>>5779690“This isn’t that,” you said. “The favour is for something else.”
“For what?” Henzler had asked, cofnsued.
“I haven’t decided,” you admitted.
It was curious: the favour wasn’t something you’d even consciously intended to accrue. Afterward, having done so, you were wary to expend it.
“Oh, well, I mean… I guess I could…”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to do this for nothing,” you interrupted, silencing the girl. “What do you want? Maybe I could help you make some friends? I know a few people, who’d let you hang out with us if I vouched for you. You know, popular kids.”
She’d cringed at that a little. The reaction surprised you a little, given how she’d seemingly lamented a lack of friends a little over a year ago, in the Mirror Maze.
“More expectations,” she mumbled, shuffling her feet and looking down. “More debts and obligations…”
Ah.
“Well,” you said after a moment, “you’d said you were interested in fairy courts, yeah?”
THAT got Henzler’s attention. You hid a grin.
“I saw one,” you said. “During break, between last year and this one. Danced in it, too. I share that with you, you help me out, deal? Tit for tat?”
“D-deal!” she’d said excitedly staring at you with the echo of that same excitement from a year ago, hands balled to fists and held tremulously, near her chin.
Of course, you got the better end of this bargain in many ways. You only explained the events on the hill the Henzler once, briefly demonstrating the subtle, heatless flame of the <Faerie Fire> once as evidence, and a couple more times when asked (and to show off).
“Curious,” she’d whispered, running her fingers through the fire, distorting and scattering it before it coalesced around your digits once again. “It’s fire, yes?”
“Well, yes,” you’d said, confused. “What else would it be?”
“But it produces no smoke,” she’d noted. “No alchemical reaction. Nothing BURNS.”
“Well, no,” you’d admitted.
“And no heat?”
“Right again,” you’d said. “Look, about my grades in—”
“And no light?”
“What?” you’d asked. “Henzler, look, it’s making light right now.”
“That’s not visible-spectrum light,” she’d corrected. “We’re seeing it with our second sight.”
