She stopped moving for a moment and put a hand on her head to get her bearings. She better not fall out of the sky at this height or she would be a fairy pancake.

Ruby focused on slowly breathing in and out until the wave of dizziness pa.s.sed. She descended rather slowly after that until she felt well enough to go faster again. With a twinge of regret, she put her glamour back on before she got close enough for Ash to see her.

She hadn't bothered hiding her wings from him since he checked the status of the tear. He had already touched them more frequently than anyone outside of her immediate family so there wasn't a point.

Ash knew they were there. If he wanted to hurt them, he would have already.

The same did not extend to her true appearance. Ruby didn't even like showing that in front of her family. She got into the habit of staying in her human glamour even at home before her parents died.

Like with her powers, they warned her that it would be dangerous if people knew her true appearance. She went along with it because she knew appearance was directly related to a fairy's powers and that it would be obvious there was something different about her.

Flint and Lily had been surprised that she seemed to prefer her human form over her fairy one but never gave her a hard time about it until they discovered what her power was. They demanded she release her glamour so she did.

The horrified stares had been enough for her to never want to show anyone ever again, even if it meant hiding herself away for the rest of her existence. They immediately apologized for their reaction, saying they were simply surprised, but Ruby wasn't an idiot.

She let it go because they were her family and she already knew it was off-putting. She had been dealing with her own appearance in the mirror for years since glamours couldn't trick them.

She wished she had figured out how to change her glamour into anything she wanted sooner. Then she could have come up with one that looked like a standard earth fairy before she moved in with her aunt and uncle.

Unfortunately, that was a recent trick. She only figured out how to do it around the time they discovered her powers. She didn't want them to know there was anything else weird about her so she never said anything about it.

The basic law of glamours was that they only showed what other people expected to see, hiding fae traits and making them look more human. You couldn't change facial features, gender, or anything absolute.

Except Ruby. She had discovered that she could take on the appearance of anyone she wanted regardless of race or gender. She did some research on glamours by borrowing a book from a witch about them and realized she was unique.

As if she wasn't enough of a freak already.

For a fairy, she was ridiculously overpowered and she hated it. Having to hide her true self from everyone, even the people she loved, had been draining. And in the end they still betrayed her for being different after finding out the truth.

Ruby had learned her lesson. She would never tell anyone about her powers again, even if it meant she would never be able to have anything more than superficial relations.h.i.+ps with others.

She didn't need love anyway. Her parents loved her and they died. Flora loved her and she accidentally caused a chain reaction that led to her almost being sold off. As long as she had things to keep her busy for the rest of her eternal life, she would be perfectly fine.

Eventually she made it closer to the ground and saw Ash's anxious face peering up at her. Oh. The sun had sunk behind the mountains already so he no longer needed to cover himself. She hadn't noticed.

Relief flooded his features and he shouted up at her because she was still a bit far away. "What took you so long? I was starting to think you blew away!"

Ruby laughed. Oh please. No self-respecting fairy would ever let themselves get blown away.

"I went really high!" she yelled back. "See for yourself!"

She dropped the measurement tool when she was only ten feet up and he caught it with one hand above his head before examining it wide-eyed. "That's a lot, right? I don't know human measurements."

Ruby snorted. That level of bewilderment was actually kind of cute on such a sharp face. "Yeah. It's a lot. About a third as high as human airplanes get."

"…I don't know anything about airplanes either. You told me about them before but I still have a hard time believing humans invented a flying contraption."

"You never saw them wherever you lived before?" she asked incredulously.

Ash shrugged. "If I did, I probably thought they were shooting stars."

Ah. That made sense. She used to make the same mistake with helicopters at night when she was little until her parents corrected her. When you've never seen something before you tend to try and make it fit into a mold of what you already know.

"Well, you'll get to fly on one in a few days. You can see the wonders of human technology for yourself. I made sure to book us a flight after dark. We'll be flying down to San Francisco first and have a layover for a few hours before going on to Las Vegas."

"…I understood maybe half of those words," Ash confessed with a sheepish smile, his fangs glinting innocently.

She jokingly lay a hand on his shoulder. "Ah, my innocent young gra.s.shopper. You have so much to learn."

"I'm not innocent. Or young. And what's a gra.s.shopper?"

That was it. His naivety was too much. Ruby burst out laughing and hung there in midair clutching her sides for support. Ash shook his head at her, not understanding what was so funny, but there was an indulgent smile on his face that she didn't notice the entire time she had her laughing fit.