I haven't been feeling terribly inspired lately… I did this oneshot as a sort of "pick-me-up" to get me into the writing spirit again, not to mention that I wanted to write something instead of action for once. As always, feel free to point out any inconsistencies in my flow of ideas. I also have NO clue which genre I should list this under. All OOC-ness is intentional.
Disclaimer: FOP is not my creation, however some of the concepts in the following story are. Characters, setting, and some concepts are the property of Butch Hartman.
Days in the Sun
Rin Fang
Pallid clouds drifted across a transparent October sky. The sun shone a brazened gold through the turning and shifting leaves fluttering in the breeze. Birdsong, somehow displaced in this serene bubble of time and shifting paradigms echoed in the vacuum of innocent bliss. Autumn days, autumn days, shameless, honest autumn days were arrived in their golden splendor.
The contented coos of young children playing in the dusky streets, the gentle purr of engines against the pavement.
The aroma of amber sap, the quietness that distilled all of life's hardships in the bat of an eyelash.
Such were the flawless days in the sun for the teenage male passing under its protective rays, almost whittled into adulthood.
He wasn't much, just some lonely brown-haired fellow with lousy teeth and an ever-dwindling self-esteem. This species of young male, jocularly called "loser" by his fellow variety of animals, genus "High School Senior", was traipsing along like a wounded antelope. Although he was chordate, and his blood ran as strong and pure as his human DNA allowed he was rejected a long time ago, led to believe that he was below "omega" in a pack of "alphas". Essentially, an outcast, furious in his tumultuous youth.
Answering to the name of Timmy Turner, he was a born ugly duckling turned toad. A simpering wretch of a boy, who once hoped to start his life anew after he reached college, a cringing coward who dwelled on his ill fortunes and misdeeds.
But Timmy Turner was no creature to pity, for he was far luckier than the crying masses, lives shattered and left in an anomaly.
There was still a sun on his horizon.
To many people, magic is a conundrum, too metaphysical for the bland tastes of the average Tom, Dick, or Harry. To the herds of lemmings ambling their way along in blind bliss day after day, magic makes great material for fiction.
Magic was different for Timmy. It was his childhood, a spark of light in a graveyard of abuse and stupidity. It was what motivated him to strive for life years on end.
Now the sun was on the rifts in the hills. The eighteen-year-old let his backpack slip from his weary shoulders, and he fumbled for his house key as he loped to the front porch.
It was far too beautiful a day for the occasion.
Timmy removed his sneakers; they were heavy and weighed his heart down more than he could stand. He shoved the key in the lock, pausing to think before he turned the doorknob.
Whatever thoughts he wanted to have eluded him, so he continued on his death march toward his room.
He had a lot of homework—how inconsiderate his teachers were in light of his situation.
He didn't care. A day's worth of homewaste wasn't valuable in comparison to the end of life, as he knew it.
Timmy threw his belongings on the ground, and slammed the door shut. It was unusually quiet—his parents were on jury duty and he was far too old for any babysitter to come torture him. Without removing his shoes, he slogged up the stairwell, where his room lay looming like a gas chamber at the start of the hall.
There they were, his guardian angels, sitting on his bed. The two he could call his best friends, and his little brother.
The one who appeared to wear the pants in the relationship, a pink-haired woman carrying a rotund baby on her lap, clutched a fishbowl in her free hand. Her husband, wide-eyed and youthful, was maneuvering a suitcase twice as big as he was. These angels—creatures believed mythical—or fairies looked somber.
The grown male, who called himself Cosmo, was sniffling, hiding his face under the luggage. Wanda, his wife, was doing the same.
Eighteen was the worst year for fairy godparent and child alike, because the day the latter turned adult, he was deemed too old to believe in magic.
So the fairies returned to their homeland, waiting maybe a hundred years or so to find a new godchild, and the child forgot about their existence, only recalling warm feelings.
"Hey, sport," choked Wanda. She turned her head toward the window, laying her cheek on the sill. "Are you ready?"
Timmy took a few steps toward her. "Are you?"
Cosmo dropped his head, shuddering. "We do this a lot."
He wasn't exactly the prosaic type, so he stared blankly on while Wanda talked.
