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Chapter Text

Origin of the Pixies

ACT 1: SPOILED

Prodigal Progeny

Spring of the White Sun

"We're not doing this. I'm not doing this, Sanderson- I'm simply not. This isn't happening. Really. I'm not walking down a worn road through my childhood neighborhood. I'm not watching a young damsel draw ice crystals up with the wooden bucket dangling down in the repainted old well. I'm not stepping through the rusty gate. I'm not passing the grayfish pond and beaten poofing pad with my surname painted across it. I'm not climbing the steps."

"Oh. You aren't?"

I glared at the little nymph racing along the cloudstone path after me on clumsy bare and dirty feet, then bent down to pick him up again and set him at my left hip. "Oh, quit giving me that sarcastic look. You're too young to pull it off. Dazzling, isn't it? We're at the Whimsifinado household and there's no denying that. And Wednesday evening's coming on in here in the Amethyst time zone, so if we wait much longer, he may get himself too drunk to listen to reason for the rest of the weekend until Rheather shows up to drag him into the office when Friday comes around. That means we're better off knocking now rather than later tonight, aren't we? And I'm still talking to you like I'm expecting a particularly intelligent answer. I have got to stop doing that, don't I?"

"I can answer," Sanderson protested, sinking his fingers into the top ribbon on China's coat. His nails scraped the bulge of my throat. "I answer lots of questions."

"Yes, you can, and it makes you so much more bearable to be around than you used to be. Here goes everything." I knocked twice, then spun on my heels and started off. No use waiting all day if he obviously wasn't home-

The door swung inward, freezing my raised wings before I could flap. There were no words exchanged for a solid ten seconds. Only silence. Then I eased myself around again and tried to ignore the bewildered squint on my father's face.

"Oh. You… your hair is just starting to go white."

It wasn't the only sign that the calendar had used him as a chew toy while I'd been away. The long ipewood wand he'd once spun between his long fingers had been replaced by a crooked upturned staff he braced beneath him like a walking stick; not von Strangle quality by any means, no, but it was thick and impressive enough. Actually, his fingers themselves were different too- bony and with knuckles bulging intermittently like the square divots in a waffle. His one spiral cowlick still graced the back of his hair in a stray feather sort of way, and his round nose was slightly upturned in the same smooshed manner I remembered from my younger years. Though it was getting late, he still wore the vest in Wish Fixers wine. Hadn't lost the slight leprechaun points at the tips of his ears, either. Now, however, he wore odd, tiny windows about halfway up his cloudy blue eyes- some sort of medical measurement thing, I supposed. I'd seen them once before on someone's face, and a few monocles here and around, but as for what they did, that was Rhymepyrian to me.

When Ambrosine opened his mouth, I could see a space among his teeth where one was missing and he clearly didn't care enough to fix it. "Fergus? Well, well, well! Hold on. Don't move a fleck, speck- I want to take a look at you."

"Yes, it's me. I'm glad to see you still live here after all these millennia, Ambrosine. You always did tell me that you planned to." I shifted Sanderson in my arms, one hand to his tiny chest. He clutched tighter with his fists as Ambrosine leaned his staff against the doorframe and began to circle us.

"Well, well, well," he kept saying, over and over like something broken. He must have paced around me four times. Finally he stopped in the doorway again and parted his wrinkled lips in a smile. "Your freckles finally decided to show up proud and loud and gorgeous ruddy red-brown. What a big, handsome drake you are now."

My wings drooped. I reached behind my neck as they began to rustle and chirp. "Um, thank you."

"No, you could blink twice and put a habetrot to shame with a face like that if it were just a smidgen rounder. Alright, maybe a pailful of smidgens rounder." He took my elbows and whistled. "You're still my pretty flower boy. Solara would be thrilled beyond belief to look at you now."

"Thank you, Ambrosine."

He clasped his hands before his chest. "And? Aren't you going to introduce me to your son?"

"What son?" Then I looked down. "Oh! Oh, you're referring to Sanderson. Of course. Sanderson, this is my father, and your… relative, Ambrosine Whimsifinado. Father, Sanderson." I gripped one of his wrists and lifted his arm. "What do we say, Sanderson?"

Sanderson hid his face in my neck.

"He only just slipped out of pooferty five days ago. Isn't that right, Sanderson? Look at him, Ambrosine. He has a fair grasp of the Snobbish language already and it's only building. He can tell you about trees and birds. He likes to draw. He knows basic math. He tells jokes, or tries to. Look at him."

Ambrosine took the nymph's pale hand and jarred it up and down. "Swell to hear your brood never lost pooferty, even with those messed-up genes. Aw, he's just a scampy little thing. He looks exactly like you did at his age, plus the thick double cowlick in his hair. His hair makes me happy. Did you do that? Can I hold him?"

I hesitated. "May we come in first? I'd rather you were sitting down. Your legs don't appear to be quite as sturdy as they used to be."

"I'm hardly old yet. The staff's mostly for show because I like attention, but subtly." But Ambrosine beckoned us in anyway. I studied the walls as he pushed the door shut. They'd been tiled now with yellow and green squares all the way through, interlaced with thick white grout. That was different, and rather ugly. The floor was made up of actual blue-black rock as opposed to dirt and straw or white rubber. I did like that. It appeared a bit lumpy and sharp in places, but all in all I liked it. It was clean.

Ambrosine was waiting in his faded red-pink chair with arms held out. He probably stayed in that position for a full two minutes as I walked around the main room, squinting at timestream images framed along the walls and the various newfangled technology that I had never heard of during all my time spent living down Earthside, like candles that could be enclosed in lanterns without snuffing them, and ovens powered by the nearly-stale dust and oil secreted from the skin. When I circled over to him, I peeled Sanderson's stubborn fingers from my collar and handed him off to my father. He bounced his fingertips against the younger drake's cowlick. My hands went into my pockets.

