just another day

That was kind of how she was feeling now. Especially since it was summer and she didn't have her classes and her dormmates to keep her distracted. She had a place to stay, her mother sent her money so she could rent a room for the summer. She was lucky enough to have access to a kitchen.

But she was feeling a little more lonely than usual as she did her shopping, so when she heard a familiar voice and saw a familiar figure, she felt more compelled than usual to go toward him.

"Hi," she said softly, giving him a small, polite nod. "Yeah, I am. I, um, have some online classes so I figured it was better to stay local so if I needed to go to campus for something I could... I... how are you?" she eyed what he was grabbing off the shelf. "Do you, um... shop here often?"

"Sometimes," Gary said. "When I want to make Taiwanese food at home and need something for it."

But the items in his basket didn't reflect that.

Life was never actually still, even when it was lazy. Isaac enjoyed that, he didn't know what to do with himself if he was only being idle. But he knew Nick appreciated the chance to be. After over a hundred years of life though anyone would appreciate a little downtime that didn't require them to be on guard.

There would be more friends this year for Avery, more time spent visiting them, although he was still a bit young to be staying overnight.

"We usually take some trip outside of town before the summer is over " They hadn't quite begun to plan for it yet but he needed some time away. More difficult with his job now but not impossible. "We usually go to a beach, my partner ends up doing most of the planning because he's traveled so much he's better than I am at figuring out the details."

And if they didn't do it that way and Nick didn't have a chance to convince himself the trip was safe he'd stay tense the entire time, unfortunately. So the trade off wasn't one Isaac minded, he was just happy to get some time away from everything.

"We don't do much travel outside of town, not together anyway. Nicola will go for conferences for work, and I'll go to different parts of the UK with our oldest for violin competitions, but that's a few days here and there." Gary said.

A beach sounded nice. Made him miss Taiwan, growing up near the ocean there.

Gary didn't usually need to buy things from Moon Market. Most of the time, his family ate in the circle in the hollow, or if he wanted to make Taiwanese homecooking he'd forage plants from the forest and make do.

But Nicola was craving very specific things, now nine weeks pregnant, and Gary wasn't going to deny his pregnant promised whatever she wanted. As he placed something into his basket, he happened to look over and spot Marcy just a few feet away.

He smiled warmly and waved to her.

"Hey, Marcy. Still in town for summer?"

And he wanted some of that summer with his family, of course. Even though he wouldn't have quite as much of it as he usually did.

"Does that mean you have big plans for the summer then?" He wasn't really sure what constituted big plans when it came to the Hollow, but with kids there was no shortage of things around town to do during those warm months.

"No, I mean. Nothing like going on holiday, fairies don't really do that. Our oldest daughter has some summer program in Bristol she's going to for a few weeks for music but other than that we're just staying in the Hollow." Gary said. "The big plans are actually getting to be at home, for Nicola, since she works in town during the school year."

He gestured toward town.

He nodded though, not sure he was familiar with Gary's wife since he still didn't know everyone at the university when the campus was so large.

"I'm running into that myself there; this is one of the few afternoons that I have off a little earlier than I expected."

Avery wasn't paying as much attention to the adults, too busy trying to explain that water really wasn't all that scary. "I don't think you can sink in those," he noted the water wings, since they were made to float, but maybe that wasn't quite as good in the water as having fins.

"Not really for me. My job involves a lot of delegating things to other fairies." Gary didn't feel like explaining the inner workings of the hollow further to a human. "I'm much more free than her from now until the end of the school year."

He gestured in the general direction of Pride U.

It didn't matter what he said, she would feel that way. How could she not when she was part of a secret life?

Seeing her just made the secret harder to maintain. And one day, when the cats all got out of their bags, who would people blame? Who would they keep in their life and who would just keep being another stranger?

"Okay," she gave him another small nod. "Thank you. I... I'll keep that in mind if I um... have any more questions."

Hadn't she just admitted to having a lot of questions? Wouldn't it be easier to just ask them?

Instead of saying anything about that though, he kept himself in check. Yeah...Marcy had every right to hesitate to rely on him for anything, even just answers to questions.

The water helped, Isaac supposed, since Avery was quite literally in his element there and far more comfortable.

"Nice to meet you Gary, and you too Sadie," Isaac smiled, briefly shaking that man's hand before he relaxed again. One thing he missed with his new job was the parents; for the longest time teaching he was a little outside their world but now that he was a parent himself he missed the conversations with others at the primary school.

He nodded, he had no doubt it was for the sake of polite conversation but it still felt nice to hear his name instead of Mr. Morey, which seemed like a formality people at Town Hall stuck with no matter how often it was fine to call him Isaac.

