The Fairic Shadough

Her golden hair shimmered playfully under the obstructed sunlight. Like a sheaf of perfectly ripe, golden wheat, it danced playfully in the wind. As the breeze wove through her hair, it mimicked a wave flushing over a field of wheat. All would be well except for the fact that her hair wasn’t wheat and the wind was blowing it into her face. With an exaggerated and annoyed huff, she shook her head and spat a few strands out of her mouth.

“Ugh! Annoying wind, stop messing with my hair, I just got it done.”

The golden-haired fairy fluttered her wings, gracefully taking flight like a butterfly. At that moment, a gust of mischievous wind decided to ruin her moment of grace. It picked up her small and frail body and spun her round and round, toying with her like a child with a new doll.

When it was done with annoying the fairy, it moved on about its business, whatever that may be, for a gust of wind. Orleyna sat up, rubbing her bum after being toyed with and discarded. She angrily raised her fist and shook it in the direction the gust of wind traveled.

“Just you wait! I’ll get you next time, you silly thing.”

Only now did she realize she was in an unfamiliar land. She turned her head side to side, then engaged her core muscles, turning her upper body to take in more of the scenery. She tilted her head to the side, humming curiously as she got up. Now she was engaging her entire body and turning around. She spun around, of her own accord this time.

“Hmmmmmm,” she proceeded to hum as her gaze wandered the dimly lit forest.

The shadows were long and moody, dark even, overlapping like a group of moody teenagers at a party, pretending not to care while hoping someone would ask them about their traumas and feelings. Some shadows looked suspiciously alive, as if they might leap out and try to scare her with a classic.

“Boo,” moment, while others resembled hard working shadows that simply minded their own business, being shadows – dark and eerie.

A few shadows even looked like they were tired of their shift already, though it seemed as if the evening had just begun and they were in for a long night. A few shadows were lazily dripping from the branches of trees. One shadow in particular caught her eye, as in – their gazes met. The shadow blinked. Orleyna blinked back harder in disbelief.

The shadow’s eyes scanned her up and down, as if judging her fashion choices.

“Rude!” Orleyna muttered, turning away with a loud ‘hmph.’ She stood still for a moment then peeked over again at the shadow to confirm. The confirmed, the eyes were still there. A pair of moon-like silvery eyes, judgmentally glaring at her. ‘I knew the abyss stares back, but shadows? That’s a new one…’ the fairly thought to herself nervously.

Before her eyes, the shadow stretched. It didn’t move in a traditional sense; rather, it elongated and thinned itself out. Reconfiguring its shape like a strange logic-defying creature that hated logic and geometry alike. Orleyna hesitantly took a step back, “Uhm, whatever you’re offering, the answer is – NO!”

As the shadow seemingly reached its maximum permissible length of -thin and long, it slinked like a slinky that at last reached the bottom of the steps, and suddenly it assumed a humanoid shape, albeit two-dimensional. Orleyna stared at the humanoid-shaped figure on the floor as it seemingly knelt and opened up a briefcase. She popped her eyebrow like it was a champagne bottle on New Year’s Eve and stared at it.

“You uhm, look a little, flat,” she commented.

The shadow stopped its motion of rummaging through its briefcase and then seemingly glared up at her. Its shadowy finger pointed at her shadow’s chest, as if mocking her that it wasn’t the only thing flat here.

“RUDE!” Orleyna exclaimed, covering her chest with her hands.

“It-it isn’t about the size, you know!? What do you even want from me!?”

The shadow gave her a ‘wait’ motion with its hand and proceeded to rummage through its shadowy briefcase.

The shadow stood up at last, holding out a small shadowy booklet of sorts.

“I am here to offer coaching, a shadow coaching, from shadow to shadow.”

Its voice was surprisingly normal-sounding. Whatever one might expect the shadow to sound, this wasn’t it. It sounded like the most mundane door-to-door salesman one could imagine. It spoke fast but precisely.

“Excuse me!?” Orleyna protested.

“Oh, no not you, I’m here to talk to your shadow, not to you,” the shadow replied.

