Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dimmadelphia’s Enrichment Academy tries very hard not to feel like a school, but it smells too much like standard cleaner, dry-erase markers, and budding ambition to be anything else.

The floors are a polished linoleum, the color of pink lemonade, and the brick walls are mostly yellow with a random pink brick here or there to match the floor. Lockers coded by learning pathways and corkboards filled with school or club events and fliers line the walls between classroom doors. In the corner of each hallway, there’s a little potted tree surrounded by motivational quotes about mindfulness and growth. But even the most enrichment-friendly school still sounds like a hundred kids cracking open juice boxes and zipping Velcro sneakers when lunch starts.

Hazel takes a seat at her usual table while her friends hop into the lunch line. She’s got her lunch box already open—triangle-cut sandwiches, strawberries, and a bottle of apple juice. Her backpack hangs off the back of her chair, a pair of pink and green bubble fidget toys clipped to the strap.

As she waits, she looks around the cafeteria. This room, compared to the many other rooms in the school, is a cavernous, sunlit space that tries, valiantly, to disguise itself as something cooler than it is. And the floor, for whatever reason, is white here—still shiny, with little holographic flecks that catch the overhead lighting and shimmer under students’ sneakers, and the walls are entirely blue. One wall is entirely windows, fitted with pale yellow roller blinds that are almost always halfway down, letting in just enough sunlight to make the place feel lively but not too distracting.

The tables are long and plastic, with a silver napkin holder at each end. Some have stickers peeling off the sides, where past students have attempted to add more character. One of them might even have a pair of googly eyes.

The lunch lines only serve the basics: pizza triangles, fruit cups, bento snack packs, and mystery casserole with an alarming amount of quinoa. There’s a mural on the far wall behind the lunch lines of an abstract city skyline with stylized gears and leaves growing out of the buildings. A giant banner above it reads, “Fuel Up Your Brain—Healthy Food, Healthy Mind!” And in the far back corner, there’s a water bottle refill station that hums softly next to the compostable utensils bin.

Noise carries easily here, kids chatter and laugh, and fork tines click against reusable trays. Someone at the center table starts beatboxing with a spoon against a juice box, and someone else joins in with a freestyle poem about the spaghetti on Fridays. There’s always one kid trying to trade carrot sticks for cookies. A pair of teachers monitor from a standing-height table near the mural wall, sipping coffee or green tea and scrolling through emails.

Finally, Hazel sees her friends coming towards her.

“I heard someone from Dimmsdale is opening it,” Winn says, taking a seat with their tray of lunch food. “Like, a real comic book artist. Did indie stuff back in the early 2010s. Self-published before it was cool.”

Hazel blinks. “Opening what?”

“The new comic and game store,” they say, excited. “On Maple and Sixth? It’s called ‘Page Turner Comics.’” They lean forward, brushing a few strands of  pink-purple hair from their eyes. “You seriously didn’t know? The flyers are everywhere.”

“Oh, that thing?” Jasmine pipes up, pulling a grape from her fruit cup. “I thought it was just some old guy trying to sell baseball cards or whatever to weird dads.”

Winn scoffs, looking personally offended for the guy. “He’s not old. He’s like… in his mid- to late-thirties. That’s peak creative age. And I saw the logo—it has original art. Not just licensed stuff. Like real brushwork, thick lines, maybe ink and wash.”

Hazel raises an eyebrow. “You can tell all that from a flyer?”

“Winn can tell what cereal an artist eats based on how they draw shoes,” Jasmine teases, brown eyes twinkling with mischief.

“Very funny,” Winn mutters. “Anyway, my mom read on the neighborhood board that the guy moved nearby with his daughter. Some people said it was kind of… sudden.”

Hazel quietly pops a strawberry in her mouth, eyes flicking toward her backpack. The two fidget toys clipped to her backpack twitch a little as they listen in, sharing their only thoughts between themselves.

“Oooooooh,” murmurs Cosmo, voice muffled and invisible to anyone without the right kind of wishing imagination. “I love mysterious strangers with hidden pasts! That’s how half of my favorite soap operas start!”

“That was your soap opera,” Wanda deadpans. “It got canceled after one episode. They just couldn’t understand art.”

Hazel bites back a smile and looks back at Winn and Jasmine. They’re talking over each other now, arguing good-humoredly that real fans can tell the difference between digital and traditional line art. Hazel attempts to follow along, but before long, her attention drifts again. 

Someone new is moving to town. A new girl. Maybe she’s the same age? She’s also moving here abruptly, kinda like Hazel and her parents did after Antony left for college. Like her, the new girl probably won’t have any friends to speak to or sit with during lunch.

Hazel remembers what that felt like—arriving mid-year with a backpack full of notebooks that didn’t match the school’s supply list, wondering who to sit with, how to make friends. Did anyone think she was cool? Would anyone notice if she never said anything at all? She didn’t have the best of a time for the first couple of weeks, and it’s only thanks to Cosmo and Wanda that she even started coming out of her shell.

“We should be nice to her,” she says suddenly.

Winn pauses mid-rant about brushstroke integrity. “To who?”

“The new girl.” Hazel looks up, firm now. “She’s probably nervous. I mean, who moves mid-year without something weird going on?”

Jasmin shrugs. “Weird isn’t always bad.”

“I didn’t say it was,” Hazel replies, brushing crumbs from her lap. “I just… I think we should make her feel welcome. She’s probably starting sometime soon. If I were her, I’d want someone to talk to.”

Winn sets their juice carton down, a little more carefully than they needed to as a thoughtful expression crosses their features. “You’re right.”

Hazel watches him, surprised he didn’t argue or make a joke.

Jasmin nods once, chewing on a grape. “We’ll sit with her. Or let her sit with us, if she wants. But if she’s weird in a bad way, I reserve the right to text you about it.”

Hazel nods, mostly content with that answer, and munches on another strawberry. The tart sweetness coats her tongue.

She wonders what the new girl likes to do. Does she like learning new things? Will she like rocks? Scary movies? French fries? Since her dad owns a comic shop, does she like Prime Meridian? Or will she be more like Jasmine or Winn? Is she passionate about something specific? Like singing or skateboarding? Or does she prefer to try new things and never settle on a favorite? The possibilities are endless!

“We should figure out what she’s into,” Winn says suddenly, echoing Hazel’s thoughts a little too well.  “Then we won’t sound like total randoms when we talk to her.”

“She’s probably into books,” Jasmin says, flicking a grape stem into her empty cup. “You know, the classic new-girl vibe. Quiet, mysterious, mysterious-er. Probably draws wolves in the margins of her planner.”

Hazel gives a soft snort. “Why wolves?”

“Because that’s what girls draw when they have trauma,” Jasmin replies, deadpan.

“I drew wolves,” Winn says.

“Exactly,” Jasmin answers, smirking.

Hazel rests her chin in her hand and watches the lunchroom’s movement—kids darting between tables, cartons being traded, laughter echoing from the far corner where someone’s trying to see if chocolate milk can be frozen using just ice cubes.

She doesn’t realize how quiet it’s gotten at their end of the table until a voice cuts in from just behind her shoulder.

“Well, if it isn’t Habanero, the Spicy Thinker.”

Hazel groans inwardly before she even turns around. She already knows that voice. She knows the cadence, the smirk laced into every vowel. Dev. He of the oversized name, the stupidly expensive sneakers, and the matching ego—stands there holding his lunch tray like a knight wielding a shield made of juice boxes and lunchables.

“It’s Hazel,” she replies, without inflection. But deep down, the words sting. She misses when they were friends.

“Right, right,” he says, like he’s deeply apologetic and not at all about to make it worse. “Sorry, Hazmat.”

Cosmo’s fidget form gives a tiny offended bounce on her backpack strap. “I liked ‘Habanero.’ He thinks you’re spicy!”

“I’m going to turn him into a pineapple,” Wanda mutters.

“Hazel,” Winn corrects, voice flat. They eye the Dimmadome heritor with a growing sense of disdain.

Dev turns to Winn like he’s just noticed them. “Hey, Winnebago. What’s up?”

“That’s not even—whatever.” Winn exhales through their nose. It’s no use arguing with someone looking for a fight.

“Page Turner Comics,” Jasmin says pointedly, diverting the conversation. “That new store? You heard about it, Dev?”

“Obviously,” Dev scoffs, “My dad said the guy used to work for Pixel Slam Studios. The one who did Starship Bonanza before the lawsuit. Pretty sure he’s, like, totally washed. Moved here to disappear or whatever.”

Hazel’s lips press into a thin line. Part of her secretly wishes that Dev had a brighter outlook on life, but with the way his dad treats him… it’s not something that’ll change so easily on a whim.

“Or maybe he came to start over.” She says.

Dev raises an eyebrow, something about her tone—quiet, calm, not biting but not backing down either—makes him pause. Just for a second. His mouth twitches like he wants to fire back, but the retort never quite makes it past his lips. Instead, he shifts his weight, tray tipping slightly in his hands, and his gaze flickers—just briefly—to Hazel’s face. Not her eyes. Just… somewhere near. Her cheek, maybe. Like if he looks too directly, he might give something away.

Then he clears his throat, one shoulder lifting in a half-hearted shrug. “Whatever. I’m just saying. Could be cool, I guess.”

Hazel narrows her eyes. “You guess?”

Dev doesn’t answer that. Instead, he glances toward the middle of the cafeteria, where Trev and a couple of their usual crew are clustered around a tray of nachos and a phone set on low volume, watching a stream of a game tournament.

“I gotta sit over there,” he says, more to himself than anyone else.

“Later, Hazelnut,” he tosses over his shoulder, voice light again. But there’s a pink tinge creeping up the back of his neck as he walks away, making a show of swaggering toward his usual table like nothing at all just happened.

Hazel watches him go, mostly because he’s still talking as he moves—loud, half-joking jabs at Trev’s lunch choice—and partly because she’s not sure why he came over in the first place. Sure, he teased her like normal, but it wasn’t to the extent he usually does. What’s going on?

Winn arches an eyebrow. “Did he just—”

“Yes,” Jasmin cuts in, blinking after him. “Yes, he did. He absolutely did.” She kicks Hazel lightly under the table.

“What?” Hazel asks, blinking and turning back.

“Nothing,” Jasmin says, voice sing-song.

Winn is smirking into their juice box. “Absolutely nothing,” they add, sipping with theatrical innocence.

Hazel frowns at them both. “Okay, but you’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?” Jasmin asks, wide-eyed.

“The look thing. Where you’re both trying not to laugh like there’s a joke I’m not getting.” She narrows her eyes at her friends. “Is there something on my face?”

“Just the sweet, sweet glow of being admired,” Jasmin says with a fake sigh, as if that explains anything.

Hazel blinks. “What are you talking about?”

Before either of them can answer, the overhead bell trills. A collective groan rises from the room. Shoes squeak on the linoleum floor. Trays clatter into stackable bins. The beatboxer gives one last sad tap to his juice box.

Hazel hastily finishes her juice and starts packing up her lunch, her mind still half-stuck on that look Jasmin gave her. And the one Winn didn’t even try to hide. And Dev, who didn’t say anything that weird, but also hadn’t acted like his usual irritating self.

She clips her lunchbox closed and slings her backpack over one shoulder. The fidget toys bounce against her side as she joins the tide of kids filing out of the cafeteria, Jasmin and Winn close behind.

“Seriously,” she says as they step into the hallway. “What just happened?”

“Nothing,” Winn says again.

“Nothing,” Jasmin echoes.

They share a look behind Hazel’s back.

Hazel huffs and walks a little faster. If there is a joke, she’s going to get to the bottom of it. She just… might have to check her face in the mirror first. Just in case.

—

By the time the last bell rings, Hazel’s still not sure what was weirder: the way Dev casually wandered over to talk to her, or the smug silence from her best friends afterward. They’d stayed maddeningly tight-lipped all the way through sixth period, exchanging glances like two sitcom sidekicks who knew more than they were letting on. Hazel had tried to focus on class—really—but her mind kept circling back, like a bee stuck in a room with one window.

Now she’s speed-walking home, shoes thudding against the pavement. She rounds the corner to her street just in time to catch a glimpse of a large moving truck easing away from the curb, its engine growling low. It’s white and boxy, the kind with faded company lettering half-worn off the side. The ramp clatters up behind it with a bang, and then it pulls off down the block, leaving only the smell of diesel and a few scattered packing peanuts in its wake.

Hazel slows to a halt at the edge of the sidewalk, eyebrows drawing together. She tips her head, eyeing the building in front of her. Her apartment complex is old but sturdy, the kind of place with creaky steps and faded doormats. It’s not the kind of building where people move in often. Most of the tenants have been there for years (except for Hazel and her family). The truck hadn’t been there that morning when she left. Which means someone must have just moved in today.

And any new arrival is kind of a big deal.

Hazel fumbles up the brick stairs and into the front entrance, the old wooden door wheezing shut behind her. She pauses in the foyer, listening. The building smells like it always does—somewhere between old carpet, curry from the third floor, and the faint moldy scent of air from the AC. There’s no noise upstairs. No one is talking or dragging furniture around. For a second, she wonders if maybe she imagined the truck.

But then her gaze catches on something new: a cardboard box tucked awkwardly beside the mailboxes, labeled in thick black marker with a name she doesn’t recognize. T. Turner.

The name doesn’t ring a bell. Definitely new.

Hazel leans a little closer, inspecting the box like it might offer more clues if she just looks hard enough. It’s not taped shut, just folded closed, the kind of thing someone might’ve brought in from the truck but forgotten to take to their apartment.

Her curiosity flares. She lives on the second floor and she knows everyone up there. Cosmo and Wanda are ‘renting’ the apartment just across from her, and a sweet elder lady called Mrs. Jeong lives next to them on the other side of the elevator; she always makes the best honey cookies. Then there’s the retired gentleman who lives at the end of the hall; he always smells like Andy’s mints and walks his cat on a leash. As far as she knew, the last unit has been empty for a while, and she doesn’t know anything about the other floors.

As Hazel eyes the box, wondering who T. Turner is and whether they’ll be weird or normal or somewhere in between, a whoosh of air and faint sparkle of fairy dust poofs up behind her. She turns to find two figures shimmer into place beside her in a faint shower of sparkles. The air smells faintly of bubblegum and freshly opened cans of soda.

Cosmo and Wanda now stand there in their human disguises—sort of.

Wanda adjusts the collar of her sunshine-yellow blouse, brushing a bit of fairy dust off her sleeve like this is just another normal Tuesday. Cosmo, on the other hand, does not. He totters alarmingly beside her in his usual unbuttoned lime-green shirt and—Hazel squints— his legs are backwards . Not twisted or turned around. Backwards. Knees bending the wrong way, feet somehow still facing front. He’s smiling like he doesn’t even notice, which is probably the worst part.

“Cosmo, honey,” Wanda says through clenched teeth. “Legs.”

Cosmo peers down at himself, blinking. “Ohhh, that explains why walking felt like two flamingos doing the cha-cha in a dryer!”

With a flick of her wand, Wanda taps his shoulder. There’s a sound like a rubber band snapping back into place, and Cosmo’s legs instantly fwip the right way around. He wobbles, flailing his arms a bit, then beams.

“There we go!” he chirps, striking a pose. “Now I can moonwalk forward! It’s so much easier.”

Hazel sneezes from the fairy dust and then stifles a laugh in the crook of her elbow. “You guys are so weird!”

Wanda chuckles, a little wry. “We are undercover godparents. Weird is kind of in the job description.”

“Yeah!” Cosmo chimes in. “And you haven’t even seen my jazz hands yet.” He lifts both hands and wiggles his fingers—now miniature instruments—dramatically. “Ta-da!”

Hazel smiles despite herself, the last bits of her school day melting a little.

Wanda smiles at her before squinting at the box near the parcels. Slowly, the grin slips from her face. Then, as if sensing her change of mood, Cosmo’s fingers droop mid-wiggle. He follows her eyes, and his smile falters too.

Hazel straightens. “What’s wrong?”

Wanda doesn’t answer right away. Her hand slowly lowers to her side, the wand vanishing with a shimmer of light that fades too quickly. She looks at the name on the box like it’s something fragile and sharp all at once. Her expression flickers—not confused, not surprised exactly, but… lost. Like something heavy and old has stirred loose in the back of her mind.

“It… it just that name seems familiar,” she says finally, voice soft.

Cosmo, unusually quiet, edges a little closer to her. He’s still looking at the box, but his usual buoyant energy has gone somewhere distant. “Like déjà vu made of marshmallows and… and sadness.”

Wanda reaches for his hand without looking, and he takes it.

Hazel tilts her head. “Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine, sweetie,” Wanda says gently. But she doesn’t smile.

Cosmo nods, a slow, thoughtful motion that doesn’t suit him. “Yeah. Totally fine. It’s just…” He squints at the letters again. “It’s like hearing a song you forgot you loved until it made you cry.”

They both go quiet after that.

Hazel watches them, unsure if she should say something else. Their whole vibe has shifted—like someone opened a window and let winter air into a cozy room. She’s never seen them like this.

She glances back at the box. Just a name. T. Turner. No address, no apartment number. Just blocky handwriting and slightly crumpled cardboard. But something about it clearly matters. A lot.

Wanda’s eyes look wet. Not crying—but close. Cosmo leans a little closer into her, and Wanda squeezes his hand like she needs the anchor.

“Come on,” Wanda says gently after a moment. “I bet your mom and dad are wondering where you’re at.” She gestures toward the stairs.

Hazel shoulders her backpack and follows them, her shoes tapping up the steps. The cardboard box stays exactly where it is—quiet, unassuming, and full of mystery. What could the name T. Turner possibly mean to her fairy godparents? Who are they? Which apartment are they in? She has so many questions.

And there’s only so much excitement her little body can contain.

She hugs Cosmo and Wanda goodbye, more out of habit than anything else, before bursting through the front door of her family’s apartment like a shot fired from a confetti cannon. Her sneakers thump against the entryway floor, and the door bangs shut behind her with the familiar rattle that always makes her parents wince. Her backpack thuds to the floor in a heap, faceless fidget toys jangling with the impact.

“Moooooom!” she yells before the door even swings shut. “Dad! Somebody moved into the last apartment on our floor!”

The scent of dinner—garlic, sweet pepper, and something gently sizzling—drifts in from the kitchen, but Hazel’s already halfway down the hall, skipping over the worn runner with socked feet.

Angela is at the stove, stirring a pan with practiced ease, hoop earrings catching the light with every turn of her head. Marcus leans against the counter, a dish towel slung over one shoulder as he chops bell peppers with deliberate focus.

Both of them glance up as Hazel barrels in.

“I’m serious!” she says, breathless. “There was a moving truck and a box forgotten by the mailboxes, and Cosmo and Wanda even poofed in and—well, never mind about that—but someone actually moved in next door! Like right next to us, next door. What if they have a kid? Or a dog? Or a whole collection of rare bobbleheads? We have to go say hi!”

Angela raises an eyebrow, lips twitching into a smile. “You got all that from a forgotten box?”

“It said ‘T. Turner’ on it,” Hazel says, gesturing like that explains everything. “Which definitely means they’re interesting. You don’t get a name like that and end up boring.”

Marcus chuckles. “Hazelnut, slow down. Let them at least unpack a suitcase first.”

“But it’s the perfect time to bring something over,” she insists, bouncing on her toes now. “We could bake cookies! Or muffins! Or that cinnamon swirl bread you made last month—everyone loves that bread!”

Angela laughs, setting the spoon down and turning toward her daughter. “Hazel. They just moved in. Let them catch their breath. You don’t want to knock on someone’s door while they’re still figuring out which box has their toilet paper in it.”

Marcus grins. “Give it a night. Tomorrow is Saturday—plenty of time to bake something then. You can even pick the recipe.”

Hazel groans like they’ve suggested she wait a year, but she flops dramatically against the counter anyway. “Fiiiiine. But if they move out again before I get to say hi, I’m blaming both of you.”

Angela leans down and presses a kiss to the top of Hazel’s head. “Fair enough. But until then, you can help me finish dinner.”

—

Later, the apartment hums with quiet. The dishes are stacked in the drying rack, the hallway lights are dimmed. Hazel shuffles into her room in her favorite mismatched pajamas—one sleeve pink with frogs, the other striped like a candy cane. She’s yawning before she even makes it to the bed.

Cosmo and Wanda are already there, in full fairy form, floating near the lamp on her nightstand like two colorful fireflies. Cosmo’s wings twitch as he flutters upside-down, trying to balance a button on his nose. Wanda’s got her wand tucked behind one ear like a pencil, arms folded, watching him with fond exasperation.

Hazel crawls under the covers with a contented sigh. “G’night, Cosmo,” she mumbles, her voice a sleepy whisper. “Night, Wanda.”

“Goodnight, Hazel,” Wanda says gently, her voice soft as cotton. “Sweet dreams.”

Cosmo chimes in with, “Dream of marshmallow clouds and blue Jell-o seas!”

Hazel giggles, her smile lingering even as her eyes slip closed. “I hope the new neighbors are great,” she murmurs, barely audible now. “I hope they’re the kind of people who like comics... and cinnamon bread... and weird kids with fairy godparents.”

“Well, Squirt, you’ll be able to meet them tomorrow,” Wanda shushes gently, tucking her and Cosmo’s latest godchild to bed.

The room quiets, her breathing slow and steady. The two fairies exchange a glance and then, with twin pops of shimmering poof-magic, vanish from the bedroom in flashes of pink sparkly clouds.

They reappear just outside the Wells’ apartment, hovering quietly in the dim hallway, the soft hum of the building air conditioning and the creak of the old pipes the only sounds around them. Wanda folds her arms again, brow furrowed, and Cosmo, still upside down, bobs lazily in midair, spinning slowly like a balloon caught in a draft.

“ T. Turner,” Wanda says, the name curling uneasily off her tongue. “You don’t think...?”

Cosmo floats upright in a sudden jolt, eyes wide and uncharacteristically serious. “You don’t think it’s him, do you? Like Timmy Turner? Our Timmy Turner?”

Wanda chews her lip, wand twirling between her fingers. “I don’t know. Turner isn’t exactly a common name, but it’s not all that uncommon either.”

Cosmo gasps suddenly. “What if it’s a pseudonym for a vampire?! Like The Turner? What if he’s plotting to turn everyone into a vampire?!”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “Cosmo, vampires haven’t live outside of Romania since the Middle Ages.”

“You don’t know that!” Cosmo whispers loudly, zipping behind a houseplant like something might be eavesdropping.

Wanda sighs. “We don’t even know if it is him yet. T. Turner could be anybody. Thomas. Teresa. Tiberius.”

“Tomato!” Cosmo adds brightly.

“Certainly not that.” Wanda smiles softly, amused.

They float in silence for a moment. The hallway is quiet. “If it is him… things could get complicated. Once our Timmy turned eighteen, he had to forget us. Poof, memories wiped, fairy file sealed. If this really is Timmy…”

“…then he doesn’t even know us anymore,” Cosmo finishes, eyes turning glassy. “Our little boy won’t even know who we are!”

Wanda doesn’t respond right away.  She eyes the door at the end of the hall, face unreadable. Then she says, “We’ll know soon enough. Hazel’ll probably be knocking on their door first thing in the morning. If it’s him… We’ll deal with it. Carefully. Quietly.”

Cosmo nods solemnly. “Like Ninja Turtles.”

“No, Cosmo. Not like Ninja Turtles.”

He frowns. “Awww. But they’re so stealthy.”

She lets out a soft laugh despite herself, and they both drift slowly across the hall to their apartment, their wings giving off just the faintest sparkle.

