“Some Earth places are beautiful,” Eric remarks. He glances around his bedroom. “Not much here, though… is your school good? Or are they all… like that?”

"Schools are all the same. Made to melt children from their natural state into neat little pegs that can be slotted into the capitalist machine."

Eric snorts. “Yeah. Um, so, you think magic and stuff is cool, right?”

"Yes! I wanted magic even before I knew it was real - I collected those weird little rocks with holes in them, and for Christmas my grandma keeps getting me nazars and witchy stuff like that - it's cool!"

Eric offers a hand to shake. “If you promise to meet me at school, I can show you more magic and stuff.”

"I promise."

She feels, as soon as she says it, something happening to her. She couldn't break this promise if she tried. Good thing she's not inclined to try.

Eric shuffles his feet and scratches one of his lesions. “I honestly don’t know what you do with friends. Well, human friends. Do you?“

"Yeah, think I can manage. -oh, of course. So, the only real rule of this game is that, no matter what I say happens, you can say I reach into my pocket, what do I find? And then you have to figure out something to do with it..."

They can pass some companionable time playing the pocket game, and then Zanna's mom pokes her head in. "Alright, guys, I hate to break up your party but it's time for a certain girl to head home."

Zanna jumps, then remembers she's glamored and smooths down her nonexistent skirt. "Okay, okay. Eric, it was cool meeting you."

“You too.”

…As Zanna leaves, Eric wonders how far his glamour can stretch.

As they drive home, Zanna chats with her mom, uncommonly generous with her words.

"I'm feeling a bit chilly," she says absently.

Her mother passes her an old sweater, much too big for her; she pulls it on and pulls her knees up underneath.

A few minutes later, as they drive home, she feels the glamor on her snap, and her fake clothes dissolve into ephemeral glitter. "Fuck!" she says involuntarily. 

"Don't swear," her mother chides, glancing over. "- where are your shoes?"

"I got them coming out but forgot to put them on," she lies fluently, her brain still mostly frozen. "Eyes on the road, Mom."

"You shouldn't have been walking barefoot on the pavement," Mrs. Richardson mumbles confusedly, but she complies.

Zanna hurriedly pulls her socks and shoes out of the glovebox and onto her feet, surreptitiously scraping off what remains of the sand between her toes. She contemplates the rest of her clothes, currently stowed under the assumption she could get them out under the cover of the glamor. ...not a chance. The glamour's gone, and Mom isn't actually oblivious enough to fail to notice her daughter slipping back into her skirt without magical intervention.

The sweater comes down to midthigh, standing. It'll have to serve.

Even after Mom turns the heat up - "you really do look awfully chilly," she frets - Zanna stays huddled under the baggy sweater like her life depends on it. When they get home, she races upstairs to the bathroom before she can be interrogated by her father, then makes a mad dash from there to her bedroom a few minutes later.

Her chest heaving against the scratchy wool, her face cherry-red, Zanna considers whether her promise to Eric covers murdering him on sight. 

Ari sometimes wonders if he misses anything.

He remembers his mother, or he thinks he does. She was... tall, and pretty, and she smelled nice, like... some kind of flower. But Belinda is taller, and beautiful, and smells like the strange blossoms that bloom in the Eversnow. And he wouldn't have Belinda if he still had his mother.

He remembers... lights, steady and lifeless, sometimes flickering; nothing to compare to the bottled auroras they sell at the goblin market. He remembers books, thick board books about farm animals and things like that, but they never held his attention like the stories Belinda tells. He remembers a bottle full of milk, warm and mild, but never as sweet as the cold milk that he sucks from Belinda's breast.

If he ever missed anything, he thinks, he doesn't anymore.

Eric meanwhile misses a lot of things. Like being too small to have to go to school.

”So, I heard about this thing called homeschooling,” he mentions in the car.

Sarah chuckles. “Sorry, kiddo, Harold would make an awful principal.”

Harold is Sarah’s boss at the liquor store. Eric hates him because he means Sarah has to leave Eric’s sight. He squirms in the backseat of the car, seatbelt rubbing against his bare chest. Eric could just glamour it so Sarah thinks he’s buckled in—it’s not as if they’ll crash—while he’s in the car, but that feels… nasty somehow. 

“Spaghetti tonight?” Sarah asks.

Eric nods vigorously. Food on Earth tastes like sand compared to the memory of fairy food, and it doesn’t help that Eric’s allergic to basically anything processed. Not spaghetti and meatballs, though. But only when Sarah makes it.  “Yes,” he says, “that would be great.”

Too soon, they’ve pulled up in front of Eric’s new school.

“Go on, champ, you can do it.”

Eric nods. Sarah opens the car door for him and kisses him on the cheek. Then, she’s gone. Eric searches for Zanna. He knows she’ll be there. She couldn’t avoid him if she wanted to.

She's there alright, her arms folded in front of her chest. "Did you know the glamor was going to snap?"

“Oh… no, sorry. Never tried it that far before. Humans are weird about skin.”

"I know, but I have to live with them - and I can't do magic about it. Well, for the record it broke when I got a couple of miles away from you, but I'm okay, I had a very large sweater to hide in."

“Won’t do it again.” 

‘The bell rings.

“Aw crud. Already?”

Eric is introduced in front of the class. 

Zanna amuses herself imagining his glamor collapsing in front of everyone, which would be extremely funny at least to her.

Eric does… very little work. Mostly he makes his pencil fill out worksheets while staring out the window. Somehow, the air is less stuffy and dusty while he’s sitting in the room. It fades when he periodically wanders out, the teacher apparently not noticing. 

When he wanders back in, there's a neatly folded note on his desk.

Can you cover me too? -Zanna

Eric grins and nods.

Zanna stands from her desk and walks over to him, and curtsies deeply.

"Charmed, I'm sure."

Eric bows back with a flourish. “Enchante.”  He takes her hand and kisses it. “Care to show a weary traveller around?”