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They’re friends. They are well past the point where they could still reasonably pretend otherwise. Bloom knows this. Icy won’t say it out loud, but she knows this. Stormy does. Darcy does.
That does not make waking up sprawled out next to her groggy and exhausted and worn and, weirdly, comfortable, any less awkward.
Icy radiates cold. Her sheets are silk or whatever. Bloom’s pretty sure her magic has been working overdrive to compensate, and so has Icy’s, and so - temperature wise, they’re comfortable. But she still feels sore as hell and her magic feels drained.
Icy shifts next to her, just a little, and lets out a deep breath. Awake then, too.
They’re alone. The dorm window is open - Riven probably came in and out through it. Darcy and Stormy probably went to class.
“What’s your plan for Alfea finding out?” Icy rasps. Bloom closes her eyes and exhales.
She does not believe Daphne lied to them. Which means she has the Dragon Flame. Which means the very power that created the known universe resides within her.
Bloom doesn’t think it’s a power of creation, not like she’s used to conceptualizing them. But it’s still an unimaginable power. And she can’t think of a single government that wouldn’t do anything to possess it.
“The Magix Counsel’s kinda like your UN, right?” She asks quietly.
“I have no idea what that is. It’s a governing body of the entire dimension, sort of. Every homeworld and some inhabited planets have a representative on its board. The major colleges all do as well. They don’t officially have the power to enforce their rule. That doesn’t stop them.”
And they are based in Magix. Magix, where Alfea and Red Fountain are.
She’s pretty sure Red Fountain’s involved. The boys wouldn’t be dealing with Helia - who is wild, why the actual fuck they’d choose him to spy is a question Bloom desperately wants answered - otherwise.
Alfea and Red Fountain wouldn’t have had the kind of dimension-wide reach they do if they weren’t working with or controlling the Magix Council, though.
And last night - this morning? -’s conversation comes back to her.
Daphne had nothing to lose. She has everything.
“I need to warn my parents.” She says quietly.
“Right. But what’s your plan for Alfea finding out?”
“Grab everyone and go to Zenith.”
“…Mother would be willing to go to war?”
“War’s already started.” Bloom sighs, and then rolls onto her side to look at Icy proper. She’s scowling.
“I want to tell Griffin about all this.”
“You don’t think she’s involved.”
From everything Bloom knows about witches in general - she’s pretty sure Icy’s right, even before the woman nods.
“I have no idea why but she trusts Saladin and Faragonda. The way she talks about them…”
“After I warn my parents. Put some…contingencies up or something.” She promises.
“Contingencies for what?” Icy asks, and turns her head to squint at her. Bloom chews on her bottom lip for a moment.
“Alfea’s bigoted as hell towards Earth. But it’s also - ah. Full of itself. It has a very particular image and it does a lot to maintain that. Fairies are benevolent and all, you know? So I don’t think they’d kill my parents. I do think they’d fuck with their memory or threaten them, or watch them.”
Icy nods slowly.
“And you have a plan for dealing with that?”
A thought strikes her, and Bloom sits up. Between the two of them, they’ve kicked off most of Stormy’s blankets, but she still ends up frustratingly tangled in the sheets.
“You guys sent monsters to Earth to attack us, right?”
“…Yes?”
“Interplanetary travel is strictly documented, right?”
“I see where you’re going with this. And no.”
“What if you come with me? We’re skipping today anyway.”
“And what’s your cover story for that?”
“Slept. Bad dreams. Griselda was about ready to tranq me anyway.” She answers a touch too quickly, because she’s not about to let Icy waive this off, and the witch gives an appropriately loud and long groan of exasperation before sitting up herself.
Bloom raids Darcy’s closet for clothes, and makes out with a swishy thigh-length skirt, one of those weird cage bras with the straps that make a design on that her mother never let her buy, and a sheer black button-up. Darcy has fantastic taste in clothes, because she has clothes that are fun. Icy just wants sexy shit. Stormy is great because she likes comfortable shit.
