Adventurer Series 1: The Fairy

Chapter 4: The Impatience of Kurtis

Waking up in the morning is always tiresome. The feeling of warmth from lying in a bed and covering yourself with a sheet is addicting. I obviously have this addiction; Kurtis apparently has it as well. He sluggishly pulled himself out of his bed and started taking down the camp. He was so tired, that he apparently forgot that I was there, because he nearly crushed me when he was folding the tent, which is what woke me up.

While Kurtis carried the supplies, I decided to get some extra sleep by lying on top of them. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that that wasn't very comfortable. Every time Kurtis stepped down, the entire pack rocked heavily, and every once in a while, Kurtis would readjust the pack, resulting in me nearly falling off. I ended up having to fly half-asleep next to him; it was already tiring trying to fly in the first place.

"Did you have to wake up so early?" I asked Kurtis.

"I couldn't go back to sleep." Kurtis replied with equal tiredness, "Besides, it was about the right time for me to wake up. I can't stay in one place for too long. We have places to be."

"Could you have at least walked a little smoother? Every step you took made me hit my head on your bag; and every time you had to readjust it, I fell off.

"You want me to make you a tiny bed or something?!" Kurtis replied with irritation. He was so kind yesterday, but now he's pretty sour. I can't really blame him though, sleep addiction is hard to get rid of, and we both just woke up.

"A tiny bed would be nice; make the mattress from soft straw and the pillow from some tiny bird's feathers and the blanket from finely woven wool."

"I'm not making you a bed."

The mood was generally the same, until...

"Hey, Pixie. Look inside the pack; there should be a bag of bread in there."

Doing what I could, I opened his pack with some effort. Inside, I saw a blanket, the tent, some bandages, and a large sack.

"Is the large sack the one you're asking about?"

"The bag is in the sack."

I force open the sack and look for the bread, which was conveniently lying on top of everything else. There were also bags of meat and jam and fruit.

Here's a little trivia about fairies: we're only about fifteen centimeters tall normally. Some larger fairies can grow up to sixty centimeters. I am not a large fairy. I struggled greatly to lift the bread out of the sack, I thought my arms would've fallen off if Kurtis hadn't taken the bag from my hands. He opened it up and started eating from it, offering me a piece – a relatively large piece – every once in a while. From there, his mood seemed to have improved.

"Pixie, why did you want to be a companion?" Kurtis asks me.

"Well..." I continued speaking after I swallow some bread in my mouth, "I wanted some excitement in my life. There wasn't a shortage of fun things to do back where I came from, but I wanted more; so I thought, 'what could be more exciting than being an adventurer's companion? To go on great quests, fight great monsters, and earn great riches.' What about you? Why'd you want to be a blademaster?"

"Eh...circumstances...My brother and I were magically adept in our respective fields. I had the gift of levitation, but he had...something else. I initially used my powers for helping my father in his workshop; he was a blacksmith, and my ability to levitate objects allowed for easy forging and production of armor and weapons. In fact, I made each and every one these blades myself." Kurtis shows off the daggers sheathed around his body, "I made these all over the course of two days. They're tough and deadly."