A few prequel scenes, 20 years before Barry Anderson takes place!

I’m trying to let myself post more frequently instead of waiting until everything is perfectly polished and in order. I think it’s more fun to share scenes and let everyone get to know the characters along the way.  Helps against my perfectionism as well.

It’s Halloween season 1999, and Frank Anderson is in the middle of his accounting major.

Previously, Frank had wandered into a funky little shop because his girlfriend, Virginia, wanted incense. Their relationship has been rocky lately…

…and the girl working in the shop was so very cute.

Frank Anderson tried to be nonchalant as he walked into the quirky little incense shop, running a hand through his hair.  This was dumb, he knew; he didn’t even know if she was working today, and he was supposed to meet Virginia later!  But he’d been right down the street and the idea of seeing her again had pushed away his misgivings about taking a detour into the store.  If she wasn’t there, he’d probably pretend to be really into the graphic t-shirts for a minute before turning right back around and leaving.

But there she was, behind the jewelry case filled with rocks, underneath the funky mismatched lamps: the dignified brunette who had helped him buy incense his first time in the store.  She looked up to see who had come in, and lit up with a smile that she probably used for everyone, but excited Frank, it being turned on him.

“Hi!” she said warmly, voice magically both breathy and sturdy. “Need any help finding anything today?”  As casual as the shop atmosphere was, she wasn’t wearing a uniform, but her outfit was pretty (actually quite sexy), and looked like she could have walked out of the show Charmed, with a silky, dark red halter top and black jeans.

“Uhh,” Frank hesitated, readjusting his glasses.  He should have worked out more of a game plan in case she was working!  “Mostly looking today.”  Doh, that was a bad move!  He should ask for her help so he’d get to talk to her!

“Okay, well let me know if you need anything,” she smiled, and went back to whatever she was looking at.

Just ask about something, anything, Frank thought.  “So what’s the deal with the fancy rocks?” he pointed with a smile.  “I’m assuming people aren’t just spending $6 on a piece of specularite because it’s pretty.  And this doesn’t really seem like a geology major hang-out.”

She seemed surprised he was striking up a conversation with her.  “No.  They’re mostly types of crystals.  People buy them because they believe they have different spiritual and magical abilities.”

Frank raised a skeptical eyebrow, worried about offending the cute girl, but definitely not a believer when it came to “magic” or most spirituality.  “And do they?  Have magic?”

The pretty girl got a mischievous smile on her elegant, long face and shook her head.  “Not like that, no.”

He grinned at her honesty, and was relieved she wasn’t into that hokey stuff.

“They are really pretty though, look!” she said persuasively, pulling a beautiful faceted purple rock out from the back of the cabinet, it casting sparkles on her face.  “Amethyst!”

“Mmhmm, really pretty,” he said, glancing from the rock to her face as he said it.

She seemed to notice and she blushed, busying herself with putting the gemstone back.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t really seem to go with this place,” he commented, leaning an elbow on the counter to be able to talk more quietly and get closer to her.

She laughed.  “It’s a job.  You’re the one who’s come in here twice!  Doesn’t really seem to go with your vibes either.  Unless you’re a closet weed guy.”

“Not exactly.”  He’d done it once in a while, and it’d been satisfying to slow his mind down, but he didn’t exactly consider himself a stoner or anything.

“Besides,” she grew businesslike suddenly, “I like incense.”  She walked out from behind the counter and over to the large displays of burnable sticks.  “They make it all here now, you know!  And ship it all over the country.  That’s what you bought last time.  Was that what you were interested in today?  We carry so many scents.”

She wasn’t buying his failed attempt to be casual.  “Maybe…” he tried noncommittally.

“Did your girlfriend like your last purchase?” she inquired pointedly.

Oh.  She remembered.  “Uhh, yeah she did, actually,” he admitted.  “I was, uh, trying to get her on my good side… since we’ve been on the rocks lately.”  He wanted to plant seeds there, and it had been true, overall.

“Uh huh,” she said, folding her arms, unimpressed, not letting him off the hook.

