Post by Dark Beauty on Jun 18, 2007 13:12:10 GMT -8
Smaller than the others, but the funniest one of all. Thistle makes her grand entrance!!!
Dark awoke early the next morning. It was a habit that she had always possessed; waking in the early hours of the morning. Of course, she did not mind. She was never tired after she woke up, and she was always eager to see the sun rising in its radiant grandeur.
She stretched and looked out of the inn window, the drapes of which she forgot to close before she went to bed. Her dazzling blue eyes caught the glow of the autumn sun and sparkled in it.
Suddenly, she was blinded by a silvery light. She looked down and noticed her ornate medallion shimmering happily in the sunbeams. She lifted it easily by the tiny silver chain that held it up and tucked it under the neckline of her white robes again.
The glowing turned almost annoyed.
“I know, you hate me for it,” Dark said in exasperation. “However, it is not my fault that you show your feelings so flamboyantly.”
The glow, muffled by the robes, became dimmer. It reminded Dark of a child grumbling at its parents when he knew he lost an argument.
Dark laughed and the medallion stopped its glowing.
The elven sorceress looked at herself in the looking glass and washed her face. She found a brush that had not been there before on the little table and smiled. Kimmy knew that one of Dark’s favorite pastimes was brushing her hair.
Dark picked up the brush and stroked it through her beautiful black hair lovingly. Her hair shone in the light and became softer with every comb. Its wavy body became evident again, and she loved watching the transition from the ugly bed hair to her stunning usual hair. Once or twice, the brush got caught in one of the large golden earrings that she wore, but she did not really notice the twinges of pain.
When she had finished, she looked at her reflection one last time. Seeing nothing that she would have to fix with her magic, she happily opened the door and walked down the stairs.
Kimmy was up and getting breakfast ready. She turned, saw Dark coming down the stairs, and grinned.
“Once again,” she laughed. “You are the first guest down in the morning. I see you found the brush that I left for you?”
Dark smiled. “Yes, I did. Thank you very much.”
Kimmy bent down and picked a bowl from the shelves built into the bar. “Don’t mention it. I thought you might like it.”
Kimmy came out from behind the counter and walked over to the fire on the other side of the room. She carefully pulled the hanger which suspended a small pot out from the fire and bent over it. The human woman grasped the cap with a cloth and lifted it up, letting the steam erupt from the pot as she took hold of a ladle that was protruding from its mouth. Kimmy scooped out hot porridge into the bowl which she held in her hand then replaced the lid and pushed the hanging pot back into the fire, placing the ladle back into the small cauldron as she did so.
She stepped over to her friend and held out the bowl to her. When Dark took it thankfully, Kimmy reached into one of her many apron pockets and pulled out a spoon. “Here you are. Eat up; I have a feeling you’re leaving and are going to need all the strength you can get.” She said it cheerfully, but Dark was aware of a pain in her eyes as the innkeeper turned back to her work.
Dark had managed to leave the town before anybody was up and walking. It had been a sad good-bye with Kimmy, but she had been able to leave before any tears were shed, and she promised to be back soon. How many people had she promised that to lately anyway?
The beautiful elf walked in the light of the early sun with not much interest of the scenery around her. She had been moving through tall-bladed prairie for about an hour now, and she was getting bored of all the green waves in the sea of grass.
Dark was not tired at all. However, she found it hard to walk. Her heart felt a bit heavier than usual. Many emotional things had happened to her lately, and she had been out of practice if bearing them. Why had everything suddenly gone so wrong? Was there anything that could aid her in bearing the burdens of sadness and work?
Dark looked up with a start as her hair was yanked backward and a tinkle of a laugh rang out. A small humanlike figure flew in front of her, giggling madly. Dark rubbed her head and grimaced at the tiny flying thing. She had reached the Land of the Pixies, alright.
The pixie laughed at the face that Dark gave it, and flew off toward a place full of little floating lights about a quarter of a mile away. Dark shook her head. The floating lights were the pixies.
Unlike their cousins the fairies, pixies were trouble makers and actually rather odd looking. Most of them had wild, tangled, frizzy hair and very long pointed ears which had ends that were very thin and almost stringy. They had feet, but no toes. Their feet came together with tips like their ears, except it curled at the end. A choice few of them had different colored skin, such as blue or pink. They wore hardly any clothing, just a piece of raggedy cloth which hardly covered them. But that did not really matter, since they usually glowed with their dim light, and the light made it hard to see their bodies. Sometimes, if the pixies wanted to show off, they would add little sparkles to their glow and make it brighter.
To tell the truth, nobody liked pixies very much. Dark didn’t really like them either, but they were a bit of a comical relief, as long as they were not pulling pranks on her.
