Chapter Text
Her eyes were closed, shut so tightly she could feel the skin around them stretching and pulling and melting. Shadows danced across her eyelids, the contrast so sharp she still saw. The last strains of ballroom music fizzled out as two hands clashed and released.
The smell of ozone was in the air, sharp and watery. The smell of fire brought water, gushing from her eyes. The tears burned away on her cheeks, never falling to the glass ground.
Arms snaked around her back, pulling her close into fabric. Soft. Dirty. She could feel ash smudge off onto her face and she buried herself deeper. The grip was tight, almost painful. The grip was warm, almost scorching.
And so she could feel her body being carried through space, being spirited away in young arms that were too scrawny to fit her properly. Yet she trusted none more.
And then the warmth was pulled away and Bloom’s eyes flew open, colors and shapes meeting her eyes that did not match the shadows that had been there just a second earlier. She sat up, palms landing on the soft mattress underneath. Her body was bent forward, heaving in air that did not smell of hickory wood. Something had been lost.
Her sister stood over her, one blonde eyebrow raised. She held a blue blanket, drooping in her hands, and there was a twitch to her lips. “Come on Bloom, you cannot sleep the day away.”
Bloom rolled her eyes and out of bed, daylight meeting her as she stepped into view of the window. She tugged her blanket back and threw it onto her bed. Her sister released it willingly, walking away and chucking a new shirt at Bloom.
“Daphne, I was just having the weirdest dream-” Bloom began to complain as she followed her sister out into their house.
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Daphne’s arms were curled around her sister as her legs collapsed to the ground. She was sprawled against the concrete floor, unable to rise again. The muscles in her arms were tense, unyielding to exhaustion. Her body shifted to curl around her sister. No matter what, she wouldn’t let go.
There were flames around them, her eldest friend. They licked the edges of the room, ready to burn any enemy that sieged the palace. The palace which had been attacked and they had run-
She breathed in the smoke, letting her lungs burn and expand and she breathed out even more fire. They didn’t come near her, spreading out in an offered embrace.
It was not as warm as that of her parents. Great Dragon, how could anything be as warm as that? As desperate? That couldn’t be their final hug, though they had gripped each other as though it would be.
There were tears, dribbling out of her eyes, shed through the mask that almost felt melted to her face. Her tears did not quench the flames, only made them softer. The anger that had fueled her desperate flight was gone. She had burned up in the castle, arms raised for the last time to call upon the dragon to protect her while she fled with Bloom.
All that was left was a flicker, that did not burn the walls or floors, but rather just danced in the corner of her eye. Begging her to rage again.
“Holy shit,” A voice filled the air, brick and wood being pushed aside as a man entered the room.
The flames grew, Daphne would protect Bloom.
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Bloom started unloading the dishwasher as Daphne cracked eggs into the pan on the stove. Her sister did not take her eyes off the bubbling yolk as Bloom continued to babble, too focused on her task. Daphne had gotten better at cooking since Bloom had been a child, unwilling to eat the burnt concoctions Daphne offered up. She had grown up on fast food and leftovers from their neighbors.
Yet Daphne still refused to trust herself enough to move away from the pan, and Bloom would cook even worse than her first attempt.
“It was this giant building, you know? I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the size. The hallways stretched up into the sky, giant arcs that were made of stained glass.” Bloom could hear the detail falling from her mouth, more and more being added as the words came to her. Her fingers itched to pick up a pencil, to try to capture the sharp lines and dancing curves.
Daphne laid her hands down on the stove, humming as she considered Bloom’s words. “Sounds like a beautiful place,” she finally offered.
Bloom bobbed her head. “Mhm! Oh, I wish it wasn’t a dream Daphne! It’s the type of place fairies would live!” Their wings would let them touch the ceiling, trailing their fingers across the lines of glass, gliding through the long hallways as sparks flared out behind them.
It would’ve been beautiful if Bloom had seen it.
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“Right, we’re going to want to use a Phillips head screw then,” Vanessa said from where she was reading the instructions off to the side, gently rocking Bloom’s cradle with one hand.
“And what in hell is a Phillips head?” Daphne huffed to herself, glaring at the screwdriver in her hands that had not fit into the screws. She wished she could melt down its metal and shove it into place.
Mike chuckled, digging through the toolkit he had brought along. Daphne had only asked to borrow it, but she had ended up borrowing the two adults as well. Who, to be honest, were doing a lot of the work. “It means it has a different like, type of screw it fits into, because some have different… patterns?” He pulled out a new screwdriver and passed it over to Daphne, his terrible explanation not congruent with a lack of practical knowledge. “Try this out.”
