After we got back to the hospital, it took almost an hour to get officially released. Poppy and I weren’t a problem since we were cleared to be released from the Fairy Ward already and just needed to sign the appropriate paperwork, but things with my sister were a little trickier. We had to talk with one of the psychologists overseeing her recovery and get him to sign off on her release.

Dr. Gehrig came around to the idea though when we told him that Aunt Maya was a close friend to the family and that we had grown up spending a lot of time at her home with her and her kids. He felt that familiar faces would be good for Kelly and give her a sense of normalcy that she likely needed until we needed to move into the dorms in September. Having people who we were close to around us would probably be good for both of us or so he said as he signed off on her release papers. He still wanted her to come to see him once a week to see how she was adjusting though.

While we were waiting to meet with Dr. Gehrig, Aunt Maya and Selina helped us to bring my sister’s stuff as well as my little house and all the other physical gifts that had been dropped off for me and Moonlight to Aunt Maya’s hover-jet. It was one of the family models, meant to seat up to eight human-sized people, and it had plenty of storage space for our stuff. Poppy didn’t have much, and we just brought her stuff with mine since she’d be staying in my little Sprite-sized house with me.

It was almost eight o’clock by the time that we were finally able to leave the hospital and Aunt Maya decided that it would be too late to start cooking us all a proper dinner. With that in mind, she suggested we order dinner from a place near their neighborhood called Everyone Eats. She hadn’t tried it yet, but the place advertised that they had meals for people of all shapes and sizes, except for Vampires, who could only consume blood.

The place boasted things like pizza, wings, and burgers, but they had some healthier selections for vegetarians or herbivores as well. They were also as good as their claim, having an entire Fairy menu as well. From what the server who took our takeout order said, one of the restaurant’s owners and cooks was a Pixie who had an ability somewhat similar to Poppy’s, which excited my girlfriend no end. Where she had been missing just about everything about being human-sized, he had mostly missed the food. We weren’t able to learn the details of his special ability (except that it was magic, duh), but he was able to produce Pixie-sized versions of most human food dishes.

The Pixie versions were still a bit big for me and Poppy, but a small Pixie-sized pizza would be like an extra large deep dish to us. We decided to go for that and an order of chicken bites. I was kinda worried about where we might find some flower nectar, which is both delicious and an important part of a Sprite’s diet, but apparently, Poppy already knew where to get some. One of the nurses in the Fairy Ward had told her that there was a large greenhouse and flower shop in town that not only sold various plants, gardening tools, soil, and bouquets of flowers but also collected and bottled flower nectar to sell to Sprites.

It sounded like the stuff was heavily regulated too, not because of the high sugar content (though it probably should be), but because it was difficult to collect in large amounts. Because of that, it was reserved for Sprites, who needed it as a part of our diet. So, only Sprites were able to purchase it. Jade, Breeze, or one of the other Sprite nurses usually purchased any that was needed for the Fairy Ward. By the time our order was ready, and we left the restaurant to go back to Aunt Maya’s place to eat, Aunt Maya had promised to take us to the greenhouse or have one of the girls show us where it was tomorrow.

Once we were back in the hover-jet and heading to Aunt Maya’s home, Poppy and I got settled cozily into one of my sister’s tails for the trip. She had plenty to spare and since there were no seat belts for Sprites, we had discovered earlier that it was best to have something to hang onto in case the autopilot needed to make any turns or change altitude suddenly. Kelly’s tails were so warm, cozy, and fluffy that I nearly fell asleep while snuggling Poppy. She should really put a warning label on those things, with great floof comes great responsibility.

Aunt Maya’s home was in a nice neighborhood near the university and the homes all looked well-maintained and had large yards. The house was a large two-story brick affair with green-painted wood trim and a large flower garden in the front. Given the location and the size of the house I was looking at, I was guessing that this area was very affluent. Kelly seemed to be thinking the same as she asked, “Aunt Maya, how can you afford this place?”

The woman in question shrugged as she took the food and a handful of Kelly’s shopping bags to take inside. “Honestly, we got this place because it has an indoor pool, and the twins needed that. Between the insurance money for the house and the hardware store, selling the properties, and allowing the university to study the girls, I was able to afford this and get the new business started.”

I briefly wondered what she meant by ‘allowing the university to study the girls’ but she had Kelly and Selina gathering the rest of the stuff from our shopping trip and the hospital and bringing it inside before I could press the issue. We got everything inside but didn’t bother taking anything to the bedroom that Kelly would be using yet. We were all hungry, and the twins promised us a tour of the house and to help us get everything upstairs after we all ate.

