Black wings, Snow, and Sand

Chapter 9: Bringing hope to the world

Victoria, Tooth, North, and I sit in a table that was made for a king's feast. The room smells of cinnamon, and pine, and the milk, North gave us is cold, and soothing. He converses with one of the yetis, while Victoria talks with Tooth about their feathers.
" I hate that feeling when some of them fall off." Tooth says.
" Exactly, it's like your limbs are falling of."
Victoria responds while petting baby Tooth's head with her finger, the little fairy rubs her cheek against her's, then sits down on her shoulder. Their conversation is happy, but there's still a grim feeling in the air. She smiles at baby Tooth, then looks up in my direction across the chestnut wood table. She smiles, and I grin back.
We haven't really talked since we were in the hall, but we tend to smile to each other. She turns, continuing her conversation.
I can't shake the image nor feeling of when her eyes turned purple, nor our almost kiss. I relive the scene step by step, but image what it would be like to kiss her.
Suddenly, Bunny bursts through the doors, and hops/runs to North. He whispers something in his ear. North nods, then turns to us.
" Everyone to the launching room!"
We don't even hesitate to follow. We all move quickly through the factory, and reach the room with ease, even though it still buzzes with excitment. Only then Victoria asks,
" Whats wrong?"
" Easter is tomorrow, and we're going to make sure nothing bad happens." North says without skipping a beat. Then turns to two yetis, and one elf that followed us out," Get the sleigh ready to-"
" Oh hold up there mate, I think we should take my way." He smirks as he pats the wood floor of the sleigh room with his right foot. The ground under us gives, and we fall through a giant rabbit hole.
Everything is dark. At first we fall, then we start slide. All I can hear are shrieks of laughter, and whoops as we coast through the darkness. Soon, I can see a circle of faint light ahead. I lost my staff on the way down, but I'm sure it will turn up, it has it's way of coming back.
North, Bunny, Tooth, the elf, and the yetis land first. My bare feet hit the ground, I stumble forward, turn, and land on my back. I close my eyes, laughing. So that's how he gets around. I hear a grunt, and feel something land right on top of me. I let groan as I open my eyes. Victoria stares right at me in a mixture of shock and embarrassment. A snow storm flies inside me.
"Oh bloody-I beg your pardon."
She flaps her wings once, to stand up. Once shes up, she offers me a hand. I stand up, rubbing the back my neck. She looks down, then picks my staff off of the floor. Told you.
"Oh, uh... I believe this belongs to you."
" Oh, haha thanks."
We stare at each other in silence for only a few seconds before she pauses, and turns to Bunny. I almost forgot they were there.
" Do you hear that?" She asks.
" Yea." We look down a long tunnel, though I hear nothing,"someone's here, and they weren't invited."
At that, we draw our weapons, running, and chanting down the stone tunnel, ready for anything. We enter his world, expecting to see Pitch or a Nightmare, but no. We stop, right in front of a little blonde girl, that I recognize from Burgess, as Jamie's younger sister, no more than 5 or 6. She stares up at us with shock stretched across her face.
" Sophie??"
How? We quickly straighten up, and put our weapons away. She carries little unpainted easter eggs.
Whats weird about these eggs, is that they have little legs sprouting out from under them. Probably why she finds them so fascinating.
She spots something, and releases the little eggs, running toward the elf with glee. She starts to drag him by his pointed hat, laughing.
" Elf!Elf!" She giggles, then lets go of him, and starts chasing the eggs around. Bunny turns to all of us.
" What is SHE doing HERE?!" He asks as if we'd know. North feels around his long red fur coat.
" oops, snow globe..." He looks up with wide eyes.
" For the love of God mate! What am supposed to do?" He looks over in Me and Victoria's direction, an expecting look stamped across his face.
" hey, don't look at us, we're invisible remember?" I sneer. Beside me, Victoria shrugs sarcastically. He mutters something, as he turns back to the others.
" Don't worry guys, by the look of those wings, I'd say she's a fairy fan!" Tooth says with joy, and floats to Sophie.
" wow! Pretty!" She says in awe.
" Its ok little one! Hey, look I have something for you!" Tooth reaches behind her ear to reveal tiny little baby teeth in her hands.
" Oh! Look at the pretty little teeth with little blood and gum on them!" She says still cheerful. Sophie, how ever, screams and runs the opposite way. Well, no offense to Tooth, but who could blame her?
" Blood and gum on them? When was the last time any of you spent time with children?" I ask as I walk over and sit on top of a large egg shaped boulder. Sophie recovers from the scare, and resumes playing with the little easter eggs. They run under an opening under the rock, and hide.
" peek a boo!!" Shrieks with laughter as they run out, and starts chasing them.
" We do our best to protect children of the world, but we don't have time for....children..." North states defeated.
Really? I knew they protected children, but I didn't know that they actually never spent any time with them. Well maybe I'm not so useless.
" Wow, things must be really bad here, if one child can ruin Easter." I cast a small snow flake toward Bunny's nose, to see if he gets the message. He wiggles his nose, then smiles down toward Sophie.
" Hey, you wanna paint some eggs? " he says gently. She shakes her head excitedly," yea? Come on." We all follow him toward a pink, and blue river, surrounded by multi-colored flowers, and pink leafed trees with spiral twigs at the end of each branch.
The eggs begin to carry Sophie through the pathways between the boulders, that oddly enough look like bigger Easter eggs. She looks up, and sees North standing above her, on the rocks. He waves down to her, and she giggles.
I fly around trees and boulders, and watch as the eggs go from plain white to painted in exotic colors of all different kinds. I didn't realize how many eggs there were.
In almost no time at all, they're painted and ready. Bunny hops around giddy like a school boy.
" I'm seeing the world and I'm bringing hope with me!" He exclaims.
Sophie soon catches up to him. I follow behind and stand next them, as she rubs her eyes, yawns, crawls into Bunny's arms, and falls vastly asleep. We watch quietly as the eggs walk toward the tunnels leading to the world's countries.
"Not bad."
I simply say as he cradles the tiny girl in his big fluffy arms. He smiles and lightly nods.
"Not bad yourself." I don't know what would bring him to say that, we always bickered and fought...
We stay silent as Sophie breathes lightly in her sleep.
" I could probably take her home. If that's ok with you." I hear Victoria behind me.
I turn around to be greeted by a gentle smile. I try to return my own smile without looking like a fool. I fail miserably, but she doesn't seem to mind, in fact she smiles even wider.
" I mean I don't think I'll be any help here."
" I don't think that's a great idea lass, Pitch is-" Bunny states
"Trust me, I dare the bloody wanker to mess with me right now."
He looks at her, then at Sophie.
"Fine, but I think at least someone should go with you." He says seriously.
"Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing, the great Easter bunny cares if I get hurt?" She teases. He stutters and tries to act cool.
"No. I just...I don't want him to.... know... what we're doing," he hands the sleeping child to her, "Can you carry her?"
" I think I can manage." She giggles. She takes Sophie from Bunny carefully, holding her tight against her, yet gently. Bunny nudges me toward as she's about to leave. Oh.
" I can show you the way." I say kind of sheepishly. She turns back around to face.
" Oh, Thank you. I honestly couldn't really remember." She smiles then we turn toward a cave leading to America.