Mivera paused in midair as she dodged her way around thin twigs visible only in the pale moonlight. She alit on a branch at long last, clutching a delicate hand against her chest to let her breathing catch up, and allow her papery wings fold gently against her back. She ran miniscule fingers through her short, softly spiked blond hair and sighed. She only hoped she hadn’t been going in circles for the past few hours.
It had been an arduous night. Not long after the sun had gone down, Mivera took flight from the kingdom in the high trees forest. It had taken some delicate and stealthy work. After a bitter disagreement with her father Dirmin, the king of the fairies of that realm, he had posted his most vigilant guards around the tree hovel in which Mivera slept. However, the young fairy was determined and cautious, a combination that allowed her to fly down the hollowed tree and come out at the roots.
This, of course, wasn’t without its harrowing risks. A porcupine had emerged from a nearby pile of leaves, startling Mivera and almost causing her to let loose a cry of surprise that would’ve alerted the guards, but the beast seemed to have no quarrel with her and had only been surprised itself. So, moving among waist-high roots parsed through the crabgrass of the forest, Mivera had finally cleared the cluster of trees that made up the fairy’s dominion and flitted quickly into the night.
Now, having been flying for most of the night without stopping, probably in a variety of directions that included anywhere but straight ahead, Mivera was beginning to question her own motives as she perched on a branch behind the cover of some velvety leaves. Her silken powder blue nightgown snagged for a moment on a thorn, but she managed to tug it loose, though not without creating a tiny tear in the hem of it.
She was almost sorry for having disobeyed her father, as she knew his order to never leave the forest had come from his heart, but the temptation was too great. She couldn’t remain cooped up in the trees any longer. She had to see the outside for herself.
As the thirteen-year-old Mivera understood it from the bedtime stories of her youth, the fairies hadn’t always kept to themselves in this way. It used to be that all could freely pass out of the forest and, albeit in shadow to keep the secret of their race mostly hidden, visit the world outside.
The world of humans.
A concept so wild and tantalizing to Mivera that she had spent many days as a young child drawing on the oaken walls of her bedroom in the tree using a tiny chip of charcoal. In these pictures, she drew smiling humans as closely as she could imagine them, with their bodies stretching up from the floor to the curled wood above that formed a makeshift ceiling, which stretched a foot into the air, and usually perched in the human’s hand was an accompanying image of a smiling fairy. The two were united as best friends.
“You don’t want to meet the humans,” Mivera’s grandmother Sola had told her just five years before. “They’re vile creatures. And ugly. Disgusting.”
“Ugly?” Mivera asked.
“They lack the breeding of we noble fairies,” Sola had explained. “All of us maintain our beauty and youth until the day we pass on to the next world, but not them. You have not seen them, so you cannot know. They dry up and curl into each other like the withering flowers of winter. It is a sight you cannot look upon without fearing your eyes have been tainted forever.”
“I don’t care about that,” Mivera had stated. “I just care to know them on the inside. Surely their kindness must outweigh what their bodies do to them without their control?”
Sola had chuckled. “Oh, Mivera. You’re so young and sweet. It almost makes me sad to have to inform you.”
“Of what, Grandmother?”
“They’re just as disgusting on the inside as they are on the outside,” Sola had spat with a sudden bitterness that made Mivera jump back in surprise. “Scheming, plotting, caring only for themselves and hurting those who get in their way. Unfit to know in any way except that which allows us to put them down.”
At this, the eight-year-old Mivera had burst into tears. The stories her father would read her at night had, for years, led her to believe that the humans were gentle giants that sought to befriend all creatures of the earth, and when the fairies of old had ventured into their midst and discovered the right ones, they would become lifelong friends.
Secretly, Mivera had yearned to befriend a human for as long as she had known about and been fascinated by them, but this was not something she could share with any of her friends or family. Being a princess, there were expectations set out for her of proper conduct to exemplify for the rest of the small kingdom. The mere idea of interacting with humans did not fall within these.
