Percy Bysse Pilkerton. Percy Bysse" It was his Mum named him of course, and his Da" Well, even that long ago he had learned when to hold his tongue.

Mum had been quite the noted local beauty in her youth; blond and fair of skin and graceful as a willow beside a manor pond. She was even courted, or so she says, by several minor poets of the time. Her parents, however, decided that they liked the prospects of a thriving greengrocer better, and thus his Dad had won the prize.

Mum did not so much fight the marriage as thicken against it, shielding the slender beauty within from the world with butters and sweets. When she found herself pregnant against all odds, she abandoned all pretense at wifeliness in order to devote herself to motherhood.

One would think that a prescription for a childhood from hell, but young Percy (who had yet to learn to hate his name) was not a particularly unhappy child. He was a lovely boy, of delicate features and white blond hair so fine it seemed always aflutter.

For the most part he had known nothing better and so cheerfully accepted the parental restrictions and constrictions save one: His Mum put a terrible load of studying on him, so much that he never did truly have a friend close enough to call his "mate." She had, you see, developed ambitions above her class, and her son's intelligence and education were the icebreaker she intended to use to clear a path before them.

It was just one of those things. With her son's success at Harrow and his graduation all but guaranteed, Percy's Mum had been preparing for her social ascendance. She had stretched the family budget to deck herself out in clothing that she thought of as posh, and begun affecting the peculiar accent of the public schooled classes.

It was the latter that brought about her demise. When her local newsagent had no copies of the Times and tried to assure that the Sun was an appropriate substitute, she "harrumphed," and proceeded to tell the poor man in no uncertain terms that a periodical of that stripe had no place in her family's home, thank you very much!

Her diatribe earned the attention of a pack of ragamuffins, who, fired by the class hatred that is never far from the surface in those fabled isles, followed her with catcalls and obscenities. When she picked up her pace, the pack determined that the game was well afoot, and began to give chase.

If she had run, they would likely have dissolved into laughter and let her go. But instead she turned to chastise them. If she had fled, the flung soda bottle would have probably shattered at her fleeing heels and done nothing worse than ruin a smashingly good pair of shoes. If she had run, it certainly wouldn't have caught her in the middle of her forehead and driven all thoughts of class, or a better future or anything else for that matter, from her mind.

She died in hospital soon after. Percy and his Da were there, and when she passed they looked at each other with a profound lack of recognition. Both had spent too many years dedicated to trying to please this woman who was, in the final analysis, beyond pleasing. Whatever thin threads of family that had bound them were ultimately woven into her intercession and, without her stubborn hands to guide them, fell loose and inconsequential.

Percy left Harrow two days later, with the few pounds that remained in his account and the aimlessness of the newly reborn. The money ran out in the streets of Vienna, and the beautiful boy, hungry and alone, looked around himself with a chemist's eye and determined that this city would be the crucible in which he would mix a new life.

The address was in the warehouse district, an area where the few windows were darkened at night and where the scant oases of streetlamps seemed impossibly far apart. For that reason, the couple had splurged on a taxi, and still felt compelled to dash in a staccato rush of heels from the vehicle to the door.

That entranceway was itself unremarkable and vaguely foreboding; a windowless, reinforced door illuminated by only a single naked bulb above. Foxy and Roxy opened it, and found themselves facing a long corridor walled with unpainted sheetrock. At the end of it, under another single bulb, sat an extraordinary creature; grossly fat, completely hairless and"though clad only in a breechcloth—of uncertain gender. It looked up at them and, when it spoke, its voice was surprisingly lovely, even melodious.

"Roxy dear," it said, "I wasn't aware that Miss Stuart had put out a call for individuals with your particular skill set."

The girl blushed, shuffled her feet, all but swallowed her words in hesitant reply,

"It's not me," she said. "It's my friend. I thought maybe Miss Stuart would like to meet her?"

The creature studied Foxy silently for a long moment; it was as if it could see through her clothes, peer into her very thoughts.

"Very well then," it said. Adding with a fleshy grin, "and do be safe."

The door behind it lead to yet another corridor, similar in its lack of trappings to the one before, and to another desk where another creature, virtually identical to the one they'd encountered before (could it have somehow been the same, were they walking in circles without knowing) greeted them.

"Ah Miss Roxy, and this would be the supplicant' Miss Stuart is waiting, please go on in."

Another identical door, but this one opened to an elegant glass-walled office perched high above a dance floor upon which a bacchanal of Olympic proportions seemed to just be reaching a fever pitch. Within the office was a large burled walnut desk. On the desk sat only a laptop, a smart phone, a landline, and a single yellow legal pad and pen. Behind it perched a small, tidy woman, blond hair cut in sharp wings against her freckled cheeks, eyes hidden behind blue-tinted wire-rims, and conservatively clad in cotton and tweed. Ignoring Roxy, she focused her attention on Foxy. When she spoke, it was without accent, other than a peculiar precision of syllable.

"You come petitioning my aid, I think. Tell me, what is it that you seek?"

Foxy steeled herself.

"I want to complete my education, ma"am. I want to become a pharmacologist. And"and I want to become a woman."

The little blonde studied her again, in meticulous detail, from white waterfall of hair to stiletto heels.

"First things first," she said, clicking her pen. "I could find a place for a drug maker in my employ. What do you call yourself?" And here the little blonde lowered her glasses, and bathed her audience in the power of her pale blue eyes. Foxy felt her knees begin to buckle, and realized with a start that she loved this tiny woman with all of her body and all of her soul.

"I'm Foxy, Foxy Contin," she said.

Alma sniffed, pinched the bridge of her nose.

"How very clever," she said, in tones that spoke the opposite. "But you are a member of my entourage now, and your name is Magenta Grail.?