"He's fine about me, and she loves me, I'm her favorite munchkin," says Kerron brightly. "I'm not sure about anyone else. It's harder to tell who a colorshape is about if it's not about somebody who's close to me. I could tell that yours were about Mummy, but I can't tell when Henry has a colorshape that's about his mummy because Rosalie's not close enough to being a part of me for the witch part of my power to help."

He thinks. "There was this one colorshape that I couldn't read because I didn't know what it was about at all, and I asked Addy for help with it and she said -" He switches into a higher register, generic Midwestern accent with a trace flavor of German in place of his forty percent Manx to sixty percent assorted American - "'it means your dad is insecure and everything would be much simpler for him if your mum would just turn already' - but then she didn't explain what that means. Is she in love with somebody besides Daddy? ...Is she gonna fall out of love with Daddy? Humans can do that and she's mostly one! Then what would happen to me? All the hybrids I know with broken-up parents are grown up already but I'm still little! And Daddy would be so sad!"