Daphne shoved the new screwdriver in and twisted, watching the screw slowly sink into place. Another step in this endless creation of their furniture done.
The apartment she had gotten was tiny, not like the spacious palace that she conceptualized as home. It was too cramped to fit her and her sister, all the things they’d need, the magic that itched to burst through Daphne’s skin. How was she meant to live in a place too small to hold in her wild thoughts, her tempestuous temper, her burning tears? It would overflow, drowning her sister and herself.
Yet she was lucky, because without this apartment, she’d have no place to call home.
So she bit her tongue and got back to work putting the shelf together, because Bloom’s room would be perfect.
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“A bike?” Bloom hoped the rising of her voice at the end, stretched out just a beat too long, hid the disappointment that had colored it before she could have stopped herself.
Yet Vanessa still looked at her knowingly, a small smile playing on her lips. Daphne and Mike just nodded proudly, oblivious to everything but their own accomplishment.
“Now you won’t have to take those forsaken buses,” Daphne asserted, grinning. Neither sister liked to ride the bus, they always got lost and could never remember the name of their stops. Mike and Vanessa had gotten used to picking them up from halfway across town.
“You’ve turned sixteen, that means it's time for a bit of freedom. Though, maybe not that much.” The side eye Mike shoots Daphne is not subtle, nor does it pass over Bloom’s head. She knows her sister took custody of her at only the age of nineteen-almost-twenty, and as she nears that age, the thought grows ever more foreign to her. Daphne was so put together though, so perhaps it was only Bloom that was this immature.
“Thanks for the bike,” she chirps, giving them both a smile and climbing on. Ah well, at least Daphne made sure she had always been athletic, so biking wouldn’t be too hard.
Her family waves goodbye to her, yet she doesn’t see it, only trust that those waves exist.
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“You’re too reckless for this job!” Mike shouted, his hands cutting through the air as he paces the gravel around Daphne. He’s trembling a bit, in his yellow and gray suit. He hadn’t been on-scene until a few minutes ago, Daphne and her partner of the day the only ones at the station when the call came in.
“I was just doing this job!” Daphne shouted back, her fingers fisting around the blanket a paramedic had laid over her. They’d insisted that she had to get checked out after she had emerged from the crumbling building, and she didn’t have a good enough argument against it.
“No, no you weren’t.” Mike shoved a finger into Daphne’s face.
“There was a cat stuck in there!” Daphne had heard it yowling as she had escorted the last of the family outside, the little boy crying as he’d heard it too. The decision to rush back in had been natural. “Are you saying you should’ve let the cat die!”
“Of course not!” Mike snapped back.
“Then tell me, o’ wise sir, what I should have done in this situation!” If she was standing, she would curtsy, her head tilted mockingly upwards to meet his eyes.
Her skin is burning, not from the flames she just walked through, but from the ones that make her alive inside. It was so freeing, to rush in there and pull the poor creature out. There were no thoughts involved, just instinct that had her barreling through the hallways. She had felt like herself, for the first time in the year and a half since she’d arrived on Earth. Regret was gone in these moments, replaced with burning adrenaline and anger at the injustices the world could commit.
Death would not visit her doorstep, nor those she swore to protect again.
“You should have dealt with it from the outside, trying to put the fire out!” Mike yells straight into her face as she rises to meet him, blanket falling from her shoulders. “There’s a difference between getting people out and running into a collapsing building! You can’t just throw away self-preservation, it would’ve been much safer for both of you for you to focus on putting the fire out rather than letting yourself burn up with it!”
And Daphne trembles. What happens when she stops burning?
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Bloom lays her back against a tree, Kiko curled up beside her. The sun lights up her sketchbook, and she draws lines to follow its flickering. Shadows form around the edge of her page, and light streams in through the windows she draws.
As a child, Bloom sometimes tried to look up at the sun, gazing into the fiery orb that challenged her. That is, until Daphne shook her head and told her to stop before she needed glasses.
Now, she could only gaze upon the moon.
It grew late, clouds drifting across the afternoon, and Bloom stood to return home. Maybe she could pick up a pizza for dinner? Pepperoni on her side and pineapple on Daphne’s, not for the actual taste but because she enjoyed the look on Mike’s face. Bloom wouldn’t have known her sister’s true intentions if she hadn’t been told, her face had been so placid as she ate.
Vanessa would’ve gotten home from work now, but not yet prepared dinner for her and Mike. Perhaps she could invite them over for dinner, she felt a bit bad about not being as grateful for the bike as they seemed to expect.
