Everything felt so hazy and fake around her, a sign that Indigo had passed tired and moved on to sleep deprived. Intellectually, she knew the shuffle of early risers moving around her were real people but a weary side of her eyed them like they were nothing but moving blurs of color. She should sleep; it’s been days since she’s laid in her bed and her nightly performances have been lacking.

Despite her thoughts, Indigo strode past her apartment complex and continued onto the street that led to her little hole in the wall shop. It would have been nice to stop at her studio apartment for a quick shower to get rid of the sweat and glitter that clung to her – but then she might be tempted to lay down. Indigo didn’t want to sleep; she wanted to push her humanly limits until she dies from exhaustion or the restlessness left her jittery limbs.

The shop looked like it always did – worn down, like her. Without the neon sign buzzing, the shop’s title proudly declared that it was “BLUE HAZE” in the tired grey of the morning. Later, when it got darker and she decided to light it up, she will be irritated by the missing letters – but fixing the sign costs money, and it wasn’t like the occult store was booming business. If anything, her finances have been suffering since Nick fucking Bloodfang. The humans that used to come there avoided her store because witches worked for the devil or some shit explanation like that. The Other that used to be regulars avoided it so people didn’t find them out and lead a witch hunt to their doorstep.

Though, it wasn’t entirely suffering, Indigo noted as she jiggled the door open and saw a piece of paper slide across the dusty linoleum. Leaning down and picking up the purple scrap (was it scented?), Indigo glared at the chicken scratch request for crucifixes.

“Fucking loonies.” Indigo huffed, crumbling the paper in her fist. If she was a more destructive witch, she would have burned it to ashes. As it were, she very well couldn’t divine it to a crisp.

Even though crucifixes would achieve two things, jack and shit, Indigo obediently tapped out an order twenty minutes later when everything was operating, albeit with a retro rustiness that Blue Haze was characterized. It’s not her fault she couldn’t afford a high-speed laptop or a nice TV; her customers would just have to settle for the slow as shit dinosaur PC that still had a box for a backing.



It was a waste of money, to be sure. To spend five hundred and fourteen pounds on a hundred and fifty wooden crucifixes that wouldn’t achieve anything was absolutely dumb. But, if she jumped up the price for each individual one and added some nonsense about them being blessed by a priest, maybe she could get a couple of paranoid edgy teens to buy them.

That’s what her business relies on, nowadays, anyways. Her regulars have become decidedly irregular and the Others didn’t quite like to frequent such a closet-outing location, so Indigo had to keep her business running by taking advantage on the oft clueless crazies.

Thinking about the small amount of people that came in and out of the bell-triggered door to order some ridiculous and false countermeasure against the Other made her a bit nervous, now that she took a moment to really analyze it. Mostly what they asked for wouldn’t work – holy water, crucifixes, and someone the other day had asked for her to brew a potion against leprechauns. She closed the shop down for ten minutes, went to the back of her shop and scrubbed some of the glitter from her hairline into a bottle of tap before adding a smidgen of green food dye. Was it ethical to sell that to the clueless dope for fifty-five pounds? Certainly not, but she had little regrets.

It wouldn’t do to give dumbasses scared of leprechauns, of all things, actual tools that could be used against the Other.

Nodding decisively, Indigo flicked on her cheap radio she kept on the counter – she hated the radio, but it wouldn’t do to be out of the loop if one of the stations decided to report on something important. After she fiddled with the volume a bit, Indigo retreated to the back storage of her shop.

The storage room was full of dust motes that would have caused a violent sneeze if she wasn’t so used to it already – cleaning wasn’t exactly her forte. Indigo rarely put in effort to unpack boxes unless they would be going on display, so it took her quite a bit of ruffling around and scraping boxes across the floor before she found the seven boxes tucked in the corner. Armed with industrial strength duct tape, Indigo mummified the boxes carrying iron and a few Solomon Tools and scratched “NFHS” onto the small patches of brown box left. Not for Human Sale.

Satisfied, Indigo ambled back to the counter just in time to catch the tail-end of the On the Edge broadcast.

“–ally condemn the call to violence against the Other from these anonymous pirates.”

“Huh? Did I miss something already?”

