It happened during "Precision Sparkling"—an exercise where they tried to make their lights form specific shapes.
"Today we're making circles!" Teacher Milly announced, holding up a cardboard cutout. "Nice, round, friendly circles! No pointy edges!"
Most children produced wobbly ovals or squiggly lines that vaguely suggested circularity. Sam managed a lopsided ring that flickered with heat distortion. Chloe's rose circle kept collapsing into a puddle of light.
Leo, concentrating fiercely, made his green finger trace a shape in the air. It was… polygonal. Several straight lines connected at approximate right angles. "It's a circle-ish," he said defensively.
Astraea, as always, performed minimalism raised to art. Three silver sparkles appeared, arranged in a perfect equilateral triangle. Then, with three more appearing between them, it became a hexagon. Then, with six more, a dodecagon. By the time she had twenty-four sparkles, the shape was visually indistinguishable from a perfect circle to human eyes.
She held it for exactly five seconds, then let it dissolve.
"Beautiful, Astraea!" Milly clapped. "So precise! Everyone, look at Astraea's circle!"
The children oohed appropriately. Most went back to their struggles. But Leo kept staring at her, his brow furrowed in that particular way he got when his scientific mind encountered a puzzle.
At juice break, he finally spoke. "Your sparkles are… too perfect, Raea."
Astraea froze, the apple juice halfway to her lips. She'd been careless. In her focus on geometric precision, she'd forgotten to add the human imperfections. The wobbles. The flickers. The slight asymmetries that said "child learning" rather than "ancient being with perfect control."
"Too perfect?" she asked, keeping her voice light.
"Yeah." Leo leaned closer, lowering his voice. "Everyone else's lights… they breathe. They flicker. They're alive. Yours are like… math. Perfect math."
He'd noticed. Of all the humans, Leo—quiet, observant, scientifically-minded Leo—had noticed.
"They just come out that way," Astraea said, which was true. "I don't try to make them perfect. They just… are."
"That's even weirder," Leo said, but he sounded fascinated, not suspicious. "It's like your power doesn't follow the same rules. My green finger—if I don't concentrate, it goes out. If I concentrate too hard, it gets too bright and gives me a headache. Yours just… exist. Exactly the same every time."
He was describing, with the limited vocabulary of a ten-year-old, the difference between human mana manipulation and dragon harmonic resonance. Humans pushed. Dragons… resonated.
"Maybe different powers have different rules," Astraea offered.
"Maybe." Leo took a thoughtful sip of his juice. "My grandpa says sometimes science finds things that don't fit the rules. They're not wrong—the rules are just incomplete."
Astraea looked at him with new appreciation. Leo, who could only make his left pointer finger glow green, was perhaps the most perceptive human she'd met in decades. Not because of power, but because of mind.
"Your grandpa sounds smart," she said.
"He's a retired physicist. He says the gate is the most exciting thing since… well, since ever." Leo lowered his voice further. "He's teaching me to take notes. Measurements. About my power. And… other things."
"Other things?" Astraea asked carefully.
"Like how your sparkles are always exactly the same brightness. And how they never make shadows. And how sometimes, when you're not looking, things around you… glow a little."
Astraea's ancient heart did something it hadn't done in centuries—it skipped a beat. Not from fear, but from surprise. Leo had been observing. Recording. Noticing the tiny leaks in her camouflage, the faint effects of her presence on the environment.
The basil plant on her windowsill, leaning perpetually toward her. The way paper near her sometimes developed faint silver edges if she wasn't careful. The subtle warming of the air around her as her dragon metabolism increased.
"He thinks maybe there are different… types of Awakened," Leo continued, unaware of the minor existential crisis he was causing. "Not just different powers, but different… ways of being powered."
Closer. So close to truth.
"Maybe," Astraea said again, because it was all she could say.
After CYAP, walking to Mrs. Evans' car, Leo said something that stayed with her. "You know what my grandpa calls things that don't fit the rules?"
"What?"
"Frontiers." Leo's eyes were bright with the thrill of discovery. "Not problems. Frontiers. Places where the map ends and the real exploring begins."
Astraea looked at him—this ephemeral child with his single green finger and his scientist's mind—and felt a surge of something like affection, but more complex. Respect, perhaps. Or recognition.
He was a frontier too. A human mind pushing against the boundaries of what his species understood. Not with flashy power, but with quiet observation.
[System notification!]
[Achievement unlocked: 'Noticed!']
[Description: Someone has observed your special sparkle qualities!]
[Reward: +5 to Stealth (for not being fully discovered!), 'Subtle' Title]
[Note: Being unique is wonderful! Just maybe be a little less unique sometimes!]
The System, as always, missed the point spectacularly.
That night, Astraea examined her glamour more carefully than ever. Leo had noticed the perfection. The lack of shadows. The environmental effects. She needed to add imperfections. Deliberate, calculated flaws to her sparkles. A slight flicker here. A barely perceptible drift there. Shadows that were almost, but not quite, right.
And she needed to tighten her containment. No more ambient leaks. No more subtle effects on her environment.
She practiced until her control was imperfect by design. It was harder than perfect control—like a master painter deliberately making clumsy brushstrokes.
When she measured her height, she found another change. 0.34 cm cumulative. The growth continued, steady as ever.
But her mind was on Leo. On his observation. On his grandfather's idea of frontiers.
Four hundred years ago, she'd watched a similar mind—a monk in a monastery, observing the stars with homemade lenses, sketching patterns no one else saw. He'd called them "God's handwriting." She'd known they were stellar nurseries. But she'd respected the observation.
Leo was that monk's descendant in spirit, if not blood. A watcher. A noticer.
She touched her back. The wing buds were definitely there now. Small, firm mounds. Another week, and they'd be visible even through clothing if she didn't maintain her glamour perfectly.
And Leo was watching.
Tomorrow: imperfect sparkles. The day after: tighter containment. The great hiding continued, but now with a new variable: a small, green-fingered observer at the frontier of discovery.