Author's Warning: Not my best work. And I was too lazy to fix it. Rated T for violence and the author's personal paranoia.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Except for the stuff I made up.

"Kirsty! Rachel!"

The voice was thin and old, and wobbled with fear. Yet at the same time, it sounded somehow familiar. Kirsty knew this voice, but she could not pick out how. It was a woman's voice, and for a second Kirsty wondered if it was her mother or even her grandmother. No, she said to herself, Granny's dead. And my mother would never be haunting my dreams.

Then in the dream, for that is what it was, an image appeared. It was fuzzy and gray, but through the haze Kirsty could barely see the hunched form of a woman, sitting on a glass bench and held down by blue glass shackles. The woman's hair was white, and her clothes were tattered. She coughed, and the chains on her wrists and ankles rattled. And that's when Kirsty realized that the cuffs were not glass. They were ice.

The entire cell was made out of ice and tightly packed snow, and the only light came from a flaring blue torch outside of the cell bars. Kirsty wondered how they could burn without melting the entire prison, but this was a small worry and was able to be ignored. Because at that moment, the old woman started to move.

Her head tilted up slowly, and their gazes locked. The face of the woman was pale and wrinkled, and her eyes were hollow. "Free me," she rasped, her misty gray eyes flaring brightly. "FREE ME!"

And Kirsty awoke from the dream with a gasp.

She now recognized the old woman. It had been Queen Titania, ruler of Fairyland.

What to do? she asked herself. It had been almost three years since their last fairy adventure, and she had pretty much given up on the fairies. She was sixteen and in high school now; why would she burden herself with the knowledge that fairies were real? And could they be? She had dismissed the notion as a figment of her childhood's young, imaginative, and quite frankly ADHD mind, albeit a very intricate figment that pretty much spanned her entire childhood. Her friendship with Rachel had slowly faded away as both girls became more preoccupied with school and their closer friends.

But could the friendship be rekindled? And was it just a dream?

Both questions were answered when her cell phone rang. Kirsty snatched it up off her bedside table and answered before the second ring, but she didn't even have time to say hello before the girl on the other end of the line shouted, "Did you just see that?"

"Yeah," said Kirsty, somewhat flustered at Rachel's sudden outburst. "I did."

"So they're real?" asked Rachel. "The fairies? They weren't just our imaginations?"

"I'm not sure," replied Kirsty. "It could just be our memories, coming back to us –– "

"I don't think so. I've never seen anything like this before. They have to be real, Kirsty."

Kirsty couldn't take it anymore. She was confused, and tired, and to boot she was having another migraine. "Rachel?" Her childhood friend kept talking about fairies. "RACHEL!" The other girl finally stopped.

"Yes, Kirsty?"

"Do you hear yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're talking about FAIRIES. Fairies! You're sixteen, Rachel. You're going into your junior year of high school in two weeks. And you're talking about FAIRIES. Grow up. You're not a kid anymore."

There was a stony silence over the phone, then Rachel's voice, small and lonely, asked, "What?"

"It was just a dream. Our imagination. Face it. There's no such thing as fairies, or goblins, or Jack Frost." For a moment, Kirsty wondered if Rachel had hung up. "Rachel?"

"I'm still here," replied Rachel in a voice as cold and hard as ice.

Kirsty wasn't sure what to say. She had never heard Rachel's voice that harsh. So she said nothing, and Rachel said it for her.

"You might have given up on them," she said. "But I'm going. I'm using my locket, and you're welcome to follow me."

There was a silence, and then a click. Rolling her eyes, Kirsty threw her phone onto her bed. So what if her childhood friend still believed in fairies? She could just keep doing that, and they'd all see how that went. Kirsty almost looked forward to the moment when Rachel would call her back crying, saying that the "magical lockets" that held the "fairy dust" didn't work. She knew exactly what she'd say. "I told you so."

