Chapter Text
Too dark. Too tight. Too squishy. Too foul.
Taylor squeezed her eyes shut, and was devastated when she couldn't do the same with her nose. Despite herself, a sob wracked her body, and her head bumped against the door.
"God this can't be happening," she said, the words so soft they barely escaped her lips. "Why couldn't they just...agh," she banged her head against the door again, a brief moment of anger piercing the despair and disgust. "I wish I'd never woken up this morning," she groaned into the darkness.
POOF
Taylor bolted awake, her bed and pajamas drenched in sweat. Her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest, and she could swear she could still taste the rotten air from the locker on her tongue. But as with all dreams, the tighter she tried to hold on, the more the details slipped away, until eventually the horror of it all was a small clinical detail. In the grips of Morpheus it has been dreadful, but now it was like something she'd read about happening to someone else - not even a real person, just a fictional character. A tasteless torture scene, but nothing to get upset about.
She glanced around her room, still tangled up in the blanket, and something made her pause. Her mind was still waking up, but her subconscious had latched onto something and Taylor felt it was urgent to determine what exactly had caught her attention. The rickety bookshelf was still a bit of mess from where she'd had to rearrange things to make room for the new books over Christmas. The laundry hamper was still basically empty, since she'd done laundry just a few days ago. The window was--
Taylor squinted, trying to make sense of it. The window was off, she decided. It wasn't open, and neither were the blinds, so that wasn't the problem. The light coming through, though, was not the burnt yellows of a rising sun, just barely shooting the holes between blinds to light up the wall. This was fuller, less yellow, and the light was hitting the floor. She looked over above her little desk, and the clock confirmed it was currently 12:03pm.
She swore lightly and stumbled out of bed, almost tripping over the blanket and eating floor, but managed to right herself. It was first day of the new school year and she was already hours late. Her initial impulse was to rush, to minimize her tardiness, but - she glanced back at the clock - there was no helping that at this point. If she even went to school today, she'd barely be there for any of it, and there's no way they'd take "I overslept" as an excuse when she was coming in after lunch. It was going to be a stain on her record no matter what she did.
Taylor went about her morning routine, the feeling of wrongness continued. She looked around as she brushed her teeth and put on real clothes but everything seemed normal. She looked for her father - surely if he'd noticed she was dead asleep, he'd have tried to wake her or at least...at least something. But he was nowhere to be found, so he'd probably just not noticed and had gone into work. It was only when she returned to her room that she found something out-of-place that has previously escaped her notice. On the desk was a school journal, but the usual pattern was colored to resemble military camouflage. Taylor was positive she'd never seen that journal before, but the more concerning thing was the pair of eyeballs painted on it that appeared to be looking at her.
And then the journal blinked and the world stopped making sense.
POOF
A puff of smoke briefly enveloped the desk, smelling of coffee and chocolate. When it faded away, the journal was gone, and a man stood before her. He was like a cartoon caricature of a soldier come to life before her eyes: steel-toed combat boots, camo jeans, bandoliers crossed over a sleeveless green shirt, deeply-tanned skin as if he'd been on deployment for years, a white flattop cut that nearly grazed the ceiling with how tall he was, and muscles everywhere. The only things out of place were the tiny gold crown floating behind his head, and the enormous black staff he clutched in one hand topped by a five-pointed star that was slightly glowing. Her initial instinct at having a strange man appear in her bedroom was to scream and run, but when her eyes met his, something stopped her in place. His gaze was hard, but there was a kindness there that made her reevaluate. The man gave off the same feeling she got whenever she saw heroes giving interviews.
"Taylor Hebert." His voice was as outlandish as the rest of him - a bad Austrian accent, deep and gravelly. "I am Jorgen von Strangle, the strongest fairy in the universe. I am your fairy godfather, here to grant your every puny wish." He slammed the butt of his staff - his wand against the floor in emphasis, and the star glowed ever-so-slightly brighter for a split second.
Taylor didn't reply immediately, just staring at first. If you had asked her the day before, she would've said she didn't believe in fairies, but that wouldn't have been 100% true. It was impossible in this day and age to be dismissive of the supernatural, but the clear delineation provided by the introduction of parahumans to the world made it clear to most people that anything from before the 80s was probably not real. Despite that, some part of her...maybe not believed, but more hoped that there was real magic in the world. Something like out of the pages of a book: capable of great change, but simple, fanciful. Something unexploited by the world, in a way that no real source of power would ever stay for long.
Of course there's a world of difference between fairies being real and her having a fairy godparent. One who would use magic on her behalf, who could apparently grant wishes. Her immediate reaction was to push back against such a ridiculous claim, except...
"Does that mean my dream...that my...that it actually happened?" she asked slowly, the question sticking in her throat as if putting words to her memory would make it stop being a dream and start being real.
"It happened. Then it un-happened. You are welcome!" he said with a self-satisfied smile, and his voice seemed to shake the room slightly.
"Right..." Taylor muttered, mind whirling. "...so I guess I get two more wishes, right?"
"Not right."
"Not right?"
"That's right," he nodded. "I am no puny genie, Taylor. Your every wish shall be granted, no matter how silly or whimsical, until it is time for me to move on."
The room seemed to spin. "Every wish?" she repeated faintly. "You've...you've got to be kidding me."
"I am not kidding you." Once more his booming voice seemed to have a physical presence.
