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milk of human kindness
mother this boy has WINGS
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Zanna is too old for playdates. She has explained this to her mother at length. As usual, her points were ignored.

Also, this boy is, by all accounts, boring. She's been told this by everyone who's met him. (She doesn't really take into account that they're boring too. If anything, wouldn't they be the best positioned to know?)

She doesn't want to go. But she knows if she drags her feet too much, Mom will be insufferable. So she just gets in the car and tolerates the chatter until they come to the neighborhood where her new playmate resides. 

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Her new playmate resides in a... moderately run down apartment building, just on the edge of the bad part of town. The elevator has a positively 70s wood panel interior that hasn't weathered the intervening decades well, though, it does have less of a urine reek than the stairwells. On their way to the apartment, they pass a man sitting against a door, rocking, head clutched in his hands as he mutters to himself, on the verge of weeping.

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"What a lovely place," Zanna says sweetly.

"It's got character," her mother admits. "I tried not to read into the address... well, he'll still need friends."

They ascend and knock on the door of the Goldman apartment. 

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Sarah Goldman opens the door, smiling warmly. "Zanna! Mrs Richardson! Lovely to see you!" She bends down, not quite to Zanna's eye-level, but enough to make it clear who she's addressing:

"It's wonderful of you to come play with Eric, sweetie. A new school is so much easier with a familar face." 

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Zanna smiles back not unlike a cornered animal. "Y-yeah. Exciting stuff."

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Sarah flashes Zanna a pinched smile. "Oh, you don't have to pretend, honey, Eric probably feels just the same." She straightens, quirking a shoulder. "So, let's do the introductions and then we can have some peace and coffee?" Sarah asks Mrs Richardson. 

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Mrs. Richardson laughs genially and pats Zanna on the head. "Let's! I could certainly use a cup."

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Sarah leads the Richardsons through her apartment. Its very substance is shabby, but it's been cared for diligently. There might be mold in one corner of the ceiling, but there isn't a spec of dust. The appliances are second hand, but better maintained than a car in Cuba. Dotted throughout is evidence of mild Judaism: a menorah on the mantle, a flier on the fridge for some kind of Temple social event, a Hebrew blessing in tacky "Live, Laugh, Love" script framed on the wall. All throughout are photos of Sarah's son. He's almost always dressed in somwhat oversized hand-me-downs. He has a narrow face with a slightly elfin, upturned nose, whose unformed features promise he'll either be handsome or interesting looking.

They reach the two bedrooms doors, facing each other in a hall that's more of an alcove. Sarah knocks. "Eric! It's Zanna!"

 

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"Ah, come in!" calls a shaky, but shockingly pleasant boyish voice. 

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Sarah opens the door onto a cluttered little bedroom, mostly dominated by an old race-car bed that looks like it's been in a few YouTube crash compliations. A naked, milk skinned boy with wings like a giant northern birdwing butterfly edged with iron is laying on his belly and idly kicking the air as he draws. He tries to look up at Zanna, but fails. "Ah, hi."

  

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"Ah-" Zanna half-consciously looks to her mother for an appropriate reaction to the naked boy with wings.

"What a nice little racecar bed," Mrs. Richardson says, looking like she might yawn at any moment. "If we had a boy we thought about getting one like that."

Zanna... turns back to Eric. "...hi," she says. "Zanna. Nice... wings."

Mrs. Richardson looks fondly at her daughter. "You have such an odd way with words."

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Now Eric is staring at Zanna. 

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Sarah tilts her head. “Right… we’ll leave you two to it, then.”

She closes the door behind Zanna.

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Eric sits up on his bed, revealing his lack of a certain marker of Jewish identity. The strangeness goes deeper than his wings or nudity. His irises are black, with two white stars where his pupils should be. He’s beautiful, in a way utterly unlike the boy in the photos Zanna has seen. The only thing to mar him a few miscellaneous rashes, or maybe the mildest of burns?

”Ahh… what did you mean about ‘wings’?”