Orleyna blinked in disbelief, “Excuse me!?” she folded her arms and turned around. At the corner of her eye she could see her shadow disagreeing with her motions. It reached over and grabbed the booklet from the shadowy silver-eyed creature and proceeded to flip through it as the creature proceeded to explain its course and offered services.

“Ahem… shadow!?”

Her shadow peered at her.

“You’re my shadow! Don’t go falling victim to some random scam salesman without MY consent.”

Her shadow huffed and returned her gaze to the booklet. The silver-eyed shadow continued its sales pitch, ignoring Orleyna.

“So my offered services are professional shadow coaching. The ‘S.H.A.D.O.W.’ program.”

As Orleyna later discovered, the acronym stood for ‘Stealthy Hats Aggressively Denying the Overenthusiastic Whimsical sunlight.’ A cult of shadows working to overthrow the physical world and plunge the world into the eternal shadowy darkness, a realm beyond one’s wildest dreams and imaginations, but today is not that day, for her shadow proved far more sensible than she had hoped.

She watched as her shadow crumbled the booklet and threw it on the ground, then huffed and turned around angrily, as if offended that some shadow creature would think she, the great Orleyna’s shadow, would need coaching on how to be a great shadow. She’s already a great shadow; she follows her host around, mimics her movements, and makes funny faces when her host isn’t looking.

Orleyna smirked smugly and whispered, “That’s my girl. You show him.”

Her shadow sneered playfully and nodded, giving a phantom fist bump to her host. Orleyna dusted her dress off and turned on her bare heel with a smug grin on her face, half to allow her reason to do a sassy spin of her own and act smug.

“Well, this has been thoroughly weird, and I have places to be that don’t involve strange shadow schemes and… whatever you’re planning. She leaned in and squinted at the silver-eyed shadow.

“If I see you near my shadow again, I will personally burn this entire forest down to rid of whatever dared cast your miserable existence into, well… existence.”

She leapt up, fluttering her wings and taking flight.

As she distanced herself from the ground, she watched her shadow moonwalking away from the salesman. A cheerful chuckle escaped her lips. She tried to fly higher, but the forest’s canopy proved to be far too dense for that. With many razor-sharp leaves and intertwined branches blocking her way, she reduced her altitude to that of a support helicopter carrying a heavy payload.

Occasional distant howls would distract her and make her skin crawl. She was but a peaceful fairy; she would mock dragons, annoy gods, and tease a chef of gods on his quest. But she wasn’t used to dealing with actually ‘scary’ things like- scary things. That’s not to say dragons aren’t scary, but the last 1 she encountered was hardly a fire menace- he instead spewed laughing gas.

Once every few trees, a sneaky branch would attempt to assault her; it wasn’t her fault the howls and growls, creaks, squeaks, and moans distracted her from safely navigating this potentially hazardous environment. Moans, groans, and a picnic basket. She blinked a few times at the basket that sat upon the only spot in the forest that let through enough sunlight to act as a spotlight.

“Whoa!” she marveled at it.

Distracted, she did not notice the next sneaky tree. It stood like a stop sign right in the middle of the path. In fact, it was even red. But akin to a distracted zoomer on a phone, she heeded a bright red thing no attention, and flew right into it. Her body contorted to the shape of the tree upon her forceful impact with it.

“Shadow?”

She called out in a pained groan as she peeled her face off the tree’s bark. Her shadow was obstructed by the tree’s shadow. She was she it could hear her, though.

“Next time, give me a heads up.”

She peered down to see her shadow peering from behind the tree’s shadow. It formed a hat, and put it on its head.

“No, heads up, not hats up. Ugh, no matter.”

She peeled herself from the tree with the grace of a stubborn sticker being removed from a surface it really liked. The kind of removal where it leaves behind not just residue but a part of itself. Though, fortunately for our fairy, she did not leave any parts of herself behind, well, except for a bit of fairy dust that got flung off her wings upon the impact, leaving behind a very funny imprint of the star-like spread out fairy.

“How rude of you to stand in my way,” she huffed angrily at it, then gestured with her finger in a ‘listen here, you little,’ motion.

“Can’t you tell this is a no-standing zone!? People are flying here, you know!? Enough of your rude siblings spreading their branches all over the place, creating a flight hazard, but you? You really stepped out of the line,” she proceeded to lecture the tree.