Chapter Text

The sun is already high by the time Hazel stirs, tucked beneath a tangled pile of bedsheets and dreams. A shaft of golden morning light slips through the slats of her window blinds, striping her face and coaxing her awake with the warmth of a lazy Saturday. She groans softly, rolling over and squinting one eye open. The house is already alive with the smell of breakfast—sizzling butter, brewing coffee, and something toasty and sweet.

She bolts upright.

Today’s the day.

Hazel throws off the covers and scrambles out of bed, one sock on, the other forgotten somewhere under her sheets. Her pajamas are wrinkled, and her cheek has sleep lines from where her pillow cover got wrinkled under her face while she slept, but there’s no time for mirrors. Not when the new neighbors exist and she hasn’t met them!

In the kitchen, Angela and Marcus are already mid-routine. Angela leans on the counter, nursing a cup of coffee and swiping through the morning news on her tablet. Marcus, in a faded science tee and pajama pants, hums to himself as he flips pancakes on the stove, his hair slightly squashed on one side from sleep. The faint sound of jazz plays softly from the speaker tucked beside the toaster.

Hazel thumps into the room with her usual whirlwind energy. “Good morning!” she chirps, grabbing a pancake straight off the cooling plate. She blows on it as she hops from one foot to the other. “Sorry I’m late. I had a really weird dream involving marshmallows and a shark made of string cheese.”

Angela doesn’t even look up from the article. “Mmhm. Sounds about right.”

“Hazelnut,” Marcus says with mock sternness, pointing his spatula like a gavel. “Seat. Plate. Syrup. You know the rules.”

She plops the pancake onto a plate, grabs a fork, and drizzles a very generous amount of syrup on top before digging in like she hasn’t eaten in days. “Issogood,” s he mumbles through a mouthful.

Angela sets down her book and arches an eyebrow. “So what’s the rush? You usually sleep until nine on Saturdays.”

Hazel swallows and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. “I have plans.”

Marcus eyes her warily. “The kind of plans that involve science experiments, or the kind that involve knocking on strangers’ doors before they’ve had their morning coffee?”

Hazel grins. “Both, eventually. Maybe. But first, we bake. Something friendly. Something delicious. Something that says: Hi, welcome to the building, I am not weird or dangerous, please be my friend.”

Angela and Marcus exchange an amused look.

Then, Angela sighs, smiling. “You pick a recipe yet?”

Hazel sprints across the kitchen and yanks open the lower cabinet near the fridge, pulling out the family’s well-worn binder of handwritten recipes. Its spine is cracked, and the front cover is covered in cookie batter fingerprints. She slaps it on the table and begins flipping through it with dramatic flair.

“We need something classic,” she mutters. “But fun. Not boring fun, real fun. Something with chocolate. But also cinnamon. Oooh, maybe orange zest! No wait—maple! Maple is very neighborly!”

Angela sips her coffee and watches the pages fly by. “You know, you could just bake the cinnamon swirl bread you were raving about yesterday.”

Hazel gasps. “Perfect. And I can add chocolate chips! Or walnuts! Or glitter!”

“Edible glitter,” Marcus warns without looking up.

Hazel salutes him. “Obviously.”

Before long, she’s elbow-deep in flour and sugar, perched on a stepstool in her favorite kitchen apron—a pale yellow one with a cartoon lemon on the front and “Easy Peasy” scrawled in looping font. Marcus supervises the oven while Hazel mixes the dough, humming under her breath with her tongue poking out the side of her mouth in concentration.

By mid-morning, the whole apartment smells like cinnamon and brown sugar and just a hint of chocolate. Hazel pulls the loaf from the oven with oven mittens twice the size of her hands, beaming with pride. The bread is golden-brown perfection.

Angela helps her wrap it in plastic wrap on a sunflower-printed dish. Hazel adds a little note in her slanted, half-cursive handwriting: Welcome to the building! From Hazel Wells (and my parents, who are also cool).

They leave just after eleven, Hazel practically vibrating with anticipation. Almost immediately, Cosmo and Wanda step from their apartment with a gift basket of their own. This one, compared to the one they gifted the Wells, is filled with homemade muffins, a jar of raspberry jam, and—added at the very last second—a rubber duck wearing sunglasses.

Cosmo had insisted. “Every good gift basket needs a little whimsy!” he had declared in his usual bright tone, just before tripping over the potted plant in the hall.

Hazel eyes the basket with open approval. “Nice touch with the duck,” she says, adjusting the loaf in the center of the dish through the plastic wrap.

Wanda smiles faintly, smoothing a wrinkle in her sundress. “We figured we’d all go together, if that’s alright?”

Angela smiles warmly, appreciating the effort from their neighbors. “That sounds perfect. It’s always nice to have several friendly faces around when you’re settling in.”

Hazel’s eyes light up even more at that, glad that her fairy godparents would be joining her and her family in welcoming their new neighbors. She senses that their gifts, while usually odd, will go a long way in making the newcomers feel at ease. “Team Welcome Wagon? I’m in.”

However, as they start down the hall, Hazel glances back over her shoulder. “Is Peri coming?”

Wanda shakes her head gently. “He said he’d stay home. His accident took a lot out of him.”

Ah, they’re still calling it that. Hazel nods with understanding, though there’s a flicker of something behind her eyes—concern or maybe just curiosity—but she doesn’t press. She hopes that he’ll get back on his feet again soon though.

Their footsteps pad softly along the worn hallway rug, the murmur of city life just audible through the apartment walls. The sun spills down through the window at the far end, catching in the dust motes and making everything all glow-y. Hazel hugs the warm loaf to her chest as if it’s a treasure, and for a moment, the group walks in quiet, each of them holding something—gifts, expectations, or maybe just the thrill of something new.

They stop just before the apartment at the far end of the hallway. The space is still and expectant. The door is painted the same burgundy red as the rest of them, but something about it feels charged with potential. There’s a new welcome mat—a brown coir with the words welcome to our home in black ink.

Hazel swallows, cheeks pink with nervous energy. “Okay,” she whispers. “Here we go.”

She knocks. Once.

No answer.

Again.

A pause.

From inside, footsteps—slow, hesitant.

Then the sound of the deadbolt clicking.

The door creaks open.

A young girl stands in the doorway.

She appears to be about Hazel’s age—maybe a smidge younger—with straight brown hair that falls just past her shoulders and wide, solemn blue eyes that seem to absorb everything in front of her. Her skin is pale, like she hasn’t spent much time in the sun, and she’s dressed in an oversized pastel yellow hoodie with the sleeves bunched up at her wrists, patterned pajama pants covered in bright yellow daffodils, and mismatched fuzzy socks cover her feet.

She doesn’t say a word.

Instead, she stares at them with a quiet sort of curiosity. Not shy, exactly, but cautious. Like someone who’s been told not to open the door for strangers but did it anyway out of sheer gravity-pulling interest. Her gaze lingers longest on the loaf of bread, then the basket, then Hazel herself.

Hazel lifts the basket a little higher, her grin polite but eager. “Hi! I’m Hazel. I live down the hall. We brought you some bread and stuff. It’s warm.”

Still, the girl doesn’t speak.

From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a voice—low, smooth, male—calls out, “Dewdrop? Who’s at the door?”

The girl turns her head slightly but doesn’t respond aloud.

Then—

He appears.

Stepping into view from a shadowed hallway behind her comes a man—tall, lean, and not at all composed. He’s wearing a soft-looking, pink jacket and jeans, all wrinkled as if he slept in them. He looks as though he hasn’t shaved in a few days, and his brown hair is unkempt and messy. His smile is crooked, almost boyish, with a slight overbite. It looks as though he’s attempted to have some work done to his teeth, but whatever he was trying to fix or hide couldn’t be hidden completely.

His eyes—the same blue as the girl’s, only more somber—flick first to the visitors, then down to the girl. He places a gentle hand on her shoulder as he joins her at the doorway.

“Hello,” he says warmly, with just enough of a smile to be friendly but not too familiar. “Can I help you?”

Hazel beams. “Welcome to the building! I made cinnamon, chocolate chip bread (with the help of my mom and dad). And they brought muffins and jam.” She nudges Cosmo lightly with her elbow.

Cosmo and Wanda, however, remain frozen where they stand. They don’t move. They don’t blink. They don’t speak. They just stare.

Wanda’s eyes shimmer like the surface of a full teacup, lips parted as if caught between a gasp and a name she can’t bring herself to say. Cosmo’s usual cheer drains from his expression in a slow, dawning wave, his mouth twitching uncertainly, like it’s trying to form a smile that won’t come. His fingers tremble around the handle of the muffin basket. One of the marbles rolls gently and hits the lip of the dish with a soft clink.

Hazel glances sideways, confused. “You guys okay?”

They don’t answer. And the man doesn’t seem to notice their odd behavior. His eyes flick across the group again, landing mostly on Hazel, polite and tired. So tired. The kind of tired that lives in your bones. The kind you wear like a second skin.

He doesn’t recognize them. So, how would they know him?

Instead of thinking about any harder, Hazel beams up at him. “Hi!! My name is Hazel! I live just down the hall with my mom and dad. We’re you’re next-door neighbors. This is Cosmo and Wanda! They live across the hall from us, which makes them your neighbors, too! We wanted to welcome you to the building.”

His eyes fall on Cosmo and Wanda again, longer this time. Something briefly flickers across the man’s face. Just for a second. A crease between his brows. A twitch of the corner of his mouth. A tug of memory that doesn’t quite rise to the surface. But there’s no recognition there, not even a hint that he might know them.

He huffs a quiet laugh, the sound soft and a little surprised, as if at himself. “You know,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “I used to have a couple of goldfish named Cosmo and Wanda when I was a kid. Weird coincidence.”

Cosmo makes a quiet, hiccuping sound. Wanda clutches the hem of her shirt, knuckles going white.

The man doesn’t notice. He offers a hand, one palm out, the gesture easy but tentative, as if the muscle memory of pleasantries hasn’t quite faded. “My name is Timothy, Timothy Turner, but everyone just calls me Timmy,” he says sheepishly. “And this is my daughter, Thalia. She usually goes by ‘Talie’ though.”

The girl doesn’t move closer, but she doesn’t shrink back either. Her gaze flits from Timmy’s hand to Hazel’s face, then down to the still-warm loaf again. One small hand curls into the fabric of her oversized sleeve, and she leans subtly into her father’s side.

Hazel steps forward half a pace and offers the basket up like a peace offering. “Hi, Talie,” she says, tone gentler but no less excited. “I really hope you like cinnamon. And bread. And chocolate chips.”

Timmy smiles faintly. “She’s more of a strawberry jam on toast kind of girl, but I think she’ll be thrilled.” His voice softens a little when he looks at Talie, and something about the weariness in him eases, just slightly.

Talie doesn’t speak. But she reaches out—quick, precise—and takes the dish from Hazel’s hands. She then nods her thanks.

Wanda swallows hard, holding out her and Cosmo’s basket. Her voice, when it comes, is barely above a whisper. “It’s… very nice to meet you, Timmy.”

Timmy looks over at her, that flicker behind his eyes again. Curious. Gentle. And unknowingly inches away from remembering something that would turn his whole world inside out.

He nods, accepting the gift. “Nice to meet you, too.”

Cosmo’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Wanda nudges his side lightly with her elbow. That’s enough, it says.

Hazel, sensing the odd tension but not understanding it, brightens again. “So, um. If you guys need anything—sugar, flour, duct tape, an extra pair of scissors—we’re here. I’m kind of the unofficial building welcomer. It’s a self-declared title.”

Angela smiles, “What she means is, if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”

Timmy nods, chuckling under his breath, a genuine smile slipping through the fog of fatigue. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

Then Hazel steps back. “Well. We’ll let you get settled. Enjoy the bread! And the jam! And, uh… the duck.”

Timmy blinks. “The… duck?”

Wanda gently lifts the little rubber duck from the basket and holds it in her hand with exaggerated ceremony. “He guards bathrooms. Very effective. Very professional.”

Timmy huffs another laugh. Talie watches the duck as if unsure whether it’s real or part of a joke no one’s explained yet.

Hazel waves, already stepping backward toward the hall. “Bye, Talie. Bye, Mr. Turner.”

Timmy raises his hand again in a half-wave. “Thanks again. Really.”

The door clicks shut behind us with a quiet finality, like a punctuation mark at the end of a very strange, very important sentence.

Angela exhales, already switching gears. “Well, Marcus and I need to knock out a few errands and finish up some projects,” she says, her voice light but edged with the familiar hum of weekend responsibility. Then, she turns to Wanda with a warm smile. “Hope you and Cosmo enjoy the rest of your Saturday.”

Wanda nods politely, still a little dazed, her smile small and a little strained. “We’ll try,” she murmurs, though her eyes flick once more toward Timmy’s closed door.

Hazel catches the tiny flicker in her expression, like her thoughts are still stuck on Timmy’s face and the way he didn’t recognize her or Cosmo. She’s still hung up on whether he was supposed to recognise them or not.

Angela glances at Hazel next, her expression softening. “And you, Pudding Pop—try not to get into too much mischief today, alright? If you decide to visit a friend, make sure your dad and I know where you’re going.”

Hazel straightens up like she’s being addressed by a general and snaps a playful salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

Angela grins and ruffles her daughter’s curls. “That’s my girl. You need us, you know where to find us.”

“Yep!” Hazel chirps, the word popping with a grin.

With that, Angela and Marcus disappear through their apartment door, their voices trailing off in soft murmurs behind it.

The hallway settles again. Quiet. Still.

Hazel turns back to Cosmo and Wanda, who remain rooted to the same spot. They suddenly look as though they’ve aged a thousand years in five seconds. The moment feels fragile now and heavy.

Wanda exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as Cosmo sniffles beside her. Neither speaks for a long moment, but the silence between them isn’t empty.

“It’s him,” Cosmo whispers at last, his voice wobbling like it’s barely survived the journey from his throat. “Our Timmy. He remembered our names.”

“A little,” Wanda replies, barely audible. “He’s grown. So grown. And tired.”

Cosmo sniffles loudly, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes until they’re pink. “He wished for a kingdom made of pillows once.”

Wanda lets out a soft, watery laugh, the sound pulled from someplace deeper than her ribs. “We had to clean up feathers for weeks.”

Cosmo leans his head against her shoulder, eyes glassy. “We had so much fun together.”

Wanda nods. “And now he doesn’t even know who we are.”

Hazel stands nearby, watching the two of them in quiet bewilderment. Their words swirl around her like bits of a dream she wasn’t part of, things half-heard through a door left ajar. She frowns slightly, confusion knitting across her brow.

Finally, she steps closer, her voice careful. “Okay… I know I’m not the grown-up here, but… what exactly is going on?”

Wanda blinks, slowly turning her gaze toward Hazel. There’s a long pause—an invisible thread stretches tight between them.

Cosmo opens his mouth like he’s going to answer, but all that comes out is a choked hiccup.

Wanda smooths his back once, then turns fully to Hazel. Her face is soft but serious. “The man you just met—Timmy—he was… he was an old friend from a long, long time ago.”

Hazel watches them for another moment, the gears turning, a waterfall of questions pressing just behind her tongue, “He was someone you knew?”

“You could say that,” Wanda replies, tone soft.

“He remembers us!” Cosmo wails.

Wanda rubs circles into his back as his shoulders shake with sobs, the sound muffled as he clutches the front of Wanda’s blouse. His tears soak through the fabric, and Wanda stands frozen for a second, her own breath catching in her throat.

“I know, sweetheart,” she murmurs, “I know.”

But she’s crying now too. She tries to blink the tears away, but they come anyway, hot and fast. They slip down her cheeks and vanish into Cosmo’s green curls. Her vision blurs, the hallway swimming in watery gold and soft shadow. She doesn’t even try to stop them. Not this time.

Hazel blinks. “Wait. How? How’d you know him?”

Wanda’s hand stills. Her fingers press into her husband’s shirt as she stares down the quiet hallway. The light seems to dim, as if it knows the mood has shifted to something less than cheery.

“He was our kid,” Cosmo says brokenly, voice cracking around the words. Cosmo’s sobs grow louder, desperate, raw. “He remembered us, Wanda. He remembered our names! And that—” he exhales sharply— “that we used to be near him always!”

Wanda’s lips press into a tight line. Her other hand finds its way to his hair, smoothing it back in the familiar, instinctive motion she’s used for years. Comforting him used to be easy. Now it just makes the ache in her chest swell.

“Timmy—he was… he was our last godchild.” Wanda finally says, “A long time ago. Before you. Before we went into retirement. When he was your age, we were his fairy godparents. We took care of him. Granted his wishes. Helped him through… everything.”

Every inch of Timmy Turner—every wild, wonderful, ridiculous, stubborn part of him—was once theirs. A little boy with too much sadness in his heart and too much imagination in his bones. A boy who made them laugh when they thought they couldn’t anymore. A boy who believed in magic when the rest of the world told him to stop.

And now he’s a man. A father. Tired, quiet, guarded in all the ways he never used to be.

But he smiled. He joked. He laughed.

And he remembered them. Or at least, something about them.

“He was the best god son in the whole universe.” Cosmo says, voice trembling, “Even if he did make us live in a fish bowl.”

“He didn’t make us do anything,” Wanda clarifies, “At least with our living situation.”

Hazel processes this slowly, her mouth falling open. “And he doesn’t remember you?”

Wanda hesitates.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to answer. It’s that the question, so simple and small in Hazel’s voice, carries the weight of a few thousand years of aching silence and the final, trembling flicker of a wish extinguished.

Wanda closes her eyes for a beat. Then opens them again. “No.” Wanda shakes her head and swallows down the lump in her throat. “He doesn’t remember us. At least, not specifically. He remembers goldfish. He remembers us as his bedside companions.”

Cosmo’s fingers tighten around the fabric of her blouse, as if afraid the memory might slip through them if he lets go. He doesn’t add anything—not yet—but his gaze meets Hazel’s, and for once, it holds no silliness, no gleam of absurd mischief. Just grief, honest and raw, too big to hide behind a joke.

“Why?” Hazel asks, growing more and more desperate for answers. Why doesn’t Cosmo and Wanda’s previous godchild remember them? Did he do something bad? Did something happen to him?

“When a child grows up—” Wanda exhales— “They forget us. We knew it would happen. They tell us not to get attached for that reason.”

Cosmo sniffles loudly, his face blotchy and red. “I miss him, Wanda.”

She nods, her own voice nothing more than a breath. “Me too.”

Hazel blinks, stunned into silence for a moment. “You loved him.”

It’s not a question.

Cosmo nods.

“With everything we had.” Wanda says.

Hazel is quiet for a moment. Her voice, when it comes, is softer now. “How could he forget something like that? How does he forget how much you meant to him?”

“It’s not his fault.” Cosmo replies.

Wanda smiles sadly. Her hand resumes rubbing circles into Cosmo’s back. “It’s part of Da Rules. When children grow up, the magic fades. Their memories of us are wiped, replaced with something more believable.”

Hazel blinks, “Does that mean I’ll forget you, too?”

They haven’t told her? Wanda could have sworn they mentioned it once or twice. She nods, grim, “Once you don’t need us anymore, yes. But you’ll remember us as your neighbors just like Tim—” her voice cracks— “just like Timmy remembers us as his goldfish.”

“What about Antony and my friends? I wished for them to remember everything that happened in Fairy World.”

Wanda sighs, “When it’s time for a child to forget, all their wishes fade away. They’ll think it was a good dream or a game of pretend. Since it’s a shared memory, it’ll likely be something that’ll work for all of you.”

Cosmo lets out a small, shuddering breath. “It’s supposed to protect them, keep them from hurting themselves or anyone else.” He snifles. “But it doesn’t protect us…”

There’s a silence then, not the awkward kind, but the kind that likes to linger all the same.

Wanda threads her fingers through Cosmo’s hair. The hallway is quiet. Hazel looks down the corridor toward Timmy’s door, where she can still see the faintest sliver of warm light spilling from beneath it.

Hazel thinks of Talie’s eyes. Wide, dark, and far too old for someone so young.

“He has a daughter,” she says aloud, the thought still forming as it leaves her lips.

Wanda’s hand stills, but she smiles, “Yes.”

“Timmy is a dad, just like me.” Cosmo hiccups. There’s something so deeply bewildering in the way he says it—like the idea is too large to hold in his heart. And maybe it is. Because how do you grasp something like that?

That the little boy he’s loved so dearly—the one who wished for such ludicrous things as a child that Da Rules had to be updated and almost rewritten to hide all the loopholes—is now a father? That he’s someone’s father? That he’s raising a child of his own and loving her the way he was once loved by them?

Hazel shifts again, standing close to Wanda’s side now, her brow furrowed in quiet thought. “She looked sad,” she murmurs. “Talie, I mean. She didn’t talk, and… she looked like she wanted to but couldn’t.”

Wanda’s gaze softens, though the sadness doesn’t fade. “We’ve heard rumors from the others on the community board and other sources that something happened, but we’re not entirely sure what.”

Hazel’s voice lowers. “Did something happen to her mom?”

Wanda doesn’t answer.

Cosmo’s chin trembles again.

Hazel glances at them both, then back toward the door. “Do you think she could ever have a godparent? Like me? Like her dad did?”

The question catches Wanda off guard. Her breath stills for a moment. It’s not one she’s dared ask herself—not since they retired. “I don’t know,” she admits quietly. “Sometimes… the universe makes exceptions. For those who really need magic.”

Hazel processes that. Her eyes are too big for her face sometimes, full of old thoughts for someone so young. “I think she needs it,” she says simply. “She needs someone to look after her the same way you looked after Mr. Turner.”

Cosmo sniffles, nodding solemnly, the way he used to when he swore oaths of ice cream-related secrecy.

Wanda wraps an arm around Hazel’s shoulder gently. “Maybe someday,” she says. “But for now… all we can do is be good neighbors.”

Hazel leans into her. “I’ll do my best.”

“We know you will,” Wanda murmurs.

The air kicks on, and the hallway light buzzes faintly overhead.

Chapter Text

Timmy watches as Talie carefully places Hazel’s plate of cinnamon, chocolate chip bread on the counter, her small hands steady, precise—more so than any almost-ten-year-old’s should be. She doesn’t say anything, not even a glance in his direction, but the quiet thunk of ceramic against laminate speaks louder than words. Her expression is unreadable, tucked behind the straight fall of her hair and the slight hunch of her shoulders.

The smell of cinnamon lingers, warm and sharp, folding into the dusty scent of cardboard and packing tape that still fills most of the apartment. Timmy’s fingers tighten for a moment around the woven handle of Wanda’s gift basket, then he slowly sets it down beside the bread. It makes the countertop feel almost domestic. Almost like a kitchen.

Around them, the apartment looks more like a storage unit than a home. Towers of boxes loom in every corner, some half-opened, others still taped shut and marked in rushed Sharpie: BOOKS, KITCHEN, COMICS/STUDIO, TALIE’S ROOM? The question mark is his, scrawled in a moment of uncertainty while packing up their old life in Dimmsdale. A life they’d left behind in pieces.

The walls are still bare. The windows, streaked with the residue of a rushed cleaning, let in the weak morning light that stretches across the cluttered floor like pale fingers. Somewhere under the window is Talie’s sketchpad, open to a drawing she wouldn’t show him. Her colored pencils are scattered nearby in a quiet, rainbow explosion.

Timmy exhales slowly, his shoulders easing as he glances at the basket. There’s something grounding about the homemade bread and the carefully folded card attached to the ribbon. Wanda’s handwriting curls in warm, loopy script, and just seeing it makes the weight in his chest shift—lighter, maybe. Or at least something less heavy.

They’ve only just arrived, and already, people are reaching out, offering help and giving gifts. Little Hazel and her parents with homemade bread and rambling. The strange couple with her basket of jam, small comforts, and rubber ducks.