"Hey," Sanderson protested, reaching upwards.

"I like his hair. I like your hair. Would I know the lucky lady who blessed you with this little bowl of frosting?"

"Hmph. If there was one, I never met her."

Ambrosine lifted his eyebrows. "Oh… I see how it is. You slippery butter-seal."

"Stop! My 'licks!"

My nose twitched. "Could I have Sanderson back? You're upsetting him."

"No, I love him."

"Hm." I placed a knuckle to my lip. "We're going to have a sharing problem, aren't we? Fortunately, we won't be staying for long if I can help it. Rather, is it at all acceptable by you if we stay here for a night or two? I don't plan to intrude long, and then I'll be out of your hair for the rest of either of our lives."

"Good dust! Stay as long as you care to, Fergus!"

He'd taken the bait. I raised my eyebrow. "May I?"

"It's been 325,000 years- I think I can afford to get you set back on your feet. But I want Sanderson to sleep with me. He's very cute and makes me nostalgic, and frankly, you have bags under your eyes and so I think I'm helping."

"Yes, that would actually be a large relief to me, so you're welcome to keep him."

"But…" Sanderson opened and closed his hands in my direction. Absently, I patted his flat head beneath his broken crown when I got up to walk along the hall towards my old room. He started to whimper.

"Fergus?" Ambrosine called as I reached out to the left and put my hand on the knob. Not fully registering the warning (thinking, perhaps, that he was concerned about Sanderson), I opened my door. And went stiff all the way down my back.

My safe gray-brown walls had been tiled in sharp pink and pastel yellow. My former writing desk where I had passed hours working out math equations bore a frilly white cloth, a mirror, and about a hundred bottles, necklaces, tubes, powders, polishes, nail files, brushes, clippers, and special colored stylus with uses that I had learned well after my nine months with Kalysta. There was a rug on the floor. A fuzzy white rug. Why would you need a rug? My Dragonflies pennant and the ticket badge from that Vibrant Sparks saucerbee game long ago were still attached to the wall above my bed, but they'd been joined by pieces of sloppily-manufactured trinkets that I didn't recognize, and that Ambrosine certainly wouldn't have allowed me to purchase back when I was growing up. Board games, dozens of books, and a music stand were clustered in the corner. There was merchandise from Mistleville.

And in the middle of my purple bed, beneath the window against the opposite wall, tuning the strings of a springcase, a music bow stick in her other hand, lay a pale-skinned damsel with bushy brows and jutting teeth. Her bundled black hair glittered from her ears upward with white dots like stars, which I thought might explain the spilled powder on the desk and floor. One indigo eye studied me with thick wariness where I hovered at the door, freckled and fuming in my marbled selkie coat and bare feet. A solid, shiny, healthy six-pointed crown floated above her head. She wore my favorite dusty-gray sweater that I'd long since grown out of (or one that looked just like it, more likely, since even my optimistic outlook on life wouldn't let me pretend the old thing had survived for hundreds of thousands of years). Either way, it didn't quite fit on her slender form and slipped from her left shoulder.

I spun with a sweep of wings and flew back down the hallway, slapping my hand against the wall every three wingbeats, and finally drew up in front of his chair again. One arm flailed behind me. "What happened to my room?"

As Sanderson's whining faded into pleas to be picked up, Ambrosine put his hand to the thin instrument across his eyes and gazed at me in sheer disappointment. "You realize, I hope, that you've been gone for long beyond three hundred thousand years. Things change in that time, speck."

"Who is she? Your prostitute? My prostitute?"

"My daughter, actually; your sister. Nice try."

"That's even more disgusting than my theory." I glared at Sanderson's uncovered ears. He blinked at me with anxious eyes. "Do you even realize how old you are?"

Ambrosine snorted. "Seven hundred eight thousand's hardly old. I plan to live to see a million like your grandfather Praxis. And I wasn't much over four hundred thousand when I had Emery. That's far younger than your age now, and you've got a nymph."

"Emery? That's her name?" I tightened my knuckles into the folds of China's coat sleeves. "You used my name? You didn't have the right."

"I liked it," he said with a pouting lower lip.

"What about Solara?"

"What about Solara? I got lonely with you away from home. I have needs." His attention went back down to Sanderson, and he made a rolling motion with his left hand several times near his ear. "Don't get all steamed about it. You know how I feel about bitter emotions. There's ice cream in the icebox, and you're welcome to take all you like if it means you'll cool off."

Shaking my head, I sat down in the gray chair opposite him. "No. No, I forgive you. You make a decent point. I chose to leave, and things are different now than they once were. I understand that… Now then. Ambrosine, may we talk, grown drake to grown dra-"

"Get yourself some ice cream, Fergus. You need it."

I didn't move at first. Then, teeth in my lip, I peeled my wings from the chair and headed into the kitchen. It didn't look anything like the one from my memories at all; he'd changed even the chairs and cupboard doors. The windows had starry blue covers that closed. Both the curtains and tablecloth looked as though they were spun by the same knowing hand as whoever had knitted the blankets in the other room. Emery's, I figured.

The first thing I grabbed was a bright clear bottle bubbling with pink liquid up on a high shelf. After several minutes of fumbling amongst mugs and silverware, I managed to open the icebox trapdoor and locate the ice cream as well. I withdrew a small carton of yale milk for Sanderson. Sigh of relief.

"And get me a bowl and a spoon, would you, too? You're dazzling, thanks."

