That was the night everything changed. I had no way of realizing it at the time, stewing over my spurned secret love as I flew off to tend my flowers and trees, what trials and horrors awaited me.
Blissfully ignorant, a patch of lily-of-the-valley was my first stop. Among the pips and blossoming bits there pink flowers had budded, a rarity for this subspecies so l liked to check it often. Whoever the Garden Fairy was that tended it in the day must have felt similarly as it had been braced with a twig, allowing it more sun in the mornings when the light wasn't so harsh, while still effectively shading it when the sun was directly overhead.
"Hello lovely!" I cooed, gliding down towards it on silently glowing wings, pausing only a moment to savor its fragrance. Looking the plant over from bells to soil-clung roots I made made certain there was nothing amiss before I began. Sinking to my knees, my fingers burying themselves into the soft peat stirred up the warm rich aroma of earth. Then, eyes lightly closed, I focused on the appropriate toxin-feeling as the poison formed somewhere within my chest prior to flowing down my arms and out of my fingertips like a cool, refreshing wave.
I smiled when, after some coaxing, the flowers became receptive, drinking it in. Nausea, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, confusion, blurred vision, and blister-like hives; this was a good, refreshing bane to have started my evening with, even if the plants were non-lethal.
After I'd finished I hovered, self-indulgently kissing each bell-like bloom before darting away to tend to some jasmine and daffodils; again, neither fatal. The daffodils were troublesome and I had to argue my point with them, their yellow heads bobbing and swaying in a loose breeze, obstinate and vain as ever. At last they relented and my work there was quickly done. Was it wrong, I wondered, to have favorites among my charges? Would it have been like a mother having favorites of her children?
Either way, wrong or right, I did and do have favorites, as I'm sure most mothers do. Now it may sound poor of me, but like I have stated before, Nyxies are very different from our Fairy counterparts, and I favored these plants for their lethality. It had taken a great deal of work and doing, but at last I'd gotten them to grow together; red sage taking root under my yew tree. Tucking in my wings as I approached, falling into a shallow dive I went straight for the heart of the thick bush, rolling and laughing as it's tiny buds tickled against my skin. Breathing in its sweet scent I couldn't help but feel triumphant as, after all my hard work, the first green berries had begun to grow.
Picking one, I cradled the smooth delicate orb in both hands. This toxin attacked the central nervous system; erratic heartbeat, shallow breathing, kidney failure; all were hallmarks of red sage poisoning. Death was slow and painful, and sometimes when a weak heart was involved, cardiac arrest would occur. Anaphylaxis was also prominent, and of course no one can live without their kidneys so there were several promising attributes worth appreciating in the plant.
Pocketing the fruit for later, knowing a single bite could kill any of my friends, I planned on savoring the taste later.
I fed my shrub her needed poison before moving to check the yew. I love my yew; the ghost, the silent killer. In most cases death can occur within a few short hours, and without any outward signs of poisoning. When signs do occur, seizures and anaphylaxis typically, it's already too late. My face fell when I noticed Rot tending to a large gash in it's side.
"What are you doing?" I asked sharply, a low buzz filling the air as I was beating my wings furiously behind me.
"Working." he grunted as a hand slipped into the deep divide, decaying my tree's flesh as he ran his fingers along it. I flew nearer, inspecting the weeping, pungent-odored gash, my gaze critical and appraising.
"Why are you killing my tree?" I yelled, putting myself between them, and pulling at his arms and trying in any way I could to make him stop.
"I'm not," he said in his typical gruff, hardly-ever-more-than-two-syllables-at-a-time manner.
"Then what is?" I bellowed, completely irate after all my long, hard work. Rot shrugged, he usually worked with leaf litter and other decaying plant matter, things that were already dead.
"Bacterial wetwood." he responded after a while, finally able to name the power that flowed from him.
Rage flared through me. Vira had diseased my favorite plant; I was sure of it. I was well prepared to fly off and give her a good taste of what a yew could do to someone when Rot grabbed me, painfully, by a wing.
"Don't do it," he advised, still holding on.
