Storing Day

She looked at the scenery in front of her and smiled. It was being a busy day but everyone seemed so cheerful. Ria and Lonny were experimenting with some ideas she had had, as lively as always. She was sitting in a desk up in the balcony of the library, surrounded by books that Lonny brought to her from the shelves below. All the alchemists were flying from here to there, making the machines work and continuously storing new dust. The Factory wasn't always so lively, it usually was more of a quiet place, but that day was the Storing Day, which happened once a month, when they filled the reserves of pixie dust. It was a big event, and fairies with all kinds of powers came to the Dust Mill to help. The dust keepers carried pixie dust to the Factory, the water fairies helped with the river flow to speed the process, wind fairies made sure that not even a speck was lost, and the tinkers provided material and revised the machines in case some of them broke. To Zarina, who had more than enough motives to doubt people's capability of collaborating, that day of the month seemed magic.

"Hey, be careful with that! Do you want to make that machine explode?" Zarina turned in the direction of the voice just in time to see another tinker get scolded by Burrell, who was in charge of the repairing division. She always came to help on the Storing Day. The logical thing would have been for Tinkerbell to go, because of her good relationship with Zarina, but Burrell had asked to substitute her, nobody knew why. She was now talking to Glowen, a tall and blond sparrow men who had been of the firsts to become an alchemist. Zarina was starting to think that he was that "why" nobody knew. But well, since they had started talking Burrell's scolding had become a little less harsh, so no one complained.

"Zarina, Vidia wants to talk to you, she's outside helping the carriers.", said Glowen approaching her after he had parted with Burrell, who was still looking at him with a stupid face. Ria awoke her to reality, asking if she could help with a machine, and smiled innocently when Burrell noticed she had been caught and blushed. Zarina tried not to laugh because of it, her two black haired helpers had a pretty funny way of helping others.

"I'll go right now, thank you Glowen." She flied to the exit and grabbed her notebook from a small table that was near the door and revised the things she had been noting during the morning, while she walked outside. Vidia was controlling some small twisters she had put on the edges of the road to prevent the dust from falling to the ground.

"Vidia, did you want to see me?", shouted she to the fairy.

"Ah, Zarina, here you are!" She told Zephyr, the other fast fairy, to replace her and descended to meet with her friend. "Hey, you should tell that tinker friend of yours not to stick her nose in someone else's work. Can you believe she came here to tell me that my tornados should be larger? Who does she think she is?" She was probably talking about Burrell. Everybody knew Vidia wasn't too friendly with the tinkers, but in this case she and Tinkerbell agreed in their hate for Burrell. Tink's reasons were that she thought Burrell was after Terrence because she had seen them talking "too friendly", although the true reason was that they had been born almost at the same time and they were good friends. As for Vidia's reasons, you could say their characters didn't match: Burrell believed in the hard work (sometimes "too hard" work), and Vidia believed in the importance of one's gift. So what hadn't been enough to prevent Tink and Vidia from becoming friends, had ended up creating a awful relationship between her and Burrell. None of their friends cared much, because in the end their fights were nothing more than words, and Zarina almost enjoyed seeing how the two fairies criticized each other for the exactly same things.

"Did you call me only to talk about Burrell?", said Zarina.

"Of course not, she's not worth wasting my time with." She was truly angry, how cute. "I called you because Cathy was looking for you." Cathy was a chubby and red haired fairy who worked in the tinker's library.

"Where is she?", asked Zarina.

"She's waiting for you up there.", answered Vidia while pointing to the top of the hill behind the Dust Mill. "You know, she doesn't like crowded places.", added the fast fairy while putting one finger on her head and rotating it to say that she believed the librarian was crazy. Zarina didn't like it, although she also thought that Cathy was a very peculiar person, but she laughed a little when she realized that Vidia's gesture had been exactly the same as Burrell's when she talked about Cathy. They truly were alike. "That must be why they are always arguing", thought the alchemist as she parted with Vidia and flied to the top of the hill.

She reached it in no time. Up there the voices of the fairies below were only a quiet murmur, and she could easily hear Cathy's wings flapping rapidly, she always did that when she was nervous. She found her standing on the road that leaded to the sunflowers field, holding a big book with both her hands.

"Hi Cathy, what brings you here? Vidia told me you were searching for me?" The fairy tried to answer but she was so nervous her glasses almost fell from her tiny nose, and she had to leave the book on a rock to put them back. Zarina waited patiently.

"I… I didn't know wh… who I must tell th… this, bu… but you are in charge of tha… that p… p… pirate, no? A… and I tho… thought you would be he… here, so I came…" Zarina was starting to lose it.

"What happened Cathy, did James do something?"

"Y… you k… know I do… do… don't like to complain…" That was a total lie, Cathy always came to her claiming that her fellow alchemists had damaged the books she had lent to them, and for what she had heard from Tinkerbell she did the same with everyone. And the worst part was that almost all the times the culprit was none other than her pet, a silkworm who "worked" in the library. "bu… but the other day", resumed Cathy. "I… I was in charge of him a… and whe… when he left I found that someone had damaged thi… this book." She picked the book and opened it to show the inside pages to Zarina. The alchemist looked at it and then sighted.

"Don't you think this look more like worm bites?", she said. Truth was, there wasn't a page of the book which hadn't been eaten by the worm. Cathy blushed and then she passed some pages to show her another think.