“But, y’know, there’s only so much that the granny version of a bong can do for a relationship,” he commented, running his fingers over the dipped tips of the incense sticks in their assorted jars.

She actually laughed at that and he was relieved.  “Well, maybe you should buy a stick for yourself and try it out,” she suggested.

“I don’t think the guys in the house would be keen on me burning girly smelly stuff,” he laughed.  “And they might think I’m doing some kind of weird ritual, trying to summon girls to my room or something.”

She got that mischievous smile again, straightening a weird old tree man statue on a shelf.  “Uh oh, frat boy?” she asked after a second.

“Kinda,” he laughed.  “Technically, yes, but I’m the stick-in-the-mud who tells them they don’t have the budget to throw the parties they’re throwing… and then they don’t listen to me and throw them anyway,” he smirked.  “I’m an accounting major.”

“Mm,” she murmured, sounding more interested than he’d expected.

He hadn’t thought divulging the information exactly sounded “cool” or anything, but he hadn’t wanted to come off like an immature party guy, especially since she looked a couple years older than him.  “Are you in school?”

She seemed surprised at the question.  “Oh… I finished.  A… few years ago.”

Oh, he processed that, startled.  He hadn’t thought she was that much older than him.  She might be like… twenty-five??  He really hoped he didn’t look stupid and immature now.

“I studied Hospitality, but I got bored trying to actually go into a career with it,” she shrugged.  “So now I sell sparkly rocks and toker pins.  Who’da thunk?”  Her blue eyes were beautiful and timeless.

Frank licked his lips nervously, trying to think what to say next, but the door chimed just then.

The enchanting brunette straightened, pulling out of the proximity electricity with Frank and putting her friendly smile back on.  “Hi there,” she said to the new customer, a middle aged woman with fried-looking wavy hair and big John Lennon circle sunglasses, “can I help you with anything today?”

“No, I’m fine,” the woman waved a hand, going for a display in the back.  “I know exactly what I need!”

Her job fulfilled, the cute shop girl leaned back against the incense display with both hands and sighed casually at Frank, expectantly.  Man, she was shaped hot; great hips in her tight, slightly flared black jeans, her whole body slender but still nicely curved.

“I don’t think I caught your name last time,” he quirked a smile at her, keeping his voice low since there was someone else in the store now.

Her thin brows went up.  “Oh, probably not.  It’s Dania.  Dania Duffy.”  She nodded to herself.

“That’s really pretty!” he told her.  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that; ‘Dania.’”

“Thank you!” she beamed.  “I like it.  I don’t think you told me yours either.”

“Uh, Frank Anderson.”

“Well, that is an accountant name!” she teased.  “Did you walk out doing taxes so they named ya?”

He laughed, feeling his cheeks warm, which they didn’t do often.  “Basically.”

“I’ve picked out my stuff!  I’m ready!” the other customer wheezed, dropping a bunch of crystal pendants, enamel pins and matchbooks on the counter.

“Perfect!” Dania raised her voice cheerily.  “I’ll check you out, just one second!”

Frank was going to lose her conversation, but he was out of things to say.  But to his shock, she looked flatly at him for a moment, not walking back over to the cash register yet.

“You’re not going to buy anything, are you?” she asked, humored.

“Oh, uh, I… I could…” he glanced around, trying to find something he’d remotely want, to try and make the interaction seem worth her while.

She sighed again, giving him a look like she was talking to a little boy.  “Frank, do you want to go get coffee sometime?”

His eyebrows shot up.  “What?  Oh, uh, yes!  I’d love to go get coffee with you!”

“Good!” she said, proud and long-suffering.  “I need to go back to work now.  Call the shop later and I’ll give you my number, and we can decide when to meet for coffee, okay?”

“Uh, yeah, sounds great!” he stammered, still too shocked to form intelligent sentences.

“Okay,” she smiled.  “Seeya later, Frank.”  And with that she walked with a sexy hip-swish, back over to her place behind the counter and started cheerily interacting with the woman buying ‘magic necklaces.’

And Frank left the shop, feeling a little bewitched.

