Gah! Darn it, Meden! Where am I? Aah! Okay! Escape now, questions later! There’s another fire approaching. WOW am I sick of that! I seem to be in some kind of pod. Don’t tell me this is an egg or something. If I can- ah!

As I make to stand, my head busts right through the ceiling, which disintegrates around me, covering me in ash. I somehow resist the urge to cough from the lungful the smoky air I take as I look at the field before me, full of giant flowers with interspersed with even more gigantic trees, many of which are aflame. The inferno burns all around me, and I can feel the oppressive heat coming from it. I don’t feel the urge to recoil from it, but I am so very done with fire right about now.

I can’t tell my cardinals from here, but in the direction I was facing there’s nothing but a sea of flame and ashes as far as the eye can see. I look behind me and see what I had been in was another flowering plant growing along the ground. What’s more, I can see the base of it, and it’s not burnt! Right, safety that way!

I start to run in that direction. My body feels light. Too light. If I’m not careful a fire-born updraft might sweep me off my f-EEK!

My feet lift off the ground as I’m suddenly sent skyward, but something’s not right about it. Something’s resisting my movements and- pulling me up by the chest?

Okay, buddy, what’s the big idea? Without thinking, I yank the arms off of myself and spin around to find a girl, just hovering there, looking startled with her hands on her chest. Her features are striking.

She’s fair skinned, like someone with purely English ancestry, which makes sense given what I’m seeing here. She’s wearing a deep green dress covered in soot stains. On her head she sports straight, purple hair to the bottom of her rib cage, and yellow eyes opened wide staring at me in shock.

Of course, that’s my reaction exactly, since I didn’t know what I was expecting to find behind me, but a fairy straight out of English myth wasn’t it. I don’t know much of the fantasy species’ taxonomy, but she’s obviously some kind of fae, judging by the two pairs of insect-like wings on her back and the faint emerald glow she’s emitting. What’s more, there’s something familiar about her. I mean, of course there is, she’s my identical twin, after all.

Wait, how do I know that? I look down and really see myself for the first time. I’m covered in ash, even more than as she is, but it’s hard to see on my pale gray dress and pallid complexion. I look over my shoulder and see long grey hair and a pair of wings, and it finally dawns on me.

She let me go several moments ago. I’m floating weightlessly in midair. I subconsciously knew this girl was my twin. My identical twin, except someone turned the saturation slider to 0. I’m not surrounded by giant plants from a human’s perspective, because I don’t have a human’s perspective. I’m not even human anymore in the first place.

I’m a fairy.

Why am I a fairy‽ Hold up. Meden, he made a remark about calling him Navi at the end, didn’t he? What the heck? All the little nicknames I’d thought of him, and the one comparison he takes umbrage with is Navi? She wasn’t that annoying! Okay, maybe a little, but still!

Just then my sister taps me on the arm, snapping me out of my own little world, and taking me gingerly by the hand. She flies off towards a nearby cypress tree, away from the fire. I let her, and watch as the world passes beneath me with my own eyes.

I’d flown my fair share of aircraft in my time, my previous time, but that had nothing on this. No cockpit, nothing to strap into, nothing beneath me but the earth and nothing above me but the sky. It’s unreal.

I catch a better glimpse of the plant I, we, had come from. Half of it is past the fire line, still largely intact, and the rest of it is looking badly burnt. I recognize the bell shaped purple flowers.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Deadly Nightshade. Belladonna.

“Thank you,” I say as we land on a cypress branch. She lets go of my hand and takes a step back, looking at me with a worried expression, looking back and forth from me and the fires below. I’m not sure what she’s fretting about, really. The fire will take a few minutes to get here, and I feel fine.

I feel better than fine, in fact. I feel great! I feel almost literally light as air! For the first time since the plane crash, there’s nothing about to kill me! The pain is gone, even the aches and pains have disappeared, and I can fly the way humanity can only dream of! This is fantastic!