He exhales. Cosmo and Wanda. The names echo in his mind. It’s strange. Unsettling, almost. Because that can’t be right. They were just goldfish. Bright little things he kept in a round bowl on his dresser when he was a kid. One kinda green and one kinda pink. Silly little things. That was all.

He remembers watching the way they swam in circles—erratic, chaotic, almost like they were playing. He used to talk to them. Not just in the way lonely kids talk to pets, but really talk to them. As if they understood. As if they talked back. He’d sit on the edge of his bed after a rough day and whisper to the bowl, and the fish would blink and bob and—

Timmy shakes his head, frowning, but the colors won’t go away. That bright, minty green. That vivid, candy pink. They’re colors he’s seen a hundred times since. Balloons at a birthday party. A weirdly vibrant tie and boutonniere at a school dance.

Why do those colors mean something?

His brow furrows as he leans against the counter, gaze drifting to the basket again. The ribbon is pink, the tissue paper green. Not unusual choices on their own. Not really. But together…

He presses his fingers to his temple. For a second, a phantom image flickers at the edge of his thoughts: glittering crowns, floating above heads that shouldn’t be floating. Wings, too, maybe? And sparkles— so many sparkles.

It’s just so weird. The names. The colors. The feeling that he’s forgetting something big. Something important. But every time he tries to chase it, the thought slips through his fingers like a dream dissolving at sunrise.

A quiet clink pulls his focus. Talie is reaching for a butter knife from the drawer, her face blank, her movements careful as she sets it on the counter. She briefly glances at him before training her eyes on the plate like she’s waiting for something.

“You hungry?” he asks softly.

She doesn’t answer verbally, but she nods. Then, reaches out and breaks a piece off the bread, the chocolate already melting slightly under her fingers.

Timmy watches her nibble at the corner of the slice—small, deliberate bites like she’s testing each one before committing. He lets the quiet sit for a beat, then pushes off the counter.

“I’ll make you something real,” he murmurs, more to the room than to her, but her eyes lift for just a second. He sees the faintest flicker there—approval, maybe. Or just appreciation masked in tired detachment.

He cuts a thicker slice of the bread and sets it aside, then rummages through one of the open boxes marked KITCHEN. There’s a frying pan wedged awkwardly between mismatched mugs and a colander. He pulls it out and sets it on the stove. A little oil, a few eggs, and some leftover cheese from the insulated bag they carried up the night before. A simple scramble. Nothing fancy. But the smell is warm, rich, and it blends with the cinnamon in the air until the place starts to smell almost like a home.

Talie perches on the edge of one of the unpacked stools, elbows on the counter, eyes fixed not on him, but somewhere near—watching the skillet, maybe, or the way the cheese begins to melt. Her silence isn’t heavy, just quiet. Like a radio dial turned low.

As the eggs cook, Timmy glances out toward the living room. The place is a mess. The couch is still wrapped in plastic, wedged between a box labeled CORDS? and what might be Talie’s old toy chest. The coffee table is upside down, legs sticking up like a beetle on its back. He can’t even see the floor past the mound of throw pillows, unopened boxes, and a rogue guitar case.

“All right,” he says under his breath, plating the food. “One step at a time.”

He sets the warm plate in front of Talie with a fork and another glance she doesn’t quite return. But she pulls the plate closer. And that’s enough for him.

While she eats, he starts in on the boxes. The first is labeled FOYER / COATS and it’s a quick win—just jackets, hats, umbrellas, and a pair of tangled scarves. He hangs them up on the standing rack by the front door, sets the doormat in place, and peels the tape off the mirror box to hang just inside. The light catches as he adjusts it, and for the first time, the front of the apartment looks like someone lives here.

Talie finishes eating and quietly brings her plate to the sink. She doesn’t speak, but she stays. She hovers near the wall where the kitchen meets the living room, watching him shift a box labeled MOVIES / GAMES toward the entertainment center still half in its packaging.

“Wanna help me open this one?” he asks, nodding toward the box marked TALIE’S STUFF.

She hesitates, then shrugs. Which, for her, is basically a yes.

Together, they crouch near the box and peel back the tape. Inside are the things that used to live on the shelves of her old room—her sketchbooks, some dog-eared novels, a half-built model spaceship. A ceramic dragon with a chipped wing that she lifts gently and holds for a long moment before placing it on the window sill.

Timmy doesn’t say anything. He just keeps unpacking, one item at a time. A snow globe. A bundle of rubber bands wrapped around more colored pencils. A fuzzy stuffed bear with a stitched face coming undone and a faded nametag: Chewy.

He moves slow. Thoughtful. Not because he’s tired—though he is—but because every object feels like a piece of her. A thread connecting the girl she was before to the girl sitting beside him now, silent and still but somehow helping. Choosing where things should go.

It’s like rebuilding a world from memory.

By midday, the living room breathes easier. The couch is unwrapped and fluffed, the coffee table flipped and topped with a coaster and a small potted plant they didn’t know they’d brought. The rug is rolled out, crooked but grounding. The sun filters in stronger now, brighter and warmer, bouncing off dust motes and framed photos still waiting for hooks.

Timmy straightens up, dusts off his hands, and looks around.

“It’s not perfect,” he says, more to himself than her, “but it’s a start.”

Talie stands by the window, arms crossed, her profile backlit and pale. She doesn’t say anything. But after a second, she nods.

He turns toward the boxes again. Still so many left. But somehow, the space feels a little less overwhelming now. Like maybe, just maybe, they can turn this place into something real. Something soft. Something safe.

Maybe even home.

Timmy moves to another box near the far wall, this one heavier, sealed with double layers of tape. The handwriting on it is familiar—his own, but smaller, neater than the others. Not rushed like KITCHEN or BOOKS . This one says only: FOR TALIE.

His brows knit together. It’s not for a specific room. He can’t remember why he wrote that label. His fingers find the edge of the tape. With a quick pull and faint riiiiip of adhesive, the box opens.

He pulls open the flaps, and there they are. Her things.

A scarf she used to wear when the mornings were cold, still faintly scented with vanilla and lavender, maybe. A jewelry box with the clasp slightly bent. A folder of old sheet music that held the notes to her favorite song—the one she used to hum while folding laundry. A stack of notebooks, recipes handwritten in blue ink with little smiley faces in the margins.

He lifts a framed photo. It’s the three of them before… everything.

Timmy stares down at the photo, his hands still. The glass catches the afternoon light, soft and slanted now, bending golden across the frame. He doesn’t look at her. Instead, his eyes find Talie first—four in the picture, maybe five. Her face is lit up with something bright, almost too big for her small features. She’s laughing, mid-motion, arms flung wide like she might take off like a bird any second.

Joy. That’s the word for it. That kind of joy that doesn’t think, doesn’t wait, doesn’t worry. The kind that glows from somewhere deep and boundless. The kind that used to fill rooms just because she walked into them.

It hits him all at once—how different she was then. How her laughter used to come so easily, loud and open, hiccupping into giggles. How she used to sing nonsense songs to the dog next door. How she’d bounce into the kitchen in socks that didn’t match, hair wild, eyes lit with a hundred questions about space and dinosaurs and why jellybeans had to taste like that.

Back then, Talie spoke all the time. Not just in words, but in color. In motion. In the way she danced when no music played, how she’d narrate her drawings aloud like she was building a world with every crayon stroke. Even her silences used to sparkle—intentional pauses, theatrical, waiting for applause.

Now—now, it’s different. She still draws, still listens, still exists beside him. But that glow… that easy, effervescent wonder… it’s been hidden away and tucked somewhere quiet. He wonders if she even remembers what it felt like to laugh like that.

He sets the photo aside gently, the ache in his chest dull and deep. Beneath it, more of her things wait—small pieces of the life they used to have. A tiny music box that plays off-key lullabies. A knit hat with a crooked pom-pom. A birthday card drawn in crayon with the words ‘To the best mommy ever!!’ under a picture of a stick figure with a smile and long hair.

Timmy presses a hand to his mouth, fingers curled against his lips. He doesn’t cry, but his eyes burn with tears. He just sits there, silent, with the box open in front of him and the weight of a dozen forgotten moments settling around his shoulders like dusk.

From behind, there’s the soft creak of floorboards.

Talie stands a few feet away, eyes fixed on the photo. She doesn’t reach for it. Doesn’t speak. But her gaze lingers on her own wide smile from years ago, like she’s studying a stranger. Then, slowly, she steps forward. She picks up the music box and holds it to her chest.

Timmy watches her, but says nothing. There’s no need. In the quiet, they sit together, side by side, surrounded by their entire lives still half-packed up in mountains of boxes.

Talie’s eyes flit from the music box to her father’s face and then back again, reading something unsaid in his expression. She turns and carries the trinket carefully to her room without a word. The soft click of her door closing follows a heartbeat later.

Timmy watches her go. Then, he sits in the quiet that follows, listening and waiting to hear the small, tinkling music that Talie’s mother left her, but nothing comes. So he exhales slowly, and he folds his wife’s perfumed scarf and everything else back into the box. He keeps the photo of them out, hoping perhaps to put it on display somewhere.

Once everything’s neatly put away, he pauses, hand resting for a moment on the lid, then closes it with a quiet finality. His fingers linger on the marker-scrawled words. They’re smudged a little at the edges—probably from the move, or maybe from tears he didn’t realize he’d shed the first time he packed it.

He stands, stretches, massages his neck, and moves to the next box. This one is labeled COLLEGE in his own slanted handwriting, drawn with a black Sharpie during another lifetime. The cardboard is dented at the corners, the tape is yellowed and curling.

He slices through the tape and lifts the flaps open.

Inside, nestled in a tangle of faded orientation pamphlets and a rolled-up hoodie from Dimmsdale University, sits an old fishbowl. Its glass is a little dusty, but it’s otherwise intact—round and simple, its wide mouth open like it’s waiting to be filled again. He isn’t sure why he didn’t donate it after he finished college, but maybe it’s time to use it again.

Timmy lifts it out with both hands and turns it gently in the light. A small smile plays on his lips. He brushes off a streak of dust with his sleeve and glances toward Talie’s room.

“Hey, Talie,” he calls softly, “come see this.”

Her door opens a crack, then a little wider. She steps out cautiously, still holding the music box under one arm like a plush toy. Her eyes are curious, searching.

Timmy kneels down so the bowl is at her eye level and gives it a little tilt so the sunlight hits it. “Do you know what this is?”

Talie nods once. Slowly.

Timmy grins. “This was my old fishbowl. From college. Back when I… well, had a couple of goldfish.”

Talie leans forward, peering into the bowl, her fingers tightening around the music box. The glass is empty, but in the reflection, a flicker of something dances across her face. Not a smile, quite, but close.

Timmy watches her for a moment, then says, “Would you like to get a couple of fish?”

Talie’s head snaps toward him. Her eyes widen slightly. She blinks, and then—carefully—nods.

Timmy’s grin softens. “Yeah? We could go this weekend. Find a little pet shop, pick out a couple of real characters. You can name them.”

Talie opens her mouth like she might say something, but nothing comes out. Instead, she hugs the music box tighter to her chest and nods again—this time a little more firmly.

Timmy ruffles her hair gently with one hand. “Cool,” he says. “We’ll get the bowl cleaned up first. Make it nice. They’ll need a good home.”

Chapter Text

It’s Monday morning, and the sun yawns over the city in long, syrupy beams, lazily spilling through classroom windows and bouncing off scuffed tile floors. The bell rings, shrill and insistent, as students shuffle in with half-buttoned jackets and sleepy eyes. Hazel walks through the hallway with a quiet buzz under her skin—part nerves, part excitement, and part something she can’t quite name.

Her backpack bounces against her spine with each step, the bubble fidget toys clipped to the side swaying like ornaments. Cosmo and Wanda, disguised in pastel plastic and silicone softness, don’t speak, but Hazel can feel them paying attention. Watching. Listening. Waiting on a wish.

While Talie only just moved in this last weekend, Hazel can’t help but assume that she’ll see the new girl today. She scans every doorway and shadowed corner she passes, her eyes flicking from face to unfamiliar face, looking for those brown waves and solemn, quiet gaze she remembers. Talie had barely spoken during their brief meeting, but something about her—something behind her eyes—stuck with Hazel like a question she hadn’t finished forming.

She wonders what Talie’s voice sounds like when she laughs. Wonders what books she likes, if she’s into video games, if she likes spicy snacks, or the sour candy that Hazel always keeps hidden in her desk. Wonders what it would take to make her smile.

And most of all, she wonders how she’s going to help her feel at home here.

She’s already planned out a mental map of introductions—Winn first, of course, because they’re calm and kind and have a way of making anyone feel seen. Then Jasmine, who’s a little intense about her interests, but always means well. Maybe not Dev. Dev’s… complicated.

Hazel turns the corner, the hallway brightening with sunlight pouring through the high windows, and there they are: Winn and Jasmine, leaning against the trophy case near the library entrance, mid-conversation.

Jasmine is animated, her hands fluttering like birds as she talks. “I heard it’s gonna be open by the end of next week! End of next week, Winn. That’s so soon.”

Winn adjusts their glasses, their brow arched. “That’s if they finish building the back shelving and the card wall in time. My uncle helped set up a game store once—those things always take longer than you think.”

Hazel grins and bounces up to them. “Morning!”

Both of them look over, Jasmine perking up immediately. “Hazel! Did you have a good weekend?”

Hazel nods, “Oh, yeah! My family and didn’t do a whole lot, but I met my new neighbors! They’re really cool. The dad’s name is Timmy. He has a daughter—Talie.” She feels the tension roll off her fidget toys at the names, she’ll have to speak carefully to avoid her godparents from breaking down again. She hated seeing them like that.

Winn’s eyebrows lift. “Talie? That’s kind of a cool name.”

“Is she starting school today?” Jasmine asks, leaning in. “I didn’t see anyone new in homeroom.”

“I don’t know,” Hazel says honestly, adjusting the strap on her backpack. “I was hoping she might be here. If she is, I want to show her around.”

“She’s lucky,” Winn says with a smile. “You’re the best welcome wagon this school’s got.”

Hazel beams at that, but her eyes still wander past them, toward the front office, toward the classroom doors slowly creaking shut. Still no sign of Talie.

Cosmo’s voice bubbles from her bag in a whisper only she can hear. “Maybe she’s invisible.”

“She’s probably just nervous,” Wanda counters gently, her tone wrapped in understanding. “First days are hard.”

Hazel nods to herself and grips her bag a little tighter. If Talie does show up today, she’s going to be ready. Ready to introduce her. Ready to help her. Ready to be the kind of friend Hazel knows how to be—the kind that sticks.

She just hopes Talie gives her the chance.

Hazel and her friends make it to their homeroom just as the last echoes of the bell fade into the morning murmur of the school. The classroom hums with that familiar mix of chaos and routine—backpacks thump to the floor, chairs scrape, a pencil drops and rolls beneath a desk. The scent of dry-erase markers and overripe bananas lingers in the air.

Hazel slides into her seat in the middle of the classroom, Winn and Jasmine settling in around her like puzzle pieces falling into place. Her desk feels colder than usual. Maybe it’s the sunlight slanting just right across the room, or maybe it’s something else—something sharp and unseen.

Then she sees him.

Dev Dimmadome is already there, slouched in his usual seat in the back row, shoulders hunched like he’s trying to disappear into the screen of his tablet. His fingers twitch against the glass with practiced ease, the faint tch-tch-tch of tapping barely audible beneath the morning chatter. He’s wearing his dark glasses again, even though the classroom lights are soft and the sun isn’t quite that bright.

He doesn’t look up. Not when the door opens. Not when chairs scrape. Not when Jasmine laughs too loudly at one of her own jokes. He just sits there, alone in a crowd, like someone dropped a void right into the middle of the classroom and the world built itself around it.

Hazel swallows and tries not to stare. She can’t tell what game he’s playing. Something fast, probably. Something sharp and full of explosions. He never plays anything slow.

Still, as she pulls her notebook from her backpack and sets it carefully on the desk, something shifts. Not a movement. Not a word. Just… a feeling. The kind that prickles the back of her neck and makes her skin hum.

She looks up, and even though he hasn’t turned his head, even though those glasses hide his eyes completely, Hazel knows.

For one heartbeat—maybe two—Dev is looking at her.

And then, just as suddenly, he isn’t.

His fingers resume their rhythm against the screen, fast and indifferent, as if nothing ever happened. As if the weight she felt on her shoulders a moment ago was just her imagination.

Hazel turns back toward the front of the room, jaw tight and thoughts spinning. There’s something in the way he watches the world without watching it. Like he’s not really here.

Hazel grips her pencil harder than she means to, the wood creaking faintly beneath her fingers. She doesn’t write anything. Not yet. She’s still watching, still feeling that strange afterimage of his gaze on her, like the echo of a dream that fades the moment you try to remember it.

She knows Dev used to have a fairy godparent.

She knows that godparent was Peri, Comso and Wanda’s son.

She knows something terrible happened during the Battle of Big Wand—a phrase wrapped in enough capital letters to sound both official and unspeakable. She’s heard Cosmo and Wanda whisper about it when they think she’s not listening.

Dev was Peri’s very first godkid. His trial run. His first chance.

And when that chance slipped through his fingers like glitter down a drain, something happened to Peri. Dev became the first kid he lost.

She knows that Peri blames himself.

But what Hazel doesn’t know is whether Dev remembers any of it. Whether the boy with the tablet and the invisible wall around his heart has even the faintest memory of magic. Of Peri. Of a time when he might’ve smiled without thinking.

Because if he does remember, he’s hiding it behind those dark glasses and sharp silences. And if he doesn’t... well, that might explain why he looks like he’s been living in a loop. Like he’s playing the same level of the same game over and over again, waiting for something to break.

Hazel let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Her pencil taps softly against the desk now, a steady beat to match the thoughts in her head.

She doesn’t know if she can fix any of this. But she wants to. And wanting is where every good story starts.

She glances back once more—quick, subtle.

He’s put his tablet away now, resting it face-down on the desk like a shield that’s no longer needed, but still within reach. His hands are folded on top of it, fingers laced with a kind of tension that doesn’t quite match the sleepy pace of the room. He’s not looking at her. Or maybe he is. It’s hard to tell with those glasses—like trying to read the weather through a brick wall.

Hazel’s eyes linger a beat too long.

And then, his head tilts.

Slow. Intentional. Like a dial turning.

“What?” he asks suddenly. It sounds like he’s trying to be forceful, but the question doesn’t come out that way. Annoyed, maybe, but not unkind. “You keep looking over here.”

Hazel blinks, caught in the act. Her mouth opens, then closes again. She forces a crooked smile, her fingers still nervously dancing with her pencil.

“Sorry,” she says, too soft for confidence and too loud for denial. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

Dev doesn’t respond right away. His fingers twitch, unlacing, then lacing again.

There’s a heartbeat of silence.

Then he shrugs. “Whatever.”

Hazel watches him for a second longer, then turns back to her notebook. Her smile fades, softening into something smaller, more thoughtful. Maybe he doesn’t remember her. At least, not in the way she remembers him.

Hazel presses her lips together and lowers her gaze to her notebook, letting her pencil finally scratch out a line across the top of the page. It’s not a sentence. Not even a word. Just a doodle—a looping swirl that coils in on itself like her thoughts.

The rest of the morning unfolds like a slow yawn. Math drags. History limps. Hazel doesn’t mind her classes, usually, but today she keeps checking the clock and checking the door, hoping Talie will walk through it with a pass in hand or a sheepish look on her face. But every time the knob twitches, it’s just another late kid with bedhead and an excuse.

By the time lunch rolls around, Hazel’s hope has thinned into something brittle. She sits at their usual table—Winn on her left, Jasmine across from her—noise filling the air around them as she unwraps her sandwich.

Still no Talie.

She should’ve known better than to get her hopes up. Moving is hard. First days are worse. But still… she was ready. She wanted to be that friendly face in a sea of strangers, to make this weird, crumbling school feel just a little smaller for someone else.

Instead, all she has is the quiet weight of disappointment curling behind her ribs.

Jasmine chatters about her latest manga obsession, and Winn chimes in with the occasional comment, but Hazel only half-listens. Her thoughts keep drifting—back to Talie, to Dev, to the strange way her fairy godparents have been acting lately. Wanda has been quieter. Cosmo too. Like they’re waiting for something to happen but don’t know what.

Hazel’s fork hovers over a cube of melon, her eyes scanning the cafeteria one more time just in case.

Still nothing.

She sighs through her nose and spears the fruit.

Winn notices first.

“Okay,” they say, gently nudging Hazel’s elbow with the corner of their tray, “you’ve been scanning the room like you’re expecting the principal to walk in riding a dragon. What’s up?”

Hazel blinks, her fork paused halfway to her mouth. She glances at Winn, then Jasmine, who’s already leaning forward with that look—the one she gets when gossip or mystery is afoot.

Hazel shrugs, but the gesture is small and weighted. “I was just… hoping Talie would be here today,” she admits. “While she did just move in over the weekend. I thought maybe today would be her first day.”

Winn’s expression softens, and Jasmine’s eyes widen.

“Ohhh,” Jasmine says, stretching the word like a sigh. “You were really looking forward to seeing her, huh?”

Hazel nods slowly, her voice quiet. “Yeah. I don’t know why, really. We barely talked, she didn’t talk at all, actually, but… she seemed nice. And kinda sad. I thought if I could just say hi, maybe help her find her way around, it might help.”

Winn sets their juice box down and gives her a warm smile. “You’re a good person, Hazel.”

“She’s lucky,” Jasmine adds, plopping her chin into her hands. “Having you waiting for her? I’d show up to school just for that.”

Hazel chuckles softly, but it’s a thin, threadbare sound. Her shoulders are a little hunched now, the weight of the day pressing down just enough to bend her posture.

From the fidget toy clipped to her backpack on the floor, Cosmo’s voice pipes up, tiny and syrupy with sympathy. “Aww, kiddo… we know you were excited.”

Wanda’s voice follows, softer, steadier. “It doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to come. Sometimes people need a little more time.”

Hazel pokes at her fruit again, watching the juice bead on the plastic tray. “I just… thought maybe today would feel different. Like something was finally starting.”

Winn nudges her again, this time more gently. “Hey. It still could.”

“Yeah,” Jasmine agrees, reaching across the table to poke Hazel’s arm. “Maybe she’s just running late. Or maybe tomorrow’s the day. First impressions don’t always have to happen on Mondays.”

Hazel manages a small smile at that, one that actually reaches her eyes. “Thanks, guys.”

Cosmo lets out a tiny honk from the fidget, like a party horn deflating. “We’ll keep an eye out with you! I bet she’ll be here soon. Maybe she’s coming with a sparkly entrance and a shower of glitter!”

Wanda makes a noise halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “No glitter, Cosmo. The school janitors suffer enough.”

Hazel giggles—really giggles this time—and it loosens something in her chest.

“Thanks,” she murmurs again, eyes scanning the cafeteria one last time. “I guess I just need to be patient.”

“When she does show up,” Jasmine begins, popping a grape into her mouth. “She’s gonna be so glad you were already looking out for her.”

Hazel nods and takes a bite of her sandwich, the tang of mustard and lettuce grounding her again. The ache of disappointment is still there, but it’s softer now—held gently by the words of her friends and the quiet, watching presence of her godparents, tucked safely in disguise.

Maybe Talie didn’t show up today.

But Hazel will be ready when she does.

Hazel chews slowly, the rhythm of lunch filling in around the edges of her disappointment like cement poured into a crack. She’s quiet, but she’s not alone. Winn absently sketches in the margin of a worksheet they never plan to turn in. Jasmine’s half-telling, half-performing a story about her cat knocking over a row of collectible figurines. Cosmo and Wanda, hidden in plain sight to everyone but her, emit the occasional muffled noise as they talk to each other.