I was going for a very ‘90s/’00s Whimsigoth vibe for Dania in this scene, like she suspiciously could have walked out of Charmed, Buffy, or Practical Magic.  She’s a classy young woman with polish, and definitely no magical secrets.  …Definitely.

I use Annapantsu’s extra sultry cover of W. I. T. C. H. by Devon Cole here, and I’m obsessed with how cheeky it feels for Dania. The young, bespectacled future accountant encounters a confident blue-eyed beauty with a mysterious femininity that leaves him enchanted—while I get to have fun with the irony, because Dania is quietly winking at the audience the whole time as she leaves him feeling bewitched.

(Yes, it’s canon that Dania is a huge Bewitched fan because of how it mirrors her own love story)

I relish in the irony of writing a skeptic who has no clue what genre he just stepped into.

 

Maybe a year or less later, Frank and Dania have been dating for a while.  They’ve used “The L Word,” and are both flirting around the edges of the marriage-talk.

Frank loves his average life with average things in it.

I’ve never seen the action-thriller movie The Accountant, but when I was looking for Frank music, I encountered the eponymous theme song and knew I needed it for Frank, happily lord of his contented mundane domain.  It’s routine, and he likes it that way.  It’s the kind of life you can steer and wrap your head around.  It’s safe, and in his control, with Dania as the beautiful ribbon on the top of his brown box life.

But the ominous notes at the end show a slight vignette on his magazine picture, a browning on the edge of the pumpkin patch.  What if his unfettered desktop utopia has something shimmering beneath the surface, like snake scales?

“You doing okay?  You’ve barely touched my French fries,” Frank teased with a smirk.

“Hmm?” Dania murmured.  Yeah, she was obviously quite distracted.  After a moment she seemed to process what he’d said and she laughed.  “Do I really eat that many of your fries?”

He put his hands up.  “Hey, did I complain??”

She smiled gratefully, but her expression was almost instantly swept away with worry.  “Frank… can we go walk after we’re finished here?”

Uh oh.  That didn’t sound good.  He swallowed and tried to smile nonchalantly.  “Sure.”

She ate a few of his french fries in relief.

 

Dania was uncharacteristically quiet as Frank drove to the park she’d requested, one they’d visited once before, the one with the old bridge over Four Mile Creek.  It was already getting dark and Frank considered bringing up that the park might close at sunset, but his girlfriend was intent in a way that told him this was important to her.  Dania Duffy was a very accommodating person… until she wasn’t.  And it was in those times he’d learned to give her what she wanted, for her wrath was much more intimidating than her usually beaming smile hinted.

She gave him a nervous smile as he parked.

“I didn’t wear my walking shoes on our date,” he pointed out.

She gave him a pensive smile.  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to drag you off out into the dark woods or anything.”

Frank immediately chuckled.  “I just meant that accountant shoes give you blisters if you try to hike.”

Dania nodded, distractedly.

“Do you have good enough shoes to walk?” he asked, brow furrowed.

She smiled more genuinely, grateful for his concern.  “I, uh, changed my shoes in the bathroom before we left the restaurant.”

“Oh really?” he asked, surprised.  “I didn’t even notice.  Sometimes I swear you conjure more shoes out of thin air.”

“Heh,” she laughed to herself, tucking her pretty brown hair behind her ear.  “You should know by now that I have essentially an endless supply of shoes,” she winked.

He smiled too.  She was very cute and girly about it.

He came around to her side of the car and opened her door for her, like he always did.

“I appreciate what a classic gentleman you are, Frank,” she said earnestly.

He grinned modestly.  “If you want to earn a lady, you gotta treat a girl like one.”

She really seemed to like that.

He locked his sedan and squeezed her hand, and they walked like that from the parking lot to the trailhead.

Dania seemed to be relaxing more.

Frank pointed to the sign with park rules and hours.  “Technically, it looks like it’s about to close, so hopefully no cops will come turn us into pumpkins at midnight.”

Dania visibly stiffened, closing his fingers in a vice-grip suddenly.

What was that about?!  Did she have some traumatic history with the police that he didn’t know about??  He’d never seen her act this way.

