T’faide woke with the morning sunlight, feeling pleasantly refreshed before the panic set in. He remembered volunteering to help keep watch, which he certainly didn’t do in the end, and dreaded finding his mother cranky and sleep-deprived again.
Fortunately, Niasha appeared to be sleeping soundly. Instead, T’faide’s father was keeping watch, his long ears twitching to catch the sounds of insects and animals beginning their day; making sure nothing else was mixed in with them.
“Good morning, dad,” the halfelf said softly, stretching his arms over his head. “I’m surprised you’re up this early.”
“Your mother said the same thing,” Arwinthall replied with a perplexed look on his face. “I know we lived separately, but I could’ve sworn you both knew the basics, at least.”
“What basics?” T’faide made his way to their magic bag and fished out some dried meat for his breakfast.
“You know, common sense knowledge about elves. We only sleep four hours a night. I went to bed early, so I woke up right about when the watch was changing.”
For a moment, the boy stopped chewing and looked at his father strangely. “Is that common sense? I’ve never heard of it before.”
Arwin raised his shoulders. “I really don’t know how it never came up.”
T’faide’s father woke his mother, and they all ate a modest breakfast before packing up their little camp. They still had several days of walking ahead of them.
“This forest is called Great Gnul, isn’t it?” T’faide asked at one point. “How big is it compared to other forests?”
Niasha didn’t answer, as she’d never been to any forest besides this one.
“It’s moderately large,” Arwin said. “It would take two weeks to cross from one side to the other at this pace. Gnul is mainly called a great forest because it’s old. There’s a small fey wood at its center around the oldest trees. Your village and mine are at the outskirts, really.”
T’faide had never seen a fey with his own eyes. He’d always heard that they were annoying and selfish creatures. Adl’gar had sometimes cautioned his apprentices to come to him if they ever ran into a fey, or to show them some nature magic if that wasn’t possible. They liked that, apparently; it appeased them.
“Have you ever seen a fey?” the boy asked.
“Yes, I have,” Arwin nodded. “We’re distantly related, and we get along alright.”
“They’re nasty little things,” Niasha muttered, clicking her tongue. “I wish they’d never leave their corner of the forest.”
“You’ve seen a fey before?” T’faide asked his mother, a mildly surprised look on his face.
“Once,” she shrugged. “Hopefully never again.”
Arwin chuckled helplessly at that. His long ears twitched in response to some distant sound, and he shushed the two following behind him. They took a wide detour around some unknown danger. Only after several minutes did their elf pathfinder speak up again.
“There was a sleeping boar,” he declared with an apologetic smile.
They walked on in pleasant quiet until lunch time, and T’faide went to search for firewood. He bent down to pick up a nice dry stick and felt a harsh thrum travel through his bones. The halfelf’s hands went numb, and he dropped the firewood he’d collected so far. As he was swiveling his head, searching for the source of that strange sensation, his short pointed ears picked up a sound above his head, like twigs snapping. He focused his eyes toward the disturbance just in time to witness a small red light fall from the canopy and land in a bush beside him.
T’faide held his staff like a weapon and used its end to push some leaves aside and search for the fallen object. He found a tiny iridescent person, like a little girl with dusty pink skin. Her eyes were large, almond-shaped, and solid blue. She wore a stiff green dress that didn’t cover much of her body, and looked to have been grown rather than sewn. Her hair was the exact same color as her skin and was cut short at an angle that followed her jawline. She was very literally glowing, even now that she was lying dazed in a bush.
This creature looked far too similar to the stories T’faide had heard for him not to guess what she was. She was a faerie: a diminutive kind of fey. They were mischievous, but relatively harmless, and they counted among the more agreeable fey creatures.
“Are you okay?” the boy asked.
The faerie’s face twisted into a pained expression, and she whined in a high-pitched voice. “It hurts… daddy…”
Then she closed her eyes and went limp, and T’faide was left feeling rather conflicted.
Slowly, carefully, he tapped the faerie’s foot with his staff, then he poked her with his finger. When she didn’t wake up, he carefully rolled her onto her side, noting that she was really only a bit bigger than his hand.
Some sticky green liquid was left on the leaves where the faerie had been lying, and it continued slowly seeping from her back where her wings should’ve been.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
T’faide rolled her onto his hand—face down, gathered up what he could still carry from the firewood he’d dropped, and headed back to camp.
***
“Is she going to live?” T’faide asked, peeking curiously as his father held and examined the little fey.
“She’ll live,” he nodded. Some specks of gold light that reminded T’faide of pollen were slowly raining down on the faerie, and he could see the wound on her back gradually closing. “A faerie without wings probably won’t live long, though. They aren’t strong or fast on their feet, and they’re too visible to hide well.”
The thought put a bad taste in the halfelf’s mouth. Arwinthall was a good druid, but not good enough to regrow lost wings. They couldn’t deliver the faerie to a better healer or to her home in the fey wood; it would be much too far out of their way. But if they left her alone, she would die.
“Do you think there might be someone in town who can heal her wings back?” he asked.
“It’s possible,” was all the assurance Arwin gave him.
T’faide looked to his mother, who had made it all too clear she wasn’t keen on the idea of keeping a fey trickster with them. Even so, he made a request of her.