The lunchroom hums around them—plastic forks squeaking against trays, sneakers squeaking across linoleum, someone laughing too loudly three tables over. The scent of ketchup and warm bread mingles with the sharper edge of floor cleaner, and somewhere in the background, a vending machine whirs like it’s trying to join the conversation.

Hazel’s eyes drift again—toward the lunchroom doors, the line of students snaking past the food counter, the long, rectangular windows that open onto the courtyard. She scans each new face with a small flicker of hope, but they all blur together in the same familiar haze.

Still no Talie.

Her stomach curls. Not with hunger. Just that restless kind of ache that comes from waiting.

Then, without warning, she feels it again.

That prickle.

It crawls across the back of her neck like a whisper made of static. She straightens, eyes narrowing, and casts a glance toward the far end of the cafeteria.

There—Dev. Sitting by himself at the very end of a nearly empty table, tray untouched, tablet nowhere in sight. He’s hunched over, elbows on the table, fingers steepled under his chin like he’s thinking too hard about something. He looks smaller like this. Not because of his height—Hazel knows he’s taller than he lets on—but because of the way he folds in on himself, all angles and edges and silence.

She watches him for a long moment.

He doesn’t move.

She briefly wonders if he might have fallen asleep.

But the longer she looks at him, the more that restless, questioning gets louder. She wants to say something. She doesn’t know what. But something.

Maybe: Hey, are you okay?

Maybe: Do you remember Peri?

Maybe just: Hi.

But each idea withers the moment it forms. What right does she have to ask? What would she even say if he looked up and gave her that hollow stare again? He already caught her watching once today. Would he be angry? Would he care?

She lowers her sandwich and leans slightly closer to her backpack, letting her voice drop to the smallest whisper. “Do you think he remembers you?” she murmurs. “Or Peri? Or Fairy World?”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then Cosmo’s voice comes quieter than usual. “Nope,” he says, voice sad and simple, like he’s answering a question about someone who moved away and never wrote back. “He can’t. He broke too many rules.”

Wanda chimes in, her voice low and careful. “He didn’t just share secrets, Hazel. He shared everything. Every fairy secret Peri trusted him with—he gave it all away.”

She looks back toward Dev, who still hasn’t moved. Still looks like a statue carved from shadow and too many thoughts. “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she says suddenly. “At least, I don’t think he did. Dev just wanted his dad’s attention.”

Wanda sighs, “We know. That’s the hardest part.” Her voice turns softer, tinged with a kind of knowing grief. “That’s the part that hurts the most. Dev didn’t mean to hurt anyone. But wanting something badly doesn’t undo what it cost.”

Hazel’s fingers tighten around the edge of her tray. Her eyes stay locked on Dev’s hunched form across the cafeteria, as if she just looks long enough, she’ll see the shape of the past in the curve of his shoulders, or Peri, disguised as his headphones, hanging around his neck.

Cosmo lets out a wobbly sigh. “He was Peri’s first. And Peri was so proud.”

“He loved him,” Wanda whispers. “The way we love you.”

Hazel’s throat catches. She looks down at the half-eaten sandwich in her hands, suddenly heavy as a stone. It’s hard to imagine anyone giving up something as impossible and beautiful as fairy godparents. It’s even harder to imagine someone choosing to throw them away.

But she doesn’t think that’s what Dev did.

She thinks he just wanted too much. Needed too much. And didn’t know where the line was until it snapped beneath his feet.

“He told his dad,” Hazel says, more to herself than anyone else. “About magic. About Fairy World.”

Her two fairies hum their acknowledgement.

Hazel’s heart twists. Her hands curl slowly into fists, not out of anger, but from the sheer weight of it all—the loneliness, the desperation, the echo of a wish that never landed right. She looks up again at Dev, still motionless at his corner of the world.

“Did they take his memories?” she asks quietly.

Wanda answers with a nod Hazel can feel more than see. “Jorgen came down personally. They had to wipe everything. Not just Fairy World, not just Peri. They had to pull the root of it—his whole chain of wishes, his belief in magic, every spark and shimmer and wonder. Gone.”

“Like pulling out a song before you even learn the chorus,” Cosmo murmurs.

Hazel blinks back the sting creeping behind her eyes. “But he still feels it, doesn’t he?” Her voice is a whisper, almost lost in the lunchroom clatter. “Something. Some piece of it.”

Cosmo and Wanda don’t answer immediately.

Then Wanda says, “Sometimes the soul remembers what the mind forgets.”

Hazel stares across the cafeteria, her chest tightening. Dev’s fingers are still steepled beneath his chin, his expression unreadable. He doesn’t look like someone who knows he once had a miracle tucked into his pocket. But he does look like someone who’s lost something important and can’t remember what it was—only that the ache never left.

Hazel wonders what it would do to someone—having that kind of magic, that kind of love, erased. If it would leave behind a shadow or a scar. It probably does.

She bites the inside of her cheek. “That’s not fair,” she says, her voice trembling now. “That he doesn’t get to remember any of it.”

“No,” Wanda agrees. “It’s not.”

There’s a long pause after that. Just the lunchroom sounds rising again—trays clattering, laughter echoing, someone yelling across a table about stolen fries. But Hazel feels like she’s beneath all that noise, like she’s sunk beneath a lake and the world has grown faint and blurry.

Her thoughts circle like slow whirlpools, impossible to pull free from. She watches Dev, and in the back of her mind, Mr. Turner’s face surfaces. He seems to remember something about Cosmo and Wanda, but… he doesn’t remember anything about fairies or magic or anything similar.

She remembers the way Wanda’s voice had trembled, just a little, when she first saw the box labeled T. Turner. The way Cosmo kept nearly floating into the ceiling with excitement, only to plummet again with every new realization. The way they both spoke about him reminded her of the way her grandma spoke about her late pawpaw.

“It’s not fair,” she says again, firmer this time. Because it isn’t. It isn’t!

Wanda’s sigh floats out like steam from a kettle too tired to whistle. “No, sweetheart. It’s not fair. But Da Rules weren’t written to be fair. They were written to protect and keep order.”

Hazel’s jaw tightens, her throat hot with something that’s not quite anger, not quite sadness. She pushes her tray forward, forgotten sandwich edging toward the brink.

She knows why Da Rules exist. She’s seen what happens when magic slips out of bounds—when wishes ripple too far, when secrets spill. Wishing for something is like dropping a ball through a Plinko maze. It can go in any direction.

But still.

She thinks about Mr. Turner and Talie—her neighbors, her almost-but-not-quite-friends. They both walk around like they’re wearing masks and pretending that everything is alright. Alright, maybe she’s jumping to conclusions, but Hazel knows that he remembers… something. He must. He knows Cosmo and Wanda’s names. He knows he had a couple of goldfish with their names.

But he doesn’t remember enough.

And Dev? Dev remembers nothing. Not even the echoes. Just that ache, that empty seat inside him where something soft and glowing used to sit.

Hazel swallows hard and mutters, “I know they broke the rules. I know. But how is it supposed to help if all it leaves behind is hurt?”

Wanda doesn’t answer at first.

Then: “Because the alternative is worse.”

Her tone is different now—low and iron-strong. She sounds like someone who’s seen what happens when Da Rules aren’t followed. Like someone who’s tried to pick up the pieces after a wish turned into a wildfire. Hazel feels that weight in her bones.

Still, she stares at Dev, stubbornly. “He just wanted his dad to see him.”

Cosmo frowns, unusually quiet. “So did Timmy.”

Hazel presses her lips together. Her eyes drift, not to Dev this time, but to the big windows that overlook the street beyond the school—the one that curves around to her block, past the pale yellow building with the overgrown hedges.

She whispers, almost to herself, “How many times have Da Rules erased something important?”

Neither fairy answers.

It was too many times to count.

Hazel watches Dev one more time.

He moves.

Slowly, he straightens—arms unfolding, shoulders rolling back like he's shaking off a bad dream. He pulls his tray toward him and picks up a fork, stabbing half-heartedly at a lump of mashed potatoes. He doesn't look up. Doesn’t glance at anyone. But that heaviness in his posture has shifted, just barely.

Like he felt someone watching.

Hazel feels something else in that moment. A wish, unspoken but almost ready to be said.

She pulls her bag closer, fingers brushing against the rubber-soft edges of Cosmo and Wanda, and closes her eyes for half a heartbeat.

“I wish…” she starts to whisper.

But then stops.

Not yet. While she wants to help everyone that’s hurting, she doesn’t want to cause any undo damage. She needs to find a loophole. She just has to be patient.

Chapter Text

The sun hangs low in the sky, stretching long shadows across the sidewalk as Hazel walks between Winn and Jasmine. Winn’s backpack is half-zipped, and the edge of a notebook flaps with each step, and their skateboard is tucked under their arm. Jasmine’s talking a mile a minute about some dream she had—something about flying on a magic carpet through a city made of graham crackers and marshmallows. Her words spill like marbles, chaotic and bright, but Hazel only half-listens.

Cosmo and Wanda hover over them, no longer disguised. They’ve stopped trying to be subtle. They know Winn and Jasmine are allowed to see them and hear them. And the road leading to Hazel’s apartment doesn’t usually get a whole lot of foot traffic, not since the construction on Main finished a couple of weeks ago.

“So,” Winn says, finally finding a space to interrupt Jasmine’s dream rant, “this Turner-guy and Talie, your new neighbors, are they the ones who own Page Turner Comics?”

Jasmine gasps a little, like Winn just cracked open a treasure chest. “Oh my gosh, yes! I keep seeing that Coming Soon sign and all the posters for it all over town.”

Hazel doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes stay on the road ahead. The sidewalks here are uneven, cracked in places where roots have pushed up through the concrete. She absently counts each fault line as they walk over them, like a grounding exercise.

“He’s… quiet,” she says, finally answering Winn’s question. “I only saw him once, last Saturday. Looks like he hasn’t slept in years.”

Winn raises an eyebrow. “So you’re saying: Hot and depressed? Like a tortured poet.”

“Sounds like a hot mess.” Jasmine elbows Hazel playfully. “And probably in need of a shower.”

Hazel snorts despite herself.

“I think he’s a vampire plotting to turn the whole of Dimmadelphia into vampires! Scary!” Cosmo says, chewing his nails as he glances down an alley.

Wanda sighs, “We’ve been over this, Cosmo. There are no vampires in Dimmadelphia. And Timmy, he’s—” She bites her tongue to keep from saying too much—“He’s probably just slow at unpacking.”

“He just seemed really sad.” Hazel finally says. “I’ve barely met him and Talie, but that seems very unlike him for some reason.”

Cosmo makes a soft sound, almost a whimper.

Wanda lowers her voice dramatically, “He used to smile more.”

Jasmine slows her steps. “Wait. You know him?”

“We—er…” Wanda fumbles over her words as she tries to come up with an excuse, “I mean, he’s probably going through something. You know how people are. Something could have happened to make him this sad.”

They walk in silence for a few steps, the only sounds being the rustle of wind through new spring leaves and the faint creak of someone’s back gate swinging open behind a townhouse.

Then Jasmine pipes up again, voice softer than usual. “And his daughter? Talie?”

“I haven’t seen her since Saturday either,” Hazel replies. “I thought she was supposed to go to our school, but… I don’t even know what grade she’s in.”

“Do you think she’s got fairies too?” Jasmine asks. “Like a whole second generation of sparkle secrets?”

“No,” Cosmo says immediately.

Wanda’s answer is slower. “If Talie had fairies, we’d learn about it sooner rather than later.”

“Just like how you found out about Peri being Dev’s godparent,” Hazel says matter-of-factly.

“Exactly!” Cosmo grins, “Oh, we were so excited to learn that our baby boy was assigned his first godkid!”

Wanda smiles, bittersweet. First and last thus far.

Winn tilts their head. “Oh, do you think the comic shop is like… a cover? For something?”

“Oh, that would be so cool!” Jasmine adds, “He could be a secret agent! Like that old show my dad used to watch and now rewatch… what was the name? Jack? Buck? Chuck!”

“Oh, Chuck, I remember my mom talking about that one sometimes,” Winn supplies with a smirk. “The guy who downloaded government secrets into his brain and had to be protected by spies.”

Jasmine snaps her fingers. “Yes! That one! Page Turner Comics could be a front! He could have a whole underground base beneath it, full of secret files and gadgets and maybe a giant hamster that runs the power grid!”

Cosmo’s eyes go wide. “I want a giant hamster that runs a power grid!”

“You can’t even keep a goldfish alive,” Wanda mutters, mostly to herself.

Hazel lets their chatter wash over her as the apartment building comes into view. Home. It’s not the prettiest building on the block, but it’s close to school and part of a good neighborhood.

She leads the way up the steps. Winn and Jasmine don’t follow her inside, but they pause at the bottom, still talking about comic books and espionage. Cosmo and Wanda float behind Hazel’s head as she pushes through the front door.

“Have a goodnight, guys!” Hazel waves cheerily. “Walk home safe! “I’ll text you when I’m done with homework.”

“Okay!” Jasmine waves back. “We can compare notes on what we got!”

“Hopefully before I fall asleep watching dog park livestreams,” Winn says.

Hazel nods and heads up the stairs.

The inside of her building smells the same as it always does. And it’s the same quiet, too. No moving furniture. No loud music. Nothing. She wonders if that’s why her parents chose to live here instead of closer to downtown.

Hazel glances at the parcel lockers and finds them just as dull as they usually are. The box that was there all weekend is now gone. Mr. Turner must have finally taken it up to his apartment. He must have been busy unpacking all weekend.

She turns toward the stairs, bouncing up them with end-of-the-school-day energy. There’s a faint squeak on the third step. It’s the one that always sounds like a rubber duck losing its will to live—she smirks at the thought and continues to climb.

As she reaches her floor, a rustle of movement and the sound of someone knocking catches her attention.

A delivery guy, juggling a paper bag and a drink tray, fumbles with his phone before knocking on the Turners’ door. Hazel pauses, pretending to fiddle with her keys.

The door creaks open as Mr. Turner answers it.

His hoodie sleeves are pushed up, revealing faded ink on his wrist: a quick, clumsy doodle of a crown. His hair’s messier than before, sticking up in odd places like he’s been running his hands through it for hours. He thanks the delivery guy with a nod, accepts the food, and then turns to go back inside.

The door is open just long enough.

Hazel catches a glimpse beyond him.

There’s a narrow kitchen table under a flickering overhead light. Boxes still stacked along the walls, half-labeled in a scrawl that looks like it got tired halfway through each word. And there—Talie.

She’s sitting at the table, hunched over a spiral notebook. Her hair’s up in a messy bun, pencil tucked behind one ear. She’s chewing the cap of a pen, surrounded by open textbooks.

Another chair is pulled out beside her—empty, but its position tells a quiet story. A chair that’s been used recently. A mug sits next to it, half-drunk and still steaming.

Hazel freezes mid-step.

It looks as though Timmy might have just been sitting there, helping her with homework.

Talie doesn’t notice the open door or Hazel on the landing. She’s curled into herself, posture small, like she’s trying to take up as little space in the world as possible. One leg tucked under her. Shoulders slightly hunched. She doesn’t move when Timmy walks in and sets the takeout bag on the table.

But when he opens one of the containers and nudges it toward her with a little, wordless gesture—she lights up. Just a flicker. A tiny, golden change in her eyes. Her face softens. Her shoulders loosen. She uncurls just enough to take the container, her fingers brushing against his.

Then the door shuts. Softly. No drama. No slam. Just the gentle click of a quiet home pulling itself closed again.

Wanda floats up beside Hazel’s shoulder, her voice barely above a whisper. “That’s sweet. Timmy’s homeschooling her.”

Hazel nods slowly. “I guess it makes sense. She hasn’t been in school, and if he owns that comic store, he’s going to be home until it’s finished.” She hums quietly to herself, “When it is finished, will Talie come to school then?”

“Possibly.” Wanda nods, “I doubt he’d leave her at home by herself.”

There’s a thoughtful pause. Then Cosmo chimes in, grinning a little too widely. “Awww, sweet… and lonely! Like a little bunny living in a shoebox.”

Hazel gives him a sideways look. “What does that even mean?”

“It means she looks like she doesn’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of except a guy who eats cereal for dinner,” Cosmo replies, completely serious.

“She wouldn’t be lonely because of Timmy,” Wanda murmurs. “She’d be lonely because she doesn’t have any friends.”

“But what if she didn’t have any friends?” Cosmo asks, throwing his hand out and frowning, “She didn’t say a word to any of us when we said ‘Hello!’”

Hazel slowly looks away from the Turners’ apartment. She chews on the inside of her cheek as she walks down the hall toward her family’s apartment. Cosmo and Wanda float beside her, unusually quiet… again. Her keys jangle softly as she unlocks her door, but her mind is still inside that apartment—back in that flickering kitchen light, in the quiet that felt less like peace and more like hiding.

Inside her apartment, everything feels too loud. The thunk of her backpack dropping to the floor, the hum of the fridge, the muffled voice of her mom talking on a work call in the office.

Hazel toes off her shoes and heads straight for her room, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

She flops onto the bed and stares at the ceiling, arms flung wide, legs hanging off the edge. Cosmo immediately floats upside down above her, grinning. “Maybe we can throw her a surprise party!”

Wanda perches on the windowsill, thoughtful. “She doesn’t seem like the type to enjoy loud noises.”

Hazel turns her head to look at them. “You guys… what if Talie’s never had friends before? Like… not just because she’s new here, but because of the whole ‘being mute’ thing. What if everyone’s always just… ignored her?”

Wanda’s gaze softens. “It’s possible,” she says. “Some kids get used to being overlooked. And once people stop trying, it becomes easier to disappear than to try again.”

“Like when you drop a jellybean under the couch and forget it’s there,” Cosmo says solemnly, “and it gets all fuzzy and you feel bad but also kind of scared.”

Hazel sighs, curling onto her side to face them. “She didn’t look sad exactly. Just… small. Like she was trying not to bother anyone.”

There’s a pause. Wanda, still quiet, draws a small star in the fog of the window with her finger. “You know who that reminds me of?”

Hazel doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to.

“Our little Poofy,” Cosmo says quietly, “I remember it like yesterday!”

“Peri,” Wanda nods as she gently corrects her husband, “He wasn’t one to speak a whole lot when he was younger.”

Hazel gives them a look.

Wanda sighs, eyes softening. “Believe it or not, Peri didn’t speak until much later than the average fairy—or human, for that matter. Then again, we fairies don’t really know what the average development is for a fairy. Before Peri, there hadn’t been a fairy born in over a millenia.”

“Yep!” Cosmo grins, “Before my son, I was the last fairy born!”

“That’s besides the point,” Wanda continues, “Because Poo—Peri didn’t speak much, the other fairies treated his silence like absence. We’ve seen it with one or two of our godkids over the years as well. It happens more than you’d think.”

“But Talie’s not absent,” Hazel says, sitting up suddenly, her voice firm. “She’s there. She’s doing homework. She’s smart. She just…” She falters, then finds the words again, “She just might need someone who doesn’t expect her to talk to be her friend.”

Hazel’s eyes burn with determination. “If Talie doesn’t have anyone—if she never has—then I’m going to be her first. I’ll be the one who makes room for her. Even if she doesn’t talk. Even if she doesn’t come to school. Even if it’s just waving through the window or leaving notes under the door. Someone has to try.”

Cosmo gasps and clutches his cheeks. “You’re gonna be her fairy friend—but without the magic!”

Hazel smiles faintly, leaning her head back against the wall. “I want her to be part of things. To feel like she belongs. I just… don’t know how yet.”

Wanda stands and floats toward her. “You don’t have to know everything now. Just be kind. Be patient. Let her know you see her.”

Cosmo offers, “We could deliver a cake! Or a turtle! People love turtles!”

“Maybe just a note,” Wanda says dryly.

Hazel’s smile grows. “Yeah. A note’s a good place to start.”

She pushes herself off the bed, her limbs feeling lighter. She rifles through her desk drawer, pulling out a small notepad with cartoon frogs on the edges. She thinks for a moment, tapping the pencil to her lip.

Then she writes, in neat print:

—

“Hi Talie!

I know we met briefly on Saturday, so I hope this isn’t weird, but I’d really like to be your friend. :)

—Hazel”

—

She stares at it, unsure for a second, then folds it carefully and tucks it into a little envelope. Wanda adds a smiley face sticker to the back. Cosmo tries to add a glitter bomb, but Wanda wrestles it out of his hands before he can detonate it.

Hazel stands at her door. “Okay. Operation Friendship is a go.”

As they slip into the hallway, the air seems cooler. Still. The kind of still that holds its breath. Hazel tiptoes to the Turners’ door, heart pounding like she’s stealing treasure instead of offering a note.

She bends down and slides the envelope beneath the door. It disappears with the smallest whisper.

Then she straightens, turns, and walks back to her apartment.

Maybe nothing will come of it.

Or maybe something will.

Chapter Text

The grass in the backyard is a little overgrown, curling in waves that brush against Timmy’s ankles as he kneels beside the flower bed. It’s late summer—just before the first crisp breath of fall—and the air is warm and drowsy, the kind that makes bees fly slow and sunbeams linger too long on your skin.

Dimmsdale’s skies are a soft, endless blue, cloudless except for the faintest smudge of white trailing behind a distant plane. The fence is old and warped in places, paint peeling in strips that catch the breeze like forgotten paper ribbons. There’s a dent in one panel from the time Timmy crashed his bike into it when Cosmo was trying to teach him how to ride without training wheels—he smiles at the memory.

Poof sits cross-legged just beside him in the dirt, a bundle of lavender curls and bright eyes, wearing a tiny sunhat that Wanda insisted he wear to reduce the risk of a sunburn. His round eyes watch Timmy intently, like everything the older boy does is something worth remembering. He doesn’t speak—never has—but the way he leans in with every gesture, the subtle tilt of his head, the wide-eyed attention he gives each movement—it says more than words ever could.

Timmy digs into the dirt with a plastic spade, pushing aside old roots and turning the soil like he remembers his mother doing back in the spring. “You gotta break it up,” he says, not expecting an answer. “Loosen it so the water sinks in right. Otherwise, stuff just dies.”

Poof blinks slowly, then mimics the motion, forming a trench right beside Timmy’s. He glances at his brother for approval.

Timmy grins. “Yeah, just like that.”

The garden isn’t really a garden yet—just a patch of dry earth where nothing’s grown in a long time. But there’s a packet of marigold seeds sitting on the grass beside them, and something about the idea of planting them feels important. Feels like the kind of thing he’s supposed to pass down, even if he barely knows what he’s doing.

His parents are out of town and have been for the last week, celebrating their anniversary. Timmy doesn’t know when they’re supposed to be back, they don’t tell him much of anything anymore. He’s old enough to be on his own—get groceries with the allowance they give him, cook, clean, and watch the house. He knows they are counting down the time they have left with him, just are Cosmo and Wanda… just in a very different way.

Timmy sighs and looks out over the yard. There are several clover patches hiding in the grass, and a beetle inching its way across the far end of the flower box. It’s quiet except for the occasional bark from the neighbor’s dog, the dull hum of a lawnmower down the block, and the windchime on the back porch. A peaceful quiet. The kind that used to be rare in Timmy’s world.

He opens the seed packet, lets Poof peer in. “These are marigolds,” he explains. “They’re tough. They don’t need much to grow—just a little light and space. Even if they get stepped on or forgotten, they come back.”

Poof looks from the packet to the earth, then raises his wand and flicks it once. A faint sparkle trails from the tip—light and delicate. It fades as it lands on the soil.