“Dane, I’m joking,” he pointed out.  “I don’t think anyone will care if a couple is taking a romantic walk after dark.”

“Oh, I knew you were joking!” she said, still obviously flustered.

“…Okay,” he said skeptically.

They walked a few paces and Dania was glancing around nervously.  It was a pretty wooded nature park, with a thin, paved trail, but Frank felt much too distracted to notice much about the inky trees silhouetted in the fading light, or the sounds of evening birds and crickets.

Dania was walking faster than she usually did, and finally took a determined breath.  “Franklin…?”

His brows rose quizzically.  Sometimes she called him the more formal version of his name when she was being flirty, but sometimes she did when she was being serious or annoyed with him, he’d discovered.  “Yes…?” he replied teasingly.

“Do you ever wonder if there’s more than just the normal, visible world?” she asked, a tad desperately.

That was not the direction Frank had anticipated whatsoever and he felt his defenses rise immediately.  “Dane, I told you that you can believe anything you want, as long as you don’t ask me to.  You can be Christian or Jewish or whatever you want to be, as long as you don’t push anything about God on me.”

“Oh!  That’s not what I’m talking about,” she blinked at him in the darkness, looking shocked.  “I was thinking a little more… secular but supernatural.”

“…That’s against the definition of ‘secular,’” he said flatly.

“Oh, is it?” she worried.

“I mean, yeah,” he said.  “Are you talking about ghosts or aliens or something?”

“Um, closer,” she murmured.  She sighed like this was already going badly.  “I was thinking more like magic…”

He rolled his eyes in the darkness, although she probably couldn’t see.  “No.  I don’t believe in magic.  Aside from maybe the Arthur C. Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technology being mistaken for magic.”

“I mean, define ‘technology,’” he was pretty sure she mumbled.

“What?” he asked.

She sighed grumpily, like this was definitely not the way she’d wanted the conversation to go.  “Maybe I should just show you, but I’d want to get farther in, first.”

An owl sounded in the trees.

“Show me??” he questioned, step faltering.  He turned to look at her, letting go of her hand.  They were walking deeper into the dark and lonely woods and she was starting to freak him out a little bit.  “Dane, may I remind you of the fact that I enjoy neither surprises, nor pranks?”

“It’s not either of those!” she insisted, sounding hurt and like this was slipping out of her hands quickly.  “I mean, it might be a bit of a surprise, but that’s not the point.”

He was not walking forward with her.  “The hot vampire thing is kinky and all…” he teased, trying not to panic about the weird mood in the air.

Dania scoffed, hands on her hips.  “I’m not a vampire!”

“Are you married and your serial killer husband is going to come and skin me alive?!” he suggested another possibility.

She snorted loudly.  “No.”

“If this is all a ruse to tell me that you’re married—”

“Franklin.  I’m not married.” Dania said flatly.

“Okay, good.  Are you a witch?” he laughed.

“Closer!” she said frustratedly.

“What?!” he cried.

“I mean, I’m not that either!” Dania said quickly.

“Oh god,” Frank rubbed his forehead.  “Dane, I really like you, but if you’re way into the sage burning, incantation chanting, ouija board stuff, dancing under a full moon with your girls club around a cauldron in the woods, I swear I’m out.”

“That’s not—!  (Well, some of that is fair, but not for those reasons…)” she started and stopped.

“Dania!” he shouted, rarely one to raise his voice.  “Tell me what’s going on!”

She glanced around in the essentially dark.  No one was around.

Frank waited, arms folded.

“I’m a fairy.”

He understood all three English words out of her mouth, and yet she couldn’t have said that.

There was an interminable silence.  He expected her to take it back.  Instead she added a fourth word, simply.

“I’m a fairy godmother.”

Frank swallowed, hurt.  “Dania, if you wanted to break up with me, you could have just done it at the restaurant.  You don’t have to make s*** up.  It doesn’t let me down easier or anything.  Especially this absurd—!  I told you ‘I love you!’”

“Franklin, I’m serious,” Dania murmured, worriedly.  “I’m a fairy godmother, like my mother before me.”