"Do you make it out to the lake often? I feel like I'm here so much in the summer I have most of the faces practically memorized," he laughed, glancing at the kids to check on them but they were busy splashing around near the shore.

"My girls do, but my wife usually takes them," Gary explained. "I'm very busy in the Hollow with my work there."

No use explaining what a head dust-talent does, so he didn't.

She should agree and move on. She should say okay and thank you. But she just looked at the table in front of her. He said she didn't need to apologize but that was all Marcy wanted to do. It was all she ever wanted to do. Apologize for being an inconvenience, apologize for existing.

She shifted, finally look up at Gary. "I mean, I can't come by the hollow all that often anyway. At least not inside. So... I guess we don't have to worry about it too much." There was a bit of lightness to her tone, hopefully leaving the implication out there that that just meant they'd have to meet outside the hollow.

Or perhaps he'd take it as then they shouldn't meet up.

Marcy didn't know if she cared which way he took her words. Either way, this would still hurt for both of them.

Should I just tell her? was on the tip of his tongue. Nicola, his wife, Hattie Rose and Sadie's mother. He could, it'd be easy to blow up his life, it was a long time coming anyway.

"That's okay, I don't mind coming to town more." Gary said, sipping his tea. "It's not an inconvenience to see you."

He wished she knew that.

But he knew why she felt that, because he couldn't just claim her as his. Or wouldn't. Whichever it was.

"It's not hard," he confirmed, "you just gotta practice. You can swim with me." Nobody had ever really asked before but Avery wanted to help, that was what you were supposed to do.

He did swim closer though with a few flicks of his tail though, so she wouldn't have to go out into the deeper water.

Isaac watched the kids for a minute, offering Gary a spot on the blanket so he wouldn't have to sit on the ground.

"Don't worry, she'll be fine; he can breathe in the water but he knows other people can't, he'll make sure she doesn't go out too far." Isaac mentioned to Gary, but it was also because he knew Avery wouldn't venture out into the center of the lake all by himself anyway. If he and Nick had been in the water possibly so, but he didn't like to go that far away from them usually.

"No promise it'll be an easy time getting them back in though, he'll try to stay out there all day," he laughed.

"Once she's made a friend it'll be hard to drag her out, too." Gary said, sympathizing with the other parent.

He sat down at the spot offered and then offered his hand.

"I'm Gary, that's Sadie, my youngest." He said. "You're Isaac, right?"

It was Gem.

Because Gem was spoiling for a fight and this man had just sat down in the seat that Gem had reserved in his head. And he'd spent the last few hours, quiet and brooding. Until he'd quietly whipped himself up into a firestorm of grief and regret.

He was looking for something to take a bite out of.

"You know that 'girl in the blue dress'?" Gem asked, cutting across the bartender who was shrugging and saying 'sure!' "Seems to me like you just came outta no where. Last time I checked, Uber drivers didn't pick up the tab."

Gary was not easily ragebaited, not did he care to entertain some pissed off person who decided he wanted to fight. Still, it very much bothered him that someone might misunderstand his relationship with Ningning, so he turned to the younger man and chose to address him calmly, hoping that staved off a fight.

"She's my niece. My sister will lecture her for partying even though she's an adult, so I'm taking her for the night. My daughters will enjoy drunk makeup time with their cousin, she won't get yelled at, my sister has time to cool down, I did something nice, everyone wins."

It wasn't Pixie's bar, with its warm oak.

This was Pierrot, its countertop shiny onyx and new. It was cold against his elbows where he had rested them.

Each time he came in here, it was like picking at a scab. His gaze searched for something, anything familiar, that would remind him of Tink--and all the others too. The way they'd laugh, the kind of laugh of a group of people who had a secret only the others knew.

Gem had never fit in like that with anyone.

He took a sip of his drink: whiskey, neat.

Someone started to sit down on the stool next to him. "That seat is taken."

Gary did not want to be here.

But you don't ignore an SOS from your niece. Ningning was Gary's older sister's daughter and she was kind of, as she would say, going through it right now.

Recent breakup, struggling in the job market, struggling through grad school applications, feeling the weight of her parents' expectations, living in the shadow of her brilliant older brother-- Gary could sympathize with her. Even if he didn't much approve of the partying, but hey, at least she called her uncle to take her back to his home in the Hollow to avoid her mother in town.

Except now that Gary was here, she found her second party wind and didn't want to leave.

He thought he may as well grab a drink and wait for Ningning to tire herself out...but that may take longer than he cared to wait. The temptation to throw her over his shoulder and pay her bar tab on the way out was strong.