“No magic,” Timmy says gently, ruffling the boy’s lavender tuft of hair. “Not for this. Sometimes… it’s better to do things the slow way.”

Poof tilts his head, curious.

“It’s not about making it easy,” Timmy continues. “It’s about watching something grow, even when it’s hard. You know?”

Poof doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t look away either.

They plant the seeds together. One by one. Tiny hopes buried under loose, warm earth. Timmy presses them down with his fingers. Poof leans in close.

Timmy brushes dirt over the last shallow hole with the side of his palm, careful not to press too hard. The soil clings to his fingers—soft, crumbly, and smelling faintly of damp wood and grass clippings. He gives a little nod of satisfaction, wiping his hands on the hem of his shirt before reaching for the dented blue watering can that’s been sitting in the sun.

“It doesn’t look like much right now,” he says as he tips the spout forward. Water trickles out, catching the light like liquid glass. It soaks into the dry patches with a soft, greedy sound. “But give it time. Water. Patience.”

He glances sideways. “And maybe some luck.”

Poof watches the water disappear into the dirt, a crease forming between his brows. His tiny hand reaches forward, fingers ghosting over the darkened soil, like he’s trying to feel the change happening beneath the surface.

Timmy sets the can down with a sigh, then flops onto his back in the grass. Blades bend beneath him, tickling his neck, but he doesn’t move. The sun warms his face and arms, and for a moment, he lets himself breathe all the way in.

Poof stays sitting, peering down at the rows they made, then at Timmy, like he’s waiting for the next instruction.

But another never comes.

Timmy opens one eye and gestures vaguely toward the sky. “The birds’ll eat them if we don’t bury them deep enough. That’s why you tuck them in. Like you’re keeping them safe until they’re ready to come out.”

Poof glances up, toward the blue expanse. Somewhere, a crow caws in the distance—sharp and high—and the fairy boy flinches slightly, pulling his hat lower over his curls. He scoots closer to Timmy and lowers himself into the grass beside him.

Timmy smiles without looking. “They’re not gonna eat you, buddy.”

They lie there in the silence. Just two specks in a too-big world, surrounded by sun and weeds and earth still damp with potential.

After a while, Timmy whispers, “Did you know marigolds are for remembering?”

Poof blinks at him, lashes long in the light.

Timmy doesn’t look away from the sky. “That’s what Juandissimo said last October. Said they help you remember the people who aren’t around anymore.”

A beat. A breath.

“I think I get it now.”

Poof shifts closer, a small, warm weight against his side. He doesn’t speak, but his hand curls into Timmy’s shirt, tugging gently. He doesn’t know what his brother is talking about, but he hates how sad he sounds.

Timmy doesn’t respond right away. His eyes stay on the sky, that endless blue, like he’s trying to memorize it before something changes. His hand absently finds Poof’s and gives it a little squeeze.

He wants to say something simple. Something light. But it catches in his throat.

Instead, he says, “There’s gonna be a day when you’re not with me anymore.”

Poof blinks, confused.

Timmy glances at him now, the corner of his mouth tilting up like he’s trying to be brave for both of them. “You’ll still be somewhere, obviously. Just… not with me.”

Poof’s brows pinch, his mouth parting like he wants to object but doesn’t know how.

“I don’t mean right now,” Timmy adds quickly. “We’ve still got time. Lots of it, probably. I’m just… saying. Someday.”

Poof’s fingers tighten in the fabric of Timmy’s shirt. He shakes his head once, hard. His curls bounce under the brim of his hat, and for the first time, he looks upset.

Timmy turns onto his side, facing him properly. “Hey, hey. It’s not happening today. It’s not even something we need to think about right now.”

But Poof doesn’t look convinced. His eyes are wide and shiny, and his little lip trembles just enough for Timmy to notice.

Timmy sits up, brushing grass off his elbows, then cups Poof’s cheek with one hand—warm and careful. “Poof, I don’t want you to worry about it. You’re still here. We’re still here.”

Poof makes a quiet, questioning noise, as if trying to ask why that day has to come at all.

Timmy smiles again, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s just how it works. It’s in Da Rules.” He brushes his thumb gently along Poof’s temple, then drops his hand to the boy’s shoulder. “You don’t have to understand it right now. I just wanted to tell you… that I know it’s coming. But I’m not going anywhere today. And neither are you. Okay?”

Poof sniffles and nods, pressing his forehead to Timmy’s chest like he’s trying to tuck himself away somewhere safe.

The wind picks up, rustling the grass like a whisper, tugging at the sunhat’s brim.

Timmy wraps both arms around him, folding Poof into a soft, careful hug. His eyes drift closed. For a moment, he lets the sun and the silence hold them both.

He can’t protect Poof from the rule.

But he can give him this—a quiet afternoon, seeds in the dirt, and the knowledge that for now, they’re still together.

—

Timmy wakes with a jolt.

The ceiling above him is still the same off-white, peppered with shadows over the popcorn texture. The early morning light has just begun to creep in, painting the walls in a slow, golden haze. It’s quiet—too quiet—and it takes a moment before he realizes the weight in his chest isn’t just the usual morning grogginess.

His breath catches, uneven.

He runs a hand over his face, fingers brushing across damp skin.

He’s been crying.

The discovery is strange, disorienting. His eyelashes are stuck together at the corners, his cheeks feel cool where the tears dried, and his pillow is slightly damp beneath his head. He presses the heel of his hand against his eyes, willing the sting to go away.

But the confusion stays.

He doesn’t remember why. Doesn’t remember the dream—just that it was heavy. Like something important slipped through his fingers in the dark and he didn’t notice until it was already gone.

He rolls onto his side, frowning into the pillow. His head throbs faintly, a dull ache blooming behind his temples as he tries to chase the memory. But the more he reaches for it, the more it fades.

Was someone talking to him? A voice. Maybe a touch. Something warm, maybe?

The memory stutters, like a skipped frame in an old VHS tape, then vanishes completely.

Timmy groans softly and scrubs at his eyes again. “Stupid dream.”

He sits up slowly, the sheets pulling away from his legs with a soft whisper.

His room looks atrocious. It’s still a mess with boxes leaning against each other in teetering stacks, some half-open, some sealed with crooked strips of tape. Clothes spill out of a plastic laundry basket near the foot of the bed—shirts he never folded, socks that never found their pairs. His backpack slumps like a deflated balloon against the closet door, zipper halfway down. An empty ramen cup sits precariously on the windowsill, the plastic film still clinging to its rim.

He squints at the clock.

7:48 a.m.

Later than he meant to be up. Not late-late, but enough that his stomach tightens with a flicker of guilt. He told himself he’d do better this week—unpack, get settled, make the place feel like something more than a storage unit with a mattress in it.

Still, he’s up now. That’s something.

He shuffles out of bed and pulls on the nearest shirt—wrinkled and soft with overuse—then pads into the apartment barefoot. The hardwood floor is cool against his feet, humming with air blowing through the vents.

He turns the corner into the small kitchen-dining-living room combo. The room is bathed in gentle light from the big window overlooking the community space out back, dust motes drifting lazily in the air. The smell of pencil graphite and something vaguely fruity hangs in the space—leftover cereal, maybe?

Talie is already at the kitchen table, hunched over a piece of paper with her brow knit together in concentration. A box of well-used colored pencils is spread out before her. She’s drawn what looks like a car—kind of lumpy, kind of boxy—and inside it are two stick figures. One in the front seat, one in the back. 

He recognizes her instantly. The brown waves are unmistakable, even in crayon. She’s sitting in the backseat, and her mother is behind the wheel. The characters seem neutral, but Timmy knows better. He stops in the doorway to watch quietly.

Talie doesn’t look up when she feels his eyes on her. She doesn't even acknowledge his presence. I stead, she continues to work on her drawing, filling in the sky now, and pressing her blue pencil a little too hard—he can hear the wood scratching the paper from where he stands.

He watches her shoulders tighten with each scratch of the pencil, each deliberate stroke dragging too slow, too hard. The sky she’s drawing isn’t blue like cartoons or cheerful picture books—it’s heavy, streaked in a way that looks more like bruises than daylight. Her tiny hand clutches the pencil like it might shatter if she lets go.

Timmy knows what the drawing is. He swallows against the lump forming in his throat. His chest feels too tight. There’s a heat behind his eyes again, and he has to blink hard to keep it at bay.

It’s the last time Talie was with her mother.

The scar above her brow is still faintly pink, still peeks out from under her hair when she forgets to tuck it behind her ear. He’s never asked if she remembers the crash. Part of him prays she doesn’t.

But scenes like this make him wonder.

He wants to comfort her, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. He doesn’t want his daughter to remember what exactly happened that day. He doesn’t want her to go through that trauma again. And if he did try to explain it to her, what would he even say? You were hurt, comatose, barely holding on. Your mother was gone when I got there. She protected you…

Just thinking about it, he knows his voice would crack. His heart might, too.

Timmy shifts his weight, the floor creaking gently under his heel. Talie’s pencil slows for half a second, but she doesn’t turn. Doesn’t speak. She doesn’t flinch when he gets close. He sees her swallow once, sees her shift in her seat.

Quietly, he crosses the room.

There’s a bowl by her elbow—pink milk and a few swollen cereal puffs clinging to the rim. She found the stash he hid in the cupboard, the one he bought on impulse because it reminded him of childhood Saturday mornings. It shouldn’t mean anything. But it does.

He leans down, gently, and presses a kiss into the top of her hair. She smells like her apple and cinnamon shampoo.

Timmy lingers there a moment longer, lips pressed against the crown of her head. He lets his eyes flutter closed—just for a second—so he can hold onto the scent, the weight of her so close, the small gravity she has that pulls the worst parts of the world out of focus. Then he straightens up, his hand brushing gently across her back before he turns toward the kitchen.

The coffeemaker is old—secondhand from a thrift store, faintly yellowed at the edges, with a little crack in the glass pot that hasn’t quite reached the danger zone yet. He pours in water from the dented kettle and adds the grounds—dark roast, the cheap kind, the kind that always tastes a little burnt no matter what you do. He had gotten it just before college, and it’s lasted him this long; he can’t give up on it now.

It sputters to life with a series of gurgles and sighs, filling the room with a bitter, grounding smell that somehow makes the day feel more real.

He leans against the counter, arms folded, eyes drifting toward the living room.

The fishbowl rests at the edge of the low table, right beside the half-filled bookshelf he’s only just started organizing. It’s a round, clean globe of glass, maybe a little too small, but the water inside sparkles in the morning light. Two tiny goldfish dart through the space like flecks of firelight, their movements erratic but strangely beautiful—twisting around each other like a practiced dance.

They loop and dip and rise in tandem, catching glimmers of sunlight with each flick of their fins.

Timmy watches them for a while, the corners of his mouth twitching with something close to a smile. Despite the apartment not being completely put together yet, he’s glad that they went to the pet store to pick the little things out. Their presence alone makes the place feel more like a home.

He exhales, slow and quiet, then lifts his voice just enough to carry across the space. “Did you feed them already?”

He doesn’t expect an answer.

But Talie nods, still focused on her drawing. She presses her purple crayon into the corner of the paper now, adding something that might be a flower or maybe a crack in the sidewalk. Her fingers smudge the blue sky. She doesn’t lift her head.

Timmy watches her for another moment, coffee forgotten as it drips and hisses behind him. Her hair falls into her face again, and she doesn’t bother to push it back.

“Thanks, Dewdrop.” he says softly.

She nods—barely—and continues coloring.

Outside the window, the community lawn is still, touched by gold and shadow. A single leaf twirls down from one of the older trees, brushing against the glass before disappearing from view. Somewhere, a car engine starts. A dog barks. Life begins to move.

The machine beeps and Timmy pours his beverage from the pot into an equally well-used mug. 

Then, he takes it from the counter, letting it warm his fingers, and walks slowly toward the table. He cradles the cup with both hands, sipping carefully—too hot. Bitter, still. But it wakes him up in the way he needs.

He sets it down beside Talie’s cereal bowl as he takes a seat, careful not to jostle her paper.

His eyes drift again to the fishbowl—those two goldfish twining through the water in slow spirals, their tiny mouths puckering and opening with silent rhythm. One has a pale, almost translucent tail fin that fans like a piece of silk. The other swims with short, quick darts and has a single dark mark just below its right eye—like a freckle, faint but distinct.

Timmy tilts his head and smiles softly. “You name ’em yet?” he asks, taking another small sip.

Talie pauses mid-line, the green crayon hovering just above the paper. Her shoulders lift with a little breath, then she nods once and sets her pencil down. She rummages through the scattered papers beside her—some crumpled, some bent at the corners, all rimmed with color—and finally pulls out a single, flat sheet with two round shapes drawn side by side. She slides it across the table without a word.

Timmy lowers his coffee and leans in to look.

The drawing is unmistakable. Two goldfish, lovingly rendered in fat, waxy strokes, swimming in opposite directions but almost touching noses. One has a flowy, white-edged tail, outlined in soft peach-orange. The other is rounder, brighter, with a spot scribbled near its eye in dark brown crayon.

Underneath, written neatly in Talie’s careful block letters, are the names:

“Cloud”

“Star”

Timmy’s heart gives a soft, unexpected lurch.

He studies the names, lips parting slightly. The way she spelled them is perfect. Clean. Proud. There’s something about it that sticks in his chest—like a note struck just hard enough to echo.

He runs a finger just over the paper’s edge, careful not to smudge anything. “Cloud and Star,” he says aloud, letting the names sit on his tongue. “Those are… really good. They match them well. I like them.”

Talie doesn’t respond, but he sees the tiniest twitch at the corner of her mouth before she ducks her head again, pretending to tidy up her pencils.

He watches her, quiet.

Timmy lifts the drawing gently and holds it up, giving the paper a little wave in the direction of the fishbowl. “You hear that, guys? You’ve got names now. Official.”

In the bowl, the fish swim on, heedless of their christening, but the timing feels poetic—Cloud twirls beneath the little castle ornament, tail flashing like silver and Star bumps gently against the glass before circling back to join.

Timmy smiles again, this time a little wider as he moves back towards the kitchen.

He magnets the drawing on the fridge, pinning it in place with a magnet shaped like a pineapple.

The colors stand out against the dull white. He takes a step back, arms crossed loosely, and looks at it like it’s a painting in a museum.

He doesn’t hear Talie approach. Just feels a gentle tug at the hem of his shirt—small fingers curling, tugging twice.

He looks down.

She’s there, close beside him, her head tilted back, eyes wide and solemn. The crown of her hair is a little messy from leaning over the table, a single crayon mark streaked faintly across her knuckle. Her lips press together in that thoughtful way she gets when she’s making a decision that matters.

Without a word, she lifts her hand and offers him her pinky.

She holds it out with both a quiet determination and perplexed expression, like she’s not entirely sure what she’s promising yet… but knows it’s important. Knows it means something.

Timmy blinks.

There’s no context. No explanation. But somehow, he understands.

It doesn’t feel like it’s about the fish. Or the drawing. It feels like it’s about everything else. About the silence they both carry, the weight they don’t have words for, the way the mornings creep in with their soft light and grief that never quite goes away.

His chest tightens again, but this time it’s gentler. Almost warm.

Slowly, he crouches, bringing himself to her level. The floor creaks beneath his feet, and his knees protest slightly, but he doesn’t care. He looks her in the eyes—clear and steady—and hooks his pinky around hers.

They stay like that for a second, tangled together by the smallest gesture, in the smallest space.

He squeezes.

“So… what are we promising?” he asks, voice soft.

Talie shrugs, just a little. Then she leans forward and presses her forehead lightly to his, nose brushing his cheek. It’s not an answer—not in words—but it lands like one anyway. He closes his eyes. 

When she pulls back, she doesn’t say a word. She just lets their pinkies linger another beat, then slips her hand away and wanders back to the table—back to the paper and pencils and half-drunk cereal milk. She climbs onto her chair and settles back to finish her drawing.

Timmy stays there, crouched in front of the fridge, hand still half-curled where her pinky had been. He breathes in once slowly and lets it out, hoping that he’ll be able to hear what’s going on in that head of hers again one day.

But whatever the promise was, he’s already decided:

He’s going to keep it.

Timmy finally pushes to his feet, knees cracking in quiet protest as he rises. His coffee is still warm when he picks it up from the table—barely—and he finishes it in two slow sips, letting the weight of the morning settle into his bones.

There’s a clarity to the silence now. Not clean or easy, but steady.

He rinses his cup in the sink, sets it upside down on the drying mat, then stands for a second with his palms pressed against the edge of the counter. His eyes drift across the apartment again—at the leaning towers of cardboard and the sagging couch cushions, the stack of frames near the wall that haven’t found nails yet, the half-unpacked bookshelf with paperbacks leaning awkwardly against each other like tired soldiers.

He glances at Talie.

Still coloring, still quiet.

He should get her started on her assignment for the day, but what’s the harm in letting her color a little longer? She always finishes the main lessons early. He can wait a little before getting her started.

He exhales and stretches, earning a few more pops and crackles from his joints. Then, he turns towards the wall of remaining boxes.

It’s time to make this place theirs.

The first box he grabs is marked in black Sharpie: MEDIA - FRAGILE. The tape peels like old sunburn, crackling and flaking away in strips. Inside, there’s a stack of DVDs— The Iron Giant, Spirited Away, Treasure Planet —all worn, some without cases, all kept for love rather than condition.

Beneath them are the comics.

His comics.

He lifts one slowly, fingers brushing over the glossy cover. The artwork is unmistakably his—raw in places, a little unpolished, but full of life. His linework still has the same slanted, jittery charm that it always has. The main character stares up from the page, cape caught in some invisible breeze, eyes wide with hope and fear at once.

He sets that one aside carefully—like a fragile photograph—then pulls out the rest. There are about nine he’s finished over the years. One was picked up by a small indie label for a few months. The rest he printed himself, stapled with love and sleepless nights.

He sets them gently on the lower shelf of the bookcase, tucking them beside a row of Talie’s picture books. She’s got The Paper Bag Princess, Last Stop on Market Street, and at least three dog-eared copies of Captain Underpants—each cover patched with tape where they’d started to fall apart.

He grins and fills the shelves with careful rhythm: books by size, comics by color, movies in an order only he understands. Each one finds its place like a puzzle piece, and as the shelves fill, the apartment shifts around it—becomes more anchored, more grounded. Less like a stopgap. More like a home.

He drags the second box over: LIVING ROOM.

Inside are the blankets. Three of them: one wool and scratchy from his college days, one light and patterned with tiny foxes (Talie’s favorite), and one handmade—crocheted in zig-zag colors by… someone… years ago.

He folds them loosely over the back of the couch and tosses two throw pillows into place, their covers mismatched but soft, one with a faint coffee stain he stopped caring about ages ago.

He steps back. The couch still sags, but now it looks like it’s meant to be sat on. Like it’s waiting for stories and weekend cartoons and naps that sneak up out of nowhere.

The next box is heavier. Framed photographs rattle as he opens it, glass clinking softly like wind chimes. He unwraps each one with slow hands: a photo of him and Talie on the beach when she was barely walking, her feet full of sand and her cheeks full of cookie; a picture of her mother—wind-blown, laughing, holding Talie in her arms like the world couldn't touch them.

That one he doesn’t hang. But he doesn’t hide it either.

He sets it on the mantle of the low, particle-board shelf just above the fishbowl, angled slightly toward the window where the light catches the glass and makes it glow.

Timmy pauses there.

The apartment is still cluttered. Still dusty in corners, still too small in all the ways he wishes it weren’t. But as he looks around, he sees it filling out. The shelves no longer gape with emptiness. The walls have more color than shadows. The pillows smell faintly of fabric softener.

It’s not perfect. But it’s becoming something real.

Behind him, Talie’s chair scrapes softly as she slides off. Her little feet pad across the floor, and she peers around him toward the photos he’s placed. She doesn’t say anything—but her eyes linger on the beach one. Then the one of her mom.

Her hand slips into his without fanfare. Small and warm.

Together, they stand in the middle of the room—half-unpacked, half-built, wholly theirs.

He squeezes her hand a couple of times before glancing at the clock. It’s a little later now.

Timmy clears his throat gently.

“Alright, kiddo,” he says, nudging her shoulder with the side of his knee, “let’s get you started on your lesson.”

Talie groans quietly but doesn’t argue. She follows him to the makeshift school corner they set up near the window, where a small desk holds a stack of workbooks, some stubby pencils, and a jar of erasers shaped like animals. Timmy flips through the pages of her workbook until he finds the lesson for the day—basic multiplication and a short reading passage about sea turtles.

“You got this,” he says, tapping the page with a finger. “Do the first three and then come get me, okay?”

She nods, already picking up her pencil.

He tousles her hair as he steps away, weaving between boxes toward the spare room he’s claimed as his office. The floor’s still mostly bare—just a folding table with a monitor, a tangle of cords, and a dusty desk lamp waiting to be reassembled. The walls are blank. The air smells faintly of cardboard and old apartment paint.

He kneels by a box labeled OFFICE and slices the tape open. Notebooks, sketchpads, old hard drives. His ancient scanner. He smiles faintly, pulling out a mug with a chipped rim and a pen jammed inside it.

He’s halfway through setting up the monitor when the shrill trill of his phone erupts from somewhere in the living room.

Timmy freezes.

It keeps ringing. Loud. Insistent.

He curses under his breath and pats his pockets. Nothing. He checks the makeshift desk. Not there.

A moment later, Talie appears in the doorway with the phone in both hands, arms outstretched like she’s holding a dead rat.

“Thanks, Dewdrop,” he mutters, taking it from her.

She nods and disappears again.

He looks at the screen.

Tiffany

He stares at the caller ID like it might change. It doesn’t.

The ringing stops.

Then starts again.

He sighs through his teeth and finally answers.

“Hi, Mom.”

Her voice rushes in like a gust of wind through a cracked window. “Timothy, finally. I thought maybe you dropped your phone in a box again. You know I hate it when you don’t answer.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just… unpacking.”

There’s a rustling on the other end—he can picture her now, pacing the length of her kitchen in her house that’s never had a box out of place, cordless phone tucked against her shoulder like she’s been waiting all day for this call.

In the background, his father’s voice filters through, low and half-mumbled.

“Thomas,” she snaps, not bothering to cover the receiver. “Let me talk.” Then, more directly, “Anyway, when can we see Talie?”

Timmy’s stomach knots. No hello. No, how are you holding up—just straight to it, like nothing monumental has happened.

He rubs his temple with the edge of his thumb and turns toward the wall, away from the sound of pencil scratching in the next room. “Mom, we just moved in. I’m still unpacking, Talie’s starting a new routine, and—”

“I know, I know, it’s been hard,” she interrupts, drawing the word out like she’s describing the weather. “But it’s been weeks, Timmy. Don’t you think it’s time she saw some family? Stability is important right now. And you could use the help.”

She says that last part like it’s generous. Like it’s not laced with judgment.

“I appreciate that, I do,” he says slowly, carefully. “But we’re still finding our footing here. She needs space. We need space.”

“Well, you had plenty of space back home,” she says, her voice pitching just enough to sting. “You didn’t have to move so far away. You chose this.”

Timmy closes his eyes.

He feels it rising—that itch beneath the skin, that tightness in his jaw. It’s not the words themselves. It’s how they come out. As if she’s the one grieving. As if her inconvenience is what matters most.

He glances toward the living room. He can just make out the top of Talie’s head bent over her workbook.

He shuts the office door, thumb hovering over the speaker button. For a second, he thinks about it—just setting the phone down on the desk, letting her voice rattle into empty space while he gets on with the day.

But he doesn’t.

Because Talie doesn’t need to hear this.