Mike and Vanessa had no duty to raise her, not in the same way Daphne’s name upon all of Bloom’s papers gave her. But they still signed their names next to Daphne’s anyways, welcoming Bloom into their house at any time.
Honestly, Bloom was starting to recognize how much Daphne had needed that.
A shout drew her from these thoughts. Not a shout, a cry. The crashing of trees and the sound of pain.
Bloom didn’t notice her sketchbook dropping from her shaking hands, she was too busy running forwards.
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“So, the wizard then took out his wand, waving it over his head. The fanciful words of an old spell did not drip from his lips, rather he cried out the strangest combination of sounds his apprentice had ever heard.
‘Why Master, what are you doing?’ The apprentice asked in shock.
‘Is it not obvious?’ The wizard responded. ‘I am engaging in creation and time.’” Daphne lets herself linger on the last words in this chapter, savoring them. The books that fill the children’s section of the local library were different from the boring tomes she’d had to read as a child. Both she and Bloom pour over them with interest, curled up as Daphne reads to her late at night.
Bloom is asleep, and Daphne slips out from under the blanket, shoving a paper into the book to remember their page.
Bloom had thrown a temper tantrum before going to bed tonight, banging her fists against the ground as tears had rolled down her face. It was almost a shock to Daphne’s system to see so much raw emotion, unfettered by tiredness. Bloom had screamed her tiny lungs out, bawling out all her sadness and anger into the world.
The screams didn’t match their quiet life, Daphne had realized. The torment had subsided into calm waves. Despair no longer was worn everyday like an ill fitting cloak, but hung up when she got home so she could spend time with Bloom. That amount of rage and sadness no longer filled the room. Until now.
Bloom slept quietly, and Daphne exited the room.
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The girl shone, dazzling in her splendor. The yellow dress she wore sparkled like gems on a necklace, or stars in the sky. No, not like stars. Stars contrasted the dark. On her, it was like light contrasting light.
She was so bright.
Bloom gaped for a second as the girl twirled her staff, the tip of it glowing. She was smiling, the words coming out of her mouth loud and confident taunts. She tossed her hair like a diva in front of thousands of fans. Her eyes glimmered with excitement.
She was beautiful.
The gremlins lunged at her and she beat them off, sweeping her staff through the air. They each burst into pieces of light, glitter powdering the air. The girl crows with delight, pushing sweaty bangs out of her eyes. Her long blonde hair, lighter than Daphne’s and pulled back into two ponytails, swings to and fro as she raises her head.
“Had enough then, you great hulking bag of smelly piss!” She shouts.
The lump of flesh facing her roars and charges, the gremlin creatures following its movements. She raises up her staff to swing again, but a gremlin who survived---how did Bloom not notice---kicks it out of her hands.
Bloom takes a swift two steps forward, leaning down her body and scooping up a rock. In one motion, more fluid than she could ever achieve in gym class, the rock has collided with the ogre’s head.
“Leave her alone!” The voice that exits Bloom’s body is not just her own, it carries the strength of sister, the firmness of Vanessa, and the protectiveness of Mike behind it.
The girl whips her head towards Bloom, swaying. The gremlins turn to her and their feet are smacking the ground as they lunge.
She’s in danger.
The realization takes her breath away. She’s in danger. Has she ever been in danger before? Most certainly, but normally Daphne comes rushing in with warm arms and a fierce glare. She is alone and in danger and she wishes to be in the arms of her sister. She wishes to feel that protection---no, she wishes to extend it.
Her arms splay out and there is heat, like popcorn in a microwave, like when she, Daphne, Vanessa and Mike all set off sparklers together. It is like needles pricking every part of her body, which like a bed of nails, does not hurt in its infinity.
And the gremlins land, the smell of ash filling her nose, and the girl sends a ray of light at the ogre, ending the battle with him fleeing.
“What just happened?” Bloom asks herself, asks the girl. Instead of responding, the girl collapses, her form wavering and breaking into a different dress, a different person without answers.
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Daphne knows how to make portals, she made the one that brought her and Bloom to Earth. Her teachers at Alfea had always praised her myriad of talents, passing her lists of further reading if she wished to continue improving. She used her portals to travel everywhere, from Magix to Domino to Alfea, her feet forever wandering the magical dimension.
Her fingers tremble as she brings them up, preparing to draw a circle. She knows how to return home, a constant urge to let her magic flow out and guide her back to her birthplace. The dragon inside of her wishes to roar to life once more in its kingdom of flames.
