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The entire Darnell household had been thrown into disarray. Wisp could not understand why her big sister was now big, and why she had to go to nursery school and Jacoba got to go to big person's school, and was only comforted by the promises that Christian was going to be there to play with her. Jacoba refused to be called Jacoba any more and had had her first argument with her mother ever: a beautiful inauguration all around, Beatrix thought, and she wearily left her eldest cabbage-daughter cooling her new metal heels in the hallways so that coffee could be obtained.

Waking up that morning as a kid and the first thing your mom ruled was that you had to go to school. Jace was pretty sure that was illegal, and she pulled the peak of her baseball cap back around her head as she adjusted the big man's shirt she was wearing over her baggy jeans. The jeans were Beatrix's: the shirt was one of Jack's that he had left there when her mother was putting bandaids on his ouchies and giving him crap about not doing any home improvements, or whatever. Jace shoved her hands in her pockets and skipped a few steps to the side: the robotic legs she had woken up to, capped to the smooth stumps of her side, had a charm that wouldn't wear off for a while. She launched herself forward to do a handstand, just to test the weight, and they were heavy.

Jace immediately wobbled both heavy legs forward - the cuffs rose up over her ankles, revealing a flash of steel - before she rose up straight, thumbs in the waistband, examining the new arrival. It was a girl she didn't think she'd ever seen before: she looked all flowery and summery and bright, like a calendar picture. Everything Jace wasn't, basically.

"I did not," she said. "You nearly got in the way of me coming down."

Jace didn't have a backpack. Jace had a plastic bag because she didn't have many school things: Jace was wearing hand-me-downs that spanned generational gaps. Jace was also wearing a baseball cap. Baseball was for sissies who wore tights.

Basically it was maybe the worst morning ever where half an hour ago it had been the coolest morning ever.

She fixed Delilah with a tangerine stare and moved to a handstand again, shifting her weight to find her balance. "Says who?"

Jace fixed her with a cold, hard duh! expression, although it was upside-down and didn't have much pull. She felt stung: any ideas she had had of making friends were punched out of her. She righted herself up and pulled her baseball cap off her head, as it was falling away anyway. "I guess someone's really into maths."

"Thwomp wouldn't do that to me," the redheaded girl said with smug satisfaction. For some reason, she wasn't quite ready to reveal her status as the math teacher's daughter, not knowing if it was a plus or a minus. "I have mints in my pocket."

"He's not a rock, he's a demon," Jace immediately said, stung to her mother's defense. 'He's my mom's familiar. He's a demonic elemental, not just some stupid - stupid retard rock. He eats sweet things and he watches detective shows on TV."

"Do I look like I have a rock demon?" Jace's feathers were still ruffled, but it was difficult to stay totally ruffled when the other person was unrufflable.

"Well, I don't. That's a my-mom thing. I'm just... a me. No dumb rocks." She folded her arms tightly in front of her: it made her feel slightly better, closed in, protected. "What're you? You look like a fairy or a flower or something."