“Mom,” he says, firmer this time, “you know why we left. We needed a reset. Not just me—Talie too. She’s doing okay here. She’s got her routine, she’s starting to sleep through the night again, and… and she’s coloring. Laughing sometimes. That’s progress.”

There’s a pause on the line. A soft click, like she’s switching ears.

“Well,” she says, tone clipped, “I still think she should be around family. I just worry about her. And you.”

And you. Like an afterthought.

He doesn’t respond right away. He lets the silence stretch thin, lets her hear it. The space between words. The weight of it.

Then: “I know you do.”

His voice is tired.

She doesn’t pick up on it.

“Maybe we could drive up next weekend?” she continues. “Just a quick visit. Nothing dramatic.”

“We don’t have a guest room—”

“We’ll stay in a hotel if that makes you feel better.”

He closes his eyes again. Presses the heel of his hand to his brow.

“I’ll think about it,” he says.

“Think quickly. You always wait too long, Timmy. You let things build up.”

“I said I’ll think about it.”

His voice cuts a little harder than he means it to. And for once, Tiffany goes quiet.

Then, almost softly: “Alright.”

He hangs there for a second—suspended between guilt and anger—then exhales through his nose, pinching the bridge of it.

“I have to go. Talie’s doing her lesson.”

“Oh. Of course,” she replies, a little stung. “Tell her we love her.”

“I will,” he almost lies.

He ends the call and sets the phone down on the folding table like it’s something fragile, something he’s afraid might ring again if he breathes too loudly.

In the next room, Talie’s pencil scratches rhythmically across the page.

The house is quiet again.

He forces himself to breathe.

He lingers by the table, hand still hovering near the phone, like maybe if he waits long enough, he’ll wake up in a world where those calls don’t carry so much gravity. But the silence doesn’t give him an answer. It just sits—on his shoulders, in his stomach, in the breath he hasn’t fully exhaled.

Eventually, he moves. Not because he’s ready, but because something deeper than readiness—responsibility, maybe—nudges him forward. The folding chair creaks beneath him as he sits.

For a few seconds, he just stares at the wall. The light from the window has shifted—no longer sharp and golden, but paler now, thin like tea. Clouds must have crept in. He notices it in the way the shadows in the room soften, how the air feels quieter. Like the apartment is holding its breath with him.

Then he reaches into the box beside the desk and pulls out one of his old sketchpads without really meaning to—creases worn into the spine, corners curled like dry leaves. He flips through page after page. Character drafts, cover ideas, loose plot maps scrawled in fading Sharpie. Some of it’s hopeful. Some of it’s so raw he almost wants to tear the page out.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he flips to a blank page. The paper is soft from age, the corners curled slightly. He picks up a pen and presses the tip of the pen to the page and just... waits.

Sometimes, the act of drawing is a way out. Sometimes, it’s a way in.

Today, it feels like neither.

He draws a shape anyway—a simple circle, then another. A figure emerges, small and loose, a cape trailing behind it. It’s not for a new comic, just habit. Comfort in linework. Muscle memory where emotion can’t reach.

The figure floats above a city, its arms spread like it might catch the sky.

Timmy stops there.

He drops the pen and leans back, letting the chair tilt dangerously for a moment before settling again with a groan.

He thinks about what his mother said. About “family.” About space.

They’d had plenty of space, back there. Miles of it. Enough to drown in. What they hadn’t had was room—room to grieve, to grow, to shift beneath the weight of everything without being told to stand still.

He gets up again, quietly, the sketchpad still open on the desk. The little caped figure looks weightless, fearless, untethered. A version of himself, maybe. Just a silhouette against a skyline that hasn’t been drawn yet.

He peeks into the living room.

Talie’s got her head resting in one hand now, her pencil stopped mid-problem, the workbook slightly askew. Her other hand drums against the page absentmindedly. She looks up when she hears him. Her eyes don’t ask much, but they see more than she ever says aloud.

Timmy smiles as best he can and pads over.

“How’s it going, Dewdrop?”

She shrugs, then twists the pencil like a gear in her fingers.

He nods like a fellow soldier in the trenches. “Difficult problem?”

She nods and silently nudges the workbook toward him, where a small, uneven paragraph about sea turtles is underlined in green.

Word problems always got him, too. Too many words. Not enough numbers.

“Well, let’s take a look here,” he says, reading over the page a couple of times to makes sure he gets the words right. “If a sea turtle lays 110 eggs and only 1 out of every 10 hatch, how many hatchlings are there?”

Timmy traces the line with his finger, then glances over at Talie. She’s chewing the edge of her thumbnail now, eyes fixed on the page but not really seeing it.

“Alright,” he says softly, dragging a stool closer and sitting beside her. “So. One out of every ten eggs hatches. What’s that sound like to you?”

She frowns a little, eyebrows pulling together. Her pencil scribbles a half-hearted number in the margin— 10 —then she looks up at him sideways, unsure.

Timmy picks up her eraser—one shaped like a tiny purple whale—and sets it in front of her. Then he slides nine more coins from the dish by the window and lays them out beside it, ten in total.

“Okay, imagine each one of these is an egg.”

She blinks, interested now, if still quiet. She leans in, gaze flicking between the makeshift turtles.

“Only one hatches,” he says, gently flicking the purple whale forward. “Just one out of the ten. That’s what one-in-ten means. So…” He looks at her, lets the moment breathe. “If a turtle lays one hundred and ten eggs, how many little whales are we gonna have crawling out of the sand?”

Talie narrows her eyes. He can practically hear the wheels turning behind them. Her fingers tap out invisible numbers in the air—then she picks up her pencil and slowly, carefully, writes:

11

Timmy grins. “Boom. Nailed it.”

She doesn’t grin back—Talie rarely does when she’s thinking—but her shoulders relax a little. Her mouth moves, silent, counting the imaginary whales again. Then she underlines the number with purpose and glances back up at Timmy, almost excited.

He taps the edge of her workbook. “You want me to stay for the next one?”

She shakes her head. Barely. Just once. Then turns the page with the soft rustle of paper and starts reading the next problem.

Timmy lets her be.

He stands slowly, back cracking again as he straightens, and watches her for another breath or two. The concentration in her brow, the quiet control in her fingers. How she curls into the problem like it’s a story she wants to finish.

At least she doesn’t struggle as much as he did when he was her age.

He pads back toward the hallway, where boxes still wait like unopened questions. The apartment is still rough around the edges, still clumsy in its arrangement—but now, at least it’s starting to feel like home.

And that, Timmy thinks, is something like magic.

Chapter Text

The door creaks open with a tired groan and a ripple of glittery light. Cosmo and Wanda step quietly into their apartment. The room is dim and shadowed, bathed only in the soft glow of a single floating star-shaped lantern.

The door clicks shut behind them with an almost apologetic sound, and the hush that follows is thick, cottony, like the air has been waiting for them to come home so it can sigh. Inside, the apartment is just as it always has been—cozy, whimsical, warm. The walls glow with a soft salmon-pink hue, the paint enchanted to adjust its tone with the time of day, casting deeper shadows in the corners now as twilight settles into the magical sky outside.

The floor beneath their feet is a rich, plush indigo blue, enchanted long ago to cushion each step. It ripples gently under their weight, adapting to each movement, and ensures that not even the sharpest furniture edge could deliver a stubbed toe.

Wanda enters first with one hand to her temple, fingertips pressing softly against the spot just above her brow. She isn’t grimacing, not exactly—but the weight behind her eyes tells her she’s close. Her usual spark, that sharp, energetic glow she carried even in moments of chaos, has dimmed to a quieter ember. Her eyes are a little puffy, and her curls are somewhat wilted. One might have chalked it up to a lack of sleep if she were human, but she isn’t.

Fairies don’t necessarily need sleep, they don’t even really need to breathe, and they especially don’t need these simplified, colorful forms either—they are just luxuries. But that isn’t the point. None of that is.

The point is grief. Or maybe it’s grief’s cousin, the hollow ache that comes from being remembered only in pieces.

Cosmo follows behind her, just a step slower than usual. His bounce—normally irrepressible, like a spring wound too tight—is gone. He walks instead, like someone who’s trying not to wake anyone, like someone sneaking in after a hard truth has finally made itself at home. His eyes stay down, focused on the floor that seems almost too kind beneath his feet. His hair was a tousled green mess, sticking out at odd places as if he had run his hand through it and never checked a mirror afterwards.

The door clicks shut behind them with an almost apologetic sound, and the hush that follows is thick, cottony, like the air has been waiting for them to come home. And it does. The apartment receives them quietly, almost as though aware they’re not in the mood for any of its usual antics. The flying picture frames, the sparkling lamps, even the couch with its taste for their TV remotes—all of it sits in a kind of respectful stillness.

Wanda doesn’t say anything as she kicks off her pink sandals and leans against the wall, mulling over their new neighbor back on Earth. What are the chances? How is it possible? Is this fate’s doing?

She crosses the living room and gently drops her wand on the entry table—its spark flickers once and goes still. The furniture in the room responds with quiet rustles: the couch plumps itself, a tea set jostles on the shelf, even the plants along the windowsill lean slightly toward her like they want to help.

But there’s no fixing this with tea or puffy cushions.

Cosmo doesn’t let go of his wand. Not yet. He stops halfway to the couch, looks around, then slowly lowers himself onto the floor instead, cross-legged in the middle of the room like a kid waiting to be picked up.

They’ve been dancing around the subject all week.

Timmy.

Their last godchild before they retired. Their favorite. The one who broke almost every rule in the best possible way. He grew up with them, cried with them, laughed with them. The one who used to make wishes so big, so wild, it felt like Fairy World itself was stretching to keep up.

The one who now lives two doors down from their apartment on Earth.

An adult.

And he doesn’t know them.

At least, not in the way that matters. His eyes pass over them like strangers in the hallway. There’s something familiar in his expression sometimes, in the way he rubs his temple or sighs into his coffee or stares just a little too long at bright pink skies—but it’s not recognition. It’s not memory. It’s something else. Something hazy.

“I saw him this morning,” Wanda begins quietly, “On my way to get the mail from our parcel box.”

Cosmo lifts his head. His eyes are wide, rimmed with something close to ache. “Did he…?”

She shakes her head. “He held the elevator door open for me. Smiled a little. Called me ma’am.”

Silence folds itself back around them like a blanket that’s too heavy. Not warm. Just heavy.

They don’t move for a long moment, letting the magic-hummed quiet of their home settle in again. Somewhere off in the hallway, their clock—a jellybean-shaped thing with legs—waddles down from the wall and hops onto the coffee table with a soft thud, ticking nervously as if afraid to interrupt.

Cosmo’s mouth twists as he stares at it. Not quite a frown, not quite a smile. A sound escapes him, somewhere between a breath and a whimper. Then he turns to Wanda, his voice trembling. “Are we even allowed to talk to him?”

Wanda doesn’t answer at first. She presses a hand to her mouth, then runs it down her face, pulling at her skin in frustration. “There’s nothing in Da Rules that says we can’t talk to a former godkid.” Her voice is tight. “But there’s also nothing that says what happens if we do.” She glances at Cosmo, and the weight behind her gaze is unmistakable. “We could be reported to the Fairy Council. We could be reassigned. Relocated. Timmy could be memory-wiped again.”

Cosmo’s face falls. “But he’s right there, Wanda.” He uncrosses his legs and hugs his knees, staring out the window where magical twilight glows soft and coral. “He’s right there, and it’s like… like I can still hear his wishes bouncing off the walls.”

Wanda looks down at her wand on the table, still quiet. “We helped raise him. We helped him survive things no kid should ever have to. And now he’s just…” She trails off, jaw tightening. “He’s grown up. He doesn’t need us anymore.”

The words slip past her lips before she can stop them. They land in the room like a dropped plate. Not loud, not shattering—but final. Heavy. Wanda doesn’t look at Cosmo as she says it. She can’t. She just stares at the coffee table.

The silence that follows says everything she doesn’t.

Cosmo exhales, long and slow, like he’s trying to let something go, but it gets stuck halfway out.

A warm breeze stirs through the room—a minor enchantment mimicking an open window at sunset—and the curtains flutter faintly, trailing soft shadows across the floor. The magical twilight outside glimmers with lazy stars, as if the universe is tiptoeing, unsure what comes next.

Wanda finally moves, stepping toward Cosmo and kneeling beside him. She places a hand on his back, gently. Steady. He leans into her touch like it’s the only solid thing in the room.

“But he does need us,” Cosmo murmurs. “Not like before, not for rocket skateboards or chocolate rivers or—” his voice hitches “—or to make Vicky vanish into a giraffe for the afternoon. But… I saw the way he looked at his daughter. The way she looked at him. They’re both… stuck. They’re hurting.”

Wanda closes her eyes.

It’s true. They are hurting. Both of them are. It’s like they lost something or someone important to them.

Wanda keeps her hand on Cosmo’s back, her fingers splayed like she’s trying to hold him in place—trying to hold them in place. Her other hand curls slowly around nothing, the phantom shape of her wand forming in muscle memory. She feels the pull, that old, automatic instinct to wish things better. To fix. To help.

But it’s not that simple anymore.

“We can’t just show up in his life again pretending that nothing has changed,” she says, quieter now. “He’s a grown-up, Cosmo. He’s not supposed to remember. That’s the rule. The magic fades for a reason.”

Cosmo nods slowly, but his brow furrows. “But what if it’s not all gone?” he whispers. “What if there’s something left? Like… like a cracked window. What if part of him remembers and that’s why he looks so lost?”

“It’s possible,” Wanda sighs. He did remember that as a pair of goldfish he used to care for. Maybe there’s something more?

She’s wondered if he has remembered anything more. All week. Every time she’s seen him in the hallway. Every time she’s heard the soft shuffle of his daughter’s steps outside their door. Every time she’s caught that look —that flicker in his eyes when he sees her, like he’s squinting through fog. Like he almost knows her.

Maybe the magic didn’t completely erase itself. Maybe it couldn’t.

She shakes her head. “But maybe he’s lost because of whatever’s happened in his life. It’s possible that he’s experienced a great loss.”

Cosmo shifts on the floor, tucking his chin into the space between his knees. His voice is thin, almost paper-light. “We did too, you know.”

Wanda turns toward him, her expression softening.

He doesn’t need to say it—but he does anyway.

“When we had to leave him… when he turned eighteen and the rules said it was over…” Cosmo’s words tremble, but he pushes through. “It was like we actually lost a child.”

The silence after that isn’t still. It aches—it breathes. The apartment responds, a faint dimming of the enchanted lights overhead, a rustle from the curtain near the window like a shaky breath. Even the picture frames seem to lean inward, their corners tilting as though they want to huddle close.

Wanda remembers that day.

The way Timmy smiled through it like he always did, like everything was fine. She remembers the way his voice cracked on “Thanks for everything,” and how he didn’t look back when he walked through the door into the life that would no longer include them.

But she remembers, too, the way Cosmo sobbed for three days straight after. How he curled up in bed and refused to come out. She remembers putting on a strong face for him, for herself, pretending it was enough to know he’d had a better childhood because of them.

But it wasn’t.

It still isn’t.

Because it was a loss. The kind you never really get over.

Wanda takes a breath, slow and deliberate. “I know,” she says softly, finally. “We gave him everything we had. And when it ended…” Her hand drops from Cosmo’s back and curls into her lap. “It was like someone closed a story we didn’t finish reading.”

Cosmo looks up at her, green eyes glistening. “Do you think he misses us?”

Wanda hesitates.

Then: “I think… I think something in him does. Even if he doesn’t know what it is.”

Cosmo’s lip trembles. “Then maybe… maybe that’s enough. To just exist near him. To keep watch.”

Wanda doesn’t answer for a long time.

She looks out the window again, where stars drift lazily through a sky that doesn’t belong to Earth, doesn’t belong anywhere, really. She watches the slow movement of enchanted clouds that never rain. She thinks about the girl—Timmy’s daughter. The way her presence felt familiar in a way that made no sense. Like she echoed something deep and forgotten.

Wanda finally speaks, her voice low and even. “We can’t go out of our way, Cosmo. We can’t insert ourselves back into his life. It’s not our place anymore.”

Cosmo nods again, slower this time, but the sadness doesn’t leave his face.

“But,” Wanda adds, almost to herself, “if the door opens... if it really opens—not a crack, not a trick of memory—but a true moment of recognition… then maybe, we might have a chance.”

The jellybean clock lets out a shy hiccup of a tick, and then all is quiet again. Wanda and Cosmo sit on the floor like relics in a museum that no one visits anymore—timeless, suspended, but gathering dust all the same.

Cosmo’s fingers draw idle circles into the enchanted carpet, leaving behind glowing trails that fade within seconds. He watches them, like they might spell something out—like maybe the answers are written there, just beneath the weave.

But there are no answers there.

His fingers still for a moment. His eyes shift from the fading glow trails to Wanda, who’s watching the window again, her jaw tight, her shoulders barely rising with each breath.

He hesitates, then whispers, “Should we tell Poofy?”

The question hangs in the air like a weightless charm—small, glimmering, and unbearably heavy. Wanda doesn’t answer right away. Her fingers twitch, then curl into her lap as her mind races ahead. Not just to Peri, but to everything that name brings with it.

Their baby, their pride, their miracle. A child of chaos and color and boundless magic. A child they’d once carried through storms of wild wishes and the bubbling nonsense of toddler spells gone awry.

A child who didn’t understand why they had to let go of Timmy.

She remembers it too vividly.

Peri—Poof, then—had been so small still, floating midair on stubby wings, his eyes shimmering like oil-slicked marbles. He had felt something was wrong—felt it through the bond all fairy families share. When Timmy hugged them goodbye, Peri had clung to his pink shirt so tightly that his tiny fists left wrinkles. Wanda had to pry him away.

And afterward, the magic inside him lashed out.

It wasn’t tantrum magic. It wasn’t the harmless sort that turned milk to lava lamps or made the fish sing showtunes for a week.

It was something deeper.

Raw.

Poof had screamed. Not just with sound—but with magic too. Light burst from his fingertips, splitting furniture, cracking enchanted glass, warping entire rooms into overlapping timelines. For three days, Fairy World flickered in and out of seasons. Sunsets blinked into snowstorms, and back again. Flowers grew old and young in the same breath.

Cosmo had cried while trying to calm him. Wanda had stood guard at their door, refusing to let the Council intervene. “He’s just hurting,” she’d pleaded, over and over. “He’s grieving. Let him grieve.”

Since then, he’s grown up with a hole shaped like Timmy Turner that he couldn’t name, and magic that sometimes sparked when he looked at Earth through the Looking Pools. As he got older, he learned to bury it—most days.

But Wanda knows. She’s always known.

Peri feels it.

Now she closes her eyes and lets the memory settle like dust on a windowsill.

“No,” she says at last. Her voice is low, but firm. “Not yet.”

Cosmo glances at her, a flicker of confusion playing behind his eyes.

Wanda exhales slowly and opens her eyes again, lids heavy with the weight of things unspoken. She doesn’t look at him. Instead, she stares at the dim curve of their living room ceiling, where a faint trail of stardust hangs like a memory caught in the rafters. “He’s just lost Dev. He’s out of work… out of magic.” Her words fall with gentle precision, like stones carefully placed in a riverbed to hold the current. “He hasn’t been the same since the battle.”

Cosmo swallows. “But he’s strong. He’s still—”

“No, Cosmo.” Now she looks at him, and her eyes, normally bright and sharp with conviction, are dulled with an ache she hasn’t named until now. “He pretends to be strong. He thinks it’s what we need. What we expect.” She touches her chest lightly, over her heart, her fingers curling inward. “But I can feel it. That big, quiet hurt he carries now.” Her voice drops to a whisper to keep it from breaking, “I don’t know if he can handle knowing Timmy is so close—” her voice catches, cracks, then finds itself again—  “It could break him.”

Cosmo lets his gaze drop, his wand slipping just a little from his fingers. “But what if it heals him instead?”

Wanda doesn’t respond immediately. She just breathes—slow, measured, barely moving. Like the whole apartment is holding its breath with her.

Finally: “We have to be sure. Really sure. Because once that door opens for Peri, it won’t close again. He’ll go to him. He’ll try to reconnect the pieces. He’ll try to get Timmy to remember everything the way he originally did, not the way the rules let him.”

A silence full of ghosts settles between them. From the shelf, a plush cat with wings yawns softly and rolls over in its sleep. Somewhere in the walls, magic crackles faintly, like a song trying to hum itself.

“And if it turns out Timmy really doesn’t remember—if he doesn’t want to—” Wanda bites her lip. “We can’t risk hurting Peri again. Not like before.”

Cosmo folds in on himself a little, his knees pressed to his chest, chin balanced on top. “He’s not a baby anymore,” he admits, sinking lower like he’s just admitted his worst fear, “He’s grown up. He knows how to hold pain without exploding the sky.”

“I know,” Wanda whispers. “But sometimes I still see that baby in him. The one who clung to Timmy like he was the only thing worth watching. And I’m not ready to see that light go out again.”

Cosmo nods, slowly, like a plant adjusting to the shade.

For a long while, neither of them speak.

Outside, the magical twilight deepens. A soft fog drifts past their enchanted window, casting ripple-like shadows on the shimmering walls. 

A soft creak interrupts the quiet—a door, deeper inside the apartment. Light spills from the hallway, pooling at the edge of the living room. Footsteps follow, tentative, slow, and uneven, the kind that belong to someone trying not to be noticed but can’t help it.

Wanda turns her head first.

Cosmo follows her gaze.

Peri’s stiff silhouette stands in the hallway, framed by the light like a portrait frozen in motion. He’s definitely not a baby anymore—hasn’t been for a long time, Cosmo and Wanda know that—but the roundness in his cheeks lingers, a softness he never quite grew out of. There’s a faint slouch in his posture that wasn’t there a few months ago. His feet are bare, his lavender-stripped pajama pants are wrinkled, and his T-shirt sags around his frame as if it’s given up trying to fit right.

There’s something wrong about the way the light of Fairy World touches him.

It glints off Wanda and Cosmo with its usual sparkle, curling around their floating crowns, catching in the corners of their eyes, shimmering along their outlines in the way fairy light always does.

But it avoids Peri.

Not completely. Not obviously. But enough. The air around him doesn’t ripple. His shadow is too sharp. The enchantments in the floor dull beneath his steps instead of responding, and the colors around him seem flatter, like someone turned down the saturation just a notch.

He looks between them, eyes half-lidded but alert in that careful, quiet way—like someone who’s tried to hear overhear things they weren’t meant to hear. His face is pale, not with illness, but with the kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix. There’s an emptiness behind his gaze that wasn’t always there.

“Did I miss something?” he asks, voice hoarse from disuse, like he hasn’t spoken in hours. Maybe days.

Wanda straightens subtly. “No, sweetheart. We were just talking.”

Peri nods, but it’s slow, skeptical. He doesn’t ask what about.

He walks toward the kitchen without another word, leaning on furniture and the counter as he passes through the same magical home he grew up in. Nothing stirs around him. No floating utensils greet him from the sink. The toaster doesn’t pop up to say hi. The fridge doesn’t hum its usual silly jingle. He brushes his hand along the table edge—deliberate—and the room doesn’t react.

Cosmo’s eyes follow him, wide and aching.

Peri opens the cabinet, pulls down a mug. His fingers are thin and pale, joints a little too prominent. He moves with the stiff grace of someone learning to carry weight that used to be invisible.

Wanda watches carefully, her voice gentle. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Peri shrugs, not looking at her. “Didn’t try.”

He sets the mug down with a quiet clink, the sound too sharp in the heavy hush of the room. The teapot sits cold on the counter, untouched by magic, though it should be brimming with enchanted warmth by now. Peri doesn’t even glance at his wand—still sitting where he left it three days ago, half-covered by an unopened letter from the Fairy Council.

