Glitter Isn't Always Pretty

By: LadyNightSky

Disclaimer: There was something bugging me about this story, but I couldn't pinpoint it, until I remembered that I haven't been writing disclaimers for it. So, I DON'T OWN WINX CLUB. Voila, instant fixage. :)

Chapter Three: Meet Layla, Princess Extraordinaire

September 11; At the medical wing

Dear Diary,

I might not have seen Icy that day, but the metaphorical shadows the Trix used to cause are back with a bang.

Early this morning, a little after dawn, I went for a walk along the edge of the Alfean Woods, and discovered a strange set of footprints newly implanted on the soil. They looked like they'd been made with hiking boots, and I followed them a ways into the forest, finally happening upon a clearing. There a girl with flowing brown hair lay on the ground, eyes closed.

I knelt beside her and shook her gently, trying to wake her up, and when I couldn't I waved a bit of porcelaen bark under her nose; having snatched up the bark from a small tree growing conveniently near by.

It woke her instantly, and she sat up, a bit dazed. I asked her what her name was, but she didn't seem to be able to hear me. She stared at me, not really seeing me, repeating the same phrase over and over again, "Darkar has the pixies, Darkar has the pixies…"

I cast a spell to make her light as a feather, and half dragged half carried her back to Alfea, where I immediately signed her in the medical wing.

Nurse Ophelia said she was suffering from Post-Winx Depletion Syndrome, then shooed me away, telling me that there was nothing I could do for the girl now and that I best hurry along back to my dorm.

When I got there, the girls were waiting, ready to snap at me for making them late for their breakfast. Before they could open their mouths, I rapidly related what I'd been up to that morning.

Eyes wide, they promptly linked arms with me, and we walked down to the dining hall together, dreaming up possibilities to who they girl was and what she meant by "Darkar has the pixies."

Musa, always the groundless dreamer, thought that she was a heroine from a distant realm, thwarted in her attempt to save the universe and suffering from the loss of her pixie friends to a monster named Darkar.

Bloom, the romantic, thought that she was a princess that was running from an arranged marriage, running to her true love and true friends, who she'd just discovered had been turned into pixies by a dark wizard named Darkar.

And Tecna, the practical one, said that she was probably just some girl that had gotten lost and was hallucinating from losing her Winx.

I must admit, I had agreed with Tec on this one. The girl certainly hadn't been attired like a princess or a heroine, more like a hiker that had been out in the wilderness longer than she'd planned.

All of us stopped by the medical wing after morning classes, and arranged ourselves around the girl's bed. Tecna ran a scan on her, deriving that she actually was a princess, Princess Layla of Tides, which was on the other side of the Magical Dimension.

What she was doing here, so far from her home, was a complete mystery. According to the scans, she didn't attend either Alfea or Cloud Tower (not that she looked like a witch) or Bexmount, the rather snobby exclusive academy for princesses located one magical forest west of Red Fountain (which Stella claimed was just a dumping site for princesses who couldn't make it into Alfea).

Suddenly, we all heard a small wail coming from the girl's (I suppose I'll call her Layla now) discarded pile of bedraggled clothes, which Nurse Ophelia had exchanged for a standard medical nightgown.

Musa, who was nearest the pile, bent down and extracted a tiny baby pixie with huge blue eyes out of Layla's hood. The baby immediately stopped crying and cooed happily as Musa rocked it. She looked at us questioningly, then placed it gently on Layla's bed. The baby crawled up Layla's arm, and settled on her head contentedly, falling asleep in a few moments.

Layla's face, which had been tense a moment ago, faded into an expression of relaxation, and abruptly, her eyes flickered open, scanning me and my friends quickly.

She lifted a shaking hand to her head, a gently picked the baby off, settling it on the bed beside her. She sat up, glanced around the room with the nervous expression of a rabbit that's been cornered by a troll. "I-I um, where-?" she stammered, her voice hoarse.

I stepped forward and smiled. "Hello, Layla. You're at Alfea, a school for magical faeries. We found you in the middle of the forest."

Her eyes widened, and rolled back into her head, and she collapsed again. I gasped, and hurried forward, but the Nurse bustled in again and demanded we all leave.

We left and-

Oh crap.

I gotta go. Something's wrong.

Flora

A/N: Yes, yes, it was very VERY short, and Flora would NEVER have said "crap", but I couldn't bear to put in "Oh gooey gumdrops". It made my eye twitch. I'll try and update soon; meanwhile, vote on what pairing you want: Flora/Helia, Flora/Riven, or Flora/OC.