The Sparkle Room was an assault on the senses in six different pastels.
Astraea stood in the doorway, taking in the converted storage space that now served as the Luminous-affinity classroom. The air tasted of synthetic lavender and the ozone-tinged sweat of anxious children. Every surface screamed in muted colors: buttercup walls, mint ceiling, a rug depicting a rainbow giving birth to cartoon stars.
*The last time I experienced sensory overload this profound was during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. At least those colors were achieved with mineral pigments and ambition, not mass-produced polymer paints.*
"Welcome, Light-Bearers!" Teacher Milly's voice cut through Astraea's ancient reverie. The woman stood before them, a vision in a rainbow-striped apron, her smile wide enough to eclipse rational thought. "This is our Sparkle Sanctuary! Where we'll explore our Inner Glows in a safe, supportive, and super fun environment!"
Astraea moved with the small herd of children—ten in total, all classified "Luminous" after orientation. She took her place beside Leo, who was clutching his Sparkle Starter Kit like a religious talisman. The room's lone window, high on the wall, was filtered to cast everything in perpetual rainbow-tinted light, giving the space the feel of a cult's initiation chamber.
"First rule of Sparkle Room!" Milly sang, pointing to a glitter-glue poster. "SPARKLE WITH KINDNESS! That means we use our lights to uplift, not to outshine!" She beamed. "Can anyone tell me what 'outshine' means in this context?"
Chloe, a girl with pigtails that trembled with her anxiety, raised a timid hand. "Um… making someone else's sparkle feel sad?"
"Exactly, Chloe! We're a team of twinkles!"
Team of twinkles. Astraea filed the phrase alongside "divine right of kings" and "flat earth society" in her mental catalog of earnest human delusions.
[System notification!]
[Quest available: 'Make three friends!']
[Objective: Form positive social bonds with three (3) fellow Light-Bearers!]
[Reward: 'Social Butterfly' Achievement, +5 to Charm stat, 1 Sparkle Star Sticker]
[Note: Friendship makes everything brighter!]
Astraea's ancient mind parsed the notification. Friendship as checkbox objective. Relationship-building reduced to game mechanics. The System doesn't just misunderstand me—it misunderstands humanity.
Still. The path forward required forward motion. And forward required playing the game.
"Now," Milly continued, "let's begin with our Morning Gleaming Circle! Find a cushion!"
The cushions were shaped like celestial bodies and covered in fabric that felt like tortured polyester. Astraea selected a navy blue star. Leo plopped onto a green moon beside her. Chloe took a pink star with the reverence of someone approaching an altar.
"Close your eyes, friends," Milly instructed, her voice dropping to a hypnotic murmur. "Take a deep breath in… and out… Feel the light inside you. Your personal, special glow. It's like a little friend in your tummy."
*My 'little friend' is a fusion-core capable of powering small civilizations, currently operating at 0.0001% capacity due to four centuries of starvation,* Astraea thought, but she closed her eyes obediently.
Around the circle, faint glows began to manifest—the hesitant, flickering lights of children pushing against reality with untrained souls. Leo's left pointer finger lit with its specific, unwavering green. Chloe produced a soft, rosy aura that trembled like her pigtails. Sam, the thermal boy, made his palms glow warm orange.
Astraea performed her usual act of exquisite minimalism. Three perfect silver sparkles appeared above her knees, held in absolute stillness for five seconds, then vanished without a trace.
"Beautiful!" Milly exclaimed. "Astraea, yours are so… crisp! They pop in and out so cleanly!"
"Thank you," Astraea said, inflecting her voice with modest pleasure.
The morning unfolded through a curriculum of curated absurdity. "Sparkle Story Time" featured a picture book about a lonely lightning bug learning that "his true brightness was friendship all along." Astraea noted the biological inaccuracies—fireflies used light for mating, not emotional validation—but kept her observations to herself.
