It began with crayons.
Wednesday morning, during "Rainbow Expression Hour," Astraea reached for the silver crayon—the one that most closely matched her true sparkle color. Her fingers closed on empty air. The crayon was gone from its slot in the communal box.
She glanced around the table. Ben was diligently coloring a blue sky. Mia was creating a garden with every green shade. Leo was diagramming something technical in precise gray lines.
And Chloe, two seats down, was coloring a princess dress with silver accents. With Astraea's silver crayon.
"That's mine," Astraea said, her voice calm. Four hundred years of patience made kindergarten property disputes feel absurd, but the principle mattered.
Chloe didn't look up. "It's from the shared box. First come, first served."
"You took it from in front of me."
"Prove it."
Astraea considered the options. She could reach across with dragon-quick reflexes and take it back. She could use a whisper of glamour to make it appear back in the box. She could even, theoretically, manifest a new silver crayon from void-stuff.
All would draw attention.
"I need silver for my moon," she said instead, keeping her tone reasonable. Childlike.
Chloe finally looked up, her smile sharp. "Moons are white. Or yellow. Everyone knows that." She held up her picture—a princess with a silver crown, silver slippers, silver trim on a dress that was already purple. "Silver is for royalty."
The ancient part of Astraea noted the symbolic appropriation: taking the color most associated with Astraea's true nature and declaring it the domain of self-proclaimed royalty. Human politics truly never changed.
"Actually," Leo said, not looking up from his diagram, "the moon's apparent color depends on atmospheric conditions, mineral composition of surface regolith, and the observer's visual perception. Silver is a reasonable approximation for certain lunar maria under specific lighting."
Chloe blinked, processing the sentence. "Whatever. It's my crayon now."
Teacher Milly, helping at another table, hadn't noticed. The subtle aggression flew beneath adult radar—just children sharing, just mild squabbling.
Astraea took a white crayon and began her moon. She made it perfectly round, with subtle shading that suggested craters. It was objectively better art than Chloe's lumpy princess, done with centuries of observational skill. She knew this, and regretted it immediately when Chloe's eyes narrowed.
The crayon was just the beginning.
At recess in the CYAP courtyard, the bullying evolved. The courtyard had a small "sparkle-play" structure—tubes that amplified luminescence, mirrors that reflected light patterns, and a sandpit where children could draw with glowing sand.
Astraea was practicing controlled sparkle pulses with Leo, sending tiny silver lights through a tube to emerge in different colors at the other end. A physics lesson disguised as play.
Chloe and two of her friends—a boy named Kyle who could make faint red sparks, and a girl named Jasmine with shimmering pink aura—approached.
"That's boring," Chloe announced. "Watch this."
She made her six blue sparkles zip through the tube in complex patterns, crossing and weaving. It was actually decent control for a human child. The sparkles emerged dancing.
Kyle and Jasmine oohed appropriately.
"Your turn, copycat," Chloe said to Astraea. "Do something better."
The challenge hung in the air. Leo looked at Astraea, his scientist's mind clearly calculating the social dynamics. "You don't have to—"
"I'll try," Astraea said softly.
She made three silver sparkles appear—her standard, "Tier 0" display. She sent them through the tube in a simple triangular pattern. Competent. Unremarkable.
Chloe smirked. "See? Told you. Basic."
But as Astraea's sparkles moved, something happened. The tube, designed to amplify and color human luminescence, reacted differently to dragon-mana. The silver light didn't just change color—it fractured into prismatic spectra, creating miniature rainbows that danced on the courtyard walls. The other children's sparkles looked like candles next to stained glass.
A collective gasp went up. Even Chloe stared, her smirk fading.
Teacher Milly hurried over. "Oh! What a beautiful interaction, Astraea! The tube must really resonate with your particular sparkle frequency!"
Chloe's face flushed. "She's cheating. She did something to the tube."
"Don't be silly, Chloe! It's just a lovely accident of physics!" Milly beamed. "What a special moment!"
Special. The word was poison in this context.
After recess, during hand-washing, Chloe "accidentally" bumped Astraea as she reached for soap. Not hard. Just enough to make her stumble.