We regarded one another for a long moment; the expression on his wide face easy and affirming before he let go. There was nothing that could be done about it; besides, he was just doing his job, and I had one of my own. Drifting back towards the earth I flooded toxins throughout the tree, giving it more bite than usual, hoping that somehow it would help it stave off the wetwood, before darting away to sulk.
I sat under a wilted sapling to think. Bacterial wetwood was difficult to cure, especially to the extent it had grown.
I had always had an interest in experimentation; hybrid plants and the like, with some success to my name.
Nyxies didn't do that sort of thing, but even if I couldn't save my tree maybe I could grow another, cross it with something hardier or deadlier. The idea appealed, and as the night wore on, I found the red sage berry to be deliciously bitter.
I was just wiping the last of its juices from my chin when my sensitive nocturnal eyes caught the subtle change in the already pale light. I turned and saw, nearly too late, the owl bearing down on me. Leaping away I instinctively channeled a poison into my hands and tainting my nails, long sharp and black as many of us kept them. The owl reached for me with his talons, just as deadly. I banked right, raking my hand through his thick feathers and warming down, nails biting into it's skin.
I heard a voice call out moments later, but the owl had turned, readying for another attack, a shill, piercing cry emitting from it's devilishly curved beak.
I noticed then the cut stinging my ribs and bloodying my mossy blouse. I wrapped one hand about it tightly as the fiery burn of my pain spread.
Where Fairies had their Sparrow Men to guard and protect them, we fought for our own lives. I was rash and daring, determined to meet this foe and come out of it alive.
I charged straight at him, coming close, almost too close, but cutting the bird under it's left eye. The owl screamed and fell to the earth where it floundered and continued to wail. My heart was pounding as I landed, nerves on edge. I was holding my side and trying to work out exactly what and how much poison I had used in my haste, as I did not want the animal to suffer for merely doing what nature intended.
It was then that I felt something cool on my shoulder. I reacted faster than I could think, failing to realize in time the familiar weight and feel of a hand.
He looked at me, the Fairy King, eyes sad and confused, skin pale as I raked my claws deeply across his chest. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as he fell to the soil. I had only time to to hear the first desperate attempts at speech cut off by the hissing gag of a far too hurriedly taken breath.
I took off. I was terrified and already guilt-ridden, but what more could I have done? He was going to die. Yes, the poison had been ebbing away as I stopped focusing on it, but was still there, still potent, and he was going to die because of it.
I flew as fast as my wings could carry me, my mind devoid of thought, a stark animalistic fear flooding through me as my veins became laced with adrenaline, fear, and above all, a need to survive. It was then in my bleary headlong pelt that I collided with Airitie, a Drought Gifted Nyxie, and my greatest friend in the whole world.
"What's wrong?" Airitie asked, gripping me by the shoulders, tone assured. "You're flying like a bat out of daylight!"
Airitie had an oak brown complexion, and dark red, shoulder length hair, but what was special about Airitie was the fact of hermaphroditism, another of Nature's miracles often shunned or overlooked by so many. After I had calmed enough to look Airitie in the face I recognized that she identified as female this evening. It was in the way she wore her hair, something she did often as an outward indication of her inner self, and also to avoid certain annoyances; rather than classifying herself as third-gendered, she was fluid.
Her gentle and unassuming face was lined with worry, clearly I looked a mess. "What happened?" she asked, eyeing me keenly, pulling away at my clothing to examine the gash I had all but forgotten about. I had no idea where to begin; my mind was whirling and heart beating wildly against my chest. Everything seemed to be happening so very fast that it was difficult to remember to flap my wings. She shook me gently.
"I did something terrible," I heard myself croak in a voice that wavered and failed.
"Ok," she started, always level headed. "How do we fix it?" Was her question, though her attention lay with my wound at the moment. It wasn't deep, I could tell; it ran across my abdomen just above my navel, but bled heavily.
"I need to see Dusk." I said naming our leader after a moment of trepidation.
Airitie nodded, looking me in the eye with a steadying compassion. "Alright," she said, linking her arm through mine, "Let's go see Dusk."