She finally covers her face with both hands, then peeks out at him.

  “Adrian,” she says, voice small and sincere, “tell me this is just in my dream.”

  Adrian glances at the glowing sample. "This rare strain is believed in folklore to bloom every two thousand years. But scientifically, that likely aligns with the Hallstatt solar cycle—a grand minimum that repeats every twenty-four hundred years. We are currently at a peak. That, combined with the sudden Halloween snowstorm and the full moon, likely created the perfect radiative and atmospheric conditions to wake up the dormant spores."

  He stands still for a moment, eyes on the vial, then adds with a thoughtful tone.

  “There are… three prevailing theories. In the fairy records, I mean.”

  “The first,” he continues, “is environmental. Accidental contact with enchanted flora—usually fungi—rooted in threshold zones. Places where the veil between this world and the other is thin. That matches your case.”

  He turns slightly, adjusting a nearby console out of habit. “The second theory is what the old records call soul-surge—a transformation triggered not by spell or touch, but by emotion so vivid it breaches the boundary between realms. In scientific terms, it’s emotional resonance. When someone carrying fairy genes, especially one with a hyper-reactive emotional system, enters a peak state—joy, fear, connection—it can spark morphological instability.”

  He pauses, then adds, “And the third… is through mutual enchantment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” he says slowly, “that the shrinking happens when a human forms a bond with someone tied to the fairy realm—through blood, through magic, through history. A connection strong enough to breach the threshold between worlds.”

  His voice lowers.

  “Willingness. Sacrifice. True love that bends the rules of what belongs where.”

  “Which records are you talking about? Because I’ve read dozens of fairy tales. Shrinking doesn’t always mean some grand cosmic love story.”

  She presses on.

  “Sometimes it’s a punishment. Or a curse. Or the result of drinking something you shouldn’t or stepping into a circle at the wrong time. Some tales say humans turn into fairies because they steal fairy food. Others say it happens if you help a dying sprite or get caught in moonlight during the wrong solstice.”

  She huffs. “And turning back? That’s just as chaotic. You wait for dawn. You kiss someone you love. You find the original flower. You trade your name. You leave behind something precious. You bargain with a witch. Or you don’t turn back at all.”

  A pause.

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  “Not everything is about love that bends rules.”

  Adrian doesn’t reply immediately.

  He can’t tell her yet.

  The fragments of fairy records are buried in the university’s oldest wing—kept there because the Vale family once owned them, protected them, translated them, and encrypted them in a language only bloodline scholars still know.

  His family has always held that tie.

  A gene expression that makes them suited for thresholds, for gates, for the subtle places where human and fairy converge. But that doesn’t mean he understands it.

  The shrinking is still a myth, and everything about how the fairy bond works is scattered across versions—oral, written, poetic, or distorted.

  Mira’s frustration isn’t wrong.

  Her tales are valid too—told through too many generations, folded into bedtime stories, and whispered into lantern light by grandmothers who’ve heard five different endings to the same song. The original meaning is murky at best. That’s how fairy logic works. Truth diluted by wonder.

  So Adrian says nothing of what he knows.

  Instead, he studies her for a long moment, then nods slightly, almost to himself.

  “Then try. You know the stories. Test them. Find your flower, your moonlight, your bargain.”

  He leans back from the console, letting the shadows of the screen flicker across his features. “We have no map. If this is a story, it’s not written yet. So whatever ending you believe in—start there.”

  Then, after a pause, his voice softens.

  “The full moon was last night. If that matters, we’ve missed it. Five hours until sunrise. If you’re trying to replicate whatever happened midnight, we won’t get another proper attempt until tomorrow.”

  He glances toward the sequencing display. “The full DNA results will be ready in three hours.”

  A beat.

  “So, in the meantime,” he says, standing and brushing his coat lightly, “we’re getting you some food. And proper clothes.”

  Her mouth opens in horror. Her hands fly to her face. “I have class. I have Global Policy Forecasting & Crisis Mapping in the morning.”

  “I’m still tiny, Adrian!”

  “I’m aware.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand—” She stumbles into a frantic little pace, each step wobbling over the textured surface of his desk. “Today’s session is the start of the next forecast block. Aldren’s unveiling the new predictive model, the big one—the one that incorporates satellite-indexed resource pressure variables and AI escalation simulations—I’ve been waiting two weeks for this.”

  He leans back in his chair, watching her scramble with something close to amusement. “You could always catch up later.”

  “No.” She turns to him, eyes wide with something deeper than panic—hunger. “You don’t get it. He builds each scenario like a story. Every data point, every decision node—it’s a narrative of collapse and survival. And if I miss the beginning—”

  Her voice thins. “It’s like starting a book from the middle.”

  She continues, breathless now. “And if I don’t listen to how he frames it live, I won’t feel the tension. I won’t know what’s urgent. Aldren never says outright which variables are traps—you have to read it from how he moves the map. I have to be there. Even if I’m invisible. Even if I’m not allowed to type a word.”

  “Take a rest first,” he says gently. “I will make you some food, and we will go to class together.”

  Mira blinks slowly, as if her brain is still buffering. Of all the surreal events that have unfolded—the shrinking, the theories, the terrifying uncertainty of what she had become—it should’ve shattered her completely. But Adrian, in his maddening calm, speaks of food, clothes and attending class with a tiny girl like it's just another Wednesday, and somehow, impossibly, that anchors her.

  ?