"Timmy, the truth of it all is that you aren't our son, no matter how much we'd like to believe. When you were nine and suffering, we were sent down from our world to offer you guidance and support. But really… we're not allowed to love you. Taking care of children is our job, not our hobby. It's not like we picked you. As a matter of fact, us fairies view humans as inferior creatures. Call us stable hands, if you may."
Timmy flinched; Wanda shook her head.
"But in lieu of such truth, you were a good kid. You might have proven our biased race wrong."
Wanda didn't usually speak like this. Her speech sounded tape-recorded, rehearsed.
"Humans are stupid, but interesting," she continued, fumbling through her pocket. Something was materializing in the room; it took the form of a taxi without wheels.
Timmy knew how it worked. At this moment, his memories would be erased, and his fairies would immediately be whisked into the magical car, taken away forever and ever.
But the situation looked different, somehow.
The floating car was there, the fairy at the wheel was impatiently tapping his fingers against the dashboard.
There were others in the car.
One by one, they exited, faceless figures in white lab coats surrounding Wanda.
The lady herself was testing out a syringe, and Cosmo was wincing in the corner.
Why would Wanda need a…?
"Don't feel sad about us leaving," she muttered, advancing on him. "You won't remember us. In fact, saying good-bye is almost like… falling asleep."
Timmy's eyes widened with shock. He didn't even have a passing opportunity to save defend himself as she sunk the needle in his arm.
Cosmo started to scream, but after catching her disapproving look, shut up, staring on in muted horror as Timmy collapsed from the anesthetic. He hit his head on the bedpost, and crumpled like a limp rag to the floor.
"Be kind, professor!" he shouted.
The men behind Wanda moved around her and picked Timmy up, throwing him in the trunk of the taxi.
"Excellent work," said one to Wanda before getting back in. "Report back to the lab at twenty-one-hundred hours."
"Thank you," she answered sedately, parsing her words. "I will."
"Ah, you should be rewarded handsomely for your research. This one, however…" He pointed at Cosmo. "This one seems to have not made any effort with his job. We might have to take him to see the Fairy Council."
"What?"
Cosmo's knees buckled, and he quivered in fear, a cold sweat taking over the whole of his anatomy. "Not the… not them! I've done my research, I swear!"
"Where is it?"
"It's… it's… um."
"Exactly. You never do your job well, Cosmo."
"I swear I have my research! I'll give it to you tonight when we return to the lab!"
"Oh?" The man snickered. "All right then. But remember, it's next to impossible to fabricate nine years' worth of information in a few hours. And no hocus-pocus, either. We're monitoring you." With a final grin, he rolled up the window, and the car with the driver, the men, and Timmy dematerialized.
The sun was dipping below the hills. Now purples blended into the reds and golds, a chill settled on the air.
"Why?" Cosmo sunk down on the bed, hands at his forehead. Wanda clutched her baby tighter to her chest and joined him. They were silent for a moment, until she spoke.
"You're an idiot."
"I get that a lot. Wanda… how do you find the strength to supervise me, then ultimately betray my godchild in the end? How can you draw a weapon on him?"
"A syringe is not a weapon. Cosmo, you know that I'm just going to collect a few samples of DNA from him, maybe run a few tests on him. He'll be back home, safe and sound in the morning."
"Did you see his fear?"
"I did, but fear is natural."
"And why do we always bring our godchildren back home if we're just going to kill them later?"
Wanda tensed and dropped Poof in her lap, clenching her fists. "Cosmo, I'm just a scientist. I'm supposed to take human DNA and turn it into a virus, so that one day we may end humankind and take the world for our own! Fairies have always lived in fear, in persecution. Humans are close-minded creatures, they are… They wouldn't accept us…"
"Who says they wouldn't!" screeched Cosmo in reply. "The Fairy Council fed that to you, didn't they…?"
"You're being foolish! You're supposed to research the humans. See, you 'Godparents' latch yourself onto one child every so often, when you're supposed to be studying human habits. By just observing one child, you're expected to come up with a way to defeat the humans… See, just attacking them doesn't work. When mankind is threatened, they come together for some reason, become strong for a few weeks until everything blows by. But when you attack them from the inside, they fall apart. Take no prisoners, so we say… Cosmo, why did you stop keeping a log on Timmy's behavior after the third month of 'Godparenting'? You're so useless, it's no wonder I was asked to supervise you while you worked…"
"Useless? How is an act of mercy useless? We collect DNA every time we get a new godchild—isn't all this research enough? Humans shouldn't die! We should live in harmony with them--!"