The usually Friday morning chatter floated around the room comfortably as students discussed their plans for the weekend, or their misadventures from the evening prior, or both, in some cases. It was common knowledge that the weekend starts on Thursday nights for uni students, and it seemed that few in this room were exceptions to that rule. Cael certainly wasn’t, he had spent the previous night prowling a sorority mixer in search of closeted frat boys to offer a proper good time to. He’d had no luck in these endeavors so, alas, he had no wondrous tales to tell. Instead, the lavender-haired boy focused on his work.

Having studio art first thing in the morning on a Friday might not be considered ideal for most people, but Cael was not most people. As a liberal arts major that was decidedly undecided with what he wanted to do with his very long life, Cael dabbled in a little bit of everything. Literature, maths, botany, and studio art took up the majority of his time during this current term. Of that list, the latter two were his favourites. The painting that he was working on currently was a combination of those two preferences — he was trying to recreate a flower that he had seen during one of his trips to Avalon, using only a patchy mental image of it as reference. It was going relatively well, all things considered. When curious students asked him about what kind of flower it was, as they did not recognize it, Cael passed it off as one he’d seen in his dreams once. Avalon was like a dream, humans didn’t need to know the full truth.

Cael enjoyed the sound of the palette knife scraping against his wooden palette as he mixed the color that was meant to be the base shade of the flower’s petals. It was a gentle sound, but Cael was focused enough on it that it drowned out the voices of his classmates. Moments like this made him realize why some of those ASMR videos on YouTube were so wildly popular. Tingles, was it? Yes… this sound could give him tingles in the proper setting. He blinked sleepily as he dipped his brush in the mixture and brought it up to the canvas in front of him. After laying down a single stroke of the freshly-mixed paint, Cael gasped.

What a hideous color! Aoife would most likely correct his thought, as no color was a bad color in her eyes. She would analyze the mood and depth of it, as she often did, but Cael only sees colors visually, and he was certain that he right and properly ruined the whole painting with this one! Caeldyn stared wide-eyed at the canvas, and then looked down at the slab of wood in his hand, as if the palette was responsible for committing this atrocity. It did not, this one was all on him.

Cael was normally much better at color mixing than this, but he was very tired this morning. It’s not that he was hungover, or that it was too early in the morning — Cael was usually quite the morning person — he simply had not gotten enough sleep the night before. Cael’s frustrating roommate, Andrew, had brought a random girl home, proceeded to have relations with her not more than four meters from Cael’s attempting-to-sleep form, and then he went on to snore like a bear for the remainder of the night. Andy’s slights were being compiled in a formal list by the faerie boy, and someday, oh someday, Caeldyn planned to return them all. Revenge as sweet as Cael desired it to be would take careful planning, so he was in no rush. Andy-boy would get what was coming to him, in time...

Students began to shuffle around the room chaotically, breaking Cael out of his mental meanderings. He flicked his mismatched eyes up to the clock and realized that it was time for him to pack up as well. His shift at The Daily Grind started in half hour! Cael set about rinsing his brushes and wrapping his palette in plastic wrap — because, he certainly wouldn’t want that horrendous color drying out by the time he got back into the studio, of course! He’d have to make sure the ugliness stayed consistent in the future and keep that paint fresh. Sighing, Cael headed out of the classroom and onto the streets of Edgetoun.

The Daily Grind wasn’t too far away from campus, Cael could easily walk there and be on time if he kept a fast pace. The cold February air nipped at his nose and caused him to shrink his face down into the soft grey scarf wrapped around his neck. Cael hugged his arms across his chest in an attempt to retain his own body heat until he finally arrived at his destination. He entered his workplace through the back employee-only entrance. The employee lockers were situated behind the kitchen, and Cael went about stripping off his many layers there before replacing them with a barista apron over his light blue cashmere sweater. He passed his coworker, Bonnie, who was decorating pastries in the kitchen and she stopped him to say, “Oh hey, Cael, can you bring these out on your way?”

“Of course!” The fae boy replied cheerfully, turning his attention to the trays beside Bonnie. Each tray held a dozen perfectly decorated biscottis. The right tray were the Birthday Cake variety, notable by the white frosting coated with a shell of very happy rainbow sprinkles. The other tray were the Triple Chocolate variety — dipped in milk chocolate, sprinkled with dark chocolate chips, and garnished with a drizzling of white chocolate. Cael eyed the second tray lustfully.

“Don’t even think about it!” Bonnie scolded, recognizing this wanting gaze. Cael responded with a smile that dripped with faux innocence. She shook her head and then gestured her thumb behind her. “Take a dink from the pile instead.”