“…What, like a social services program?” he suddenly hoped she was just talking about some good-doer-y program for women around town to donate dresses to underprivileged girls, and knit baby blankets anonymously.

She exhaled wearily.  “No.  Like in storybooks.  The kind that appear and grant wishes.”

Frank snorted with utter skepticism, not sure how else to react.  “Do you get real tiny too?”

He could barely see her face, but she was frowning with displeasure.  “Those are pixies.”

“Of course they are.”

“There are several types of fairies, but I’m a fairy godmother, we’re the all-female type of fairies,” she was going on.

“Uh huh,” he replied, entirely unsure how to respond.  How were you supposed to react when your girlfriend told you she believed she was the Easter Bunny??  Was this what he got for dating someone this attractive?  Maybe something had to be wrong with someone both that beautiful and sweet, and he’d been naive to think otherwise.

Or was she just screwing with him?!  If it wasn’t so dark, he’d have wondered if the Candid Camera crew was hiding in the trees.

“But there’s a whole world of magic, behind the scenes…” Dania was saying passionately, tugging his hand to try to get him to walk further.

“Are you taking me to your unicorn and mermaid friends?” Frank asked flatly.

She dropped his hand and there was a long, hurt quiet from her.  “You don’t believe me at all, do you?”

“Dania… you are just expecting me to believe that not only do fairies exist in the world, and pixies too, apparently, but that you are one?!” he said, trying to reason with her. 

She was silent for a long second, and then turned on her heel and strode away from him, deeper into the woods, toward the creek.

“Dane!” he called worriedly.  He wasn’t sure why she was acting like this, but he surely didn’t want her to get nabbed by a serial killer in the woods alone!  She didn’t stop and he followed her at pace.  “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can talk about… this.”  Whatever “this” was.

She came to a place beside the water, secluded in the darkness of the trees, away from the walking path, and stopped, facing him.  Frank stopped too, bewildered about what she was doing.

She reached into her pocket, and at this point Frank half expected her to pull a gun on him.  But no, it looked like a stick, in the bare light.

There was a last pause, with just the croaking of the creek toads.

The stick suddenly came to life with red sparks and Frank wondered if it was a road flare—

… until it rose out of her hand and hovered in the air.  Surely this was some trick, he thought as he watched the object levitating.

… Maybe aliens weren’t a far-fetched backup story??

The stick spurted like a glitter lava lamp full of ethereal red slime and it illuminated the whole glade around them as if there were a crimson bonfire.  It swirled around Dania’s body and her lovely face was determined and maybe a touch smug as it lifted her body slightly off the ground, morphing her shoes and clothes like computer graphics, right before Frank’s wide eyes.

Before he could process it, really, it had transformed her cute, casual date outfit into glittery red high heels, and a glamorous red dress.  It changed her hair too, to a saturated deep scarlet tone, and lengthened it.  But none of that freaked Frank Anderson out half as much as the gigantic wings that exploded from her back!!

He cried out and stumbled backwards a few feet.  “Holy s***!”  He wiped his glasses on his shirt as if the whole thing could somehow have been mercifully caused by a smudge on his lens, or his astigmatism.

Despite the situation, Dania chuckled.  “There’s nothing to be scared of, Franklin.  I was telling you the truth.  I’m a fairy godmother.”  Her wings glowed faintly red in the black of the forest, and they fluttered just like a butterfly.

“Am I asleep?” he checked.

“Nope,” she said sweetly.

“Am I stoned??”

“Not a bit!” she beamed.

“Do you live in a flower?” he wondered, dazed.

“No,” she smiled.  “You’ve seen my apartment.  I do enjoy gardening, though.”

“You cast spells?!” he asked, scared.

“Yes,” she said, “but mostly godchild wishes, not like witchy stuff.  We do, in actuality, make a lot of dresses.  We specialize in transformation magic.”

“…Is that why you’re so beautiful?  Transformation magic?” he asked with some desperation.