She reached the swirling lights which she, as she got closer, was finally able to make out as the odd little figures they were. They swarmed around her, giggling, pointing and flying about with their pointed little wings. A blue one came up behind her and pulled her hair, as the first one had. Another pixie wedged itself into one of her pouches and tried to make the contents fall out. Dark thrust her hand down and caught the pixie before it could do anything. It looked up at her in a pout, as if to tell her that she was no fun.
Dark tossed it into the air in front of her, and it flipped once in anger, and then flew into the crowd of its kin.
They got the message, and no others came up to her. They just flew around her head yelling out in their tiny voices vicious little catcalls. Dark paid no attention and continued to walk. Pixies were so annoying sometimes… most times, actually. It was a pity that they spoke common tongue and nothing else, because everyone was obligated to listen to their offensive annotations.
All of a sudden, Dark felt something hit her in the stomach. There was a small “oof,” and laughter from the pixies.
The elf looked down. Lying on the ground, rubbing her head, was a tiny pixie. Well, no, it was not a pixie. It did have wild red hair, and it also had the pointy wings of a pixie, but there was something different about it. It had tiny, humanlike feet, and the ears were only slightly pointed. Her clothing was that of a fairy; green, the bottom cut in jagged edges, very short with tiny shoulder coverings. This creature was half pixie and half fairy; a feypixie.
Dark thought it looked familiar. It was not until the little thing looked up at her in almost comical looking rage that she recognized it.
The feypixie stood, pouting distastefully up at Dark.
“Really, you should watch where you’re going,” the little one squeaked. She dusted her little dress unhappily. “True, I was busy making faces at my friend Butterball and didn’t see you, but you should still look where you’re going.”
Dark smiled, dismissing the entire speech. “Hello, Thistle.”
The feypixie looked up at her with a suspicious stare and crossed her arms. “Who are you?”
“Maybe if you got out of the grass so you could see me, you would know who I am,” Dark answered, quite amused.
The little one grumbled and fluttered up until she reached the elf’s face. It squeaked in surprise and flew backwards, covering her mouth. “Dark!” The little-half pixie regained her composure and tried to look regal. “Really, you shouldn’t go surprising me like that. You might have killed me. Then what would you have done? You know you’d never be able to live without me.”
The funny thing about all this was the fact that the little feypixie was deadly serious about everything she said. Dark laughed at Thistle, making the little one very upset. She tried to stamp her foot, only to fall about an inch from the place where she had been hovering.
“What is so funny?” Thistle demanded angrily. “Whenever I actually mean what I say, you always laugh at me!”
Dark just laughed harder, and the pixies joined in with a chorus of high-pitched giggles. Thistle glared at all of them, and then hovered in front of Dark’s face, her little arms folded across her chest.
“I’ll have you know, Dark, that I am not going to tolerate this kind of behavior.”
If you can imagine a tiny feypixie being deathly serious, her wild hair blowing in the breeze as if it was a gale, and saying this to a nearly eight thousand-year-old elven sorceress, you might just be able to see why this was such an amusing thing to Dark. She clutched a stitch in her side and continued to laugh.
Thistle simply glared at her a beat more, then, shrugging, dove into one of Dark’s pouches on the sorceress’s belt.
Dark’s laughter stopped almost immediately. She looked down into the pocket and saw Thistle’s tiny body inside, trying to open a small bottle that she had found there.
Dark was not as worried about this as she might have been with any of the other pixies. Thistle was her friend, and she was half fairy. The fairies were kind, clean, organized and beautiful. Thistle’s only flaw was her wild hair. Her attitude was not all pixie - trouble seeking and unorganized - she was actually quite organized, but not as much as a pure fairy might be. The other pixies accepted her only because of her clumsy ways and the part pixie attitude – and her love for trouble. The fairies, who would have nothing to do with clumsiness or disrespect, had told Thistle as kindly as they could to live with these little mischief seekers.
Dark swung gently but irritably at a pixie that was trying to follow Thistle’s example. The little being sighed then flew back to where it had been hovering before.
“Thistle, you know better than that. Come on out.” Dark was peering down at the feypixie, who had given up on the stopper in the previous bottle and had moved onto another one, which was nearly as big as she was.
The little one looked up at Dark, a happy glint in her wide green eyes. “I am merely seeing what new stuff you’ve collected since the last time I intruded on your pouches.” She gazed at the violet liquid in the vial and grinned. “I like the color of this one.”
Dark raised an eyebrow. “That one is poison.”
Thistle immediately dropped the glass bottle and wiped her hands on her dress, then moved on to a red one.
Dark sighed, then swatted at another pixie. “Thistle, could you get your cousins out of here?”
