What drops is not a pin; it's a boy. He falls onto the ground with a muffled scream and a not-so-muffled thud, but where he's falling from is not clear. He wasn't there a microsecond ago; now he is.

And next he's immediately trying to scramble to his feet and reaching for a... wooden stick... from a sheath.

Well, that's new.

Xan opens his eyes and floats back to the ground. "Good afternoon. What's the stick about?"

By then he's standing up and looking up and squeaking and pointing his stick and shutting his eyes and then opening his eyes again because what's the point of the stick if you can't see your target. "Who are you! How are you flying without a broom! Why are you naked! Where am I! Where's the giant snake!"

His accent is pretty British.

"I'm Xan. Why would I need a broom to fly? I'm naked because I was sunbathing on my own property. You're in Kent Acres, Smallville, Kansas, USA. I'm not going to make the obvious joke, but I haven't seen any giant snakes around here recently."

He squints. "You're... not a wizard," he half-asks half-says. "I was eaten by a snake. Well, it had a mirror for a face. Then I was here." He's still pointing the stick. "Also my name is Sadde."

"I'm not a wizard, no. You're saying you are?"

He considers lying but it would be stupid as heck. He lowers his stick. "Yes. Although I guess I shouldn't tell you that but you, er. Can fly."

"Yeah, I've got no idea what's up with me being able to fly. I'm also super-strong, and I can set things on fire with my eyes. The Kents say they'll explain everything when I'm older, which is, like most of what they say, absolute horseshit."

"...huh. You're like a comics superhero or something. Cooool."

"That's... kind of a weird thing to say? Comics are about real people, you could've just said 'like a superhero'."

"Comics are not about real people where I'm from. Ultraman and the Black Widow are, like, fictional."

"Huh. Our comics are about, like, Wonder Woman, who fought Germany in World War 1 and then fucked off to an island paradise instead of sticking around for the sequel, or the Green Lantern, who flies around making big green boxing gloves to punch criminals instead of, like, building infrastructure. Both of whom are real."

"...sounds also weirdly like comics back at home but not, like, the same. Also the thing where they punch things instead of doing anything better. Hey do you get tired of flying? Or punching things. Do you need to eat a lot more? 'Cause if not that's a whole lotta energy you can create out of nothing."

"I eat about as much as a normal kid, but I think I might photosynthesize somehow too? For some reason society isn't built around sunbathing four hours a day and never wearing clothes, which it would be if I was in charge."

"If people don't wear clothes they get, like, infections."

"Not me. I've never gotten so much as a scrape."

"Well you're a comics superhero, of course you didn't, but mug- er, normal people get those so they can't just be naked."

"They can wear shoes," Xan says magnanimously. "To keep their delicate feet safe."

"It's not their feet it's their butts and, er, other parts."

"Humans are poorly designed," Xan rules. "Maybe I'll just make a bunch more of whatever the fuck I am and we'll live in a nudist paradise to rival Themyscira."

"Themwherenow?"

"Wonder Woman's home island where she fucked off to after World War 1. By all accounts, it's a very nice place. Population: one thousand beautiful warrior-women who don't age or get sick."

"Why don't they—is this another one of those things where someone has invented the secret to immortality and not shared it around, I was already annoyed enough by one of those."

"They say their gods did it for them. Some people say it must actually be witchcraft, because there's only one God and his name is blah blah blah, but I think he must have put in that commandment about putting no other gods before him for a reason, and if the Amazons say their gods did them a favor I don't see a reason not to believe them."

"Gods are real here?"

"Well, like I said there's some disagreement on the subject. But objectively, there's immortal Amazons and there's priests who go around casting out demons and there's various other shit, so I'd say yeah."

"...I don't suppose you'd get the reference if I said that I think I'm no longer in Kansas."

"No, you're definitely in Kansas. You can tell by the corn. -but we do have the Wizard of Oz here, your reference wasn't in vain."

"I thought I was ready for anything when it turned out magic was real but here I am in another universe. Maybe I should have read more sci-fi, I don't know a lot about how this story goes."