Icy, predictably, throws on her usual min-skirt and crop top and then flings open a wardrobe Bloom does not remember being there a second ago. She proceeds to send boxes of what look like potions and ingredients and books floating out of it, and then the back of the wardrobe straight up disappears.
“Does Cloud Tower know about this?”
“Cloud Tower likes us.” Icy sniffs, and then Bloom has to scramble before the witch abandons her. That, she assumes, means not only a yes but that Cloud Tower gave the witches its blessing.
There’s a cramped staircase that leads into what is basically a basement even if they’re absolutely not below-ground, filled with all sorts of weird shit. Glass tanks with little creatures in them - Darcy’s - and shelves filled with various enchanted items and books. Grimoires.
It isn’t that everything there is special or powerful or anything - it’s that everything there is theirs, Icy and Darcy and Stormy’s, built and cultivated and bred with their own hands and their own magic and -
Icy grabs her shoulder and shoves. Bloom has a split second to recognize that she just stumbled into the middle of some intricate chalk work, and then she’s wincing and blinking as early afternoon sunlight blazes down at her.
She’s - she knows this place.
This is where she met Stella.
There is a quiet pop and Icy is suddenly at her shoulder.
“So it’s a fixed point?”
“Regrettably.” Icy sighs. Bloom digests that, and then nods, and starts marching. They aren’t far from her parents’ house. The park is only a few blocks away. Convenient, if a little unsettling.
“Have you ever been to Earth before?” Bloom asks, and she - well. It’s a pretty blatant attempt at conversation. And at a dig - she watches Icy roll her eyes like a hawk. But the witch doesn’t sneer or curl her lip or anything like that - not anything more than usual, anyway.
“No. Griffin said it’s a fun place to play, though, and after all your little study sessions Stormy’s frothing at the mouth to visit.” That, Bloom decides, is Icy Speak for I want to go too, which is fantastic, because -
She spins around and beams and Icy flinches back.
“Halloween’s coming up!”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s an Earth holiday! The fact that you don’t have it anywhere in the magic dimension is a fucking war crime.”
“You’re not explaining anything.”
“We celebrate all the spooky and scary shit. Dress up like monsters or fictional characters or whatever, and run around threatening to prank people in exchange for free candy.”
Icy runs through the five stages of grief the minute the word candy leaves Bloom’s mouth. Stormy is in love with Earth candy, courtesy of care packages from Bloom’s parents. She and Musa and Riven are the only people Bloom shares it with - too sweet for Tecna, too artificial for Flora, too unhealthy for Stella - and of all of them Stormy is the most enthusiastic of it. It’s fun to share with her - and more than that, it’s just nice to share her home with someone that doesn’t scoff and curse it on principal.
That the witches are more accepting of her background than the fairies is a source of constant, bitter amusement for her.
“You say that like I should be excited for it.”
“I told Stormy once - Earth is much more familiar with witches than with fairies or almost any other magical creature. So on Halloween, a lot of people choose to dress up like witches. But - I will outright ban you from the planet if you guys don’t get actual costumes. You’re not allowed to just show up. I’m not gonna let the girls transform, so I have to hold you to a higher standard too.”
She’ll outright fight them if they try, not that she thinks it’ll be a problem - she’ll get a chance to work on outfits with Stella, so she can flex her artsy muscles and Stella can dictate what looks the best. It’ll be fun.
“Right. Stormy didn’t tell me that but I assume this was the same conversation you decided to tell her about the mass murder of witches in.” Icy says dryly. Bloom’s shoulders hike up to her ears before she can help herself.
“I take no responsibility for anything you suffered as a result of that conversation.”
Icy throws her head back and barks out a laugh, and Bloom smiles, and then they turn a corner and crash right into something.
Someone.
Oh.
For a fairy with, supposedly, God her fucking self inside of her -
How can nothing, nothing at all, go her way?