“Mom, if she wants to go with us to town, can we bring her?”
Niasha stood over a pot that had finally begun to boil, dumping in some cubed meat to stew along with some bones.
“If she behaves, fine. But any nonsense and she’s going in this pot.”
“You shouldn’t eat fey, you’ll get a stomach ache,” Arwin chided her.
“Just making a point, dear.”
By the time the stew was cooked and they had eaten half of their meal, the dusty pink creature lying on a blanket started to stir. T’faide set down his bowl and crept closer to watch the faerie’s big blue eyes flutter open.
“Eep!” She sucked in a startled squeak, being greeted with a halfelf’s face about the size of her whole body.
“Does your back still hurt?” he asked.
“My back?” The faerie felt her back with her hands, and her glow turned a sickly blue color. “My… my wings! Oh no, it wasn’t a nightmare: I lost my wings!”
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, and T’faide accepted a small handful of berries that his father handed him, offering them to the faerie.
“We’re having lunch right now,” the boy said. “You should eat something.”
The faerie kept crying. She accepted one of the berries and held it in her lap, but she didn’t eat it. T’faide set the other berries down on the blanket next to her.
The family of three continued eating their meal, allowing their magical guest a chance to cry. Ultimately, the faerie ate a couple of bites as well, and her glow turned a slightly better color than before.
“Do you have a name?” T’faide asked.
“Lulura,” she said.
“I’m T’faide. These are my mom and dad. I saw you fall out of the sky with your wings gone. What happened?”
The little fey heaved a great sigh, “I got caught by a bird. When I tried to fly away, it tore my wings, and my magic went crazy.” Lulura slumped her shoulders.
“Is that what I felt?” the young wizard wondered aloud.
“How should I know?” The faerie pouted.
T’faide shook his head. “Anyway, what do you want to do? We’re going to the nearest town on the plains. You can come with us or you can stay here in the forest.”
Lulura stared at her lap in intense thought. “I… I was leaving the forest anyway. I’ll come with you. Maybe I’ll find a nice bard who’ll fix my wings for me.”
“It’s possible,” Arwen said doubtfully.
Lunch soon ended. Niasha packed up the few things they had taken out of the magic bag, while T’faide and Arwin erased the traces of their little camp. Lulura was too small to help and just watched the other three curiously.
“While we’re traveling, can I ride on your stick?” the faerie asked T’faide.
“It’s not a stick; it’s a magic staff,” the boy frowned. “And I don’t think it would be very comfortable.”
“I think it will be,” Lulura replied. “The magical force coming from it feels nice. Set me on top.”
The halfelf scratched his cheek and finally nodded, letting the little fey walk onto his hand and transporting her to the top of his staff. There, she stepped onto its flat top and used nature magic to make the wood sprout new branches. The branches were thin and short: they twisted into a spiraling orb that caged the faerie safely.
“See?”
T’faide nodded. “That’s fine, then; you’re not heavy. Just don’t mess up any of the runes, alright?”
“I won’t.” Lulura made herself comfortable in her makeshift nest pod. “Say, what kind of magic is this? It feels really clean.”
“You can talk on the way,” Niasha said, giving her son a pat on the shoulder. “We’re going now.”
***
During the next leg of their walk, T’faide told Lulura about arcane magic and answered all of her questions, hoping a fey’s perspective might help him understand something new about it. The conversation naturally turned to what Lulura knew about magic in general.
“We fey have a connection to the natural force, just like druids,” Lulura told him, “but most of us aren’t druids.”
“Why not?” T’faide asked.
“Because we don’t need to be. We’re born able to use the natural force without needing to learn spells,” the faerie answered. “Take my wings, for instance. By channeling natural force through them, I could fly. Now that my wings are gone, I can’t fly anymore. Fey use the natural force to become something beyond the original scope of nature that a Druid deals with.”
“Does that mean you don’t use nature magic, just the force behind it?”
“Mostly, yeah. There are some fey who become druids, but not me.” Lulura leaned forward and pointed at T’faide’s father. “Now take elves, for example. They’re close to fey, and you can just tell there’s something innately magical about them compared to humans, right? They live long and sleep less, and it’s just natural for them, like my wings were for me. That’s the kind of innate connection I’m talking about.”
T’faide considered her words. “But elves aren’t fey even though they’re connected to the natural force. Why not?”
Lulura huffed. “Elves are only close to fey because they can still develop a connection to other kinds of magical force if they want to. A fey can only ever use the natural force. In exchange, it’s as easy as breathing for us.”
“How can you tell if you have a connection to a magical force?” T’faide asked, peering down at his hand.
Lulura waved him down confidently. “You’d definitely know about it by now. You would’ve started channeling that magical force as a baby when you were still figuring out how your body works, and by now you’d have mastered it. There’s no way you’d only notice something like an innate magical connection later in life.”
T’faide nodded. He had expected that he would have to build up a magical connection gradually through practice. Druids had to practice nature magic, and so would a soon-to-be wizard like himself have to practice arcane magic.
It was a little frustrating sometimes. Druids had been around for a long time, and they knew that meditation was one of the fastest ways for them to strengthen their connection to the natural force. T’faide had no idea what was the best way to connect to whatever magical force arcane magic was based on. He didn’t even know enough about that magical force to give it a name yet.