Shortly, Luna was situated with papers, pencils, and crayons and Reginald sat at his desk to read through reports on the overnight activity of Project Present. Initially developed by himself with the small goal of creating an app to help people live in the moment, it quickly escalated in scope. He saw more potential and founded Pacific Systems Strategies with a close friend. The ‘strategies’ came into play early on as they needed an actual income and began consulting, working on Present in their spare time.

At this point, they’d expanded but not by much when it came to employees. The whole thing was very hush-hush. On the outside, the company was an asset to the community. They gave money to the building of a playground, sponsored this parking garage, and developed a programming curriculum now deployed in local schools as an extracurricular activity.

They were a perfect gift to the area and hardly more than freelance advisors, but behind closed doors they were further developing Present.

In the beginning, he wanted to create a quick, helpful application, but the plans grew so quickly that he could hardly remember when it became more. Now, they were attempting to combine camera and microphone access with the AI. The next phase was to test it in real life.

What they were hoping to do with Present was further develop the machine learning algorithm and integrate the app with a pilot program; they were planning on using family and friends as guinea pigs. It was safe, but invasive. Still, the way the younger generation viewed privacy was warped and he didn’t think they’d have a problem marketing.

Lost in his thoughts Reginald became, as he frequently did when it came to work hours, and Luna ate a chocolate doughnut as Donner complained about everything. She'd given up arguing when it was revealed that he didn’t intend to win or lose, he was in a bad mood all around and had been since she was put in a dress this morning. For some reason, he was taking the lace and the bow personally, which was dumb. It had nothing to do with him, but he was mad at her for not fighting it. She didn’t want to, though. She’d never worn a dress before, not that she could remember, and she didn’t mind it. Besides, she thought she should get used to it because girls were expected to wear even longer dresses under their robes; she didn’t understand why he was so upset about it and determined to find out whenever she next fell asleep.

“Don’t even try,” his tone held a threat. “That is none of your business. I may be trapped in your mind, but you cannot access mine freely.”

“Fortune tellers are real?” She changed the subject. Forget his mental anguish; ain't nobody had time for that and she would find out the truth of his dark past one way or another.

“Yes,” he didn’t sound as enthused as she thought he should. Then again, it was rare for him to be anything but irritated. She wondered if he was like that before he landed in her head, too. “Diviners, they’re called, though the curriculums of all the approved schools downplay their role in Society.”

“There are more schools?”

“Did you think the children arbitrarily began schooling at twelve or thirteen? Many are home-educated, but others attend official institutions. Or unofficial, depending on who their parents are and what they can afford.”

So, there were many magic schools. “How do they keep it hidden? If there are schools all over the place, wouldn’t people notice?”

“Magic, obviously," she could feel him rolling his eyes. "Charmed gates turn away the eyes of the uninvolved and combinations of plant properties mix to dispel suspicion. That and people don’t pay attention to things that don’t concern them on either side. I promise you Society is almost as unaware of the other side as they are of Society.”

“What do you mean almost?”

“The government pays passing mind to it. There is a division devoted to keeping the secret and while severely understaffed its importance to Society cannot be understated. There was a time when people knew of magic and it didn’t end well.”

She guessed he meant witch trials and burning at the stake. “What else is in the Society?”

“All the things you’d think there would be. The storybook monsters. Vampires, hags, trolls.”

She thought of Tinkerbell, a favorite of Georgia.

“Yes, fae as well but they are nothing like the cartoons portray. Their beauty is off-putting and they are tricksters of the highest order. The old English tales of children being lured into the forest by lights and never seen again are the reality.”

She was going to have to learn more about those things. Maybe she could get one to take Georgia.

Ungle, she observed, didn’t even know she was there anymore. He was absorbed in his papers and computer and didn’t flinch even as she opened the door and left the room.

The hall was empty, but she could hear the others in the main area, and getting past all of them wasn’t going to happen.

But she was magic.

“You have the ability to use magic,” Donner corrected. “That doesn’t mean you can-”

They were outside.

“-you, you can’t- that...” He was having an issue processing this one. She’d proven adept at using magic that any other child would never be able to master at her age; that was one thing. There were rare cases of innate talent, but this was something else. This was teleportation; it was dangerous, difficult, and taxing for anyone much less a first-time attempter. It was also a highly regulated magic because those able to accomplish it were too powerful to ignore. The discipline required was no laughing matter. If concentration was lost, if one's power output dropped for even a moment, you were liable to find yourself missing limbs or trapped in a limbo outside the reach of the living.