Thistle grumbled and let go of the vial, then popped her head out of the pouch. “Hey! Get out of here!” the feypixie yelled at her kin. “You are making Dark angry, and believe me, you don’t want to do that. She can get very scary at times. Why don’t you all just go away before she fries you all with a fireball or something like that?” Thistle had managed to excite herself. She looked up at Dark and bounced up and down in the pouch. “Can I see that? Will you do that for me? Please?”
Dark shook her head slightly. Thistle’s face fell and she looked back at the pixies.
“Well, get out of here!” The feypixie, pleased with her performance, ducked back into the pocket.
The pixies, looking at the elf in a bit of fear, began to fly away. Some glared jealously at the pouch that Thistle had inhabited as they turned. When they had all flown off toward the only tree in the Land of the Pixies, Dark peered into the pocket at Thistle, who was looking up at her in disappointment.
“What?” Dark was not sure what she had done this time.
Thistle toyed with the bottle a bit more. “You could have done something scary, you know. I didn’t do that for you without thinking that I wouldn’t be repaid.” She looked around at the other vials, then, giving up, flew out and into another pouch. Dark could hear a muffled exclamation, and then Thistle popped out of the pouch sputtering and sneezing. “I thought you were a sorceress! What are you doing with powders?”
Dark raised an eyebrow. “You opened one of the powder bags?”
She was answered with a hearty sneeze and an itching movement.
The elf folded back the top flap of the pouch and saw an opened powder bag inside. She picked it up, examining the contents. When she realized what it was, she shook her head and pulled the string that would seal it again, and then put it back into the pouch.
“Thistle, I am part mage, too. Sorcery uses up my strength. I use powders and potions whenever I can so that I don’t have to worry about my strength being sapped away.”
Thistle rubbed her nose and glared at her friend, her voice clouded by a sudden congestion. “You know, you could ‘ave tol’ me tha’ befowe. Whud id dat stuv anyway?”
Dark folded the pouch shut and tried to hide the half smile that had appeared on her face. “You managed to find the irritant powder that I use on annoying enemies. You’ll be itchy for about a half hour.”
Thistle rolled her eyes and groaned as she scratched her arm. “Can’d you do anything aboud id?”
Dark laughed. “I think it is punishment for your actions, Thistle.”
Thistle frowned and scratched harder. “Oh please, Dark! Can’d you juzd wave your fingers? Dis id gilling me!”
Dark considered it for a minute. “Well, since you are so small, maybe it does have more effect on you than it would on a regular person. Okay, Thistle. I don’t have any powder antidote, so consider yourself lucky.”
Dark closed her eyes and let all thought empty from her mind, which really is not a simple thing. However, she had done this so many times, that she was proficient at it. She fixed the mental image of Thistle in her mind, then thought of healing her of whatever might be wrong. She drew in the power around her, and she felt it course through her blood. The familiar tingling feeling flooded her body. She held out her hand and whispered the word to release the energy.
“Heal.”
She felt the power rush out her fingertips in a swift flow of force. It drained her a bit, but since there was not really too much of a person to heal, it was not as exhausting as it might have been otherwise. Healing was the most energy-sapping type of spell, so she was grateful that Thistle was so small.
The little half-pixie stopped itching and looked at her hands. “Hey! My cut that I got from running into the rock this morning is gone! I’m not itchy anymore! I don’t sound ridiculous, either! Hey! Do another spell!” Thistle was bouncing up and down in midair.
Dark shook her head and put her hand to her temple. She had a headache, but it would go away soon, and she knew it. “I told you, it takes energy. Be grateful that I did one for you.”
Thistle pouted. “Fine, I will be quiet about it. Well, why are you here?”
Dark shrugged. “I am just passing through to get to a human village.”
Thistle’s eyes lit up. “An adventure? You are going on another adventure? Can I come? Please, may I come with you?”
Dark backed up a little bit. “Uh… Thistle, I don’t think that would be such a good idea. There will be lots of fighting and danger.”
Thistle just squealed in delight. “Hooray! I am coming with you for sure now!” The feypixie flew up onto Dark’s black-haired head and sat down, her tiny legs dangling next to Dark’s pointed ears. “Let’s go!”
Dark rolled her eyes upward, trying to see the little being that was happily kicking her in the side of the head.
“Thistle, what are you thinking?” Dark winced as the half-pixie kicked her again. “You can’t come with me; you’d get us into so much trouble! Will you stop kicking me?”
Thistle stopped swinging her tiny little legs and bent over so that she was looking into Dark’s face upside down. She was grinning gleefully and her frizzy red hair was hanging down in a rather pathetic looking way. “Of course I’ll get us into trouble!” The feypixie was extremely cheerful. “What is an adventure for without trouble? Don’t worry; I’ll make sure nobody kills you.”
Dark raised an eyebrow, and Thistle laughed.
