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disaster-aster · 7 years

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The beginning - Part 4

F i g h t O r F l i g h t

I felt a draft of air on my back as the thief’s hand swept right behind me. He would have knocked me senseless against the window there and then, had he aimed right. I cussed; I was spraying night lily pollen hoping to mess with their senses and it scattered enough in the room to lose its effect.

“Hold on Minna, I got her!”

But the tall guy didn’t get me. His two gloved hands clapped right under my feet when I jumped on the bed and I ran across the thin bedsheets, flapping wings to give myself a bit of a boost. Anything to be just a little faster. At that point I was afraid to fly, in case they’d throw another coat at me. It was safer to remain grounded even if it slowed me down. I just needed somewhere to hide, and for that night lily pollen to do its thing. If I could only find a hole or a large enough crack in the wall, they would have to give up. Sadly I knew I would definitely be too slow to crawl under the door. It would have been the best option had the gap been just a little higher.

They caught me when I leaped to reach the nightstand’s handle. In midair, like you catch a falling berry. This time they made sure their skin was far enough from my teeth that I wouldn’t be able to bite them.

“How much is a fairy’s wings worth again?” The third man asked Minna, the boss, in a matter of fact sort of way. It was the first time that one spoke and although he was dressed like a male, he was soft spoken and almost sounded female. His eyes however were as cold as ice. One of them was nearly all white, I guess he was half blind. There was a pretty earring on his left ear. I noticed because the sun was making it shine.

I didn’t want them to rip my wings off my back. I use them to fly, if I didn’t have them I’d be grounded and I’d never be able to go home so I dropped the act… though I still looked them like they were a bunch of idiots, which they were.

“My kind’s not the one with magic wings, it’s the others who are. Learn the difference, thick brains!”

“Just pin it to the nightstand I’ll get the book.” The soft spoken thief said nonchalantly.

I thought they would pin my clothes to the wooden nightstand, you know. So I was relieved by the idea of not being squeezed in a warm, smelly glove any longer. Then, I thought, I’d only need to slip out of my clothes and run naked to safety. They would be lucky enough to see that I have a nice looking butt. Except rather than putting me down, the pointy man pinched my wings and carried me around the room like a stained handkerchief, putting back in his pockets the things I picked out of them earlier.

Swayed in all directions by his quick movements I watched the floor zoom in and out many times. It’s not the most comfortable position I’ve been in. Even the time I spent at sea, with the salt making my skin dry as burnt bark, seemed better in comparison.

“They worth our weight in gold, if they’re any use. Each of ‘em, even.” He finally read on one of the crumbled papers with the numbers on them.

What would they even do with my wings if they held any magic anyways? Grow a garden? They would still need a green thumb. The best use they could make of my spells would have been the night lily, and even then, I couldn’t produce enough pollen to knock them out all at once so it wouldn’t help them much either.

“Can’t you just pin that thing to the table Hayne? If you drop it we’ll have to catch it again.”

I was hoping he would drop me, because the window was about to be unlocked by a creeping vine I had started back when I tried to open it the first time. Maybe I can’t do powerful magic, but I have enough to go by. I’m not completely defenceless despite the size. I helped the man a little: since he wasn’t paying much attention to me I figured it was a good time to give him a taste of some dragon tears. Surely he would hate the feeling.

But I made it grow too fast and a bulb on the stem exploded, splashing the both of us in clean, odorless spit. He dropped me alright, but my wings were also covered in juice and it burned too much to fly. Grounded again, I rushed under the beds.

It was a good thing, come to think of it, that Jibby made me walk so much. I had pretty strong legs by then.

The floor shook as soon as I made it under the bed. Something banged against the opposite wall and I was quickly pulled behind. Desperate, I grabbed the sheets. They slipped through my hands, heavy and warm as I was taken away. I never thought humans would dive under beds. I thought they only did that in the water.

The one called Minna pinned me against the nightstand this time.

With daggers.

In my wings.

And they covered my screams under a white, perfumed glove.

I remember it smelled like lilac and somehow the smell made the whole picture even darker. To think… right before the first dagger hit, digging into both top wings together, I could see it: the window was open. If I hadn’t splashed myself with dragon tears in my hurry, I could have escaped. So close, and now unattainable. No one can fly with pierced wings. I didn’t think I would even be able to walk with pierced wings.

