All seventeen years of her life, no gaps, no blanks or long stretches of nothingness. She witnessed the birth of her aversion to microwaves as it happened; on a spring afternoon, when the machine had whispered to her how fun it would be to give a spoon a ride inside itself. Sparks whizzed from the spoon within seconds of the microwave plate spinning and she could have sworn, she heard the metallic abomination cackle as her younger self huddled under the kitchen table and sobbed.

Forgotten days spent at the park, swinging, sliding, scraping knees, and having a father to run toward, whose arms could be counted on to be wide and ready to receive her tired, sore body, flashed before her in perfectly rendered hi-def. She smelled the cut grass, her father's aftershave.

Dandelion seeds tickled her nose as they rose upward into the sky, wood chips pressing into her knees. She heard herself giggle, her father's 'I love yous' lavished upon her with reckless abandon. The slick of metal ran down her legs as she rode the slippy slide, breeze whipping her face flush.

The scene changed to those of the night, when she and her father sought retreat from the long hard days and harsh Oak sun. Where they'd laid out on the back lawn, grass tickling their skin, prodding them through their clothes, humidity causing them to glisten with sweat, as they stared up at the stars. Peneloper had never felt more loved than at those times, beside her father, the world so shiny and safe and wondrous.

She played beside a younger Crispen next, whose waxen complexion had been sun-kissed, sweat freely running down his nose and chin, all smiles and ease. He did magic, and she did magic, levitating toys, even levitating herself when Mr. McNickel's cat, Thornbush, got stuck in their oak tree. She watched as herself got stuck alongside Thornbush, her magic unstable at the time, the cat abandoning her moments later after realizing the height was nothing to a creature who always landed on its feet. Peneloper's father had to rescue her. Afterwards, he stoppered her sobs with a cone of mint chocolate chip.

Night scenes alone and in her bed, carried whispers to her ears. Of a boy's voice, small and trembling, alone. The urge to help, coupled with a curiosity that couldn't be compelled into submission, ballooned inside her. The connection between them, forged not long after. Countless encounters in a landscape of frigid night danced before her on the backs of smoke. Of her and the boy huddled together, her telling him stories and him listening with clear eyes and a saddened expression. He resembled Crispen; she'd forgotten that, how unusually similar they'd been, though Gideon lacked Crispen's lightness and levity. The boy a yang at war with Crispen's ying.

Together, Peneloper and Gideon caught the stars and he canned them in mason jars to preserve them for her longer. So much of what he'd done had been for her, to repay her for her kindness. She'd asked what kindness, because she hadn't seen any at the time and he'd replied, "You're here with me. And that's enough."

She told him to call her Nep and he did so sheepishly and unsure, a tremor running through his voice. She felt her heart experience its first flutter, a first blush staining her cheeks. Friendship found in the dark, made to weather whatever came next.

She'd written about him in a notebook, the same one she'd receive from her dad years later. Several pages filled with her lopsided chicken scratch told of her and Gideon's encounters.

Gideon and I gave chase to the stars.

Gideon leaned on me, being alone gets to him.

He's got the prettiest eyes - clear. Gideon says they're ugly and empty. I told him they could be anything.

I told Gideon about the microwave. Gideon avows - his word, not mine - to hex them. Awful doodads - my word, not his - he says. I promised not to listen to one ever again.

Gideon smiled.

Told Gideon about Crispen. He got awfully sad. Don't know why.

Darkness enveloped Peneloper. A chill made her shiver. The last time she'd met Gideon he had shown her the most recent stars he had canned and pickled. While showing them off, he'd mentioned a new friend who had promised to help him escape so they could be together. He and Peneloper in the real world, friends forever, weathering whatever came next.

Peneloper got a bad feeling, a tingling that started in her fingertips and went all the way to her toes. Gideon tried to console her, tried to show her everything would be alright. He'd raised his right hand and just as the skin on his palm peeled back, Peneloper's magic flared up and formed a shield in front of her.

