Aunt Maya had her assistant manager running the store that Sunday and with nobody in the house having anything pressing to do, except getting some flower nectar and possibly some other things needed for me and Poppy to have a proper diet for Sprites, it looked like it was going to be a lazy day as my sister, Poppy, and I settled in. I thought that a nice quiet day, and spending time with Aunt Maya, Ainslee, and the twins would be nice. Kelly and I hadn’t seen them since before the Incursion and wanted to catch up, and it would give Poppy a good chance to get to know everyone.

Poppy and I had the last of our pizza for breakfast until we could do some shopping for other food. Sprites generally need a lot of carbohydrates, especially sugar, in our diets. Flying uses up a crazy amount of energy after all and, while we do get energy from absorbing mana, we still need a diet that helps offset the high energy demand. It’s why we eat a lot of grains, fruit, and berries, and why flower nectar is so important for us. That stuff is crazy high in natural sugars, though how much varies by different flower species.

We do eat protein and stuff too, usually once a day, but sugar is much more important to us. Our metabolisms are similar to a hummingbird’s so not only do we need those carbs, but we also need them often, especially once we start flying everywhere. If we weren’t passively absorbing mana for energy as well, we would have to eat a lot more often than three meals a day. As it was, Poppy and I regularly had to drink flower nectar, juice, or sugar water between meals. We also crashed hard at night.

I had wondered why Poppy slept so deeply at night the first few times that she fell asleep while snuggling with me, but now that my metabolism got a kickstart from constantly flying, I was doing it too. At least I knew why now since Jade had explained it one morning. She told me about how my metabolism was changing due to needing to process more energy faster for flight and how, when we fall asleep, our metabolisms drastically slow down to conserve energy and function just from the mana we’re absorbing, so we’re practically hibernating when we fall asleep at night.

Thankfully, Aunt Maya’s house had plenty of cereals, juices, and fruit stocked. We could get some berries and any other necessities at the grocery store later and flower nectar at the greenhouse, but since most of us had slept in and it was looking to be a lazy day, I figured that wouldn’t happen until much later in the afternoon. So, it came as a bit of a surprise when Ainslee offered to take me shopping for necessities as we were all eating lunch.

Ainslee said that she wanted to spend some one-on-one time talking with her best friend and catching up, and at first, I wasn’t sure about it since it felt like I would be abandoning Poppy with a bunch of strangers. She had been getting to know my sister better recently, but she’d only known Aunt Maya and her family for less than a day. Poppy slammed the brakes on that line of thinking though.

“I’ll be fine, Love,” she told me. “I’d like to get to know everyone here better anyway. I know that if I was suddenly reunited with my best friend from before the Incursion, I would want to reconnect too. Go with her and try to have fun.”

I gave in because not only was my girlfriend right, but I thought that it would be a good time to have a private talk with Ainslee about how she was coping with being a girl now and having to drink blood. She didn’t look upset, but even after this time apart and both of us changing so much, she was still my best friend, and I could tell when she wanted to talk about something serious. Maybe this was bothering her more than she wanted to admit to her mother and sisters, and since I went through something similar, she thought I could understand.

We wouldn’t be completely alone since Moonlight had insisted on coming along, though she would remain out of sight unless we needed her for some reason. She would also remain quiet unless one of us asked her something directly since she didn’t want to intrude on what would likely be a very personal conversation. She promised me that she would hang back and keep an eye on us from a distance unless one of us got injured or she felt that we were in danger.

I watched Ainslee as we made our way to the nearest mag-lev train station, and I tried to figure out how to bring up what might be a sensitive topic for her. Hell, I wanted to be a girl deep down, and changing into what I was now still came with a bunch of trauma and repressed memories that I still wasn’t sure that I was ready to deal with. Changing into a girl when she didn’t want it, and having to drink blood, had probably been very difficult for her, and she had been dealing with stuff for a little over three years now while I’d only been aware of the past month or so. At least I was happy with how things turned out.

My friend seemed to favor long dresses that would conceal her hooves and her very long red hair covered her ears. Was she ashamed of what she was now or just trying to blend in? The thought of her hating what she had become made my heart ache for her and I just didn’t know what to say at first.

Ainslee was the one who finally broke the miasma of awkward silence that had settled over us. “So… how are you handling it? Being a girl and a Sprite and all, I mean. Are you… okay with it? If you need any help adjusting, there’s a support group for Altered who have changed gender, I could take you there sometime… if you want. Mom thought it was a good idea for me when I was changing and everyone’s nice, but I haven’t gone to the meetings in a long time.”

