The two winged sovereigns of the fae stepped into the moonlight.

  “What the F?!” cried Himari, stepping backward. “ . . . wait. Don’t I know you?”

  “Right?!” Helen pointed at Proto. “We know you.”

  “You were named ‘Porno’ or something, right?” said Himari.

  “Why does everyone get my name wrong!” lamented Proto, who had zero recollection of these two GSIs.

  “That or King Utterflutter, your choice,” Fairy Queen Astrid replied to Himari. “Also, hail, mortals.” She gave them a regal wave.

  “Yes, a fine eventide to you all,” grumbled Fairy King Proto.

  “Helen,” said Dimitri, “who are these flapping pixies?”

  “This is Queen Moonwing. And, as she said, this is King Utterflutter,” replied Helen.

  “Utterflutter,” repeated Sancho. “Wasn’t that in some cartoon?”

  “Right?!” cried Fairy King Proto. “It’s on the tip of my tongue!”

  “So, yeah, this is Himari and this is Dimitri. We’re GSIs at the university,” explained Helen. “Which means we do hard labor for below minimum wage.”

  “Me too,” said Sancho. “Except I’m the janitor.”

  “Yes, quite right, Sancho! We’re all in this together,” affirmed Helen.

  “Except Himari,” said Dimitri, “who makes more per day than us each week.”

  “Also true,” acknowledged Helen.

  “Really though, it’s an injustice!” lamented Dimitri. “I’ll be fifty by the time I have Himari’s net worth.”

  “Remember that story of the ant who worked hard and the grasshopper who read Don Quixote all day?” said Himari.

  “Hey now, we’re in this together!” admonished Helen.

  “I feel we’ve been forgotten,” mused Fairy Queen Astrid.

  “I’m sorry. We’re being rude and nerdy,” Helen apologized. “It’s what GSIs do.”

  “Ohh.” Himari had approached Astrid and was eying her up and down. “That cosplay convention! I had to miss it because of this stupid retreat.”

  “I went to one of those when I was fourteen,” recalled Sancho. “My little sister was Sailor Mars.”

  “What were you?” asked Dimitri.

  “I don’t know. An off-duty janitor, I guess.”

  “Kawaii, neee!” Himari reached for Astrid’s wing and felt it between her fingers. Sparkles rubbed off on her. “So realistic! Where did you find this powder?”

  “You might say it’s homemade,” replied Astrid.

  “It’s the only way to get good things here, isn’t it?” sighed Himari. “That, imports and Etsy.”

  “Or the only way, period, if you’re in the humanities,” remarked Dimitri.

  “Are we still going on about my money?” berated Himari, hands on her hips. “Is it not enough that I buy the wine, I treat when we go out—”

  “Alright, alright,” said Dimitri with a pacifying wave. “So, what brings Your Fae Majesties to our humble arboretum?”

  “We come with a question for you, Dimitri,” spoke Astrid in a dulcet croon. “It’s very important that you answer it truly.”

  “A question for me? Well, you’re in luck,” declared the turtlenecked GSI. “Answering strange and pointless questions is my entire career path.”

  “Very good,” said Fairy Queen Astrid. “So, my question is, what’s the most beautiful thing you can think of?”

  The man tilted his head at Astrid and regarded her appraisingly—her leafy curves, her cobweb dress, her shimmering hair of silvery-blue.

  “Besides my radiant Queen,” added Proto drily.

  The Fairy Queen rolled her violet eyes at the Fairy King, but couldn’t keep her cheeks from dimpling.

  Dimitri looked thoughtfully from right to left—from Helen to Himari—then back again, and back and forth. His brow went increasingly furrowed.

  So did Himari’s. Her hands were soon back on her hips.

  Meanwhile, Helen was batting her silver-sparkling lashes at the goateed man, her hands clutched prayer-like to her fore. Her hair shimmered with Luna’s eminence. Her faint smile seemed to glow with elfin mystery.

  “Well, the answer’s clear in the end,” Dimitri finally sighed. “Much as I like La Galatea, I’d have to go with Don Qui—”

  “What!?” interrupted Helen and Himari.

  “‘Donkey,’ you said? Well, a donkey you’ll have!” declared Fairy King Proto. He waved a hand with stardust in its wake.

  Out of the foliage wandered a braying donkey.