A cool hand catches her elbow before Bloom can hit the pavement. That is not the kind of good luck she’’d just asked for.
Mouth already twisted into a vicious snarl, Mitzi’s eyes flash with recognition and go wide behind a curtain of dark hair.
X
Earth is strangely pleasant, on a magical level. The planet has no soul, has no magic - but it isn’t a void so much as…well, Icy doesn’t know. The place doesn’t feel like an absence, though. More like stasis. She hadn’t realized how much she felt, how in tune she was with the power of the magical dimension, until she sets foot in a neat little park and has to contend with Bloom all but radiating joy just at being back on the hunk of rock.
She’s exhausted already, and they haven’t even started trying to explain what the actual fuck is going on to Bloom’s parents. They’re from Earth - Icy can’t imagine they’ll take it well.
And now, as if that alone isn’t a task monumental in scope, she has to feel Bloom go tense and rigid against her while some idiot little Earth girl coos out Bloom’s name in a voice so nasally an shrill Icy has to tamp down on the immediate reflex to cast a counter-curse, because they’re on Earth and thus that has to be the girl’s natural voice.
Bloom’s taken the entirety of Magix degrading her for her place of origin in stride. She’s made passing comments about being used to the bullying, to the bigotry. It’s not hard to put two and two together.
“I’m not here to waste time playing nice with all your little pets, sweetheart. We have things to do.” Icy says coolly, and shoots the girl still sprawled on the ground a disdainful look. She doesn’t remove her hand from Bloom’s arm. The fairy’s not afraid - Icy would feel that - but she’s certainly not happy about their little run-in. As the dark-haired girl pushes herself up, gaze flicking across Icy head-to-toe, she can’t really blame her.
“Wow, Bloom. I knew you were a freak and all but bringing your delinquent friends to Gardenia with you?”
Del -
Actually. That is almost flattering. Icy turns, angles her body to face Bloom directly. Bloom looks absolutely confused.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Mitzi?”
“Gardenia’s resident fuck-up gets sent away to some reform school and you think we wouldn’t find out about it? Please. I’m just shocked it took your parents so long to realize what a failure their daughter is!” The girl laughs back. Actually, literally, laughs.
What the fuck…?
“Do you need her alive?” Icy asks, maybe a little louder than necessary. She’s already done with the girl, and she’s already having to clamp down very firmly on her magic. It won’t do to turn the bitch into a popsicle in the middle of a public street. Or a pincushion. Or a hyena.
“I - uh, no? Why would I - wait Icy no - “
For all her bluster, the Earth idiot goes pale in equal parts fear and outrage and scrambles back. Leaps back, nearly taking out a short blond woman in her haste. She’s not very coordinated. Icy endures Bloom grabbing her arms while she watches, while she stares unblinking and still sneering at the girl’s retreat.
“And here I thought I’d never meet anyone tackier than Stella.” She says airily. Bloom wheezes.
“Okay look I’m not going to pretend I can stop you guys from fucking murdering people but can you show a little tact please?” Bloom’s voice isn’t loud enough to be heard by the other girl; given that Bloom is now ignoring her, the girl’s fear melts into white-hot fury and she spits out something too vitriolic and high-pitched to properly hear before sweeping her hair over one shoulder and stalking off.
All in all, the encounter takes mere seconds.
“She acted like she had power over you.” Icy notes, the moment the idiot is out of earshot. Bloom peels herself back and rolls her eyes. That alone is - a relief. Bloom doesn’t let anything Alfea says hurt her; if she were to let this lesser creature do so that would have been insulting. Bloom’s damn near a witch, in spirit if not in name - she’s better than that.
“Ah - yeah. I dunno. Back when we were younger I told her I was bi and she outed me to the whole school. Which I guess could’ve been…something to hold over me. But she’s been like a dog with a bone ever since.” Bloom shakes her head, eyes dark as she tracks the girl’s retreating figure, and then she turns to Icy with a smirk.
