Crazy times around here, people! Schoolwork and homework have increased, and I've had a bunch of essays and projects already. Have you all been busy, too? If so, you have my sympathy...
As always, I telepathically sent my thanks to everyone who has read, followed, favorited or reviewed this story, though I'm writing it now in case you didn't get the message :-) Thank you so much for your continued support, it means so much to me and it makes me even more excited to write this than I would be if nobody read it. So anyway, you all are flitterific!
Did I really just use the word flitterific?! Wow... maybe fairies abducted me in my sleep and tampered with my brain or something. (If that happened, would there then be a Clumsy-abducting-talent fairy? That would be really creepy. I now have a mental image of a Clumsy tied up like in Gulliver's Travels, surrounded by a ton of fairies that are doing a lobotomy or something...) Well, that was a kind of freaky brain dump... Moving on!
I normally try to answer questions that people have left in reviews in these authors comments instead of , so everybody can read my response (besides, I never really got into the habit of P. people, and I think it would be weird to start in the middle of this story) ... Anyways, your questions always seem to be questions that would involve spoilers or things I hadn't even thought of. So I won't tell you right now what Anna's fairy talent will be- though I can guarantee she will not be a Clumsy-abducting-talent fairy. :) But you'll find out in this chapter anyways.
Oh, and to the Guest Reviewer who commented on the Gail Carson Levine books, I know they didn't give Kyto the wand in the books, but I appreciate you telling me! It's nice to know somebody has read them, so at least one person knows who Prilla and Rani are (I wonder why they were never in the movies? They should be).
One last thing- I've made almost no progress on the MMD scenes for this fic since the last time I updated, so don't expect any of those anytime soon *cries* Oh, and in case you were wondering, the reason Elsa's wand-madness was a lot worse than Anna's was because I imagined her magic and the wand's magic interacted and somehow increased her wand-madness.
And now, on to chapter 17, Elsa and Anna's first full chapter as fairies! (though we're not starting with them)
Mother Dove cooed softly, sitting on her egg as she always did. Her egg held the magic that kept everyone on Neverland from aging, which added to the importance of sitting on it forever. This necessity was a big hindrance- she could never fly or look for her own food. If she ever got bored, Mother Dove didn't complain.
"What is it?" asked Beck, the animal-talent who looked after Mother Dove. Mother Dove cocked her head to one side, as if listening to something nobody else could hear. Her expression grew blissful, and she said "I sense to new fairies!"
A new fairy arriving was a surprisingly rare event in Pixie Hollow. Although there were lots of babies that would laugh their first laugh on any given day, most of the laughs would never actually become fairies. Like Anna's, they could be destroyed almost as soon as they came out (which meant there were actually quite a lot of people who could understand fairies but simply never came into contact with them). A lot of laughs never made it to Neverland. They drifted along aimlessly and went on looking like a dandelion forever; a laugh won't become a fairy until it comes into contact with Pixie Dust.
"Have they reached Neverland?" Beck asked, knowing that a lot of them didn't. Mother Dove felt whenever a baby first laughed, and she could tell whether or not a laugh made it to Neverland, so she was bound to know the answer. Mother Dove cooed out an affirmative.
"Do you mind if I go see them?" Beck asked. Mother Dove shook her head, too busy thinking to give a audible reply. Mother Dove felt there was something odd about these two additions, but she couldn't quite place her wing on it.
Beck flew off towards Fairy Circle, where all the Arrival Ceremonies took place for fairies born in the warm part of Pixie Hollow. As she got closer, she noticed an uncommon silence- even though all the fairies stayed quiet for most of the ceremony, there would still be some sound, and one could normally hear Queen Clarion from some distance away.
When she got there, she saw it was deserted.
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If one were to stand outside Dewey's library after a certain incident with a wand, they would hear a shrill scream of excitement, or rather, two screams that blended together.
"We're fairies!" Anna and Elsa gasped to each other, after staring at their reflections for a while. At first it had been hard to believe, but Anna had pinched herself hard enough to know it wasn't a dream. And if it wasn't a dream, then it had to be real, right?
