The fae smiled, sharply: “Give me your name, child.”

“Uhhhhh. Stick.”

“What.”

“Does Leaf work better? I’m just kinda looking around this clearing. Look, I’m trans, I haven’t decided on one yet, I’m throwing some spaghetti at the wall, you know how it is.”

Fae are born with features sharp and narrow, yet this one seems to soften as Moss looks at it. Its grin— sharp, teeth gleaming, its eyes— cutting, searching, the jut and pull of its jaw enough to scratch glass. It does not blink. Branch does not blink. It softens.

“I said, give me your name, child.”

“I still haven’t picked one,” Grass defends, even now still hoping for a way out of a faeries deal.

“No. But your parents did. Give me your name, child, and it shall no longer be yours. The entity of your name shall no longer exist, and you will be free for whichever name you choose— Leaf, or Stick, or Lichen.”

“...oh.” says Petal, and in the next moment a name falls from their lips. It is not their name. It never has been. The fae is sharp and cutting and witty, that moment of softness an imagined slight.

“Very well, child. Be warned of mushroom circles, should you lose your name again.”

“Okay,” Mushroom smiles, and the Fae pulls itself away from their reality in a swirl of feathers and silk.

When they go home for the first time in two months, their mother frets over them in a way she had not since they were a child, and she calls them by no name at all.