“She called you a delinquent. That’s almost offensive, I’m more punk than you right now.”
“Yes, the eye-bags really give you a criminal flair.” Icy says dryly, and Bloom’s smirk turns more natural, softer. She promptly latches onto Icy’s wrist and starts towing her back down the street; Icy allows this, and lets the fairy chatter aimlessly about her city as they walk.
The technology on Earth is comparable to that in Magix, if far more primitive. Icy doesn’t particularly care all that much, except that the air is rank with city and pollutants and gross, and she can never say a word about it or the Linphea fairy will never let her live it down. It isn’t Earth’s fault, necessarily - the magic dimension handles things better only because it has interplanetary communications and trade working with it. Earth’s done remarkably well for itself, given that it has been left to drown by the wider community.
Which is. Concerning.
Because Earth is still alive. It’s an anomaly - Icy isn’t aware of a single other planet that has had its soul destroyed but still retains life. If something interfered in Earth’s eradication - what was it? And why did it not help every other dead planet cluttering up the cosmos?
But - Icy forces herself to breath and focus on the quaint little house Bloom is dragging her towards.
It’s small and brightly painted, with a similarly small but vibrant lawn - not the plain, boring grass so many of its neighbors sport but a garden bright and varied and lush enough to put Bloom’s suite room to shame. A graceful path of stones snakes its way up to a front door from a driveway.
It’s worn, lived in. Like Darcy’s house, with a brighter coat of paint and more plants. Bloom knocks out a rhythmic pattern on the front door with her free hand, bouncing excitedly on her toes.
“Have you not been home yet?”
“Not in person, no. Tecna found out how to let me call home and Stella uses her ring to let us throw shit at each other ‘cuz Timmy and my Mom have this weird book club thing going on and Dad sends me Earth stuff but it’s not -”
There’s a muffled shriek from inside, and the door is yanked open. It’s only Bloom’s grip on Icy’s wrist that prevents her from falling straight onto the girl who opens the door.
She’s got short dirty blond hair cut into a bob - and by cut, Icy is being generous, she probably did it herself with a pair of safety scissors - and the same big eyes as Bloom, but brown. She’s got a frankly terrifying grin on her face, teeth barred, and flings her arms around Bloom with a truly impressive cackle.
“Selina!”
“Bloom!”
Oh, realms. There’s two of them.
They separate almost before Icy can finish her little horrified realization, and Bloom lets go of her to clutch at her - friend? Sister? - ‘s shoulders.
“Okay what the fuck did Mom and Dad tell you about my college?”
“That Swedish bullshit? Yeah, I know they’re covering for you. Uncle Mike looks constipated as shit whenever it gets brought up.”
Icy raises an eyebrow, because Bloom looks relieved at that. She’d have thought keeping the whole…magic thing under wraps would’ve been a bigger concern, even if Bloom wasn’t aware of the laws surrounding keeping Earth in the dark.
Bloom turns to her, then, and the other girl’s focus snaps to her. Icy grimaces automatically.
“Selina, this is Icy. Icy, this is my cousin Selina. We’re gonna tell her everything as soon as we can find Mom and Dad.”
Selina’s beam turns shark-like. Icy’s grimace deepens. She should’ve brought her sisters.
Selina leads them inside and straight to a kitchen. Bloom immediately beelines for the cupboards, and Icy remembers that they haven’t yet eaten, which is unfortunate because she immediately feels her stomach ache.
“So, Icy, you go to the same - uh, wait, are you actually going to college?”
“Technically yes. No, Icy goes to like. The rival college.”
“That’s certainly one way of putting it.” Icy snorts. Rather than moving on, Bloom’s cousin raises an eyebrow. Icy leans slightly to peer over her shoulder. Bloom catches her eye and shrugs, in the middle of preparing what looks like half a loaf of bread, so - well.
“Cloud Tower is a school for witches. Alfea is for fairies.” She waves a hand as she speaks, sending brilliant fractals of ice scattering across the counter top.