I slammed the icebox lid. After re-checking all the usual drawers and cupboards and hideaways, and then some of the unusual ones, I finally had to settle for pulling a bowl dabbed with spaghetti sauce out of the sink and rinsing it off with the nearly-drained water pail. Horrible, awful mess. We'd never had piles of dirty dishes like this when I lived here- I'd seen to that from the moment I could float, and those were the days before kitchen wands. Then I returned to the den.

"Where did you get that?" I asked Sanderson, who sat in the center of the old black coffee table, and then I said, "Did you actually give Sanderson chocolate?"

"Yes. He wanted it. I'm the grandfather now. I'm allowed to spoil. Look, he likes it. It's not my place to pry into the nature of his existence or your own conscience, but it's been nearly a hundred thirty thousand years since Cosmo Cosma was born, and even under the circumstances, I'm excited. Me, with a grandnymph! An adorable one!" Ambrosine broke another chunk from his chocolate bar and held it in front of Sanderson. He twitched it. Sanderson reached out with his arms without abandoning the cross-legged position he'd taken up. I resisted the urge to take him back.

"I would prefer it greatly if you didn't do that. I didn't want him to taste straight sugar until he's nearer age of majority at 200,000."

"I did a fine job raising you, didn't I? Where's that chocolate-maple ice cream?"

I eased open the blue lid. It came with a pop, releasing the sweet waft of caffeine. Three spoons had been stabbed into what little remained of the dessert. My eyes trailed up to Ambrosine's face as he smiled at them, lost in his memories, and licked his lips.

I found a clay tablet and stylus for Sanderson to entertain himself with. Then I stood there (Well, floated there) with my arms folded behind my back for two long minutes as Ambrosine scooped his ice cream, and I counted out the flickering passing wingbeats. At last, I slid my hand beneath my coat and brought out the cherry soda. I set it on the table and knelt down.

"Father, would you like to have a drink with me?"

Ambrosine glanced away from Sanderson at last. "Don't think I don't know what you're trying to pull, Fergus."

"I wasn't trying to disguise it. Ah, well. It was worth at least the attempt." One hand on my cheek, I flicked a nail against the bottle. Glass sang. "It's been a year since I've so much as glanced at a soda. My plan was to drink with you often, the price on me. I suppose I can forgo those future bottles so I might be able to afford more milk for Sanderson. He's still relatively new to the whole weaning business, you know, and he likes the stuff. But, of course…" Here I took the bottle by the neck and tilted it towards me, raising my eyebrows in my father's direction. "You'll have to drink sometime. All I have to do is wait."

Ambrosine hesitated.

"All right. A quick drink tonight, to celebrate my only son coming home. But don't expect me to sugar myself into a puddle."

"Of course you won't." After my father had sent me to fetch two glasses, I poured the soda between them. "No," I told Sanderson, pushing him down the coffee table, "you stay there and drink your yale milk. There we are."

"Now Fergus, you'll take the first sip, or I won't drink."

I shrugged and did so. After a few minutes of waiting, Ambrosine was satisfied.

Once I had given Sanderson another stylus, and once I'd watched my father down a few shots, I leaned across the table with fingers interlocked. "You know I don't beat bushes, so let's begin."

"Dazzle me."

"For some time now I've been thinking that I'm interested in taking over the family business. More specifically, the part of it that involves actual business and management. I do not want, and will not, become your doe-eyed therapist puppet. What hoops would you like me to jump through in order to achieve my goal?"

Pause. "You want Wish Fixers?"

"That's exactly the one."

Ambrosine frowned into his glass. "I haven't thought about it. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to let the place go. It's been in the Whimsifinado line for, mm… Must be going on three million years about now. Long before the Unwinged began walking the Earth, long before the will o' the wisps, long before Krisday… Even before the Anti-Fairies really manifested themselves into an organized society, so well before the great war that led to the Divide."

"I may have been born with a genetic mutation, but I'm a Whimsifinado too."

"Yes, but you said no. I sought my heir elsewhere. My plan was to give it to Emery."

My fingers stiffened on the edge of the table. Competition. I tongued my cheek as I took a long sip of soda and stalled. When I put the glass down, I dabbed traces of sugar from my mouth. "I'm the firstborn, and a gyne. I believe that between your offspring, it is to go to me."

"Gyne?" Sanderson asked, lifting his head from his work. "What's 'gyne'?"

"Mm. That's a pointy point, Fergus. Alright. You're mature enough, aren't you? Stockily built and braced for anything. Got a squeaker of your own biting at your heels. S'pose I could give you the place - keys, files, income, bills, free reign - for three thousand thousand."

There was a pause as I worked out the math from the slight slurring hiccup of his words. Then, "Three thousand thousand? That's… three million, actually. Of what?"

"Of cash, of course."

"Three million lagelyn? For that little fixer-upper?"

"It's a good business coming up on its three millionth birthday," Ambrosine said as he took another sip. His lowered eyes glimmered. He wasn't so drunk after all. He was playing with me.

I wanted to knock that glass out of his hand and watch it shatter to the floor. I wanted to grab the bottle and down its remaining precious carbonated liquid myself, or pour the contents out over the dirt and rocks. Instead, I pressed my lips tight and waited until I was sure the pink sparks of magic in my blood had cooled down to purple. "Three million is a… rather steep price. That's one hundred and twenty-six million els. My thought was that since I am your son - unless I'm mistaken, the only offspring of your first mate - managing the business ought to be my birthright. It's written out in the legal inheritance laws. Check with the Eroses. Situations like these are how and why the social ladder came to be in the first place."

"Are you? Did it?"