Said wings beat the air nervously.

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Zanna puts the fact of this being her first time seeing boy parts in person firmly to one side. "Don't be ridiculous, I was talking about your wings. - why are none of the pictures of you? Is that boy your - no - are you an alien? Did you replace him?" She pauses. "Not that I care if you did. I didn't know him."

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Eric vanishes. Before Zanna can even register this, he’s clutching her hands. “You gotta promise you’ll never, ever tell!”

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"I'll promise not to tell our moms, that'd be stupid, and I don't really care about telling, like, cops or reporters or scientists, screw them, but I don't wanna promise not to tell anyone. Too limiting. Who are you afraid of finding out, I won't tell them."

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Eric sighs and lets go of her hands. “I’m a fairy,” he says glumly. “I got left here when I was tiny because I’m boring.”

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"Well, that's shitty of them. I used to pretend I was secretly demon-spawn or something, just because my parents suck and I wanted powers, but you sure have me beat on evidence. - how come I can see your wings and stuff when Mom can't? Am I maybe actually something?"

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Eric clutches his head and wails, “I don't know! Humans aren’t supposed to see through my glamours! Not even Sarah can do that! And she’s my milk mother!”

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Zanna claps a hand over his mouth and drags him into a rather forceful hug which might be better termed a headlock. "Hey, it's okay! I'm probably just that cool! Don't cry so loud or they'll think I'm bullying you!"

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Eric half-heartedly slips from Zanna’s grip like smoke. “They won’t. The glamour.”

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"...does that mean I could actually bully you and you couldn't do anything about it?" Zanna asks. "Academic curiosity."

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Eric tilts his head. “I guess. Don’t know why you would. Sounds silly.”

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She shrugs. "I mostly just do it if somebody's real boring and I'm stuck with them - some people are more fun crying than talking. You're not that boring."

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"Also, I could just make the glamour not hide that. When I have baths I don't hide that I'm not wearing anything."

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"Ah, it's adjustable. Cool. ...got any other powers? I saw how you got out of my hug, that was cool."

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Eric shrugs. "Not that much. I'm a changeling. I'm under Restriction." 

Suddenly, the room is full of gold coins. "I can make stuff, I guess."  

The coins vanish, but now his bed is a sleeping lion. “I can turn things into other things. You know, if it’s not too fake. Wood’s usually alright. Plastic, forget about it.”

He takes Zanna's hands. Suddenly, they're standing on a deserted tropical island. The sun is setting beneath the horizon, burning the sea and sky scarlet and violet. "And I can go places, but only places that are now."

He glances at Zanna. "Oh, sorry, not used to taking clothes with me."

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Zanna giggles in delight, then looks down and giggles some more. "Can you glamor me too?"

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"Sure, nobody around, though." Eric swishes a finger. "Anyone looking thinks you're wearing a ballarina dress."

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"Ugh, fine. Ballet sucks, for the record."

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Eric giggles. It's the first sign of happiness Zanna's seen from the boy. "You asked." 

He sits on the sand. The surf stretches out to touch his toes. "Sorry, my magic's pretty boring." 

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Zanna considers sitting, then decides to instead stand in the water.

"Seems pretty cool to me. I've never been anywhere like this."

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"It used to be somewhere they stuck sick people. Glad we don't do that by the way. Get sick, I mean." He stretchess a leg out into the water. "Guess I'm kinda like the people they put here, though."

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"Like a leper colony? I don't think you're very much like a leper. I'm at least unusually sure you aren't missing any parts - despite the lesions."

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"I was boring. Not good enough."

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"That's still not very similar to leprosy. I guess you could call it a developmental disability." She shrugs. "Supposedly I've got one of those. Unspecified, supposed to account for my unusual deficit of friends. Ignoring my explanation, which is that people are fundamentally garbage."

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"...Am I garbage?"

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"...statistically probably but so far you haven't been? I mean, broad strokes."

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Eric perks up slightly. “Are my wings really nice?”