The twins were still identical and had this eerie way of finishing each other’s sentences but neither of them had really changed much in looks (at least not obviously) except for the new amber color of their eyes and getting a few years older while Kelly and I were out of action. It was almost like old times, except Uncle Gavin and Aiden were conspicuously missing as we all sat down to eat, with me and Poppy using a table and chairs from my little house set on top of the human-sized dining room table. As we all started to dig in, Aunt Maya asked Sammie (at least I think it was Sammie), “Where is Ainslee?”

“She’s out doing her… weekly thing,” Sammie replied with a faint frown. “She should be back soon, but she probably won’t be hungry.”

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to ask in my loudest voice, so I could be heard, “Who’s Ainslee? And where are Aiden and Uncle Gavin?”

Aunt Maya sighed but gave a brief nod. “There’s a lot to catch you girls up on. We’ll tell you everything while we eat.” So, as we ate, Aunt Maya and the twins started to tell us everything that had happened to their family since the Incursion.

The Breach had opened right near their house, killing their comm rings and all other electronics, and even though Aiden had been awake and noticed the Breach forming, they hadn’t had time to escape. Aiden took the twins through the back door, and Aunt Maya was on her way to follow them while Uncle Gavin tried to cover their escape. He only got off one shot from his shotgun before the retaliatory attack destroyed the front half of their house and collapsed the rest. Uncle Gavin was killed in the blast and Aunt Maya was buried when the house collapsed on her.

Aiden tried to get the girls to safety, but they couldn’t outrun the Titans. The twins had been terrified that they were going to be captured, but just like me, as soon as that red sensor beam passed over Aiden and the twins, they were all promptly ignored. Aiden hid the twins in the remains of their cellar after that and tried to search for his mother in the rubble of their home and when the Titans returned, that was when he saw Kelly and several others being taken through the Breach.

One of the Vanguard’s post-Incursion search and rescue teams found Aunt Maya in the wreckage and gave her medical attention, but she needed to stay in the hospital for over a month afterward due to her injuries. They brought her and the kids here to Amethyst Harbour for care since it looked like both Aiden and the twins were becoming Altered and Boulder Creek was essentially leveled, only those who had made it to the shelters had avoided death or abduction. There was nothing left for any of them back home with their home destroyed and most of the people they cared about dead or captured, so once Aunt Maya was out of the hospital, they decided to settle down locally.

It also helped that the university and Vanguard-associated scientists were really interested in Aiden and the twins as a case study and offered to pay to study them and run tests while Aunt Maya was recovering and they found a place to live. Cases where multiple genetic siblings became Altered in the same Incursion were rare, and it was even more rare for siblings to become two different types of Altered. The scientists and university professors had a field day with them as theories on how influential genetics were to various types of Altered were revised.

Aiden had clearly taken after his father’s Scottish side of the family, while the twins had mostly inherited their mother’s Polynesian genes. The fact that the twins were apparently both Mermaids while Aiden became some type of Fae that they hadn’t seen before yet, a Baobhan Sith, was of great interest to the scientific community. Like most Altered, the Baobhan Sith seemed to have a place in myth and legend, Scottish Folklore in this case, but a lot of what they knew about them had to be taken from those legends since Aiden was the first to appear in the modern age. Everything else they had to learn as Aiden discovered it through his changes.

A completely new type of Altered was fascinating to scientists though. This new type of Fae shared the usual Fae quirks and vulnerabilities but had hooves rather than feet and needed to sometimes feed on blood like a Vampire. Apparently, Aiden also became a girl when changing, which was why they were now calling her Ainslee. This made me think that I should have a talk with her and make sure she was adjusting okay since not everyone would be as happy with a magically induced gender swap as I was.

And then there were the twins. Mermaids were quite a bit more common, but there had never been a case where a set of Identical twins had both become Altered before. Both remained identical and had the normal abilities and needs that Mermaids displayed, but their bond had become even closer than it was before. They discovered soon after their changes were complete that they could communicate telepathically with one another and see through one another’s eyes.

This wasn’t an ability that any Mermaids had shown before, but the scientists were fairly certain that it wasn’t their special ability either since they weren’t physically mature yet. This was probably unique to them due to being a set of Mermaid twins. They were looking forward to seeing whether the twins would still develop special abilities when they were mature enough, and how their bond might affect those abilities if they did.

That might still be a couple of years since the twins were just about to start their senior year of high school. They were going to a public school now, one of two in the city that was specifically geared toward the local Altered kids. Ainslee had graduated from there a year ago and from what Aunt Maya knew, her oldest daughter was looking to join the Vanguard and attend the university once she went through her Waking and discovered her special ability. Ainslee hadn’t Awoke yet, but she was still hoping to do so in time to register for the fall or spring semester this year.

Dinner was good, and both Poppy and I were stuffed and would probably be having leftovers of our pizza tomorrow. The time passed quickly as we learned what had happened to the Mackenzie family during and after the Montana Incursion. Kelly and I were about to tell them what had happened on our end when I heard the front door open and a voice call out, “I’m home!”