He doesn’t need it.

Not in his current state.

Instead, he fills the pot with water the old-fashioned way, from the tap, his hands trembling slightly as he adjusts the stream. His back is to Cosmo and Wanda, but they see the way his shoulders pull tight when the cabinet door sticks, the way he flinches—barely—when the kettle’s weight jars his wrist. He moves like he expects everything around him to betray him. Slowly. Inevitably.

And still, he doesn’t ask for help.

Cosmo shifts a little. His fingers twitch toward his wand before he remembers not to move, not to say anything, not to make it worse.

Wanda’s hand brushes his wrist. Just enough to still him.

The kettle goes onto the stove. Peri turns the knob, waits for the low click-click-click of the flame to catch. The burner hesitates—like the apartment itself doesn’t quite recognize him—before a small, pitiful tongue of blue fire finally ignites beneath the metal.

He doesn’t sigh, but the sound is in his shoulders. In the slope of his spine. He leans on the counter, one hand braced flat against the surface, the other rubbing his temple slowly, like the act might scrub away the hollow pressure building behind his eyes.

“You don’t have to do everything the hard way,” Wanda offers quietly, carefully.

Peri doesn’t answer right away. He watches the kettle. Watches the faint shimmer of steam begin to rise, the only movement in the room besides himself.

Finally, without turning: “I know.”

The silence afterward is heavier than it should be.

Then, soft: “It’s not about punishment, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He taps the edge of the mug once. Twice. “I just... don’t trust it right now.” He swallows. “What might happen if I let it all back in.”

Cosmo opens his mouth, closes it. His crown droops just a little.

Wanda rises from the couch but doesn’t cross the room. “You’re not dangerous, Peri.”

Peri turns his head slightly, just enough for one eye to meet hers over his shoulder. “That’s not what I meant.”

The kettle starts to whine. Not the usual perky hum it once played when ready—just a low, breathy wail, like it doesn’t want to be boiling but has no choice.

He pours the water slowly. Steeped leaves drift lazily in the mug, swirling shadows against porcelain.

Wanda watches Peri stir his mug with a spoon that clinks gently against the sides—quiet, almost reverent, like he’s afraid to disturb something. She can’t tear her eyes away from the motion, the way his hands move with a kind of detached focus. Every gesture is slow, intentional, as though he’s measuring the weight of each moment.

The spoon clinks once more, a hollow sound that hangs in the air far too long, before Peri sets it down. He wraps both hands around the mug—not for warmth, not really—but for the feeling of holding something solid.

He doesn’t look at Cosmo or Wanda, but he doesn’t leave either. He just stands there, shoulders slightly hunched, mug cradled in his hands like it might anchor him to the room.

Cosmo speaks at last, tentative: “You can lean on us. Even if you don’t feel like... all of you.”

Peri grips the mug tighter than he needs to, steam fogging his face. “I know.”

Cosmo opens his mouth, then closes it. His wand flickers at his side—brief, instinctual—but the magic doesn’t respond. The flicker dies before it begins. He looks down at it, frowning. He wants to say something. He always wants to say something. But even he knows there are silences you can’t fill with glitter and balloons and a joke.

Wanda feels it again—the tug in her chest, low and twisting. It’s not just sadness. It’s fear. A quiet, creeping dread that this isn’t just a phase or a side effect. That Peri’s magic is gone. That the thing that made him him has burned out, leaving behind only the quiet, aching afterglow of what used to be.

And he doesn’t talk about it.

He never talks about it.

Not about Dev, not about losing his godchild, not about the way his wand no longer sings in his hand. He uses it now the way humans use canes—leaning on it, not waving it. Not wishing.

Wanda studies her son. She notes the quiet bend in his shoulders and the dim aura that barely flickers around him anymore. Fairies aren’t supposed to dull. But here he is, washed out in the warm magic-light of the apartment, like he’s already halfway faded.

She wants to say something. Anything.

But how do you say we’re worried you’re dying inside without breaking something that hasn’t healed? How do you say you’re allowed to be broken without making it worse?

They don’t talk about Dev.

Peri drinks from his mug and turns his head, just slightly. His eyes are on the living room window now, where the stars drift in lazy arcs across the enchanted sky. The light from the stars reflect faintly in his eyes, but it doesn’t catch like it used to. No sparkle. No magic gleam. Just a quiet shimmer, borrowed and fading.

Peri breathes in slowly through his nose, exhales through his mouth. The kind of breath that comes from someone who’s been holding too much inside for too long.

Cosmo and Wanda exchange a glance.

Cosmo’s eyes are glassy, his lips parted like he’s on the verge of saying something, but Wanda gives the faintest shake of her head. The moment is too fragile. The kind of moment that turns to dust if you speak too loudly.

Then Peri speaks.

“I don’t need you to worry,” he says, voice low and flat, like he’s rehearsed it. “I know you are. I can feel it humming off both of you like a bad weather spell, but I don’t need it.”

Peri turns to face them now. Fully. His gaze is sharp—not cruel, not angry, but solid in a way it hasn’t been in days. “I’m not broken. Not useless. I’m not a sparkless kid who needs coddling.” He sets his mug down with a sharp clack on the counter, the sound final. “I’m a grown fairy, even if the magic’s gone. And I can figure this out. On my own.”

Cosmo starts to float to his feet. “Peri, we just—”

“Don’t,” Peri cuts in. His tone isn’t sharp, but it’s sure. Like a door closing gently but firmly. “Please. Don’t do the voice. The one where you try to make everything sound like it’s okay.”

“Peri…” Wanda begins, voice as soft as she can make it. “You know we’re here for you, right?”

He doesn’t look at her. “I know.”

“Really?” she asks, quieter. “You don’t have to pretend.”

He exhales, shoulders curling inward. “I’m not pretending.”

Wanda bites the inside of her cheek. “Then help us understand.”

Finally, Peri meets her eyes. There’s no anger in them. No resistance. Just exhaustion. Something raw and cavernous. “There’s nothing left to help,” he says simply.

Wanda’s eyes sting. She steps forward again, reaching out—but Peri brushes past her. “I’m going to lie down,” he says. “You should rest too.”

He doesn’t wait for a response. He limps past them, slow and deliberate, his bare feet making the faintest whisper against the floor. He moves like someone trying not to shatter anything—inside or out.

Cosmo makes a small sound—sharp and involuntary—as they watch him disappear down the hallway, his figure quickly swallowed by shadows.

When he’s gone, Cosmo speaks, barely a whisper. “He doesn’t believe…”

Wanda wraps her arms around herself, staring at the empty hallway.

“No,” she murmurs, “he believes something worse.”

Silence again.

She crosses to the counter and places a hand on the mug Peri left behind. Still warm. He didn’t finish his tea.

“He’s going to be okay,” Cosmo says quietly, voice hoarse. It’s more to himself than anyone else.

Wanda nods slowly. “Yeah. But not today. Maybe not even a week from now. But he will be.” He has to be.

Cosmo sniffles and floats up beside her, tucking himself into her side. “We’ll be here when he needs us.”

She leans into him, drawing a deep breath. The enchanted sky beyond the windows shifts—one star blinks brighter than the others, then fades.

“Always.”

Chapter Text

The air in his room tastes stale, like he’s been breathing the same breath for too long. The curtains are half-drawn, letting in a sliver of Fairy World’s glowing sky, but even that soft light seems too harsh.

Peri lies curled beneath a quilt that used to shift colors with his mood, but now just stays a dull, muted blue. He hasn’t showered in days. His hair clumps in the wrong places, weighed down by sleep and sweat, and his skin itches with the kind of invisible grime that no spell can wipe clean. His lavender-striped pajamas cling in weird places, stretched out around the knees, loose around the waist. He hasn’t changed them. He doesn’t see the point.

Every part of him aches in ways he can’t name.

He’s not sick. Not in any way a fairy doctor would find on a scan.

But he feels rotted through—like someone peeled away all the starlight inside him and left only the husk.

Peri stares at the ceiling, unfocused, eyes dry. Not from crying—he hasn’t cried. He wants to, maybe. But that feels far away, like something he forgot how to do.

The silence in the room is thick, clinging to the walls like dust. There’s no music playing, no floating photo frames chattering softly from the dresser. Even the soft hum of background magic—the ever-present buzz of Fairy World life—feels quieter here, like it’s deliberately holding its breath around him.

Peri shifts just slightly, enough to pull the quilt up over his shoulder. It doesn’t make him warmer. He’s not cold either, just… empty, like warmth doesn’t know where to settle in him anymore.

His wand sits propped against the side of the bed, but it’s changed. It’s not a wand anymore. It’s a cane. 

The shaft is carved from a dark, almost black, iridescent wood that doesn’t exist on Earth. It shimmers faintly in low light, not with glow but with depth, as though looking at it too long might pull you inward. Intricate etchings spiral down its length—ancient fairy script, maybe, or just the nervous work of someone’s hands trying to make it mean something.

The golden handle curves into the shape of a crescent wing, its edge not yet worn smooth. The globe at the top is heavy and fragile-looking, a crystalline orb no bigger than a peach, cloudy inside—like the remnants of something that once burned too bright. A dead star floats at its center, gray and still, its light long since spent. Tiny cracks lace the orb’s surface, but they haven’t spread. They’ve been like that since the day he fell.

He stares at it without blinking. It doesn’t stare back. It shouldn’t anyway. It’s just a thing. A tool, a replacement, a compromise. But when he looks at it, all he sees is a monument to the magic he destroyed, to the job he shattered, to the child he lost.

Dev.

The boy who trusted him.

The boy who needed him.

The boy who looked up to him.

He closes his eyes, but his thoughts don’t slow. If anything, the dark makes them louder—pressing in like a storm through cracked glass.

You failed him.

You’re not supposed to fail them.

You were supposed to protect him, teach him, guide him!

You let everything fall apart.

You let him go.

You made him go!

Where did he go wrong?

Peri swallows hard. His throat feels raw. His chest is hollow. He can feel the absence where the extra magic for Dev used to live—a soft warmth in his core that once shimmered every time the boy looked to him for advice or made a wish.

They don’t tell fairies how it feels. They don’t tell fairies how it hurts. They don’t teach that at the Fairy Academy. They don’t explain that it’s not just a goodbye. It’s not just someone moving on. 

Because it’s not supposed to have happened this way!

It’s wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Not like this.

It’s a severance. A rip. A tear. Like his whole being was stretched too far, and something inside gave way.

Now, there’s only static. Cold, grating static.

He rolls onto his side, slowly. Every muscle protests. His body feels older than it should, like time passed differently while he lay here not moving. His joints click. His back twinges. His wings—faint and useless now—twitch against his shoulder blades, a phantom ache flickering through them like nerve memory.

The quilt slips from his shoulder. He doesn’t pull it back up.

He doesn’t move.

The stillness becomes a second skin, fitting tighter by the hour. Even breathing feels like a negotiation—something he has to remember to do. Inhale. Exhale. Don’t forget. Don’t stop.

The ceiling above him is etched with old constellations—a childish illusion spell from years ago, one Cosmo helped him cast when he was afraid of the dark. They used to shimmer and dance, stars twinkling in a soft lullaby rhythm. Now they barely flicker, their magic dulled like the rest of the room, like everything that Peri once touched.

He shuts his eyes again. Opens them. Nothing changes.

Time here is thick. Slow. Unkind.

He remembers the battlefield, or parts of it. Lights too bright. Shouts too loud. Air so thick with magic that it burned. Something had fractured inside him—his core, his spark, maybe his purpose. He didn’t know it at the time. He was too busy trying to call out to Dev and… not die.

The thought hits too hard, too sharp, and Peri flinches before he can stop it.

Jorgen had made the decision. He always made the decisions. Send the Anti-Fairies back. Send Dale and Dev with them. Memory-wiped. Identity erased. Bond broken.

Clean slate, they said.

Necessary, they said.

Peri doesn’t remember screaming. But he must have. He remembers pain. A splitting, silencing kind of pain that knocked the world sideways and then—nothing. Just the white of the hospital ceiling and the humming, strained voices of Fairy Doctors who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

That was weeks ago. Maybe months. He doesn’t know. Doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know what day it is. Because no matter how many days pass, Dev isn’t going to remember him.

He could walk right past me and not even blink.

His cane catches the corner of his vision again.

He stares at it. His fingers twitch once under the blanket, like they want to reach out. Like they miss it. But he doesn’t move. He can’t use it for anything but a mobility device anyway.

Not that he wants to.

Not that he deserves to.

His voice—when it finally stirs in his throat—is barely more than a breath.

“Dev,” he whispers.

It’s the first time he’s said the name aloud since waking up.

It feels like breaking glass.

He rolls onto his back again, curling in tighter, tucking his knees toward his chest like that might contain the damage.

The quilt shifts with him but doesn't change color. Just stays that same dull, washed-out blue. A mourning sky. A silent bruise.

Peri bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper. His eyes sting, but no tears come.

He doesn’t notice when sleep finally takes him.

It drags him under slow and mean, not with comfort, not with peace, but with the exhaustion of something caving in. Like a sinkhole swallowing the last of a hollow house.

The room slips away, but the ache doesn’t.

And then—

He’s falling.

There’s wind, but no direction. No sky. Just the sensation of plummeting through something thick and endless. Magic, maybe. Smoke. Memory. It tastes bitter in his mouth—like ash and starlight gone sour.

Then the dark parts.

He stands in a place that might once have been Fairy World, but everything’s wrong. The clouds are black, churning in slow spirals overhead. The ground beneath his bare feet cracks with each step, webbed with glowing red fault lines that pulse like veins. The trees bend inward instead of up, their branches skeletal, clawing at the sky. Fairy architecture lies in ruin—floating islands shattered, crystal spires crumbled to dust, the air choked with sparks that flicker and die before they reach him.

Peri walks forward. Or tries to.

Each step is like moving through syrup, like the world itself doesn’t want him here. His cane is gone. So are his wings. The weight of nothing clings to his back, pulling him down.

And in the middle of it all—

Dev.

He’s standing in the center of the wreckage, too far to touch, too far to hear, and yet right there. His outline is sharp, more real than anything else around them. His clothes are the same he wore on that last day—a hoodie too big for him and not his color.

Dev doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. He just stares.

His eyes are completely black. Not with malice. Not with hate. But with absence. Emptiness. As though everything that once lived behind them has been scoured clean.

Peri tries to call out. His mouth opens.

No sound comes.

He runs. Tries to. His feet scrape against broken ground, each step harder than the last. He reaches out, arm trembling, hand aching for Dev’s sleeve—

But the closer he gets, the further Dev seems. The ground stretches.

Peri stumbles.

Dev takes a step back.

The cracked earth opens between them. And from that rift pours not lava or light but memories—bright and sharp and unrelenting.

Dev laughing as he cracks a joke with Hazel at the park.

Dev asleep on the couch, head on Peri’s lap while Cosmo and Wanda whisper in the kitchen.

Dev hugging him too tight, whispering, “Thank you,” for the first time.

Dev crying, asking, “Why doesn’t he love me?”

Peri freezes. He didn’t have an answer then. He doesn’t have an answer now.

The world shatters.

Silence.

He’s standing again. Alone.

No wreckage. No Dev. Just starlight.

A cold, empty field beneath a sky full of dead constellations.

The wand is in his hand again.

And then the dream cracks one final time—

Peri’s breath catches as he yanks himself up. His hand grips his shirt, heart fluttering wildly in his chest.

The room is dark. The quilt is tangled around his legs.

His face is wet. He doesn’t remember crying.

His throat hurts. Did he scream?

The knock is soft—so soft it barely registers over the ringing in Peri’s ears. At first, he thinks he imagined it.

Then it comes again. Gentle. Careful.

“Peri?” Wanda’s voice, muffled through the door. Kind, but frayed with worry. “Sweetheart… can we come in?”

He doesn’t answer.

Not can’t. Just doesn’t. He doesn’t have the strength to invite them in, but he doesn’t have the strength to push them away, either.

The door creaks open.

Light spills across the floor in a narrow strip. Cosmo steps in first, quiet in a way he almost never is, his eyes already glassy with concern. Wanda follows, holding herself small, as though trying not to intrude, even though they’ve known this room as long as he has.

They take in the mess—the untouched water glass, the unused wand cane, the dim constellations—and they don’t say anything.

Wanda crosses to the bed with a soft rustle of fabric. She doesn’t ask for permission. She just lowers herself onto the edge, slow and steady, the way you’d approach an injured animal.

She reaches out, brushing her fingers over the rumpled quilt near Peri’s calf. Her touch doesn’t glow the way it used to. Magic still works on her—but he doesn’t respond to it.

Cosmo hovers closer, his floating slowing until his feet touch the carpet for the first time in days.

He doesn’t speak.

He just reaches down and wraps his arms around Peri, pulling him up into a loose, careful hug.

Peri stiffens at the contact. His breath catches, and for a second he doesn’t move at all.

Then—slowly—he folds, like paper going soft in the rain.

His forehead rests against Cosmo’s shoulder. His hands don’t rise to hold back, but his eyes shut, and something in him eases. Just a little.

Wanda leans in beside them, her hand finding Peri’s. She holds it gently between her own, thumb brushing the back of his clammy palm.

She doesn’t let go.

“Nightmare?” she asks softly.

Peri swallows. Nods once.

The lump in his throat is too thick to speak around. His chest shudders, and though his eyes are mostly dry, the tears that do escape feel scalding.

Cosmo squeezes a little tighter, pressing his cheek to Peri’s hair. “We’re here.”

It’s a simple promise. Soft. Steady.

He doesn’t deserve it.

He failed.

He lost his kid.

It was his first time!

He breaks, then.

Not loudly. Not violently.

Just—quietly. Utterly.

His body goes limp between them as the sobs begin, silent and stuttering, like the kind of crying that runs so deep it’s forgotten how to make sound. The kind that’s been waiting for days, weeks, months behind dry eyes and half-swallowed words.

Cosmo and Wanda hold him, rocking gently, breathing with him, grounding him.

The stars on the ceiling flicker once.

They don’t regain their shine.

Chapter Text

The morning sun spills through the window in long, golden lines, soft and warm, like it’s trying not to wake anyone too quickly. Dust motes drift lazily through the glow, catching in the light like slow-falling snow. It creeps across the floorboards of Talie’s bedroom, brushing over the worn rug, the edge of a low bookshelf stacked with trinkets, picture books, craft paper, and the slightly askew tower of colored pencils she forgot to cap last night.

The sunlight finds her stuffed bear, too, slouched against the pillows like a sleepy sentinel. He’s missing one button eye, and his fur is patchy in places, worn smooth from years of clutching and cuddling. There’s a faded ribbon around his neck, soft from being tied and untied, retied and adjusted, again and again with little hands.

Talie stirs beneath her blanket, her hair mussed and her cheek faintly red from the pillow’s seam. She blinks up at the ceiling for a long moment, the quiet of her room wrapping around her like another layer of covers. Then, slowly, she sits up. Her movements are gentle, practiced—like someone used to tiptoeing through her own life.

She pats her bear once, a quick tap-tap on his soft head, then slides out of bed. Her bare feet touch the cool floor, and she rises with the hush of someone who doesn’t need noise to make her presence known.

The hallway is dimmer, but not dark. Pale light drips in from the living room windows ahead, illuminating just enough for her to walk without stumbling. Her pajama pants swish softly with every step, the hem brushing against her ankles. She pauses at the corner, rubbing sleep from one eye.

That’s when she sees it.

An envelope on the floor just inside the doorway to the kitchen—plain white, brand new. Her name is written on the front in careful, slightly shaky handwriting. The letters are rounded, a little too tall, spaced out like the writer was trying very hard to get them right.

She crouches slowly and picks it up, turning it over in her hands.

There’s no stamp. No address. Just her name.

Her shoulders soften as she stands, carefully slipping the envelope open. Inside is a single piece of paper, folded twice.

She tilts her head, curious and fully awake now. She opens it and reads.

The words are kind, if not a little nervous with the way the smiley face is drawn, but her lips curl at the corners, a quiet, private smile. She reads the note again, eyes tracing each word with the same careful attention she gives to choosing the right shade of pink for a flower petal.

Then, she folds it neatly along its original creases, smoothing the edges with her fingertips. The paper crackles faintly beneath her hands. She takes a moment just to hold it, pressing it flat between her palms, as though storing the warmth of the words inside her skin.

Moving with quiet purpose, she walks back to her room. The coloring book waits on the floor near her bedside—a thick one with rounded corners and a glittery sticker half-peeled from the cover. She opens it to a page already filled with soft lavender trees and a sky made of spirals. Then, like hiding treasure, she tucks the envelope between the pages, sliding it deep enough so that it won’t fall out. A secret kept safe.

She closes the book with care, her fingers lingering on the spine, and sets it atop the tower of pencils, still in their box.

Talie’s feet are quiet against the floor as she pads back down the hall toward the kitchen, her arms tucked close to her chest for warmth. The apartment still smells faintly of dust and the earthy citrus of the soap her father uses on the counters.

It’s not a big place, but it has corners full of half-held silence and old echoes. Stories. She briefly thinks about those who lived here before her and what kind of lives they may have had.

The kitchen greets her like an old friend: chairs slightly askew, the cereal box left in the middle of the counter, the light above the sink still turned on from last night. It hums faintly, casting a dull yellow glow across the dishes drying in the rack. The table is clean except for one mug with a faint ring at the bottom—her father’s—set carefully beside the folded newspaper. The front page is crinkled, the crossword already half-solved.

She moves to the cabinet and pulls down her favorite bowl—a yellow one with a chipped rim and a faded cartoon bumble bee on the bottom. The cereal clinks in gently, and the milk makes a soft glug-glug-glug as she tips the carton. She puts it all away again, exact and mindful, just like her mother taught her to be. Then she climbs into the chair at the far end of the table, tucking one foot beneath her.

She eats slowly, one spoonful at a time, the crunch loud in her mouth but nowhere else.

Her eyes drift toward the fish bowl next to the bookshelf. The goldfish swim lazy circles in their little glass world, their tiny mouths opening and closing in tandem as if they’re speaking to one another. Both are a pale yellow, but one has an almost transparent fin, and the other appears to have a small freckle under its right eye.

Their tank is fairly simple—pink gravel, a ceramic castle, a sprig of fake seaweed—but the water glows in the morning light, dappled with gold and movement. It shimmers and seems almost magical.

Talie leans her chin on one hand, watching.

Her father had taken her to the local pet store over the weekend without saying why and let her pick out the two little things. She knew he had found an old fishbowl in the many boxes cluttering their apartment, but beyond that… she wasn’t sure what was so special about them.

He hasn’t named them yet either. Just fed them, cleaned their tank, and sometimes, when he didn’t think anyone was watching, he would stand by the counter and stare into the water, motionless. Talie had watched from the hallway once. He didn’t blink. His face was still, but not empty. It was… far away, like he was trying to find something in the glass. Or someone.

Sometimes he rubbed his chest just under his collarbone, like a spot ached there. Not visibly. Not loudly. Just a small, unconscious press of fingers to fabric.

She doesn’t ask.

She can’t, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know how.

But she wonders.

She wonders what he sees when he looks at those fish.

She wonders who he’s remembering, if there’s anyone at all.

She wonders if he sees her.

Her mother.

Talie doesn’t remember everything—just pieces. Scents. Sounds. The way her mother’s laugh used to fill up the hallway like warm light. The feel of her arms, soft and strong at once. The way she used to kneel down when Talie came into a room, like nothing else mattered. The softness of her voice when she spoke to her, especially at night. Always with stories. Always with her fingers weaving through Talie’s hair like a lullaby.

