Tag: Fairy

Frost

https://pixabay.com/photos/bridge-snow-river-railings-1458513/

There were lights in the mist. I glanced at the sun overhead as if to reassure myself that it was in fact daylight, that the glare that squinted my eyelids reflected from the snow. Surely that’s all it was, my eyes playing tricks. It was just bright spots under the trees where the light made it through the canopy.

There was no canopy. The branches were bare except for the straight evergreens, but they stretched over summer shadows. And there were lights, dancing now in a fog that drifted like smoke. I shivered, shuddered really, but my feet wouldn’t obey my will to run. Run as fast as you can. Run away!

There were footprints on the bridge. Someone had scraped the path, and the handrails might have never seen snow, but the boards underfoot were invisible through a layer of scuffled snow and ice. Flakes puffed up and fell again as I watched, leaving new marks. My teeth chattered, and I shook my head frantically.

Gran had told me of the frost brownies. Tales for children. No serious adult would believe such fairy stories, but then again Gran had always been a bit strange. A puff of snow fell across my shoe and I stared at it without comprehension. Ice crawled up my leg, tickled my spine like sweat in the summer except in reverse. My hair crackled slightly and a loose lock fell into my face, swinging oddly. Then it giggled.

The Town

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The hot glue gun sat cooling beside his hand. A quick inspection of the board, a wiggle here or tap there, showed nothing loose or out of place. It was finally finished. How long had it taken him to figure out the right materials for those mossy roofs? He couldn’t even remember. It hadn’t mattered, really; the model had to be perfect.

He wasn’t sure why, exactly. He had woken one morning with an overwhelming need to build it. A town he had never seen, but he knew every detail. He’d looked it up one day, trying to convince himself it was just imagination and didn’t have to be so precise. There it was, a tiny town somewhere in the mountains clear across the world. How it could even be recorded on the internet he didn’t understand. After that he gave up fighting the urge; he never repeated his search or dug any deeper either. He had been too afraid of the reasons to want to know them.

Now, as he stood over his work, tiny lights flickered in the windows. He blinked, but they didn’t vanish. Music drifted faintly from the treeline on the far side of the model, and the tops of brightly-colored trees around the houses quivered as if a gentle breeze tickled them. The laughter of children rose from the house nearest him. He didn’t wait for more but stumbled to the door on legs that felt like jello. In his terrified hurry he forgot to shut the door.

Kizi

https://www.goodfreephotos.com/albums/vector-images/child-fairy-vector-clipart.png

A ray of sunshine peeked into her nest, softened into a pink glow by the delicate petals beginning to unfurl over her head. She blinked in wonder, and yellow dust clung to the green tufts of her hair as she raised her head from her flowery pillow. Gossamer wings fluttered from her back, unexpectedly bouncing her into a curving petal.

The flower wobbled on its stem, and lavender eyes blocked the light. A giggle followed, then the bud was pulled open by two pairs of hands and a gentle breeze from a dozen sets of wings blew the pollen away. She reached up to touch them in delight, but her own wings waggled, lifting her unsteadily from her soft bed. She spun in jerky circles trying to see them move until, dizzy, she clung to the tip of the bud and panted.

One of the watching sprites flipped headlong through the air and blew a raspberry in her direction. Another zipped after him, yanking a lock of hair and folding its own arms with a frown. Kizi giggled and covered her mouth in glee at the mocker’s predicament. She narrowed her own eyes and focused on making her wings do her will. With a wobble, she rose into the ranks of the sprites, who welcomed their tiny new sister with dizzying acrobatics and a chorus of chuckles that set every bird in the grove singing.

Visit https://books2read.com/u/baDgr6 or https://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Heather-N-Russell/dp/B09BF7W792/ to see more of Kizi in _Chosen_, the first installment in the Magicborn series.

Fallen Faerie

The wooden towers of Crann still soared above the forest floor as Sean passed the mighty gate posts. The gates themselves were long gone, eaten away by time and exposure. Loam crunched beneath his feet and he winced at the now familiar twinge between his shoulder blades.

How long had it been? He couldn’t remember now. How beautiful Crann had once been, full of color and graced by its delicate queen. Even after all this time the gossamer of her wings filled his memory, and his throat closed in anguish.

The castle loomed over him as he stood in the center of the great courtyard. Once brilliant in the sunlight, now it cast deep shadows that threatened to engulf him. The spectre of death hovered between the once fine towers, death that he had brought.

Well, he had paid dearly for his crime. The queen, whose life fueled the city, had died, poisoned by the creature he had innocently tried to save. The council had cursed him, cut his own wings from his body as the price of treason. His loss could not save them, however, and without the queen they one by one faded into mist. Crann stood empty and silent, its spires growing green and soft as its floor decayed.

He gazed up at the remnants for a moment, hunching his aching shoulders. He didn’t know why he had come back; nothing but pain remained for him here. He turned slowly back to the shadow of the gate and froze. Barely visible under the drifting leaves, something gleamed, something so small he might have stepped on it. He bent and retrieved it, cupping it reverently in his palms where it glowed ever brighter until it took gauzy shape. His back itched, and she smiled up at him as tiny green points broke the earth around him.