I raised my eyebrow. "It ought to be my birthright, unless my assumption that Emery came around after a random one-night stand is incorrect, and you're implying that Solara mothered her herself. In which case, my limited respect for her has just dipped further, if she didn't have the meaty guts to notch your wings and yet believes herself entitled to have her way with you when it pleases her. So either I've lost respect for her, or I've lost it for you for mating purely for entertainment. Take your pick."

"There are damsels," came the evasive answer. When he lowered his gaze again, I watched a rosy glow light up his cheeks and neck. "How high can you count, Ferg? Double it. Hic. Pardon me. You left. I needed an heir."

"Congratulations: You sicken me. And here upper school taught us that fairies only give their souls away once."

"Hm. Yes, I'd argue that they do. Maybe love doesn't have anything to do with - hic - anything. Maybe. I'd have expected you to think as much, seeing as your little family seems to be short one damsel."

"Faking the hiccups is pointless, you realize."

Ambrosine leaned back in his chair, dropping the light swirl in his voice. "Hmm… Yes. As I understand it, you can either buy Wish Fixers off me for three million, or you can wait another 325,000 or so years and I just might be old and senile enough to reconsider. Alternatively, you may bide your time until a murder weapon untouched by magic does me in, or perhaps until some heavy sickness hits me after my immune system finally collapses, and I suppose that maybe, legally, the place will be yours anyway."

He smiled thinly when he saw what had to be a look of stunned disgust upon my face. "Ooh, I wonder what you're thinking right now. Where do you draw the line, my dear salty gyne? Would you chase after a mercenary and have me killed to save yourself three million lagelyn? Or possibly, challenge me to a fight yourself? A rematch? You probably have a fighting chance, even if I did sorely whip your apexes last time around. I know you want to." No answer. Ambrosine leaned across the coffee table on his elbows, the sodaglass resting between his fingertips. "I know you really, really want to, Fergy."

"It is not my intention to kill anyone for the sake of my own selfish interests. Despite my freckles, I am a well-adjusted member of society. Such a thing is beneath me."

"Awfully stiff and syrupy-sweet way you said that, speck."

I shook my head, keeping my gaze level with his as Sanderson mumbled about the details of his drawing. "No. No, Ambrosine. Though you may have disowned me from a young age, I could never allow myself to play a part in murdering you."

"Though I may have disowned you! What? And who was the one who had the idea to wander Earth among the Unwinged for over 320,000 years?"

"They're innovative," I retorted. "I rather like them. You know, Ambrosine, I think they'll really become something great. They've shown they're capable of communicating and have even expressed thoughts and desires on their own. I don't imagine it will be long before they begin making actual verbal wishes of their own, just as well as any Milesian or Yugopotamian. That's why I want Wish Fixers. I'm going to capitalize on this by the time Amity Angel Safety and Protective Recall Agency hits the scene. If we invest in that, we ought to strike it big."

"And you'll have your Wish Fixers when I get my three million."

"What do you even need that money for?"

Ambrosine shrugged. "Absolutely nothing. I just want to see you work for it. You've been playing the bum-on-the-street card for far too long, I think. If you're interested in the business, I want to know that it will be in safe hands. It's a living, breeding thing. Hic. I need to know it will survive even if someday I join the gone and forgotten. That's what good fathers do."

"Is the business a little unicorn?" Sanderson asked, but neither of us answered him.

"Dazzle that," I said finally. "You can have your three million. I'll work hard. You'll see that I will, and I'll manage to pull it together somehow."

"See that you do."

"You know I keep my promises. Now, second order of business." I drew air through my nostrils and straightened my shoulders. "I need a new wand."

"He wants a new wand, Sanderson!"

My fingers tightened around the neck of my sodaglass, which I'd hardly had more than two sips from despite myself. "I think it's a reasonable request. I'll need to have my license renewed, and I've gone so long without one that it only seems fair that maybe you could-"

"Which number is this, then?"

"What?"

"Which number wand is this? How many have you lost or chewed to a thread in all your life?"

I felt the creases march along my forehead. "I'm not sure that's releva-"

"How many have you ruined or misplaced?"

"… Twelve."

Ambrosine nodded slowly, like this proved multiple points and pleased him. I shifted in my chair.

"What I need is a wand that makes noise. Something I can just… just… trigger from a distance, so I never lose it again. And not wood- the flaw in milbark is that it tastes too sweet." I patted around the pockets of China's coat and my pouch. "I'm not even sure what I keep on my person anymore. Old notes, neatly folded inside one another… Those were from long ago. My dream is to afford a filing cabinet one of these days."

"Doesn't Sanderson have a wand?" He asked it through the next sip of soda like an afterthought, although it clearly wasn't.

"I'm assuming that's a joke. If I can't afford one, he doesn't get one either."

"You realize you'll stunt his growth that way." The glass clicked back on the table and left a wet circle across the wood. I took up my own and shrugged.

"At this moment, I have bigger concerns on my mind. I didn't want him anyway, and until I manage to gather my feet under me, we'll both have to get by on the things we do have."

"It's just you and the baby, then?"

"Just us. Wandering among the Unwinged and town bubbles and such."

Ambrosine studied my midsection with vague interest. I curled my upper lip.

"I highly doubt there's another one on the way. Not ever again. That would be ridiculous. Sanderson is some sort of freak accident, and nothing more."

"Are you certain you don't recall the mother's face?"

"I am, because he has none."

"He can't have none."

"Sanderson can. He's some sort of random but powerful wish made by some miserable child on a distant planet or plane of existence or parallel dimension."

