Twig woke to the unpleasant realization that sleeping could be painful at human size. Hard surfaces had never bothered him this much before. But then, he’d never had to deal with a gigantic amount of weight pressing down. His right hip felt bruised like he’d flown into a wall, and his neck ached where it had rested at an awkward angle. Apparently the scattered pillows and thin blanket weren’t enough for a proper bed. Who knew?
He sat up with a groan that he hadn’t planned on making (how embarrassing), and found that most of the pixies on the pillows around him were still asleep. Golden sunlight was just starting to filter through the windows of this giant stone building, and it wasn’t shining in anyone’s eyes yet. They all looked very comfortable. And so did the silver dragon, curled up in the corner of the room.
The minotaurs in the center were starting to stir, untangling from a complex pile of limbs that seemed cozy to Twig. It probably would have been a trickier thing to arrange if any of them had had long horns instead of small-to-medium nubbins. The two human shapes in the middle hadn’t gotten squashed though, so it all worked out. Even if the former centaur still looked distressed by the lack of a horse body behind her. She rolled over and visibly twitched.
A light knock on the door was followed immediately by someone kicking their way inside with harpy feet. Twig sat up straight to see a procession of wings, clawed feet, and tubs that smelled like food.
“Good morning!” announced the first harpy.
Every pixie not already in the air zipped upward now. Twig flexed wing muscles he didn’t have in an effort to join them.
“I understand you lot are mostly interested in plants, so we did what we could,” the harpy continued, setting down her wooden tub on the table by the far wall. “We’ve got plates here somewhere. Or small bowls. Feather, do you have the bowls?”
Twig got his feet under him, amazed at how difficult it was to stand when he couldn’t just lift himself into the air. He could walk well enough, though slowly, and he joined the crowd at the table well after the other pixies. An exciting spread of food greeted him.
Peas, blackberries, bread, nuts — all normal things, but they were tiny to him now. He plucked a single pea from the nearest bowl and marveled at it while harpies bustled past. To think, he could eat the whole thing and hardly notice!
He crushed it between his teeth, and found it to taste like no pea he’d ever eaten. He wondered if his taste buds were different. Then the blackberries caught his eye — what would it be like to eat them without separating the globes? And bread! What was bread like as a big person?
Bread was soft. Even the hard crust was chewy, and it all of it was delicious. Twig found a plate and did his singleminded best to gather a sampling of all the tastiest things. There was fish at the end of the table, but he left that alone; it was clearly for the dragon (politely waiting for a turn). And Twig had never liked the smell of fish anyway. It was nothing like these berries!
He returned to the pillows, where he took his time eating. Other pixies finished quickly and some flew over to join him, full of questions.
“Are the walnuts as soft as they say?” someone asked. Twig didn’t look up to see who.
“Yeah!” he said, mouth full. “You don’t have to cut a slice off at this size; they’re easy to chew! And I can eat the whole blackberries — seeds, core, everything. They taste a little tangier, I think?”
He gathered quite an audience while he ate, narrating as he went. It was only when he’d finished the last crumb of bread that the pixies dispersed for morning cleaning.
Twig returned his plate to the table, then realized with a jolt that he didn’t need to clean up after himself.
I mean, I should fold the blanket and move the pillows, he thought, gazing out at the room. But I didn’t shed any pixie dust on them. I don’t need to brush them off.
All around the room, while the other big people chatted in the center, the colorful lights of his kinfolk flitted between their sleeping places, the water pitcher, and the door. There were no dustbrushes to be found in a harpy building (no surprise), so they were making do with cloth napkins and bare hands. The smaller pillows could be carried outside by teams of four, and smacked around until they shed any significant deposits. The bigger ones had to be scrubbed. Twig could see one fluffy-looking affair that had held a good half dozen pixies; the tassels were visibly drifting upwards, and would need extra attention.
But Twig wouldn’t have to do any of it.
Well, I could, he thought. Team effort and all that. The more involved, the faster done. But none of the dust is mine. He slowly sank back against the table. And I don’t want to get in anybody’s way. They have it under control, I guess.
He watched in silence while all traces of shed pixie dust were dampened and sprinkled into the dirt outside. It was a quick cleanup, despite the lack of proper brushes. There wasn’t enough to be worth collecting.
The last group to carry a pillow outside returned full of excitement; they dropped it and called for everyone to join them. Something interesting was happening.
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Twig realized that he did hear more voices outside than before. He pushed off the table and joined his kinfolk in funneling out the door. The minotaurs and others were close behind.
Bright sunshine made him blink, reflecting off the pale stones and paler mortar that made up the village. The thatched roofs were dark. The feathers of the inhabitants sported a range of speckled brown-to-white colorings. A whole flock of them were currently parading down the dirt road with their hopping birdlike stride, in the wake of something weird and triangular.
Twig blinked, and tried to get a better view. The other pixies were already high in the air; he realized that he’d been left behind with the big folk, who were also following the crowd. Twig hurried to get ahead of them. He couldn’t keep up with his own people, but he could at least get close.
The minotaurs, naturally, took this as a challenge, and stampeded gleefully after him, including the human one. The biggest was carrying the former centaur like a child. It would have struck Twig as funny if not for his urgent concern that he might get trampled.
He pressed up against a rough stone wall and let them thunder past. The young dragon trotted up to wait silently for him. Twig caught his breath, gave the dragon a nod in thanks, then broke into a jog.