She started getting dressed, in jean shorts and a t-shirt. But right as she was about to enter the bathroom to do her hair and makeup, a golden glimmer caught her eye. Curiously, she turned. It was coming from her jewelry rack, from a particular golden locket…

After their adventure with the seven Color Fairies, Rachel and Kirsty had been given two matching lockets that were filled with emergency fairy dust. Through their other adventures, they had always worn these lockets everywhere, just in case they needed a little fairy magic. If opened, the fairy dust inside would shrink the two human girls down into fairy size, sometimes also sending them to Fairyland.

Puzzled, Kirsty made her way to her jewelry stand and took the locket off its hook. She had put it up there years ago, when she made up her mind that fairies weren't real. She had never worn it again. The soft golden glow emanating from the golden pendant stirred a distant memory, and Kirsty tentatively stroked the sides. Where was the latch?

Her finger pressed against the tiny latch, and the locket popped open.

There was a noiseless explosion, and iridescent glitter sprayed out of the tiny golden locket. Kirsty yelped and stumbled backwards, dropping the necklace. Some of the glitter cascaded down on her, and she touched some of it curiously. No, it wasn't glitter. It was…fairy dust.

At that moment, everything around her started swirling into colors.

She found herself being swept down a rainbow, and involuntarily she screamed and shut her eyes. When the feeling of falling wore off, she cracked open her eyes. She was standing in the middle of a beautiful garden that looked like it had been taken right out of a fairytale. Everything was green and blooming, and warm sunlight filtered through the fruit trees above. Through the spaces in the leaves of the trees, Kirsty thought she could see a castle's white spires. Birds sang sweetly, and somewhere she could hear a bubbling fountain. The cobblestone pathway felt comfortingly cool under her bare feet. She could smell the faint, springy scent of flowers, fruit, and freshly cut grass. But somehow, there seemed to be an invisible haze of sadness and regret, making the fairy garden feel more like a graveyard.

"It is beautiful, yes?"

Kirsty swerved around. But as she did so, her hand brushed against something behind her, and she felt the strangest of feelings. Whatever she had touched, she could not only feel it in her hand, but also in whatever it was she touched. Almost as if it was another part of her body. Momentarily forgetting the voice that had caused her to turn around in the first place, Kirsty craned her head to see what it was she had touched. She saw a pair of beautiful silver fairy wings, and reached out a tentative finger to touch them. Her finger brushed against it, and she could feel her touch. These wings were a part of her body.

"You have grown so much, Kirsty Tate," the voice said again, and Kirsty tore her eyes from her wings and towards the source of the voice. She saw an old man, dressed in red robes and a golden crown, sitting on a bench. She scrambled for the name, which was buried under years of other memories and facts and words that had accumulated over the long period of time that had lapsed between her last Fairyland adventure and this moment. "King…Oberon?"

The faintest trace of a smile appeared on the old man's wrinkled, weary face. "It has been a while since you have last come. And you, Rachel Walker. You are such a lovely young woman now."

Kirsty turned and jumped when she saw Rachel suddenly appear next to her. Rachel also had wings, and wore her golden locket around her neck. "Thank you, your majesty."

"Rachel?" gasped Kirsty. "How did you get here?"

"Same as you," replied Rachel. "I…I think. Did you use your locket?"

"Well, not…purposefully," said Kirsty, hesitating before the last word.

Rachel rolled her large blue eyes. "Enough with the pleasantries," she said impatiently. "King Oberon, what's wrong? Kirsty and I both had a dream that her majesty the queen was –– "

"Kidnapped?" the fairy king finished. "Yes, or so I recall…what did you see in your dreams?"

They told him.

"Ah," he said in his slightly dazed, somewhat distracted voice. "So you saw her in Jack Frost's dungeon. Bound with ice chains, you say? Then it is as I suspected. Come, let me show you how she was taken."

He led both girls over to a golden pond, and at the sight of the pond a bit of memory floated back to Kirsty. "I remember this pond," she said. "Isn't it the seeing pond?"