It all came out of her at once, like she had rehearsed it over and over in her mind and just wanted to get it said as quickly and painlessly as possible. Wait, there was a support group for people like us? I guess that made sense since it was probably pretty traumatic for people who didn’t want it and were uncomfortable with their new bodies.

Wait again, it sounded like she was actually worried about me. Was that because she had a rough time adjusting and expected the same for me? I needed to reassure her that I was perfectly fine. She shouldn’t be so worried about me, especially if this was so hard on her that the support group wasn’t helping her, and she had stopped going.

“Being so small took some getting used to, but flying and using magic is awesome and I love being a girl, or as close as we Sprites get to it. We only really have one gender, even if all of us look like women. Turns out that I was transgender all along and didn’t want to admit it. I had some help realizing that, and it brought up some repressed childhood trauma, but I’m happier now than I ever was before,” I informed her cheerfully as I settled myself comfortably on her shoulder opposite the one that bore her purse.

Ainslee halted her forward momentum to stop and stare at me on her shoulder. “Huh. You know, in hindsight, that makes a lot of sense. There were a lot of things when we were kids that make so much sense now, and it totally explains why you became so moody and withdrawn when we both hit puberty. I guess I was worried for nothing, I can help you learn all the girl stuff Mom and the twins taught me though, if you want.”

I stood up and hugged her neck and then smiled at her as I settled back into a comfortable sitting position on her shoulder. “Poppy and the nurses at the Fairy Ward taught me most of the stuff I needed to know over the past month. Poppy has fashion covered, we’re too small to use makeup, and we don’t need to worry about periods and such because we’re part magical plant, I guess. Thanks for the offer though.”

“Ugh… yeah, periods suck, but some of the Sprites in the support group told me about that whole flowering thing you all go through. That’s fucking weird,” she muttered with a shake of her head, causing her long red tresses to shift with the movement and brush against me.

I took a deep breath as I brought up a potentially hurtful topic. ”So… why did you stop going to the support group? Was it not helping you?”

She shrugged her shoulders, jostling me, and quickly apologized. “Sorry, I’m not used to having passengers there. I guess you could say that, but it’s more like I didn’t really need it. Being a girl isn’t nearly as terrible for me as other people in the group made it out to be, and I kinda felt bad and out of place because I wasn’t suffering like they were. It’s like being a girl is no better or worse than being a guy was for me. It’s different yeah, and I can see positives and negatives to both genders, but I’m still the same person inside, so it’s not a big deal to me and I’m getting to like this body, except for the whole drinking blood thing.”

“Huh. This is not how I was expecting this conversation to go,” I told her honestly. “I was worried that you were trying to hide how much it was upsetting you.”

“I know what you mean, I was thinking the same thing about you. I’m glad we got that out of the way,” Ainslee replied, letting out a long sigh of relief.

“If it’s not too weird to ask…” I timidly pressed after a brief silence as Ainslee started walking again. “I was actually wondering about the bloodsucking thing. What does it taste like? And why do you even need it? I’ve seen you eating regular food today.”

She looked down for a moment in silence with a thoughtful and somewhat conflicted expression on her face. Her tone was quiet, subdued, and perhaps a little guilty as she answered, “It’s… delicious. I guess it makes sense that I would like since if I have to drink it, but I think that makes me hate doing it even more. I feel like… a monster. As for the why, we don’t really know for sure since I’m the only one of my kind so far, but the eggheads that studied me have a theory that seems to fit. They’ve been wanting me to test it, but I don’t feel comfortable trying it.”

The theory was that Ainslee wasn’t getting any more nutrients from the blood itself than any other person would and that she wasn’t actually a hemovore like Vampires are since she could eat normal food most of the time and only required blood once in a while. They thought that the blood was just a medium that she used to get what she really needed to feed on, something that they called vitae. It was essentially life essence, an energy that was produced in blood but that humans had no way of detecting yet. Ainslee though, could smell it, and it smelled delicious.

She could smell when a person was producing more, and usually, that was when they were active, and their blood really got pumping. Altered smelled better to her than regular humans though, and the long-lived or functionally immortal Altered, like other Fae, smelled so much better than either that it wasn’t even a contest. So, they theorized that the longer-lived Altered naturally produced more of the vitae that she needed, which was why they usually don’t age and live for a very long time.

The eggheads, as she insisted on calling them, thought that the density per drop of blood was far greater in such Altered, meaning that she could probably get a much more filling meal while drinking much less blood if she fed on them. Ainslee was scared to try it though. Right now, she was feeding on criminals, terrible people who usually had death sentences because once she started feeding it was almost impossible for her to stop until she was fully sated, usually when the prisoner was sucked dry, or close to it. She worried that if their theory was wrong, she could end up killing an innocent person.

