perhaps you could make something of it. But the truth is, your people have ruined you. Your genius is entirely creative. You're severely behind in your knowledge of technical skills, and you lack basic common sense as well as a sense of self-preservation. You can't even communicate through pheromones. Because of this, I can't recommend you be placed in any advanced programs. Anti-Bryndin and Anti-Elina can force the schools to let you in, fine. That's not my business. But I won't sign any permission forms to allow you to skip years or decades of education. You need to stay at the level you're at."

Quite frankly, I wept. I stood there and I looked at him, my shoulders heaving, and I failed to choke back my sobs. Burning teardrops stained his floor and began to bore holes through the wood.

"The test is over," he said evenly, not a muscle twitching in his face. Not so much as an ear. "You're finished by default. Now the two of you are going to walk with me down to the tram station at the end of the street. I will buy you both passage on the blue line, and you're going to ride it straight back to the border. I'll ask one of the Keepers to escort you back to the Castle. Then you're going home."

I turned and gazed at Mona. She slid off the couch and took my hands in hers. No words were said. I couldn't have processed them if they had been.

I sheathed my wand, and Ambrosine took both our scabbards for safekeeping until we could board the tram. He marched us from his beautiful rich Fairy person house, which didn't look quite so beautiful anymore, and down the painful cloudstone street to the station at the end. He didn't lay so much as a hand on our skin, which was almost worse. I could take being yanked and dragged, but to walk with my head bowed with him behind broke my spirit more than any slap ever had.

This wasn't how I'd pictured it. I'd come here for two major reasons: To prove my absolute intelligence, and to learn where I could find Fergus Whimsifinado, and I'd succeeded in none of those. This was insane; it simply wasn't fair. Not fair at all.

But I had stopped crying. Even with my head held low and tail metaphorically tucked between my legs, I continued to devise a plan. Just one little slight against the Fairy population. What was one little slight against the unfair crimes they'd accused our people of across the centuries since the war?

Ambrosine left Mona and I sitting in chairs at the front of the station, half-hidden behind an enormous glowing plant, while he went to talk to the Keeper on duty standing near the floor-to-ceiling station windows. Confident that we were no longer sitting within range of his magical senses, I slipped from my chair and behind the giant plant. My target was a wingless, red-haired damsel waiting alone on a bench with a small child in her lap who couldn't appear to keep her grubby hands to herself and not the picture frames on the walls. Yes, this dame appeared foolish enough. I smoothed down my hair with both hands, then slid from behind the plant's other side and hurried to greet her. All I could do was hope she believed my urgency, even if I couldn't manage to quicken my pulse higher in so short a time.

"Excuse me- Excuse me- Terribly sorry, please do excuse me." I ran over to her side and collapsed beside her on the bench, mopping my brow. Automatically, she shifted away, pulling her child nearer to her chest. I disregarded the gesture and turned to face her. "Please, can you help me? There's a terrible emergency that I must report, but I fear that the Keeper standing over there won't take me seriously because I'm but an anti-fairy child. Could you report to him on my behalf?"

The young mother looked curious, though hesitant. "Um. It's okay. You don't need to be afraid. Don't spaz out. Everything will be fine. What is it?"

I wrung my hands and glanced back over my shoulder, pretending to be overly concerned. "Are you from around here?"

"My sister lives in this town."

"Well, do you see that drake?" I pointed my claw across the station to where Ambrosine stood, arms folded, relaying instructions to a cross-looking fairy dressed in a pale blue uniform that, being a Water year myself, made my skin crawl beneath my fur. "That's Ambrosine Whimsifinado. My name is Julius Anti-Whimsifinado. I'm his grandson's counterpart, and I've come here to file a report for child abuse. You see, if you ask him whether or not he has a daughter, he'll tell you yes, and say her name is Emery. She's coming back from school today, and he intends to linger about and take her home even though she doesn't belong to him. Her counterpart is my friend, and she's really sick of all the abuse. Anti-Ambrosine has done the most horrible things to her when he comes around on certain nights, if you know what I mean; he really a nasty card."

"You say they honey-locked?" the fairy damsel asked in horror.

"They most certainly did! Of course, if you confront Ambrosine Prime directly, he'll become quite flustered and try to deny it. Go on. Ask him why his wings aren't notched near the distal part of his costas. Wing notching is the marriage tradition of common fairies, since their subspecies mates for life and typically doesn't remarry, isn't it?"