“Minna, they’re worthless… it’s the Kings’ we’d want.”

“I told you!” I screamed in rage.

The chained flashes of ice cold pain made it difficult to breathe but I was enraged and embracing that rage made the pain easier to bear.

“I told you! I am useless to you, now let me go, you big, stupid, braindead droppings!”

“Oh well, someone might still want an exotic pet, might as well bring it along.”

I think it was Minna’s idea. I’m not sure. I was still screaming in pain, trying to push the daggers out of the cherry wood, and I couldn’t see anything.

“Ya kidding, boss? Look at’ that thing did to my arm!”

“Ya! That’s dragon tears for you! Enjoy!”

The dagger still wouldn’t move, no matter how hard I pushed it. My strengths were depleting fast.

“That shite gonna burn for a week, I heard. Hey Minna, maybe Hayne’s got the right idea there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unless we trap it in a jar or sum’thin’, with minimum holes for air, I don’t think we can carry a fairy around. Tricky monsters, they are.”

“So you say we let it go.”

“I say we get rid of it.”

“I say we kill it.”

That last one was the pointy thief. Hearing him, I stopped pushing against the dagger, fear caught in my throat. He said it so easily.

They took the glove off my face and for a moment I saw nothing but white, like looking right at the sun. Then, three sadistic smiles, like you’ve never seen before.

“Alright then, let’s kill it. Slowly.”

I thought Jack was exaggerating when he said humans were particularly dangerous to our kind. But now I know: humans are horrible. They should never be approached.

The man called Minna picked me up without taking the daggers out of the wood. I heard my wings rip as much as I felt it. A big, noisy rip. Like a leaf being torn apart and my whole body went numb, the pain striking through every limb like a storm. It made my ears ring and black stars formed before my eyes. They ripped my wings, bit by bit and I let them. They didn’t even have to hold me.

I still remember their laughs. They were so happy.

What was there left to do? What can you do when your limbs are pulled apart? They didn’t mind what dragon tears was left on them they just kept digging in with their nails and the noise made me sick.

Then it was over. They stopped as suddenly as they had started and I dropped on the nightstand like an old, wet twig. I laid there breathless, head spinning, trying to get myself together. When I finally managed to roll over, in one last attempt to get away, I found myself in the remains of my own wings, scattered like snow on the cherry wood. I crawled, slowly. There was a ruckus in the room. Things were falling down, the thieves were agitated and angry. I made it to the wall, what was left of my wings dragging lifeless against me. I pulled myself up by digging my nails into the wax of a candle, shaking and my stomach all turned up.

One of the thieves bumped against the nightstand which shook violently, throwing me off. I landed on the floor, in the dust, with a choked “Oof”. The candle dropped right beside me and a dark silhouette perched over it. It picked me up by the sash, put me back on my feet and I toppled weakly against a body of warm, soft feathers. It was Jibby. She had heard me. She had flown right in through the opened window to help me. With what little strength I had left, I climbed up on her back, shaking and biting my lips not to scream. Blinding light hit us as the thieves lifted the nightstand and Jibby flew up and out the window.

I was saved.

#ash's journey #aster #writing #fairy #personal project #logbook #female artist #artists on tumblr #illustration #thief #thieves #wings #female writer #a fairy's log

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disaster-aster · 7 years

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Fresh fruits for @featherpantsgt 🍓

#sketch #for others

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disaster-aster · 7 years

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The beginning - Part 3

J a c k W o u l d H a v e K n o w n

One thing I really wanted was to see adventurers and I knew exactly where to go in order to watch them. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to find the place where I needed to go… for some reason taverns and inns all look like houses and shops. At least make an effort not to build everything the same! I had to search through many villages along the shore, feeling more impatient and irritated that I didn’t find what I was looking for and Jibbs was not helping at all. She was reluctant to fly most of the time and preferred hopping on the grass and taking way too many naps a day for way too long. She was driving me crazy and I was doing the same to her, forced as I was to steal her pebble if I wanted her large feathery butt to go anywhere. You’d think sleeping from sunset to sunrise would have been enough, but no. I think I understand now why Siisa and Moltai were so angry at me when I ran away from my daily chores. Someone who refuses to do what you want them to when it’s important that they do it is infuriating.