“You have no idea how funny that looked, Dark.” Thistle continued to giggle. “It looked as if you dropped your eyebrow instead of lifting it!”
Dark glared at her little friend. “Well, who’s going to make sure you don’t get killed?”
Thistle made herself look as important as one can when upside down. “I am a big girl. I can take care of myself.” Just then, the little one slipped off Dark’s head and nearly hit the ground before she realized what had happened and began flapping her transparent wings furiously to save herself. She didn’t scream or show any surprise, only simply placed herself on top of Dark’s head again and held herself high.
Dark rolled her eyes. “Thistle, I am serious when I say that you can’t come with me! I don’t need anymore trouble than I have already.”
Thistle bounced breathlessly on the black-haired head that she was seated on. “Oh! Danger and trouble already! Then I suppose I will be just a little bit less fun than I usually am.”
Dark actually considered this. Being even a tiny bit less annoying than usual was a huge sacrifice for the half-pixie to make. In the end, she decided that there was really nothing that she could do about it. When a pixie has something on its mind, it will do it, no matter what the cost. Dark shrugged to herself. “Alright, Thistle, you can come along.” Of course, all this statement declared was that Dark would acknowledge Thistle on the journey. Even if she had told her that she could not come along, Thistle would have trailed behind anyway.
The feypixie happily kicked Dark again. “I was hoping you would tell me I could! When do we start?”
Dark irritably, but gently, took the little figure’s legs and held them away from her face. “We leave as soon as you stop asking me questions.” Dark let go of Thistle’s legs, but they stayed in their position. Obviously, the feypixie had gotten the message that she was not to touch Dark’s face again. Dark chuckled to herself after the few seconds of silence. “You really want to go, huh?”
The feypixie bent down in front of Dark again, her lips pressed together tightly. She nodded her head rapidly, accidentally whapping the elf with her frizzy hair. When the sorceress made a face at the feypixie, Thistle made an adorable wide-eyed look of apology.
Dark smiled warmly. “Fine. Before we leave, Thistle, I think you should know what is going on. Where is a place that we can talk about important things?”
The feypixie immediately pointed to the huge tree a while away which was swarming with pixies.
Dark rolled her eyes upward in an effort to try to see Thistle. “You can’t be serious! If we went and talked there, I’d have at least half of the population following me! Please, Thistle, think clearly!”
Thistle paused for a moment, considering what would be the best thing to do. Then the little one pointed forward energetically.
Dark took it as the statement: “if we go, we can talk about it on the way.”
The elf shook her head slightly, resulting in the feypixie frantically trying to hold onto the black hair that she was sitting on.
“I suppose that there is absolutely no way to make you stay behind, is there?”
The little figure on top of the tall elf’s head bounced about joyfully and shook her head, still not saying a thing.
Dark sighed and lifted her robes up a little bit so that she would not trip on them in the tall grass. “Very well. I suppose even you as a companion will be better than no companion at all.”
The half-pixie made a face at the sorceress, and then looked forward.
As soon as the Wood Elf took the first step, Thistle erupted into an endless string of babble, and it was not until they reached the Tree of the Pixies that Thistle finally was quiet. Dark, not being able to see the tiny woman, rolled her eyes upward.
“What is it, Thistle? What’s wrong?”
The feypixie was looking at the huge tree with a sad look on her face. She fluttered down onto Dark’s left shoulder and turned to look at her.
“It is just that I am going to miss Butterball waking me up for noontime breakfast.” The little one sighed dramatically.
“‘Noontime breakfast?’” the elf inquired.
Thistle nodded sadly. “Oh yes. There are three times for breakfast.” Thistle started to tick them off on her fingers. “There is crazy time breakfast (that is any time before seven), nine o’clock breakfast, and noontime breakfast. Of course, noontime breakfast is kind of a hassle, because that is when first lunch starts. Then the buffets are around until dinnertime, which is a set time for all pixies. After dinner is when the balls and other parties begin.”
Dark listened to this speech with a raised eyebrow. “What do they serve for breakfast?”
“Sugar cubes and candy.”
Now both of Dark’s eyebrows were raised. “What about lunch? What do they serve then?”
“Cakes and puddings. I help make the puddings!” Thistle looked very pleased with herself.
“Do you pixies ever eat anything healthy?”
Thistle smiled. “Oh, what a silly question! We have chocolate-covered strawberries for lunch, too! And in the buffets, everything is there, including plain fruits. Nobody eats the fruits, though. I still don’t know why they put them out there.”
Dark sighed. “I wonder how you stay so thin.”
Thistle looked down at her very lean belly. “I wonder that sometimes, too.”
Dark just rolled her eyes and began her journey. With just one backward glance and a small shuddering sigh, Thistle sat down on the robed shoulder of the sorceress and began her incessant chatting again.
