Strange Magic Week is a tumblr event, which this year lasts from Monday August 15th to Sunday August 21st. The challenges/prompts (and what I did with them) are as follows:
1. Fairy Tale of creator's choice AU (I did a crossover with Thumbelina, where the two fairy kingdoms have diplomatic ties)
2. Wedding/Arranged Marriage (Bog shows up at Marianne's wedding to Roland, and meets her for the first time after she cancels it)
3. Tiny People in Jars (Pare finds a snow globe and everyone is creeped out by it)
4. Dark Fantasy AU (What if feels like to be love-dusted)
5. Role Reversal (Dawn is the Crown Princess, Marianne is her little sister)
6. Babies/Next Generation (Goblins do not know where fairy babies come from)
7. SciFi AU (In a world of ever-singing magical beings, a music box is equivalent to an A.I.)
There were also a few 'bonus challenges' - Fairy/Forest Fashion; Minor Characters and/or Minor Pairings; Scenery/Location; and Original Characters - which could be used as a substitute for a challenge someone didn't like or in combination with another prompt. This story fulfills the Minor Characters prompt as well as featuring (what appears to be) a tiny person in a jar.
The bank of the North River was only sparsely populated, making it an excellent place to let a lizard run loose. Pare rode on Lizzie's shoulders as the giant reptile galloped and frolicked. She seemed to love the riverbank, with its warm stones and open spaces and all the low-buzzing mosquitoes she could catch.
Lizzie settled on a particularly wide, flat rock and closed her eyes. Pare dismounted to stretch his legs.
The sparkle of sunlight on water was almost hypnotic. Pare walked slowly around the edge of Lizzie's basking rock, appreciating the view of the wide river on one side and wider field of flowers on the other.
There was a glint of light where he hadn't expected it. The large elf lowered himself over the side of the rock, hanging by his fingertips for a moment, and went to investigate. He wasn't concerned about danger. Lizzie was just a shout away, and there hadn't been enough rain this summer to make the river a flood risk.
Whatever had caught the light was mostly round and about twice Pare's height, and splotched with mud.
He got close enough to make out a shape inside of it.
Pare gasped in horror.
He had never seen the cobweb trap in which the Bog King had imprisoned the Sugar Plum Fairy, but Sunny had described it to everyone. Under the mud was a clear orb, much like that one, with a woman frozen inside of it.
"Ma'am? Can you hear me?"
She didn't respond. She didn't move. Her eyes were vacant, her mouth in a small smile.
She was long-limbed, like every other fairy Pare had ever seen, but her wings were oddly stubby and rounded and … glittery? Her arms were outstretched, and she balanced on one toe, the other leg reaching behind her. Her purple dress flared as though she'd been paralyzed while dancing.
The shell of the trap was scratched and chipped, and the orb seemed to be mounted on a pedestal.
Maybe it was some old goblin hunting trophy, thrown away now that the Dark Forest and Fairy Kingdom were officially allied.
Pare shook off that horrid thought. He knocked tentatively on the sphere.
"Hold on, Ma'am. My name is Pare, and I promise I'll do my best to help you."
He couldn't reach though to pull her free, the way Sunny had described … Could he smash it open? Or would that harm her somehow?
Maybe he could rig up some kind of harness and he and Lizzie could drag the trap back to the village. There had to be someone somewhere who could help. Or maybe he should take her to the Dark Forest? It did look a little like a goblin trap, so maybe someone there would be able to free her.
He set about getting the trap out of the dirt it was partially buried in. Pare got a thick twig from under a nearby bush and started coaxing it under the sphere, hoping to lever it free rather than having to dig. He pulled down on his lever and it snapped in two.
If he had some rope, Lizzie could probably pull it loose. Maybe.
This looked like a bigger job than one elf could handle all alone.
"Lizzie?" Pare called. She sauntered off the rock and nuzzled him. He scratched under her chin. "Somebody's trapped in this thing. Can you guard them for me while I go get help?"
Lizzie put a claw on the trap's pedestal and raised her head proudly.
"Thanks. I'll be back as quick as I can."
The area swarmed with elves. Within a few hours, they constructed a rough but stable scaffolding and were hoisting the trap out of the mud.
The agitation created a swirl of white chunks inside the orb. Everyone gasped and went still, watching in case this was some sort of magic and the fairy woman was about to awaken. She didn't move.
Once the trap was in the air, a waterproof sheet of tarp was pulled under it to prevent anything else from being sucked into the mud, and a cart, usually used for transporting heavy barrels of fruit preserves, was rolled under the orb.
The ropes were carefully and unevenly lowered, so the pedestal, which had been at a slant when Pare had found the object, sat level on the bottom of the cart. The white chunks floated about once more, and slowly settled around the woman's foot.
A few goblins had been in the village when Pare arrived, and they had joined the rescue party. One tapped their claws against the sphere. There was a chime.
"It's glass," they announced. "Whatever this is, it's made of glass."
One of the elves wiping the mud from the orb gasped.
"There's an inscription over here! Look at this!"
Painted in flaked gold on the base was the phrase, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Under this, in smaller, capitalized letters, were the more nonsensical words, NUTCRACKER BALLET.
"So … we should ask Sugar Plum about it?" Pare guessed.
"I don't know what the heck this thing is," Plum announced, "but she's a statue. It was sweet of all of you to worry, though. I guess since my name's on it, you can just leave it here."
Forever after, those who visited the Sugar Plum Fairy in her magical workshop avoided looking at the eerie statue, frozen mid-dance step in her glass prison. Unknown to anyone else, Plum covered it with a sheet most of the time – it reminded her a little too much of her own time as a prisoner. But it amused her to see people glance at it and then hastily look away.