Gideon's face grew hard. His eyes turned black and he no longer resembled the friend who had chased the stars alongside her. He stalked toward her an unknown entity, new and terrifying as a voice screamed, "Pervert her! Pervert her! Do it now!" A hand closed around Peneloper's neck and squeezed. Her breath escaped her as fingers dug into her esophagus.

She choked on a scream, and then, found herself back home, in bed, a doting father tending to her, running his hands through her hair, and telling her everything would be okay as she mourned the loss of something inside herself that had been replaced with an emptiness she couldn't quite describe. Her dad's fingertips brushed against her temples. Blue radiated off his skin, and then she couldn't move. Paralyzed, she gazed at her ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars and paper planets of her personal universe and wished she could cry.

Gideon.

Her last thought was of Gideon before her father erased him from her memories.

●

Her eyes shot open, and she found herself lying on the Council table, all four of their faces leaning over her, like umbrellas gone askew. Welda peeled back her lips and dripped a mixture of drool and water onto Peneloper's cheek. Kelpner smiled. He always seemed to smile. Peneloper couldn't pinpoint it exactly, but there was something innately horrifying and unsettling about that smile.

Quinceton played with his bowler cap, head held high, eyes downcast as if suspecting Peneloper of foul play. Her father looked as miserable as she felt - sallow, flushed of any emotion, sweaty. He tried to smile, but only managed to heft one corner of his mouth. Genesis's talons pricked her skin as he shuffled across her torso, feathers ruffled, wings crossed. Crispen and Chant stood at her feet.

"We were friends," she said. Crispen nodded. Despite her throbbing head, she added, "Gideon was my friend." Her cheeks felt damp, her throat dry.

Crispen tried to smile, but whatever had made it possible for the boy in black to upturn his lips, had fled him. "And he's my brother."

She nodded. It made sense, given Gideon's sadness and Crispen's knowledge about him. Ying and yang, made of the same stuff, though polar opposites - how hard was this for the boy of crows? Pitted against his brother. Fighting on different sides with the inevitability of a clash; how much pain had he been hiding from her? If only Peneloper could read minds or understand auras, or been a little less dense and actually cared about those around her. She tensed her jaw and swallowed back a dozen swears.

Her father reached out and grazed her cheek. She turned toward him and gripped his hand. "You protected Crispen from them." She tossed a glower the council's way.

Kelpner straightened. "I assure you, Miss Auttsley, no one needed protecting from us-"

"Yes," her father interjected. "After I saw what they would do to him, I couldn't let it happen again. I lobbied for Gideon too, but-"

Peneloper's expression soured. "But they wouldn't hear of it," she hissed.  Addressing the three senior members of the council, she continued, "You let a child rot in prison." A shade of light purple pulsed under her fingernails.

"We--" Quinceton tugged on his suit jacket, and stiffened. "Did no such thing. A refracted with a propensity for magic?" He clicked his tongue and adjusted his monocle. "A union most foul between a human and that-that-" Kelpner's face grew clouded, and Quinceton clipped his sentence short. "Well, no matter. That boy and-" he pointed Crispen's way, "him should not have been allowed to exist. If you ask me, we should have done more."

Genesis rose up like a tornado spurned and dove for Quinceton's face, doing what Peneloper had envisioned doing herself. With talons outstretched, he tore and pecked at the man's head, his bowler falling to the ground. Genesis gave a war cry, as a torrent of down feathers partly blotted Quinceton from view.

"My word!" He flung both hands in front of his face as Genesis continued his assault. Peneloper grinned; she had never liked the fat bird more. "Control your bird!"

"That's what you've never understood," Crispen said coolly. Genesis pecked at Quinceton's exposed head, ruffling the man's well-groomed mane into a mess of reddish tangles. "You can't control everything."

He snapped his fingers, and Gen stopped mid-air, a talon clenched around Quinceton's cane. At the boy's beckon, he released it and flew to Crispen, who plucked him from the air and cradled the bird in his arms like a baby. He whispered to his companion, "Remind me later, and I'll toss you a peach for your efforts."

The bird cooed and settled into the arms he must have loved because, within a few blinks, he was fast asleep, head bobbing slightly as he rode the waves of whatever it was birds dreamt of when feeling absolutely and completely incandescent.