"The Council doesn't like black sheep. They KILL invalids like you, idiot!"
"So we should do everything they tell us? You would give up Poof if they told you to?"
Wanda's mouth went dry as she looked down at their son, appearing quite afraid in the midst of their screaming.
"I… don't know how to answer that."
Cosmo quieted, twiddling his thumbs.
"The reason I stopped keeping that log was because Timmy told us that he loved us. Love, Wanda, love! He was the first godchild to have told us so. Wanda, you call me an idiot because I'm bad at school. Wanda, I call you an idiot because even though you know geometry and physics and biology, you never read up on the subject called 'humility'. This… even reminds me of a story. Everything we've been doing, what we've been talking about reminds me of this story I read once in a library book…"
"You… you…"
"This was a story about a country from a few decades ago. See, like Fairyworld, they were in a mess. Everyone persecuted them, everyone blamed them. Now, this country, they had a chancellor. A brilliant man he was. He came up with ways to jump-start the economy. He had them build illegal weapons, he had them make cars and tanks… but this chancellor was actually a despot. He wanted more than prosperity for this country, but to get what he wanted, someone had to suffer. So he blamed a religious group in this country. First, curfew laws, then Kristallnacht, then he made them live together like cows—in a ghetto. Everyone loved the chancellor, or shall we say Fuhrer? He even made his own Council, the biggest and baddest Council of them all. They were so proud of themselves that they wore red bands on their arms.
"Fuhrer was a greedy man. He didn't hate the religious group; he just HAD to get what he wanted—dominance. All our hatred, all our war, all our sins come from GREED, Wanda. Are you not greedy in that you want the world for yourself? Like that group in the ghetto, don't you view humans as inferior? You practically called Timmy a horse; when the war began in that country's area, not only did they take everything for themselves, but they took that group to special camps in CATTLE CARS! Others joined them, too. The lucky ones were gassed before their suffering began. Families were torn apart, disease ran wild, people were thrown into incinerators! And the best part? Scientists just like you ran experiments on these 'inferiors'.
"And Fuhrer never batted an eyelid. But when he couldn't get what he wanted, Mr. Hitler threw a hissy fit and took himself out."
"Cosmo." Wanda was speechless. The sun had set now, and everything was bathed in a mantle of black.
"Help came to this group—these Jews, these Gypsies—years after the pain began. Help came because help's world was threatened by a single bomb on a harbor. Even though millions died, they didn't care. They just ended the killing while they were defending themselves in their greed. But that isn't the end of the story. More invaders came, and a wall was built. On the west, democracy. On the east, communism. Like the wall between fairies and humans.
"But… Wanda. The wall eventually came down. The world helped this country, and they became peaceful and thrived. See… we think that using brutality to satisfy our greed is the answer. But it's not. The world came together and lived. The world clashed and it burned. You know, the only thing we need to satisfy all our problems is just to reach out to each other. There's no need for money, for invasion. All we have to do to achieve greatness is extend a hand every so often. Wanda, do you understand? It is possible to live in harmony, even if that harmony takes us thousands of years to find. So next time you write a report, write it on hope."
Cosmo touched her hand. Wanda shuddered, then was still. They stared at each other for a considerable amount of time after that.
"If the Council decides to kill me, I'm not scared anymore. I'm happy I finally said my mind. Wanda, if I could have one death wish… could you open your mind? Words alone cannot change our intentions, but action can. Talk to the simple fairies on the streets. Come together, and overthrow the Council. Maybe you can avoid violence. Could you do that for your weird, idiotic husband?"
Wanda looked out to the stars. "We once played in the sun, but there was no warmth. Now night has come, and there still is no warmth. But the sun will rise soon, and our days will begin again. The temperature will increase. Timmy really was a good kid."
Wanda smiled at Cosmo, Cosmo smiled at Wanda. Even Poof giggled.
Despite the frigid night, their days in the sun would someday begin again.