Bloom’s cousin freezes. Then slaps a hand over the ice. And then gasps. She whirls on her cousin. Bloom hesitantly lifts a hand and snaps her fingers; a cheery orange flame pops into existence at her fingertips. Selina gasps again, louder, and launches herself at Bloom. Icy pointedly looks away - if the idiots start a fire, she’s not helping.
“If you’re lying to me I’m gonna fucking disown you.”
“I - hold on I can transform. Icy - do you want some toast?” Bloom doesn’t wait for an answer before slamming a plate piled with toasted bread on the table; her cousin’s already yanked out various toppings and cutlery. Icy spreads jam across a slice without touching the knife; Selina’s eyes get brighter.
“Do you not transform?”
“Fairies have wings.”
“Like - “
“Don’t ask about the biology! I freaked out so hard when it first happened I threw up!”
“You were drunk.”
“I can handle my alcohol! I can’t handle spontaneously exploding limbs out of my back!”
The cousin starts bouncing. Icy takes a bite of her impromptu breakfast, and bodily turns around to avoid the glitter-bomb that is a fairy transformation. There is another gasp.
“Why the fuck do you not have pants?”
“I’m working on it, okay!”
Icy turns back to survey the chaos, and something catches her eye.
There is a fat green snake wiggling its way straight towards the counter. An even fatter yellow snake is sprawled unmoving on top of it; the green one is thrashing itself free with a single-minded determination that Icy can admire.
“I thought you had a rabbit.” She says, and the two girls stop and look at her. Selina’s the one to look down and beam at the sight of the reptiles; she reaches down and scoops the yellow one up, and the green one shoots itself across the kitchen tile and disappears around the other side of the counter.
“These are mine! This is Eldora, and the fast little danger noodle you just saw is Acheron.”
“…Hey, Selina. What are your snakes doing here?”
“Dad kicked me out. I’ve taken over your room.” She says it plainly, simply, and that - shocks Icy. Nearly makes her drop the toast in her hand. Judging by how quickly Bloom masks the raw fury and outrage the statement causes her - this is…normal. Or at least not unexpected.
“And you let him?”
“Well I prefer to stay alive, so yeah.”
Icy does throw her hands up then, toast be damned.
She’s got a lecture on the tip of her tongue and half a dozen of her favorite lethal spells ready and raring to go when there is the sound of someone at the door, and a tall, willowy dark-haired woman steps into the kitchen.
They all blink at her; she blinks at them. Then her eyes narrow at Bloom. Bloom, whose wings flutter in anxiety and spray sparkling cerulean magic across the tile at her feet.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing playing hooky, young lady?”
X
Icy is the most infuriating goddamn witch Bloom has ever had the misfortune to meet, and Mom loves her. It doesn’t help that Icy hasn’t stopped looking impressed since Mom walked in the door. She’s a fucking suck-up.
Dad speeds home after Mom sends him an SOS, and the four of them - six, if Bloom were to count Selina’s snakes - are settled only a little awkwardly in the living room as they wait for him. They’re lucky today is a slow day, for him and the boys. Her assorted adoptive uncles had all offered to come back with him, and god did that sound wonderful but she doesn’t want to endanger them and this is -
But Selina’s here. And that’s. Oh so much better than she’d hoped.
“Sorry about, uh. Not telling you.” She offers, finally breaking the banal chatter they’ve been engaged in for the last few minutes. Selina’s grin is all teeth, and Bloom - de-transformed now, thankfully, Mom had also been severely unimpressed with her lack of pants - cuddles Acheron closer to her chest on instinct.
“I was honestly leaning with being kidnapped by aliens as an explanation - why do you have that look on your face.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Icy mouth the world aliens. The idiot looks amused.
“It’s all on other planets. Not like. A different dimension or whatever. When I said I was on another world I meant it literally.”