In his companion's absence, Kelpner stepped forward, as Quinceton set to smoothing out the knots in his hair. "We did what we had to."

"Conviction before due process? Sounds criminal," Peneloper said.

The boy frowned. "It was not without a great deal of thought. I happen to see the nature of all."

Chant came to Peneloper's aide and enveloped her in an embrace one could only categorize as vice-like. Considering she wobbled more than Mrs. Luric's puddings, his stability was appreciated. "Is he," Chant rolled his eyes and lifted a quizzical brow, "You know, a little daffy?"

"I am not." Kelpner pouted. "I can see all. Every possible outcome, every course a person can take. I know all."

Peneloper took her cue and leaned in to better conspire with her best friend. "Seems to be a severe narcissist." She squinted at the boy and dragged her fingers along her chin. "And a megalomaniac. Mom's therapist would love to dissect his brain." She frowned. "He wanted permission to dissect mine, post-mortem of course. Utterly gushed that my build had to be of an extraordinary, unique blue-print. I think he had aspirations to be an architect before reality convinced him to pursue psychology."

"But brains are brains," Chant replied. "It's only how one uses them that determines-"

"-that's what I said!"

"Enough of this vagrant, disrespectful chatter!" Kelpner bellowed. His hands flew to his temples, where he immediately started massaging them. "You, Miss Auttsley, are just as infuriating as your father was when we first met."

Rayburn puffed, a strut in his step as he rounded the Council table. She tossed him a conspiratorial smirk. "Auttsley-brand frustration, hers by birthright."

Peneloper and company laughed. Kelpner's frown worsened. "I knew what was to come if Gideon and Crispen existed. I knew what would happen if they were allowed to live under Rayburn's instruction. Things," he turned toward Peneloper, "would not have turned out well for you, Miss Auttsley."

"As they've turned out wonderfully now," she retorted. "What with an old friend coming to kill me and my father faking his death to do whatever nonsensical Council errands you forced upon him. Yes, my life has been glorious, indeed."

"Miss Auttsley." Kelpner smoothed the front of his shirt. "You would not exist as you do now if it weren't for my actions."

"Meaning? I'd be what? More like a seventeen-year-old girl who spends her time glued to her phone with friends aplenty, sneaking off to parties, arguing and angsty and-"

"Dead. You would have been dead. Long ago. And your father would have felt responsible and carried that guilt with him for the rest of his life. He would have shirked his Council duties, ignoring the curse and the world-yes, Miss Auttsley - the world which you so regularly misjudge and dismiss, would have been destroyed. I did what was necessary. For the greater good."

For the greater good. Was there a despot or dictator, authoritarian or anarchist alive or dead who hadn't uttered those words? Or at the very least, mumbled them, when, ideally, no one was looking in their general direction? The quick answer was no. The more thought out response, well researched with the help of Bing! was also no. Every villain, whether real or fictional or fictional though based on someone real, believed themselves to be doing what was right.

In this instance of 'greater good' where the world had been on the line, and if no action had been taken, the very story you're reading would not exist, it might very well have been for the greater good. But admitting that a child being locked up and separated from his magic, which to those outside the know was like severing one's connection to their soul, to their core essence, and leaving him to stew in loneliness, only to have said loneliness abated by the very person who he'd ended up hurting and, in return, had been forced into forgetting their time together, didn't seem like a choice any decent person should make.

And if that was the way of things, maybe the saying should be: "We indulge in the bad, to prevent the slightly worse, which, admittedly, makes us all assholes."

"Well," Peneloper said. "You've certainly kept me alive, so I'll give you what you deserve - a modicum of gratitude."

"Kept you alive for now," Chant hissed. "Though what have they been doing while Gideon was allowed to roam the layers freely-"

"A dog would never understand the world as we do," Kelpner spat. "You lack the aerial view of those of us with wings."

"And there's that familiar Council arrogance I could have gone another decade without." Crispen snorted.