Still, after Mivera’s upsetting conversation with her grandmother, King Dirmin had entrusted his brother Niro, known as the most capable flier in the kingdom, to take the young Mivera on a trip high above to see what it was that she yearned to know. The excited young fairy’s wings hadn’t quite developed yet, and so her uncle strapped her to his back using soft twine treated with substances created by the fairy alchemists to be unbreakable. He flew her into the air so high that the towering trees that formed the fairy palace looked like mere twigs to Mivera.
From there, Mivera had been flown by Niro to the space above an industrial compound with smokestacks that seemed to the startled young fairy to reach even higher than the impossibly tall trees of the forest.
“What are they doing down there?” the fascinated girl had asked.
“Reaping resources from the land for their own benefit,” Niro had said simply, hovering in place, as close as he was willing to go. Dirmin had given his brother express orders to go no lower than they were at that time.
“But… why?”
“Because that’s what they do. They take from the land and use it to build something new for themselves and only themselves, like the parasites to the earth that they are.”
“But surely… not all of them do this? Surely there are those that give back to the earth?”
Just like Sola, Niro had laughed at his niece’s outlandish question, though he had answered it a little more calmly. “No, Mivera. They don’t. All of them do this. See the black smoke rising from the great pillars?”
“Yes.”
“That is from the fires within where they burn the earth and mold it anew as some broken creation.”
“Oh…” Mivera had answered, gape-jawed and terrified at this thought, as she watched the endless ropes of black smoke billow from the towers.
“Now you understand,” Niro had said at last in the silence. The lesson learnt, he had flown her safely back home to the trees, where she had spent the next three days in solitude in her room.
Now, though, the thirteen-year-old princess had had enough of the waiting and lies. The previous evening, Mivera had stumbled upon something in a small memorial to her mother, Zina, which was constructed inside of an oak tree hovel in the center of the realm. The queen had perished ten years before, and Mivera could barely remember what her face looked like. She often visited the memorial made of the deceased queen’s precious belongings and drawings on the wall of her good deeds as co-ruler of the realm of fairies with her husband Dirmin. On this particular visit the day before, though, Mivera had found something new.
It was a tiny silver object that looked to Mivera like a massive pendant, but the hook in the back meant this could not possibly be its purpose. It sparkled in the sunlight and its visage both enraptured and fascinated the young fairy. Speaking to one of the elders about it, Mivera had discovered it was not a pendant at all.
It was a human earring.
The bitter argument that followed with her father had revealed that her mother used to, in secret, engage in the old practice of going out to the world beyond and looking for the right human to befriend. She had apparently discovered a young human female child, troubled and alone, and taken pity on her, visiting her frequently and offering the depressed girl her comfort.
On one of her trips back, though, the queen had come across a hawk on the outskirts of the forest and been snatched up. Dirmin told his daughter he had been witness to it himself but been unable to do anything about it, no matter how long he spent searching.
So it was true. There were good humans out there. Mivera knew that now, and she was determined now more than ever to find and befriend one.
Her strength slowly returning in small quantities, she rose from the branch and took off flying into the night again. Most fairies didn’t have fully developed wings until the age of sixteen. Mivera could still use hers, particularly because of her eagerness to leave the forest and see a human firsthand, but they were not yet strong enough for long distance flight, and she was discovering this the hard way as exhaustion began to set in from her hours of endless flying.
This would’ve been far easier in daylight, with noticeable landmarks in the trees to follow, but it would be too risky to leave in the day, especially after her father’s orders for her to be closely watched by his guards.
Finally, tired beyond belief and not sure of what else to do, Mivera ventured toward the tops of the trees, where the wind was stronger and her wings weren’t quite strong enough to withstand the onslaught yet. However, it was a necessary risk to gain some direction.
Peeking over the edge of the treetops, Mivera felt herself immediately whisked several feet through the air, her legs tossed and turned overhead, but she managed to keep just enough control to see which direction the trees ended in, and what was more, it wasn’t far off. Diving down with all her strength, Mivera escaped the current of the night breeze back into the relative safety of the pine tops and took off through the air, under the cover of branches, with renewed zeal and a compass direction to finally follow.
The sun was just beginning to peak warmly over the horizon when Mivera darted out breathlessly from the last line of trees and found herself facing a massive battered gate of white and black, though as she looked it up and down, she realized it was a fence separating the woods from the area beyond.