“You can’t spot Magix from Earth though, dear. Mike got so excited to dig out his old telescope before Tecna told him.” Mom says sagely, casting a thinly disguised glare at the dusty pile of equipment stuffed behind the armchair.
“So when can I go?” Silena asks. Bloom shoves Acheron at her, and ignores the squirming in her stomach.
Just in time, the front door flies open and Dad skids in. He freezes when he sees them. They make eye contact. The front door slams shut behind him.
“I owe you twelve bucks.” Bloom says flatly. Dad throws his hands up in victory; Mom lets out the most done sigh she’s ever heard in her life.
“Mike, honey, that’s not a good thing.”
“Wait wait somebody explain - “
“It’s some uppity rich kid school for fairies, Vanessa! And it’s secret! It’s bound to be shady and untrustworthy!” Dad cries, and flops halfway across Mom’s lap. She sighs and shoves him off onto the floor. Icy is staring up at the ceiling. Selina looks affronted.
“Dad bet me Alfea would be like, some bullshit evil government thing before I left.” Bloom says after a heartbeat. He’d looked her dead in the eye too, told her to have fun and fuck shit up if she needed to but she’d best be bringing him his money back too. She’d be more irritated about him being right if everything wasn’t, you know, on fire. Metaphorically.
“Wait so your magic school is evil?”
“So fucking evil.” Bloom breathes. Mom reaches over and sympathetically pats her knee; Dad knocks his boot against her ankle.
“Isn’t that one of the witches that blew our front wall out?”
“Knut wasn’t a very good employee.” Icy deadpans, but she looks appropriately pained. Bloom doesn’t actually expect her to apologize, doesn’t need her to.
“So you’re not trying to murder each other anymore?” Mom clarifies. They both nod, and she relaxes.
“I leave you alone for like four months.” Selina breathes, and Bloom goes to snark back but restrains herself. They have an emergency family meeting to commence.
She very gentle plops Acheron into Selina’s lap, where Eldora is already snoozing, and leaps to her feet - dancing awkwardly over her father until she’s standing in the middle of the living room.
“Alright so long story short I started having these weird dreams, there was this ghost lady yelling at me, and she’s some like, mythic hero in the magic dimension I guess? So I went to find her and I brought Icy with me and turns out Alfea - that’s the name of the school - had trapped her spirit in her violently murdered body at the bottom of the lake and also she knows me because apparently she punted me off our shared planet in the middle of a motherfucking genocide that Icy’s ancestor committed and accidentally shot me through time so I’m like, literally hundreds if not thousands of years old. Also god, as in actual literal god, does in fact exist, except she’s a dragon and she’s a she and also she’s inside me.”
Icy covers her face with her hands, and bends over in what Bloom assumes is a silent scream. Her mother’s eyebrows have damn near climbed off her forehead. Dad is frowning. Selina is staring perfectly expressionlessly at her.
Selina is the one to break the ensuing silence.
“Right well I’m not telling Great-Gran that.”
“Also turns out Brandon’s actually Sky because they switched identities or some shit and he’s fucking engaged and tried to cheat on his literal fiance with me and Darcy told me so the guys got into a fight over it and Red Fountain found out and stuck a fucking spy in their squad. And Alfea is apparently covering up the whole genocide thing and something to do with how magic works and something to do with the fact that there’s dozens if not hundreds of murdered planets floating around in space and - “
“She’s afraid Alfea will take punitive action against you once they find out that we know, or that she has the Dragon Flame.” Icy cuts in smoothly.
Dad blinks at her.
“They’d do that?”
“We’re not technically supposed to do magic on Earth, which limits them. My best bet would be that they would erase any memory of your daughter from your life.”
Mom goes pale at that, and Bloom has to close her eyes and try not to set herself on fire. Her stomach roils; maybe she shouldn’t have eaten that toast.
“They’re like. Super uh - planet-ist? Against Earth. I got into a fistfight - actually that was fun, it got me my wings and Icy helped out - because the fairies will literally sit there and spew nonstop insults for literal hours.”