The fairy damsel pulled her daughter into her lamp and stared across the station. "I don't know. Are you sure about this? It isn't some sort of trick?"

"I'm not lying. It's the truth!" While I couldn't force my eyes to fill with tears on command, I did manage to make my words hitch in my throat. I rubbed my fist across my nose. "Why does no one ever believe me?"

"Hey, hey, don't cry." The mother reached her hand towards my head. Her gesture was surely intended to be comforting, but I flinched anyway. I didn't have to fake that part. She hesitated, and my acting must have convinced her of my sincerity. With a comforting murmur, she stood with her nymph clasped in her arms and hurried across the station. I didn't hear what she said, but all of a sudden the Keeper swung around, and Ambrosine's mouth dropped open. I ducked behind the glowing plant again and scampered back to Mona. We exchanged a slap of hands.

Ambrosine made a valiant effort to protest the accusations of child abuse, but he stuttered horrendously when pressed about his absent wing notches, and he had to be held for questions anyway. Why, I heard something related to his therapy permit being suspended for the next 50,000 years! As the Keeper disarmed him and cuffed his wrists to the post in the floor that held the chain dividing the line to the ticket counter, Ambrosine's wide blue eyes fell on me. The sheer amount of rage that took over his face was indescribable, and I burst into cackles before I could stop myself. Mona and I were escorted back to the Blue Castle via a fully-paid poofing by the Keeper, who showed us actual gentle care. I'd never felt better in my life. How's that for karma?

All right. So, perhaps I was a smidgen evil after all. Mm, it did feel good, didn't it? Giving the Fairy race a taste of their own medicine? Who knew being evil would be so much fun!

Of course, I paid a price for my little stunt. I lost my privileges to gain an education whether in Fairy World or at Spellementary School. Ambrosine had no incentive to speak kindly of me, and Mr. Winkleglint and Mr. Thimble were only too happy not to take me back, I'm sure. And of course, Anti-Bryndin was horrified to hear Mona and I had snuck out where "hurt could have come to get us", and Anti-Elina was furious that I would disobey the orders of the High Countess. The first time my mother saw me, she went to deliver a smack across my neck with her staff before Augustus intervened (I'd tagged after him the whole afternoon for precisely that reason). Good show, Augustus.

No matter. I wanted no part in any of it. I shook off their shackles of my own will and turned my attention to more pertinent matters. Namely organising my father's unfinished research, practicing my magic, preparing for my impending heavy training as a homeostasis specialist, and wooing Mona with gifts and inventions whenever I could find the time.

The following spring, the heir to the High Count seat was born. He was a drake with brilliant yellow eyes, and Anti-Bryndin left the Castle one day and came back with the struggling anti-swanee pup in his arms, without any sign of the mother. Mr. Thimble's long-ago comment regarding Anti-Zoe and the grain silo haunted me still, but I hadn't looked into it, even though I wanted to just to prove the Fairy's biases against us wrong.

"His name is Winslow," Anti-Bryndin gushed to me when we pups all gathered around to meet our new addition to the bottom creche. "See his small horns. Anti-Elina and I will take him now to present him before Twis at the Soil Temple, and then we will come to have a carving made for him in the hallway."

"Wasting no time with the statues," I observed, thoroughly amused. "You realise that many Anti-Fairies stay in their exoskeletons for merely a month before their counterpart sheds it off. They are linked, you know. You'll be recommissioning a new statue almost immediately."

Anti-Bryndin didn't seem to mind, and lifted Winslow over his head. "But he is my heir, and my prince, and my son. I love him. See his small horns, how nice they are."

"Sina kova minjina d'misai rija," Winslow cooed in a language only vaguely familiar to me, stretching down his hands to touch his father's cheeks. I suppose he inherited much of his personality profile, native tongue included, from Anti-Bryndin. The most elaborate canetis rings I had ever borne witness to dangled at his ears like wind chimes, decorated in ribbons and beads.

"Ah, sina kova minjina d'lai rija kastarc autu!" He planted kisses all along Winslow's face. Watching him dote over his newborn, Mona and I couldn't help but chuckle, and reached for one another's hands. Someday that would be me showing my firstborn child off to the little pups. Me, with the mother herself beaming at my side. Eight pups. I wanted eight by the time I was done. Or maybe nine. And I'd raise them all forever.