King Oberon did not reply, only stretched out his hand and waved it over the water. The golden water rippled, and when the ripples settled they saw an image. It was the image of a woman, who looked similar to the Queen Titania they had seen in their dreams except…younger, perhaps. Her hair was long and dark, and there were fewer wrinkles on her peaceful, smiling face. She was walking alone in the gardens where they now stood, with her face tilted up towards the warm sun.

Until the sun was blotted out by clouds, that is.

When the sudden gray clouds covered the sky, Queen Titania frowned. Leaves rustled, and the wind started to pick up. Snow crystals swirled on the breeze, and suddenly a pale blue figure dropped from the sky. He landed on his feet on the ground in front of Queen Titania, and they all saw his face. Jack Frost! The ice king was tall and cold, with an icicle beard, scowling blue eyes, white hair, and a blue face.

"Jack Frost," said Queen Titania calmly. "What a pleasure it is for you to drop in."

"Save the pleasantries," Jack Frost snapped in a voice like breaking icicles. He stretched out a long, white finger towards the fairy queen and before she could act, encased her in a giant cube of ice and carried her away on the wind.

The image in the pool rippled and faded, and King Oberon lowered his head sadly. "Without my beloved Titania," the king lamented, "fairy magic has lost some of its power. If she is not returned to Fairyland within three days' time, magic will fade entirely and fairies will become powerless. Even the magic used to create the images in the seeing pool is weak."

"What are we going to do?" asked Rachel. "And why did Jack Frost take Titania?"

"He took her to weaken us, but also for her gift of magic sight. Titania can sense when another fairy or fairy dust user is nearby, and can read their thoughts at will. Using her as a tool, Jack Frost has drawn this power from her and is able to detect when we send someone to rescue her. The only ones who are undetectable by this magic are humans or human hybrids."

"So you want us to rescue her?" asked Kirsty.

"Not alone," said Oberon. "Along with you I shall send one other, who was once a human yet knows the ways of magic. Her name is Serene."

"Serene?" Rachel repeated. "You mean…Serena the Salsa fairy?" They had met Serena, who was a Dance Fairy, in one of their previous adventures.

"No. I meant what I said. Her name is Serene. She was a human before she chose to join our ranks permanently and become immortal. She is not a complete fairy and uses a different form of magic that does not require fairy dust, but is instead a guardian and protector of our existence. She, with many others like her, help conceal the existence of Fairyland from human eyes.

"When do we get to meet her?" asked Rachel.

"Right now," said a new voice from above them. All three of them looked up. In the apple tree above them, perched nonchalantly on a branch with one leg dangling down, was a girl. No, not exactly a girl. Her ears were slightly tapered like an elf, and she had silver wings like a fairy, but instead of a wand, she held a long steel-tipped spear. She seemed about the same age as Kirsty and Rachel, but her dark brown eyes seemed centuries old. She was dressed in a strange mixture of clothing, with ripped gray jeans, knee-high black boots, leather fingerless gloves that went up to her elbows, and a light gray vest over a dark long-sleeved shirt. There was a black-handled dagger strapped around her left thigh in a black holster. Her short, unkempt dark hair and overgrown bangs framed an olive-skinned face. Her lips were curled in a sarcastic, mischievous smirk that Kirsty and Rachel recognized from the faces of devious, kleptomaniac kids who got sent down to the principal's office daily. "I'm Serene." She held out her hands as if to say, What now?

"Come on down, Serene," called King Oberon.

Serene yawned, stretched, stood up on the branch, and plucked a golden apple from one of the nearest branches of the tree she was in –– and this was a real, pure gold, twenty-four-karat apple, not just one of those yellow ones. As Kirsty and Rachel stared, she leapt from the tree, sailed over the golden pond, and landed on the cobblestone sidewalk in front of Oberon, Rachel, and Kirsty. "So these are the human heroes," she remarked coolly. "I expected more…well, more."

Kirsty gritted her teeth. Serene opened hers, taking a huge bite of the golden apple. Oberon glared at Serene and scolded, "Those apples are forbidden to eat to everyone except the royal Pegasus. You know that."

