Hi, I’m Franky

My grandmother was a witch. We did not see eye to eye. While my peers were raking leaves and scrubbing stoves for their pocket money, I was picking gypsy-flower, collecting slow worms, and chasing crows from rafters.

“Offerings for the Faerie folk,” she called it.

“How you get ants,” I would mutter.

Before she was the Queen, before any of us were the people we are now, I saved her from a sharp blade in the back and a gutter rat’s death.

She never thanked me, but that’s hardly unusual.

I know she remembers. I sometimes wonder if she cares.

“Careful, K-i. Call yourself human again, and the Fleet Guard will have you reprogrammed.

“I apologize, Tal. I use the term ‘us’ to establish a sense of shared identity. But you know I cannot truly align myself with humans.”

“I know, Kai. I’m only messing with you.”