"Well, he's obviously not wishbirthed. He can't fly. Besides that, wishborn eggs are just dormant; they still can't fertilize without a damsel's sperm."

Ignoring him, I went on. "I loathe that people can twist the fabric of the entire universe in ways like that. And the Keepers of Da Rules just let them get away with it, time and time again. It's not the way I'd rule the world, and let's rest the case at that."

Ambrosine poured himself another glass of sparkling cherry. His hand shook a bit at the wrist. "How exactly might you manage the universe, Fergus?"

"With at least some sense of order. With close attentiveness and a sense of justice. And records that are always up to date and, most importantly, an easily-accessible complaints department for when things like this happen, so mistakes can be looked into and corrected." I put out my hands, palms facing together and the fingers pointed at nothing and yet everything. "We have power and an advanced, high-functioning society. We have teleportation and, albeit in a limited fashion, some sense of time travel. Is it really too much to ask that people who've been beaten down get the help they need? No. Or at least I think it shouldn't be. If I held the power, I would do my utmost to ensure I helped everyone, regardless of their species or their circumstance."

"Even if they're an Anti-Fairy?"

"Why not?"

"Even if they're huldufólk?"

"Without hesitation."

"Even if they're a brownie?"

"I… I see no reason why I shouldn't."

"Even if they were penniless with holes in their pockets and wings torn at the jugal fold?"

"I would help to situate them back on their feet, yes. It's the right thing to do. They could pay me back later."

Ambrosine shrugged. "I don't know who you think will be paying for your funeral ceremony."

"If all goes as planned, Sanderson will be in a position to make the arrangements I desire concerning the end of my life, and it's going to be spectacular. Very. Anyway, that's beside the point I was attempting to make. I have had very few contacts with any Fairies, both drakes and damsels, for the last dozen hundred years, and none of those meetings dissolved into any deep relations. However Sanderson came to be in the empty pocket of space inside me, I never met his mother."

"Perhaps your mind was wiped afterwards-"

I shook my head. My chipped fingernails clipped on the sodaglass. I raised it to my lips. "There are no gaps in my memory. I'm certain of it. Sanderson admittedly appears to be something like my offspring in some puzzling, mutated way, but I expect him to be both the first and the last. I'm beginning to get on in age, I have never had any real interest in settling seriously with some pretty-haired damsel, and I do not plan to engage in any…" I made a swirly motion with my finger. "… lasting relationships of that sort now. It simply doesn't appeal to me. Sanderson I'll keep because I cannot justify disowning him, especially with fairy crossbreeds set out on the chopping block as I'm sure you're aware, but I wouldn't stand for having another offspring. I have him, he is my companion and my heir, and he's all I need. Now. On the subject of that wand."

Ambrosine drummed his fingers together in front of his nose. "If I were to bequeath to you such a wand, how might you use it?"

"Sparingly," was my instant answer. "My funds are limited as they are and I can't afford paying for the more grandiose items of interest. No. I'd keep it on hand for emergencies and perhaps just a few instances that aren't emergencies, but that I consider worth the expense. In this way, I might have the magic on hand, but I also won't be draining my money for the Fairy Elder to redistribute. I won't waste my cash on frivolities and will manage it carefully so someday I might lift Wish Fixers off your hands. And that's the other reason Sanderson doesn't get one. I can't afford to have him waving it about willy-nilly while I end up sending money to the Council for his every whim at the end of the month."

"Sorry, what?" Sanderson asked, looking up from his clay drawings.

"Yes, you would. Don't give me more of your sass."

Ambrosine got up and floated over to the sink. He rummaged around a few drawers before shaking his head and leaving the keeping room. Several more minutes ticked along in silence.

"Did you finish your milk, Sanderson?" I turned out the pockets of China's gray and black coat. "Didn't I have a pacifier for you I picked up in Millshire?"

Sanderson pointed his stylus towards my left side.

"Right. In the shirt. Thank you for being attentive. I do hope this becomes a thing with you, because I could use a second pair of eyes."

"Why?"

"To watch out for scary people and things that are not safe. Being safe is the best."

"I can do that," he said, sticking the pacifier in his mouth. He held up his clay impressions so I could see what he'd made. "Thish is you holding me tight. When Ka'wysta tried to take me away."

I wrinkled my nose. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You hugged Sandyson."

"I never did that."

He sighed. "Okay, I'll d'waw it again. This time, watch."

"There we are," Ambrosine said, returning to the kitchen with a wand. It was worn at the tip and even slightly bent, but it still began to glow when he gave it a trial wave in the air. "I think it belonged to your mother, probably. Or to one of the damsels who came after her. For my tea parties, I mean. I suppose it doesn't matter, and I imagine whoever its previous owner was won't mind you having it, seeing as it's been left at my place for so long without bringing her back for it."

He handed the wand to me. I held it near my face and squinted. It was an outdated model. Chesberry wood was thick and knotted at its very core, and the wand's handle had obviously been thinned out from overuse of drawing on its magic.

"Here." Ambrosine reached across the table and handed me the instrument that had been balanced on his nose. "Cloudland technology's come a long way in the 300,000-plus years you've been gone. Put these on."

I lowered the wand and took them, but I didn't trust them. "What do they do?"

"They'll help your squinting problem. Just stick them on your nose. The arms hook behind your ears. You'll see. Come on," he wheedled when I continued to hesitate. "You trust your own father, don't you?"

For a moment more I stared at the instrument, tapping it with my finger to see if it sprinkled any purple dust (it didn't and almost certainly wasn't magical), folding the arms in and out of position. At last, bracing myself, I slid them onto my nose. And I almost jumped out of my wings as every wrinkle, every hair on Ambrosine's face swam into sharp, clear-cut focus.