During "Color Exploration," they attempted to "befriend" different light wavelengths. Most children produced strained, wobbly hues. Leo managed a slightly greener green. Astraea, for variety, produced a sparkle at exactly 450 nanometers—a perfect violet that matched her eyes. Milly called it "creative interpretation."
It was during "Creative Luminescence"—where they drew on black paper with light—that Astraea noticed something.
Chloe was struggling. Her rose-colored glow kept spluttering, fading to gray. Tears welled in her eyes. "I can't make it stay," she whispered, her voice breaking.
Milly was across the room, helping Jake with his unstable blue orb.
Astraea watched for a moment. Then, with a thought more precise than any human instrument, she reached out—not with her power, but with her perception. She traced the flow of Chloe's mana. It was like watching someone try to carry water in a sieve—energy leaking at every seam.
Untrained soul, anxious mind, blocking its own flow, she diagnosed.
She could fix it. With a nanoscopic adjustment to the local mana field, she could stabilize Chloe's output. It would be trivial.
She hesitated.
Direct intervention risked exposure. But watching the child struggle felt… inelegant. Wasted potential.
A compromise.
Astraea focused her own sparkle-making—not on her paper, but on the air near Chloe's workspace. She created a single, perfect silver sparkle that floated just at the edge of Chloe's peripheral vision. Then another. And another. Arranged in a specific, calming pattern—a spiral that pulsed gently at a frequency known to stabilize certain neural oscillations.
She wasn't fixing Chloe's power. She was creating optimal conditions for Chloe to fix it herself.
The effect was immediate. Chloe's breathing steadied. Her rose glow stabilized, then brightened. She completed a wobbly but intact heart shape on her paper and beamed.
"Wonderful, Chloe!" Milly called from across the room.
Chloe turned to Astraea, her eyes wide. "Did you see? I did it!"
"I saw," Astraea said. "The heart is… heartfelt."
At juice break, Astraea found herself navigating the social landscape with strategic authenticity. With Leo, she offered technical praise about his light's consistent wavelength. With Sam, she noted the efficient heat distribution in his cookie-warming. Both responded to being seen for their precision rather than just their novelty.
By the time they packed up their Sparkle Starter Kits, Astraea had accumulated not just System-checked "friends," but actual connections—fragile, ephemeral, but real.
[System notification!]
[Quest complete: 'Make three friends!']
[Reward: 'Social Butterfly' Achievement unlocked! +5 to Charm stat! 1 Sparkle Star Sticker added to Inventory!]
The sticker—a glittering gold star—materialized in her kit. She peeled it off and, after a moment's consideration, placed it beside the "CYAP Star!" badge on her notebook's cover.
Leo noticed. "You got a Sparkle Star! What for?"
"Demonstrated participatory excellence," Astraea said.
"I got one last week for not spilling glitter," he said, with the weary tone of someone who understood the uneven distribution of rewards.
As Mrs. Evans drove her home, Astraea gazed at the city sliding past her window. The Sparkle Room was absurd. But within its pastel insanity, something genuine was happening. Connections were forming. Growth was occurring—not just hers, but theirs.
She felt the familiar warmth along her spine. The wing anchors pulsed their slow, steady rhythm.
I have made three friends. Not because a System told me to, but because they are there, and they are trying, and their trying matters. Even if their scale is microscopic. Even if their lives are breaths in my long wind.
She ate the fruit snack sun Milly had given out. It was gelatinous, overly sweet, and chemically complex.
[System alert!]
[Achievement unlocked: 'Friendship sparkler!']
[Description: You've made friends! Your social journey is off to a bright start!]
Four hundred years ago, I learned the gravitational songs of dying stars. Today I learned that Chloe's favorite color is rose pink because it reminds her of her grandmother's garden. Both are valid forms of knowledge.
Tomorrow: more pastel absurdity. The day after: more measured growth. The great unstucking continues, one friendship, one sparkle, one chemically complex fruit snack at a time.