"N… no. I… I mean this one." Indeed, the page she had stopped in hadn't been eaten. In fact, there wasn't any page, someone had ripped it off. "Thi… this was su… supposed to b… be a map o… of the Hollow." Zarina looked at the book, and then she turned to look down below, to where all the fairies were working peacefully. She wouldn't let that magic day go to waste.

"Thank you Cathy, you are a big help. Don't worry, I'll take care of it, we'll make sure he pays for doing that to your book." And then she left to the Pixie Tree. Cathy looked at her and then opened her wings. She rarely used them, but the book was too heavy to walk with, so she had no other option. It took her a big effort, but finally she could open her two enormous wings, which were three times larger than normal ones. It was rare among fairies to have such big wings, so she tried not to show them often, but they were very useful for carrying heavy things, and that's why she had been assigned the librarian's post. She didn't like leaving the library because it meant showing her secret to others, but she was happy to know that the evil who had done that to the book was going to be punished. "I hope Wormy isn't feeling lonely, he's such a good boy…".

James was working at the tinkers shelter, packaging the materials that were going to be delivered to the Mill. He would have had to work harder in the Mill, but there were a lot of people there and it would have been easy to lose sight of him, so they had decided to keep him in a safer place. Zarina was now fling towards his cell on the road to the courtyard to retrieve the map she was sure he kept there, when she saw a watcher flying at great speed.

"Horace! Where are you going?" The sparrow men stopped midair and tried recovering his breath. He seemed very nervous, and Zarina started to fear the worst.

"Zarina, glad I met with you. I'm on my way to see the Queen, the pirates have returned!" She felt depressed. Suddenly the map's accident wasn't important anymore, her day was ruined anyways.

"I… I'm going then.", said Horace as he started to fly again.

"Wait! I have something to ask of you." The watcher looked at her suspiciously but listened. "If possible", said Zarina. "make it so that James doesn't know what's going on. I have reasons to think that he's scheming something, and if he knows his crew is coming he'll try to run away for sure."

"So what should we do?"

"Tell Clarion to alert everyone with discretion. Suspend the Storing Day but make it like it has already finished. I'll distract James so you all can start preparing the defenses. It's very important that everyone remains calm, do you understand?"

"Yes, no problem." And then he left.

Tinkerbell saw Zarina arriving at the shelter and immediately thought something was wrong, her friend never left the Mill in days such as that.

"Zarina, what brings you here? Is something wrong with the materials we send you?" The fairy wanted to tell her friends about the pirates, but she noticed James looking at them so she answered casually.

"No, nothing wrong, I just wanted to see how you were doing here.", she said while dragging Tinkerbell apart to talk to her privately.

"What happens? Why can't the others hear?"

"Tink, the pirates are going to attack us again." Her friend looked at her for a while and then to the workers at the yard.

"And you don't want him to know."

"Cathy found a book that was missing a page with a map of the Hollow, and she has reasons to think that James was the one who took it."

"And you think if he knew the pirates were coming he would try to run away."

"Exactly."

"So, what's your plan?"

"Horace has already gone to warn Clarion and the ones at the Mill. They will start preparing for the counterattack while we distract James. We'll make it so that it seems the work here is finished, and once he has returned to his cell we can stop pretending."

Tinkerbell nodded and they both walked to the yard. She left to talk with Fairy Mary, who was in charge of the team which had remained, and Zarina went to were James was. When he saw her, she would have sworn that he looked happy. He was planning something for sure.

"Hi James, how are your labours today? More suited to your physical condition?" She was trying to tease him, she felt safer dealing with his angry self. But, to her surprise, James's mood did not decline.

"It truly is good to have some easy jobs from time to time." He seemed truly happy, it was almost creepy. She tried her next trick.

"Tink told me that you are almost finished here, so I thought we could have lunch together." For some time now James had been avoiding spending time with her alone, and he hadn't been in the Dust Fabric for three days. Zarina had deduced he thought that convincing her friends was still more efficient than a direct combat with her, so having lunch the two of them alone had to be a bad thing for him. But, instead of the pretended smile full of hate she had expected to see, James's eyes shined with happiness.

"As you command.", answered the pirate while he took a new load and carried it to the packaging zone. There was no doubt, he was planning something. But she couldn't stop her heart from beating faster as she blushed. She was prepared for the angry James, but not to see how happy he was at the thought of having lunch with her, she hadn't seen that coming. She tried not to seem too happy herself.

"Ok then, I'll come to pick you up."

"James, work's finished here.", said Fairy Mary, followed by Tinkerbell, who had just informed her of the situation. "We don't have any other tasks for you this morning, so you'll wait in your cell until lunch time." James left the pieces he was carrying and sighted. It was obvious that he didn't want to return to the cave, but he didn't protest either.

Two fairies came and were about to tie him but Zarina gave them a warning gaze and they left the ropes and just escorted him to the road that leaded to his cell. They never tied him now so if they were to do so he would notice something was off. James entered the cave and then they heard someone shouting. It was Fawn, who was flying towards them.

"Zarina, we can't wait any longer, the pirates are almost here!"

Zarina quickly turned before James could understand what was going on.

"Tink, close the gate!", she shouted, and the tinker quickly pushed the door so that James couldn't open it.

"Ok, now let's go.", said she to the others. "Are the catapults ready?"

"Yes, everyone is waiting for your orders.", answered Fawn.

Before they left to the tree she looked at James one last time and saw his hatful expression. "Yes, that's his true self", thought she to herself and then she sighted and followed her friends to the battle.