So as I was saying, following weeks of walking more than flying (my feet were oh so sore) I finally learned that the difference between common housing and shops were in their sign. Unlike the shops, houses have small letters on the mailbox or the fence to know which is which (except for the ones that do have big signs and I was very confused then). After making my way into more than a few wrong places, finally I found an inn which I entered through a small hole in the gutter. Jibbs was too large to fit and waited outside. Which was fortunate because the hole gave right into the kitchen, of all things. It was perfect for me, with plenty of places to hide. The door to the dining room was cut in half, too, so it was easy to fly there when nobody was looking.

I don’t understand though what use there is for only half a door.

It took many days, and at some point I stopped counting, before an adventurer walked in. I still remember. He had hair the colour of wheat and he carried with him the smell of sea salt. His clothes were dripping with water, too, but it was not raining. He was talking a lot, and laughing a lot, but what struck me the most was the color of his eyes. I had never seen a human with eyes of gold and I still haven’t seen another one of those afterwards. I heard him say he was waiting for his crew, and he stayed a few days. Every evening he sat with what I can only guess were strangers to him, and he talked with them for hours. I loved listening to his adventures, and I’d always find a spot to sit as near to him as possible. The ceiling beams were very useful to run across the whole dining area. He, too, seemed to be one of those people who ate maps for breakfast; he sounded like he knew the whole world like the back of his hand. Oh, and he had a bird too. A ginormous white pelican who sometimes stuck its head through the dining room’s window looking for him. It took two or three men to push his large, dumb looking face out of the inn and the adventurer kept saying the bird was not with him but clearly, it was. It followed him everywhere whenever he went looking for his crew (I watched them from where I sat on the rooftops with Jibbs). I didn’t know there were pelicans big enough for a human to sit on their back.

He told stories better than Jack, like he was born to do that and I decided I’d tell stories better than him. Sadly, his crew joined him the next week and he left with them the day after. I never saw him again. Maybe the pelican ate him…

That very same night, a group of young men with a similar gait came into the inn.

I couldn’t help but to wonder what was hidden in their hip bags. They were much bigger than what I had seen on any other people I watched. Maybe they were what they call nobles, I thought. Maybe they were rich. They carried weapons with them and what better need would there be than to protect their goods? Luck was on my side: they put silver coins on the counter and asked to stay for the night. I followed them across the dining room, sticking near the ceiling. In the hallway I was in the open but humans rarely pay attention to what is above their eye level. I took a chance. The door closed right in front of me.

“Owl farts!” I cussed and I think they heard me because the door opened immediately and they nearly caught sight of me. The head that popped out of the room looked right and left. When they closed the door again, I approached to eavesdrop. They sounded excited about something. I just had to see what it was about.

I waited for the innkeeper to announce mealtime. In the evening, there often was one or two musicians trading a few drops of ale and a plate of whatever food was left for entertainment. That should give me all the time I wanted in the nobles’ room to look through their things and satisfy my curiosity. They would stuff their faces with strange fish and drink themselves under the table while I’d do what I do best.

Crawling under the door was in itself quite the adventure. Old wood tend to make splinters and those splinters snagged my clothes. I had to be more careful than I had ever been so not to hurt myself. You know how mice and rats squish themselves to fit in tight spaces? Yeah well fairies can’t do that. Once or twice I thought I would never see the end of it, especially when large splinters tugged at my shirt and pants at the same time.

‘At this rate, once I get out from under here I’ll be naked.’ Is what I thought.

On the other side, surprisingly with all my clothes still on, the floor was littered with weapons of all sizes, smelly wet socks and leather coats. I avoided the socks and walked on the coats alongside a well-worn lance. One of them had so many pockets inside and out I stopped counting after the tenth one. Just how many spaces did a noble need to put things in? Besides, some of those things could have easily been left back home. Like those round shiny iron beads and what I thought was a bizarre kind of pepper. The money I understood was necessary to keep, though I didn’t get why they had to divide it into so many pockets. Same about the armfuls of white pearls I found. There were a few papers as well, on which something was written but I couldn’t read it. I did however understand the numbers at the end of each line (numbers may be the only thing we have in common). I thought at first it might be for keeping track of what they owned and they had to be rich, because those were big numbers. They possessed many things in many exemplars.