"...probably the way this one goes is that I take you to the Kents and tell them they've got a new unexpected kid to take in? They're boring, but they can keep you fed. Oh, but first I'd like to know what-all you can do with that stick of yours."

"Oh, bunches of things." He looks around for some solid object, decides to just do it on some fallen leaves, and swish and flick and "Wingardium Leviosa!" and now it's floating. "It works on heavier things than this but I don't wanna steal your corn. And you're not carrying any objects."

"I am definitely not. Neat. So it's like... telekinesis?"

"Yeah, this one is. I have some other stuff that works on other objects too but, hmm..." He points the stick at an empty spot in the air. "Flagrate!" And then he starts writing in the air with a ribbon that emerges from the tip of his wand. He spells, "I can also do stuff like this."

"Ooh. Lots of tricks. You seemed to think you could hurt me with it, earlier, what's that one do? I kind of wanna see if it'd work on me."

"Oh, okay." Point. "Everte Statum!"

Xan is thrown back a couple of feet, but catches himself in the air and stays floating. "Cool! Can anybody use one of those?"

"No, there's some genetic stuff related to it. Did you feel any pain? That should involve some pain but I don't know if it'd work on you."

"No pain. Pity, would've been interesting to know what it felt like."

"Do you get burned?—no, wait, I should not use fire in a cornfield."

"Tried to check a couple of times, but Martha's got eyes in the back of her head."

"She won't let you? If you find me a place with not this much corn I can make fire that doesn't burn anything I don't want it to."

"Ooh, sure - I'll take you to the barn, there's hay but I can clear us out a spot."

"Cool okay.—man I wish my broom had come with."

"I can carry you," Xan points out. "Haven't found a limit on what I can carry yet."

"You're naked," he points out.

"...and? It's not contagious."

"...I guess."

Xan picks up a pair of overalls and slings them over his shoulder, then unceremoniously picks Sadde up in a bridal carry and flies over to the barn at a speed that ruffles Sadde's hair.

He crouches and gently puts Sadde back on the ground. "And lo, you remain fully clothed."

He laughs. "That was not my objection. I'm not sure what was, though."

"It was probably some kind of social norm bullshit, society loves making people uncomfortable with things."

He gets a broom off a hook on the wall and sweeps the hay out of a six-foot radius circle in the middle of the barn. "Alright, go ahead and immolate me."

"The one that only burns what I want it to is not that big. Caeruleus Inflamarae!" And now there's a tennis-ball sized blue flame floating in front of Sadde's stick. He motions with the stick for the flame to move over to where Xan is. "It's only hot above."

Xan puts his hand over it.

"Nothing," he says with some disappointment. "I can feel that it's hot, but it doesn't hurt."

"Huh." That flame goes out. "I have one that's a jet of flame and is hotter but that one will definitely set the barn on fire. There are other spells that are meant to hurt but I don't know them yet."

"I don't think a hotter flame would even help - that didn't feel like the kind of thing that could hurt me. It's fine."

"I'm sure I can figure out some spell to hurt you eventually. If you, er, want."

"I sure wouldn't say no. How do you get new spells, anyway?"

"Oh, I go to wiz—"

"—ard school. Which is not here. It's back home."

"Oh."

Xan thinks about it.

"Maybe we can get you back there."

"...well, if there was a way to come here there should be a way to get back, yeah? But hols end in a month and I don't have any of my books. ...also my mum is gonna be worried. And my friends."

"So we've got a deadline, and the sooner the better. I'll... think about what I can do to get you home, there's gotta be somebody who can do it."

He nods. "Well, um, anyway someone has to have invented spells for the first time, so even if you can't I'm sure I'll figure it out."

"I can and I will."

"Til then, should I introduce you to the Kents so you know who you'll be staying with?"

"Yeah sure. Why do you call them that?"

"They're not my parents. They feed me and stuff, and I live in their house, but I won't call them my parents."

"...yeah, I understand. My—father—was—anyway I live with just my mum now, have for a while. Oh! I didn't even show you the coolest stuff I can do."

