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Stand Your Ground: Firebird Tears

Chapter 7

Blocked

Everyone snatched up some kind of defense. "Vidia, Sil, are you okay?" Scruffy asked, worried.

"Yes, I'm fine." Silvermist got to her feet.

Vidia nodded, curtly, staring at the overgrown spider. "What is that thing, Fawn?" she asked.

"A scorpion, I think." Fawn guessed. "I've never seen one before."

It took a few incredibly fast steps forward and stopped as everyone else backed up, too.

"Fawn, how do you scare away scorpions?" Rosetta whispered loudly.

"Plant lavender." Fawn said, quickly.

"It's too dark in here – I'll never get it to grow." Rosetta pointed out. "What else?"

"Get a cat?"

"That isn't going to work." Scruffy said, watching the scorpion nervously.

"I don't think it has to." Vidia stepped toward the scorpion. "I think he's afraid of us. Fawn, can you tell him that we aren't going to hurt him and that we're just passing through?"

Fawn obeyed, and the scorpion scuttled away.

"That was strange." Scruffy remarked.

"Yeah, a friendly animal." Vidia seconded, sarcastically. "Really strange."

Silvermist picked up the lunch that she had dropped. "You see? There are some nice cave creatures." She sat down on a rock after making sure it was one.

"Yeah." Vidia sat down on the ground, leaning against Scruffy.

After they finished lunch Rosetta turned to Tinkerbell. "So where are we off to next?" she asked.

"I guess we just keep going straight."

"There isn't any straight." Fawn pointed out. "Straight is into a wall. There's only a right or a left."

Iridessa cleared her throat for attention. "I happen to have copied the map from the book of legends so that we could get into the right cavern." She pulled a piece of parchment from her bag. "It says here – that we go straight." she looked at the wall. "But we can't walk through rock."

"It isn't actually a solid wall." Tinkerbell observed. "It's a wall of unconnected rocks, and it sort of bulges out at the bottom."

"Maybe they piled up some rocks to keep someone from following them." Rosetta said.

"That doesn't make a lot of sense." Vidia shook her head. "The fellow was getting Firebird tears for his injured friend. He wouldn't take time for anything unnecessary."

"Maybe there was a cave in!" Fawn exclaimed.

"And the fairies had to wait to get in, so they carved themselves some chairs." Scruffy suggested. "It all fits!"

"Except for why the rocks aren't moved now." Vidia pointed out. "There should be a passage."

"Unless they never got through. The bats must have chased them out here, and then there was a cave in, and they tried to go back for the vial, but couldn't." Fawn suddenly said.

"So how do we move the rocks to get back through." Vidia asked. "We don't have a lot of time."

"I'll bet some pixie dust would move them." Iridessa spoke up, and turned to rummage in her bag for the bags of pixie dust.

"Hang on!" Scruffy stopped her. "The other fellow who came here before was a fairy, too, so he must have used fairy dust, and he didn't get through. We don't need to waste dust on something that won't move."

"We really don't have a whole lot of dust." Tinkerbell agreed. "We can move them the old-fashioned way. They aren't too big."

"All right." Fawn skipped the the wall and pulled a rock off the top. "Gangway!" she shouted, jumping back as a few other small stones tumbled off.

"Be careful, sugar!" Rosetta exclaimed, stepping back.

Tinkerbell got up. "Come on. It won't take too long if we all pitch in."

"Is there anything I can do?" Scruffy asked.

"I don't think so." Silvermist replied, "Just rest up – there will be something that you'll have to do that we can't sometime soon."

The fairies worked at moving rocks for at least an hour.

"Time for a break." Tinkerbell called. "We can't keep moving rocks forever without rest."

"That's what I'm worried about." Scruffy said, suddenly, as the others sat down, panting.

"What do you mean, Scruffy?" Vidia leaned against him.

"I can't see any difference in how the rocks look now from when you started. What if the cave in wasn't just in the passage? What if no one ever got into the cavern again because it all caved in? The whole Shadow Shelter?"

"That would mean that the vial was crushed." Iridessa realized.

"And the tears would have evaporated a long time ago." Rosetta shook her head. "No. I'm certain the cave in is only in this little bit of tunnel. We'll clear this, and keep walking until we get to the vial."

"Thanks, Ro." Vidia smiled. "But you don't need to coddle me. It was always a futile quest. It just gave me something to do while I waited for the fifteen days to be up."

"I don't think so." Silvermist agreed with Rosetta. "She's right. If it had been an enormous cave-in, it would be recorded in the history book, and they didn't say a word about it."

"See?" Rosetta said, obstinately. "We just have to keep going, and then we'll break through to the other side."

"Or if it takes too long to dig through we could check one of the other tunnels and see if they connect to the cavern where the vial was dropped." Fawn suggested.

"Either way, we'd better get back to work." Rosetta stood. She tugged at a stone on top, but it wouldn't come, so she yanked on one in the middle. It came out beautifully, and Rosetta set it on the ground, but then the other rocks shifted.
"Ro, look out!" Vidia shouted, then flung herself on the other fairy, knocking her out of the way.

Some of the rocks crashed to the ground and dust filled the air.

"Rosetta, Vidia, are you okay?" Tinkerbell cried.

"Where are you?" Silvermist walked into the cloud of dust then retreated, coughing.

"I'm okay." Rosetta called. "Vidia, are you all right?"

Silence.

Rosetta frowned, worried. "Vidia?