Away with the Fairies

*°•○Part Sixteen○•°*

"Cooome, sit here," Berenice hooted deeply, indicating the mirror under her feet. "To rescue your butterfly, to win his heart back, you must know the one who took him from you and her reasons for doing so. Silence Princess, let me tell you a story..." the sorceress said, piercing Rosalind, who shifted uncomfortably at hearing her words, with her unmoving gaze.

Berenice spread and waved her wings, and the mirror glowing softly under and around them suddenly came to life. It seemed to play out the scenes and images the owl was talking about.

"My mother fell into this place through the lake, from your world," the white owl said, looking between Hans and Louise, who watched her words unfold in the mirror. "She, a witch's familiar, had been injured badly by some of your kin, who were scared of her powers. She passed away soon after I came to life." The bird flapped its wings, and the images changed.

"But before she died, she created this place for me. Terra Sonalis, or the Land of Dreams, a world filled with the magic she possessed. When I grew up and discovered that even I owned her magic, I improved it. Or so I believed."

The moving pictures in the mirror changed again, and in the flower-filled meadows and forests populated by all sorts of animals which they had been looking at before, now appeared goblins, elves and fairies.

"Yes, Princess, you are all my creations," the owl said, glancing at Rosalind, whose breath hitched at the realisation. "But I made the Butterfly Fairies the rulers of Terra Sonalis. They were your first kings and queens..."

Berenice waved her wings over the mirror, and this time, they could see two orange and black Monarch Butterfly Fairies, seated on thrones made of crystal, in a spacious, white tent. And there were Yellow and Blue Swallowtails, black moths and white butterflies, and many, many more, all around them.

"It was when they," the owl said, pointing at a couple of Blue Swallowtails in the mirror, "replaced the Monarchs, when it all happened. When the son of their son, one of the ancestors of your Pipevine Swallowtail, was still a young prince..."

The owl shifted, swapping the images again. "There was a girl, a pretty Lily of the Valley Fairy, who fell in love with him. But, the poor thing was so shy and so similar to her many sisters that the Butterfly Prince never noticed her properly. He was only interested in Rose Fairies." Berenice giggled. "Really, Princess, I don't know what it is between you and butterflies! But where was I... oh yes... Somehow, the little, unhappy fairy plucked up her courage and managed to cross the sea to come here, asking me to help her, just like you now..."

Berenice trailed off, looking into the mirror, lost in her thoughts and memories, as they all watched a beautiful blonde Flower Fairy, dressed in a long white dress and coat, her hands and lips blue with cold, stumbling exhaustedly across a snow-covered plain.

"She asked me to give her special powers, the strongest magic, so she could distinguish herself from the thousands of other Lily of the Valley Fairies. She thought that then, her beloved butterfly would fall in love with her. And I did give it to her." Berenice sighed. "The power of frost, ice and snow, the same scary magic the Snow Goblins possessed, the one for which they had been banished from your part of Terra Sonalis a long time ago by its other inhabitants."

The images in the mirror now morphed quickly, showing first the unhappy flight of Snow Goblins across the sea, and then a picture of a breathtakingly beautiful fairy, dressed in white and grey fur-lined gown, standing in front of a magnificent castle made of snow and ice, surrounded by a small army of Snow Goblins. Her translucent wings and the tall crown perched on top of her blonde, high-piled hair glittered like diamonds whenever she moved through the sea of the short, bluish creatures, giving them orders.