Domino was not warm when she left, ice creeping up her fingertips, cracking the glass halls. For the first time in her life, the flame inside of her had not been enough to keep her warm.
Somehow, it is the memory of the cold, more than the fear of the decomposing bodies she remembers, that lowers her hands, that makes her turn away.
Domino is no longer home, and she is no longer a Princess.
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Daphne is not home when Bloom returns, certainly working late at a part-time job to earn more money than being a firefighter provides. It had been a relief when Bloom had grown old enough to take care of herself, when independence had finally been something she could achieve. Daphne had begun leaving her home at night later and later, trusting her to not burn anything down. Bloom was proud of that, normally. Proud her sister did not need to worry about her, that they were now a team in life.
She wishes for nothing more than her sister to be home right now, to tell her what the hell to do with this passed out girl because Bloom is not ready to take care of someone else. It is frightening, the weight she carries.
So she does the next best thing, and walks over a house, banging on Mike and Vanessa’s door.
Vanessa opens it up and holds in her questions as she guides Bloom inside, ordering her to lay the girl on the couch while she goes to grab whatever medical materials they have. Mike walks into the living room and begins to shout in surprise, but Bloom cannot make out the words he is saying.
Her hands are on fire. Not literally. Not right now? She is burning, she was burning, she will burn. There is fire in her veins and it is roaring to protect this girl, to protect these people, to fight against whatever miscarriage of justice, of life, has just happened.
She does not know this girl, nor what the battle was, yet her heart is screaming over it.
It’s so loud.
Vanessa lays a hand on Bloom’s shoulder and she looks up to see Mike standing in front of her, his face only showing frantic concern.
“Honey, tell us what happened?” Vanessa asks. And Bloom does.
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Daphne is not good with plants. She picks up the pots, letting her fingers only hold the clay tight enough that she won’t drop it. Her breath feels hot---too hot--- oh dragon, she doesn’t want to burn these ferns!
There is laughter behind her, softer than the brazen performances she hears in battle, or the tense giggles that do not break through the fear of war. Vanessa is laughing, a light sound that causes Daphne’s cheeks flush, but a smile to form anyway.
“There’s no need to be so scared, if you act any more uncertain I’m sure the plants will notice,” Vanessa teases her, coming over and taking the pot from Daphne. “If you don’t want to move them though, you could water them?”
Daphne picks up the pail and wanders through the shop, tipping it into random pots. How does she know if a plant needs watering again, and how much does she give them? Her mind only pulls blanks as the frantic questions run through her mind.
And Vanessa is laughing again. She is laughing and it is open and free. And Daphne longs to laugh like that, so much so that she does. She laughs and is bent over, water pooling around her shoes like she is stepping into a beach, like she is stepping into the water, and it is no different from the flame.
“How about,” Vanessa offers, taking the can from Daphne. “I show you what to do first?”
Her voice is soft as she leads Daphne through the care of plant after plant, and she is never angry with Daphne’s confusion. She lays a warm hand on Daphne’s shoulder, and Daphne leans in. It is like her childhood is being returned to her, once more gaining the teachings of something she has never known.
She misses her childhood. She misses the one she didn’t have, because all too soon she learned of the Ancestral Witches.
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The girl is awake, sitting up on the couch as calm and collected as if she hasn’t just awoken in a stranger’s house after battling creatures of fantasy. As if she, herself, isn’t a creature of fantasy.
“You’re the girl from the park!” She snaps her fingers at Bloom. “Damn, you were cool! I wasn’t expecting to find anyone with magic on Earth, what world are you from?”
“I-” Bloom gapes at the girl.
“Listen, I know you girls have just gone through something traumatic, but we need to calm down. You’ve got confused due to the stressful events. There’s no one here with magic, let’s just go through what happened slowly and make sense of it,” Mike is kneeling in front of the girl.
“And what’s your name?” Bloom demands. She does not know why that knowledge is so important to her, why she wants to know this girl as a person so much.
“I’m Stella, the princess of Solaria,” Stella doesn’t even mind Mike, just giving Bloom a dazzling smile. Her teeth are so white, not colored yellow from candy and forgetting to brush like Bloom’s.
“I don’t think Solaria is a country,” Vanessa murmurs.
“Listen, I’m going to call you an ambulance, okay?” Mike tries again, standing up and walking towards the phone. “You probably have a concussion if you think magic is real.”
Stella rolls her eyes, her smile turning sardonic as she is still facing Bloom. It is a shared emotion, as though Stella fully believes Bloom feels the same. It’s so confident, that smile. She snaps her fingers, and Bloom watches as with a blink, the telephone has turned into a bunch of bananas.
