The chronicles of Dusty and Dakota.

°•Chapter Four: Dusty: The Damsel In Distress•°

"How much longer do we have to walk to get to the middle of the woods?" Dusty whined, huffing and puffing as he continued to drag one leg before the other.

"We don't." Was Dakota's baffling reply.

"What?!" Dusty furrowed his sweaty eyebrows at his companion.

"If you ceased your wheezing and whining for a second, you would have noticed that we are already in the heart of the forest." Dakota spoke lowly, but with much scolding in his tone. "And lower your voice! Are you trying to alert them of our presence?!"

"Them?" Dusty repeated, confused. "What do you mean the-"

And that was when he heard it. As Dusty halted his huffing and puffing, he began to hear the song and laughter. And as he squinted his eyes against the darkness of the night, he began to make the lights out. Dozens and dozens of them. His eyes beheld an entire village of houses made from mushrooms, and flying all around and over these homes - dancing, laughing heartily and indulging merrily in song - were...

"Fairies!" Dusty exclaimed in a whisper. "My goodness, Dakota. They are so much more...ugly in real life." His wonderment instantly wore off as he observed them.

Dusty never waited for Dakota's response as he expressed his disappointment. "I mean look at them; their noses and ears are way too big for their ghastly faces. And those fat paunches, stubby legs and and hideous, bat-like wings?" He grimaced.

Dakota thought that Dusty should have been the last person to be criticizing someone's "fat paunch", as he was not exactly a slim and delicate fellow himself, but he kept his mouth shut and allowed Dusty to continue his slandering of the fairies.

"Do you have any idea how cute they make them out to be in the books and movies?!" He cried out in a hushed whisper. "I feel ripped off! Lies, Dakota! My entire childhood was a lie! They're as ugly as scarecrows; uglier than the devil's dam, the whole lot of them!"

"If you are quite finished-" Dakota tried to speak, but was interrupted by Dusty, who felt that he still had a lot to say on the matter.

"You know, Dakota, when you told me that fairies were planning to eat my sister, I couldn't believe you. But looking at them now;" He shook his head as they both eyed a fairy flying across the village, a tad higher than the rest. "I believe you. That thing does look like it could eat a person."

"Dustin!" Dakota admonished him. "The physical appearance of the fairies is not our main concern right now; rescuing your sister from them is."

"Whatever." Dusty grumbled. "Fact remains; they're still as ugly as a bucket of smashed crabs."

Dakota shut his eyes, sighing in sheer exasperation, but a certain sound made him reopen them. That sound was the chiming of laughter he could recognize all too well.

"Scarlett!" Dusty whispered in excitement. The ugly blighters hadn't killed his sister just yet! That was good news; good enough to make him forget, at least momentarily, about his disappointment towards the disfigured and unsightly appearance of the fairies.

She was walking into the fairy village from the opposite direction, laughing and talking with a few of them as they flew around her, jingling like bells while they did. In her arms, she was carrying a burlap sack and from some small holes and rips on it, Dusty's eyes saw the familiar golden dust that seeped.

"That strange, shimmering dust must come from somewhere." Dakota said, having observed the same thing that Dusty had. "I wonder where that is."

"If my sources are correct - and by sources I mean storybooks and movies - the pixie dust comes from a tree." Dusty informed him. "A certain magical tree that exists for the purpose of the creation of the pixie dust alone."