She laughed, and in retrospect it was a fairly fairy godmother-ish laugh.  “You’re sweet.  But no, this is just me.”  Her now-red brows lowered in consideration.  “Although I am…”

“What??” he asked, not sure what other stuns he could take right now.

She seemed to think better of whatever she had been about to say.  “We can talk about that later.”

 

Frank drops her off that night in an awkward emotional place, not sure where it leaves them.  The next day…

 

Even the tinkling of the bell on the store door made Frank jumpy.

Dania didn’t look up at the sound, helping a customer at the front counter with the “magic rocks” they sold there.  Frank felt like everything he saw was in a new and jarring light.

“Mythology says that amethyst is supposed to protect against drunkenness, but I’ve never met a student who was saved from a hangover by it!” she was laughing to the college girl she was showing the purple rock to.

She was still his sensible girl, he thought hopefully. …She just believed in magic now. … But so did he, after he’d seen it with his own eyes!

He’d walked a little farther into the store, hands going into his pockets uncomfortably; guiltily, maybe.

Dania glanced over, and her expression turned serious and worried, a pensive frown on her beautiful, elongated face.  “When you decide, just ring the bell, okay?” she pointed for the customer’s behalf.  She gave Frank a weary smile, and then turned toward the back room.  “Clay, I’m going to buzz out a little early,” she called to her coworker in the back.  “You’re here until close, right?”

There was affirmation and she disappeared for just a second—well, not literally, he thought. … Although she could do that!  So weird.  But, no, in this case she just left line of sight behind the curtain of the back room for a moment—and came back a moment later with a cardigan and a purse, probably having clocked out.

She walked purposefully towards him, clutching her bag tightly.  She didn’t say anything, letting him lead the interaction.  He appreciated that.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

“Hey,” she agreed.

“You wanna walk?”

She nodded.

They left the store and started silently down the sidewalk beside the brick road of High Street.  It was dusk again and the street lights were just coming on.  It was a pretty downtown, with old Midwestern architecture.  Frank had briefly considered being an architect, and the constantness of the buildings and the brick all around felt steadying when she’d made his world topsy-turvy.

“How are you doing?” Dania asked, still quiet.

He thought it was very sweet that she was worried about that, rather than offended by his reaction to her being a — an outlier.

“It’s been a rough 24 hours, not gonna lie,” he shrugged.

She nodded, looking disappointed.  “It’s a lot to take in.  Part of me worried I’d never hear from you again.”

“I have more integrity than that, Dane!” he said, a little hurt.

“That makes sense,” she sighed.  “Well, at least I told you before we were engaged or married, right?  Unlike Samantha in Bewitched.”

He was stunned that that could have been something that she’d concealed from him until it was too late for him to make his own decisions about it!  “I—No, thank you.  I didn’t realize that was a thing to appreciate.”

“I didn’t want you to feel like I’d ensorcelled you into anything,” she said mopily.

They were almost to campus and he stopped her between a Catholic church and a tattoo parlor, turning her around with a nudge of her shoulder.

She looked up at him with tragic, beautiful blue eyes.  Before saying anything, he placed a hand on her back and brought her close, kissing her intently on the mouth.  She returned it, sad right down to her lips.

He held her mouth intently, trying to reassure her through the gesture.

When they parted, she watched him with sweet expectancy.

“Dania, I’ve decided that I love you more than I don’t want magic to exist,” he said firmly.

She laughed in surprise.  “Is that a large amount?”

He nodded seriously.  “If I’m being completely honest, I would love to ostrich right now, and pretend that it was all a hallucination.  But I have to come to terms with it.  Especially if I want to marry the most amazing person… who happens to be a fairy godmother, apparently.”

She smiled like she was starting to hope.  “I love you too, Franklin.”

He returned the smile with relief.

“Being a fairy is a huge part of my life though,” she told him earnestly.  “Are you going to be okay with that?”

He swallowed and then nodded with determination himself.  “I might need to understand more about it.  But it seems like you use it to help people.”  He chuckled with an uncomfortable shrug.  “Well, yeah, not like I’d expect anything less from you.”

She looked grateful for the compliment.  “Yes.  A fairy godmother’s duty is to support her godchildren, to raise and teach them as if they were her own, no matter what their circumstances.”