“So, what were you saying about magic not being real?” Stella asks, batting her eyelashes mockingly at Mike.
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“Come on Daphne, but school is so boring!” Bloom whines as Daphne tries to tug her into her coat. She does not know yet if the Dragon’s Flame has awakened in Bloom, if it will keep her warm through the winter and vibrant in the cold.
“You’ll learn a lot there,” Daphne grunts, shoving a hat onto Bloom’s head.
The floorboards creak as Bloom stamps one of her tiny feet. “But the teachers don’t actually do stuff, they just give us paper and tell us to do stuff with the numbers or words.”
“They’re trying to teach you how to read. You want to learn how to read, right?” Daphne’s head is pounding, blood too loud within her ears. She will be late for work if she does not get Bloom out the door soon.
“I don’t want to go!” Bloom wails. Her little lungs are screaming, expelling all the air within her.
Daphne sighs. “You’ve got to go Bloom, it’s just for a few hours.”
Tears and snot streak Bloom’s face. “No! I wanna stay home with you! School’s boring and we don’t learn stuff there and I’m bad at it! I wanna color and have fun!”
“Bloom! You have to go to school!” Daphne’s voice cannot be heard over the ever increasing screams of her sister, the little girl’s cries so loud.
She is crying over having to go to school, over having to just sit in a room for 7 hours and do nothing. It would be so easy, to sit and do nothing. It would be so nice, to just let herself rest and do nothing for so long. God, school had been so easy compared to the stress that existed around it, her classes the only reprieve.
How could Bloom not understand? How could she throw a fit over this, burning through all her energy and crying all her tears.
“BLOOM! YOU ARE GOING TO SCHOOL AND THAT’S IT! I DON’T CARE IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, I HAVE TO GET TO WORK SO WE CAN GET MONEY, AND IF YOU DO NOT GET OUT THE DOOR RIGHT NOW YOU WILL BE GROUNDED. YOU’RE LUCKY TO ONLY HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SCHOOL!” Daphne’s voice is a roar. Her chest is heaving. She feels the burn of tears and the acid taste of anger.
Bloom stands beneath her, hiccuping quiet sobs. She is trembling.
Bloom runs out the door before Daphne can break through to stop her, and Daphne slides to the floor and calls out of work today.
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“So then, you’re an actual fairy?” Bloom doesn’t bother to keep the awe from her voice, how could she when one sits in front of her. She wants this girl to feel Bloom’s world expanding, for that connection to form in between them.
Stella’s smile is unwavering, her confidence unshaken. “Yep! And you are too, if that demonstration in the park is any indication!”
“What do you mean?” Vanessa asks, sitting down in the chair next to Bloom. Mike has collapsed onto the sofa, whispering to himself.
“Well, she did create an expanding force field around herself, if I’m not mistaken. Which I rarely am.” Stella so easily puts words to the energy which confused Bloom. She states it all so simply, like it is fact.
It is fact Bloom is magic.
“But Bloom’s- Bloom!” Mike responds with the thought that keeps catching Bloom. She is, for better or worse, just a normal girl. And normal girls don’t have magic.
Stella does not seem to understand that logic, just shrugging. “So, where are you from then?” She asks Bloom again.
It is the repetition of this question that grabs Bloom’s attention. Why is that so important? Is there a different answer Stella expects?
“Uh, next door?” Bloom has never lived anywhere else she can remember, and Daphne has never implied a home outside of the apartment. Bloom knows they must’ve had one, because Mike and Vanessa once talked about how they helped Daphne get the apartment, but she can’t bring herself to ask.
She had a home that wasn’t next door once. And she now recognizes that the possibilities of what that could’ve been are more endless than she ever could’ve imagined. Perhaps she even had parents, then, parents that for some reason or another she knows Daphne would never answer.
“Huh,” Stella frowns for the first time since Bloom’s seen her. “Pretty sure people on Earth aren’t supposed to have magic, but hey, what do those stuffy scholars know!”
Stella then stands up and grabs Bloom’s hands. Her hands are cool, yet they send warmth spiraling through Bloom anyway. “So then, Bloom was it? Why don’t you show me around?”
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There was a knock on the door, a pounding similar to the one in Daphne’s head. They harmonized, like awful music she heard on buses. The knocking didn’t cease though, and unless she wanted this tune to continue, she’d have to do something about it.