"Tada."

"Cool! Does that, uh, get everything?"

"Yep. I can look like any humans that have existed or any humans I can think about and change anything like that."

"And also some animal parts but not completely," he says, reverting to boy and turning his nose into a short elephant trunk.

Xan: is having some thoughts! His body: is responding to those thoughts!

"That's a really cool power. I wouldn't give up flight for it but it'd be close."

Sadde: notices. "Oh you're straight? I guess most people are." His nose is back to normal. "Anyway I can get flight with a broomstick so." He will valiantly try to not look at the response after that.

"What's a straight? I was thinking about- other stuff."

"Boys who like girls and girls who like boys are straight. I'm—I don't think I'm anything yet, it sounds like such a hassle, but whenever I go through puberty I'm pretty sure I'm gonna like both, seems like it'd make sense with how I sometimes am a girl."

"Oh. I like both but most people around here think that's gross."

"Most people think not being straight is gross yeah. It was part of why my father—uh, anyway. Puberty should be coming around any day now, I'm pretty sure. I've been told." Shrug. "—wait, what were you thinking about, if it wasn't me turning into a girl that did it?"

He is still not looking.

"If you could give yourself a horse prick. Always thought they looked like they were having fun."

Sadde lets out a startled laugh and starts coughing with presumably spit he choked on.

Xan pats him on the back.

"You don't have to maintain eye contact, by the way," he mentions. "I don't care whether you see my dick in its locked and upright condition."

"I know you don't care but it feels—weird. ...I don't know why either. Maybe one of those things about society."

"Society can fuck itself. But you can do what you want, I'm not going to force you to admire it, I just wanted to mention."

"I know but I don't like having things that don't make sense in my head." He forces himself to look.

Curved. Larger than average, from what Sadde may have seen of his yearmates. Uncut; Sadde may or may not know how unusual that is given the milieu.

Sadde does not know how uncommon that is, what with being British. He does not blush, but he does kind of have to hold his gaze there.

And...

"...okay, maybe puberty is not that long away."

"Oh, is that what the funny feeling was? Do I tickle your fancy?"

He rolls his eyes. "I met you half an hour ago, I don't know if you tickle my fancy. I'm objectifying you."

"Fair enough. For what it's worth you seem pretty great and if you'd like to have fun at some point in the future I certainly wouldn't object."

"Not that far into puberty, thank you." He adjusts his trousers. "...have you done that with anyone before?"

"Couple of times. No kissing, but I've done some mouth stuff. Boys from school wanted to see what it was like and they knew I was game."

"Why no kissing?"

"That would've been queer."

"...and the other stuff isn't? And that's a weird word, what's this, the eighties?"

"...the sixties, actually. 1964."

"—wait what?"

"It's 1964. What year was it when you were eaten by a giant snake?"

"Nineteen ninety-nine."

"We ever get out of Vietnam?"

"...er, I think so? I dunno, that's American stuff. But I think you lose the Vietnam War yeah."

"Probably had it coming. But yeah, welcome to the sixties. It's shit. Hopefully we can get the fuck out of here and escape to the turn of the millennium, that sounds grand."

"I mean, it's better than the sixties, yeah. Wow you guys don't even have computers, do you. Well, like, real ones. Or phones." His phone came with him. It's kinda large and chunky, for 1999, but surely it's a marvel of technology in '64.

"That's a phone? How's it get the message through without a wire?"

"I dunno, cellphone radiation. I'm not a physicist. Also too much magic breaks electronics so it's not great, I can't take it to Hogwarts with me and have to send letters to mum. Via owl.—oh, Richard is gonna miss me, too. My owl, that is."

"Not for long he's not, we're going to get back there. Come on, I'll introduce you to the Kents."

With a whirl of movement that stirs the hay on the floor, Xan's wearing his overalls, which are noticeably tented and still showing a lot of skin but technically more appropriate than his birthday suit. Then he strolls out of the barn towards the farmhouse.

Sadde follows.