"Sacred smoof! I can see again. Like I'm younger than Emery."

He smiled, his rounded chin resting in his liver-spotted hand. "Can you now? They're called spectacles. Concave lenses to warp your vision, I think is what they said. In the morning I'll take you to get your eyes examined, and we can get you a pair of glasses of your very own. May I have those back now?"

"What?" I asked from where I'd wandered on the other side of the room. "Oh. Yes, thank you."

He leveled his eyes with mine as I sat beside Sanderson again. "Hic. Now, realize Fergus that one of these days, you have to get truly organized."

"I will. But that's difficult to do when you've been wandering Earth for a good 300-"

"I mean it. If you lose this wand, I will not replace it."

I unfolded and then reshuffled my wings. "I can organize if I so put my mind to it. Really. I just haven't found the right… I need a large, spacious place of my own, where I'm not bound to the rules and regulations of the Fairies."

"You say that like you aren't one."

"It's the fairies who claim that because of my wings and lopsided magic, I'm not one of them."

"And now you say that like I'm not even here," Ambrosine remarked, sounding half hurt. "Anyway, the whole cloudlands in this quadrant of the universe is under Fairy jurisdiction. You'd have to travel lighteons to find some place it wasn't, and when you did you'd simply be playing in somebody else's sandbox. There are no final frontiers. The universe is spherical and as it expands outward, it's already owned by someone else. Everything has been discovered. You'll always be stepping on somebody's - hic - toes or tentacles or hooves. The rules have been erected and this is where it ends."

I leaned both hands against my cheeks, elbows planted on the table. "I was born in the wrong generation."

It was his turn to snort. He readjusted his little spectacles. "Dear smoof, Fergus, did you even go to school? Of all the eggs in my dome, the Eroses ensured yours fertilized for good reason. Of course you belong in this generation. They don't make mistakes. Their entire company is founded on that motto. They eliminate their flawed children, you know."

I picked up my mother's wand again, wondering exactly what had been going through her mind on the day she'd left us to cause her to forget it in Ambrosine's care. "I suppose that… Although I was originally not going to toe Plane 1 and ask it, if you're in the mood for being generous and caring anyway… Is there any chance I could also borrow a wand for Sanderson while he still has nursing milk in him?"

"No need for borrowing. I'll buy him his first one, as a birthday present. But the child-safety locks stay on."

As though he didn't understand the importance of Ambrosine and I actually ensuring he would be capable of using flight or magic for the remainder of his life, Sanderson put down his stylus and rubbed his eyes. "Time for the Sandman to pay his dues," Ambrosine guessed, watching him suck on his pacifier with intent to kill. "Let's bundle you into bed while you're all tuckered out. If you're not going to be sleeping with him tonight, Fergus, will the chairs do fine as a bed if we push them together? When the Big Wand's field gets rejuvenated Friday morning, I'll turn the old storage room across from Emery's quarters into your new pad."

I assured him that the soft chairs would do fine now. After he'd taken Sanderson, I carried the lantern along the hall into the washroom, looked in the mirror, and sighed. That cowlick in my hair that Kalysta had given me was still there. Because I was going to rinse my hands anyway, I dipped them in the washing pail and made an attempt to press it flat.

My hair stuck down like trampled grass, but it would prickle back up in a matter of hours, if not minutes. It always did. Maybe one of these days, I'd have to locate another will o' the wisp whose saliva was old and strong enough to rival Kalysta's, and request that they lick it down for me permanently.

I traced my finger around one thick curl. One of these days. Maybe. I did look awfully handsome.

Setting those thoughts aside, I took a moment to stare around the old, vaguely-familiar washroom. The towels and small cloths were the same ones I remembered, or the same color if nothing else. As I pulled open a drawer, my entire being groaned.

"There's toothpaste. Actual toothpaste. Oh my dust, I've wanted toothpaste so badly. I will never complain about flossing again. And wing brushes too! And I don't have to share it!"

Ambrosine leaned his shoulder against the door frame as I popped the sterile bubble from around the two unopened brushes. "Enlighten me on something, Fergus," he said, with all the casualness of a splintering eggshell.

"Sure."

He flicked a dusty fluff from the collar of his vest. "Regardless of whether or not you actually remember mating with Sanderson's mother, do you have any idea what color magic the two of you might have used to fertilize his egg?"

It took me a moment to process the question. Then the wing brush plunged from my fingers and clattered across stone. I looked up, my fingers curling inward. "I… I'm sure I…"

His eyes were grim behind the spectacles. "It obviously wasn't 'indigo', because you definitely couldn't have gone three seasons without any sleep. As pale and scrawny as he is, I've seen a lot of nymphs and he doesn't seem quite sickly enough to be green. Red undoes itself. Blue likely would have faded by this point too. Pinks always show some obvious condition such as being deaf or blind or mute or lame or grounded. Now, what I'm asking is, you didn't use purple, did you?"

As I took a tiny step backwards, I listened to the sound of Sanderson turning the bark strips of a storybook on the other side of the wall, undoubtedly clutching his pacifier in his left fist so he might tell himself aloud about the pictures, although his grasp of the Snobbish alphabet was still up to some debate. He had Rapunzel in his lap, by the sound of it. Ambrosine's favorite.

"It was yellow. Of course I would have used yellow. Yellow sticks, and a purple-born would die when I do just like my anti-fairy. I didn't use purple. I wouldn't. I know better than that. You'd have to be a smoof not to."

With a soft sigh through his nose, Ambrosine touched the apex of his long dragonfly wing to one of my misshapen ones. "No, the Eroses wouldn't have let that happen. I'm sure that when you register that wand in your name come morning you'll be fined for their services automatically, and I can see for myself this will send you into debt."