Elsa thought that, considering she had magic of her own and they knew that fairies and trolls were real and they had both flown multiple times, they really should have known this sort of magic was real, too.
Anna jumped up and down in excitement and cried "I'M A FAIRY! Just like Tinker Bell and Periwinkle and Bluebell!" Bluebell was Anna's make-believe fairy from earlier that day when waiting on the beach and playing the pretend game of fairies. Anna had tried to think of what her fairy name would suit her, since she noticed that lots of fairies had names that weren't human names.
She'd come up with 'Bluebell' since it had the word 'bell' in it, like Tinker Bell, and there was a shade of blue called Periwinkle. Even though Tink and Peri were really Elsa's fairies, Anna had a special bond with them, too. Elsa, on the other hand, had never made up a fairy name that she liked.
"This is amazing!" Anna (or Bluebell) shrieked, jumping into the air and fluttered her wings, instinctively knowing which muscles to move in order to do so (she flapped her arms, too, despite the fact that never helped). However, even fairies can't fly very well without Pixie Dust, so she crashed into the ground.
"Ow..." she murmured as she sat up, rubbing her knees. That had hurt quite a lot, and the white dress she was wearing had torn near her knees. She'd probably have bruises on her knees later later, and maybe even on the palms of her hands, too. Elsa started to walk towards her little sister to see if she was okay. Walking proved to be rather awkward because her body proportions had changed drastically and she was still unaccustomed to them.
Both of them still startled a bit when they heard their sister's voice coming out of a grownup's body. It was rather creepy, hearing the voice of someone you knew coming out of the mouth of a drastically different version of your sister. It was even creepier to glance at your reflection and see what appeared to be an older version of yourself staring back at you.
They heard voices approaching the entrance to the library, and they looked at each other, worried. How would everybody react to them being fairies? Naively, Anna thought that Tink and Peri would be thrilled; she certainly was. This was like something out of a dream!
Still, they both knew they'd most likely get in trouble for being in Dewey's library or using the wand- probably both. There was really no point in hiding, since it was only a matter of time before somebody found out what they did.
Not at all discouraged by that logic, Anna slipped and slid across the ice towards the nearest stack of books, which was now taller than she was, not liking how awkwardly long her legs felt at all. She actually tripped over her own feet, but luckily she caught herself before she hit the ground.
Elsa's gait was as awkward as Anna's since she hadn't adjusted to her new body. Elsa seemed to have just barely kept her ability to walk over ice without slipping; she came very close to slipping numerous times- but that could really just be blamed on her new body. She had just ducked behind the stack of books that Anna was hiding behind before the door to the library opened.
Two fairies entered, though Elsa and Anna didn't risk peeking around their pile of books to see who. The two newcomers were in the middle of a conversation concerning something about which book to look up, and what sort of book somebody would like more, though Elsa and Anna didn't know who they were referring to.
Elsa realized with a smile that she heard what their were saying. She actually heard two distinct voices, though she did wonder why she didn't hear the usual sound of bells, since Anna had said a while ago that she heard bells but knew what they meant.
Oh well, Elsa thought, just a tad disappointed, perhaps fairies didn't hear the bells. It wasn't a huge loss, and being able to understand fairies was more than enough to make up for it.
"I can understand them!" Elsa joyfully mouthed to Anna. "What?!" Anna asked out loud, and Elsa slapped herself in the face. It had been rather stupid of her to try to communicate that before they were safely outside the library. Of course, they'd revealed themselves, so there was no chance of escape.
Given that there wasn't much use in hiding now that their cover was blown, the Clumsies-turned-fairies stepped out from their hiding place and got a look at the other fairies.
Both of them wore icy-blue clothes, just like Peri and pretty much every winter-fairy. Unlike Peri's strapless top, these fairies' clothes had a loop-like strap around their necks. One of the fairies had white hair tied up in some kind of triple ponytail style, and her bangs almost covered her left eye. The other fairy had black hair that ended around the bottom of her head. She, too, had really long bangs, though she pushed them towards the right side of her face.