He opens the door and leads Sadde in. "Ma'am, there's, uh, somebody you should meet?"

An aging woman walks out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel. "I've told you- oh, my, who's this?"

"Name's Sadde. He, uh, appeared suddenly? And he's not from this world. I was wondering if we could put him up until I can get him back to his own world?"

The woman looks shocked at the implication that she might not take in an alien child. "Of course! If he's got nowhere else to stay, we'll put him up in the guest room. Sadde, I want you to feel right at home, hear me?"

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Kent," he says with all the proper enunciation only a British person can do. "I do hope I will not be much of an inconvenience, I'll try not to get in your way and help you however I can."

"Now, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that," she says benevolently. "I'm not putting any child who isn't mine to work, that's final."

"—I have magic powers," he mentions. "And some spells that are very useful for, er, cleaning and tidying up and fixing things and all. It wouldn't be an imposition."

Okay maybe Sadde is a little bit very excited to be allowed to use magic in this alternate world just like that.

"Oh, magic," she says. "Well, if God saw fit to bless you with powers, it'd be a shame not to let you use them, wouldn't it?"

He grins and elects not to comment on the whole God thing. "I have a spell that literally makes things clean, I could show you...?"

"Ooh! Now that's a miracle God doesn't often see fit to grant. Hmm, how about... does it do shoes? Jon's poor boots are caked with dirt, I've stopped bothering to clean them as long as he leaves them outside but if you can get them clean it'd be a weight off my mind, I feel like it looks slovenly."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does anything. Well, maybe not things that are very large but shoes it can do."

She leads him to the boots in question. They are in fact recognizable as boots, but only because a sufficient collection of dirt will eventually fall off on its own.

Should be easy enough. "Scourgify!"

They clean up as expected!

Martha claps her hands together. "Oh, how lovely. Don't worry, I won't set you to cleaning all day, but any time you see something looking dingy, feel free to wave your wand at it, alright?"

"Yes, ma'am," he says, saluting.

"Alright. Do you have anything to move in- well, I suppose you wouldn't, if you appeared out of thin air like Xan says. Hmm... we might have to get you some clothes. You're not constitutionally opposed to them like our boy is, are you?"

"I'm not.—also, er," better get it out in the open sooner rather than later, "some days I'm a girl rather than a boy." She's okay with magic, right? "Magically, that is. It, er, has happened since I was a baby."

She frowns. "Well, that's... certainly unusual. God doesn't make mistakes, though, I'm sure it's all according to plan. Do you have a different name, or anything, when you're being a girl?"

"No. My name isn't very common, I think my mum made it up, so it's not, like, a boy's or a girl's name, it's just a... me name."

"That's fine, then. We'll buy you some dresses for when you're feeling feminine; can't have a girl your age running around in pants, after all."

Not in the sixties we can't, but, "I'd be okay with it, it's not a problem in the world where I'm from, and I wouldn't want you to spend money on me if you don't need to..."

"Nonsense," she says firmly. "We may be simple folk, but we've got standards. If we couldn't put you in proper clothes we'd have no business taking you in."

"Well, thank you, you're really very kind."

"Now, let's see," she murmurs to herself, "we'll need some decent boy clothes, some decent girl clothes, and a church outfit for each... How does your feminine self feel about floral print?"

"I don't really mind very much, I'm actually not very good at picking nice clothes for myself, so I'm sure you'll be able to pick something prettier than I could. Floral print sounds lovely."

"Oh, good," she says happily. "I've got some fabric with red roses I was thinking of making some curtains out of, but it'd make a lovely church dress for a girl your age with a halfway respectable hat. Come on back inside, are you hungry? Xan's always hungry."

"I could eat," he agrees easily. "Does he have to eat a lot more than a regular boy his age, for the superpowers? He said not, but..."

"He eats exactly as much as a regular boy his age, which is to say anything and everything. But I think he gets something out of all that sunbathing he does, that's why I haven't put a stop to it," she whispers.

She opens the door, and Xan's floating upside-down by the ceiling. "You also know if you tried I'd burn the house down," he says, as if there wasn't a door between them while she whispered.