Chapter 3
Dark awoke early the next morning. It was a habit that she had always possessed; waking in the early hours of the morning. Of course, she did not mind. She was never tired after she woke up, and she was always eager to see the sun rising in its radiant grandeur.
She stretched and looked out of the inn window, the drapes of which she forgot to close before she went to bed. Her dazzling blue eyes caught the glow of the autumn sun and sparkled in it.
Suddenly, she was blinded by a silvery light. She looked down and noticed her ornate medallion shimmering happily in the sunbeams. She lifted it easily by the tiny silver chain that held it up and tucked it under the neckline of her white robes again.
The glowing turned almost annoyed.
“I know, you hate me for it,” Dark said in exasperation. “However, it is not my fault that you show your feelings so flamboyantly.”
The glow, muffled by the robes, became dimmer. It reminded Dark of a child grumbling at its parents when he knew he lost an argument.
Dark laughed and the medallion stopped its glowing.
The elven sorceress looked at herself in the looking glass and washed her face. She found a brush that had not been there before on the little table and smiled. Kimmy knew that one of Dark’s favorite pastimes was brushing her hair.
Dark picked up the brush and stroked it through her beautiful black hair lovingly. Her hair shone in the light and became softer with every comb. Its wavy body became evident again, and she loved watching the transition from the ugly bed hair to her stunning usual hair. Once or twice, the brush got caught in one of the large golden earrings that she wore, but she did not really notice the twinges of pain.
When she had finished, she looked at her reflection one last time. Seeing nothing that she would have to fix with her magic, she happily opened the door and walked down the stairs.
Kimmy was up and getting breakfast ready. She turned, saw Dark coming down the stairs, and grinned.
“Once again,” she laughed. “You are the first guest down in the morning. I see you found the brush that I left for you?”
Dark smiled. “Yes, I did. Thank you very much.”
Kimmy bent down and picked a bowl from the shelves built into the bar. “Don’t mention it. I thought you might like it.”
Kimmy came out from behind the counter and walked over to the fire on the other side of the room. She carefully pulled the hanger which suspended a small pot out from the fire and bent over it. The human woman grasped the cap with a cloth and lifted it up, letting the steam erupt from the pot as she took hold of a ladle that was protruding from its mouth. Kimmy scooped out hot porridge into the bowl which she held in her hand then replaced the lid and pushed the hanging pot back into the fire, placing the ladle back into the small cauldron as she did so.
She stepped over to her friend and held out the bowl to her. When Dark took it thankfully, Kimmy reached into one of her many apron pockets and pulled out a spoon. “Here you are. Eat up; I have a feeling you’re leaving and are going to need all the strength you can get.” She said it cheerfully, but Dark was aware of a pain in her eyes as the innkeeper turned back to her work.
Dark had managed to leave the town before anybody was up and walking. It had been a sad good-bye with Kimmy, but she had been able to leave before any tears were shed, and she promised to be back soon. How many people had she promised that to lately anyway?
The beautiful elf walked in the light of the early sun with not much interest of the scenery around her. She had been moving through tall-bladed prairie for about an hour now, and she was getting bored of all the green waves in the sea of grass.
Dark was not tired at all. However, she found it hard to walk. Her heart felt a bit heavier than usual. Many emotional things had happened to her lately, and she had been out of practice if bearing them. Why had everything suddenly gone so wrong? Was there anything that could aid her in bearing the burdens of sadness and work?
Dark looked up with a start as her hair was yanked backward and a tinkle of a laugh rang out. A small humanlike figure flew in front of her, giggling madly. Dark rubbed her head and grimaced at the tiny flying thing. She had reached the Land of the Pixies, alright.
The pixie laughed at the face that Dark gave it, and flew off toward a place full of little floating lights about a quarter of a mile away. Dark shook her head. The floating lights were the pixies.
Unlike their cousins the fairies, pixies were trouble makers and actually rather odd looking. Most of them had wild, tangled, frizzy hair and very long pointed ears which had ends that were very thin and almost stringy. They had feet, but no toes. Their feet came together with tips like their ears, except it curled at the end. A choice few of them had different colored skin, such as blue or pink. They wore hardly any clothing, just a piece of raggedy cloth which hardly covered them. But that did not really matter, since they usually glowed with their dim light, and the light made it hard to see their bodies. Sometimes, if the pixies wanted to show off, they would add little sparkles to their glow and make it brighter.
To tell the truth, nobody liked pixies very much. Dark didn’t really like them either, but they were a bit of a comical relief, as long as they were not pulling pranks on her.