  “What the what!” cried Himari, as mists swirled back up toward their waists.

  Fairy Queen Astrid had whirled toward Proto and was regarding him with blazing eyes.

  “Has something got your wings aflutter, Dear?” he asked her blithely.

  “’Donkey,’ ‘Don Qui’—really?” fumed Helen at Proto. “My love turns me down, and you make a cheesy pun?! Worst. Fairy. Ever!”

  “Your love?” raged Himari. “Whatever, you can have him. But you might have to pull him out of Don Quixote’s arms!”

  “Speaking of which,” mused Dimitri. “That donkey—it looks just like Dapple. Don Quixote’s donkey.”

  “Stop talking about Don Quixote!” screamed Helen, holding up her glittery hands.

  The donkey, disconcerted by her shriek—and, perhaps, by a slight nudge from Fairy King Proto—suddenly charged at little Himari.

  The red-garbed girl gasped and stepped back.

  Sancho dove at her, pushing her out of the donkey’s path just in time. Instead, it ran right through him, knocking him splayed upon the dirt. He hit hard and skidded sidelong.

  Himari gasped and regarded her wounded savior, her hand flying to her mouth. She darted toward his supine form.

  Meanwhile, following the impact, the donkey had slowed to a stop about fifteen yards away and started nibbling some grass.

  Dimitri regarded the beast thoughtfully, not seeming to notice the ailing janitor or his girlfriend leaning over him. “So . . . I do like the donkey. But, to be clear, I was saying Don Quixote.”

  “Screw you,” Himari muttered at him over her shoulder.

  Then, she returned to her tender ministrations over Sancho. He was moaning and rubbing his head. “There, there,” spoke the smiling math major, gently brushing hair from his brow.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Don Quixote, is it? Well, we’re all entitled to our own choices.” Proto waved a palm, conjuring a thick leatherbound tome in Dimitri’s hands.

  “What fine binding!” wondered Dimitri, flipping through the book. “Is this section-sewn? I think it’s section-sewn.”

  “Happy reading,” bade Fairy King Proto. “And keep the donkey too. Let none accuse King Utterflutter of parsimony!”

  “Have a read and ride, why don’t you!” suggested Fairy Queen Astrid. She made an upward-wafting motion.

  Abruptly, Dimitri was floating from the ground and waving his arms. He landed backward on the dappled donkey.

  Startled at the impact, the donkey hied away from the clearing down the forest trail.

  The tipsy GSI blinked and looked back and forth. Then, he shrugged and opened his new book in front of his face, blocking out the sparkling image of Helen dwindling in his prospect.

  “My hero,” crooned Himari over Sancho, clasping a hand around his cheek. He looked dazed but not altogether unhappy with this turn of events.

  Proto observed that mirky clouds were bulging toward them on the skyline. Ominous as they looked, he didn’t have a bad feeling about it.

  “You know,” mused Helen to Proto and Astrid, “you guys are questionable fairies, but fun people. I’m tired of scholar types. Maybe love isn’t waiting for me at the academy.”

  “Well, I’m afraid he’s spoken for.” Astrid wrapped a queenly arm around her Fairy King, who raised an eyebrow at his winged consort.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” waved Helen impatiently. She was looking afar, like a traveler about to depart. “No, I know exactly where to look for true love now.”

  “Where’s that?” asked Astrid.

  “Online dating!” declared Helen. “I’m off to take some hot selfies that totally don’t look like selfies, and summarize myself in three witty sentences, while signaling my lack of serious interest and my worthiness of serious interest.”

  “That, or maybe the cosplay convention,” pondered Helen. “Or both! After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I?” she finished in an old-Bilbo-Baggins voice.

  “Go put a ring on it,” affirmed Proto.

  The blonde GSI strolled away. “Thanks for your insights and magic and whatnot,” she called behind her, as grey mirk weltered toward them. “It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was exactly what I needed.”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” declared Proto regally.

  “Ta-ta!” called Astrid with a handcurl, flapping up a cloud of silvery dust.

  “You’re the one I’m meant for, Sancho!” declared Himari wildly.

  Then, the bulging mirk blew over them from behind. And Proto suddenly was hurtling through grey ambiguity, as star specks whirled about in shining ellipses.

