The Nutcracker

Chapter 8

Yayyyy so here is chapter 8 :D hope you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it! :D

The Nutcracker stared at the pure white snow beneath him, hesitating for a moment, before he bent down and digged up a handfull of snow with his wooden palm.

He walked over to Clarie, kneeling down beside her.

He propped her foot up onto his wooden thigh gently, and placed the cold snow carefully onto her injured foot.

Clarie felt the cold snow against her skin, it was numbing and soothing, allowing her to relax.

The Nutcracker stared longingly at her snow covered foot, as if he was wishing and praying for something to happen. But Clarie couldn't figure out what the look in his eyes were supposed to mean.

As the snow melted slowly due to the body heat from Clarie's skin, the Nutcracker stared more and more intensely at the wound, hoping what he had seen once, could be seen once more.

At last, when the last bit of snow melted into droplets of water, the Nutcracker heaved a sigh of relief.

His stare broke into a contented smile which made Clarie even more puzzled than she was before, she hadn't realized that the pain in her foot was completely gone.

The Nutcracker felt the life come back into him as he looked at her fully recovered foot. Her skin was as smooth as a porcelain, there was not a single scarr in sight! The wound was completely gone, Clarie looked as if she had never injured her foot in the first place, as good as new.

"Clarie, wriggle your toes a bit" the Nutcracker said, still smiling gratefully.

"Erm okay....."

Clarie raised an eyebrow at his question, and then proceeded to doing what he told her to do.

At first, she was slightly afraid to move her toes as she feared it might trigger the pain in her foot. However, as she moved it slowly, she realized that there was no pain at all!

She crossed her legs to take a look at her foot with the thought that it must have been the snow that numbed it.

A shocking sight greeted her; her foot looking as if it had never been injured!

Clarie rubbed her eyes, wondering if it was just an illusion.

" Its the snow."

"In Gardenia, the snow has ways of healing due to the power of the snow fairies. But ever since the mouse king took over, he banished all the snow fairies, and till now they are no where to be found."  The Nutcracker explained, feeling the fine snow with his wooden fingers.

"The snow lost its power without the snow fairies. But the snow here worked! I have a feeling that they might be around here somewhere!"

"Hmm.....Shall we have a look around?" Clarie suggested. Though all the magic healing power was a bit too much to digest, Clarie decided to believe in what she saw instead of thinking critically.

They walked around the area with their eyes wide open, trying to find something, something that both were clueless about.

As Clarie walked along the snow covered path, she realized that a part of her walk felt different from the rest of the snow. It made a hollow metallic  sound as she walked across, which was strange since most pavements were sand or soil. She walked back and forth, along the spot where she thought she heard the soft chimes of her foot against something metallic.

Everytime her foot struck the thin layer of snow around the area, those sounds could be heard, and this made her confident of the unusual sights beneath her.

She crouched down with her thighs against her stomach, and began to sweep the soft snow to one side with her bare hands.

The snow was cool to the touch, however it wasn't as stingingly cold as she had expected it to be.

Her short time of sweeping eventually unfolded a steel flooring, which looked like a cover. Round, dirty and rusty, it seemed like it hadn't been touched for ages.

The Nutcracker saw what Clarie had found, and ran over to her side.

As Clarie was trying to figure out what the grey cover was meant for, the Nutcracker pivoted the sharp end of his silver sword into the side of the cover.

Then, with a huge force, he plied the cover open, pressing the sword handle downwards.

The 'clink' sound of metal to metal touch could be heard as the cover flew open.

At that very moment, millions of sparkling little creatures flew gracefully out of the giant hole in the ground. There were so many of them to the point where it looked like a fountain of sparkling water spurted neatly out of the ground in one direction.

Clarie put her hand up to cover the glare of light right in front of her. Though the glare was uncomfortable for the eyes, Clarie couldn't contain her curiosity about the river of sparkles, it seemed so harmless.

As the river of light slowly dispersed, the two took a closer look at the tiny creatures with immense curiosity.

Taking a closer look, they finally realized what those creatures were.

Fairies.