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"Your wings are beautiful. And your eyes are pretty, too."

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“Thanks!” He bites his lip. “Ah, Sarah and your mom can still hear us playing Monopoly in my room. Should we go back now or…”

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"Oh, Monopoly, gross. Am I at least cheating? Yeah, let's go back."

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Eric smiles, a little slyly, “Now you are.”

And with that, they’re sitting on Eric’s bed again. 

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Zanna picks up her abandoned clothes and considers them. "I've still got sandy feet," she says. "Can you shift my glamor to look like what I have here?"

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“Sure! You’re really pretty by the way.”

It sounds less like flattery and more like bare fact.

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"Thanks!"

She takes a look at what he was drawing when they arrived.

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Two great floating land masses, one covered by forest, the other by sea, bridged by an enormous, felled tree. 

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"Oh, that's lovely," she breathes.

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“Home,” Eric says, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Everywhere in home is beautiful.”

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"...I've never seen anything really beautiful, I don't think."

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“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?”

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"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."

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

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"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!"

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

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"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.

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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?“

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"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."

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“You too.”

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

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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. 

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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.

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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.

 

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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.”

 

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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.

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

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

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"I know, but I have to live with them - and 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."

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“Won’t do it again.” 

‘The bell rings.

“Aw crud. Already?”

Eric is introduced in front of the class. 

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

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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. 

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

Can you cover me too? -Zanna

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Eric grins and nods.

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

"Charmed, I'm sure."

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

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"Certainly! This is the classroom. It's terrible. Let's leave."

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"Lets."

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She shows him around for a bit. "That's Mrs. Jenkins' classroom, she teaches fifth grade and apparently she's a real hardass... that's Mr. Erickson's, second grade, very nice and a total pushover... hmm, I don't actually know what room that is."

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Eric snaps his fingers. The door opens.

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Zanna goes in.

"Boiler room," she reports. "Huh."

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When she turns around, there's another boy standing much too close to her. "Boo."

He looks a little like Eric - pale, winged, nude - but his wings are sharp-edged, and his eyes are red, and he looks wicked somehow.

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Eric appears behind the other boy and pats him on the shoulder. "She sees through glamours, Tom."

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Zanna jumps a little, then laughs. "Oh, were you supposed to be a demon or something?"

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"A rotting corpse. You can see through glamors? That's new. How d'you do it?"

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Shrug.

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"This is Tom. He's an asshole. That's okay, though. It's in his... humans call them genes, right?"

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"That's rich, considering she's got the same blood," Tom says offhandedly.

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"Excuse me?"

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"Said what I said. You're my half-sister."

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"Excuse me?!"

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"...Did I miss something?"

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"Had you not smelled it on her? Not even the unseelie bloodline? Embarrassing," Tom opines. "I can show you. If you like."

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"Show me what?"

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Something in the air blurs and melts, and they're standing in... Mrs. Richardson's bedroom. She's kissing someone who is definitely not her husband.

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The man also has sharp, dragonfly wings, throwing off rainbows. If Mrs Richardson cares, she isn’t showing it. But then, she is a bit occupied. 

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Eric sniffs Zanna’s shoulder. “Huh. You do smell… us.”

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Zanna seems distracted. "She's - why is she -"

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"Thinks he's your daddy," Tom shrugs. "- right, you can't see the glamor. She's got no idea she's cheating."

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Zanna collects herself. "I don't think that counts," she mutters. "You can't cheat on someone by accident."

Her mother starts stripping. Zanna gags theatrically. "Do we have to watch this?"

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Eric shrugs. “Why not? Your mommy’s beautiful. Like you.”

He says this like he’s admiring a nice painting, not how an older boy might.

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Eric brightens. “Wait, does this mean—”

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"Does it mean what, use your words, Eric."

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“She’s—she’s—us? But not like us? What happens when a fairy man mates a mortal? My dad was human, but I’ve got wings and everything!”