I know what you’re thinking: I was completely wrong about this.

They were as far from what I understood was a noble as could be. But I heard from Jack about nobles before, you know. Nobles, they fancy nice clothes, colours and point lace but he also told me they sometimes wore simpler clothes that blend in the masses. So it’s only when I found holes on all of their coats that I thought… a noble would have bought a new one, yes? That’s when I realized for myself that they were thieves. Because they were still rich. See, the adventurer I had seen the days before was not carrying anything more than a bottle of ink, a moleskin notebook and a handful of money in his sash. Adventurers are poor by definition.

“My very first encounter with thieves!” I smiled, remembering more of comrade’s stories and playing with a huge diamond ring that would easily fit on my head like a crown. In the same pocket I had found a jewel necklace large enough for me to wear like a dress. Leaving these two treasures behind, my interest quickly switched to something that was left on the nightstand. A little round contraption that started moving as soon as I touched it. I thought it was metal at first, but it bended and danced and morphed and when it stopped, I heard a voice inside my head.

Clean.

“What, you want me to polish you or something?” I asked dumbfounded. I had heard about artifacts but I didn’t know they could speak to you like they were people. The object started moving again, even faster than it was before. If it wanted to be cleaned, it would have to stop doing that. I searched around for something to rub it with and came back with a pure white satin glove.

Cursed.

The door opened and I jumped in surprise, dropped the glove and knocked the object off the nightstand. I didn’t hear it land: the thieves, back way sooner than I expected, expressed their shock in a loud and unanimous voice. As I told you before, humans don’t like the fairies. It’s out of fear, according to Jack, and they either run or fight. I tried to make them run. The magic object I was playing with the moment before had given me an idea.

“I will curse you!” I aimed to look as menacing as possible and stretched my wings wide, trying to get a ray of sun to shine on them. It normally makes a predator think twice before approaching.

“Tough luck, I’m already cursed! If anything ya gonna make it better!”

One more bad idea to add to the list of all the bad ideas I ever had before. Like that time when I fed an injured blueberry kiwi bird a handful of fresh peppers… You know how they already burst if they so little as catch the rising sun before reaching their nest? Imagine feeding them something hot. It took me two days to dig my way out of its blasted hole and it took it three weeks to grow back its feathers and its beak.

Back to the story: The thief who answered to my threats, the cursed one, walked in first. He was shorter than his friends and he looked cleaner as well. He didn’t seem cursed at all, from the outside. For a human, he looked good. Or maybe I just like red heads no matter the species… The three others followed and closed the door behind them before I could do anything to get out. They cracked their fingers. I did the same.

Cursed.

“So what’s it gonna be? A twenty feet long beard? Or maybe a biting plant in your pants? I can also call a thousand crows on your sorry heads and you’ll never hear the end of it.” My threats still didn’t look like they gave them anything to worry for. Where was the ‘humans are afraid of fairies’ I heard so much about?

Were they really scared of me, they wouldn’t have tried to catch me like an insect. I flew up and stuck to the ceiling, trying to remain out of reach, but it was too low to give me safety. They trapped me like a bird, except that they traded the net for a coat and I dropped to the floor like a rock. Swift, I crawled under the heavy leather, fingers crossed that they wouldn’t step on me with their big stupid feet and hoping to find refuge under the beds. The small man grabbed me by the waist the moment I popped out from under the coat. I bit him and tried for the window: it was locked. I spun on my feet to face the thieves, backing against the cold glass and I raised both hands like I was about to do a complicated magic trick.

We don’t even need to do that for the magic to work but I thought it worked well to intimidate someone. Except it didn’t.

“Enough! I am done playing with you!” I should have asked Jack what threats he came up with to get rid of people like them.

Cursed.

“Who’s playing with who? I believe, my sweet little lady, that you are the toy here.”

“And we been bored long enough trying to find a bloody cure to the boss’s curse,” smiled the tallest of them three putting the magic trinket back on the nightstand “that we might as well have a bit of fun wit’cha.”

