Chapter 31

Kitty found Felix sitting on the roof near the edge of the Hub. She climbed out a nearby window and walked over. He had propped a large sheet of paper in front of himself, with a half-finished sketch on it, but didn't seem to be painting. Kitty sat down beside him.

For long minutes she just sat, watching the skies with him. After awhile Felix began to work again, finishing the sketch. It was a forest, each line detailed and precise, showing Wychwood Hills forest as it was directly in front of them, with the full moon hanging overhead and casting its light on everything. All that was left to add was colour.

"Why don't you just cast an illusion on the paper?" asked Kitty, breaking the silence.

"I'm not sure," said Felix softly, pulling out a set of coloured pencils. "I think… it would feel like cheating, somehow."

"Oh," said Kitty. A deep green was shading in the trees, quickly but evenly. She watched his hand, controlling the colour, moving it around, spreading it out. With a jolt she noticed that his eyes were glittering too much in the moonlight.

"Don't cry!" she said. "Please don't!"

Felix quickly rubbed his arm across his eyes. "I'm not," he said, returning his pencil to the paper. "I don't cry."

Kitty watched his eyes. There was more blue in them now, she noticed. It made him look more… human somehow. "Why are you sad?" she whispered.

"I'm not—" said Felix, breaking off as he looked up and met Kitty's eyes. "I… don't know," he said, searching through the case of pencils for the next colour. He left off the search briefly to rub his eyes again.

"Yes, I do," he contradicted himself. "Now that I… Kitty, I have to leave"

"Why?" asked Kitty.

He looked down at his picture. "I… Azetera told me. While I was fighting him. Kitty, if the curse isn't taken off, sooner or later I'm going to… I'll turn into one of them. A demon fairy. I don't know when."

He looked back at Kitty, awaiting her reaction, and probably bracing himself for it. He blinked when she smiled up at him.

"I know that," she said. "And I don't care. Do you think I'd let you turn into one of those things?"

"But… how could you…"

"You don't know what happened to Dameneses," she told him.

For a moment he just sat, watching here eyes. "That's… true," he said at last. "What happened?"

"She stopped being Dameneses," said Kitty, looking back up at the sky. "And decided that she didn't want to stay. So she brought me back to school and then left."

"You… you did that?" said Felix.

"Yup," said Kitty, smiling up at the stars.

Felix found the colour he'd been looking for. The trees of the forest came into sharper focus as a deeper green was used to feather in individual branches. Felix was frowning slightly in concentration as he added depth to the image.

Kitty bit her lip, thinking, then suddenly twisted both hand together on her lap and said, "what… what was it like? When you were younger?"

Then she sat, watching him, and waited. Would he be able to tell her?

Felix was quiet for a long time. Only his hand moved on the paper, adding details with a still darker colour. The forest was nearly finished. Finally he shifted, so that he was sitting crosslegged at the edge of the roof.

When he spoke, it was in a quiet, even voice, and he kept his eyes on his picture.

"My parents died before I was old enough to have even a dim recollection of them. I don't know how. I was sent off to a Home somewhere. I don't know which one; it was too long ago, and I didn't stay there long. It wasn't in Chirault. I don't even know my real name: I was left somewhere, and I was named by the first person who found me.

"Since I could never remember anything that happened during the transformation, I had no idea that I was different from the other students. The fact that I rarely stayed at any one Home for more than a couple of months didn't affect me much: I just thought that was the way it was for everyone. At least when I was younger the most I could do was scare a few teachers—the creature grew stronger as I grew older, and new aspects kept popping up.

"When I was about six, it started to get stranger. I think that was about when the… the wings started growing. I started hearing other people talking about it: about 'demonic possession' and things like that, though I never really associated it with myself. I never stayed anywhere longer than a month. When I was eight, I knew something was wrong, but no one I asked could provide me with an answer. By the time they knew what I was talking about, they were too scared to say anything, and then I would leave anyway. I decided to try to figure it out on my own. I figured out the pattern: I even linked it with the new moon. But no matter what I did, I could never seem to stay awake long enough to see what was happening. I would go to some empty room: deserted classroom, closet, somewhere, and wait, but the moment the sun set, I was gone. I would wake up that morning somewhere else with no recollection of anything that had happened.

"By this point the students at the Homes I went to were more curious than frightened. I wasn't being moved around so much, probably because—though I didn't know it then—as part of my experiments, I would go somewhere away from everyone else, thereby lessening the chances of me meeting anyone. But I had still been to more Homes than anyone else I had met. And yet I wasn't a complete delinquent, I didn't seem to have any obvious problems… why did I keep getting sent away?"

He looked down at his image. He had started on the sky, using a dark indigo that graded down to a sort of violet towards the bottom of the page. Kitty watched him.

"Something happened," she said quietly.

Felix closed his eyes, his hand falling limp on the paper. "Two years ago. Galaway sent me off to Pendanz after a teacher was attacked. It was the first time anything like that had happened."

"Oh," said Kitty softly.

"At Pendanz, I kept on with my strategy… but on the first new moon there, I woke up to find someone with me. A girl. She had her own Ezyphirian heritage, and she knew what was happening to me. She helped me, from that point forward. We looked for more information, through libraries, archives… she even had a little book, mostly burned to pieces, that let her translate some texts in the original language of the Ezyphir." His voice grew softer. "It's my book now."