She reached the swirling lights which she, as she got closer, was finally able to make out as the odd little figures they were. They swarmed around her, giggling, pointing and flying about with their pointed little wings. A blue one came up behind her and pulled her hair, as the first one had. Another pixie wedged itself into one of her pouches and tried to make the contents fall out. Dark thrust her hand down and caught the pixie before it could do anything. It looked up at her in a pout, as if to tell her that she was no fun.
Dark tossed it into the air in front of her, and it flipped once in anger, and then flew into the crowd of its kin.
They got the message, and no others came up to her. They just flew around her head yelling out in their tiny voices vicious little catcalls. Dark paid no attention and continued to walk. Pixies were so annoying sometimes… most times, actually. It was a pity that they spoke common tongue and nothing else, because everyone was obligated to listen to their offensive annotations.
All of a sudden, Dark felt something hit her in the stomach. There was a small “oof,” and laughter from the pixies.
The elf looked down. Lying on the ground, rubbing her head, was a tiny pixie. Well, no, it was not a pixie. It did have wild red hair, and it also had the pointy wings of a pixie, but there was something different about it. It had tiny, humanlike feet, and the ears were only slightly pointed. Her clothing was that of a fairy; green, the bottom cut in jagged edges, very short with tiny shoulder coverings. This creature was half pixie and half fairy; a feypixie.
Dark thought it looked familiar. It was not until the little thing looked up at her in almost comical looking rage that she recognized it.
The feypixie stood, pouting distastefully up at Dark.
“Really, you should watch where you’re going,” the little one squeaked. She dusted her little dress unhappily. “True, I was busy making faces at my friend Butterball and didn’t see you, but you should still look where you’re going.”
Dark smiled, dismissing the entire speech. “Hello, Thistle.”
The feypixie looked up at her with a suspicious stare and crossed her arms. “Who are you?”
“Maybe if you got out of the grass so you could see me, you would know who I am,” Dark answered, quite amused.
The little one grumbled and fluttered up until she reached the elf’s face. It squeaked in surprise and flew backwards, covering her mouth. “Dark!” The little-half pixie regained her composure and tried to look regal. “Really, you shouldn’t go surprising me like that. You might have killed me. Then what would you have done? You know you’d never be able to live without me.”
The funny thing about all this was the fact that the little feypixie was deadly serious about everything she said. Dark laughed at Thistle, making the little one very upset. She tried to stamp her foot, only to fall about an inch from the place where she had been hovering.
“What is so funny?” Thistle demanded angrily. “Whenever I actually mean what I say, you always laugh at me!”
Dark just laughed harder, and the pixies joined in with a chorus of high-pitched giggles. Thistle glared at all of them, and then hovered in front of Dark’s face, her little arms folded across her chest.
“I’ll have you know, Dark, that I am not going to tolerate this kind of behavior.”
If you can imagine a tiny feypixie being deathly serious, her wild hair blowing in the breeze as if it was a gale, and saying this to a nearly eight thousand-year-old elven sorceress, you might just be able to see why this was such an amusing thing to Dark. She clutched a stitch in her side and continued to laugh.
Thistle simply glared at her a beat more, then, shrugging, dove into one of Dark’s pouches on the sorceress’s belt.
Dark’s laughter stopped almost immediately. She looked down into the pocket and saw Thistle’s tiny body inside, trying to open a small bottle that she had found there.
Dark was not as worried about this as she might have been with any of the other pixies. Thistle was her friend, and she was half fairy. The fairies were kind, clean, organized and beautiful. Thistle’s only flaw was her wild hair. Her attitude was not all pixie - trouble seeking and unorganized - she was actually quite organized, but not as much as a pure fairy might be. The other pixies accepted her only because of her clumsy ways and the part pixie attitude – and her love for trouble. The fairies, who would have nothing to do with clumsiness or disrespect, had told Thistle as kindly as they could to live with these little mischief seekers.
Dark swung gently but irritably at a pixie that was trying to follow Thistle’s example. The little being sighed then flew back to where it had been hovering before.
“Thistle, you know better than that. Come on out.” Dark was peering down at the feypixie, who had given up on the stopper in the previous bottle and had moved onto another one, which was nearly as big as she was.
The little one looked up at Dark, a happy glint in her wide green eyes. “I am merely seeing what new stuff you’ve collected since the last time I intruded on your pouches.” She gazed at the violet liquid in the vial and grinned. “I like the color of this one.”
Dark raised an eyebrow. “That one is poison.”
Thistle immediately dropped the glass bottle and wiped her hands on her dress, then moved on to a red one.
Dark sighed, then swatted at another pixie. “Thistle, could you get your cousins out of here?”