Daphne groaned and pulled herself off the floor, slapping a polite smile on her face and busting off her clothes as she opened the door. She’d deal with this quickly-
Mike stood in the doorway, still in his uniform. His hand was raised somewhat awkwardly, still ready to knock. He lowered it as Daphne stared at him, too tired to try to find words to say to him.
“So, can I come in?” He asks.
Daphne moves aside, letting that be the answer, and he wanders in, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Why are you here?” Daphne asks, letting the door bang shut as she releases it.
“You, uh, didn’t show up at work today,” Mike replies, casting his eyes away from Daphne.
“Yes. I am aware. I happen to be the person that didn’t show up at work today, and called in. Thank you so much for stating those facts. I thought that I had a set number of days I could take off completely normally, but I appear to have been mistaken,” Daphne can hear her voice snap these words, gone is her usual humor that would accompany these words.
Mike’s hand twitches. “Yeah, I just… I wanted to see that you were okay?”
Daphne doesn’t cry. She has not cried since the day Mike found them in the burning building and hauled them out, Daphne too weak to stand back up. She has not cried since Vanessa gave her new clothes to wear and a meal while rocking Bloom.
She sinks to the ground and rests her back against the counter. She’s no longer a Princess, what does she care that this isn’t the behavior of a leader?
And Mike sits down next to her, throwing an arm around her shoulders, and it feels exactly like how her parents had used to hug her.
She’d forgotten.
“I yelled at Bloom today. A lot,” She confesses.
“Why?” Mike asks.
Daphne can only shrug. “She was being a brat and I was angry. I just. I don’t know.”
“It’s stressful, huh.”
Daphne lets smoke leave her lungs, the flames petering out to just warm sparks. “Yeah, yeah it is.”
“You know not to do that again, right?”
“Yeah. Still feels like shit though.”
“Lots of things feel like shit. But I bet Bloom smiling doesn’t.”
Bloom’s smiles were one of the few things that made Daphne’s day. The brilliant way her sister would light up with glee when Daphne took her to the park, or when they got cookies from the gas station.
“I just want her to be happy.” That wasn’t true. That’s not all Daphne wanted. Daphne wanted her home back, to fly through the air, to be held by her parents, to see her friends that were probably dead. But she’d settle for Bloom being happy.
“I know.”
She’d be better.
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Bloom’s going to go to Alfea with Stella, she knew from the moment she set eyes on the magical hologram Stella showed her. The trees were so green, and grass vibrant. The air felt different somehow, even in the hologram. It was beautiful, in the way Bloom dreamed.
Now, all that was left was to wait for Daphne to come home to tell her. To let the news of her magic burst out.
She flies down the steps, Stella cackling as she follows Bloom’s mad dash. “Wait up, there’s no rush!” The words leap through the air as they barrel down the stairs.
And directly into a scene of nightmares, the ogre covering the doorway as shadow gremlins crawl across the apartment, Mike and Vanessa backed into a corner.
“Mike! Vanessa!” The names of her pseudo-parents tear at Bloom’s throat like lava. Like ice. Like fear and love at once, a duality that is natural.
Stella’s staff is out again, gleaming in the dusk. She has it pointed at the ogre, her eyes narrowed. “Invading someone’s house and holding hostages isn’t that honorable,” she complains, as her gaze darts over the room.
“Bloom! Run!” Vanessa yells to her, breathless. Why take the time to send Bloom the message that is already pumping through her veins?
No, her adrenaline was not telling her to run. Perhaps Vanessa knew that.
Bloom surged forward, picking up a small counter and swinging it at the ogre.
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Daphne walks home from work,her hands stuffed into her pockets as she lets herself wander, her hair glowing in the dying strands of the sun. It has been a long day, in the best possible way a day can be long. Stuffed full of motivation and activity. She had gone to the gym with one of her coworkers, ending the day with a small boxing match. She had won, of course.
Fighting was a skill Daphne could never let herself relax enough to forget, panic dripping like ice through her veins when she couldn’t lift a box or ran out of breath. It was dangerous, even on Earth, to forget how to punch someone in the face. To let panic still her rather than burst her into action.
She had shown Bloom how to fight, shoving aside the furniture in their living room to form a small ring. She had corrected the hand position of her punches, and shifted her feet until Bloom threw her entire weight into her assault. It was like bile pouring from her mouth, every word she said that taught Bloom violence. Daphne made sure she learned.
It is too pretty a day for fighting, with fireflies emerging into the sky. It is too pretty a day for the smoke she smells.
Daphne looks up, her hands curling into fists. Her feet begin to pound, to run. She cannot see the smoke, nor hear the crackle of the flames, but she can smell it.