Taylor clamped down on the excitement bubbling up inside her and tried to think about this carefully. Unlimited wishes wasn't necessarily a good thing - every story about wishes was about how they backfired on the person making them. The urge to wish for something big and meaningful clashed against the desire to wish for something small and harmless.
A thought occurred to her. "You said you're not a genie. Genies usually have rules about what kind of wishes they'll grant," she said, eyeing him carefully. "Are you limited like that, or can you grant any wish?" she asked, hoping against hope.
"Not exactly," he said gravely, before tapping his staff against the floor again.
POOF
Another cloud of smoke covered her desk. When it faded, the small wooden desk was creaking under the weight of an enormous book. It was bound in thick leather dyed a royal purple, with golden letters on the cover. Most of its pages were vellum, but there seemed to be bits of pieces of paper that had be stuck inside the book in countless places, as if the book had been updated but couldn't be reprinted, and so amendments had to be tacked on.
"Da Rules, as laid down by the fairy council, dictate how a fairy godparent and their godchild are to behave, and what kinds of wishes they are allowed to grant," Jorgen said, and his tone gave the impression that he was delivering a practiced lecture. "Some rules cannot be broken, as they violate the immutable laws of magic. Most are things that can be done, but should not, for the good of the world. Godparents that grant wishes they shouldn't, breaking the letter or spirit of Da Rules, may face serious consequences, up to and including godchild revocation and remedial training at the fairy academy." His eyes narrowed. "For a very long time, it has been my duty to enforce Da Rules and their consequences. Do not expect me to bend Da Rules for you just because you are my godchild."
Taylor looked at the book. It was very thick, which was in some way reassuring. If she could really wish for anything...well she didn't think she'd abuse it, but there also wasn't a single person on the planet she'd trust with that kind of blank check. She couldn't even begin to imagine how many ways there were to abuse ultimate power, but hopefully most of them were already written down. "And how do they say I am to behave?"
"Fairies are a secret," Jorgen began. "And we will not risk mass discovery. If I am discovered by others, you will be considered a risk vector. Everyone involved will have their memories of all things related to fairies and magic wiped away, and we will no longer remain in contact." He pauses, and shifts uncomfortably. "There are some rare exceptions. Those who already know do not constitute a breach of secrecy, nor do those so convinced magic is impossible that they will never consider it as an explanation. But if anyone looks too hard into you, or if you tell someone, then I must go, and I must take all knowledge of us with me."
Taylor could tell he didn't like it, that he didn't mind her. He seemed stiff, but that seemed more like just the way he was than being uncomfortable about her specifically. She couldn't fault him for putting his people's safety first, but it still sucked that someone else being too nosy could end this prematurely. "If I wish for something you can't grant me, will you at least tell me why you can't grant it?"
Jorgen nodded. "It was originally against Da Rules for a godchild to know Da Rules," he said sheepishly. "But it was quickly changed. Too many godchildren wanted to know why they couldn't have what they wished for, and it would always turn into a game of trial and error figuring Da Rules out one by one. If godchildren are going to be able to think of clever ways of getting around Da Rules anyway, we decided it was best if we did not have to clean up after an experimental wishing spree too."
Taylor nodded along, while considering what she wanted. The war still waged within her, but has expanded into a new dimension: should she make wishes that benefited primarily herself, or something to make the world a better place? It'd be ideal if she could do something that accomplished both, but every wish she could think of had obvious pitfalls of how they could go wrong when she thought about them for two seconds. "I wish I knew what to wish for," she murmured.
Jorgen shook his head. He reached out with one hand and thumbed a page, flipping Da Rules open to somewhere near the front. "Page 19, no recursive wish knowledge. The magic is guided by the fairy's knowledge, and fairies are not omniscient. So the best we can do is tell you what we think you wish for, but then it would be the fairy granting their own wish, instead of their godchild's."
"Yeah that makes sense. I was more just...speaking aloud than actually wishing," Taylor replied.
"You may be overthinking things," Jorgen said after another moment of silence between them. "I am here to grant you happiness with magic. What would make you happy right now, Taylor? It does not have to be the thing that makes you most happy. You have time to think on things."
Taylor closed her eyes, thinking hard. Most things she could think of were too broad or too long-term to help right now. Even her more selfish fantasies of schoolyard revenge would take days to bring about in a satisfying manner. But there was something...
"...I wish I had a cup of hot chocolate. The way my mom used to make it."
The wand came down, the air POOF'd, and there was a mug of cocoa in her hands, still steaming but not so hot that she couldn't hold it. A She raised it and took a careful sip, mindful of the small hill of whipped cream covered in chocolate shavings trying to coat her lip. The sip brought her back to countless nights in her life - that time the power had gone out and they'd made a little campfire in the yard, settling in on the first day of a long weekend to marathon a police procedural as a family, coming in still shivering and red-nosed from a day spent frolicking in the snow with Emma...
Taylor teared up a bit as the nostalgia hit her like a wave. Every memory was a snapshot of a moment of happiness, but all of them were tainted. Her mother had died, her father had withdrawn into his grief and job, her sister in all but blood had turned their private moments into ammunition against her. Every memory connected with three more, and all of it at once was--
Jorgen clapped a hand on her back and gently guided her to take a seat on the bed. He sat next to her while she drank, and listened to her woes and trouble. He just listened, remaining a solid comforting presence while she just let everything she'd been bottling up for three years spill out.