Cael happily wandered over to said pile of ‘dinks’, surveying the collection of broken cookies, mistakes, and pastries that simply didn’t look pretty enough to be put on display. Unloved product, but still perfectly fine in terms of taste. For now, Cael was able to quell his insatiable sweet tooth with a nibble of broken Peanut Butter Toffee-Turtle cookie. After his quick snack break, Cael brought the trays of biscotti out front and placed them into the oversized glass mason jars that they were displayed in for sale. The jars had chalkboard paint along the front side, so that the names of the biscotti could be written on them, along with appropriate chalk doodles relating to their flavours.

It was still morning, so the cafe was bustling and busy. The line reached almost to the door, and Cael quickly went about making drinks for the cashiers that were taking orders. He and his coworker, Guy, worked in tandem, tamping espresso, swerving out of each others’ way to fetch milk from the fridge, pumping syrups, and running orders to the pick-up counter. Their motions were so well-timed now that they hardly even bumped into each other anymore. The line began to dwindle down and the training cashier tagged out to practice making drinks, so Cael took over. The first few orders went off without a hitch until one particular woman stepped up to the register. She was a tall lady in a tailored business skirt suit with blonde hair cut in the stereotypical “I’d like to speak with your manager” fashion, and if looks could kill, Cael would be dead three times over. He braced himself for impact before she even opened her mouth to speak.

“Well, it’s about time — No, not you, Jeff, hang on, I’m ordering coffee — you guys should really look to getting a better staff here, I’ve been in line for forever.” The blonde bitched at Cael, taking a break between her bitching to address the person on the mobile that was pressed against her ear.

“I’m sorry about your wait miss, what can I get for you today?” Cael asked, his tone even and perfectly polite. He was well-practised in customer service, so he knew the drill. The woman continued her conversation with this Jeff on the phone and had the gall to look frustrated at Cael when he asked for her order. Did she seriously just roll her eyes at him? Cael was stunned.

“Ugh, one sec, Jeff — Yes, I’d like one large coffee filled to the brim, and make sure it's all the way to the brim, I’m paying you people for the coffee, so don’t skimp and leave room or whatever. I also need a cup of extra-hot water, double-cupped. And lastly, this one is the most important, one medium cappuccino, make sure the foam is good. Also double-cupped. I’ll be needing a drink carrier as well.” Cael smiled and nodded as he punched the ridiculously complicated order into the computer and cashed her out. He knew better than to give this order to someone else, especially with Guy being occupied and the other barista being a relatively new trainee. Out of the goodness of his seelie fae heart, Caeldyn took this monstrous task upon himself.

Cael aced this order, he made sure of it. Did she deserve that? No. But Cael was doing it perfectly just to spite her for being such a cunt at this point. He paid extra care to the cappucino, crafting the perfect rosetta in the foam. He upped the machine temperature for the hot water. He remembered which drinks needed double cups, and which did not. And there was absolutely no room in that coffee cup. He called the woman’s name — Francesca, gods, even her name sucked — and she snootily marched her way to the pick-up counter. Her phone was put away now, and she looked even more prepared to pick a fight with Cael than before. She took the lid off of the cappucino, inspected it visually, and then proceeded to stick her finger in it to check if the consistency of the foam was up to her standards. Cael’s jaw nearly dropped at that — that rosetta was perfect and she just, she… she destroyed it!

“Well, it’s no wonder why you're the one in this equation wearing an apron.” She said disapprovingly, a scowl on her face. What did that even mean? She wasn’t asking him to remake it, but that certainly wasn’t a positive response. Cael took full offense, though he did his best not to let that show in his expression. Francesca put the cap back on, sipped the beverage, and then shrugged — as if she supposed that it passed her test.

“Have a nice day, ma’am!” Cael said in his cheerful customer service voice as she turned to walk away. He was still pissed, he couldn’t help that his temper flared. She’d slighted the faerie, multiple times, no less! He could get her back, she deserved that. A devilish idea crossed his mind as he thought to tap into his innate fae ability to use fire magic. He wasn’t well-practised in magic by any means, but he could probably manage to heat up a simple cappucino to a scalding temperature. With what he assumed to be a subtle flick of his wrist, though it might not be so subtle to another magic user, Cael did just that. The next sip that Miss Francesca takes would surely burn her tongue. That ought to teach her not to wag it at others so scathingly. In Cael’s eyes, he’d done the world a great service in hushing her up, if only for a moment.