Thistle grumbled and let go of the vial, then popped her head out of the pouch. “Hey! Get out of here!” the feypixie yelled at her kin. “You are making Dark angry, and believe me, you don’t want to do that. She can get very scary at times. Why don’t you all just go away before she fries you all with a fireball or something like that?” Thistle had managed to excite herself. She looked up at Dark and bounced up and down in the pouch. “Can I see that? Will you do that for me? Please?”
Dark shook her head slightly. Thistle’s face fell and she looked back at the pixies.
“Well, get out of here!” The feypixie, pleased with her performance, ducked back into the pocket.
The pixies, looking at the elf in a bit of fear, began to fly away. Some glared jealously at the pouch that Thistle had inhabited as they turned. When they had all flown off toward the only tree in the Land of the Pixies, Dark peered into the pocket at Thistle, who was looking up at her in disappointment.
“What?” Dark was not sure what she had done this time.
Thistle toyed with the bottle a bit more. “You could have done something scary, you know. I didn’t do that for you without thinking that I wouldn’t be repaid.” She looked around at the other vials, then, giving up, flew out and into another pouch. Dark could hear a muffled exclamation, and then Thistle popped out of the pouch sputtering and sneezing. “I thought you were a sorceress! What are you doing with powders?”
Dark raised an eyebrow. “You opened one of the powder bags?”
She was answered with a hearty sneeze and an itching movement.
The elf folded back the top flap of the pouch and saw an opened powder bag inside. She picked it up, examining the contents. When she realized what it was, she shook her head and pulled the string that would seal it again, and then put it back into the pouch.
“Thistle, I am part mage, too. Sorcery uses up my strength. I use powders and potions whenever I can so that I don’t have to worry about my strength being sapped away.”
Thistle rubbed her nose and glared at her friend, her voice clouded by a sudden congestion. “You know, you could ‘ave tol’ me tha’ befowe. Whud id dat stuv anyway?”
Dark folded the pouch shut and tried to hide the half smile that had appeared on her face. “You managed to find the irritant powder that I use on annoying enemies. You’ll be itchy for about a half hour.”
Thistle rolled her eyes and groaned as she scratched her arm. “Can’d you do anything aboud id?”
Dark laughed. “I think it is punishment for your actions, Thistle.”
Thistle frowned and scratched harder. “Oh please, Dark! Can’d you juzd wave your fingers? Dis id gilling me!”
Dark considered it for a minute. “Well, since you are so small, maybe it does have more effect on you than it would on a regular person. Okay, Thistle. I don’t have any powder antidote, so consider yourself lucky.”
Dark closed her eyes and let all thought empty from her mind, which really is not a simple thing. However, she had done this so many times, that she was proficient at it. She fixed the mental image of Thistle in her mind, then thought of healing her of whatever might be wrong. She drew in the power around her, and she felt it course through her blood. The familiar tingling feeling flooded her body. She held out her hand and whispered the word to release the energy.
“Heal.”
She felt the power rush out her fingertips in a swift flow of force. It drained her a bit, but since there was not really too much of a person to heal, it was not as exhausting as it might have been otherwise. Healing was the most energy-sapping type of spell, so she was grateful that Thistle was so small.
The little half-pixie stopped itching and looked at her hands. “Hey! My cut that I got from running into the rock this morning is gone! I’m not itchy anymore! I don’t sound ridiculous, either! Hey! Do another spell!” Thistle was bouncing up and down in midair.
Dark shook her head and put her hand to her temple. She had a headache, but it would go away soon, and she knew it. “I told you, it takes energy. Be grateful that I did one for you.”
Thistle pouted. “Fine, I will be quiet about it. Well, why are you here?”
Dark shrugged. “I am just passing through to get to a human village.”
Thistle’s eyes lit up. “An adventure? You are going on another adventure? Can I come? Please, may I come with you?”
Dark backed up a little bit. “Uh… Thistle, I don’t think that would be such a good idea. There will be lots of fighting and danger.”
Thistle just squealed in delight. “Hooray! I am coming with you for sure now!” The feypixie flew up onto Dark’s black-haired head and sat down, her tiny legs dangling next to Dark’s pointed ears. “Let’s go!”
Dark rolled her eyes upward, trying to see the little being that was happily kicking her in the side of the head.
“Thistle, what are you thinking?” Dark winced as the half-pixie kicked her again. “You can’t come with me; you’d get us into so much trouble! Will you stop kicking me?”
Thistle stopped swinging her tiny little legs and bent over so that she was looking into Dark’s face upside down. She was grinning gleefully and her frizzy red hair was hanging down in a rather pathetic looking way. “Of course I’ll get us into trouble!” The feypixie was extremely cheerful. “What is an adventure for without trouble? Don’t worry; I’ll make sure nobody kills you.”
Dark raised an eyebrow, and Thistle laughed.