Serene swallowed and took another bite. "Okay."

"Serene is a bit… feisty sometimes," said the fairy king to Rachel and Kirsty. "But she is a good scout."

"I prefer the term 'covert operative'," interjected Serene over a mouthful of golden apple.

Oberon ignored her. "She has slipped into Jack Frost's ice castle many times. She will be a valuable resource on your mission."

"Uh, excuse me!" interjected Serene indignantly. "I am no one's resource."

King Oberon turned to Serene with his head cocked inquisitively. "Was there an objection, Serene?"

Normally if a person had been confronted in such a way by the fairy king, who had a reputation for throwing people into the palace moat when angered, they would have backed down. Serene didn't. "Yes, in fact, there was," she said. "You said I'm a resource to these two humans." The word resource was said in the same way that, in the same context, one might say portable latrine. "Encarta World English Dictionary's definition of 'resource' is somebody who or something that can be used as a source of help or information."

"Yes, exactly. I meant that you would help."

"Ah, but why did you say help? That is rule number one of working with or for me: I am a loner. I work alone, am absolutely in charge, or don't go at all."

"Emily the Emerald Fairy used up the last of her emerald's seeing magic to predict the outcomes of this mission. Her vision is hazy, but she reported that all foreseen possibilities involve Rachel and Kirsty as important players."

"All?"

"All except three," amended King Oberon. "One ended in the deaths of both you and Titania, the second ended in the death of just you, and the third…she said that she only saw a giant blue explosion. No. Kirsty and Rachel go with you, whether you like it or not."

"In this case it's the latter," snapped Serene. "They wouldn't know what to do if a hyperactive goblin charged them with a spear. I'd rather take my chances with the explosion."

"Kirsty and Rachel have proved their worth many times over," said Oberon firmly. "They have probably saved Fairyland more times in the past seven years than you did in your first seventy years."

Serene sniffed scornfully. "I highly doubt that. If they're so good, why haven't they been officially accepted into full-time Fairyland service? By the blazes, their wings are temporary! I'd bet you my spear that they don't even know how to take them off the easy way."

"The reason they have not been accepted is because they have families who remain oblivious," Oberon replied sharply.

Serene blinked twice but said nothing.

"Good," the king said, nodding. "I'm glad you three have reached an agreement. You should leave as soon as you can. Serene shall explain the plan. I shall be inside the palace."

King Oberon turned and strode towards the palace, leaving the two girls alone with Serene. She took a final bite of the apple and tossed the golden core over her shoulder and into the seeing pond.

"Why do you argue with King Oberon?" burst Kirsty before she could think differently. "If I or Rachel did the same thing he'd erase our memories and banish us from Fairyland."

Serene leaned nonchalantly on her steel spear. "That's because everyone else is replaceable. Me, I'm not. No one, not even the freezing Jack Frost himself, knows as much about these magical realms as me. I can slip unseen into the ice king's castle, steal his belt, and slip right out again before he even notices that his pants are falling down. And all while hopping on one foot and eating a bagel."

Rachel snorted. "Yeah, right."

"No really, I recorded it on my iPod, and it actually made Fairyland News the next day as the magical realm's first viral video. I could actually show it to you on the seeing pond, if you want…"

"Maybe later," said Kirsty, though she really wanted to know what pattern Jack Frost had on his boxers. "Weren't we supposed to do something in the ice castle?"

"Yeah, that," said Serene. "Sorry. Kind of attention deficit. So, with the ice castle, here's what I'll –– sorry, we'll do. I'll use a cloaking spell on all three of us, and you two will create a diversion in the north tower, drawing the sentries to your position and leaving me an opportunity to dive in and retrieve the subject. We'll rendezvous at –– "

"Whoa!" cried Rachel, throwing up her hands in mock surrender. "Slow down! English, please."

Serene scrutinized her curiously. "This is new for you, isn't it? This kind of mission?"

"This kind of anything," corrected Kirsty.