Kitty put a hand to her mouth, looking at him. Something horrible had happened, she knew that much. Did she… did she really want to know?

"Up till I met her, I'd regarded the whole affair as being deadly serious. But at Pendanz, it started to seem ridiculous… laughable, even." Felix gave a short, mirthless laugh. "We would draw skewed pictures of the creature, making it look funny, and we'd laugh. We were going to lift the curse. We could find a way. We would.

"With her help, I stayed at Pendanz for over a year, longer than I'd ever stayed anywhere. I even had a friend. I was happy."

He stopped and drew in a long, shuddering breath. He looked sideways at Kitty, who had pulled her coat tighter around herself.

"But… one night… she was late."

"Oh…" said Kitty. She heard the catch in his voice, knew that he was on the verge of crying. She knew what was coming.

And she didn't care. Kitty leaned over and took hold of Felix's arm. "Stop," she said softly. "Stop, it's all right. I don't care."

He looked over at her, his pale eyes glittering again, shining in the light of the full moon. "But…"

"I'm sorry," said Kitty, holding his arm. "I'm sorry that I was avoiding you after the factory."

"You should have kept at it," said Felix bitterly, putting his face in his hands. "You'll be lucky if you don't get hurt." His voice dropped again. "It's all I've done in the past."

Abruptly Kitty leaned over and threw her arms around him. His eyes opened.

"I don't care," she said. "I don't care what you've done. You don't have to say it if it hurts… I already know. And it'll be all right. You'll see. Tiara has the spellbook, we have the wand… we'll lift the curse."

She couldn't see his face, couldn't see his eyes. "And I'm not scared of you," she whispered, so softly she could hardly hear herself.

Suddenly his hand was brushing her chin. She looked up to see him smiling down at her, tilting her face up towards his.

"I know you aren't," he said quietly.

Kitty closed her eyes.

There was a creak from behind them. They both jerked, turning around. The soft feeling of Felix's hand beneath her chin vanished as Kitty's eyes flew open.

"Hey," said Julian, climbing out of the window. "Ms. Anthem told me to find you guys. School is officially back on, and that means curfew."

"I thought that Madame Kenzing was head now," said Kitty, as Felix began to put away the coloured pencils. The drawing was finished.

Julian shrugged. "Well, you think Ms. Anthem doesn't think ahead?" he said. "She left a will to… well, herself, I suppose the case would be now. She's taking back the school first thing in the morning. And Tiara's going to be a student here! I don't know about Natasha and Alan, but it's looking like they'll stay too. They're spending the night here, at any rate."

"Are they?" said Felix, standing up. "Where?"

"I think in one of the sub-wings," said Julian. He caught sight of the completed picture just as Felix was picking it up. "Oh wow!" he exclaimed. "No wonder you're an Arts major. So that's why you're up here!"

"Yeah," said Felix, smiling at Kitty. "Why else?"

::00::::00::

Raven brushed off her hands, watching as Alistair slowly straightened out of his frozen crouch and stretched out his arms.

"Oh, phew," he said. "What happened in there?"

"I accidentally turned you to stone," said Raven nonchalantly, putting her bag of fairy dust back into her pocket. "And then reversed it."

"Well, I'm glad you did," said Alistair, looking around at the courtyard they were standing in. "Hey, what happened to Azetera?"

Raven smiled. "He's not Azetera any more."

Alistair squinted at her until she laughed. "Let's go inside."

::00::::00::

Deep in the forest of Wychwood Hills, a forest cat poked at the crumpled form of a boy. He moaned, waving a limp hand at the animal, finally sitting up and pushing at it. Startled, the creature ran.

The boy looked around, his pale blue eyes showing surprise. His hair was long and dark, and his face was painted with lined and blocks of colour, for all the world like tattoos. However, the patterns rubbed off easily as he brushed his hand over his face. He stared at the colour on his palm almost uncomprehendingly at first, then with growing excitement. He reached up to feel the rest of his face, his ears, his hair, a slow grin spreading across his face. Paint flaked off beneath his fingers and tumbled to the ground.

Laughing, Wren stood up.

::00::::00::

By the way: the last scene with Dameneses didn't involve much magic and weirdness. Kitty was playing off Dameneses' rather weakened psychological state... there may have been magic involved, but the truth will remain forever a secret! Muahahahaha!!

Well, that's it! Thankies to everyone who reviewed and...

Shameless plug: I have a Deviantart account! And it's official: I am a better artist than I am a writer.I even have pictures of the characters posted... anime style, of course, and probably looking very different than anyone thought they would, but... still! Address is on my Bio page, if anyone's interested.

So, that's it, thanks to devilblondie for reviewing every chapter since finding me, and Wolfie Star26, and a couple of others (a short list for this one... but meh)

So... when I actually get somewhere on making this a manga, maybe I'll post news... or if I get bored I may write blurbs, weird little post-epilogue scenes, that sort of thing... but other than that, this account will probably remain silent for awhile.

Thanks to everyone who read and didn't review, as well.

And so concludes the only story I have ever written that actually reached a satisfactory conclusion.