  For once, he landed smoothly, starting his forward stride while the vague oblivion was still clarifying into physical reality. His foot landed just as the misty blue hallway of Somnus’ realm became recognizable. Momentum forced him into a brisk walk before he’d gotten his bearings.

  At the same time, Astrid apparated beside him and began advancing at the same pace. In fact, the timing of her footfalls precisely matched his.

  After about ten steps at exactly the same time, with Proto exactly at her side, Astrid looked up at him and frowned. “Are you trying to do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked innocently. “Is it so strange that we’d walk two abreast, my good Queen Moonwing?”

  She widened her violet eyes at him and wagged a finger. “Oh, no no no no. What happens in fairy dreams, stays in fairy dreams.”

  “Keep it secret? But why, my fair Matriarch of the Moss and Queen of the Copses?” inquired Proto. “Conceal our frolic in the mystic forest? Our rendezvous in Utterflutter’s realm? Our tryst amid the enchanted trees? Our bliss amid the sylvan bowers?”

  “Excuse me while I puke,” she replied.

  “And . . . she’s back,” sighed Proto.

  “It’d probably be rainbow-colored flower-fertilizer vomit,” she grumbled.

  “That’d go over well at a cosplay convention,” he observed. “‘Hot queen of the fae barfs in seven colors.’ You’d be swarmed by neckbearded men with phone cameras in seconds.”

  “I could be the ‘boring girl who does nothing,’ and that would still happen,” she replied.

  He shrugged and nodded. “Those events always feel like a sausage platter with a severe mustard shortage.”

  Her scoff couldn’t quite hide her laughter. “ . . . are you comparing me to mustard?”

  “Can I call you Honey Mustard? Dijon Darling? Horseradish Hottie?” asked Proto, as Astrid just shook her head and failed to suppress her grin. “No?”

  “Keep it up, and your new nickname will be Split Sausage,” she answered.

  Proto covered himself protectively, then studied his own pose. “I look like you did when you saw what you were wearing. A leafy two-piece! You looked like Eve’s fairy godmother. Or Tinkerbell at the beach.”

  “What happens in fairy dreams, stays in fairy dreams,” she repeated firmly.

  “Are you sure? You’d rule the cosplay convention circuit!” he pressed. But she just smiled and shook her head.

  “Also, while we’re on the subject, I have a question for you,” Proto continued, as Astrid glanced over curiously. “Have you ever heard the word ‘tsundere’”?

  She launched a backhand at him. He barely ducked beneath it.

  “What the hell! Just from that?” he marveled. “ . . . guess I hit a nerve, huh? You’re just proving it, you know.”

  He expected the next swat and ducked again, but this one came much lower.

  Thanks to his evasive maneuver, she missed her intended target—which was very fortunate indeed—but instead hit his funny bone. A jolt of mingled pain, tickles and numbness thrilled up his arm.

  “Augh!” He shook his arm in a vain attempt to restore feeling, as Astrid giggled. “If it’s not split sausage, it’s pounded meat, huh?”

  She tossed back her silvery-blue hair and laughed musically.

  “Anyway, that certainly hit a nerve,” he grumbled.

  “You deserve it for hurting my hand,” she responded archly. “With that hard elbow of yours. Rules are rules.”

  “Once again,” he replied, clutching his ailing limb, “I can’t help feeling this game is rigged against me!”

  “And yet here you are, still playing!” she observed. “Maybe the best games aren’t the easiest ones?”

  “Here I am, in a literal dream realm, with free drinks and half-hour workdays. And what do I do?” mused Proto. “I play on Nightmare Mode!”

  “If you work at it long enough,” she replied lightly, her gaze sparkling, “you get the best rewards that way. Right?”

  Looking into her violet eyes, he searched for an answer there. But he couldn’t see all the way down their depths. He just saw a dark reflection of himself within a dazzling circle, as when the moon eclipses the sun but can’t quite hide it.

  He opened his mouth to voice that—at least, as best he could. But another voice spoke first.

  “What are you two doing over here?” asked Mayger. Today, his pink hair was pomaded like mid-1960s Clint Eastwood, and he was wearing a fringed leather jacket. “You were in the Zone of the Fishes, right? You take the long way back?”

  “Where you headed, cowboy?” Astrid asked. She looked irked, like she’d just taken her first big bite of dinner when the waiter asked her an unnecessary question. “Holding a country music concert?”

