The chronicles of Dusty and Dakota.

°•Chapter Six: The Hunting Party•°

When the flames of the torch were mere centimetres away from the firewood; there came commotion from the edges of the village. Then suddenly, with a strident leap, a bobcat appeared from the trees and ferociously attacked a fluster of fairies. The sound of the animal's teeth ripping into those paunches permeated the shocked and silenced village. And then everything turned to chaos.

More bobcats leapt from the trees, so much more that Dusty couldn't count. The fairy that was about to set them alight suddenly lobbed the torch away and looked to Dusty and Scarlett with frantic, desperate eyes.

"Protect me from them!" He hissed, as his comrades got ripped to shreds in the background.

"Untie us." Dusty calmly stated. "How can we protect you if we're bound?"

The fairy uttered no disagreements before severing the ropes binding the siblings to the wooden beams with the first sharp stick he found.

"There." The fairy frantically hissed as Dusty and Scarlett stretched their sore limbs out. "You're free, now hide me between yourselves and get us out of here!"

Dusty looked at the fairy for a moment, seeming to mull something over, before he moved. He took the fairy into his hands, he held him there tightly, and began to walk away with him. The fairy became relieved, but that lasted only for a second, because it noticed that Dusty was walking right into the gist of the chaos.

"Psst!" Dusty caught the attention of bobcat that was passing them by. "Care for a snack, boy?" The bobcat licked it's lips.

The fairy's pallid face turned even whiter. "No!" He seethed. "What do you think you're doing?"

Dusty looked at the fairy through bleary, tear-filled eyes, and said: "This is for Dakota."

He tossed the fairy into the waiting jaws of the bobcat. Feeling absolutely nothing as the fairy being eaten whole cried out and yelled all throughout his getting crumpled by the cat's teeth, until he finally went silent.

"Wow." Dusty heard Scarlett say behind him. "I...I didn't know you could be so...heartless."

Dusty thought it was rich for Scarlett to be the one talking, but he said nothing; only opting to walk out of the scene as the hue and cry happened about him.

"Dusty!" He felt Scarlett's hand around his arm. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that stuff about you and your friend, and I'm really grateful that you thought to save me." Scarlett said in a breath, her eyes cast downwards in shame.

Dusty took a moment before he spoke, feeling as though a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. "And I'm sorry for being so harsh with you as well." He admitted.

Scarlett nodded and, at first seeming to be hesitant, looked to the end of the village that Dusty and Dakota had seen her come from on the previous night.

"Don't be so quick to leave." She said. "I need your help with something."

"What?" Dusty tentatively asked her; he wanted absolutely nothing more to do with the fairies and their abhorrent village.

"We have to take some of the pixie dust home with us." Scarlett said, and when Dusty widened his horrified eyes at her, explained. "We can't just leave it here, Dusty. You have no idea what it can do."

"Scarlett." Dusty scowled. "Not everyone wants to fly."

She gasped. Once, She thought, you do something once and it sticks with you for the rest of your life. "It does more than that, I promise."

"Why would you want to take something of these murdering monsters home with us?" He asked.

"The fairies are bad, Dusty." Scarlett said, feeling exasperated. "But the fairy dust is not. Please trust me on this; it does have plenty other qualities - qualities that can be used for good."

"Fine." Dusty gave in. "But this is still a horrible idea."

"Thank you!" Scarlett wasted no time in dragging him behind her and picking two burlap sacks up for the both of them. "Now let's go! The pixie dust tree gets grumpy late in the day."

"The what does what?" Dusty frowned."Then how did you get loads of dust from it yesterday?"

"The fairies had to plead with it." She told him. "They bribed it with camellia seeds and a pinch of moon dust."

Dusty scurried on in stunned silence, never daring to question anything more she had said. His new reality was a bizarre one indeed. They took a walk that had Dusty's limbs complaining, twining through more rows of trees than he liked - the deeper they went into the woods; the greater the danger became, was what he had learnt.

Though, in what appeared to be the end of the journey, he and Scarlett stood in a tree that looked quite indistinguishable from all the others; until she uttered the words. "By dint of enchantment, and by ways of acceptance; O' pixie dust tree, make thyself visible to me."

Dusty, still stunned in silence, was about to turn to Scarlett to ask what what all of that hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo had been, until the tree began to change before his very eyes. "Oh my sweet lemony lincoln."

Scarlett chuckled at him, and together they watched the tree's transformation - from the facade it wore to make itself appear identical to each other one around it, to it's own golden, breathtaking form.

"How can something so awesome associate with those monsters?" Dusty asked, in awe of the the tree that hadn't just morphed to be larger in size, but had begun to radiate purely golden ambience from it's every orifice.

From out of the hollow of the tree, the familiar golden dust slowly began to flow. Scarlett stepped out of the way and gestured for Dusty to begin catching the dust in his burlap sack. "Hurry, so that none of it gets wasted."

Dusty did as she asked, amazed and quite afraid - the lifeless trees from the anaconda's trail had given him a lasting bad impression of trees, it seemed. It took a long while for the bag to fill up and when it did, Dusty moved out of the way for Scarlett and waited as hers began to fill up as well.

"You've shown thyself to me, pixie dust tree, and have given me the greatest gift of the fairy, which I will forever be grateful for. Rest amongst thine brothers once more."

Dusty and Scarlett watched as the golden effervescence of the tree faded until it was no more, until the tree was obscured when it looked identical to the others around it.

"When did you become a sorcerer?" Dusty asked, as the made their way back to the village - where the cacophonous screams had finally stopped.

"When you became a horse whisperer." Scarlett joked, but instantly felt regret when she saw the sadness return to Dusty's eyes. Their conversation hushed down and they continued along the trail, passing the village that was in ruins by as they made their way back home.

"Hey Dusty, I was thinking maybe we could fly back home, since walking would take us more than a day. And we really couldn't worry mom and dad more than we already have..." Scarlett suggested, but when she looked at her brother, she noticed he was deep in thought and had barely heard her speak.

The thought of anyone whispering Dakota brought a soft smile to Dusty's face. The stallion was much too headstrong to be whispered by anyone. He sighed as he suddenly remembered the moment when Dakota had shielded him from the cold, and when he saved Dusty from the anaconda, and when he offered to bait himself for Scarlett.

The horse might have been feisty, but he was a hero. He was also the truest friend Dusty had ever had. He sighed once again, a cloud of misery hanging over him, as he went to overstep a large grey Boulder in his path. Dusty, however, was startled backwards by an ear-splitting whinny.

"I say, good sir!" The grey lump, which in fact was a very grumpy horse with a polished accent, bellowed. "I demand you remove your greasy little foot from my back at once...!"

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