“I mean literally, look! There’s the path, and there are the other trees, and here you are, in the middle of the path.”

The tree, being a tree, remained silent. Which was a typical tree behavior. But then, perhaps out of shape, or maybe nature itself was bored, or, it might well be that a cosmic probability event decided to play along for a change. The tree creaked awkwardly and began to slowly shuffle off to the side, like an embarrassed child that got scolded publicly.

Orleyna narrowed her eyes at the tree, scratching her head, then she crossed her arms, “Oh now you decided to move!? How generous of you,” she turned her head to the side with a loud huff, “asshole.”

Her gaze fell upon the picnic basket that sat in spot light on the field.

“Now now, what do we have here?”

She floated down to the basket. Made a few circles around in, imagining for a moment that she was a renowned NASCAR driver, making circles after circles, wondering about the meaning of life and her decisions. Then she poked at it when the basket did not respond to her circling. The basket wiggled, as if a ticklish person who got poked in the side.

“Oh?” she tilted her head.

“Are baskets supposed to wiggle?”

The basket remained silent for a moment, as if pondering deeply over her highly philosophical question. Then it growled, but it wasn’t a beastly growl. It was more of a hungry tummy growl that desired a snack.

“Humm?”

She recoiled, taking a wary step back.

“I’m not a snack.”

The picnic basket seemingly turned toward her a little, then slumped down, as if upset.

“Awhh, don’t be sad. We’ll get you something to eat.”

She reached behind herself and pulled out a small coin-purse-like object. She put a finger into it, rummaging about, then her whole hand, and then the rest of her arm, down to the elbow.

“Ughhh, where did I leave it!? It was around here somewhere. Aha!”

She exclaimed excitedly, pulling out a lemon scone. A soft baked deliciousness, lemony goodness that would make even the gods drool.

“I’ve been saving this for a special kin-” she began, but the basket suddenly had legs. It was standing like a puppy, wagging one of its lids. Before she could finish her sentence, the basket leapt up, taking her whole arm to the elbow inside its lid. She felt something warm brush against her skin, caressing her forearm.

Then she felt like dozens of tiny fingers were prying at her hands. When the prying failed, she felt soft feathers tickling her skin. And when even that failed, she felt something disturbing. A wet, warm and slippery something brushed against her forearm. It licked her, this creepy box licked her.

“Ewwww!”

She recoiled, letting go of the bun and yanking her hand out.

“Ew ew ewww! What the heck!?” she wiped the basket’s saliva against her dress, holding her hand close.

“Creepy.”

The basket sat back down, wagging one of its lids excitedly like a puppy. A moment later it let our a burp, a very satisfied kind of burp.

“Awhhh, aren’t you a cute little puppy basket.”

Orleyna clapped her hands excitedly.

“What shall I name you.”

The basket peered at her curiously, anticipating receiving a name.

“Oh I know, Dog-Basket.”

She posed proudly, placing her hands on her hips and striking a proud pose.

“What a creative deity I am!”

She glanced down as the basket rubbed itself against her thigh, demanding attention.

“Awhh, you like that? What a cute thing. You’re the best thing I’ve found all day! Definitely better than a creepy conniving shadow and a rude tree for sure.”

She scratched the basket along the rim, just under the lid. It wagged its entire body happily.

“Awhhhh you’re the cutest basket I’ve ever had. Come on, puppy, let’s go see what else we can find!?”

And so the fairy stormed off excitedly into the unknown. Accompanied by the thumping of four stubby feet that followed her excitedly. As she pushed her tiny, frail body through the vines and bushes that clung to her, with a huff she continued the argument she was having with the basket.

“I’m just saying, if you’re going to eat all the-STUPID VINES. All the snacks, at least you should say ‘thank you’ or, I don’t know – burp politely.”

The basket, as always, just flapped its lid while following along, snacking on everything that looked edible along the way. The fly it jumped to catch, the random vine, the mushroom on the ground that was very bright red and looked like it’d be incredibly poisonous. With each new snack it consumed, it burped contentedly, occasionally giggling in a strange echoey manner, as if two tiny giggles that formed together to become one slightly less tiny giggle.

