Alta looked at the duo of blue fairy and green dryad in a mixture of confusion and curiosity. The elder had sang a wordless melody until Icasondra had lost consciousness. The chimera knew they weren’t pure words, but the magic she sensed in them was shallow.
Flrynwydl carefully stood up from her throne of vines, bark, and roots, leaving the Moonlight fairy to lie on it. The throne thought for a colossal figure of three meters mostly worked as a bed for the meter-tall fairy.
“She has fallen asleep.” The dryad explained, though now she no longer looked at Alta with hostility, yet something else lingered on her visage.
Sadness. The chimera realized. I’m slowly beginning to understand more of these emotions. She had never been driven by emotions, only instincts and logic. Though from time to time she indulged in the thrill of the hunt.
Alta recalled the first true emotion she saw. The moment she had killed the first warden, who was trying to kill her in the first place, their comrade was blinded by rage. That time she couldn’t understand the reason, but perhaps...
“Follow me,” Flrynwydl whispered, interrupting Alta’s thoughts as she walked outside of her throne room.
Nature itself pulled branches and vines out of the way of the dryad as she walked on. Parts of the wall disintegrated under her will, revealing an outside door leading to a balcony with a railing composed of branches and roots.
Alta went outside with her.
The dryad looked up to the sky, the sun on its apex. It was ‘high noon’. The powerful ball of fire in the skies burned hotter than in any previous moment Alta had experienced. But she could only find the high temperature and the scorching rays soothing.
“I thought fairies could only be engendered by other fairies,” Alta commented as the dryad refused to talk. “Yet Icasondra treated you as if you were her mother.”
“You are wrong,” Flrynwydl responded after a while. “Any fae can theoretically have a spawn of any type, but such occasions are rare. Magic is unpredictable and we are but purely magical beings.”
“I see.” Alta hadn’t comprehended anything she had said. “But you aren’t her progenitor, are you?”
“I am not.” She nodded, her dark green her flowing down with the motion. “I am but the guardian and tutor of every fairy in this village. Their matron, yet never their mother.”
The chimera could feel another type of sadness in the last statement, one that wasn’t related to the issue at hand.
Flrynwydl jumped on top of the feeble-looking railing and sat on it, stretching her legs to the outside world. Alta couldn’t understand how the weak branches could withstand the weight of the logs the dryad had for thighs, let alone her whole weight.
The dryad looked vaguely human if one ignored her bleak eyes and skin tone, yet her ratio of legs to height made her totally uncanny. As if there was something wrong, unnatural.
She stretched her green feet into the horizon, her impossibly long legs seeming to even reach their objective but never truly making it, and then she took a deep breath.
“I don’t know what you are, chimera.” Flrynwydl started. “You aren’t alive like the forest or the fae, but you saved that child, and for that I’m grateful. You may stay in this village if you wish.”
Alta fluttered her wings and jumped on top of the railing as the dryad did. Her fairy legs were short, barely dangling around like the tree-sized ones the elder had.
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“You are wrong. I am alive.” She replied. “I know I’m not like others, I am more resilient than others, I do not need food or water to sustain myself, and can shapeshift into other beings, but I’m certainly alive.”
“Hmm...” The dryad groaned deep in thought. “You are taking the shape of a Blossomflame fairy, and they are aligned to Life and Chaos, I doubt you could replicate that without being yourself alive, but that doesn’t answer what you truly are.”
“Don’t ask me, I don’t know.”
Alta’s hair fluttered with the wind, like flames drifting in a breeze. She stretched her wings, the fire appendixes growing bigger with brighter flames for an instant. The sun was undoubtedly soothing.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Flrynwydl finally looked at her.
“What I’ve said,” Alta responded. “A statue told me I was a chimera, but it was also wrong once, so maybe it was wrong then too.”
“Don’t you want to know about your existence and origins?” The dryad’s hair also undulated with the wind, though hers appears more like the swaying of leaves and grass.
“Not really.” The chimera lightly swayed her head. “All my life I have only had the thought of escaping and being free, but after finally doing so, only a primeval instinct of survival remains. The only thing I know is to shift onto others. In a way, I can’t shift into myself.”
The dryad gave her a look she couldn’t discern. There were a myriad of feelings in the elder’s bleak eyes, but if Alta had to say one that shone beyond the rest, it was that of pity.
“It sounds like quite the past,” Flrynwydl said.
“Not at all.” Alta negated. “I only have the memories of my prison, all the same. So, not much of a past.”
“That’s not what I meant.” The dryad sighed.
She gave Alta another indescribable look and returned her head to the horizon, a never-ending vastness of green. Blue and green mesh together well. The chimera thought of enjoying the vista, ignoring the conundrums on the dryad’s head.
They stood for a while sightseeing, only the occasional bird making a change in the view. Who broke the silence this time was the elder.
“Moonlight fairies are nocturnal.” Flrynwydl explained. “Because they partially feed on moonlight, they prefer to be awake at night and enjoy the embrace of the Celestial Triumvirate.”
The dryad’s eyes lingered on a random spot in the sky, but then Alta noticed that place was where the three moons had been this night.
“Icasondra was always an adventurous fairy, craving knowledge and exploration. But it’s difficult to explore and sightsee with the dim light of the moons, so she forwent the Moonlight tradition of being nocturnal so she could explore the outside world with her own eyes.”
“Why are you explaining this to me?” Alta asked genuinely. She couldn’t understand the reason behind it.
“That child looks up to you, or at least I think she does.” The elder responded. “Moonlight fairies are overall the weakest of all and not the most useful for a community. Their light abilities can be useful sometimes, but those occasions are few and far between. That led Icasondra to have an inferiority complex.”
“Aren’t there more Moonlight fairies in the village?” The chimera asked once she noticed the dryad was not going to stop talking.
“There were.” She nodded. “Not anymore. The vast majority of the village is now composed of Rootweaver and Stillwater fairies, though some variations spawn from time to time. If at least there remained a single Moonlight in this place, that child wouldn’t feel so out of place, so inferior.”
Alta was beginning to understand the problem. Icasondra was a weak link in the herd, yet the fae were too goodhearted to exile one of them. This meant that the Moonlight fairy, as she also was one of a kind, alienated herself, drowning in remorse instead of striving forward.
Prey couldn’t be lone hunters after all.
“And why would she look up to me?” The chimera couldn’t comprehend the complex situation fully. “Shouldn’t she look up to you? You are a strong hunter, and she has known you for far longer.”
“Hunter?” The elder looked at the Blossomflame fairy in confusion. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not how the mind works. You saved Icasondra in a moment of weakness, and actions like those remain engraved by fire on the memory. You are a monster, I can know it even if she hasn’t told me, yet she’s forever grateful to you. You saved her from a fate worse than death.”
“I see.” For the first time, she could understand such words. Because she knew of fates worse than death, she had experienced it after all.
A shallow sound came from the throne room, almost unperceivable yet both the chimera and the dryad turned her heads. Alta’s perceptive ears pulsated upon hearing the sound and whilst Flrynwydl herself didn’t do anything, the vines around the balcony twisted slightly.
Alta knew if she were to fight the dryad, doing so in her dominion would prove a fight far more difficult than all others combined.
“We’ve talked for a long time.” Flrynwydl put her long legs on the balcony floor and stood up. “As I’ve said, you are welcome to this village, but if you hurt Icasondra in any way, be ready to experience Mother Nature’s unleashed wrath.”
Alta smiled. That hadn’t been a threat, but a promise.