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It happened while Michaela and Francesca were on the phone. She was trying to find a way to ask if John could stay with them for a week, because his constantly busy schedule had let up for a second and she wanted to have her cousin come stay with them for the first time since he moved to London. Her aunt had moved to London to be closer to him and he hadn’t been back to Scotland in years and Michaela missed him desperately.
The trouble, of course, was that the whole reason she and Francesca had met and become flatmates in the first place was that Fran and John had dated for almost all of university. It had been years since the breakup and Francesca came out as a lesbian a few months ago, but that didn’t mean things weren’t still a little awkward between the two of them.
So she was stopping at Fran’s favorite chippy for takeaway to butter her up; bad news always went down better with copious amounts of grease. She called Francesca, who picked up on the first ring. “Hello?
“Hi, Fran! Lovely day today, isn't it?”
There was a beat and then Francesca replied, slow and already suspicious, “Why are you calling? Aren’t you coming home soon?”
“Mm-hmm, just picking up something from Finn’s, thought I’d ask for your order.”
Another longer pause, then a sigh. “You want something from me.”
She stopped in the middle of the pavement, pouting at the implication. “I get Finn’s for you all the time without wanting anything.”
“Yes, but you know I always want the chicken, so you only bother asking what I want when you’re trying to act especially considerate. And you only do that when you’re trying to get me to do something I don’t want to do.”
“What? No! I would never!” Fran laughed outright at that, and Michaela rolled her eyes but smiled fondly at the same time. “Fine, okay, yes. I’m just wondering would it be alright if we had someone stay over for a week or so next month.”
“After all the times my siblings have done it? Of course. Is it one of your friends from your study abroad or something?”
“No, um. That’s sort of the other thing.” Michaela stepped out of the way of a centaur clip-clopping on the pavement and leaned on the far wall of a nearby phone booth so she wouldn’t be so much in the way. “How uncomfortable would it be if -“
A loud braying came from down the street, startling her.
“What was that?” Fran asked.
Michaela looked around the photo booth and huffed in annoyance as the unicorn continued to bray loudly. “Someone's riding a unicorn in the park. I hate the way those things sound. Like a donkey mixed with an angry cat.”
"Sorry, I can't hear you very well over the unicorn. You said something about an angry cat?”
She shook her head, feeling a headache coming on. “Never mind. How uncomfortable would it be for you to have your ex sleep on our sofa?”
“Who’s ex?”
“Your ex, my cousin … Francesca, did you hear me? I said my -“
Suddenly there was a thump on the other end of the phone.
“Francesca?"
There was series of squeaking noises and crashes and then, high-pitched and shouted as though far away, “Micki, come home! I need help!”
Then the call dropped.
Michaela was almost three miles from their building and she couldn’t remembered the last time she'd run more than a couple blocks a time.
She sprinted the whole way home.
*
When she got back to their flat, she almost dropped her keys in the hallway, hands shaking, panting from the run and heart beating from the fear. She managed to get the door open and her stomach fell to her feet at the sight. Pictures and books scattered on the floor, the apples that had been in the fruit bowl this morning knocked onto the counter, the sofa cushions all askew - and Francesca never left the sofa cushions askew. There was also a coating of some kind of shimmering powder over everything and Fran’s mobile was abandoned on the carpet.
And there was no sign of her flatmate anywhere.
“Francesca!” she called out frantically, trying to remember how to do a location spell. She hadn’t used one in ages; did she need an important object or a some physical part of Fran? Where was she going to get a physical part of Fran? Did hair from her hairbrush count? God, she wished John was here; she had more raw power but he was always better at memorizing spell components. “Fran, where are you?”
There was a tiny sigh, and then a small voice said, “Down here.”
And from behind the reading lamp on their end table emerged Francesca.
A very tiny Francesca with pointed ears and gossamer wings.
The thing was, Michaela had always know that Francesca was a fairy, in theory. The Bridgertons were actually very famous among the fae families and after being friends with Fran for almost ten years, Michaela had seen most of the Bridgerton siblings in their fairy forms at some point or another, but never Francesca herself. Fairy forms were difficult to manage - wings that beat twice as fast a hummingbird, magic magnified but harder to control, and of course, they shed fairy dust everywhere.
Michaela looked around the flat and winced. Turning into a fairy for the first time in years explained the mess. And she knew how much Francesca must’ve hated it. She valued order and control; her fairy form was the opposite of that.
