Fairy Dust

Despair and hope can feel the same sometimes

Sparkletouch stood in front of the underground with her hands on her hips, her heart secretly beating wildly, that feeling of joy from before hiding within her. She looked down at the bottle by Zennick's side and sucked in her breath, not sure if she could go on.

'I'm glad you're finally on our side, Sparkletouch,' Mirth said with wiry humour, not quiet believing their ears. 'Evil you say? Care to elaborate?'

Sparkletouch looked the gathered group, even a few unknown fairies with gently gleaming wings moving closer the the commotion, quixiup among them. Suddenly she had an audience to her story. The truth needed to be heard, she thought bravely to herself.

Still standing, she told her story, everything; who makes grit and all the drugs, even the pixie body, invading another tree because they knew the tree was dying, giants being real and Giants tears coming from them, that Cloverkiss didn't care about anyone but her elite few, and encouraged them to hide their glowing wings.

Looking around at the underground, she noticed something she'd missed before because it was entirely normal for her.

All the fairies, even Zennick's now, had wings that stood perfectly upright, the tips just above their head tops like perfect crowns.

When she'd finished there was dead silence and then Doxod and Quixiup and a few of the other Shroomer fairies started laughing heartily.

'This isn't exactly a laughing matter!' Mirth and Sparkletouch yelled at them laughing fairies at the same time. They looked at each other, seeing the anger in each other's faces and recognised something they hadn't acknowledged before.

Quixiup wiped a fake tear from fae eyes. 'I mean, most of that we'd already guessed at. I'm mostly laughing out of shock. It's like finding the Pixie under your bed is really part of a massive conspiracy to make children piss themselves for corporate greed. Like, it's a bit too big'

'But Pixies aren't even under the bed? It's fake pixies because the real pixies are fighting a war against the same corporation, who is using their blood for drugs. Like, I can't even,' another fairy called out, laughing heartily.

'And then letting their children to direct the fake pixies to protect their own and make them look more like fairies,' Zennick added, having sat down during Sparkletouch's chat. He looked up at her, face full of sadness. She knew it was for her, her comfortable life that now felt like a cage of corpses.

She shivered at the image.

'What makes me laugh most,' Doxod said with an entirely straight face looking at the group, 'is that Ms. Pinnacle Cloverkiss thinks we fairies can lie with Ysgawen dead.'

Mirth looked at him with scepticism. 'Why wouldn't we? Yeah, the tree is our home, but we can always move.'

Doxod shook his head. 'We all get different information when we take the special tea. I was told one thing. I didn't need to be shown. I knew it was true to my core. I woke up after 2 minutes.'

'That's why he's boss,' Quixiup quipped in, looking proud lounging on the carpet, oil covering faer clothes. Fae licked the oil off their hand and shrugged.

Mirth pulled back in distrust but Zennick smiled.

Doxod waved off quixiup. 'I'm boss because I actually direct stuff, and was the person who decided to turn this random group of people into a movement. It took a while to find the amanita mushrooms and turn it into tea. But after that first terrible experiment, we knew we were on the right track.'

Mirth scrambled closed to Doxod, laying a hand on his knee, wide green eyes trying to look into his stoic exterior. 'What did Ysgawen tell you?'

Doxod looked down at them. 'Same thing she told you three. I just listened a lot harder. The energy of Ysgawen is in all of us, that's where the power of our wings comes from, what the glow is. If that dies, we're dead. We all become Hollow. That's what being Hollow is. It's Ysgawen taken from us. We'd be empty, useless. Hollows can't reproduce either. We will be the last fairies ever. Cloverkiss can run all she wants. But as soon as Ysgawen loses her life, we lose ours. It doesn't matter where we are. It'll all be gone. All the dreams of flying are dead with Ysgawen.'