“What should we watch next?” Angela flipped through the Netflix menu on the television, I laid comfortably between the two of them, kind of curled up. It was nice being small. “I think we’ve watched everything on Netflix and Hulu, we’re going to have to wait a few years for them to update the library.”

“Means we’ve been here too long,” Meredith suggested, laying her head back. I stretched a little bit, adjusting my head which was laying against Angela’s shoulder. I was tired, I guess. Our bodies didn’t get tired easily but we’d been awake for a while. The way I felt right now was weird I think. I didn’t feel like an adult anymore and I didn’t feel like a guy pretending to be a girl, not like before. This was different, this was just natural. They had allowed me to slip into my role effortlessly and I didn’t realize it before, but it was what I had always wanted.

“Yeah but if we leave, we’re going to have to actually explain things to Jasmine here, and she hasn’t really been interested,” Angela pointed out. She was right, I hadn’t asked any questions, I mean yeah I was curious, but I felt like if they told me, we’d be moving on to the next ‘thing’. I wanted this ‘thing’ to last for as long as it could. I wanted to feel small and vulnerable, I wanted to lay on the couch and just exist, cuddled up next to Angela, or mom.

“Hey Jasmine, could you sit up?” Meredith asked me. She was being very careful to phrase her commands as questions so that my body didn’t go into autopilot. It was something we’d been working on, but like she said, I still had a long way to go. I stretched and set up, pulling my face away from Angela’s shoulder and looking between them as they sort of angled themselves so that they could both look at me. The television still glowed in front of us. Angela took my hand in hers and smiled at me.

“My dear,” She said, squeezing my hand. “We…have had many names over the centuries, to be quite honest. We’ve been called gods, some people call us angels, pretty commonly we’re called Fae. That mythos is actually the most accurate, but what you don’t realize is that anyone can be one of us. It’s…a matter of time really. When a soul is born it’s placed into a body, the body lives for a while, then it dies, and the soul moves on. All of the memories from your life are stored. You still have them but you don’t readily recall them, not in detail. The experiences you have can help you to be more cautious or more social in the next life. They…teach you lessons really. When you’ve learned everything you need to, you don’t die, your soul ascends and you become like us. You can decide to live in Etherol, the afterlife as you would call it, or you can come back and try to help people learn what they need to learn. We…do things to set certain events in motion, we set up lessons. It’s not for everyone, but some of us like it.”

“Souls carry characteristics,” Meredith took over the explanation, we both turned to her. “Good and evil are elevated in our world, you either follow a strict moral code, or you don’t. Souls don’t change in that regard.”

“Good, and evil,” Angela spoke again. “Are represented by two courts: Seelie, and Unseelie. Most of the time we don’t work together, we sort of do our own things. In the case of Meredith and I, we’ve been working together for the last decade, with some obvious benefits.”

“So…you’re good, and Meredith is evil?” I smirked. “That explains a lot.”

“It’s not nearly that simple,” Meredith lectured me, shaking her head. “I can’t really explain it to you, you’re still new to all this. What you really need to know is that…all souls fit into either Seelie or Unseelie, you can’t choose, and there are no neutral souls.”

At this moment in the conversation there was a long, long pause, and then, finally, Angela said it.

“Except for you.”

“Me? What do you mean, me?”

“When you were born,” Angela began to stroke the side of my head with her free hand. “That was the first time your soul ever entered the world, you’re a brand new soul, you’re an infant. I shouldn’t have done this…thing to you, you should have had many, many more lives to gain experience and to learn, but also…”

“Also?”

“Your soul is truly neutral,” Meredith finished. “You’re not Seelie or Unseelie, you have no commitment either way.

“It seems like a small thing,” Angela told me. “But…one day, when you’ve matured, you could start your own side, your own…faction. Souls would have a choice, they could ride the fence and…as much as it pains me to say it, that can’t happen?”

“Dark and light have to coexist,” Meredith explained. “It’s the balance of the universe, if we lose that balance, who knows what could happen?”

“But the fact is, I like you, and I did a horrible thing to you,” Angela continued to stroke my head, running her slim, soft fingers through my hair and gently massaging my temple. “I don’t want to see anything happen to you, I don’t want you taken advantage of.”

“So what we’re going to do is keep you,” Meredith grinned at me. “As of…eleven years ago, we own you. Well, sort of, we need you to agree to it.”

“Agree to it?” I was confused. “Don’t you already? I can’t leave…”

“It needs to be legal, all proper and stuff,” Meredith explained to me as if she were talking to a child. “You’re not leaving us either way, but we can protect you better if you agree that you’re our property. You’ll sign a form, a portion of your soul energy will be taken and stored. If we lay a claim to you, we have more say in what happens to you, make sense?”

“I guess,” I nodded. “But…isn’t this the kind of thing we’re trying to avoid?”

“The world is a lot darker, and a lot less black and white than you want to think,” Angela said sadly. “It won’t be permanent, we can release you after a few hundred years. I know Meredith has been working with you to make you less submissive-“

“You KNEW?!” I choked, almost glaring at her. “You knew she was doing that to me?!”

“It’s kind of against her alignment,” Meredith shrugged. “Seelies don’t like to torture people. Unseelies…we live for it. I mean, I really get off on it, but I don’t really go all the way with you, what I’m doing to you is less than a fraction of what I’d do to an enemy.”

“We have enemies?!” This was getting way out of hand.

“That’s why Meredith is working with you,” Angela removed her hand from my head and placed it on my shoulder, looking me in the eye once again. “There are…forces out there, and not just Seelie or Unseelie, we’re talking about…creatures, monsters, the world is…complicated. We need to make sure you’re able to defend yourself and not be influenced by them, or either of the courts. You’re a pariah, to put it in a term you can understand.”

“How do we…how do we do the contract?” I wish I could say I didn’t want to do it, but the thought of them actually owning me, yeah, that excited me.

“Well, I’ve called in someone to help, someone who knows the law and can draw up the contract,” Angela explained. She looked toward the mirror, I followed her gaze. I saw it ripple like water, and then, something stepped through. Something I didn’t expect. It wasn’t a man, or a woman. In fact it was a rodent of some kind, with a hard shell. An Armadillo, that’s what it was. It was stood upright, and maybe about two feet tall, pretty big for an Armadillo honestly. That wasn’t the weird thing about it. The weird thing was that it was carrying a tiny briefcase and supported itself with a black, wooden walking stick. Then, as it made its way toward us, the most unsettling thing happened. It spoke, with a thick Scottish accent.

“Well then, you lasses seem to a’ gotten yourself into a bit o’ a bind then ain’t ye? Alright, let’s get it settled.”