So Michaela did her best to brush away some of the fairy dust off the carpet and kneeled down so she could be eye-to-eye with Francesca. “What happened? I mean, I’m guessing you didn’t randomly decide to shift, but I thought you had to touch iron or something for it to happen without you wanting it to. I didn’t bring anything iron in here somehow, did I? Was it the new frying pan, I knew it was marked down for a reason -“
“I didn’t touch iron.”
“Well, there’s no fairy circles or mushrooms in here, so what else could’ve done it?”
Francesca pressed her lips together, her eyes darting to the side. Then she said muttered something that Michaela couldn’t quite catch.
She leaned closer. “Sorry, say that again?”
Her roommate sighed a tiny little sigh. “Fairy magic is triggered by strong feelings. So I guess I was … feeling small.”
Michaela blinked. “Oh.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to, I know it’s ridiculous. This is why I hate fairy magic. You would never, I don’t know, make it rain indoors because you’re sad or something.”
She would never make it rain indoors because witches couldn't do that under any circumstances, but she didn't think pointing that out would make Fran feeling any better, or bigger. Instead, she asked, “How do you undo it? Can I help?”
“I just, um. I have to stop feeling small.”
“Well, what made you feel small in the first place?”
Her flatmate’s glare was just as impressive in miniature. “Are you serious? After what you asked me on the phone?”
“That’s what set you off?” She hadn’t realized that having John around would still affect Fran like this. She tried to ignore how that made her heart ache. It wasn’t about her right now. “If I knew it would upset you -“
“If you knew - as if I haven’t been obvious about how I feel! And then you invite her to live with us and ask me like it’s nothing, like it wouldn’t break my - I’m not having this conversation with you when I’m too small to go outside without getting hunted by the neighbor’s cat!“
And then she stomped her foot, a cloud of gold dust puffing up, and tried to fly away. She immediately ran into the lamp and fell back onto the table.
“Are you okay?” Michaela asked as Francesca sat up and shook her head.
“I’m fine, I just haven’t flown in a long time.”
“You sure? Because you seem to have run into a lot of things before I got here,” she said, looking around all of their possessions scattered on the floor.
Francesca buried her head in her hands and whimpered. “This is the worst day of my life.”
Michaela probably should have said something comforting, but she had finally managed to register some of the things Francesca had said in her rant. “Who is ‘she?’ Who do you think I wanted to stay over?”
Her flatmate sighed and then pulled her face, which was now splotchy and red, and looked up at Michaela with sad eyes, all the fight seeming to drain out of her. “Lizzie.”
That pulled Michaela up short. She had dated a lot of women, but rarely for more than a month or two, if that. Lizzie Ashworth was the one exception, an on and off relationship that had lasted from her twenty-first birthday all the way until last Christmas, when Lizzie had said was ready to get married and Michaela had finally realized that she didn’t want that, not at all, not ever.
At least, not with Lizzie.
There was one person she’d ever felt that way about, the kind of love that could last for the rest her life, and John had met her first.
Apparently Francesca misread Michaela’s stunned silence for confirmation. “See, this is what always happens. You say you’ll be just friends and then you find some reason to go over to her place or for her to come 'round ours, and next thing you know, you’re back together. And I thought … I’d hoped that things were changing between us, because we’ve been spending so much time together and sometimes the way you look at me … but clearly I was wrong because you invited your ex to stay for a whole week -“
“No, I didn’t,” Michaela said, a smile growing on her face as finally understood where things had gone wrong. “I was talking about John. He has a holiday coming up.”
Francesca took in a sharp breath. “John? You were trying to ask me if John could stay over?”
“Yes.”
“Not Lizzie?”
“Yes, and we are definitely not getting back together. Ever. I told her I have feelings for someone else.”
And then Francesca was normal sized again.
It happened with no warning, no flash or bang or any kind of clear sign of magical transformation. Between one blink and the next, Francesca went from having wings and pointed ears and being shorter than their reading lamp to being wingless, tall, and knocking the lamp onto the floor because she was taking up the entire end table, legs draped on either side of Michaela, leaning forward on her knees so their faces were centimeters apart.
“You mean that?” she asked, her voice back to normal, albeit a bit husky; she didn’t seem to notice the change, too busy staring intently into Michaela’s eyes.
“I do,” Michaela said, reaching up to cup Fran’s chin in her hand. “Ever since I first met you.”
“Me, too. I didn’t realize it for a long time, but it was the same for me. You’re the reason I came out, because I’ve never felt for anyone how I feel about you."
“If I promise to never make you feel small again, can I kiss you?”
Her answer came in the form of Francesca closing the gap between them and kissing her eagerly, knocking them both to the floor in a big cloud of fairy dust.