Two Exes, One Owl-Bear

1. Prologue

Prologue

Since the beginning, there have been fairy realms.

They existed separately, their borders only brushing those of the mundane world.

The occasional human slipped through, of course.

A quick nap on the wrong hill. An unwitting step into a ring of mushrooms. A fall down a rabbit hole.

But the mixing of the realms never lasted long.

Sooner or later, every wayward human woke in their own world, believing their adventures were nothing more than a dream.

The mermaids’ crystalline palaces hummed with life in the deepest parts of the oceans, where no submarines shone their lights.

Every so often, an adventurous young siren was spotted exploring the surface.

Merfolk worked to suppress these incidents, spreading rumors that confused sailors had seen chunky grey manatees instead.

It was a preposterous story—and yet, somehow, it worked.

Unicorn herds lived in the unexplored hearts of the thickest jungles, leaving hoofprints on paths never tread by human feet.

Tiny flower sprites drank from hummingbird feeders in suburban gardens, their movements so quick they read only as lens flares on bird identification apps.

Vampires and werewolves hid in plain sight amongst humans, their true nature only revealed within cryptic societies in the dead of night.

The magic had always been there.

But it had always been separate, secret, a world unto its own.

In the year 10 BGM, the talks began in earnest. The Peoples most connected to nature—the wood nymphs, the sprites, the kelpies—were most aware of the planet dying.

They insisted that humans could no longer be left to their own devices, or every species, be they magical or mundane, would perish in the Earth’s destruction.

In the year 1 GM, the Great Merge occurred.

The magical People revealed themselves to the humans, and they became one world.

Not without fuss, not without growing pains, but not without great benefit for all—most significantly, the use of magic to course-correct human activities otherwise dooming the planet.

Or, as the Vegan Vampire Society gently put it when first announcing their presence, “We’re here to make things less fucked. ”

Thankfully, they did.

In the year 3 GM, pre-med student Gerard de Narbon met a vacationing half-pixie at a mermaid-owned dive bar (with actual diving).

He had never had sex with a magical Person before, and he was surprised that she glowed a bright, sparkling white whenever he particularly pleased her.

When she left for Spain the next morning, he never expected to see her again.

He never did.

In the year 3 GM and nine months, a basket appeared on Gerard’s dormitory stoop with a note saying, “Congratulations, it’s a girl! Also, it’s your girl!”

In the year 29 GM, that girl—Helena de Narbon, recently MD—was doing her residency at the Hans Christian Andersen Was Right Hospital for the Magical and Mundane, and hating every minute of it

“I would recommend an octuple bypass,” Helena said, holding the MRI aloft and pointing at each heart in turn.

“The posterior heart is healthy, but the medial heart needs immediate attention. We could wait to operate on the anterior heart, but I’d rather have surgery tackle both at once, considering the comparatively high risk of death under anesthesia for arachnaiads. ”

Helena turned apologetically to the arachnaiad patient in question, a gentle middle-aged woman with a human torso and the legs of a spider.

All eight of those legs were now twitching with anxiety under her thin hospital blanket.

“No offense,” Helena said, quickly. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. I mean, I’m not sure you’ll be fine—sorry, I shouldn’t have . . .”

This, she realized, was probably what the attendings meant when they told her she needed to improve her bedside manner.

Another resident jumped in, putting the traumatized arachnaiad at ease.

Helena sighed. How could she put her patients at ease when she wasn’t at ease herself?

The hospital—with its cramped hallways and fluorescent lights, with its overwhelming smell of illness and chemicals, with its constant cacophony of beeping and blaring—was not Helena’s natural habitat.

She had sore shoulders in the evening from holding tension all day and headaches in the morning from grinding her teeth at night.

The only exception was when she had an overnight shift, and then the timing of her ailments was reversed.

Helena cared for her fellow humanoid beings, of course. She wanted to make People’s lives better, regardless of their species or background.

But the truth was, she missed working with animals. Mundane creatures or magical otherfolk, she believed each had their charms. Amongst birds, for example, she found otherfolk phoenixes to be staggeringly beautiful, but mundane chickens had never set her on fire, so that was a point in their favor.

Helena missed fieldwork and fresh air and quiet observations and statistical analysis.

Statistical analysis never criticized your bedside manner. You couldn’t embarrass yourself in front of linear regression.

Helena was relieved when her dinner break arrived, giving her respite from her mortification.

She popped some headphones in her ears, making sure the cord didn’t tangle in her wavy black hair.

The hair, along with the olive undertones of her tan complexion, were inheritances from the Spanish half-pixie mother she never met.

Meanwhile, her ginger father could get sunburned through a window.

It was a fable that vampires had issues with sunlight, but human Gerard de Narbon certainly did.

And it was Gerard de Narbon who was calling now.

Helena contemplated answering. But her dinner break was brief, and she needed every second to clear her stupid, anxious mind and shove food in her big, stupid mouth.

She would return his call tomorrow, or the day after.

Helena shot off a text telling him as much, then returned to her cold pasta salad.

The phone rang again.

Helena frowned. Usually, Gerard respected how stressful her residency was and could handle a missed call here and there. Maybe he was having computer trouble or the power was out. She answered the phone, trying to mask her exasperation.

“Hi, Dad,” Helena said. “What’s up?”

There were sniffles on the other end of the line. “Helena,” said a voice, and it was a woman’s voice.

Helena’s heart raced as she jumped to a dozen worst case scenarios and then threw them all out, telling herself that there were tons of very normal, no-cause-to-panic reasons that a random woman was calling her from her dad’s cell phone at nine p.m.—

“This is Laura; I live next door to your father.”

“Okay,” said Helena.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. He’s—he’s dead.”

“Okay,” said Helena.

Since starting her residency, Helena had had more than a few brushes with death. She was used to remaining stoic in front of patients and their loved ones, then having her emotional breakdown in the supply closet twenty or so minutes later.

She wasn’t sure how long you were supposed to wait before crying in the supply closet when the dead Person was your own father.

So, she simply said, “Okay,” and thought to herself that things would never, ever, ever be okay again.