  “Stopping a stickup.” He double finger-pointed at her. “I’m running late. Ciao.”

  “Try not to stain your coat,” she called to him as he walked off.

  “It’s vinyl, it’ll be okay.” The slim man disappeared around a corner.

  Astrid resumed leading Proto down the corridors. “What were you saying?” she eventually asked.

  “Oh, I don’t remember,” he replied. This wasn’t quite true. It was more like he’d only half worked out what to say, and he no longer felt up to it.

  “Ah.” She continued in silence until the entrance to the lounge came in view.

  “I have a question,” said Proto, his steps slowing.

  “Hm?” She gave him a violet blink, childlike in its wideness.

  “Why wasn’t that dreamer bothered by all the magic and weirdness in her dream?” he asked. “I feel like it’s exactly the sort of stuff that would’ve woken our other dreamers.

  “Ah. Yes, that’s probably right.” Astrid’s face fell back into frosty inscrutability, like a snowflake hitting the ground. “I told you we have to work within the story of the dream. If you think that means we have to stick to realism at its most boring, you’ve been learning the wrong lessons.”

  And . . . she’s back. Again. He felt a rueful smile form.

  She turned away. “I had a feeling that dreamer would allow some magic. I picked her today for that reason.”

  “Because that made it easy for me?” asked Proto.

  Astrid looked back at him, her violet eyes gone wide again. But in a blink, they’d narrowed. “Yes,” she responded, flat and cold as ice. “That’s why.”

  She strode into the lounge, and he followed.

  “I was rather fond of the breathing world, once,” Somnus was recounting to Lilac, as she cleaned off her coffee machinery. “I used to visit folk up there all the time. They loved me! Poets invoked me! Would you believe it?”

  “After hearing a story fifty times,” replied Lilac, “one tends to believe it.”

  “Nowadays, if anyone invoked me, they’d probably toss him in the loony bin!” sighed Somnus, ignoring her. “Which, by the way, they named after Luna. Quite unfairly, I might add. She’s so sweet.”

  Astrid slowed as she passed the tables, grasping a chair as though on the verge of sitting. Then, she turned and walked out the door with the tree tapestry.

  Proto paused and stared after her, then sat in the chair she’d grasped.

  “They’d probably put you there too,” Lilac replied to Somnus.

  “Yes. Unlike certain others, who are high on the bitter and low on the sweet.” Somnus flung his hand idly toward the bartendress. “It’s a good thing you brew coffee for a living, Lilac! Where else can one pour out such bitterness to such delicious effect?”

  “Stand-up comedy?” suggested Lilac.

  “Touché,” allowed Somnus. “But yes, that’s the thing about folk up there now. They all think too hard about everything. Like coffee’s running in their veins!” he lamented. “They leave less and less time to be flesh-and-blood humans. At this point, it’s mostly just when they’re dreaming!”

  “Speaking of which.” Somnus turned toward Proto. “Welcome back! How was it?”

  “Dreamy,” shrugged Proto. He felt like he’d just woken from a good dream and realized it’d been fake.

  “Well, that’s the best kind, isn’t it?” mused the Lord of Dreams, slapping the bar. “What’ll it be?”

  “I’ll have a coffee. The usual way.” Proto nodded at Lilac.

  She blinked and nodded back, reaching for the black mug with a white-lacquered crack. She brushed one of her two loose black tresses off her pale face. It immediately fell back where it’d been.

  “Coffee. Is no one any fun today?” lamented Somnus. “At least have a pastry with it!”

  Proto wasn’t in the mood for sweetness. “How about biscotti?”

  “Naturally! The most boring of all cookies,” sighed Somnus.

  “They’re my specialty, you know,” Lilac noted.

  “Oh, come on, don’t retroactively make an ass of me!” protested the Lord of Dreams.

  A minute later, the quiet bartendress set the steaming black mug and white biscotti in front of Proto. “Let me know how it is.” She turned around. “I think they’re a good pair.” And back to the bar she glided.

  She was right. She usually was, on the rare occasions that she voiced her thoughts. He dipped the dry bread into black bitterness and, biting down, savored it. It wasn’t sweet, but somehow made the bitter sweeter.

  Feeling the coffee waking him up, he closed his eyes and relished it. His mind went empty as he filled his stomach. Sometimes, all that one needs to feel better is some contrast.