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“Why did you decide to be a fairy?” the freshman fairy asked, her eyes bright and curious.
Mirta sighed, shut her textbook and looked up. “Because I’m no good at applying eyeshadow to my cheeks,” she said, her voice sharp. She saw the flinch almost before it started and bit the inside of her lip-- some days it was just too hard to suppress the tendency towards dry sarcasm that was one of the surviving remnants of her time at Cloud Tower. “I’m sorry,” she said after another moment.
The other girl nodded, mumbled her own apology and fled.
--
Mirta sometimes wondered about the answer to that question herself. She knew she was better off at Alfea, where she could be sympathetic and kind, and actually settle down to learn without worrying about extraneous power plays. (Power plays at the fairy academy seemed mostly confined to the royalty, if the Winx’s troubles were any indication.) The upperclassmen didn’t play malicious pranks or bully underclassmen they saw as vulnerable. Everyone was, if not always nice, then at least mildly cordial. That definitely made it easier to learn.
And yet. Mirta was having a harder and harder time ignoring the part of herself that wanted to snap at the idiot freshmen who asked her stupid questions about witches. It was the same part that raged against the polite fictions most fairies seemed to engage in when they didn’t like each other. The part that yearned for someone to shove her into a locker or turn her into a pumpkin for half a year rather than quietly setting up a Rube Goldberg device that would cause her to fail a crucial test.
It was also the part of her which occasionally noted how easy it would be to slip some transformation potion into the school cafeteria apple sauce and turn the entire sophomore class into lizards-- but that thought she quashed with all the ruthlessness she could muster.
--
“So you scared the kid,” Lucy said, and Mirta could see in her mind’s eye the way Lucy’s bony shoulders came up in an unconcerned shrug. “Fairies need to grow backbones eventually.”
Shifting the phone to her other shoulder, Mirta tugged at her blue streak of hair. "I'm a fairy now too, L," she said. It wasn’t as though Lucy didn’t know that-- wasn’t exquisitely aware of her best friend’s shift in allegiances-- but the defensive words were out of Mirta’s mouth before she thought about it.
“”Exactly,” Lucy said, unperturbed by Mirta’s harsh tone. “And you have a backbone.”
“So I shouldn’t worry about scaring the underclassmen?”
“They’re just frosh. They’ll get over it. I did.”
Mirta dropped onto her bed and kicked her feet up, ignoring the smudges her sneakers left on the bedspread. She could magic those away later. “I guess they will. Maybe they need to learn a little bit of witchy aggression.”
Lucy snorted an unattractive but familiar laugh. “You’re one to talk about aggression. You barely managed to make it into Cloud Tower in the first place. Mirta the Kind Witch, right?”
Mirta huffed an embarrassed chuckle and pressed her shoes against the comforter. “I might have barely made it in, but Flora never would have gotten past the front door,” she retorted, eyes half-closing and considering what would have befallen her shy friend at the witch academy. Mirta shivered a little and her smile turned into a grimace.
“Whatever,” Lucy said, dismissing the thought. “Still, you ought to go teach the fai--the kids a lesson.”
“What lesson might that be?” Mirta stared up at the ceiling, not really seeing it. She was imagining the high, dark ceiling of the room she and Lucy had shared at Cloud Tower. In her minds eye, she could almost see the purple walls and narrow beds, and Lucy foldeded, barefoot, in one of their uncomfortable study chairs. The thought made her heart lurch suddenly and she swung upright, shaking the image loose.
There was a small pause and for a second Mirta fancied that Lucy could somehow tell what she was thinking from the quality of silence between them. After a moment, though,her friend said, “that a witch will turn you into a toad, but a fairy will turn you back again.” Lucy sniffed, as though disdainful of the idea of turning her victims back. Mirta smiled, her heart unclenching. She knew better than to think Lucy was seriously dismissing the idea of restoring whoever had been the butt of a nasty spell.
“I guess you have a point,” she said.
Mirta exchanged promises with Lucy that they would get together for dinner just as soon as midterms were over, and hung up. She spent the entire evening staring out the window and thinking.
--
At a quarter before 10 am, the halls were deserted.
Mirta worked quickly, but silently, casting nervous glances at the door every few seconds. It was really just their own fault, she told herself, for leaving the ingredients for lunch out where anyone with a basic understanding of magical lock picking could get to it.
Cloud Tower’s security was so much better.
She finished, stepped back to survey her handy-work and smiled before heading back towards Professor Wizgiz’s class.
--
The classrooms and halls were a chaotic mess of shrieks, screams, laughter, and loud, confused ribbits. A TA ran after a toad, waving magixantron exam sheets at it, as though to shoo it away from a half-hovering sophomore who had her hand over her mouth and didn’t seem to be able to decide between laughing or sobbing. Another sophomore was sitting with her legs hugged to her chest, warily watching the frog on the desk next to her. It hopped toward her and she took off out of the classroom in a flurry of wings and abandoned homework.
A short-haired school newspaper reporter was talking rapidly into a recording device in a way that suggested there would be multiple exclamation points in an article titled something like ‘Everybody’s Croaked!’ A taller fairy followed close on her heels, taking photographs of everyone and everything that moved.
Flora put a hand on Bloom’s arm, pushing the spoonful of applesauce she’d been about to start on down and away. “I think it would be best if you didn’t,” she said, and Bloom shrugged, tossing the last of her lunch into a nearby trash can.
They both ignored Stella’s complaints about her wardrobe’s lack of clothes that accessorize well with toads.
--
“Miss Mirta,” Professor Palladium started, frowning at the frogs which used to be her hapless classmates. “I believe we should talk about certain responsible usages of your powers.”
Mirta smiled sheepishly and nodded, ducking her head.
Oh well, no one wanted to take that test anyway.