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Tom rolls his eyes. "It's not science. You can get any of a bunch of things if the magic goes one way or another. Dad usually goes for a subtle thing where the baby doesn't have any powers until they make it to fairyland, but maybe he was feeling whimsical, or maybe he just made a mistake, and so Zanna's a seer."

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(Zanna would probably have something to say to this, but she seems transfixed by the act of creation.)

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Eric’s seen his mom with her boyfriends, so he’s more interested in Zanna. “You do look kind of… wrong. All human and…dressed. Ever seen dogs with sweaters? Like that.”

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Mrs Richardson cums. Again. And again.

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She shakes herself out of her fascination. "Um. Yeah, I do... feel kind of itchy. Tom, you don't mind?"

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"Why in the world would I mind."

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So Zanna shrugs out of her outfit.

"Can we visit Fairyland, then?"

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"I don't see why not."

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Eric swallows. “Um, could I come?”

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"...why wouldn't you? We're friends."

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Tom rolls his eyes. "Dork."

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Eric is looking rather intently at Zanna. “Restriction… need like, a chaperone. It’s lame.”

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Mrs Richardson lies panting and satisfied. The creature who pleased her kisses her on the navel, smiling at what shall soon be growing behind it.

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"Ugh, I always forget... do I count?"

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“Yeah. Which is frankly very unfair, you might as well be a changeling, too.”

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"But I'm not! Nyah."

Suddenly they're back in the boiler room, then the air blurs some more - then unblurs, becomes clearer than it was before. They're standing in a cavern, lit dimly by glowing crystals jutting out of the wall.

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Eric sighs happily, breathing magic-spiced air.

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And grimaces at the now-minute but ever increasing pull of Earth.

”Zanna?”

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"Yeah?" she responds, her eyes distant. 

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He glances at Tom. “Should she be growing wings or something? What was it like for you?”

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"Dad cut the wings out of my back. It was pretty involved."

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Eric takes Zanna by the hand and starts leading her towards the cavern entrance. “Bet you cried,” he calls back to Tom.

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"I did not!"

Tom skips ahead. 

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“Like a baby!” 

Eric sniffs and examines Zanna as they emerge into the light—cool and warm all at once. 

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Her skin is cooler than a human's should be. (Does he know what a human's skin is supposed to feel like?) She smells like violets and powder snow.

"Feel... cold," she says.

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Eric is nervous. Is she dying? Humans do that sometimes. “Tom?”

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"...what, you think I know?" Tom sniffs her more closely. "I think... she's changing? But I don't know how it's supposed to go."

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“What? It happened to you!”

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"You were born, could you deliver a baby?"

Tom paces furiously.

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Zanna opens her mouth and coughs out a puff of bloodstained snow.

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"- oh. Of course."

Tom calls a knife into being, a little shard of obsidian, and slices open the crook of his elbow, which drips blood onto the ground. "Father!"

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The blood swells upward, bulging and moulding into the rough shape of a person. It becomes a tall, lithe man with bare, snowy skin; deep violet eyes, and long, lilac hair. Wings weave themselves out of light from his back. He smiles cooly down at Tom, “Hello son. I hope you are being interesting?”

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Out the corner of his eye, he spots Zanna, wobbling on her feet like a newborn colt. “Oh,” he says. “She’s beautiful.” He sniffs. “And mine.” He looks back at Tom. “Did you find her?”

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"I did. But she's dying."

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“Oh, can’t have that.” 

The man with the lilac hair scoops Zanna up into his arms. “I don’t need to know your name. I can smell my blood in you. I think I remember your mother. Sweet, beautiful thing.”

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Zanna's gaze sharpens a bit. "...you're not... you're him. The one who made me."

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He strokes her hair gently. "Yes. Your father. It is very good to meet you."

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Zanna makes a face when he calls himself her father, but then she coughs out some more bloody snow.

"I feel... strange," she says.

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"It’s magic. It wants to fill your blood. To eat away the rot your mother would could a soul. To make you whole and forever."

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"I don't want to die."

