Sparrow Truman May 4th, 20XX

I awoke in a cold sweat as I sensed the presence of another magical being in my workshop but quickly relaxed after I noticed how old the trace was.

The prince had probably stopped by in the middle of the night and had left soon after.

I took down the cheap charms I had gotten from one of the other witches with a sense of slight irritation. He had said it would be able to protect where I slept from intruders but had neglected to mention that it had a limit.

The prince was probably too strong to have even noticed it never mind have been stopped by it.

The bell to the workshop began to ring obnoxiously and forced me to go answer it.

“Who is it!”

Even as I yelled I took a look at the doorbell monitor to see the tired and overworked face of Jake.

“Just a moment!”

I quickly hid the tattoos on my arm by retracting them into my birthmark, only to feel that something was wrong.

As I completed a quick scan I couldn’t stop a small grin from popping up on my face as I recognized the thin aversion spell and carefully pushed it to the side. I wasn’t going to rip it away for fear of alerting the fairy prince to anything but there were ways to maneuver around it.

Underneath it was a mass of protection spells and alerts, generally aimed around life-threatening danger but a few were to put markers on whoever attacked me, probably to let the prince track them down if he couldn’t get here and save me in time.

It was almost heartwarming if I disregarded how alarming it was that he had placed so many heavy spells on what he thought was a human.

As I did all that I took a pair of scissors to my hair that for some reason kept growing to waist length every time I went to the other world. I intended to style it but the doorbell kept incessantly ringing despite my confirmation that I was in. I ended up tying the rest of it back to hide the messiness.

By the time I opened the door Jake looked four steps away from collapsing and crashed onto the chair in three.

“Sparrow, I already have to deal with Finn’s disappearing acts do I have to add yours to the roster?”

He didn’t sound all that angry despite his harsh words but he was also visibly unhappy. I could only give an awkward smile in return as I tried to adjust between worrying about an otherworldly fairy prince that barged into my room regularly and apparently hated all witches to the point of genocide and about a high school show that somehow seemed less and less important to me by the minute.

I tried not to show my growing disinterest though and humoured the man that had somehow disregarded the appropriately sized couch and had instead flopped into its much smaller counterpart.

“What do you mean Jake, I’ve been right here?”

Instead of verbally debating my claim he just pulled out his phone and dialled my number then blankly stared me down as my unnecessarily loud ringtone filled the room.

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“I’ve been here like four times and have called you each time. never mind getting a response I couldn’t even hear your ringtone through the door.”

He laid back down and closed his eyes, furrowing his brow when his phone began to ring.

“Sparrow.. look I don’t really care where you’ve been since its not any of my business but can you at least call your minions off me? I feel like I’m about to pass a kidney stone whenever my phone rings.”

I finally picked up my phone that had been incessantly buzzing in the background and was flooded with a bunch of text messages and missed calls that almost made me feel bad about not telling warning anyone and taking off.

“You guys changed the concept?”

Jake only groaned in response and rolled over in the tiny chair, exposing his back to me.

“Call Melissa because I don’t know, I don’t want to know and I have no intentions of learning.”

At the sheer exhaustion in his usually kind voice, I couldn’t even get mad at his dismissiveness and instead just got to work calling around and sorting everything out.

Thankfully I had planned for this so it wouldn’t set us back too far but we were definitely at a disadvantage. So many new people had joined that we had no choice but to use a whole ‘world’ so to speak as a concept so each section could show off their strengths.

We had copped out and chosen an ancient civilization as inspiration but to avoid direct comparison with Alice who had not only had more time, people and money but also popularity to affect the votes and an influential uncle that she flaunted around every five seconds. We had been sure she would go for a more fantastical concept as a play on her namesake from the old fairy tale but it looked like she wanted to be a bit flashier this time.

I sent a look to her ex-boyfriend who was currently half-conscious on my couch and a brief flash of the tacky nickname he’s had her saved under in his contact list gave me a vague idea of another reason she had avoided the concept but I chose to keep my theory to myself.

The thought of having to take such an insignificant human girl so seriously as my competition did bother me more than a little but I also couldn’t wash my hands of it and let down all of the people that had joined me. Even if we didn’t win I wanted to at least get them to a level where they could impress others and have better chances later on.

I got to work calling around and making busy work, expecting Jake to make his exit while I did so but he stayed where he was, having at some point flipped over and now stared at me.

“If you keep staring at me I might blush.”

He dismissed my half-hearted attempt to throw him off his guard and continued to stare me down like he was trying to remember something through my features.

“Something’s different about you Sparrow, and it's not just your hair. Are you okay?”

I tried to laugh off how caught off guard I was but I couldn’t help but feel unsettled. There wasn’t any way a human would be able to detect anything, and even another being from another world would have a hard time detecting anything off about me with my tattoos rolled into my birthmark.

“What do you mean Jake? I’m a bit tired but I don’t think its enough to diminish my stunning beauty right?”

Once again he brushed off my joking praise of myself and continued to stare me down until I actually began to feel a faint blush creep up to my ears.

All of a sudden I was suddenly very inspired to do some planning and dove into my work, making calls and holding makeshift meetings with the concept artists and scriptwriters.

It wasn’t that I was ignoring him so I could focus but that there was a lot to do.

Eventually, he nodded off to sleep and left me to it but I couldn’t hide my curiosity and in between calls I did a quick scan.

Sure enough, the prince had gotten to Jake as well but now the question was why?

As far as I knew they had only met once when he had attacked him on my behalf but he had sealed Jake’s memory of the event afterwards.

I thought about it for a while but couldn’t come up with a logical reason and eventually settled on setting a few alarms of my own.

I wasn’t even nearly strong enough to replicate the number of spells the Prince had but I could at least put on something to let me know if any of them were ever activated.

As a final thought, I also embedded a small transport point onto him. This way I would be able to get here faster or in more serious situations transport him towards me.

I hesitated as transporting carried a high risk for humans to use without the proper protection but in the case, I would have to use it I doubted that would be the biggest danger he would be facing.