Laurel took a deep breath and got ready to try again. “I have this powdered sugarcane,” she said, pointing to a cloth bag of fine greenish powder, “and I mix it with pine resin.” As she talked she followed her own directions, trying to concentrate despite David’s breath near her ear, his eyes studying her hands. She could almost hear his mind whirring as he tried to take it all in. “It gets all thick and sticky like syrup,” she said, stirring the mixture with a silver spoon, “and it heats up.”

David nodded and continued watching.

“Then I get this little straw,” she said, picking up what looked like a short drinking straw made of glass. She didn’t tell David it was one solid piece of diamond. “I dip it in the sugar mix and blow it, just like regular glass.” It sounded easy, and most of the Mixers her age had been making their own vials for years. But Laurel hadn’t quite gotten the knack.

She breathed in, sucking just a tiny bit of the sugar mixture into the tube, and then blew out, very slowly, while picturing—concentrating on—what she wanted it to look like. She turned the tube as she blew, and the small bubble on the end elongated, stretching out—contrary to all laws of physics—not into a round bubble, but a long cylinder. The opaque, muddy mixture whitened, then grew translucent.

Laurel gave the tube a little more air and turned it once more before hesitantly pulling her mouth away. She usually did well up to this point.

“That’s—”

“Shh,” Laurel ordered, lifting a small silver knife that resembled a scalpel. She scored the sugar glass all around the edge of the diamond tube, then pulled on the cylinder, slowly separating it from the straw.

The first side came easily and Laurel painstakingly rolled the cylinder in a circle, detaching the other edges. She held her breath as she pulled the tube away from the final point of connection. The still-flexible sugar bent, then stretched into a long string and, finally, broke away.

As it did, the cylinder shattered.

“Damn it!” Laurel yelled, slamming the tube down on her desk.

“Careful with that thing,” David said.

Laurel brushed his concern away with an annoyed wave of her hand. “Can’t break that,” she muttered.

A long silence followed as Laurel studied the pile of glass shards, trying to decide what she had done wrong. Maybe if she sucked up a little more of the sugar syrup, it would make the vial thicker.

“Can…can I try it?” David asked hesitantly.

“If you must,” Laurel said, although she knew it wouldn’t work.

But David grinned and scooted over to the chair she had just vacated. She watched as he tried to imitate what she had done, sucking a small amount of the sticky syrup into the straw and then blowing carefully. For a second it looked like it would work. A tiny bubble began to form, although it was round, rather than oblong. But almost as soon as it had formed, the bubble popped with a faint blurp and the liquid ran uselessly out of the diamond tube.

“What did I do wrong?” David asked.

“Nothing,” Laurel said. “You just can’t do it.”

“I don’t see why not,” David said, looking at the greenish blob hanging off the end of the tube. “It doesn’t make sense that we should do this exact same thing with such drastically different results. At the very least they should be similar.”

“This isn’t physics, David; it’s not science. It works for me because I’m a Fall faerie, and that’s the end of the explanation. Well,” she said, taking the tube from David, “it almost works.”

“But, why?”

“I don’t know!” Laurel said in exasperation.

“Well, do you blow it in a certain way? Is there a technique I can’t see?” David asked, not catching her tone at all.

“No. What you see is what I’m doing. No secret method or whatever.”

“Then what am I doing wrong?”

“What are you doing wrong?” Laurel laughed cynically. “David, I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong!” She slumped down on her bed. “In Avalon, I spent an hour every day for the last three weeks practicing blowing glass vials. And I haven’t managed to make a single one without breaking it. Not a single one!”

David joined her on the bed. “An hour every day?”

Laurel knew he was wondering if practice would help him blow vials too, but at least he didn’t say it. “My instructors keep telling me that if I’ve studied the components and the procedures, my intuition should do the rest, but that hasn’t worked yet.”

“So you’re just supposed to know what to do?”

“That’s what they keep saying.”

“Like…instinct?”

At that Laurel flopped down on her back, a frustrated breath whooshing out of her. “Oh man, instinct, that’s like the F-word in Avalon. Yeardley kept telling me, ‘You are trying to rely on instinct, you need to trust your intuition instead.’ But I looked up those two words and they mean the exact same thing.”

David lay down beside her and she rolled over, snuggling into the crook of his arm, her hand draped across his chest. How had she lived without this for eight weeks? “It’s just so frustrating. Everyone my age in Avalon is so far ahead of me. And they’re just getting farther ahead. Right this minute!” She sighed. “I’m never going to catch up.”

“Sure you will,” David said softly, his lips tickling her neck. “You’ll figure things out.”