It’d happened before.

Teleportation required training in adulthood. Licensing.

Yet here she was and she didn’t even know what she’d done.

It wasn't that he wholly doubted her ability, he'd told her to hide the night before, to warp from her spot near the door back to the bed. But that was the same room, mere feet away. He would have been somewhat upset to see her accomplish it, but it was far less drastic than this.

“Forget it,” he said. There was no point questioning it. “What’s done is done, but you can’t wander around alone. They’ll call the police to report a lost child.”

“I won’t be wandering if you tell me where to go. I want to see one of the schools.”

“The last thing we need to do is further alert people to your presence. Going to a school that you aren’t even enrolled in is not a smart move.”

“Okay, then fairies.”

“No.”

She huffed. They were going somewhere whether he liked it or not and whether he gave direction or not. She understood why he said it was a bad idea to go to school, but she’d heard nothing but things about school for the last… However long she’d lived with Georgia. She was forever bragging about her stickers and stars and showing off her classwork on the refrigerator.

She could color inside all the lines so very well now.

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Her words were jumbled and her sentences stunted but by golly if she couldn’t count to ten and make animal sounds!

Magic school must be infinitely more interesting than that and now that she knew it existed, she would never be sent to a place as mundane as kindergarten.

It was too bad Donner refused to cooperate, but she’d figured out how to leave the office without his help and she’d do this, too. Magic was easier than he portrayed it. So far, she’d found that all she had to do was want to use it and she could. There were no barriers.

Why they used sticks was beyond her.

“It’s not that easy for everyone,” he said, spitefully. “Even the most talented require instruction in some form or another. I don’t know how you’re doing what you’re doing, but there is a cost involved. You haven’t seen it yet but nothing in this world is free, not even magic.”

What had he said about the schools? They were hidden. That meant she had to find them like a lost toy.

Charms were used to turn the eye away. She had to see the charms and follow them. What did a charm look like? She imagined it sparkled and it would feel like school.

“Oh,” she smiled. “There it is.”

A trail of shimmering shine, this one silver, and there was another in bright blue. But she liked the third, the fainter one that smelled like peaches.

“You don’t even know where Georgia is.”

“Georgia!?”

“The state, not your cousin.”

“There’s a state named after Georgie Porgie?” What fool did that?

“No, you idiot. Your cousin was named after the state. Like your mother was named Arizona.”

Well, never mind that one then; she wasn’t going there no matter how nice its fragrance was.

“The fact that you think it smells like anything is concerning to me.”

“That’s nothing new, everything is concerning to you.” And he couldn’t argue or else he would have. “I’ll follow the silver one then. It smells like snow. Which makes sense, if you think about it.”

“No. No, it doesn’t. And you still can’t go because, as I said, children are not allowed to wander around unsupervised.”

Oh, right. But that wasn’t a problem. All she needed was a sparkling charm trail of her own.

“Hey, it’s the same color as my hair. Do you think I smell like that? Like licorice? Or root beer. Yeah. Root beer.”

He gave no reply as she began her trek.

The city was crowded, yet no one noticed her. If they did it was for a moment and then their minds turned to other matters, just as if they'd stumbled across one of the hidden schools of magic.

All around her were tall buildings of glass and steel. It reminded her of the apartment she’d lived in with Pink, when she could see a city from their building. Maybe it was this city. Maybe she'd been looking at Ungle's office the whole time without knowing it.

This place wasn’t dirty like the street she'd lived on. She didn’t see any trash bags on the sidewalk, no spilling garbage, or broken bottles. Everyone was nicely dressed in business casual and the heels were slim. Not like Pink's.

They were lost to the roaring flames anyway.

It was strange to think that the world wouldn’t remember Pink, would never know her at all. No one did except Luna and she wouldn’t remember forever. She didn’t remember being a baby, even though she must have been one once, and she would forget many things about Pink in the years to come until someday it would be like she never existed.

The buildings weren’t disappearing.

“It’s not like you can take ten steps and be out of the city,” Donner told her. “You have no idea how far that school is and I can’t identify it from here. I don’t know what your silver and snow means and I don’t want to wander around for who knows how long, looking for this school. To be honest, I’m not even sure how you can tell they're connecting to schools.”

“Well, how’d you know that the other one went to Georgia? The state, not my cousin.”

“I don’t know it,” he hated to admit that. “But the signs point in that direction. The Peach School is its literal name and you were looking for the institutions. How you managed to do this I don’t know and I realize there's no point questioning it, but if you can find them like this then surely you can get there quicker than your toddler-size legs will carry you.”