He gave a slow nod, not sure what to think about that description.  He started walking again and she fell in beside him.  “But you can have children of your own?  With a human?”

“We don’t usually call you guys that, but yes,” she affirmed.

He raised a skeptical brow at her.  “What do you call ‘us’?”

“‘Mortals,’” she shrugged honestly.

He stopped in his tracks again.  “Are you immortal?!”

She chuckled.  “It’s a bit of a misnomer.  We have expanded life expectancies.  But we still die eventually, and can die of non-natural causes; like I could be shot, or die in an earthquake, or if you dropped a house on me.”

“…The Wizard of Oz parallel doesn’t exactly instill confidence about you not being a witch, Ms. Duffy…” he pointed out.

“If I’m a witch, I’m a good witch,” she grinned.

“Seems like that’s what a bad witch would say too,” he said sardonically.

“Yeah, but I’m prettier than a bad witch,” she teased.

“That you are,” he agreed wearily.  “So will you, like, not age??”

“Uhh,” she grew cagey and uncomfortable.

His brows rose.  He hadn’t been sure if he’d been joking or not.

“I will.  Just… slower.”  She seemed quite nervous now, and she stopped their walking this time.  “Frank, I’m thirty-one.”

He choked a little bit.  “You’re… eleven years older than me?!”

She got a proud and chagrin smile.  “Well, you’re kinda a baby, Anderson.”

He gave her an unamused look and started walking again.  He considered more implications.  “You can still have children for a while though?”

“My mom was sixty-five when she had me,” she shrugged.

The walking immediately stopped again.  “Your mother is ninety-six years old?!”

Dania just nodded, humored.

“I thought she looked great for sixty-five!”

“Fairy menopause is around eighty, and has much less dramatic symptoms than mortal menopause,” she explained simply.

“You could have kids until you’re eighty?!” he shook his head.

She gave him a little smile.  “I mean, I’d rather have them before I’m forty, if you have any volunteers to sire them.”

He chuckled in spite of himself.  It was all a lot!  But he did love her…  “I might know a guy.”

She looked relieved that that was his reply.

“But so, these kids… they’d be half-elf or whatever?” he wondered.

“They don’t really call us ‘elves’ anymore, Frank.”

“I’m sorry if I’m not politically correct to fairies yet, Dania.  I’m trying,” he said, exasperatedly.

“I’m not offended, it just sounds weird,” she shrugged.  “Yes, our children would be half-fairy.  Half-fairies have somewhat longer lifespans, but shorter than full-fay.  And if we have daughters, our oldest girl would inherit my magic and be a full fairy.  I got my powers at sixteen.”

“It’s matriarchal inheritance?” he asked curiously.

“Well, yeah.  It’s fairy godmother magic.  It’s the female type,” she explained obviously.

“Progressive of it,” he joked.

“It’s been that way back when fairy mothers were village medicine women, honey,” she smiled.  “It’s not exactly newfangled.”

That made sense, although the idea of fairies having always been there, lurking in the background of society, like a sparkly conspiracy theory, definitely made him skittish.

“But you’d be okay having a fairy godmother daughter?” she wondered, brown brows low and adorably worried.

He sighed.  “Dania, if she’s anything like you, I bet she’ll be the best fairy godmother anyone could imagine.”

I love these scenes as a kind of landscape painting for the backdrop of Barry.

If you haven’t read where this is going, there’s a tonal shift ahead—toward a boy growing up torn between two worlds, the accountant and the fairy godmother, and who, for a long time, mostly just wants the normalcy of his driver’s license for his sixteenth birthday.

Frank grows up a lot over the next eighteen years.  He becomes genuinely happy with the fact that his wife is, in fact, an adorable fairy godmother.  But there are still parts of him that forever maintain an uneasy truce with the magic he can no longer pretend doesn’t exist.

And somewhere in that household, long before Barry is even old enough to notice it, there are already definitions being quietly formed about what “Normal Anderson Guy” is supposed to mean.

 

<3 Much love,
Calise