"Oops," Chloe said, not sounding sorry.
Astraea caught herself easily—dragon reflexes—but let herself sway slightly for the performance. "It's okay."
But her passive dragon aura, the subtle energy field that surrounded her, reacted to the aggression. It wasn't conscious. It was biological, like a cat's fur bristling. To human senses, it felt like a sudden drop in temperature, a pressure change, a sense of unease.
Chloe froze, soap dripping from her hands. Her eyes went wide. "Did you… feel that?"
"Feel what?" Astraea asked, pulling her aura tight, smoothing the ripples.
"Nothing," Chloe muttered, but she backed away, drying her hands quickly and leaving the bathroom.
The next test came at lunch. The CYAP cafeteria had long tables with benches. Astraea sat with Leo and Mia, eating the enormous lunch Mrs. Evans now packed (two sandwiches, yogurt, fruit, nuts, cheese sticks).
Chloe and her friends sat across the aisle. As Astraea reached for her apple, Chloe "slipped" and knocked her juice box over. The purple liquid spilled across the table toward Astraea's food.
Astraea moved her tray with inhuman speed—too fast, she realized belatedly. The apple still got splashed.
"Oops," Chloe said again, the word becoming her trademark. "Clumsy me."
But Kyle, who'd been watching, frowned. "How did you move it that fast? You were looking the other way."
"Reflexes," Astraea said, which was true.
"Weird reflexes."
The incident drew Teacher Milly's attention. "Chloe, sweetie, be more careful with your juice! Astraea, let me get you a new apple."
As Milly walked away, Chloe leaned across the aisle, her voice a low hiss only Astraea could hear. "I don't know what you're doing, but I know it's not normal. Your sparkles are wrong. You're wrong."
For a moment, the ancient dragon surfaced. Not in power, but in perspective. She looked at Chloe—this ephemeral creature whose entire lifespan would be a blink in Astraea's existence—and felt not anger, but a profound, weary pity.
"I'm just trying to grow up," Astraea said, and it was the truest thing she'd said to Chloe.
Something in her tone, or perhaps the strange weight behind the simple words, made Chloe pause. The girl's aggression faltered, replaced by confusion. She opened her mouth, closed it, and turned back to her friends.
But the damage was done. The social lines were drawn. Astraea was now the outsider, the strange one, the target.
[System Notification]
[Social Conflict: Bullying Behavior Detected]
[Analysis: Low-intensity aggression, social manipulation, property interference]
[Recommended Response: Report to authority figure. Practice assertive communication. Seek ally support.]
[Note: Bullies are often insecure! Try to understand their feelings!]
The System's advice was again technically correct and completely inadequate for a dragon hiding among humans.
That afternoon, during "Quiet Sparkle Time," Astraea sat on her mat, supposedly meditating on her inner light. Instead, she monitored her own biology.
She could remove Chloe as a stressor. A dozen ways, from subtle glamour adjustments to make the girl forget her, to more direct methods. All unethical. All risked exposure.
So control it was. She practiced breathing, pulling her aura tighter, making herself smaller in the metaphysical sense. Less noticeable. Less threatening. Less everything.
It felt like wearing clothes three sizes too small after finally growing into her own skin.
Leo slid a note onto her mat during the meditation bell. It read: Chloe's dad works Association security. She hears things.
Ah. So it wasn't just jealousy. Chloe had heard about the gate incidents, the investigations. She'd connected dots no child should have been able to connect, but children were often more perceptive than adults gave them credit for.
The bullying wasn't just about cookies or crayons. It was about power, yes—but also about something sensing wrongness and reacting like an immune system attacking an unknown cell.
Astraea looked at Chloe across the room, sitting perfectly straight with her six blue sparkles orbiting serenely. A child playing at being queen of a very small kingdom.
And Astraea, a dragon, had to pretend to be a subject.
The attacks were small, petty, human. But they were probing the edges of her disguise, finding the seams. She had faced ancient wards and cosmic locks, but no security system was as relentless as a child's instinct for wrongness.