“I am not a toddler!”

“You’re as small as one. Find another way. Let’s not take all day, your uncle will notice you missing eventually.”

Leaving the office was one thing. She knew what it was like outside and what the room she would pass through, or wouldn’t pass through, looked like. There was no question about where she was going. The school, however, she didn’t know anything about it.

“I’ve seen rooftops on television before,” she said.

“Wait-”

But she didn’t.

A moment later they were high above the city atop a flat-roofed building. It was empty except for pieces of air conditioning equipment and there was a door that she guessed was for maintenance workers.

“Maybe I should jump so we can go see Snowman.”

“No. No. No! No jumping. Whatever spell you managed to cast to keep eyes off you down there will lift when you die. Your broken body will be seen by everyone on the street and I still don’t understand how time passes when we’re not here, so there’s no way to know how long you’ll be gone. We could get back and find you shut in a morgue and no matter the length of time, there will be no way to play it off. You will be clearly dead and then clearly alive again. We don’t want to deal with that from either side.”

So he said but that sounded like instant fame to her.

“Forget it. Follow the damn line.” Which she wasn’t against, so she went ahead and did as he said. “I don’t approve of any of this, by the way. Nothing about what is happening right now is okay. You’ve done many things I don’t believe are possible and though now is not the time for it, we will have to go see that Snowman.”

“You think he knows something?”

“I’m positive and I have my suspicions but don’t ask because I won’t say anything more about it until I’m sure.”

Donner checked out of the moment then, gave enough attention to be sure she continued to follow her silver snow trail without getting distracted, but the rest of his consciousness was otherwise occupied.

He’d been trying to understand Luna and that was proving impossible, but if he was right about this one thing it would make, well, not sense exactly, but... He didn’t know how to word it! And that was everything lately. It was frustrating that, not even to himself, could he articulate what was happening. He’d worked so hard to be sure that was never a problem; it was more than half the reason he got as far as he did despite his background.

He thought Luna was Life, whatever that meant. It was all down to that comment made by the so-called Snowman, telling Luna that, “Life cannot die, what it can do is move elsewhere.”

That man was far from normal, as far as Luna, but he wasn’t ignorant of it or hiding it. Luna, meanwhile, was hiding something even from herself. The locked doors in her mind were proof of that.

What it meant for her to be Life he didn’t know, but it involved levels of magical power he’d never seen in someone so young. Of course, he wasn’t sure he believed it and the implications of it were potentially dire. Even if it was true he might be better off pretending he knew nothing. Ignorance may be bliss.

He'd learned the hard way that was sometimes the harsh truth.

Another one of the many parts of the past he would have done anything but die to hide.

All of that aside, here he was. Trapped in the mind of a child who may be the personification of Life itself. How that was possible he didn’t know, but Nyx and Aether were of the same vein. The bygone gods of an old-world belief system, no longer taken seriously. Not even by himself and he'd delved further back than most dared to dream. It was too far-fetched to be true. He’d sided with the scientists on this. Evolution brought with it the added benefit of rationalism to a fault. Carry it far enough and one could justify anything. It was an integral part of the plan.

He could kill anyone because they didn’t matter. They had no purpose and he was burdened with glory.

The possibility of gods wouldn’t stop him, but if they were real it might explain his current state. There was no logical reason for this to have happened. Death? Yes. He should have died. For all he’d done to avoid it, in the end it was his own hubris that led to his demise. He should have never gotten involved with that woman, but she reminded him so much of… It was better not to think of it. Of her. Let the past remain past. That was long finished and he was sure she was dead and gone. Buried in an unmarked grave.

What a sad soul she was. The only one of her kind; he still believed it. He remembered seriously considering whether or not she may be an alien from another planet altogether. She was a strange thing, hardly kind, and her mind forever elsewhere. He wondered if she ever believed he was real. She insisted he wasn’t.

But he wasn’t going to think about her.

They were out of the city now and Luna crossed treetops as she followed the silver sparkle.

“No,” he said in a whisper. “It can’t be-” but fell silent.

Luna didn’t know what Donner was thinking the way he knew what happened in her head. He enjoyed a level of privacy that was impossible for her to attain; it was a good thing she didn’t mind it. She didn’t have any secrets to keep from him.

“Oh, finally!”

It felt like she’d been bouncing between the trees forever; her legs were starting to get sore. She’d never traveled so far by herself, or on foot, before. It was a sign of adulthood, she thought.

“No, it’s a sign that you’re stubborn.”

He was so contrary.