He had a thin pointy face and small, mean eyes. If he wasn’t afraid of me, I on the other hand was very much afraid of him. His clothes made him look even longer than he really was. Like a tower. A pointy, mean looking tower.

“Don’t meet a damn fairy every day, after all.”

“And see, the thing with fairies like you…” I heard the small man’s voice right behind me as I ran along the window ledge “… is that you are quite fragile.”

#ash's journey #aster #writing #fairy #personal project #logbook #female artist #artists on tumblr #illustration #pelican #inn #candles #giant bird #female writer #a fairy's log #mouse

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disaster-aster · 7 years

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“And you’re way too fat to outrun them, I’m pretty sure.”

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(Hello new watchers!)

#art #sketch #fairy #crow #aster #jibby

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disaster-aster · 7 years

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The Beginning - Part 2

J i b b s

People think we can speak to animals, or so I heard from Jack. I believe he often enjoys fooling them and reinforcing that belief, but honestly, that’s a whole lot of buzzard crap. If anything, I’m only more used to seeing birds and animals of all sizes from up close, as we share the same space back home. I learned their habits and can read into their body language perhaps, but in no way have I ever had an animal speak to me.

But of course, humans will keep believing whatever they want. To be honest I think Jack’s idea of keeping them dumb on the matter is on point. The more stupid things they think they know about us, the better.

I met Jibby (or Jibbs, as I most often call her) on a stormy night… yeah, no. It was a regular day, regular weather, some clouds in the sky and the air smelled of fish. Someplace called Varra? Vienna? No. Vierra. I think. Those darned Humans and their funny names for places. How they even keep track of which town is called what, I wonder. I know they use maps, I’m not an idiot, but so many of them keep up with so many places in such ease, especially the adventurers. I sometimes feel like they ate one too many maps for breakfast. Whatever...

I was waiting for a handful of kids to get out of the way so I could fly from the tree I was sitting in to the other side of the dusty path drawn across the offshore village, aiming for a pie. I had seen a thin, hard looking woman place it on the edge of the window of her shanty to let it cool down, humming an air I never heard of and never bothered to remember either. The kids far enough so that they would have no chance of noticing the faint flutter of my wings, and nothing else but a shaggy dog and a young goose coming this way, I crossed the road. As I was about to land, and in my head I was going to do so in complete silence, a large black ball bopped me. I bounced in the air with a yelp, too fast and too surprised to flap my wings and ended up right in the middle of the pie, where the cuts are made in the crust to let the vapors out (something I learned watching humans cook in a tavern). My behind didn’t appreciate the warmth. I like the comfort of a snug nest as much as any other fairy my size, but that heat was a bit too much. It carried its way right into my clothes, on which the strawberry filling stuck as I jumped to my feet. The window opened fully, the bang of wood hitting wood rang in my ears and the shrill voice of the hard looking woman, no longer humming, startled me enough to push me back in the burning pie, short breathed and heart beating fast.

She had a square shaped face and a long, thin droopy nose, and she was close enough that I never really noticed the colour or the length of her hair. I did notice, though, that her breath smelled like fruits. She must had been eating the remaining filling as she waited.

“Ya bird’n ya death-damned pixie bittah git’ away o’ my pie or else!” she screeched. She sounded a bit like what I think a banshee’s cry would be. Jack met banshees, but I never did. I have no idea where they live and according to him, they are not all that kind to fairies either.

I looked sideways and noticed the so-called bird the banshee-woman was talking about. It looked more like a water filled balloon with a long grey beak than an actual bird. And the water balloon was stuffing itself as fast as it could, digging into the crust without as much as taking a breath. The woman’s hand swiped the air too close to my head for comfort and hit the balloon bird on the beak. It extended its wings with a condemning caw as it took off, sending a large gust of wind my way. With a curtain of hair now in my face, I instinctively grabbed its claw so it pulled me out of the pie in the process.

Fortunately neither of us was hurt, except for my slightly overheated behind. We landed much farther up the dusty road, under a bush filled with berries. The bird’s beak was still covered in fruit jelly. So was my backside. I must admit, I was worried about the bird’s weight. She (it was clearly a she, I don’t know how humans can’t make the difference between male and female) was unhealthy. So I took it upon myself to make her lose some of that fat. Just enough so she would be free to fly a reasonable distance without exhausting herself. She was not too keen with the idea at first, obviously, but I had seen a brother do something similar before. He simply tricked the birds into following him around. I found this to be stupidly easy with this one.