Genesis, like an adorable puppy, and the only source of warmth in the otherwise stark and cold atmosphere now filling up the Council room, flipped over in his arms, exposing his belly, legs straight in the air. Without giving it much thought, the boy of crows reached down and started scratching the exposed feathers of Genesis's undercarriage, to the bird's cooed delight. A light flap of its wings rustled the tips of Crispen's curls.

The boy of crows was proving to be of a kinder stock than Peneloper had first imagined. He had all the appearance of a blood-starved vampire upon arrival, and all the fanfare of a teen heartthrob, coupled with all the sleekness of a brand-new car. He came to town cloaked in mystery, veiled in feathers and shadows and questions that everyone tried to ruffle, unravel and answer. For her, he'd been a means to end her boredom, and from there, he'd revealed to her what she'd been, what she'd always been - magic.

Yet here he was, in another magically mundane setting, stripped of all that newness and mystery. Instead of wearing a leather jacket, smoking a cigarette, smirking, and showing a cluster of tattoos etched above an unearned six-pack, he petted his favorite crow, looking at Genesis with selfless Philia in his eyes, his skin flushed, his curls lush and extra bouncy. He radiated happiness, even surrounded by people he detested, as he gazed at Genesis.

And then, he wasn't looking at the bird, he was looking at Peneloper, and his radiance grew pointed, laser-precise, set to stun, and stun he did. Her butterflies emerged from their cocoons soldiers, clad in thick armor, cudgels clenched in their hands. With them, they set out to bash and bludgeon, beat and clobber every part of her insides until she felt gutted of all sense, logic, and reason. Naked and exposed to his eyes only.

An urge to understand Crispen better, to have him touch her in the way he touched Genesis filled her up, and she blushed as images of herself being held in Crispen's arms, cradled like something important, something strong yet breakable, popped into her head.

And then, oh god, she remembered. The very boy she thought about had a keen insight into her mind. She cast her gaze upon the floor, fidgeting with her hands and the edge of her hoodie, fully aware of the fool she'd been.

Things only got worse from there. The members of the Council or - and this is something a seventeen-year-old would never want and would opt for their nails to be ripped from their fingertips instead of - her father, they couldn't possibly read her mind as well? Could he hear her libido-fueled thoughts? Identify her curious impulses? Could her father sense her terror, her reluctance, her fight and intrigue? Had he felt her heat ramp up as she imagined being hugged by Crispen, the very thought making her insides flush?

"Nells?" Chant asked. "Nells?" His fingers grazed her skin, and while a shock of electricity jumped from where they touched, it lacked something needed to rouse the hormone army inside Peneloper to take up the call and march into battle.

"I'm...I'm..." she stammered as she fished around for the right words, but each hook she sent into the depths came up wordless.

Instead, she braved the possible scorn and disgust of the room's occupants and looked forward. The Council was decidedly looking at anywhere, and everywhere, other than her, except for Welda, whose wide-eyed expression, parted mouth, and dancing tongue made Peneloper's skin crawl. Kelpner pretended to have a keen interest in the motivational posters tacked on the wall behind the desk. Quinceton inspected his monocle and removed his pocket square to give it a thorough wiping, as though he hadn't done something similar, not five minutes ago.

Dread, Peneloper's welcomed friend at this point, and soon-to-be most felt emotion, stormed the gates of her heart, and reclaimed its ventricles for its home.

The Council heard. They definitely heard.

Her father glanced at the exit, and Peneloper contemplated flying through it and tempting whatever it was held back by the door. At this point, who cared? If she got eaten, at least her embarrassment would be no more. Under the shaggy ends of her father's hair, Peneloper spied crimson at the tips of his ears. She sighed.

This was it. Hammer the last nail in her coffin and call it quits. Ladies and gentlemen, Peneloper's social life murdered before it even had a chance to take off.

Crispen looked her way, gaze lingering on her face. She stared back and then noticed it; the blemish on his ears, the stain at the tip of his nose, the feverish color spanning one ear to the other - Crispen Heavensley blushed.

Peneloper had done the impossible.

