Blue scales. Dashing streaks of twinkling colour passed between the legs of the station-goers. Iris would see one every so often, yet she would never find herself up close with one. Forever seeing glimpses through pant legs and dresses.

Warper was the colloquial name given to the Spirits. From her office window, Iris had seen their floating serpentine bodies accompanying police. They were almost always leashed by chain, and natural armour shielded their canine faces. A snap of their jaws was the trigger. In the wild, Warpers would disregard spacetime, teleporting their unfortunate prey to their pup-filled nests. The police department had trained them, designating their nests as the police station, and their prey as whoever needed arresting.

Evalyn had told her that it feels as though one’s stomach drops, then rises into their throat, then back down again, a thousand times a second. When Iris had asked her guardian why she had such experience, the defendant had refused to comment.

“This looks nice, don’t you think?” Elvera said, holding a trinket up to her face. A decorative key chain meant for wallets. “Infused with luck magic, it says. Sounds like a scam.”

Iris took a closer look. It was a small woven toy depicting an exceptionally plump songbird with grain-sized beads for eyes. She focused closer, doing her best to shut out the noise around her.

“No, there’s a bit of magic in it,” she concluded.

“Oh. Well, it was useful having you around,” Elvera said.

Another glint of blue in the corner of Iris’s eye spooked her, and she pressed herself into Elvera’s side.

“Do the Warpers still scare you?”

Iris nodded. “I never know where they are.”

“Well, that’s sort of the point. Police go through a lot of trouble to train them. But they’re the good guys, no quarrels with you,” she said as she patted Iris on the head and began to walk toward the counter.

“How’re you holding up? Been causing trouble?”

“No, studying.”

“That’s very diligent of you. Certainly better than I ever did.”

“You didn’t study?”

“Not what wasn’t important, at least.”

She greeted the cashier, handing over the key chain and several coins. “Thank you,” Elvera said gently as she completed the transaction. She ended the exchange without much fanfare. All business, both figuratively and literally, in a way that only made sense to Iris, given her prior knowledge of her. Even in a brown knitted sweater and green one-piece, Elvera carried a sense of authority. More out of habit than out of internal notions of status or dignity.

“Evalyn said you’ve been having some insecurities with work,” she said as they stepped out of the souvenir shop.

“Yeah,” Iris mumbled. “We’ve been trying to find ways to get past it.”

“What can you do right now?”

“Right now?”

“Right now,” Elvera clarified. “Say, could you scale the walls of the station and break through the glass?”

Iris examined the brick walls between each store. Plenty of ledges to hang onto. Even then, her purple limbs were almost strong enough to carry her and bypass the walls entirely.

“Maybe, but it would be difficult, especially breaking the glass. I might hurt myself.”

“Then how about protecting us by making some sort of barrier?”

Evalyn had made her practice such a technique to death. Wrists crossed high, picture the semi-circle, then twist.

“Yes. Evalyn says it’s the only way to protect myself when I can’t make my armour.”

“I see,” she said, continuing along the station’s main through road. Unlike Iris, she sliced through the crowd with a sort of graceful efficiency. Her steps remained consistent, rhythmic, and holding onto her dress felt like a buoy in rough waters.

“Could you kill someone?” she asked.

The steps stayed rhythmic, and she did not sense that Elvera was leaving her to the rough waters around her. Iris sensed it was not a test, but a genuine question. She wanted an honest answer, not a satisfying one.

“No,” Iris answered.

“Good,” was the almost immediate reply. Where Iris had expected disappointment or concern, a Lieutenant-General, whose chief concern was the destruction of others, approved wholeheartedly. “We don’t need you having to make those sorts of decisions yet.”

“When do you make them?”

“When you know what it means to make them. Let’s stop here.”

Empty wooden tables and chairs of a quaint breakfast café spilled into the main path. Elvera took Iris by the wrist, and they found themselves a table.

“When do you know it’s right to make a choice like that?” Iris asked, sitting down across from Elvera.

“You never do. If someone says they know when it's right, then they’re just playing god. If you do know when it’s right…well then you’d have to be god.” She plucked out the menu from between the cutlery and napkins, her eyes discreetly feasting on the illustrations as she spoke. “You make the choice when you have no other option. When you’re ready to accept the type of person it’ll make you. When you can say that becoming that type of person is worth it.”