"No you wouldn't," she says confidently. "You always say nasty things, but you've never once meant them."

He grunts noncommittally, flips right-side up, and floats back to the floor as Mrs. Kent enters the kitchen. "Welcome to Hell," he says grandly to Sadde.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, grinning at Xan. "Let's eat, eating sounds good."

Xan rolls his eyes, but walks with Sadde into the kitchen.

"There's cornbread and jam and honey, and cold chicken in the fridge, or if you want me to cook you up something I'd be happy to," Mrs. Kent says.

"What do you wanna eat?" he asks Xan.

Xan has already gotten himself some chicken and is gnawing on it contently.

Sadde can go for the chicken, too, then. And maybe some cornbread.

They're both pretty good.

Xan finishes his chicken, puts his plate in the sink, and ascends to his room. Mrs. Kent tuts, but doesn't comment.

"Scourgify!"

"Oh, thank you!"

"Anytime. Literally, I don't even get any more tired than flicking a stick and saying words, I don't have some magical energy I'm depleting or anything."

"Well, that's very handy. Do you want to go up to Xan's room? I know it might seem like he doesn't want company, but I think he's awfully lonely, really."

"Oh, yeah, I'm certain he is. I'll follow him up, if you don't have anything else you want me to point my wand at."

"No, you go right on ahead."

"Thank you for the food!"

Up he goes.

Xan, being in his room, has tossed his overalls into the corner and is currently tossing a baseball up and down meditatively.

"Awfully lonely, she says. She thinks if I had friends I'd stop beating off."

"Maybe you'd start beating off with them instead," he suggests. "But you're so obviously lonely it might as well be written on your forehead."

"...People mostly suck. Don't see how not being friends with any of them is worse than having to deal with them."

"Well, humans usually need companionship. Of, like, any kind, not just with people you super hit it off with." He hops onto Xan's bed and starts rocking his legs back and forth. "But also I don't think people mostly suck. ...maybe teenagers. And kids. Teens and kids suck a lot. I can tell, I am one," he says, nodding sagely.

Xan snorts. "I always wanted to move to Metropolis when I was old enough to get away, see if having enough people around meant there were any tolerable ones."

"There's lots. But the thing about the ones that suck is that most of them have reasons to suck and they can be made to not suck. I've spent the past two years making people not suck, I'd know."

"...I never really got there. I can't stand them, and they can't stand me."

"You seem like a perfectly fine gentleman from what I've seen, nothing unbearable so far."

"We're both weird queer kids with superpowers, though, I think that helps. Like, common ground. But I hate sports, and that seems like the only thing these guys like, so I don't have any common ground with them, besides which I'm a weird queer kid."

"Hmm, I think common ground is part of it but not all of it. But without common ground it's way harder to do it yeah and it's not like I'm saying you should be friends with people who suck at you, I'm doing that but that's because I have a cunning plan to reform a quarter of the young population of wizarding Britain, but finding people who don't suck and then being friends with them is like at least five times better than that."

"Oh."

He considers. "You don't suck. Or it doesn't seem like you do yet."

"I think I don't! I think you don't, either. So that's easy on both of us." Grin.

"Yeah."

Xan floats onto the bed and lies across Sadde's lap. "Maybe we should be friends."

"That's what I was getting at, dummy," he says, rolling his eyes and booping Xan on the nose.

"Well, I wanted to make sure!"

Xan lies there for a minute. "Not sure what you... do with friends, honestly."

"Same stuff you do alone but with more people? Also stuff that needs more people, like... have they invented board games yet, like real ones not like chess and stuff."

"There's board games. The Kents have Scrabble and Risk, but I'm not big on either."

"No those are the boring ones. You know what I wish I had? An extended bag. I would never walk away from home without everything I own if I had one and then I could just show you magic stuff."

"That does sound neat. We've got a library in town, if you like reading and don't mind that it's got about a hundred books and five of them are Bibles."

"I do like reading! And I bet the books here don't even try to bite you for it."