And it does not smell like the fires she encounters on the job, or the ones that light up a stove. No, it smells like the ones that had crackled at her mother’s fingertips and raged through the hallways of her castle.
It smells like magic.
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Bloom crashes through the window, feeling glass bite into her legs. It shreds through her jeans, the blue darkening. Her jeans do not turn red, that is not how art works.
She doesn’t have time to stare, rolling out of the way of a gremlin Stella chucks through the window. It's almost like baseball to her, hitting the gremlins with the same form a high school athlete might use to score a home run.
The gremlin gets back up though, like Bloom, and lunges at her with silver claws outstretched and teeth bared.
She bashes its head in with the lid of a trash can, the metal denting at the impact, though not as much as the way the creature’s head sinks in, its body falling to the ground and sinking into shadow.
“Nice one Bloom!” Stella calls, jumping out the window to join her. She is a fairy once more, wings fluttering behind her as she glows with energy.
The ogre roars from inside the house, the floorboards cracking beneath him as he charges to meet the girls.
“Don’t worry, I called in backup!” Stella winks at Bloom, then stretches out a hand. “How about it, wanna try a spell?”
Stella’s hand curls around Bloom, and sparks light their intertwined fingers up. She outstretches them, just in time to aim at the ogre. A ball of fire explodes from her, knocking the ogre back.
Stella releases her hand and Bloom stares at her palms, still warm from the fire she had conjured. That wasn’t Stella, she knows it as instinctively as she knows that she is alive and that there is blood in her veins. The fire was her, in the same way her art is.
The ogre rises to charge again, but is stopped by a cord tying around his wrist. There is a second in which he looks down at what has stopped him, confounded.
Then he is being dragged through the air, across the ground, a sword being raised to bash in his head.
The cord snaps and he rolls out the way.
There is a group of four boys, young enough to pass Bloom by in high school hallways, standing in front of a swirling mass of energy. It closes behind them, twinkling out of existence like a breath of air.
“Sky!” Stella shouts, bouncing on her toes and waving a hand in the air. “What perfect timing, this brute here could use a royal beat up!”
A boy with brown hair waves back, a smirk tugging his lips. “Sure thing Princess, leave it to us!”
A gremlin jumps at them, taking the time they had used to pose as an opportunity, luckily, a kid with glasses stops it with a shot of light out of a gun. A ray gun. Like Star Trek.
“Urgh, why do more of you keep showing up!” The ogre shouts, a rumble of a too-deep too-high voice. He bashes his fists against the ground. “You ain’t beating me!”
“Is that right?” Stella takes a step forward, cocking her hip. “Looks to me like you’re already done for.” A glimmer of light dances around her fingers, expanding.
And then there is darkness, as the ogre smashes a vial against the ground. The sound of shattering glass echoes in her ears, like a castle crumpling, like a kingdom falling. Shadows dance across her eyelids as they are squeezed shut, and opened, shadows of more gremlins crawl in front of her. They have multiplied, exponented, grown into a force Bloom has no hope of fighting.
Yet her body does not retreat, rather lowering itself into a fighting stance. Stella shoves out her hands, sending a spiral of light into the mass that barely dents it.
Her feet are sliding backwards on the concrete, and Bloom reaches out to steady her. Her hands wrap around the back of Stella’s, heat bursting at her fingertips as a new type of light pours forth.
Shadows snake toward her, faster than light, and she cannot swing their intertwined hands towards it fast enough.
Then a sword cuts down at it, screeching filling the cacophonous air, and a blonde boy gives her a smile before jumping back into battle. She angles their hands to shoot back a gremlin pouncing at his back.
“Keep on attacking until we get that ring!” The ogre screams over the battle, voice filling the back alley they’ve found themself in. How is this taking place in Bloom’s neighborhood?
A boy, dark red-hued purple hair, is thrown backwards, landing against the wall with a sickening crunch. The gun is knocked out of the glasses kid’s hands. The other two are backed into a corner, mystical blue shields the only thing keeping claws from sinking into their flesh.
And Stella and Bloom are alone, their light waning.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees a mass of darkness launch at Mike and Vanessa, the chair they had been swinging cracking. Not enough to protect them. Not enough.
“Watch out!” Blonde boy calls out, and she can hear the horror in his voice. Why is he horrified? He doesn’t know them, not like Bloom knows them. Not like pizza dinners and movie nights. Not like being picked up from school by Vanessa to help at the shop because Daphne was kept at work late. Not like learning to dribble a basketball with Mike and watching her sister fail more times than she did.