I start to laugh, and hearing my high pitch voice only redoubles the hilarity of the absurd circumstance I’ve found myself in. “Woo-hoo! Yeah!” I whoop and holler, absolutely giddy with the way things have turned out. Not an hour ago I was just flying my plane as usual, and now I’m here, standing in a tree with wings on my back.

If this is Meden’s idea of a joke, then I’m laughing right along with him!

“Haha! Sorry about that,” I say as my laughter subsides. “I’m just relieved. Do you have a name?”

My twin just shakes her head. “No, huh? Well, that won’t do,” I remark. “I’ll just have to give you one. Hm, how about I name you ‘Belladonna’, after our, erm, mother? ‘Bella’ for short. Does that work for you?” She nods. “Okay, Belladonna it is! My name is… uh…”

Huh. I seem to have forgotten my name. That’s weird. Wait, what was I again? I was a human, sure. And I was a pilot. I remember pretty much everything I knew from my education.

But there are a lot of gaps in my memory too. I don’t recall my age, or how tall I was, or even if I was a man or a woman. I want to say woman, but I’m almost certain my perception’s changed due to being a fairy girl now.

“I guess you’ll have to name me too,” I sheepishly tell her. Belladonna only shakes her head, and puts a finger to her throat. I can feel a sense of regret from her. Regret and… awe. Yeah. I wonder why?

And how, for that matter. How can I feel what she’s feeling? Is this that twin link that I’d heard about in myths back on Earth? I don’t have any way of testing that this instant, and I don’t have any evidence of it, but it feels right to think so. This world must have magic for there to be fairies, after all, so I’m going with ‘magical bond between twins’ for the time being.

I’m going to have to get used to going with the flow and listening to my intuition for a while, at least until I get the rules of this world well enough to start logically breaking them down.

“Can’t talk?” I ask, to which Belladonna shakes her head. “I figured. So, full Tinker Bell, huh?”

A tilt of the head. Confusion.

“Oh, what’s that mean?” I interpret. “A mute fairy. I wonder why I’m different?”

A slow nod. Curiosity and concern.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m sure it’s fine, Bella,” I reassure. She flicks her wings and floats over to me like she was in zero-g, then reaches behind me and gently takes hold of a lock of hair. She reaches her other hand behind her and pulls a lock of her own in front of her. She holds the two up side by side for me to see.

They’d look identical on an old greyscale television, but in real life the difference between the two is stark. Still, I feel healthy, and what’s more, condition eight is in play.

“Yes, I see that I don’t have any color, sis,” I say, “but I’m not old or sick, I’m your twin. You came out of the flower a few moments before I did, right?” A nod. “So I’m fine! I could use a bath, though. All this ash and soot is dulling my hair’s sheen, that’s all.”

Still, she looks unsure. Maybe there’s a way to prove it. Condition 3 allowed for systems as long as I could unbind myself from them, right? Is that a thing here?

I try to feel for something like that. Yeah, I can sense something is there in the side of my mind. I think it’s something like that. Let’s see what the activation keys are.

“Character screen. Nope. Uh, stats?” Oh, there we go!

True-

The display snapped off before I could read anything more, having stayed only open for a split second, leaving my mind interpreting the after-image; letters that I didn’t even read properly.

True Fairy

ST

That was all I could even try to make out. The rest I couldn't even glimpse. “Huh?” I interject in surprise. I even sense Bella feels the same thing. “What happened?”

“Hello, Liandan. Belladonna,” a voice comes from behind me. I turn around to see a blonde human man standing in midair, wearing a fine blue suit with a metallic luster, in perfect symmetry. His eyes, irises glowing blue with obvious power, have a weary look to them. At his left hip rests a sword in its scabbard, and at his right sits a handgun in its holster.

I know I’m tiny, minuscule even, but this man? Something about this man makes me feel subatomic. A chill runs down my spine, and I can feel Bella feels the same sensation.

The man looks at me, square in the eyes and says

“We need to talk.”