Dust in the Hourglass

 Fred is something special, and he knows it.

It's not anything he did. It's just how he was born, which isn't really fair to anyone. He never woke up one morning thinking “I'm going to be special and unique for the rest of my life,” because it was thrust upon him and he has no idea what he would have chosen if it hadn't been. It's not even just about the silver spoon in his mouth, though that's a big part of it and Fred comes to understand that pretty early on. No, his father is the one who's rich, and Fred's accidental uniqueness has more to do with his mom than it has to do with his dad.

Mom's a witch.

It's not weird, at least not to him. There are things that Fred grows up with that other kids, as he quickly learns, are grossly fascinated by at best and scared of at worst. Things like Mom being so much younger-looking than dad, or Mom being gone a lot, or Mom fletching arrows at the dinner table or casting spells or giving him a necklace of carved, painted wood that's supposed to protect him from harm.

Things like Mom's dæmon never being around.

Fred only sees Ilmarinen once in a while, but... whatever, right? It's just a thing. It's just how witches and their dæmons are. That's how it's always been, for as long as Fred can remember. So what if kids think it's weird enough to whisper behind their hands about it? If they don't like it, then that's their problem, not Fred's. That's what he tells himself, at least.

Being a witch's son is nothing special, anyway. It's certainly not bad. Some of his favorite comic book characters are witch's sons. But there's a difference between being a masked superhero (or supervillain) whose mother is a witch, and being a skinny rich schoolkid whose mother is a witch. Aside from being used to weirdness and getting one necklace that doesn't protect him from stuff like loneliness or Tony Nuñez blacking his eye in the seventh grade, Fred has yet to see any perks.

He's pretty sure, early on, that his parents are disappointed.

Again, it's nothing that he did. But he's pretty sure Mom was hoping for a daughter, and got him instead. Boys can't be born witches, after all. Only girls can. Witch mom or no witch mom, Fred's one hundred percent human. It's not that Mom doesn't like humans – she married one, after all – or that she loves him less. But sometimes, when she's home instead of visiting her clan up north, and she thinks Fred isn't looking, she gives him these sad looks. Like she's watching him grow up and die of old age right in front of her.

There's also his dæmon – Solitaire. He used to think it was weird that they'd name his dæmon after a card game, until he actually looked it up and found out that it was also a name for a type of bird. Witch dæmons always settle as birds, and when Fred finds out what his dæmon's name means, his stomach hurts a little. Solitaire cuddles close in the form of an iguana like she's suddenly ashamed of herself, and he gives her scales a stroke to assure her – we're fine, we're fine just the way we are. Mom and Dad love us just fine.

He knows they do. They tell him that, and Heathcliff tells him that when Fred asks him one day just to make sure. It doesn't stop them from being gone a lot – Dad with his work and Mom with her clan's council. It doesn't stop Fred from being lonely, because it's hard to make friends at school when the rumors and whispers fly. There are no kids for Fred to play with or dæmons for Solitaire to be around, unless you count Heathcliff's Litsa, who's nice but not really great for when Solitaire wants to play. She's patient and kind, like you'd expect a bulldog dæmon to be, but having a butler is different from having a friend.

In the back of his mind he thinks that maybe that's the reason his sixteenth birthday comes before Solitaire settles. There's no end of teasing from that, either – Fred is pretty sure he's the last kid in his entire eleventh-grade class with a dæmon that still changes her shape. They don't say it out loud, but they're both hoping for a bird, in the backs of their minds, like maybe-just-maybe Fred could have something witchlike about him.

But no. One moment he's helping run boxes for the Food Pantry, and the next Solitaire is lolloping at his heels, unable to change into something faster to keep up. He glances down, and a dark brown otter stares back up and they both know she won't be changing anymore.

His parents are happy for him, and he knows he's just projecting his own disappointment that he doesn't have a bird dæmon on them, so he shrugs off his insecurities because there's no point in keeping them. His parents love him, and Solitaire loves him and he loves her because they're part of each other.

It helps at the kids' charities. Solitaire's fluffy and warm, good for cuddling around the skittish shapeshifting dæmons of kids from broken homes or bad backgrounds. It feels good to see her doing that. It feels... right, somehow. Plus, this means he can take the swimming unit in PE, which is always awesome.

Besides. There's one more thing he can do.

He and Solitaire used to whisper about this, late at night. The thought has always scared her, but it intrigues him.