Jibby likes pebbles. I am still unsure what conditions a pebble must fill in order to become ‘the perfect pebble’, but Jibby likes pebbles. As a matter of fact, Jibby will go to great lengths to ensure that she doesn’t lose her favourite pebble. I simply stole the thing whenever I wanted her to fly or when I needed to take her attention off food. Somehow, we became friends. I don’t know if it’s because she thinks I’m just a smaller annoying bird who needs guidance, or if it’s because I stuck to her like tree sap for a couple of days. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me stealing her treasure. She gets very moody when I do that. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how this happened.

In any case I’m more grateful now to her than she’ll ever be to me, because soon enough, I would need her more than I ever could have imagined...

#ash's journey #aster #jibby #writing #fairy #personal project #logbook #female artist #artists on tumblr #illustration #pie #crow #fat crow #female writer #writer #a fairy's log

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disaster-aster · 7 years

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The beginning - part 1

L e a v i n g T h e I s l a n d

There’s a saying, when one of us is disappointed or disagrees with another, which goes: “Fairies can’t all bloom the same”. If you’re looking for a quarrel of some sort, you might add or reply something along the lines of “I suppose” or “unfortunately” in a judging tone. We tend to be proud of our line of birth, most of us, you see. I know I am. In itself, the saying isn’t supposed to be meant as an insult of any sort, but you know how it goes. Adages, especially the popular ones, the ones well known, are often twisted and changed, used in ways they were never intended for. I heard those as criticism directed to my pretty little self more times than I can count on my fingers, toes, and possibly every single strand of hair currently occupying my scalp.

Some say I am an unmindful, reckless, moronic brat. They usually end up covered in honey and downs. Serves them right.

Jack used to do the same.

I was born near Mother’s trunk, on the upper branches. Nice spot to wake up to, I believe, so long as you don’t fall down. As I grew up on the island, I often found myself going back to sit on that very same spot after a satisfying day of chores and visiting friends. Enjoyed the view, the sea and the unknown all around. The waves clashing against the sharp cliffs in a provoking roar. I knew there was more to the world than just the unvaried safety and dangers of this place. I wanted challenges, all the time. And the biggest one, the one I was really looking for, it was out there. Across the sea. Past the shelter of the high winds, in those lands I could only dream of.

I’m not the only one who left the island, mind you. Others did it before me. More will do so after me, too. Some out of obligation, and they’ll run back home immediately after, some, in smaller number, never to return.

I was 15 springs of age when I left and a whole 5 inches from head to toes, quite the regular size for my kind. I wasn’t considered an adult yet, but screw them all who said I was too young to go and explore on my own. Jack wasn’t an adult when HE left on an adventure. Figured I’d find him, he’d show me the ropes. “Worst that can happen, I’ll fall asleep someplace I shouldn’t and someone much bigger will sit on me and turn me into a fairy pancake.” I said jokingly to whoever had a different opinion than mine on the matter. I was adequate at magic, resourceful and cunning enough to do as well out there as Jack did. He always came back with such amazing stories, things he did and things he heard alike, I couldn’t let all that happen without experiencing some of it firsthand could I? And I wanted to hear the stories too. Have as many things to brag about when I returned.

So one morning I packed my stuff and left. I flew many tiring hours and, when I though my wings were about to give in, found a ship on which I hid until it reached land, comfortably curled up in the deepest carvings of the figurehead. I soon realized that salt water isn’t so kind to the skin, I never would have thought. Nasty, if you somehow can’t take it off. I didn’t really count how many days it took from the moment I found the ship to the moment it stopped to restock. I left soon as I figured the crewmen were too busy to notice my existence, knowing people aren’t too fond of us fairy folks.

I had no idea how much they really despised us, however. That, I learned later. A few days after I met Jibbs.

#ash's journey #aster #writing #fairy #personal project #logbook #female artist #artists on tumblr #illustration #sea #female writer #writer #a fairy's log

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