Altered criminals were uncommon, especially these days when there were so many benefits to joining the Vanguard. There were still the occasional idiots who thought they could become famous as some sort of supervillain, but those were few and far between. Most Altered criminals these days were usually those who were pissed off at the world, were in communities that were unsupportive, had mental issues from their changes, or got a rush and felt invulnerable from their new forms and abilities.

We tried to talk about more cheerful topics as we got to the station and took the train to a stop near the Greenhouse. We talked about old times, Ainslee caught me up on what she and the twins had been doing with themselves since settling in the city, and then we just enjoyed one another’s company and the pleasant summer weather as we made our way from the station to our destination. The greenhouse itself was absolutely huge, far bigger than I had imagined, but luckily we didn’t have to walk through it since the small steel and glass building adjacent to it, which served as the main storefront, faced the street we had approached from.

There were apparently two ways for Sprites to purchase flower nectar. The first was to buy the prepared bottles which were stored on shelves on one side of the flower cooler, opposite the prepared bouquets. The other was the U-pick option where, for significantly less money, someone could show us how to properly gather the nectar ourselves and we could go through the greenhouse and harvest our own.

I was considering trying the second option some other time, possibly as a sort of date with Poppy, but for now, the bottles were far more convenient, if painfully expensive. Still, the bottle was taller than I was, which meant that it would probably last me and Poppy months if kept properly stored. I was so glad that Ainslee had come along to help carry things.

“There’s a grocery store a few blocks down that way if you want to get any other things that you and Poppy need for food,” she offered as we left the greenhouse’s storefront. “I know this area of town pretty well since I went to school near here with the twins.”

“Sure, that sounds good,” I agreed. “Once we’re done, I can teleport us back to the house, so we don’t have to take transit.”

I let Ainslee do the walking since she knew the way and conserved my energy as I sat on her shoulder and enjoyed the sunshine until I received a somewhat hurried message from Moonlight. -Lily, you are being followed… look out!-

I didn’t have time to tag both Moonlight and Ainslee to teleport. I barely had time to let out a startled squeak. It was a good thing that the projectile heading toward us was made of ice because I could affect it as easily as water. I stopped it midair even as Ainslee swung around at the sound I made, accidentally throwing me from her shoulder. That forced me to start pulling my weight and using my wings to stay aloft as I kept the massive icicle that had been flying straight at her back floating in the air where I had stopped it.

Two people were there, about thirty feet away, and Ainslee was glaring at the larger of the pair as she practically snarled, “Hmmmph… Terry. I thought I smelled something rancid.” They were both around our age, but the guy was easily eight feet tall and built like a linebacker, and he had short white hair, blue eyes, and a blue tint to his pale skin. Beside him was a somewhat pretty girl who looked like some type of Fae with her pointed ears and slit-pupiled orange eyes, but she was far curvier than most Fae I had seen, except for Ainslee, and her skin was a blueish grey in color while her long hair was silver.

I was already starting to mentally tag both Moonlight and Ainslee in my mind as I kept the icicle hovering and asked, “You know these assholes, Ainslee?”

“I know him,” Ainslee spat bitterly. “We went to the same school.”

“This is the slut who humiliated you, Terry? Can’t say I’m impressed. She’s pretty, but she won’t be when we’re done with her,” the odd-looking Fae said as she licked her lips, and some sort of sickly green energy gathered in her hand. “I’ll take care of her mosquito friend while you have some fun with her.”

I was about to offer to get us both the hell out of there and call my contacts in the Vanguard since I had already had my comm crown start recording the moment we turned around. We could let them deal with these assholes. Unprovoked attacks with Altered abilities were against local laws, equivalent to assault with a deadly weapon, and the Vanguard handled such cases themselves. And given how very much they wanted me and my teleportation abilities to remain intact; I was going to bet these two were going to be in deep shit when the Vanguard found out about this.

Before I could get the words out though, Ainslee’s glare turned to a look of fury, focused upon the one who had just made the threats, and her green eyes turned crimson. She was out of the range of my teleport sphere and had closed most of the distance between them before I could as much as get the first word out, let alone teleport us. Something as crimson as her eyes had been, and crackling with violent energy, appeared in her right hand as she lunged toward what I’m going to call the Dark Elf. She was almost upon the other Fae when the darker-skinned woman seemed to panic, and that green energy focused into a violent beam that tore through Ainslee as I screamed.