"You think too much."
                          
"Thank you. Now can you let me grade these, Ulla?"
                          
She clucked, smacking the hand that moved to start writing again. "In the old days"—Jensi pinched the bridge of his nose—"a child such as you could not go around calling his elders by their given names."
                          
"Let me guess, if they did, they got stoned?"
                          
"Honorary titles are appropriate," she said, ignoring him.
                          
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, aarooj." His tongue stumbled around the Trollish word, meaning "grandma."
                          
Ulla's eyes narrowed in disapproval. "Terrible elvish accent."
                          
"Maybe because I'm an elf?" Sometimes he wondered if Ulla thought she was a troll. Hey, maybe then I can ship her off to Marintrylla, he thought. She'd fit right in.
                          
	"Cut the sass," she barked lightly, in that I'm-mad-at-you-but-I-love-you-too-much-to-actually-be-intimidating way.
                          
	Jensi raised his eyebrows and nodded to indulge her.
                          
	Just then, Ulla screamed.
                          
	Jensi jumped and swiveled to face the space behind him, which had previously been empty but now was not. He jumped again, and Fernan's face lit up with a grin. "Got you! Both this time!"
                          
	Ulla wagged her finger at him. "What did I tell you about those tricks, young man..."
                          
	Jensi just rolled his eyes and returned to the papers. He actually couldn't focus on the grading with all the noise, but he hoped it made him look busy. That way he might dodge a tense conversation with his brother.
                          
	The universe didn't seem to owe him any favors. "Little ilfiche," Ulla muttered, clutching her chest and striding for the staircase. "Now I'm going to have to do twenty minutes of yoga just to calm my heart."
                          
	Fernan snorted and plopped into the seat opposite of Jensi. "What'd you think about my phasing that time?"
                          
	"Uh... good?"
                          
	Fernan huffed one of those huffs that said, I'm not annoyed, but actually I am. "No, idiot."
                          
	"Okay, so it was bad then."
                          
	"That's not what I'm talking about! Like, do you think the particles were lusc, because then it'd hurt a bit, but if they were parent, the air wouldn't warp or anything."
                          
	Jensi's head pounded with the rush of blah blah blah. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
                          
	"Right. I forgot you weren't good at this stuff."
                          
	Jensi clenched his fist tighter around the pen. You just don't understand. That's what Fernan had said.
                          
	And yeah, okay, not about Abilities. He didn't get the Phasing lingo, much less the rest of it. It wasn't like you learned that stuff in Ability Detecting—it was all saved for when you did Manifest, because of course you had to Manifest. If not, then either something went wrong with your genetics, or your family's bloodline got messed up somewhere.
                          
Maybe it was his and Fernan's parents' fault—maybe they had been a Bad Match. But if they were, it didn't matter, because he'd never known them. Fernan remembered more than he did, but even the older Babblos brother hadn't been enough reason for them to stay behind.
                          
They had that in common, at least. Abandonment. But that's where the similarities between the two ended.
                          
"Why didn't you keep your word? About the Black Swan?" The questions had popped out of Jensi's mouth before he could stop them, and in the wake of their weight there was a silence that stilled even the Mistweaves.