Taking a deep breath and quivering with anticipation, Mivera easily passed through the slats of the fence and found herself in what appeared to a field stretching onward almost infinitely until, squinting, she realized there was something far off in the distance. A construct of some kind. Gargantuan, almost too large to comprehend, but knowing what she knew about the size of humans, Mivera knew this must be what the humans lived inside of. Perhaps even a palace.
Panting, her throat parched and her wings so sore Mivera had a feeling she wasn’t going to be doing much flying in the near future, she spread her delicate arms and legs out, letting the sun’s glow warm her body. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make her feel slightly invigorated again, and she took off across the field of grass and the occasional dandelion, running her fingers along the soft green blades as she maintained a distance just above the ground.
As she neared the house, its red-and-brown bricks and odd glass plating forming windows transfixed Mivera. It seemed to grow even as she approached, almost as if rising from the ground by magic. Suddenly, though, something else caught her attention.
A scent. Slight, but unmistakable.
She stopped on the frail twigs of a sapling in the yard momentarily to catch her breath again, sniffing at the dewy morning air. It was somewhere. Close by. Coming from the other side of the house. Mivera was getting weary, and knew she ought to get back to searching for a human if this plan was going to have some kind of reward, but the smell was wafting powerfully to her, and there was no way she could resist, not when she was so tired and thirsty.
In a flash she was flitting back along the grass and around the corner of the house. To Mivera, it was like rounding the corner of a great fortress, like the kind she’d come to know in her stories. It was unnerving, to be sure, but after hearing the story of her mother’s friendship with a young human girl, she was assured more than ever that the imposing nature of the house masked something golden inside. She brushed along a rumbling air conditioner pressed against the far wall of the house and gasped in shock as it groaned to life.
Immediately plopping into the grass, Mivera was back in the air faster than she thought possible, getting as far as possible from the great metal cube beast, before rounding the final corner of the house and finding her target.
It was a stone bird feeder, carved in the side with roses, the deep bowl filled to the top. The rim was fitted tautly with a clear paper that was just barely too thick to see through clearly, but the scent she had been looking for was stronger than ever and Mivera cautiously approached the plastic wrap-encased birdfeeder, spying a small hole about four inches in width along the corner of the feeder, allowing someone her size access inside.
Grasping the edge of the feeder and keeping her wings fluttering just enough to hold herself up, Mivera’s heart sang.
She was right.
There was sacred sweetwater inside from the blessed spring of the forest. The water that, when it passed through the hallowed stone in the center of the forest on its way down the babbling creek, became endowed with renewing quality. When only a little bit was drunk by the fairies, their weariness and thirst was quenched, and with even a little more, ailments could be beaten and sped to recovery in moments.
Mivera even had heard a tale of her great-grandfather outsmarting a fox in battle, and although he had actually been bitten deeply in his torso (a vision Mivera couldn’t even imagine without weeping), he had been doused by the other royals in a bath of sweetwater, and it was said that in almost no time, his body had healed itself strong as ever.
It was just what she needed.
Slinking carefully into the feeder and dipping down into the cool liquid to her knees, Mivera cupped her hands into the water and drew it to her face, taking swallow after swallow and feeling better with each delicious mouthful.
Sighing, she extended her tired wings and stretched them as she felt them heal from weakness, but as she did, she felt the edges of her wings tap against the underside of the plastic wrap, and as she did, she felt them snag fast into it.
She frowned and batted her wings to free them from the sticky surface, but this only caused the paper to snag further down on her wings.
“What is this?” Mivera gasped to herself in shock, flapping her wings now at full strength and only serving to further entrap herself until her wings were tangled into the sticky paper right down to her shoulder blades. There was no way out. The feeder had obviously been filled with the renewing sweetwater in order for birds to drink from it; why would it be covered with this absurd substance that trapped her inside the upside down dome of the stone bowl? It made no sense.
Crinkling set in all around Mivera without warning as the paper was peeled back from the edges of the bird feeder, a massive figure blotting out the light through the opaque surface. The tiny fairy shivered, giving one last tug at her wings to no avail. She felt herself roll over onto to the top of the plastic wrap as it was removed and found herself staring up into the face of a human girl.