Wish

Seeds

"I'm going out!" you announce to the general household, already halfway out the door. Sunday morning is your personal time, and this morning is a beautiful one. You fly down the road towards the fields, skipping and twirling occasionally, sleeves and skirts whipping around in a playful dance with the breeze.

It's been a few days since the thought of finding Nana's old story book had crossed your mind. You'd started making a point of targeting the more neglected areas of your home for cleaning and were eventually rewarded for your efforts when you uncovered a small trunk from a jumbled pile of frost blankets in the storage shed. What a shock it had been, as you folded and stacked the plain wool blankets, to see the familiar edges of that colorful old quilt peeking over the lip of the trunk. Even more shocking had been the thud of the tattered book hitting the floor when you yanked the quit out in excitement.

Swinging your basket of treasures, you race through the grass until you are nearly at the border of the woods beyond. The old quilt sounds a satisfying "fwoomp" as you unfurl it and let it fall to the ground. You unpack the rest of your basket - a folded cloth parcel of berries, cheese, and a chunk of brown bread, a blank notebook for pressing flowers and sketching, and Nana's old blue book. A nostalgic smile spreads across your face as you sit down, fingers tracing the flaking gold scrollwork that adorns the book's cover. Whatever title it may have once had has long been worn off leaving only traces of letters that hint at a single word.

"Faerie"

Surprisingly, when you open the book, it is not as you remember it. Instead of a collection of stories, it reads like some kind of manual. There are chapters on rules of decorum in the faerie court, recipes for teas and tinctures, and diagrams of dances that appear to include odd aerial steps. The pages look handwritten by multiple authors, and some are loosely tucked in rather than actually bound.

"Nana, what in the world is this... where are your stories?" you wonder aloud.

You nibble on the corner of your bread as you flip pages until you see a header in Nana's recognizable script.

"Granting Wishes," you begin at the top of the page, "Members of the Faerie Court possess the power to grant wishes great and small but have no great predisposition to do so. There is one certain method to compel a faerie to grant your wish, and that is by catching one in a Wish Contract...."

As you read about this Wish Contract, you're reminded of one of Nana's favorite stories. In it, the hero had saved her home from a terrible storm by convincing a faerie to grant her wish. It's all very strange. If Nana wrote her own stories she had an unusual way of doing it. Or maybe this is a gift she left for you to find - instructions to act out a part of the tale like you did when you were small. It's the type of thing she might do. Giggling at the thought, you decide to play along.

"A bite of a faerie's favorite fruit, the thing to form the Contract's root..." you read the rhyming lines in a mysterious tone as Nana would have, reaching for a strawberry with wiggling fingers. You pluck it up, giving it a thorough inspection.
"Are you a faerie's favorite fruit? I suppose you'll have to be won't you."
Returning to the book you begin again.

"A bite of a faerie's favorite fruit,
the thing to form the Contract's root,
should pass between the mortal's lips
to see the faerie can't resist."

"Well I won't argue with that," you place the sweet berry in your mouth with a smile. Nothing beats your homegrown berries, whether or not some faerie agrees.

"To sprout the stem, a flower passed's
seed to the wind must next be cast."

"What in the world..." you reread the strange words to yourself a few times before staring blankly at the page while trying to make sense of it.

A butterfly with large orange wings snaps you out of your daze as it flits across your vision and lands in a patch of small yellow flowers along the edge of the quilt.

"Ah! Thank you Ms. Butterfly," you exclaim with realization. You reach into the grass and pluck a withered dandelion from among the bunch. The top is fat with fluffy white seeds aching to fly, so you free them with a single sharp breath. The air seems to almost shimmer around the cloud of delicate puffs as they disperse and swirl away, Ms. Butterfly bobbing among them. Feeling slightly entranced by the sight, you blink away a sudden wave of drowsiness as you look back down at the page.

"The scented seed reveals the veil.
The strong of will may now prevail.
Soon they who seek the bloom will find
each other and the Contract bind."

The cryptic prose does not help with the unnatural urge to lay down and sleep threatening to overcome you, so you stumble to your feet. You think you'd better head home and go back to bed. But which way is home again? Struggling to keep your eyes open, you turn in a slow circle. You stop at the sight of something glinting in the distance. It must be a wagon or some other reflective object on the road since there's nothing to sparkle like that in the woods. Forcing one foot in front of the other you plod forward, focused on your shining beacon as the world around you fades into a blur.

This doesn't feel right. Panic begins to set in as the distance between you and the mysterious light shortens much more rapidly than it ought to for your pace. Whatever it is must be moving towards you as well, and in your current state you can't even think about trying to run. You throw your hands up to shield your eyes as the light becomes too much to bear in its approach.

"Who's there?!" you cry, "Help! Someone, please help!"

"How," a soft voice answers. Though not unkind, somehow it sounds more command than question.

As suddenly as it flared, the light dims to a soft glow peppered with sparkling motes. The usual buzz of insects from the field has ceased, replaced by barely perceptible bell-like tones. Your hands tremble as you lower them, unsure of what you'll see.

The outline of a tiny figure enveloped in light hovers a few feet from your face.

"Who... what are you?" you ask in disbelief.

"What is your wish," the small being presses you.

"My wish? You mean because of the book? I can't believe this is happening. This can't be real, Nana said it isn't real, what am I even doing, I'm dreaming right?" You ramble, squinting at the ball of light as you try to get a clear view of who you're speaking with, "I can't see you. Can I see you?"

There's a pause, then the light slowly drifts to the ground and disappears into the grass. Your heart sinks. You think you must have offended it and missed whatever chance you had to experience something incredible. Surrounded by nothing but trees and mist you become keenly aware of how alone you are and wonder how you'll even find your way home.

Suddenly, blinding light and explosive air erupt from the ground where your new aquaintance had vanished, knocking you back a step.

When your eyes readjust and your vision clears, you find yourself face to face with the most beautiful man you've ever seen. His pale yellow hair falls in soft waves across sharp blue eyes. A small nose and large rounded lips are framed by an elegantly angled jaw. He wears a draping, dusty-pink shirt over fitted white pants, his neck adorned with intertwined strings of beads and dainty flowers. His lean frame is accentuated by his posture which is graceful and weightless. He approaches you slowly, bare feet moving silently through the grass. Well within your personal space, he fixes you with a placid stare and speaks softly again.

"What is your wish?"

*******

A/N: I'm very bored and this isn't terribly original but thanks for reading. It might end up cute. Let's hope. What would you wish for if you had the chance?