The boy of crows broke eye contact first, cleared his throat and reached up, his fingers wrestling with a lock of hair at the back of his head. "Miss Auttsley, you have-" he let his voice fade, his gaze sweeping the room. He cleared his throat again. "You have quite the colorful-"

"-Hooorrrrnnny," Welda said in a sing-song voice. "Brimming with teenage lus-s-s-st." She licked her lips.

Chant stared at the reptilian woman, his revile clear, before turning to Peneloper. "What's Swamp Thing talking about? Did you--"

Anyone else in the eldest Luric's position would have been able to read the tension and discomfort in the room immediately; it oozed from every pore and surface like the stench of a high school locker room. With a werewolf's nose and his other heightened senses, Chant should have been the first to sniff out Peneloper's embarrassment, but he hadn't.

Instead, he had to drink in the room - take several gulps, in fact - before the shuffling feet, idle hands, darting glances, reddening faces, and the slight crook of Welda's lips made the lizard woman's last words resonant. And when they did, Chant went full-blown Mother Luric (and one should never go full Mother Luric). Folding his arms protectively across his chest, tossing back his head, and narrowing his eyes, he erupted with enough verbal diarrhea to cover Peneloper from head to toe. "Oh, Nell-You didn't, did you? What could have? Why?" His gaze darted to Crispen. "Did you? Why would she? But you?" He pointed at the boy of crows, then to himself, as if to say: Look at you! Look at me! There's really no comparison.

Both of Chant's biceps twitched. His pecs rose under his white-cotton tee as if to show that they too, stood in solidarity with the whole body, and approved of his assessment.

Chant was the better physical specimen objectively. No one would argue that, but the heart, while a muscle and an important one at that, could not be won over by muscles alone. No matter how much the others ganged up on it, the heart beat to the make of its own drum.

"How could you?" Chant continued. "Why him? And--" He scowled. "Why here? Don't you know these creeps can read your thoughts?"

Peneloper slammed her fists on the table. Chant's last words tumbled from his mouth and fell into the void before human and inhuman ears could consume them. "I'm quite aware they can hear my thoughts." She whirled on the Council. "Even though that is an egregious breach of my privacy and you all should be ashamed and reprimanded." Welda snorted. Peneloper glowered. "Yes, even you, Miss Witch. How would you have liked having your hormone-fueled teenage thoughts projected into every stogey old wizard's head from here to the layers' ends?"

Welda paused. Her tongue slithered back inside her mouth. For a moment, her eyelids clashed over her eyes, and then she turned on her male counterparts. "The girl has-s-s a point."

Peneloper, having converted foe to friend, at least in this, let victory gild her final words. "I don't have control over my thoughts. And yes, Crispen's kindness stoked," the blush and the heat crept back, "thoughts. Not weird thoughts, mind you. Lots of people my age engage in sex."

Her father staggered and had to steady himself by laying a hand on the desk. "Sex," Peneloper said again. "Sex. Sex. Sex. It happens, or it doesn't. Don't try to shame me for thinking about what comes naturally. I'm sure you've all read far fouler thoughts and I'm certain," she made sure to zero in on Chant and her father, "you've all thought fouler things yourselves." She flung her arms around herself. "Orgasm."

Chant's eyes bulged.

Crispen smiled while she did the inverse and frowned. "What? What is it?"

The other side of her father's mouth finally found the strength to upturn. "Nell-"

She eyed him and jutted her chin, determined to convert her embarrassment into strength. "What?"

Her father chuckled, then brought his hands together and clapped.

"Thank you?"

He shook his head and pointed at her hands. "You're glowing."

She followed his eye line, and sure enough, a cloud of purple rose off her fingers and began enveloping her skin.

"Told you," Crispen whispered. "Emotions fuel magic."

Peneloper narrowed her eyes as she secured the connection with her magic. She shaped it, bent it, turned the cloud into thick, absolute lines. With her mind, she forced those strands upward, where they danced and hovered above her head. Smiling, she morphed them into words, and a sign formed above her with an arrow pointing downward.

In bright neon, for all the layers to read, her act of magic, spurred on by sheer will, no assistance required, pulsed with this: Don't read my thoughts.