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"Shh. You don't have to. Not ever. You feel like a dancer. Am I right?"

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"...yeah. I dance."

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"Then that is how we will guide the magic." He kisses her softly on the forehead. "I'm going to put you down now."

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"Alright."

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He gently sets Zanna down on her feet, though still keeping a hold of her hands. Slowly, he raises them over her head and spins her.

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She looks up at him, and as she twirls, she slowly starts smiling.

"Oh - it's just -"

Then she starts dancing.

It starts as a kind of ballet, but the rules rapidly fall away. Soon she's leaping and spinning and, most of all, having fun - her skin gleams with sweat - her eyes glow, at first just with life and vitality and then more literally.

Sparks start rising from her skin. Hot, bright. Then, all at once, she's on fire.

And she's laughing.

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Tom looks delighted.

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Eric meanwhile is more in awe.

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He shoots Tom a glance. “Bet yours didn’t look this cool.”

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"Did too. Blood everywhere."

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Zanna kicks and leaps and spins and twirls and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. Finally the flames clear, and she stands there, a pair of grand red moth wings fluttering gently against her back.

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Her father takes her hand again and kisses it. “Now I might want to know your name.”

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Eric gets back to staring. 

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"Zanna. Do you have any names you particularly like?"

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“Father is one. Jack Morpho is another.”

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Eric works up the nerve to approach Zanna and give her a good sniff. 

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She curtsies. "It's nice to meet you properly, Jack. Though I've seen your work."

She still smells of snow and violets, but it's firmer, sharper. Like she's real now.

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“You’re beautiful.” Eric regards her and Jack’s wings. “Your wings aren’t the same.”

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“Clearly her mother’s blood has mixed into something new.”

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Eric snorts. “Yeah—”

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And then he starts fading in and out of sight, the iron edging of his wings glowing. “Stupid”—fade—“restrictions!”

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“Poor changeling,” Jack remarks. “He always seemed like a fine boy to me.”

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Eric looks desperately at Zanna. “You’re gonna come back and see me, right—”

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Eric finds himself sitting in his classroom. The stuffy, chalk choked air makes him gasp. The scratch of pencils on all sides makes him scream and push his desk over. Nobody notices.

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Zanna lands, perched on her own desk's tabletop, a few seconds later. "Course I am, dummy. I'm under oath, plus you're like, my only friend."

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"Unkind," Tom says from beind Eric.

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"Shove it, Tommy."

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Eric’s so relieved he almost weeps.

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He’s also amused. “Tommy? Why didn’t I think of that? Totally your name now, dude.” 


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"Fuck you."

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"Anyway, when does the Restriction refresh so we can go back to Fairyland?"

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Eric sighs. “Three days.”

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He looks around the room, then to Zanna. “So, you got any like, revenges planned? Unseelie kids like those.”

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"Oh, you know just what to say. Hmm... you see that girl over there?" She points at a tiny brunette. "That's Madison. She's a bitch and I hate her. Can we torment her?"

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“You really are Tommy’s sister, aren’t you?”

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"I never claimed otherwise."

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Eric snaps his fingers. The room freezes. “So, how do we go about the torment?”

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"I was thinking..."

She squints at Madison, and a wave of red stippling spreads over her skin. Something like a rash, but made entirely of chicken-pox. At the same time, her clothes melt like cotton candy under a hose, leaving the full extent of her new condition obvious.

"Hmm... and I've got other ideas, but I think I'd rather save them for a rainy day."

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“You’re lucky she wasn’t wearing polyester or anything,” Eric comments, making a disgusted face at the thought.

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"Oh, Madison would never wear polyester," Zanna scoffs. "She acts like she deserves a Purple Heart for being allergic to synthetics and preservatives - it's not that uncommon! So am I! She's not special!"

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Eric holds up an arm, revealing a trail of red spots. “I mean, same.”

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"Ha. I guess I ended up being special after all, huh?"

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Yes. In Eric’s experience, things that make him happy are rare and special indeed.