Separation. Just like what Mom and Ilmarinen have. It's different from severing, from intercision (and just the thought of that is enough to make Fred nauseous). The bond between human and dæmon isn't broken, or even damaged. It's more like it's stretched, so that they can be as far apart from each other as they want without it hurting. All witches go through it, like a rite of passage, and sometimes humans do too. Back in the old days, if your dæmon was a dolphin or something, then you were out of luck and you had to stay on a boat for the rest of your life. But nowadays, if your dæmon settles as something inconvenient like that, a lot of hospitals have procedures for it. Just gradual stretching of the bond, until you reach a point where the pain stops and your dæmon's free to go wherever it likes.

It has to be gradual, though; Fred knows that much. Separate too fast – like from a fall or something – and the bond could snap. Fred's heard horror stories and urban legends about people who get separated from their dæmons on the subway – the doors close between them and the train takes off. If by some miracle you don't die of shock, then you live out the rest of your life as an empty, lobotomized husk.

So yeah, Fred can see why Solitaire doesn't like the idea. But it doesn't stop him from wondering.

It's a little bit after she settles that he finally (sort of) convinces her.

A lot of witch's sons separate from their dæmons, to feel close to their maternal families even if they can't truly join them. It's a coming-of-age thing for witches, kind of like a bat mitzvah or a quinceañera. Plenty of people do it, and it has like a one hundred percent success rate, so what's the harm? And it'd be useful; Fred wouldn't have to scoop her up or wait for her to catch up on land, and she could swim around to her heart's content. Solitaire is uncertain, but Fred isn't, and they agree to it before Fred asks Mom about it the next time she's home.

The touch of pride in her eyes is what really brings Solitaire around.

It's not until they're standing in the North Pole and Fred is staring out at the white expanse of ice in front of him that Solitaire balks again. She's shivering – otter fur is thick, and she's wrapped in blankets and sheltered from the wind by one of Ilmarinen's big gray wings, but this is one of the coldest places on the planet, and there's something about it that makes her feel sick. Dæmons can't enter it, which is why it's the perfect place for separation. No one's really sure why. It may be the cold. It may be something about the magnetic poles. It may be the fact that, as far as Fred can tell, there's absolutely nothing living, nothing growing on that entire stretch of ice.

Solitaire latches onto his pant leg and asks him not to go. She doesn't beg – she simply tells him not to. Mom pauses, looking at him, and he knows she won't be ashamed if he loses his nerve now, but he can't. He's come this far, and he's a witch's son. She went through this, and her mother did before her, and he can do it too.

But it's not just the Arctic making him feel cold as he stares straight ahead. He's going to be alone. And not just alone like going to school with no friends, or living in a house with only his butler for company. He's leaving Solitaire behind – no fur to stroke, no warmth to cuddle. Mom will be there, and Ilmarinen will stay with Solitaire, but if Mom can't take the place of having friends, then there's no way she can take the place of having Solitaire beside him.

Fred hugs his dæmon close, places her down, and starts walking.

It hurts. He's always known it would hurt, but this hurts more than books and articles and experts can put into words. It's stop-and-start as he tries to balance walking with breathing through the pain and awful, tearing sadness. It's all he can do to keep from turning and running back, throwing his arms around his dæmon, and never letting go of her again. It hurts and hurts and hurts until it finally stops hurting, and for a single powerful instant Fred wonders if he severed himself by accident. The rush of fear that comes with wondering is what convinces him he hasn't, and somehow he manages to stumble back to Solitaire's side.

She turns away from him. He thought this might happen – Mom said it did for her.

Solitaire doesn't come to school with him for a week, and that draws even more stares and whispered rumors, but Fred holds his head high even as the weight of all the attention drags at him. He can't even cuddle his dæmon for comfort, because she's upset with him for putting them through that and refuses to come out from under the bed. Mom says that Ilmarinen flew away after they separated, and she didn't know where he was for three months before he finally came back.

“But don't worry,” she whispers. “She's your dæmon, and she loves you. Remember that. She will too.”

And she does, not a moment too soon. Fred wakes up one night from a heart-pounding nightmare about snow and ice and their bond stretching until it snaps, to find her burrowing against his side for the first time since they separated. He almost bursts into tears right then and there.

But at school, the damage is done. Fred's a freak now, and Solitaire padding after him from class to class can't fix it. Not that it matters much – Fred's never had very many friends anyway, so there's nowhere for him to fall. All that matters is that she's back. They're together – different, but not really, not unless you really mind about that kind of thing. And Fred's grown up with it, so he doesn't.

It's just him and Solitaire, and Heathcliff, and his parents, and the rest of the world can come along if they want. And if they don't, then that's their loss, not his.