Orleyna sighed dramatically, “Ughh, you’re unbearable. I regret adopting you now.”

And as the argument came to an end, the ground shook violently beneath her feet. The flowers around her stopped blooming. The chirping birds unchirped themselves, cancelling out their previous chirps with active noise cancellation techniques they developed to hide from whatever caused that tremor.

The mushrooms, quite sensible, set their time-flow backwards and returned to the state of being pores in the ground. Even the lazily dripping shadows on the tree-branches tensed up and stopped their dripping. It was as if the entire forest held its breath and tried to hide from whatever it was.

“Oh-hoh,” Orleyna swallowed audibly, pausing mid-step. From the tree line emerged a hulking shape. The apex predator of the forest.

The basket shook with fright as its gaze scanned the monstrous creature up and down. Its body towered above Orleyna and the basket, though granted the size of a fairy who could comfortably sit on the shoulder of an average human, and the tiny doll-house sized basket that was half the height of Orleyna, the creature before them must’ve been no larger than just a large dog.

The basked sat down on its hind legs, glaring up at the beast. It took a heavy step toward them. The ground trembled yet again, though it was now obvious that it trembled not from its heavy step or mass, but rather from fright. It was as if with each step, the ground itself tensed up and clenched its teeth out of fright. The beast stepped out of the shadows at last.

All three of its heads howled loudly at the brisk sunlight that fell upon its black as abyss body. Because of course, it had to have three heads. Its thin and short fur interferes like a puddle of oil in the sunlight. One of its heads was dough. Cookie dough. In fact, it was uncooked chocolate chip cookie dough, as if waiting to get baked to perfection.

The head on the far right was frightening in appearance. It had red, predatory eyes that seemingly emitted a faint glow, and a set of very stereotypical vampiric fangs. Complete with a faint glinting effect when the sun caressed its fur. It hissed dramatically at the sunlight. And the third head? It was as normal as it gets.

“Oh for the love of fur and fleas,” the middle head groaned as it looked at the excited cookie-dough head that was basking in the sunlight, as if begging to get baked by it, and then the vampiric head that glistened theatrically in the sunlight and hissed at it like a teenager in their phase that is ‘not a phase, mom’.

The middle head lowered itself to the ground, rubbing its temple with its paw, “Can we not? For once? Please? Just once I want to stroll through the forest without someone constantly begging for some fresh bunny blood, or begging to sniff and taste every flower, and then mumbling about getting cooked by the sun.”

The dough head made the most dumbfounded expression imaginable. Its brown eyes like chocolate fragments in a cookie, perked up.

“Ughh? What did I do? I’m just being me.”

And the vampiric head, it scoffed, glancing off to the side, “Why did I have to be stuck in a body with these morons. I am the night, the shadows, the FEAR! You will never understand.”

The middle head sighed deeply, then blinked a couple of times, and then a few more as it stared at Orleyna and the basket, who in turn, blinked at it too. The dough head flung itself around and glared at the golden-haired fairy and her new pet-basked.

“Oh! Snacks!? Do you think they’d make me taste better?”

Orleyna glanced at the basket, then at the cookie-dough head, then back at the basket, which was now beginning to drool as it stared excitedly at the cookie-dough dog head of the Cerberus. ‘Yeah, I don’t know which 1 of them will be becoming the snack here, but it ain’t gonna be me,’ She thought to herself. A low,w hungry grumble escaped the basket as its insatiable hunger was building up.

The vampiric head spun around, adjusting its fur and posing dramatically in the sun.

“Excuse me! I have yet to get my fill of delicious and fresh bunny blood. Soft, warm, mmmhhh it’s blood tingled on my tongue.”

The vampiric head’s voice rumbled and echoed slightly, like poetry of an overly dramatic middle schooler. Orleyna glanced up at the vampiric head, then at the normal head. Then she blinked.

The normal head blinked back twice, as if communicating in an undisclosed morse code, responding to Orleyna’s question ‘siblings suck huh? These two in particular seem really annoying to deal with.’ And the head responded, ‘Please just end me so I don’t have to listen to them anymore.’.

She grinned, fluttered her wings as the hungry stomach growls became louder from the drooling basket.

