Faylinn's Bazaar Tale

Imagine a world where fantastical creatures of myth and legend not only thrive but communicate and cooperate with one other. Where a mermaid bartering a conch shell for 2 coconut waters from a djinn is a common everyday occurrence. In the mountains of this land, where the evergreen and bamboo trees grow as far as the eye can see, was a small log cabin. Chopping up lumber was a short elderly fellow wearing a dark blue men's kimono and covered in brown fur and a big fluffy tail.  A tanuki is what his people are called, and he worked the area to provide for his wife for at least 300 years. However throughout all this time, they weren't able to rear any pups to raise a family.
 
On a typical day, the husband would spend the morning chopping wood then carrying a load of cut timber with him on his back. He would walk down to the valley to a particular place with merchants from all the corners of the world who came together in one great outdoor bazaar to trade their goods. From carts with fruits, shacks with pottery and hanging jewelry, even traveling caravans filled with folk clothing and other knickknacks. For his space however, the tanuki only set up a simple carpet for him and his timber to rest on as he sold it.

Today in the marketplace he was able to acquire fish, silk, clay, and a crate of peaches. Since he had to carry it all by himself, by the time he brought it all back home, he was out of breath and rested on his hammock. His wife took out the peaches to wash them in a nearby stream. On one of the peaches however, she found something that she thought was simply a bug until she had a closer look.
 
It was a creature that was a pale shade of beige, with a small head, an even tinier human like body and four rolled up wings on its back. It was a baby Fairy, a sprite, clinging to the fuzz of the peach with its stubby arms and legs as it rested with its eyes closed. She picked up the tiny thing on her finger and showed the sleeping sprite to her husband. The husband had seen fairies often in the marketplace, but he never knew they could have started out this puny. The adults were people who sported brilliant wings that mirrored butterflies and dragonflies, and though they rarely grew past four feet, it was amazing that one could be smaller than their thumbs. He decided that they should quickly get to the marketplace and find who lost the child. 
 
No matter how many fairies they talked to, none claimed the child as their own. One of the fairies they talked to mentioned that their women, the nymphs, would often birth multiple children and that the poor ones would have to abandon them in crowded places. He also gave them a jar of milk formula so that they could feed the child in the meantime.
 
The couple returned to their woodland cabin with the abandoned fairy in their hands. The elderly tanuki woman fed the child with the milk through a dew leaf while stroking her head of blond curls. She convinced her husband that they should raise the fairy girl as their own, for they had no other children. The elderly husband called her Faylinn, for he heard of the name in the marketplace while being told a tale with legendary warrior nymph who disguised herself as male in combat. As a race of shapeshifters, the tanuki couple changed their appearance from canines into a middle aged human looking couple to look more like their new daughter.
 
A week later, Faylinn was able to open her eyes when she was awake and her new parents saw her blue-green eyes for the first time. She also unfurled her four brilliantly scaled green and orange butterfly-like wings. The one-inch baby enjoyed crawling around their home as she learned how to flutter around with wings larger than she was. Although the tanuki couple were past their prime, they came to care for and love their adopted fairy daughter. The man would sculpt very small toys of timber and bamboo for her to play and chew on. The woman would feed her and make her tunics and dresses out of bamboo fibers and silk when her husband was able to bring some home.
 
By the time she was learning how to talk, her blond curly hair had gained a  reddish tint over time, along with her complexion taking on a more tanned hue. She still had most of her baby fat but she was at least half an inch taller. From then on, her mother taught her how to sow her clothing together and help to cook meals with the family. 

The old tanuki feared for his tiny daughter's safety and thus started her on the physical training he took long ago in his youth. First he taught Faylinn about her chi, the life-force that rests inside her and other living things to survive and the two practiced meditation every night to build and contain it. He then added daily exercises involving miniature tools to teach her the art of wood cutting and carpentry so that she could help him at the market.

Next came using her developing chi to strengthen her body as she copied her adoptive father's forms and stances when performing martial art moves, simple and complex. Before she knew it, her father constructed a full size wooden training dummy that spun to practice her fighting techniques on opponents much larger than herself. A few months after, she was able to carry a long branch with her down to the valley, a few years later she could support an entire log with merely her strength alone.

In the spring and summertime, the strawberry blonde sprite would often help her old father gather millet and bamboo near the valley. Back home she would help him craft the bamboo into furniture and help her mother make dumplings for supper. On one such evening, they heard loud barking from outside. Faylinn went outside to locate the noise and found it coming from a dog nearby. She took a defensive stance until she noticed that the dog was drooling. She gave it one of her dumplings and it thanked her for the food by letting her stroke its head. With a better look, she saw with its white and red fur, along with a curled tail that it was an Akita Inu, similar to the sled dog Huskies of the mountains. From there, Faylinn decided to bring the large, powerful dog home as the family pet and guard dog and named him Shiba.