Misery County

Chapter 10 - Part 2

Eric and Cassie both jumped before turning around to look at where the voice had come from.

"Don't be afraid. We're not here to hurt you," the voice said again. It was coming from a... from a... what the hell was Cassie looking at?

"What are you?" Eric whispered with the subtlety of an insult comic.

"We have many names amongst your kind."

"We? Who's w-" Eric began to say, but his question was soon answered.

About a dozen more tiny, glowing winged humanoids, no bigger than the palm of a hand, appeared before them. They were all dressed in what looked like ball gowns and robes, but made out of leaves and grass and decorated with berries and twigs.

Cassie couldn't contain her excitement. "You're fairies!" she gushed.

Eric looked at Cassie, then at the creatures, then at Cassie again. "It can't be."

"But it is," another fairy called out from behind them before fluttering past to join the others, a pearlescent dust coming off her pastel-colored wings as she gently flapped them.

"I used to see you when I was little. Or I think I used to," Cassie sputtered. "My mom always told me that fairies are real, but I stopped believing as I got older. And then I –"

"Stopped seeing us," the first fairy finished her thought. "We appear to little children to give them hope. It's their belief in us and in the wonders of the natural world that draws us to them and them to us. We don't appear to people that don't believe."

"But you're appearing to us," Eric chimed in.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," a third fairy from the back of the crowd said, the singsongy nature of her voice standing in stark contrast to the gravity of her message.

"I'm sorry, we haven't been properly introduced. I'm Eric, and this is –"

"Cassie," the first fairy said. "We remember you from many, many years ago. That is why we're here. I am Alwyn."

"I am Cerys," the fairy that came from behind them said.

"And I am Fflur," said the third fairy to speak.

"You – you remember me?" Cassie stuttered.

"We remember everything, my girl," Alwyn answered. "I have been in this form for over a millennium, and there's not a single child that I interacted with that I don't remember."

"We interacted?" Cassie asked.

"When you got lost in the woods in Oregon," Fflur answered.

"I can barely remember that. I must have been about three or four years old," Cassie laughed with tears in her eyes as the weathered memories all came flooding back.

"We led you back to your parents' camp site," Cerys recounted.

"Why couldn't I remember this until now?" Cassie asked.

"Because our presence fades as your belief does, even in memories," Alwyn answered as he stroked the head of a ladybug that had crawled up beside him.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Eric came in, "but you said you've been 'in this form' for over a thousand years. If this isn't too personal, I have to ask; what were you before you became a fairy?"

"I was a man just like you."