Serene sighed. "Well, I suppose I'll have to explain. In the past, when you've worked with the other fairies, you've treated Jack Frost like he was eggnog-drunk, correct?"

Kirsty and Rachel just stared at her, their eyes silently asking for a translation.

Serene sighed again. "Like he was stupid?"

Rachel's brow furrowed. "I never really thought about it, but…yeah. I guess. He did fall for some of our plans pretty easily."

"That's the thing. Those 'schemes' of his were never really meant to be the masterstrokes. They were meant to aggravate you, weaken you, draw you in, even eliminate some potential enemies. The real battle started when he kidnapped Titania."

"What's he going to do next?" asked Kirsty.

Serene shifted, sliding her hands down the metal shaft of her spear uncomfortably. "He'll keep her as long as necessary, and once we're weak enough, he'll gather the mass of his goblin army and strike. Frost knows that the majority of the fairies' magic relies heavily on the strength and well-being of Titania. Just to weaken us further, he might even kill her. And while we're mourning, he'll invade and take over."

"Just like that?" inquired Rachel, horrified.

Serene ran her fingernails down the spear shaft. "Just like that. Which is why it's imperative that we get Titania back ASAP. She was taken yesterday, in human time. But for Frost, that's enough to gather the army."

"Well," said Rachel impatiently, "are we going to go or not?"

Serene twirled her spear idly and balanced it over her shoulder. "Not just yet," she said. "It takes a bit more than just luck on your part and extreme stupidity on his part to get inside the ice fortress. For a full-on mission like this, there's more involved.

"To start –– your clothes? You really thought that you were going to invade the ice king's castle in t-shirts and shorts?" At this, Rachel and Kirsty looked down embarrassingly. Neither of them were even wearing shoes. Serene rolled her eyes. "Guess we're doing this the hard way." She muttered some words under her breath, then waved at Rachel and Kirsty. There was a bright flash of light, and when the girls looked back down, they were wearing outfits similar to Serene's, except with gray jeans in place of her brown leggings. They even had black knives just like hers, but no spears.

"That's better," said Serene. "And as for the knives –– they are both tools and weapons. Don't hesitate to use them."

Kirsty drew hers out and examined the blade. This was not the Fairyland she remembered. In her opinion, it was better.

"Another thing," continued Serene. "We'll be traveling under my cloaking spell. Do you think you two can stand being invisible?"

"Invisible?" the two girls repeated.

"I take that as yes," said Serene. "Moving on… here's the plan of action. Instead of the diversion tactic, because you two do not seem capable of such a thing –– "

At which both girls interjected with indignant "Hey!"s, which Serene ignored.

" –– I'll transport us to the castle, and we'll fly up through one of the windows in the main battlement walls. Taking Infiltration Sequence Nine-Three, we'll slip down to the dungeons under the cloaking spell and free the queen. Since I can't transport while we're within enemy boundaries, we'll have to all sneak outside the castle gates before I transport us back here. Kapish?"

Rachel and Kirsty didn't even try to interrupt. They just stared blankly at Serene. The hybrid girl sighed and pressed her knuckles into her forehead. "You follow me. I do the hard work. You say nothing and make no loud noises, otherwise you get a chance to use those daggers of yours."

"Oh," said Rachel and Kirsty in unison, mostly just to annoy Serene.

"So is everything clear?" Serene was obviously very eager to get going. "Can we go now?"

"Not yet," said Rachel. "Can I go to the bathroom?"

"No," replied Serene briefly. Before either of the girls could object, she held out her hand, closed her eyes, and began muttering inaudible words under her breath. A sphere of swirling, sparkling silver magic formed above her palm, floating and spinning. Serene's expression became more concentrated as her lips rapidly repeated the same, short spell over and over. Then the magic exploded in her hand and Rachel and Kirsty were engulfed in silver light. They shut their eyes from the intense brightness and felt themselves suspended in the air, falling through empty space and spinning.

*yawn* I hate chapter 1. Don't worry, it'll get better. I think.

Reviews are love...