Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!

IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF GLEEKATHON! - Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!

This story is a Genre swap of Hang & Bounce, a Sunshine Girls 2 series story originally posted on May 31st 2014.

"In Care Of"
Nora (AU!Beth)/Grace (OC), Emily (OC), Hailey (OC)
Sunshine Girls 2 series

Genre swap: Fantasy

When the sun drifted into the forest, they appeared. No one ever saw them or knew they existed at all, no one but the children, and for a very long time, there had been none of them about, none who would wander in. But then came the new villagers, and among them the small girl with the golden hair. Her name was Hailey Hudson, and one day she had seen something strange and beautiful out through the branches, and she had gone looking to discover what was out there, and she had met them.

There were three of them, and she had no understanding whatsoever of what they were, but they were not like her, that much was clear. To her, they were magic. At times it seemed they walked the earth, on feet of their own, but then they would lift away into the air and Hailey could not see that they had legs, or arms for that matter, more… wings, except they weren't that either. Sometimes they would be as short as she was, if not shorter, and then in the blink of an eye they were vast, giants, flying over the forest. And greatest of all, there was a light to them, like they lived of sunshine.

The first to come forward reminded Hailey of her mother, the same golden hair, the same smile. Her name was Nora. The second had hair the color of the earth, though she most often flew far, far from that ground. Her name was Emily. The last of the sunlight creatures of the forest was quietest among them, with hair like fire, and she had been the first Hailey had ever seen, the one who had drawn her to the forest. Her name was Grace.

The three were so glad, after so long on their own, to welcome the young girl into their forest, and there Hailey returned, time and time again, to see her friends, to see what they could do. They were magic to her, and she never told anyone about them because she wanted them to be her secret. She was young still, and maybe someday she would understand the truth of it, that for how much they were magical to her, she was that and more to them in return.

They were bound to the forest, and with no one coming to them, all they ever had were one another, the trees, the pond, the birds and the fish. But they were made for children to see, to foster the warmth and the joy of the sunlight which gave them life, and without them they lost something of who they were. They forgot what should have been so much a part of them, and what was worse was that they didn't even realize they'd forgotten.

But when Hailey Hudson joined them in the forest, it returned, a low burning fire made to blaze. And while Emily carried the child on her back and spun and flew with her up over the tops of the trees, her laughter rained down on those creatures below, and among them the sunshine girl's companions.

Nora looked to the skies, and the laughter alone was enough to draw her from the earth, floating and scrambling up one branch and another, getting closer, making her brighter, lighter… And then a thought struck her, one she hadn't thought in what seemed like forever… She thought about the one thing in her whole little universe, that shone brighter than the mother sun in her eyes, and that was her fire-haired friend, who she could just see now, laid out at the pond's edge, trailing her fingers over the clear waters, drawing the fish to come and say hello.

The golden creature drifted from her perch in the tree, like a leaf in the fall, until her feet showed themselves, and she sank into the water. Grace sat up, floating closer, smaller, until she was staring down at Nora's face, staring up from below the water's surface. She would look at her now, and she would know what the other creature had known, and she would smile, just as Nora gave the water only the slightest of kicks, and then she was airborne again, shrinking to match the shy one and meeting her with a kiss that left them sizzling and radiating, soaring and twining, until they caught to a tree, perched again.

"This was our tree," Grace looked about, as Nora skipped from branch to branch, laughing. "We came here, just us."

"Just us," Nora hopped and caught on to a higher branch, and Grace followed, until they sat straddling the same branch, facing one another.

"How long was it? How long did we forget?" Grace asked, shrinking now so much so that Nora could scoop her in the palm of her hand.

"Long enough, and never again," she swore.

"You can't promise that," the small Grace huddled at Nora's wrist. The blonde haired one beamed, reaching one careful finger to brush at the other's face.

"Let us forget for a millennia and I'll remember you at the slightest chance. Memory or no, I will never leave you, not now, not ever."

In a heartbeat the miniscule creature had grown and met the one she loved with a kiss that sent them toppling from their branch. But they didn't fall. They floated, held to one another, and they might have illuminated the whole of the forest until…

"Nora? Grace?" little Hailey's voice was calling from somewhere above, and the two sunshine creatures looked up, flying over the top of the tree until they were reunited with the third of their kin, with the child up on her back.

"Hailey doesn't believe she can fly on her own," Emily informed the other two with a knowing smile.

Nora and Grace shared a look, grinning, and they took off, flying side by side. Emily flew after them, over them, and as she spun about the small girl slipped from her back, gasping, then blinking. The sunshine girl had told it true. With the trio of them flying in formation around her, the human girl really was flying, just as they were, and if even one child out beyond the bounds of their forest could hear her laughter, then maybe, just maybe, Nora and Grace would never have to worry about forgetting one another ever again.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!