She lazily raised her hand, not bothering to take her eye off the menu.

“What do you want? Something sweet or something savoury?”

“Savoury, please.”

Elvera peered over the top of the menu with an impressed look. “Very adult choice there, very dignified,” she mused as a waitress reached their table.

“May I take your order?” she said. Her voice box was pitched higher than Iris expected, and a lightly etched floral pattern along the rim of her mask gave her a youthful impression.

“Two breakfast sandwiches, a long black and….”

She looked at Iris.

“Do you drink juice?”

“Juice?”

“Apple juice for the young lady,” Elvera said, smiling. The waitress noted down the order before bowing and turning away. Iris watched her as she went. The apron-wearing girl skipped through the tables, enjoying the freedom of after-rush-hour tranquillity.

“It’s not something you ever know how to make,” Elvera said, continuing the conversation from where it had left off. “But the people that make them lose hope in the world not long after. Well, if they had any left to begin with.”

“Do you do it often?” Iris asked, kicking her legs. Curiosity was routine for her now, and the adults often answered her questions, if not cryptically.

“All the time. What makes it harder, is that the things I’m put in charge of, the damage can never easily be quantified,” she said. She leaned closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Special Operations deals with the balance of power directly, never in lands gained or soldiers lost.”

“You get to decide who’s powerful or not?”

“If only it were that easy,” she chuckled, leaning back. “But we have to make choices like that all the time. Who do we kill to protect who? Every time we ask Evalyn to complete a contract, she has to make that choice. To help us or not, to sacrifice one thing for another.”

“Are those the orders she was talking about?” Iris asked, recalling the conversation she had had with Evalyn one moonlit night. ‘Hypocritical, isn’t it?’ Iris had remembered her saying.

“Yes…but the orders Evalyn receives, and the orders Elliot follows are different. If those sirens blare, Elliot has no choice but to go out and do his duty. It’s his job, but his actions are not his responsibility, they’re his orders.”

“Then how is that different?”

“The orders Evalyn gets are of her choosing to accept or not. She takes responsibility for the action she takes because we compensated her for them. She is the chain of command, the soldier and the weapon all rolled into one. That’s what makes her so terrifying.”

“Then why does she take those orders? She sounded really sad when talked about it.”

“Because if she doesn’t obey the Queen, she loses her protection. There are people who would very much like to take you and Elliot hostage and make her do whatever they want. The Queen wouldn’t hesitate to send the entire world after her if she threatened to use her power against Geverde.”

She glanced to the register, where lines of ready-made pastries sat on display in a glass cabinet. There were small sounds of chatter, short laughter, and cheerful quipping. The waitress flitted in and out of sight, writing notes on papers and going through the register. She smiled, chatting intermittently with the out-of-sight chef. A normal, healthy work environment.

“It's the price she pays for the absolute power to protect. But no matter how much she fought, there was always another danger waiting for her. She realised that no one person can change the world.”

“Is that why she works as a P.I.?”

“More or less, yeah. That way, she’d stay in Excala longer, and make those kinds of choices less. It was an act of mercy on the part of Her Majesty, but all the other Wizards and Witches understood.”

She plucked a fork from the cutlery holder and made it spin between her fingers like an awkward dancer. “An eighteen-year-old with no combat experience right after a war her father had waged. She felt guilty about avoiding responsibility, but everyone knew she needed time to grow up.”

Soft humming alerted the two to the waitress’s approach. Frolicking through the tables, the emotion she lacked in her mechanical voice radiated from her movements. With two ceramic plates in hand, she arrived at the table. “Two breakfast sandwiches, as ordered. Winderfoller leg with Alfante Cheese, lettuce, and fresh tomato between tiger bread. I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

And the waitress was off once more, skipping through the tables and living out her seemingly exceptional day to the fullest.

“Must be nice being a high schooler on a weekend,” Elvera chuckled, picking up her sandwich. “You’re not far off from that too, you know?”

“I’ve heard about school,” Iris said, eyeing up the meal to formulate a plan of attack.

“Your thoughts?”

“I don’t know. It seems fun, but a lot of work.”

“Ah, you get used to it. Besides, you’ve done more work so far than every kid your age. Hell, even every kid her age,” she said, nodding in the waitress’s vague direction.

