VIDIA'S REVENGE
Chapter 2
Sitting in a tree early the next morning Vidia looked down on the tinker's work place. Homes surrounded the courtyard and workshop of the pots and pans fairies. The houses were made from twigs or milled wood and were held together with dried, twisted vines and rested on roots or on elevated ground as a stream trickled through the residential district of the nook. The fast flyer kept watch high up in a tree from a "y" in the branches; she rested on a leaf to conceal herself as her purple garb was too easy to spot from the ground. The camouflage was necessary as her repeated presence there would surely raise suspicions after the fact.
Why does everyone think tinkers are in any way equal to the fast flyers or even any other talent guild? Vidia asked herself. As far as she was concerned the Tinker Guild members were nothing special. They were little more than sweaty, smelly, low class manual laborers who should be kept in their place, namely this hole in the ground where they worked and lived. There was no glamour or necessity in their work. They wove baskets, carved acorn cups, made and mended pots and pans and on occasion built ridiculous machines that just got in the way of flying. Even doing those things didn't require any real talent, Vidia decided, they just swing hammers and tie vines around sticks and twigs, any fairy can do that.
If Queen Ree had any sense she would keep this caste at the bottom rung of all the guilds and elevate the fast flyers to the top. We're the most important talent anyway. The number of fairies in her guild was smaller than any other talent and all the nature talents that visited the mainland depended on the fast flyers in one fashion or another to complete their assigned seasonal work. These facts led her to erroneously conclude that rarity and necessity equaled prestige and that the fast flyers were deserving of special treatment on those virtues alone. Of course, in Vidia's world view being the most talented in her guild meant she would sit atop even the top dwelling fast flyers, which would make her the most important and influential fairy in all of Pixie Hollow and Never Land. It was a fantasy that nicely stroked her rebellious nature and self inflated ego. But she had a plan to complete so she shook off her daydreaming and went to back to monitoring that ditch where Pixie Hollow's bottom feeders dwelled.
"Now which 'hovel' belongs to my little tinker fairy?" she whispered to herself as she scanned the scene below. One by one, fairies began to emerge from their domiciles preparing for a day of hard work in the nook. Fairy Mary was the first to wake and emerge from her house. Vidia had to be especially careful around that one. The tinker overseer was a close personal friend of the queen's and wouldn't hesitate to relay even the slightest suspicion to her royal "pain in the wings" highness.
Shortly afterwards other tinker fairies woke and exited their homes in rapid succession over the course of several minutes. As she waited Vidia kept watching for Tinker Bell. That's when Vidia saw Fairy Mary flit over to one house in particular. This could be it, Vidia thought. The overseer banged on the door and yelled out, "Lucinda, wake up and get to work. You're always the last one every morning." Vidia grumbled, false alarm. A second later the hidden spy saw her quarry flittering in the air chatting with Bobble and Clank about something.
"Missed it, now I'll have to do this again tomorrow and I'm running out of thistles," Vidia said chiding herself. She was about to leave when a glint caught her eye. Peering almost straight down the irate fairy saw what she was looking for, a house made of twigs and branches wrapped with vines, covered in moss and topped with leaves that formed a roof. What made this house so special was that it was adorned with lost things. She smiled a wicked smile. Only a fairy obsessed with those clumsy humans would do something like that. Vidia had her target, but now she needed an approach.
As she studied the location of the house it all came together for her. Tinker Bell's home was the first and only house situated on a portion of exposed root that jutted from a rise in the ground. A rise which surrounded the very tree where Vidia was perched, this made for an approach vector that could not be seen by those in the nook. Vidia could bring the thistles over the rise and let them run down the root right into Tinker Bell's house, destroying it entirely.
Perfect, Vidia thought. It looks like the second star is twinkling in my favor today.
Now all she had to do was trace a path, a path that could reasonably look like she couldn't control the thistles. As if everything she tried to guide them failed and they simply wound up here. Content with the success of her information gathering Vidia returned to her work where she found two exceptionally nasty thistles and after great effort finally managed to get them to Needlepoint Meadow. It took all day largely because her mind was distracted with swirling euphoria. She was as badly banged up as usual, but the discomfort was almost nonexistent. With the plan coming together so well Vidia paid almost no attention to the aches and pains she accrued while carrying out the queen's punishment. Instead, she focused on how great it would feel to finally have her long delayed satisfaction.
Over the next several days, Vidia woke extra early and perched herself in the same hiding place. She watched Tinker Bell emerge from her tinker made twig and branch house morning after morning. The fast flyer learned the tinker's routines: when she exited the house, when she reentered, when she left Tinker's Nook, when she came back, what times she worked. She recorded everything about the tinker's schedule at the nook because Vidia didn't just want to destroy Tinker Bell's home; she wanted to do it with Tinker Bell watching. The fast flyer wanted the tinker fairy to have a prime, front row seat for the annihilation. The look on her face when that ugly house gets smashed will be priceless.
If you believe that I have extrapolated Vidia's world view a little too far afield from what she voiced in the film please let me know in the reviews.
It is necessary for the story to work, so it is unlikely to be heavily altered. Helpful suggestions would be appreciated, though.
Thank you for reading and reviewing