Crimson Trails

Spider-web

There was an unusual flutter of activity as the sprites started twittering among themselves in high pitched voice.

They were flustered by the mention of Poppy as a Vešterka. I wonder what the witches mean to them in their world?

I saw them looking at me from the corner of their eyes. Suddenly a green blob popped up in my field of vision.

Serefina was standing there, her hands crossed, giving me a frosty nosed look.

Shimmer on the other hand was doing a weird fairy dance with another yellow ball of glitter and they produced tiny little globes of light which began floating up into their world.

"Hey Mister," Serefina snapped her fingers in front of my face."Are you quite sure that your sister is a Vešterka?"

"Yes, Why? What did I say, now?" I looked from one to the other.

Serefina narrowed her eyes and made an exaggerated show of shrugging her shoulders, "Fine... You come with us. We'll show you the gateway to their world."

"Their world? Aren't they a part of your world? Claramay told that..."

"Claramay? Do you mean Sapphire? How do you know her?" Shimmer stopped her dance midway to interrupt my speech.

"She's a childhood friend," I said, to avoid spelling out the complications of the relation between me and her.

"Oh! So did Sapphire bring you to this world?" that was the yellow tiny tot.

"I had always told you can't trust that witch, Belle." Shimmer rolled her eyes.

"You're simply jealous. Come on. Don't be a bitch, Shimmy. You better now start accepting her as a part of our world, cause she's here to stay..."

"Excuse me, girls, can anyone tell me what's going on, and why Claramay is here and Poppy isn't?"

All eyes turned to me.

"You are too naive and too young to know all this," remarked Belle.

"Pray how old are you, ladies?" I retorted.

"I'm almost two years," said Belle. "And Serefina is one and a half! "

She looked quite proud of being the eldest among her lot.

"I'm twenty-one," I argued. "So I need to know."

"Do you wanna meet your sister?" Serefina was avoiding the question now.

"Fine," I gave in.

"Follow us."

The sprites flew ahead of me, forming a colourful entourage of glimmering fairy dust and delicate wings.

My feet found solid ground as I landed on the soil and surprisingly my body felt lighter. Walking there was almost like walking on a trampoline.

As I looked around, the entire world seemed to have been bathed in liquid violet.

As far as my eyes went, there were abundant fields of violets and geraniums and millions of other unknown flowers. The flower bed mixed with the mauve horizon spreading to a lighter blue and white, like a painter's palette with a uniform mixture of colours or like a prism, splitting the light of the spectrum.

The sky seemed to be spilling on to the road as I walked towards the unknown — unarmed, unprotected. The shining purple cobbles crunched under my feet, the sound oddly loud in the serenity of the surroundings.

Soon enough the eerie silence was replaced by excited chatter and I found myself walking through a forest.

The forest had a dense green canopy with little violet fruits hanging from them.

But suddenly one fruit lit up and the peel of the fruit parted itself.

No, wait!

A pair of tiny hands parted the peel, rather the curtains of her home.

I realized that the little sprites stayed in the little hanging homes.

The beautiful things kept hanging there like the tree lanterns they used to put up on the Chinese new year back at home. Just like little dots of star in the vivid dark sky.

A group of tiny people were buzzing around a little fountain that gurgled out from underneath the rocks. The crystal water and it's indistinct murmur made for the serenity.

The moment they saw us, they started flying helter and skelter, bumping into each other in their hurry.

I caught two little glowing blobs before they could plummet to the ground. They sat on my palm, shook the dizziness out of their heads and looked at me, letting out another shriek and going limp on my hand.

"What happened to her?"

"She just passed out," Serefina remarked, utterly disinterested.
"You come fast."

Dejectedly I put down the orange lilliputs on a safe rock and moved ahead.

"What do you eat?" I asked casually to start a conversation.

"We eat decent food, unlike you guys. You haven't spared a single creature from being your food," grumbled Shimmer.

"Shimmy, it's okay," Belle put a hand on her shoulder.

"We survive on honeydew. The honeydew is produced by the violet blossoms. We have collector bees who work for us to collect the nectar," said Serefina, turning towards me. "The nectar then goes to the factories where they process and pack them and send them to the supermarket!"

"You guys have a supermarket?"

"Why? Do you think only humans have technological advancements? We have better gadgets than you and more advanced machinery," bit back Belle.

"Fine, I..."

But before I could complete my sentence, I felt a sharp sting on my neck. It made me dizzy and my legs turned to Jell-O almost instantaneously as my knees buckled under my weight. I dropped to the ground, screaming helplessly.

And before I could fathom anything, an unbreakable, thin thread had wrapped me — hands, feet and all. It was like the web a spider weaves over its prey before sucking it dry.

I realized that the sprites had tricked me and that, I was the prey there.

I just hoped my predator would spare me a painful death.