"Books that bite?"

"To be fair the only one I met that tried to literally bite was this year's Care of Magical Creatures book. Most textbooks are not that dangerous. Also the book won't bite if you just pet it before opening it."

"...why would you make a book that can bite people? That's-" Xan struggles for a word.

"I don't know, classes haven't started this year yet, but given that it doesn't bite if you pet it I think it's meant to be some kind of object lesson about caring for animals?"

"If you want to teach people lessons from a book then write the lesson in the book, that's what it's for."

"It doesn't bite that hard, and I'm pretty sure wizards are hardier than muggles—but yeah I guess. I haven't tried to read it yet though because spells are more interesting."

"Agreed. Animals are nice, I like them, but magic."

He considers.

"What's your favorite spell?"

"The telekinesis one," he replies immediately. "It's super useful and most wixen don't use it ever at all, it's a waste."

"Yeah, that sounds like a winner. That's the, uh, 'Wingardium' one?"

"Yeah. Don't ask me why I have to use the weird words and wand motions, I don't know how spell invention works."

"It is awfully weird. I wonder if it's just, what's it called, optimization? Like, you make a random gesture and say something weird, and see what happens, and you adjust it and see what changes? But 'Wingardium' sounds like something you'd make up if you were going for something that makes things fly, it doesn't sound properly random..."

"I don't think so, the incantation for that cold fire I showed you is Caeruleus Inflamarae and the one for a lot of fire is Incendio. It's some sort of fake latin."

"...huh. I don't know enough about Latin to tell how fake that is but it sounds pretty fake. Wonder if the library's got any Latin resources?"

"I think Incendio is actually legit but the other one is definitely made up."

"Yeah, sounds like it."

He lolls his head back, kicking out his legs. "Being bored with somebody else around is weird. It feels like it shouldn't be possible. Like I should suddenly have something to do, even though I know there's nothing to do because we're in Smallville."

"I'm not bored," declares Sadde. "Chatting isn't boring. But you know what we could do? Build something. Like a fort or something. You have super powers, I have magic, we could have a headquarters!"

"...yeah, maybe," he says. "Can you make water? If you can make water we could bake mud bricks."

"It's a sixth year spell, I've never tried it. I guess I know the words and the gesture but I should try it outside in case something explodes."

"Well, we'd be outside. I don't know how badly you can fuck up 'make some water', anyway."

"It could instead make something explode."

"That doesn't seem connected to making water at all. Is the effect if you fuck up just completely random?"

"Kinda, yeah. The way we figure out whether the wand likes us when we go get ours is just waving them around and seeing which one doesn't destroy anything."

"...huh. But what if I want to destroy things?"

"Well, then the wand won't necessarily destroy the things you wanted to destroy or in the way you wanted to destroy them. I think."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense."

He glances at his overalls, then at the window. "Wanna just fly out, instead of going out the front door?"

"Sure."

Xan picks Sadde up, and opens the window, and flies out.

He flies them away to what looks like an old abandoned quarry, full of clay, dirt, and rocks. "How big a fort are we thinking?"

"Dunno but we can expand it if we want, right? So like maybe as big as the first floor of your house to start?"

"Cool. Uh, I guess... try to make some water to make a patch of mud, and I'll start making bricks if it works, and if not I can try cutting some of the stone?"

Sadde closes his eyes. "It's technically transfiguration. And I haven't really been taught conjuration but I did read ahead a bit... lemme think."

He breathes deeply and thinks.

Xan waits for about a minute, then gets bored and starts trying to figure out how to mine usable stone blocks using only his super-strong hands. He's not very successful.

After another minute he opens his eyes, points his wand, and says, "Aguamenti!"

A jet of clear water emanates from his wand.

"Cool!"

Xan goes over to the newly created mud and starts excavating. Superspeed makes it pretty easy, and soon he has a decently sized pile of mud, which he starts forming into bricks. Each brick gets a couple seconds of heat vision, baking it solid.

Awesome, he can make infinite water, conservation of matter be damned.