Selina looks appropriately affronted.
“This is like a bad book. Alright. Well. Good news on the memory front.” She chirps, Bloom thinks she’s about to jump up but she’s still got her snakes on her lap and she doesn’t.
“How so?” Icy asks.
“I finally got a fucking job, and it won’t be hard to find a cheap apartment. I can move out, and we can set up regular calls or something. And then if Uncle Mike or Aunt Vanessa really just casually forget they have a kid, I can call you.”
“You’re cousins, surely they’d erase your memory too.”
Selina’s grin grows teeth, but it’s a very particular kind of toothy grin, and Bloom gasps as she recognizes her cousin’s train of thought.
Selina stretches an arm out and scoops up one of the pictures framed on the end table beside her, and frisbees it to Icy over Mom’s protest.
“What am I looking at.” Icy says flatly. Bloom recognizes the frame, though - it’s one of a younger her and Selina and their respective parents and Grandma camping, smeared with s’more goo and dirt and washed out in the bright orange of the campfire. It’s one of Mom’s favorite pictures because apparently she and Selina had been fighting all day and gotten so sticky that when they hugged they’d effectively super-glued their faces together and started screaming and Grandma had been the one to solve the issue by straight-up kicking them off the nearest dock and into the lake. Bloom remembers that; she doesn’t remember arguing with Selina.
“You’ve just unlocked some deep family lore.” Selina says gravely. Bloom throws herself back on the couch, anxious. Selina’s always been shockingly nonchalant about the whole thing, and on an intellectual level, Bloom knows she wouldn’t be offering if she wasn’t entirely fine and willing.
But it still leaves something sour on her tongue.
“Selina I don’t want to - “
“I feel like a fucking master spy right now, Bloom. Don’t take that away from me.” Bloom throws her hands up in surrender.
“Firstly. My dipshit of a sperm donor actually married in, and his first wife died. He remarried. Second wife is my egg donor. I’m not biologically related, and if they run a name search or anything they’d be hard-pressed to find any connection, because dipshit moved away when we were in middle school. I’ve seen Bloom in person a handful of times since, and neither of us are big on pictures.” Which is all true. Mom’s lip curls in disgust at the mention of Selina’s dad. Dad reaches up to pat her leg. Bloom feels less bad about the way her entire face has scrunched up.
“Secondly, any pictures and mentions of me still bopping around are from me pre-transition.”
Icy blinks. And then blinks again. And then sets the photo on the arm of her chair and leans forward, bracing her elbows on her knees.
“I call dibs.” She says flatly.
“What.”
“Your cousin. I have to put up with you playing at being a fairy, I refuse to let your cousin suffer the same way.”
Bloom’s eyes go wide. And.
Holy shit.
“Earth doesn’t have magic though, can you even teach her anything?”
“Not here. Not now. But all that magic had to go somewhere, didn’t it? And given what we’re looking into, we’ll necessarily have to look at why this planet is still alive even with its soul gone.” Icy doesn’t sound happy about it but -
Bloom blue screens for a moment. Selina’s still frozen, staring. Mom’s beaming. Dad is mouthing a prayer of relief at the ceiling.
“Wait you’re gonna investigate with us?!”
“Stormy will murder me if I don’t at this point.”
Icy’s deflecting, like she always does, and her words send a jolt of pure electricity, pure adrenaline, down Bloom’s spine.
Sticking around for the Dragon Fire was one thing, but this is - this is Icy offering to help with all of it, even knowing the kind of danger it’s going to bring to them, and -
And she’s offering Selina the world too - not just the world, but the entire fucking universe, entirely unprompted and just because Icy likes her and -
And god not being able to share this with Selina is - it’s not something she has to live through because Icy is saying it can be done and -
She pushes herself up, sits up like a proper human being, and looks at Selina. Catches her cousin’s eye. When she smiles, it’s only a little watery.
“Wanna learn how to be a witch?”