“Then I hope I can be normal,” Iris mumbled, not exactly sure how to articulate the sentiment. She picked the sandwich up and chanced a bite, hoping the contents would not spill out either end.

“Most kids these days want to be anything but normal. Find their own communities, stand out from the rest, you know? What would you like to be known as?”

“Introduced as?” Iris said, struggling through a mouthful.

“Yeah. On the first day of school, you have to introduce yourself to everyone, let them know who you are.”

“But I can’t do that,” Iris noted, crumbs falling from her mouth.

“I know that,” Elvera admitted, “but when you have to eventually, how do you want them to think of you?”

“I don’t want to lie,” Iris said. “It’s unfair for them.”

“It’s not unfair,” Elvera said, taking a bite of her sandwich, mimicking Iris’s poor table manners. “You aren’t just Iris Hardridge-Maxwell, the youngest and possibly most powerful Witch to have ever lived," she said with added bravado. "You’re also, y’know, Iris Hardridge-Maxwell.”

She had never heard her full name pronounced before. It had always been Iris this, Iris that. The name Iris—derived from the shifting purple in her eyes—had been one of the biggest pens which drew her own definition. A simple, four-letter, two-syllable noun had given her such a definition. The smooth, invisible contours separated her skin from the air and the wider world. The colours which only she occupied in her current time and space. Hearing her full name only made that sense of self stronger. She was real, addressable.

Yet at the same time, she was not. Those three words carried no meaning of their own. One was a noun, and the other two were borrowed from others.

What did they mean when used to address the silver-haired, purple-eyed, juvenile girl she knew herself to be? What meaning did she have to live up to?

“I want to introduce myself with my name, and nothing else.”

“Why not anything else?”

“Because there is nothing else yet. I love Evalyn, I love Elliot, I like you, and I like board games. That’s all.”

Elvera smiled at the little girl as she tried her hardest to grapple with herself. Like two toddlers bickering over a toy, her inner turmoil struggled in a most amusing, heart-warming way. “Isn’t that a nice introduction already?” Elvera suggested, which left Iris’s inner turmoil in only further confusion.

“So sorry for the delay! Here’s your long black and orange juice—”

The waitress shrieked as a hurdling mass sped toward her, knocking her off balance and sending the drinks flying.

“The fuck was that?!” Elvera said, getting up to help the waitress onto her feet. Not hurt, but the intruder had knocked her mask off her face, rendering her mute. Iris, on the other hand, had perked up immediately, jumping up onto her chair to gain a better view. It had been a person, she knew that much. Someone had bounded across their table and back into the crowd.

Glimpses. Small flashes of someone running. No, not someone. Many. Several figures shifted through the crowds at unnatural speeds.

“Elvera!” Iris shouted. “They’re being followed! If we want to find them, we have to move now!”

Elvera, after sparing the waitress a final check and handing her over to the obliviously concerned chef, agreed with a silent nod. “Do you know the way?” she said, grabbing her things.

“I think so. There’s a lot of people after them.”

Without another word, Iris got to work. She was familiar with the chase now. If it were not thieves or informants, it was runaway pets or Spirits. She leapt out of her seat, her single-minded focus blindsiding her, making her forget her fear of crowds.

The fast-moving hunters had all headed toward the entrance, barging their wait through oncoming traffic. She followed their shapes, the afterimages they had left in her mind, the gaps they had left between the people. With Elvera close behind, she had no fear left in her.

This was P.I. work. She was now on duty.

The afterimage of someone running. Only a blur for now, and only seen between the hazy outlines of clustered commuters, but still, she could see them. There was no mistake, that was the pursued, not a pursuer. Iris picked up the pace, pushing past bodies herself.

Her eyes had found the target, and although they strained, they managed to keep a lock on.

Short black hair, male, a head taller than her. She had his scent, his look, his location.

And then he disappeared. Iris did not lose track of him, no. He had been there in one moment and were no longer there the next. Iris stood still as Elvera caught up to her, halfway out of breath.

“Did you lose ‘em?”

“No. I mean, yes. They disappeared, though. Into thin air.”

“In what way?”

“In a magic way.”

“…you don’t think…”

Iris focused her senses on the evader’s last position as sensations that illuded the human body harassed her nerves. A faint glow fizzled out, just as she caught it.

“Disappearing like that...it looks like something a Warper would do....”