He coughed on another hiccup- one that probably wasn't faked after how much he'd drank. Bubbles always had given him such hiccups, and when I wasn't much more than a nymph I used to think it was funny. Not so much now. I stared at my knuckles and squeezed.

"What I'm trying to tell you, Fergus, is that it's been just me and the house for a long time, and even though Emery's been keeping me company, I miss my snarky square son. I would want nothing more than for you to stay on with me for a bit until you manage to get your wings in the air again. You can come work at Wish Fixers. You know. Until you buy it off me. Or until Emery takes it first and kicks you to the curb."

"I never finished school," I mumbled, tightening my grip.

Ambrosine shook his head. "No, and you're not qualified to do therapy counseling work, but I need someone to help me organize. And perhaps you could look into that complaints department idea of yours."

I was by no means a fool, so I accepted his offer of work and shelter while it was on the table. But later when I floated down the hall to take up my place on the cushioned chairs in the den - Ambrosine had taken it upon himself to push two of them together so they formed a bed, and brought out blankets - I found Emery waiting for me. She perched on the arm of Ambrosine's favorite seat with one of her legs crossed over the other, both hands resting on a pale ankle.

"Who do you think you are?" she wanted to know, keeping her voice as level as our father's. "You can't flit in here after over three hundred millennia demanding Ambrosine sign my birthright over to you that same night, for King Nuada's sake."

"Who am I? Who am I? Well. I could be mistaken, but I've been informed that I'm Fergus Whimsifinado. Your elder brother and therefore your superior."

She jabbed her thumb into her chest like after invoking King Nuada's name in vain, she was ready to turn about and praise the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann as a whole. "Wish Fixers is supposed to be mine. Ambrosine as good as promised it to me. You dropped out of school and he needed an heir. It's literally my destiny."

"I tried only dropping out of the psychology program," I corrected, lifting one brow. It didn't seem like it would be doing any good to yell at her like Otto. "I took business classes instead; those are the only ones I excelled at in all my many years of upper school. I think I'm more qualified to run the place than you are. Nice try, arguing destiny with a gyne."

Emery stared at me, her lower lip vibrating, and then she did something that I wasn't expecting. She began to cry.

I pulled back my head. "What? Why are you upset? I'm the one who's had to scrape by for the past 300,000 years while you made yourself comfortable with my things. Stop. Stop." I climbed onto the chair beside her and put my hand to her mouth. "Stop it. Stop making annoying noises. You're a grown damsel. After the year I've just had to put up with, I don't want to hear it. Why are you crying?"

She peeled my fingers back, sniffling. "You're just picking on me in my own home, calling me worthless. You walked in and you're trying to steal everything I've ever wanted. After all of Ambrosine's stories, you're finally here and you h-hate me."

"That's not my fault." I lit my wings and drew myself back into the air. "Look at this logically: If one of us isn't supposed to be here, it's you. See? If Ambrosine just wanted an heir, then you only exist because I left at all. You should really be on your knees thanking me. So you have no right to tell me I don't belong in my own house. And, I might add, that's my favorite sweater you're wearing."

Emery glanced at me up and down as I hovered there, which at last gave me the opportunity to study her four long dangling wings. Though they shared traits with those of the dragonfly, they were of the indirect muscle structure. She was a crossbreed (so not Solara's offspring, then). A faint brown brushed along her costas, but it wasn't anywhere as deep as mine, and particularly after I'd moulted into my adult set. Hers were much more round than they were square.

Then, wiping off her tears (rather quickly- I imagine they might have been faked), she said, "I think it's a little small for you now, dear brother. Maybe you should land again- your weight is straining your poor wings. I guess that answers why I always thought this thing was stretched around the middle. Here. Do you want it back?" Without waiting for me to answer, Emery stripped off the sweater and tossed it my way. Then she flopped back on the chair-bed. My hand twitched halfway to my mouth before I could stop it.

"Ah. Y-you didn't have to do that now. You have your own room. Well, my room, but it's- it's a private room, for doing that type of thing. Emery!"

"This bothers you?" she asked, rolling around in the blankets Ambrosine had pulled out for me.

"You stop that." I snapped my fingers twice, but Emery ignored them. "Are you trying to pull something of the- of the sexual nature here? I may be a gyne, but I still understand basic forms of self-restraint."

"Ew, no." Her head popped out from under a lump of fabric. "I didn't know being a gyne applied to incest stuff too."

"It doesn't. Can't you go and be disgusting elsewhere? Ambrosine!" I turned my back on her, wings twitching. "Emery's in here without her shirt on."

"Fergus is thinking inappropriate thoughts about me!"

"What am I supposed to think? There is a partially naked damsel whom I didn't grow up with in my bed. Ambrosine, get her out!"

His voice trickled out from up the hall: "Fergus, do you even hear yourself?"

When I peeked again, Emery was rubbing my blanket in circles against her bare, very damseline chest. I stared down at her, then spun around and took off down the hall. Emery's reaction was delayed, but when she realized what I was doing, she bolted after me. I reached my old room first and slammed the door. She shrieked and pounded the flats of her hands against the wood while I kept it pinned shut with my back.

"Ambrosine, Ambrosine, Fergus locked me out of my room! My wand's in there!"

"Did he? Hic. Good show, Fergus! I've been trying to do that for centuries. Emery, you can go sleep at that Winterfly drake's house tonight."

Her hands slipped. "But-"

Rapid, skipping wingbeats. "It's high time you got to work on a family of your own, sunshine. How is that courtship dance of yours coming along? You'll never impress anyone clumsy as you are. I told you not to cut off so much of your hair. If your hips were any wider, I'd think you were a drake."