She remembers bedtime songs hummed against her forehead. Kisses on her knuckles. A thousand little things.

And the quiet.

There was always quiet between them, but it never felt heavy. Never lonely. Her mother knew how to speak without needing sound, and Talie had listened without needing words. They were good at that together.

Now, the quiet feels different.

Heavier.

It clings to the corners of their home, a shadow that doesn’t shift when the sun moves. It pools under doors. It sinks into laundry piles and coffee cups left out too long. It swells when her father forgets to eat in the mornings, and it stretches wide when he walks past her without seeing her right away.

He tries, though. She knows he does.

There are days when he still sings softly while folding towels. When he cuts her apple slices into stars, even if he’s late checking on his new shop or checking in with his editors. When he sits beside her on the couch and rubs her back without needing a reason.

But she sees the shape of grief in his spine, the way he leans more on the kitchen counter than he used to, like he’s tired in a way he doesn’t want to name. She sees how he presses his forehead to the fridge door for a long time after packing her lunch. How his eyes linger on the photos taped there—her mother laughing, Talie nestled between them—and how he looks away just a little too fast.

Talie rests her cheek against her palm, still watching the fish. They glide through the water, slow and fluid, two soft little shapes in a world that will never change.

She wishes she could say something. Not just with her hands, not with the cards or the pictures or the careful notes. She wishes her voice would work, just this once, so she could say:

I miss her too.

I see you trying.

You don’t have to be strong all the time.

It’s okay to hurt.

You’re not alone.

But there’s only the faint tap of her spoon against the edge of the bowl, the distant sound of a car passing on the street below, and the flick of the goldfish tails in water.

Talie finishes her cereal slowly, almost reluctantly, then sets the spoon down with a soft clink. She lingers for a moment, fingertips pressed lightly to the table. Then, quietly, she tiptoes back to the living room.

She pulls a sheet of paper from her notebook and one of the colored pencils from last night’s pile—blue, like her mother’s favorite scarf.

She climbs back into her chair, brow furrowed in quiet focus, and begins to draw.

Chapter Text

The alarm blares at 6:00 sharp—an old-school clatter, the kind that rattles like a wind-up toy with something to prove. Dev groans low in his throat, one arm flopping out from under the covers to blindly slap at the nightstand. His fingers brush cold wood, the edge of a book, then finally the switch. The noise dies with a plastic click, but the damage is already done.

He’s awake.

The room is dark, but not dark enough. The blackout curtains don’t quite meet in the middle, and a sliver of morning light slices straight across his face, narrow and blinding. It cuts over his eyes, tracing the bridge of his nose like some cosmic spotlight that picked him, of all people, to bother first.

Dev squints, rolls onto his side, and drags the covers up over his head. The sheets are still warm from sleep, his body a dull ache from lying too long in one position. He shifts, the mattress creaking faintly beneath him, and exhales a frustrated puff of air into the cocoon of fabric.

He doesn’t want to move. Doesn’t want to be awake. The weight of the day presses in at the edges already—expectations, demands, conversations he doesn’t want to have, a schedule stuffed with things that are technically his idea but still feel like someone else’s life.

He curls tighter, folding his arms under his head, trying to block out the day with sheer force of will. The scent of linen lingers faintly in the sheets. The room around him, still cloaked in shadow—stays quiet; no footsteps, no voices—just the low, constant brrring of the air conditioning. 

But Dev stays where he is.

Still.

Tense.

Pretending, just for a little longer, that the world can wait.

He tells himself he’ll get up in five minutes. Maybe ten.

But time doesn’t stretch the way it used to when he was a kid, back when staying in bed felt like a pocket of forever. Now it shrinks. Slips through the cracks of sleep and expectation like water through cupped hands.

Something is wrong.

He doesn’t know what. Nothing’s happened. At least, nothing he can remember… No bad dreams, no leftover homework. His backpack’s already by the door, shoes lined up neatly beside it. Nothing is out of place.

And yet.

There’s a hollowness inside him, somewhere beneath the ribs. Not sharp, but steady. A throb, like a bruise you only notice when you press. And now that he’s noticed, he can’t stop pressing.

It feels like grief. But not the kind you can name.

Like someone left in the night, quietly. Like something small and important has been misplaced in a way that can’t be fixed. A sound missing from a song. A memory gone soft around the edges. The kind of absence that doesn’t scream—it just lingers, like fog on your skin.

Dev pushes the blanket down, peeking out from underneath it. The ceiling greets him in soft gray. The air feels heavier now. Thicker.

Maybe he dreamed something and forgot it. Maybe whatever it was is still echoing somewhere in the back of his mind, too far away to reach but too loud to ignore. He presses a palm to his chest. It’s not pain. Not exactly.

Just that ache.

That something.

He throws off the covers in one decisive move. If he stays here any longer, the feeling will root itself deeper. It already feels too big for his chest, like a balloon filled with water pressing against his lungs.

His feet hit the floor—cold. The jolt helps. Just a little. He sits on the edge of the bed for a moment, staring at the far end of his room.

His hoodie hangs on the doorknob, half off, like it tried to escape but didn’t make it. The action figures on his shelf stand frozen mid-battle, arms raised forever in plastic conflict. Everything is where it should be.

And still, it isn’t.

Dev stands up slowly and yawns, long and silent, the kind that makes your eyes water. He rubs his face with both hands, trying to rub off the ache, like maybe it’s something that can be wiped away like sleep-crust or dreams.

The hallway outside his door is dark, quiet, the house still curled in the tail end of sleep. He briefly wonders if his father is up yet or if he never went to bed. Regardless of what his father is up to, Dev has a few more minutes of being alone with this feeling before he has to start pretending it’s not there.

He wanders toward the bathroom, dragging his feet a little. The air smells faintly of shampoo and whatever clean laundry detergent clung to the towels. The mirror is fogless and cold, reflecting a boy who looks like he slept through something important.

He stares for a long time.

His eyes are puffy. His hair sticks up in weird directions, one side flattened against his scalp, the other in an awkward fluff. He doesn’t look different. But he sure feels different.

Like a part of him got left behind in the night. Something soft. Something brave.

Dev leans close to the mirror. Tries to see it. Tries to find it.

Nothing.

Just his face.

He brushes his hair down with wet fingers, watches a droplet fall from his knuckle to the sink. Then another. 

It takes him a second to realize his eyes are stinging. Not crying. Not really. Just… tired in a way that feels like maybe it wants to be tears, but hasn’t figured out how yet.

He swallows hard and picks up a comb and his hair gel, ready to move on.

He dresses quickly, with the muscle memory of habit: jeans, shirt, hoodie. He doesn’t care if they match, but they do anyway. Doesn’t care if the shirt has a stain near the hem. Everything feels gray today, even the colors.

By the time he’s brushing his teeth, he’s thinking about time again. His Au-pairs are scheduled to get him in about twenty-five minutes to take him to school. He has to eat something.

He pulls on his sneakers by the door, tugging too hard on the laces. His fingers shake, just a little.

Then he hears buzzing—sounds like the Au-pairs are finally starting up.

Dev pauses. His hand rests on the doorknob, but he doesn’t open it.

He wants to say something. Ask something. Did you feel it too? Is something gone? Do you miss someone, even if you don’t know who?

But the words stay buried under his tongue.

Instead, he sighs. Deep. Slow. The kind of breath that feels like letting go of nothing at all.

He opens the door.

Light floods in from above—unnatural, antiseptic white that hums faintly in the air. It spills down from the vaulted ceiling of the mansion’s central atrium, catching along chrome banisters and glass-paneled walkways like a spotlight on a stage no one asked to be part of. The floors shine like a hospital. Every surface reflects.

The house is vast. Empty in a way that feels intentional.

Dev steps out, and the door hisses shut behind him with a soft, magnetic thump. He’s met at once by the cold kiss of marble underfoot, the echo of his sneakers carried down the polished hall like whispers too eager to repeat him.

The statue looms ahead.

Three stories tall, it rises from the center of the mansion’s main gallery like some ancient idol, only newer. Sharper. Worse. Gold-plated from chin to toe, arms crossed like a Roman emperor, the statue depicts his father exactly right down to the combed-back hair, the perfect suit jacket, the knowing smirk that somehow managed to make its way into bronze.

It towers above the living space, surrounded by balconies and sweeping staircases that spiral upward like vines around a tree that doesn’t breathe. Dev walks past it without looking up. He doesn’t have to.

He knows every inch of it.

He’s lived in the shadow of that statue since they moved here. It stands where a hearth should be. Where a couch should go. There’s no place to sit in the main room. Just white. Gold. Glass. Echo.

A museum that pretends to be a home.

He wonders, sometimes, if his father commissioned it before Dev was even born.

The AI staff—Au-pairs—are waiting at the foot of the stairs like they always are. They hover or fly and nothing else. No faces, because why should they? Just curved surfaces with blinking lights and polished voices.

“Good morning, Dev,” says the nearest one, in a tone that’s polite but hollow. “Would you like your standard breakfast today?”

He nods. It’s easier than answering. He doesn’t want to talk. They never really listen.

“Confirmed. Preparing two scrambled eggs, toast, and sliced fruit. Please proceed to the dining unit.”

Dining unit. Not dining room. There is no dining room. Just a glossy white alcove with a slab of a table and chairs that feel and look more like props than furniture. The Au-pairs never eat. They hover. They serve. They clean. They ask about school without meaning it. They catalog everything, storing it all in some cloud storage his father made.

Dev walks slowly, footsteps silent against the pristine floor.

The mansion is filled with light and air, and yet it suffocates.

There are no pictures on the walls. No mess. No clutter. No warmth. It’s like someone’s idea of a perfect house was taken from a catalogue and then stripped of everything human.

His breakfast is waiting when he sits. It’s fine. It’s always fine. It tastes like nothing.

He chews. Swallows. Drinks orange juice that isn’t pulp-free because his father thinks “the pulp makes it real.” His father says a lot of things like that—things that sound like wisdom but feel like rules.

He eats in silence. No music. No voice. Just the hum of artificial air and the way the mansion stretches in all directions, enormous and hollow, like it was built to hold a hundred people and settled for two.

Sometimes not even that.

His father’s wing of the house is behind locked doors. Dev hasn’t seen him since yesterday morning, and he knows better than to knock unless called.

The statue watches him eat.

Dev glances at it, finally.

The gold face stares forward, eyes fixed on nothing and everything. The smile is wrong. Too wide. Too confident. It’s like being stared at by a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead.

He hates it.

Hates the way the light bounces off it and lands on him.

Hates that every hallway leads back here. That every door opens to the same white silence. That his voice, if he used it, would get lost before it reached anyone who mattered.

He swallows his last bite and places the fork down with deliberate care. The Au-pair takes the plate before he can even pull his hands back.

He thinks about asking why. Why is the statue here? Why is the house always so quiet? Why does his father never come down to eat? Why does everything feel like a stage, and he’s the only one without a script?

After breakfast, the Au-pairs guide Dev toward the lift pad with their smooth, gliding steps and unreadable, pleasant tones. One of them hands him his bag—immaculate and zipped just right—while another double-checks the schedule already embedded in his smartwatch. They don’t rush him. They never do. But they hover just close enough to make it clear: it’s time to go.

The lift pad hums beneath his feet, a low vibration pulsing up through the soles of his sneakers. One of the Au-pairs steps behind him and extends their arms, sleek and mechanical, shaped vaguely like wings. They fold in once, click once, then spread wide with a quiet hiss.

Then, smoothly—gently—they lift off the ground.

The mansion drops away beneath them, its gold-edged balconies and glass walls shrinking into geometric quiet. Dev doesn't look down. He never does. He knows what he’ll see: the manicured gardens, the pool that no one swims in, the empty guesthouse no one's stayed in for years.

Above, the sky is crisp and blue, painted like a scene from a postcard. Dev doesn’t feel any of it.

The Au-pair flies in smooth, arcing lines. They descend at the school gate ten minutes early, as always. Precision is one of the Au-pair’s top features, according to his father.

Dev hops off without thanking them. They don't expect it.

The school grounds are bustling—kids crowding the steps, chatting on benches, leaning on lockers under floating puffs of enchanted clouds that keep the walkways cool. It’s loud in the way places full of life are loud: laughter, overlapping conversations, someone yelling from across the courtyard, a pop song playing from someone’s phone.

Dev keeps his shoulders square, eyes forward, the way he’s been taught. Walk like you know something they don’t. Like you’re above it all. He doesn’t wave at anyone. Doesn’t smile.

A couple of kids nod as he walks past—recognition, maybe. Deference. One boy, Theo, gives him a quick fist-bump, which Dev returns automatically. Another kid stutters out a “Hey, Dev,” but Dev only gives a short tilt of the head in response. Nothing too warm. Nothing too inviting.

The ‘cool’ version of himself walks these halls like he owns them. The version that doesn’t care—always knows what to say and doesn’t flinch when someone mentions families or feelings or things that dig too deep.

But that’s not real.

None of it is.

He rounds the corner toward his locker, drops off his bag, and leans against the wall as the bell rings overhead. His fingers twitch slightly in his hoodie pocket, fidgeting with the frayed seam at the edge of his sleeve.

That’s when he sees her.

Hazel.

She’s at her locker, a few yards down, pulling out a notebook covered in doodles. Her curly hair barely held back with a headband. She laughs at something the girl beside her says. Her laugh sounds the same—maybe a little softer, a little more guarded. But it’s still her.

Dev’s stomach turns.

He freezes, mid-fidget. His heart gives a strange, tight squeeze like it’s trying to duck out of his chest.

Hazel.

She doesn’t see him yet. Or maybe she does and just doesn’t show it.

She is wearing her signature indigo sweater with pink stripes again today, sleeves pushed up to her elbows. There’s paint on her fingertips—green or teal or something in between. Same old Hazel. Still drawing on the corners of her math homework and making animals out of lunch napkins. Still surrounded by people who talk too loudly and never quite know how to keep up with her.

Dev swallows, but it sticks. He looks down at his shoes.

All the things he’s said to her.

Not just mean things. Stupid things.

Like calling her “Havoc” that one time—because she’d tripped in the hall and dropped a stack of books and some kid laughed, and Dev, wanting to blend into the laughter, had said it like a joke.

Like a nickname.

He’d meant it to be funny. He told himself it was funny.

She didn’t laugh.

She’d looked at him—through him, really—with that quiet disbelief she saved for people she’d trusted one too many times. Then she’d turned and picked up her books without a word.

Then there was “Hazmat.” Because she wore her science goggles outside the lab once and Dev couldn’t resist saying something sharp. “Nice look, Hazmat. Planning to blow something up again?”

He’d said it in front of their whole group.

They laughed.

She didn’t.

And he’d kept going. “Hassle,” “Hazard,” “Hazy.” Dumb little jabs, always close to her name but never quite it. Like he was trying to rewrite who she was just enough to keep her at a distance.

But the worst wasn’t any of the names. It was when he stopped saying her name at all.

Stopped talking to her altogether.

No explanations. No apologies. Just silence.

He remembers the day she stopped waiting for him to say something. The day she stopped asking why. She’d walked past him in the cafeteria—her tray full, her head high, her mouth tight—and she didn’t glance at him even once.

He should’ve said something then. Should’ve done something.

Instead, he’d laughed at something someone else said.

Too loud. Too forced.

Like if he laughed hard enough, maybe he wouldn’t hear the hollow echo it left inside him.

And now here she is, ten feet away, her hand scribbling something in her notebook before class. Still existing. Still shining a little in her own quiet way.

And Dev?

Dev is the ghost in the corner. The boy with the too-perfect shoes and the too-loud silence. The one who made himself into a statue just like the one waiting at home.

He shifts his weight against the wall, like maybe if he stands just right, he’ll disappear into it. Like the hallway could swallow him whole and let the day pass without demanding anything in return. But the truth is—it already has. A dozen times over.

He watches Hazel tuck a pencil behind her ear. It rolls free a second later, and she catches it on instinct before it hits the floor. She doesn’t even look. Just knows. The kind of small, unshowy magic that made her so hard to ignore in the first place.

Something presses against Dev’s chest again. That almost-pain. That hollow.

Maybe this is what he’s been missing.

Not Hazel, exactly. Not just her. But that—the quiet certainty of being known. The space to mess up and try again. The possibility of laughing with someone instead of at them.

They’d been friends once. Not for long, not in some epic movie-montage way—but long enough that he remembers what her handwriting looks like when she’s tired. Long enough to remember how she snorts when she’s caught off guard laughing, and how she always kept an extra juice box in her bag “just in case someone’s day needs an appy-juice.”

Long enough to know he broke something.

And not because he hated her.

But because he didn’t hate anyone. Not really. Not truly.

He’d just been… scared.

Not of her. Of what people would say. Of how it looked. Of not being enough and being seen that way. So he made noise. Distracted. Pushed. Picked. Hurt her to feel bigger than the anxiety pooling like cold lead in his gut.

The first bell rings again. Students start shuffling into rooms. Hazel turns, her backpack already slung over one shoulder. Her eyes flick across the hall—and for one second, just one—

—they meet his.

Just a flicker.

A pause.

Not anger. Not surprise.

But distance.

Measured, quiet distance.

She looks away first.

Dev doesn’t blame her.

Then, slowly, he exhales through his nose and tugs at the frayed seam of his hoodie again. His fingers tremble, just once, before they go still.

The cafeteria buzzes like a hive—forks clinking, chairs scraping, voices ricocheting off the walls in bursts of laughter and the occasional shout. It smells like cheese and starch and whatever today’s mystery sauce is, tangy and sharp and clinging to the air like steam.

Dev’s tray sits mostly untouched in front of him with already-cold chicken nuggets and somehow still-steaming, unseasoned veggies. A few grapes roll aimlessly near the edge, taunting him.

His water bottle sweats onto his tray. His spoon clinks once against the side of his pudding cup—non-dairy, plain vanilla, something safe. But he doesn’t open it.

He’s watching Hazel.

She’s sitting across the room at one of the long tables near the mural wall, her usual corner with Jasmine and Winn. She’s quieter than usual, head ducked slightly as she pokes at the two fidget toys clipped to her lunch box. One pink, one green. 

Dev stares longer than he means to.

The colors hit him hard.

They mean something.

Or they meant something. There’s a spark, deep in his mind, like the flicker of a match—but the flame doesn’t catch. A strange feeling rises in his chest, like someone tugging at his heart with invisible thread. Something warm. Distant. Almost…

Family?

No. That’s not it.

Magic.

His fingers twitch around the spoon still in his hand. His eyes go wide—but the moment is gone. The warmth vanishes like someone snapping off a light switch in his chest.

Blank.

Emptiness floods back in.

He blinks and lets the spoon fall.

And then, before he can lose his nerve, he stands.

His legs feel like paper, all folded corners and unsteady lines. He crosses the room with his tray in hand, heart banging a quiet rhythm in his ears. It’s not a good idea. He knows that. But he wants to say something. He has to try. If he doesn’t do it now, he might not ever.

Hazel looks up when he nears.

Her eyes are calm. Cautious.

She doesn’t smile.

Her friends go quiet—not rudely, just aware. There’s a tension now, thin and taut like fishing line between them. One of them leans forward protectively. Hazel waves them off with a tiny shake of her head.

“Hi,” Dev says, too fast, too quiet.

“Hey,” Hazel replies, guarded.

Dev swallows.

His mouth is dry.

His tray suddenly feels ridiculous in his hands—an offering of bland cafeteria food and crumpled napkins. He sets it down at the corner of the table, careful not to spill anything, careful not to be anything more than quiet.

His eyes flick to the fidget toys again—pink and green, their silicone ridges worn smooth on the edges. They do mean something. He knows they do. Something about—

A laugh. A voice.

No. It’s yanked away again. Like a door slamming shut behind his thoughts.

“Those are…” he begins, nodding toward the toys, searching for words that don’t come. “Cool colors.”

Hazel raises an eyebrow, skeptical but not unkind. “Thanks?”

There’s a long pause.

Dev nods again, as if that’ll help. “They, uh. They suit you.”

Hazel stares. One of her friends snorts behind a hand.

Dev panics.

He tries to fix it.

“I mean—not like suit suit. I mean—like, they go with your whole… thing. Not that you have a thing. I just mean—your whole… vibe. It’s… cool. And the colors. Are nice.”

He wants to disappear.

Hazel blinks. Then slowly—so slowly—she presses her lips together in a look that is not a smile but dangerously close to one.

“You okay?” she asks.

No. Absolutely not.

“Yeah,” Dev lies. “Totally. I just, uh…”

He hesitates.

He wants to say something real. Something that matters.

Something like “I miss talking to you,” or “I wish I’d never said those things,” or “Your laugh reminds me of something I can’t remember, and it’s driving me crazy.”

Instead, he blurts, “Do you think pudding counts as a personality trait?”

Hazel does smile at that. Just a small one.

“Only if you’re extremely lactose intolerant,” Winn grumbles.

Jasmine elbows their side and gives them a pointed look.

Dev forces out a breath that might be a laugh but lands more like a wheeze. He nods again, too much, too quickly, like a bobblehead wired wrong.

“I’ll, uh… I’ll go,” he mutters, already grabbing his tray. “Sorry. Just… yeah. Never mind.”

Hazel opens her mouth—maybe to say wait, maybe to say okay—but Dev doesn’t give her the chance.

He turns.

Walks fast.

Doesn’t look back.

The plastic tray rattles in his grip as he weaves through the maze of lunch tables, ignoring every glance, every half-whispered comment that might not even be about him. His face burns. His stomach churns. He can still hear her voice—light, edged with amusement, but not cruel.

Are you okay?

No. Still no.

He reaches the bin near the exit and dumps the tray with a loud clatter of untouched food and melting pudding. One grape rolls out of the tray and hits the floor, wobbling twice before settling. He watches it like it’s mocking him.

The cafeteria doors swing open at his touch, heavy and metal and blessedly solid. The hallway outside is quiet. Cooler. Empty, save for a few stragglers too late for lunch and too early for class.

Dev walks.

Fast. Determined. But aimless.

He doesn’t know where he’s going. He just knows he can’t stay. Not in that room. Not with the sound of her almost-laugh still echoing in his head. Not with the weight of what he didn’t say pressing against his ribs.

His sneakers squeak against the tile, too loud in the empty corridor. He takes a sharp turn near the stairwell and heads for the second floor—no classes there this period. Just old lockers, a forgotten vending machine, and windows that overlook the courtyard.

He presses his back to the wall and sinks down, knees up, hoodie sleeves tugged over his hands.

It’s quiet up here.

The kind of quiet that feels heavy. Like someone holding their breath.

Dev stares at the floor.

Not crying.

Just… deflated.

He didn’t mean to make a fool of himself. He just—he wanted to say something. Anything. And he’d said pudding.

Pudding.

Of all things.

Why does his brain do that? Why does it lock up when it matters and spit out garbage instead?

He clenches his fists under the sleeves.

Hazel had smiled.

Not at him. Not really. But because of him.

That’s something. Isn’t it?

Maybe it’s worse. Maybe it’s a kindness he didn’t deserve. Maybe she laughed because she pitied him. Or maybe because he was just so pathetic it was funny.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

His heart beats in his ears again, loud and unsure.

That feeling—the tug, the heat, the flicker of something deep and old—it’s still there. Faint now. Like an ember under ash.

He doesn’t know what it is. Doesn’t know why it’s tied to her.

But maybe… maybe the reason he keeps messing this up is because he’s scared it matters.

Because Hazel isn’t just someone he hurt.

She might be someone he lost.

And he doesn’t even know how.

So he sits on the floor, hoodie pulled up to his nose, and breathes through the ache in his chest. Through the silence.

Through the guilt.

One of these days, he swears, he’s going to get it right.