You know what, maybe he should just do that. So that's why he sat down, to pay Ningning's bar tab.

"Oh? Sorry then," he said, standing up, then just leaning over the bar to flag down the bartender. "See that girl over there, in the blue dress? I'm paying her bar tab. What do I owe you?"

He hoped to god the bartender assumed that was his daughter or something and that he wasn't a creepy old man.

"How much can I?" she asked, a little surprised by her own brazenness. "How often? Do you have a lot of young fairies coming to you specifically for guidance, or wouldn't it seem a little strange that the only one who was was a Taiwanese half-fairy?"

As soon as she said all that she looked down at the table between them, her face turning bright red.

"I... I'm sorry. I don't-- I shouldn't have..." she wanted to disappear. Too bad she wasn't a whole fairy and couldn't shrink down to pixie size and fly away. That would make so many of her problems so much easier to solve--or at least run away from.

Gary's eyes widened, shocked by her questioning and the anger that tinged with it, but he wasn't offended. He deserved much worse and frankly he was glad Marcy was at least reacting instead of sitting there meekly.

"You said nothing you need to apologize for," he said simply.

He took a sip of his tea.

Avery had already removed the shoes he didn't like to wear, and now that it wasn't cold anymore he could get away with not having to as much even if he wasn't going to be swimming, while Isaac found a spot on the bank to spread out a blanket to sit and the backpack that held snacks in case Avery's appetite couldn't hold up until Nick showed up. He'd just disappeared into the water when Isaac spotted the little girl come running over.

Avery surfaced, unglamoured skin a trailing gradient of yellow, violet, blue and teal from his head to toes, turning his attention towards the voice. His scales, which he was always quick to point out were fish scales and not lizard, caught the sunlight with a hint of iridescent as the elf treaded water with the lazy sway of his water salamander-like tail and a few kicks of his legs.

"Hello," at first he glanced at his dad to make certain it was okay, then nodded. He hadn't fully grown out of his tendency to be shy but one on one with people he could usually manage. "I'm Avery," he introduced himself and then lifted a web fingered hand that direction, "and that's my dad."

Sadie, still stood at the shore, tentatively dipped a toe in then pulled it back out, making a face. But she did want to play with the little boy! So it was time to be brave, yes. Very brave.

"Hi Avery! I'm Sadie, and that's my baba." She pointed at Gary, and Gary nodded to the kid, then to the kid's father.

Gary introduced himself and offered his hand to the kid's father while the kids shouted to each other across the lake.

With the warmer weather, the girls (mostly Hattie Rose) were begging to go to the lake to swim. Not all fairies knew how to swim, but Gary insisted his daughters learn since they go to human school, have human friends, and might do human fun activities like, yes, swimming. Better safe than stuck trying to learn how to tread water when you needed it.

Hattie Rose ran into some friends and went to hangout with them, and that just left little Sadie, who hadn't been swimming but once or twice before.

"Baba, I'm scared," she said, looking up at him.

Gary crouched down next to her. "That's okay, you can still do things if you're scared. But you don't have to right now. Do you need a minute?"

"No, I can do it."

Except, she clearly wasn't ready, because she stood at the edge of the lake a long while before turning back around to look at him.

"Maybe I do need a minute."

Gary gestured to a group of kids about her age playing together. "Would you be less nervous if you asked them if you can play?"

"I don't know them." Sadie pointed out.

"Fair point, fair point." Yeah, he didn't much care to join random groups either.

She smiled through his little anectdote about himself. She didn't really party--she tried a few times, to little success. She did some mental math again, hearing he was in his 20s in the 80s. She needed to ask how old he was exactly. But then that meant asking more questions about being half fairy and what that meant for her own life expectancy and she... didn't love thinking about all that.

"Oh," she said, surprised. "Um, yeah. Linnet is great. She's a music talent. She's really sweet. She's... well, she's helped me learn a lot about that side of my life."

Okay, ouch. But fair. Really, what right did he have to be the slightest bit wounded by that?

Still, he carefully looked over at Marcy and said, "You know you can ask me, too."

A giant white board stood next to him propped up on the Amazon prime purchased tripod. Foot traffic at the Farmers Market was P R I M E !

He'd gotten separated from everyone else, having turned his back for ten seconds and they'd all walked off, but eh, he'd find them eventually. He wasn't worried.

When someone approached him all full of energy, Gary blinked at him, but was happy to engage.

"Oh...well, I probably wouldn't be much help. "I live in the Hollow, we basically eat plants all day."