I kept my ear to the door, grim-faced, as they squabbled about earrings and eyelashes. Evidently, Emery was done with me. Almost a pity- I'd been curious to know how she planned to draw me from the room.

"Note to self," I muttered, pulling out an invisible tablet so I could scratch my next statement off on a list. "Never name any offspring 'Emery'. It's been contaminated."

Our host tore his bedroom apart the following morning in search of Sanderson. The noise woke me, and we discovered him curled up among my blankets… Somehow. Slippery little bug. After breakfast, Ambrosine bartered with Emery to have her cover for him at Wish Fixers, and then he poofed the three of us straight to Twinkletuft's Wandporium in Faeheim. A damsel called Lilie (and one of the huldufólk by the sparkling violet cheeks) helped Sanderson determine which training wand and starpiece combination suited him best. He had the most triumphant smile on his face when he handed his pick - gingertie wood and a solid crystal cap - over to me so I could complete the tabletwork.

"That's the heaviest training wand I've ever seen," Ambrosine grunted as he scanned his own wand for payment. "The thing isn't liable to break, and in a fight you could block your face with that handle like a lightning rod to resist or outright avoid your fair share of heavy shocks, but are you sure you can carry that all day every day, scuttlebug?"

Sanderson nodded. "And then I can do tricks?"

"You can do magic," I corrected. "If you gave a wand to an elf or dwarf or selkie or leprechaun, all they can manage is 'tricks.' You're a fairy, and you're capable of magic. And you'll learn to fly."

He fluttered his pale wings.

"Aren't you lucky," Lilie told him as his genetic swipe was registered in the wand's core. "It's not everybody who gets to choose their very first one themselves. Name?"

"'Sanderson' will suffice."

"I need both a first and a surname, please. Which is it?"

I squirmed my wings. Will o' the wisp and Anti-Fairy damsels alike passed down their family names. Sanderson had been raised since birth by an Ivorie, which was not a name I ever wished to speak or hear or think about again. Who else could have been his mother? I had never learned Pip's even if breeding outside the Seelie Court wasn't a physical impossibility for me.

While I was a Whimsifinado myself, part of me wanted to remain convinced that Sanderson couldn't truly be a legitimate offspring of mine. Not if I didn't remember mating with a damsel or his fertilization. Not if someone else had wished him into existence and stuffed him inside me because I happened to have the room available, no matter what Ambrosine said. I was a vase and he the arrangement of flowers: carrying him and helping him stand and thrive didn't mean I'd truly created him. I didn't want people to know he shared his surname with me. I didn't want people to ask after his mother. I just wanted to forget.

It was simply that… ever since I was young and raised by a single parent, I'd told myself that if I was ever going to raise nymphs, I wanted a mate by my side to assist me in the work. I really didn't want to place the Whimsifinado name upon him. Admitting in the official records that Sanderson was mine and mine alone meant confirming to myself that my plans had not succeeded. That I had failed. That I was incapable of following the most basic natural behavior in the universe of finding a mate. That I wasn't a real fairy. That I was broken.

Desperately at a loss, and since Ambrosine was distracted, I muttered, "It's actually 'Mister Sanderson' in full. He's a Water year. Just spell it out."

"All right, if that's what you want. I knew a kobold named Fire once."

That was it, or so we thought. The red gingertie wood was stained black to indicate that it was active and legal. But as we were walking out, I turned the wand over between my fingers and spotted my own name engraved faintly among the bark-like pattern near the base.

"Hold on." We went back to the desk. "Excuse me, I think there might be a mistake. This wand is registered under my name."

Lilie smiled in absentminded apology. "I must have pushed a key too fast- it's easily fixed. I'll get another slip and we'll have him spit on the plate again."

I lifted Sanderson onto the counter once more, and when Lilie had stuck the wand in its ivory holster and made the proper sterilized arrangements with the bowl the star cap rested in, Sanderson offered up another dab of saliva.

"What was his name, again?"

"Sanderson."

A minute passed. Lilie tapped her cheek. "That's interesting. The system is refusing to update the file. Well, it is little outdated, and it's never done well with adding new people post the instar stage of development. Allow me to dab his fingerprints in a bit of clay and I'll have someone with a wand poof them off to the Eros Nest so they can be run through their files, and you'll be all set… Rosa? Can you spare a wingbeat?"

I leaned on my folded arms and we waited. Eventually Sanderson's prints were taken and the tablet was sent off. But after a few more minutes, it rematerialized in Lilie's basket with a puff of pink smoke. Lying on top of it was a strip of parchment splattered with an ink question mark. She stared at it, then looked to me again with her brow furrowed.

"I'm sorry. There must be some sort of bug in their system right now, because it's claiming he doesn't exist."

"That… doesn't happen."

"No, it doesn't. Well. The cherubs are still migrating, so I'm sure they're very busy with that. Overuse may be wearing on their system too. Um. If you like, you can keep the wand with your name as-is, or I can hold onto it and try to figure this out, and you can come back at the end of the month and try again."

Having the wand registered in my name meant that Sanderson would be drawing significant power from my life force rather than his. But Ambrosine was watching and I was impatient. And after all, it was only one little training wand. So I said simply, "Hm. I'll take it for now, if that works for you. Thank you for all your help." And we left.

Holding Sanderson in my arms as he waved his wand about, I gulped the taste of cold cloudland air through my nostrils. After over 300,000 years of mostly living away from the world, I was back in business once again, where I rightfully belonged and where I planned to ever remain.

END ACT 1