I'd taken one day for myself upon returning to the castle, and then quite quickly went to work. Anti-Elina grounded me in punishment for running away, and replaced the ropes in my wings with metal chains that slowed my movements and weighed me down, especially on my right side. Those I couldn't cut with even an enchanted knife, and everyone could hear me dragging myself about from three corridors away. They were so heavy, I was sentenced to sleep on the lowest and sturdiest boughs of the array tree in the creche room, while all my friends gathered and whispered high above me.

Fine. My pride was dented, but not injured irreversibly. I would live. I requested Anti-Bryndin's permission to claim my father's storeroom as my own. Following his approval, I carved it out to be a private study and work space. There weren't any windows. The study had been tucked away on the third floor of the castle, in one of the rear corridors. I wouldn't be getting many visitors, and would spend much of my foreseeable childhood and adolescence in solitude. This I accepted without hesitation or concern despite the regrettable loneliness, for that was the price I was willing to pay if it meant I could unlock the secrets to biological children of my own with a partner I chose myself someday.

It wasn't a large room, but it was a cluttered one, at first. That would have to be changed. I torched all my father's notes that I decided I didn't need, and organised everything else alphabetically according to the first word on the page. While Mona and I scavenged the castle for candles, furniture, and decor, I sent Ashley to make constant runs to the public library for everything I imagined may help me in cracking the secrets of the Anti-Fairy reproductive system.

Once he brought in the first batch of scrolls, I dismissed he and Mona from the room and didn't sleep for a week. Useless. Useless. Useless. Some of the information led me down false trails, and others brimmed with jargon too complicated for even me to understand. I ordered Ashley to fetch the most massive dictionary he could borrow, and I read the whole thing in three days' time and never forgot a word of it. I requested that Mona set all my meals on a tray outside the door. The only reason I got away with missing supper in the Great Hall so often, I think, was Anti-Elina's fury at my rebelliousness. That and, come spring, Anti-Bryndin's occupation with baby Winslow. A blessing to my cause. Tiny footnotes to the name of science.

I rented out the same scrolls just in case there was something, somewhere, somehow, that I had misrecalled. Perhaps another read with fresh eyes would jar something in my brain that I had skipped over the first time around. I re-rented them again, and ran up fines when I kept them too long, and made copies, and copies of copies just because I could, and stayed in my study hour after hour until I spent more of my sleeping nights there than at roost. Realising this, I took a break from my project to attend a few magic lessons that someone or other on the camarilla was offering that week. Yes. Good. Armed with my newfound knowledge, I returned to my study and fooped up a roost, metal wall netting to climb up to it, a chamber pot in the corner, and sometimes never left the embrace of those four walls for days.

On occasion, my excitement did lose its rapid-fire luster. Over the years, I learned to anticipate the looming downfalls in my energy levels and mood. Once, when I felt one of these periods coming on, I set aside my main project and began another. Ambrosine had diagnosed me with divus displacement disorder, also known shorthand as "D3". Yet when I questioned the members of the camarilla court about it, they all became very uncomfortable, and no one could give me any straight answers. Anti-Bryndin mentioned pheromones, but that was the most I was able to draw out of him.

Speaking of which, I hadn't touched the bottle of dominance pheromones which Ambrosine had given me in place of actually useful herbal remedies that day. Having decided that they were tainted with hate towards my people, and that I didn't want to rub them across my face and negate my periods of high energy anyway, I didn't see the benefit in taking them. Why should I? Despite my chained wings, my weeks of elation were the only times I actually felt as though I could fly. Who was Ambrosine to steal those away from me as he'd stolen my educational opportunities? At the very least, if I absolutely had to, I decided I would compromise only for bottled pheromones that came from Fergus Whimsifinado. No other gynes mattered to me. I was no disloyal summer soldier.

Nothing. I crumpled up the library scroll and hurled it at my wastebasket before flopping face-first on the floor for the following six hours. Seemingly, D3 did not exist in Anti-Fairy society. No Anti-Fairy report said a word about it. If they had, I would know. The Fairies must have invented my taboo condition as yet another excuse to call my people crazy. I sneered at the thought and, too drained to scale my wall netting to my roost, surrendered to a restless few weeks of sleep on the ground.

Ring me up in another billion years once an Anti-Fairy mood specialist starts discussing my alleged disorder, and then perhaps I'll cock an ear, hmm? But as far as I was concerned, there existed no such thing.