Wow, running got tiresome fast. He was starting to really miss flying.
And, when he finally reached the crowd at the edge of the village, he realized that he wasn’t the only one.
This was the village edge in a literal sense: the biggest houses were lined up along an abrupt cliff, with a grand view of the sea. The open space at the end of this road appeared to be a popular harpy launching-off spot. Today it was going to launch something else.
Twig flagged down a couple of pixies. “That’s our human, right? The harpy one?”
“Yes!” said one.
“And she’s made herself some wings!” said the other.
“How smart of her!” Twig exclaimed. “I wonder if she can make me some too. Is there a spot I can get a better look?”
The pixies zipped upward and then back, guiding him off to the side where there was apparently a good viewing space. The minotaurs stayed where they were, muttering with some concern.
Before he left earshot, Twig heard, “Is that safe?”
The reply was, “I don’t know enough about flight to say. But it looks heavy.”
Then Twig was caught up in a crowd of chattery young harpies with the dragon pushing past him, and the pixies’ directions were hard to pick out. But he made it to the front of the flock before launch.
Just barely, though.
He caught a glimpse of the wing-shaped structure covered in brown tarp, and the human legs running toward the cliff.
The feathered crowd wished her luck. The pixies above cheered. Twig clapped along, hoping it worked well enough for her to duplicate when she landed.
She leapt into the wind’s embrace, and dropped like a rock.
The dragon hissed something that sounded like a curse and dove after her.
“What’s their problem?” a harpy asked. The crowd shuffled forward as a whole, unconcerned, though Twig was starting to wonder. Shouldn’t the pair of them have risen back into view by now?
He reached the cliff edge (reminding himself that he didn’t have wings, and really shouldn’t fall off), and he looked down. It was quite a ways.
The flapping tarp was still falling, only holding onto the frame by one corner, but the dragon had grabbed on to the leading edge. As Twig watched, the young dragon’s efforts turned a freefall into a steep dive, angling away from the rocks and out toward the deeper sea. But they couldn’t lift that much weight completely. The pair were still heading for the water, just at an angle.
Twig thought he heard the dragon’s voice on the breeze, shouting about undoing buckles. Then the frame cracked in half and the whole mess crashed into the waves, with the dragon folding their wings just before impact.
At the distant splash, the harpy villagers laughed and cheered, clearly unconcerned. They joked about fledgelings that needed more time in the nest. They laughed about the “bath of shame” in the sea, and the bedraggled hike back up to town. Pixies flitted everywhere laughing.
In the center of this merriment, the minotaurs and their one human stood stock still, their expressions a matching set of dire concern.
Twig had only been a big person for a single day, but he agreed with them. That had been a big splash. The human-harpy, the dragon, and the wooden frame would all be very heavy. Had she gotten those buckles unfastened in time?
He looked out to sea, anxious. The water roiled. A portion of tarp drifted upward.
Then the silver dragon exploded onto the surface, clutching a struggling human and shouting as soon as there was air to do so.
“YOU IDIOT!” the distant voice said. “YOU ALMOST DIED, AND THEN WHERE WOULD WE BE? WHAT IF WE CAN’T BREAK THE SPELL WITH ONLY FOUR?”
Ah, Twig thought as he breathed a sigh of relief. Dragon priorities.
The other snatches of conversation that carried on the wind had to do with the hypothetical reaction of the senior dragon, and the competing idea that the rig had nearly worked; it just needed a few more nails.
“More nails,” laughed a minotaur. “How about more brains, and maybe a trial run or two?”
“Or ten!” agreed another.
“What’s that boat?” asked their human, pointing.
When Twig looked, he saw a narrow craft being paddled toward the pair in the water. It was hard to get a sense of size from here, especially with the dragon and human mostly submerged (being held up by the dragon’s wings flapping slowly underwater), but the people looked big. Unsettlingly big. Dark and furry? Wearing furs? Were those helmets or extra-big heads? Twig squinted.
The casual way that a nearby harpy announced, “Hey, the orcs are back!” only made Twig slightly less concerned. That boat looked like it was made of skin stretched over rib bones.
“Oh good!” someone else replied. “Pity they just missed the fair. Oh well, first pick for us.”
Twig let that half-a-piece of information drift past him as he watched the disturbingly large people in the boat pluck the dragon and human out of the sea, with all the ease of farmers freeing a pair of sheep from a mud puddle.
One of Twig’s cousins hovered next to his ear. “Too bad the wings didn’t work,” she said. “I wonder if that dragon has a flight charm she can use? They were selling charms at the fair.”
Twig shook his head slowly. “I think all the fair supplies were already sent home. And the elder took that bag of tricks with him.”
“Oh well.” The pixie shrugged.
“But wait!” Twig had a brilliant idea. “We can help! Hey, everybody,” he addressed his kinfolk. “Let’s help the harpy-human! Can you fly home and get some of the spare dust? I know there’s extra waiting to be fertilizer for the skyfruits; I’m sure they can spare some that’s almost expired, maybe fresher.”
“Great idea!” his cousin agreed. “Yeah, let’s do it! C’mon, everybody! Whoever wants to come; some of you stay to tell the rest of us about those orcs, okay?”
The colorful swirling cloud parted ways in delight, with half arrowing off toward home and half spreading out to observe.
Twig stood taller, feeling a complicated mix of pride at being able to help, sorrow at being left behind, and apprehension about the hulking figures in the boat that he had never encountered before.