And Bloom feels pressure build up at her fingertips, an explosion of danger reaching its peak, but not fast enough.
Her fire takes too long to light.
And the shadows reach out-
And are hit away by a block of wood, sent spiraling through the air.
They hit the walls with a crash, fading into darkness that seeps back into normalcy. The creature reels back, shocked at the sudden loss of one of its hive-mind limbs.
And there stands Daphne, blonde hair pooling out of the bun she keeps it in, wearing the same green turtleneck and tights Bloom had seen her off in this morning.
And she raises her eyes, and Bloom for the first time understands rage.
“Stay the fuck away from my family!”
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“So let’s take a little break
Down to the cabin by the lake
I’ll take my time
I’ll take my time
Because I’ll give it all to you!” Bloom screams from the living room and Daphne lets her voice grow louder. The radio blares out the song in the background, always a beat ahead of the sisters as they tried to remember the lyrics.
Bloom is twirling around, spinning with her arms thrown wide. There is nothing graceful about her movements, no reason or rhyme. It is a wild release of motion. Barefoot and pajama-clad.
There is toast in the toaster that will burn if Daphne does not stop it in time, smoke rising out of the old contraption and setting the smoke alarm off. She lets herself be pulled into the living room and spin.
She has forgotten how to dance, careful lessons of how to move her feet. There is no one here to lead her or be led, just herself.
And she spins, higher and higher, reaching her hands up towards the ceiling, until Bloom trips and falls into her, sending them spiraling to the ground in laughter.
Daphne lets herself lay there, one arm curled around her sister, and the other sprawled out. She is breathless, she is full of life, she is flickering and burning. And it feels free.
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“Hey, get out of here!” Blonde boy shouts as the creature responds by moving forwards, recovered and ready to hit back with all it’s might. Gremlins come pouncing at her and Bloom is too shocked to set them aflame.
Yet Daphne merely smirks and twirls her wrist, and the wood is on fire. Red-orange-yellow flames creeping up towards her sister’s palm. It smashes into the first wave, heat and light growing inside them until exploding.
There is momentum to her movements, and the fire keeps spinning, once more as she chucks it at the ogre, the burning wood causing him to scream as it touches his flesh.
And Daphne dances, arms making giant circles as she twirls around the next gremlin, a circle of flames closing in on it in a second and burning it to ash.
She catches the next one, her flames bursting out of its skin as she chucks it into the next wave.
Bloom cannot help but follow the movement, follow the flickering of the flame, as does the creature, too distracted to see Daphne rush forward and leap over it. Her arms move out, and Bloom can smell the fire before it appears, encircling and embracing the creature in Daphne’s overwhelming rage.
She lands, light on her feet, not out of breath whatsoever, her hands slamming into the straggling gremlins that had been behind the creature, the force of her stopping flowing into them.
And there is ash, scattered through the air and flowing in the breeze. Like snow on a winter’s day, like a light drizzle of rain. It does not taste like burnt eggs, or school bunsen-burners. It tastes like sparklers and fireworks, like encircled arms.
Daphne does not linger to taste the ash, she picks up a fallen piece of the iron fence and twirls it. It glows red as her heat enters it. Within a few strides she is in front of the ogre, her foot smashing down on his chest as she lowers the iron to his neck.
“Yield, before I perform your funeral rights.” Her sister’s voice echoes through the alley, firm and unyielding. For the first time in her life, Bloom thinks she might understand what her friends meant when they said her sister was scary. Could be scary.
It was like a change had come over her, no, not a change, an instinct. This was not how Daphne had never been, this was how she’d always been, just without the context that had necessitated it.
And it felt like warmth. It felt like love. It felt like Daphne’s hugs. This was Daphne’s type of protection, a rage against the world for all the injustices it forced onto them.
“Who the hell are you!” The ogre squeaks, eyes blown wide. Everyone is staring at the scene, wordless.
Bloom takes a step forward.
“Yield, I will not ask again,” Daphne repeats, and there is only anger in her tone. No fear that had pumped through Bloom’s veins.
“I yield, I yield!” The ogre squeals as Daphne lowers the iron more. The teens stumble forwards, lowering their shields and bringing out glowing blue rope. With shaking hands, they tie up the ogre, their eyes darting to Daphne every so often.
And Bloom has reached her sister, and reaches out a hand, fingers outstretched.
Daphne twirls around and takes it, and the rage is gone, replaced with the overwhelming love that had brought it on.
“Bloom? Are you okay?”
And Bloom throws her arms around her sister and sobs.