“You have no idea how funny that looked, Dark.” Thistle continued to giggle. “It looked as if you dropped your eyebrow instead of lifting it!”
Dark glared at her little friend. “Well, who’s going to make sure you don’t get killed?”
Thistle made herself look as important as one can when upside down. “I am a big girl. I can take care of myself.” Just then, the little one slipped off Dark’s head and nearly hit the ground before she realized what had happened and began flapping her transparent wings furiously to save herself. She didn’t scream or show any surprise, only simply placed herself on top of Dark’s head again and held herself high.
Dark rolled her eyes. “Thistle, I am serious when I say that you can’t come with me! I don’t need anymore trouble than I have already.”
Thistle bounced breathlessly on the black-haired head that she was seated on. “Oh! Danger and trouble already! Then I suppose I will be just a little bit less fun than I usually am.”
Dark actually considered this. Being even a tiny bit less annoying than usual was a huge sacrifice for the half-pixie to make. In the end, she decided that there was really nothing that she could do about it. When a pixie has something on its mind, it will do it, no matter what the cost. Dark shrugged to herself. “Alright, Thistle, you can come along.” Of course, all this statement declared was that Dark would acknowledge Thistle on the journey. Even if she had told her that she could not come along, Thistle would have trailed behind anyway.
The feypixie happily kicked Dark again. “I was hoping you would tell me I could! When do we start?”
Dark irritably, but gently, took the little figure’s legs and held them away from her face. “We leave as soon as you stop asking me questions.” Dark let go of Thistle’s legs, but they stayed in their position. Obviously, the feypixie had gotten the message that she was not to touch Dark’s face again. Dark chuckled to herself after the few seconds of silence. “You really want to go, huh?”
The feypixie bent down in front of Dark again, her lips pressed together tightly. She nodded her head rapidly, accidentally whapping the elf with her frizzy hair. When the sorceress made a face at the feypixie, Thistle made an adorable wide-eyed look of apology.
Dark smiled warmly. “Fine. Before we leave, Thistle, I think you should know what is going on. Where is a place that we can talk about important things?”
The feypixie immediately pointed to the huge tree a while away which was swarming with pixies.
Dark rolled her eyes upward in an effort to try to see Thistle. “You can’t be serious! If we went and talked there, I’d have at least half of the population following me! Please, Thistle, think clearly!”
Thistle paused for a moment, considering what would be the best thing to do. Then the little one pointed forward energetically.
Dark took it as the statement: “if we go, we can talk about it on the way.”
The elf shook her head slightly, resulting in the feypixie frantically trying to hold onto the black hair that she was sitting on.
“I suppose that there is absolutely no way to make you stay behind, is there?”
The little figure on top of the tall elf’s head bounced about joyfully and shook her head, still not saying a thing.
Dark sighed and lifted her robes up a little bit so that she would not trip on them in the tall grass. “Very well. I suppose even you as a companion will be better than no companion at all.”
The half-pixie made a face at the sorceress, and then looked forward.
As soon as the Wood Elf took the first step, Thistle erupted into an endless string of babble, and it was not until they reached the Tree of the Pixies that Thistle finally was quiet. Dark, not being able to see the tiny woman, rolled her eyes upward.
“What is it, Thistle? What’s wrong?”
The feypixie was looking at the huge tree with a sad look on her face. She fluttered down onto Dark’s left shoulder and turned to look at her.
“It is just that I am going to miss Butterball waking me up for noontime breakfast.” The little one sighed dramatically.
“‘Noontime breakfast?’” the elf inquired.
Thistle nodded sadly. “Oh yes. There are three times for breakfast.” Thistle started to tick them off on her fingers. “There is crazy time breakfast (that is any time before seven), nine o’clock breakfast, and noontime breakfast. Of course, noontime breakfast is kind of a hassle, because that is when first lunch starts. Then the buffets are around until dinnertime, which is a set time for all pixies. After dinner is when the balls and other parties begin.”
Dark listened to this speech with a raised eyebrow. “What do they serve for breakfast?”
“Sugar cubes and candy.”
Now both of Dark’s eyebrows were raised. “What about lunch? What do they serve then?”
“Cakes and puddings. I help make the puddings!” Thistle looked very pleased with herself.
“Do you pixies ever eat anything healthy?”
Thistle smiled. “Oh, what a silly question! We have chocolate-covered strawberries for lunch, too! And in the buffets, everything is there, including plain fruits. Nobody eats the fruits, though. I still don’t know why they put them out there.”
Dark sighed. “I wonder how you stay so thin.”
Thistle looked down at her very lean belly. “I wonder that sometimes, too.”
Dark just rolled her eyes and began her journey. With just one backward glance and a small shuddering sigh, Thistle sat down on the robed shoulder of the sorceress and began her incessant chatting again.