The voice was feminine, yet husky, and when its owner walked into the dining room my jaw dropped. Ainslee, because this could only be her, looked nothing like the close friend that I had known while growing up. She was absolutely gorgeous for one thing, and she seemed to ooze feminine sex appeal. If I weren’t so damn small and didn’t have a girlfriend that I was completely head over heels for, I might not have been able to take my eyes off her.

A look at my sister showed that she was completely transfixed by the redheaded Fae bombshell entering the room, like a deer caught in the headlights. I had been pretty sure that she was attracted to girls before the Incursion, but the dazed, dropped-jaw gaze she was giving Ainslee now seemed to confirm it. And Ainslee was gaping right back at my sister as she stood there looking stunned in the dining room entrance.

There was a brief silence as the two seemed to drink in one another’s new appearances. It was broken before it could become awkward by one of the twins. I wasn’t sure which twin, and whether she just hadn’t noticed them staring at each other or just didn’t care, but the twin in question smiled and said, “You’re just in time, Sis. We just got done telling the girls here everything that happened to us and Lily and Kelly were going to tell us their side of things.”

With the moment over, the Huli Jing and the Baobhan Sith both managed to shake off their awe and almost look at one another like normal people as Aunt Maya introduced Poppy as my girlfriend and then reintroduced my sister and me to Ainslee and vice versa. “Holy shit, Sammie was right, it is you,” Ainslee finally said with another awed look at my sister.

“Language, Ainslee,” her mother scolded.

“Mooom, I’m nineteen, and I was sure that I’d never see Eli or Kelly again. Cut me a little slack here,” Ainslee protested before drinking in the sight of my sister again and then drawing in a deep breath before looking down at me and Poppy sitting at our little table. “Wow, you are tiny now, E… Lily. How does that even work?”

“Like something out of a horror movie,” I replied with a smirk. “So, I guess we both got new bodies and names. It’s good to see you again, even if I’m having a hell of a time seeing that and thinking of my friend.”

“Believe me, I know just how you feel,” the redhead answered with a nervous laugh. “So, just out of the hospital and you already have a girlfriend, huh? And she’s a redhead too, I approve.” She returned my smirk with a shaky one of her own as she flipped her long, bright red tresses behind her shoulder. She was nervous, a little stunned, and looked nothing like she used to, but just that interaction filled me with relief. She was still the same friend I had grown up with, just in a new package.

This was so weird and awkward, but it was such a relief to see that most of them made it through, even if all of us kids had become Altered in the process. Things got easier once my sister started to explain what little she remembered and how she had ended up in Amethyst Habour. She didn’t go into a lot of detail and glossed over how bad her mental state was when I found her, but that was understandable.

Kelly didn’t want them to worry about her, she just wanted to enjoy being with people she cared about again. She also didn’t mention Moonlight, probably because she was bound to me, and it wasn’t her place to reveal the Unicorn’s existence. She did tell them about her special ability, racial abilities, and what it was like being a nine-tailed fox girl though. There were things that she had learned from her teacher, Yue, as well, such as the fact that fox spirits were a lot like the Fae in some ways, including not seeming to age.

When my sister finished her story, I started to tell mine, starting with what had happened after Kelly was captured, and my very gory Sprouting. I told them about meeting Poppy and our time in the Fairy Ward, and finished up with my testing, Moonlight’s big reveal, and the rash of awkward thankyou gifts afterward. Of course, they didn’t believe me about Moonlight until I had the Unicorn in question show herself as I finished my tale.

The twins reacted as I expected, with a lot of excitement and girly squeals while Aunt Maya just stared at her for a moment before shaking her head and muttering, “Every time that I think I’ve seen everything, something shows up to prove me wrong.”

Ainslee’s reaction was the best though. She actually snorted with laughter as she tried to choke out the words, “A lesbian Fairy… with… a Unicorn… pfffft! Lily, I’m… telling you this… as a friend. You take the gay… to a whole new level. Does she fart rainbows? Because… that would be… awesome. Ooh! Maybe we could… dye her mane in rainbow colors to make it more obvious!”

Yup, this was definitely my friend, and she didn’t seem to have any issues with my new self. I couldn’t stop laughing to give her an answer as Poppy chortled across the table from me. As for my loyal Unicorn steed, she just snorted and vanished again.

Moonlight must have felt my happiness at having my friends back though, because I could feel contentment in her mind voice as she said, -You have very strange friends, but I am glad you are happy. And we are not dying my mane, so get that mental picture out of your head right now.- Of course, she said that, but I knew that if I really had wanted to, she would never deny me anything. She was lucky that I loved her just the way she was.