“Hello new forest frends! I see you lot have very different culinary preferences. I, Orleyna, the guide of the chefs of gods, well, there was ever only 1, but never mind that. I, Majestic being of the forest, am here to settle your disagreements.”

“What can you do!?”

The dough head gasped excitedly, sticking its tongue out and panting while staring at the basket box.

“Oh winged lady, will you feed me? I crave noms, nomnoms even.”

The vampiric head sighed dramatically yet again.

“Ughh, rid me of these fools, I crave nought but blood, flesh and tears of my victims.”

Orleyna paused, as if waiting for a drumroll, but it never came.

“Ahem, I see you’re all quite the, hm, what’s the word? Eh, no matter. You’re a funny bunch. The cookie head here,” she flew up to the dough head and booped it on its chocolate nose.

“A connoisseur of baked goodness and all things sweet.”

She shot a glance at the drooling basket, which seemed equally as enthusiastic about its future snack as the cookie-head was about consuming the basket and all of its contents.

Her gaze traveled upward to the vampiric glittering head.

“And that one there,” she narrowed her eyes, as if trying to see through the creature, “mmmhyeah far too obsessed with blood and being dramatic. Honestly, you’re the worst of the lot. You’ve got enough drama in your words to last three seasons of high-school musical.”

The normal head, the ever silent one who has had it enough with his siblings, only watched her with a bemused expression.

Orleyna’s smile grew wider as she looked at it.

“But you,” she said, grinning widely as she zoomed around it like a pesky fly.

“You’re the one with taste huh? The voice of reason. A true gourmet, and the one who just wants peace. Oh, how I understand you, I have to deal with dozens of pesky siblings who are all as annoying as I am, imagine that? Ugh. Best you don’t.”

The normal head growled angrily, “Do something before I snap.”

She nodded, “Ah, yes yes.”

Pulling out her coin-purse like sachet, she put her hand into it, and then her entire arm. Shortly after, she was half-consumed by the purse.

“Ughh, where’d I put them? Somebody remind me to clean up around here. What even is this?”

She tossed a metallic ball over her shoulder. It shot out of the purse like a cannonball, increased in size 10 fold, then disappeared through an inter-dimensional rift.

A few moments later, she emerged bearing a silver tray with three objects upon it. A perfectly crisp chocolate chip cookie on one side. A small plate with a delicately placed little leaf, a small piece of meat, and some sauce sprinkled on it in the middle, and a wine glass of red liquid that had a faint metallic fragrance.

“Oh yes yes yum nom nom yes please,” the cookie head exclaimed excitedly. Before she had a chance to explain anything, it had already licked up the cookie and crunched it, munching it excitedly.

“Uhm, okay well..” she snapped her fingers. The delicate mean fed itself to the normal head, and the wine glass filled with freshest of hydra’s blood, poured itself into the vampiric head’s mouth.

“Enjoy,” she grinned mischievously.

The Cerberus’s body shuddered, then puffed out, and then split into three, one for each head, well, for now at least. The normal head stared in shock at the fairy.

“How did you?”

Orleyna snickered, “Hehe, sec-ret. Enjoy your freedom, and no take-backs.”

There was a happy clap of a lid, and a loud burp. Orleyna glanced over her shoulder at the picnic basket happily wagging both of its lids this time, sitting where the cookie-dough dog once was.

Orleyna fluttered her wings, taking flight and zooming out of the way just in time as the vampire hound pounced at the basket with all the frenzy of a predator who had been taunted by its prey a few too many times, “THAT WAS MY BROTHER!”

The normal head called out, “No takebacks,” Orleyna grinned, sticking her tongue out while flying backwards.

Distracted, she hit something big and hard. As she opened her eyes to see the ceiling of her room, she realized she had fallen out of her bed.

“Owwiieee,” she groaned, getting up from the floor.

“Ayaya, what a weird dream.”

She went about her morning routine. Made some strong pixie dust coffee, had a magical cookie with it, and then hung out on the balcony of her little hut, hanging from a tree like a lantern.

As she basked in the sunlight, her gaze wandered down to the ‘below place’. A dark, dense forest existed a layer below them. She had always wondered what it was like down there, but they were strictly forbidden from ever going there.