"Hi! What are you doing in here? Wait a minute, I don't even recognize you! Are you new? Cause I'm pretty sure I've never seen you before. Not that that means you're new... Actually it might, because I know almost everybody, so if I don't recognize you than you probably haven't been around long. Oh, wait- where are my manners? Fly with you! I'm Gliss." The white-haired fairy ended her monologue as abruptly as she'd started it.
There was a beat of silence. Then Elsa started giggling- this fairy reminded her of Anna. If she didn't know better, she might have thought that Gliss was Anna as a fairy, despite the fact they looked totally different. Elsa continued to giggle in an uncharacteristic way, but it was mostly just the aftereffects of the wand's magic, which seemed to affect her much more than it affected Anna, even though Elsa hadn't even touched the wand in hours,.
Anna immediately took a liking to Gliss, since they had similar enthusiastic, talkative personalities (they also both seemed to ask a bunch of questions without waiting for answers). Anna cheerfully piped up with "Hi Gliss! I'm Bluebell, and I'm five. Except Bluebell isn't my real name, Anna is. But Bluebell's my pretend name."
She pointed to Elsa, who was still giggling uncontrollably, and said "And that's Elsa! She's my older sister, and she's eight. She doesn't giggle this much most of the time." Anna shot Elsa a worried look, slightly alarmed by her sister's uncharacteristic behavior.
Apparently Gliss didn't notice that part about their ages, and she simply chattered on "I look forward to flying with you, Anna- or would you rather be called Bluebell?. And you, too, Elsa! What are your talents? Say, why were you in here, anyways? Did you take a tour yet! C'mon! I'll show you around! This is going to be such fun!
"Gliss!" The black-haired fairy, whose name was Spike, interjected "Can I talk to you? Alone?" Gliss nodded and said "Sure, Spike." They fluttered out of Elsa and Anna's hearing range and Spike immediately started whispering to Gliss.
"Have you noticed something odd about these fairies?" she whispered urgently. Gliss looked at her blankly and replied "Not really."
"Oh come on, Gliss!" Spike whispered, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "There are tons of odd things about them! Did you notice that Anna said that she was five? I think we would've seen her sometime if she'd been around here for five years! And I don't remember ever seeing an Arrival Ceremony for either of them, and we would've been at them!"
"And how about them being siblings? Tink and Peri are the only fairy siblings, and Anna and Elsa aren't even twins, and a baby can't laugh out fairies three years apart. And Anna's wings don't even look like fairy wings- they look like hawk wings! That's not normal!" Spike paused, took a few deep breaths, and ended her tirade with a random afterthought "Did you notice how young their voices sound? They sound like children."
Unfazed, Spike replied "Come to think of it, I don't remember an Arrival Ceremony for either of them. And they're wearing those boring white arrival clothes. So they probably didn't have an Arrival Ceremony yet! I know! We can take them there now!" She glanced back down and started to shout something to Elsa and Anna, but Spike clamped a hand over her mouth and muttered "I think we should talk to Lord Milori."
"Before you say anything, remember that Lord Milori runs the Arrival Ceremonies here, so we would have to go to him anyways." Spike removed her hand from Gliss' mouth after the latter nodded.
They quickly discovered that Elsa and Anna couldn't fly, and given that new fairies were often horrible fliers, they thought it would be best to bring Lord Milori there. "I'll stay here with Elsa and Anna" Gliss said, so Spike shot off into the Winter Woods.
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Tink and Peri flew as fast as they could towards Dewey's library. However, they were only going at a walking speed, since Tink was slowing both of them down.
As she flew, Tink started to shiver. She wasn't wearing any of her winter clothes, so her shivering increased alarmingly as the cold wrapped her in its frigid grip.
"We should get your winter gear." Peri told her twin. She started to turn back, but Tink said "No, I'm fine! We need to keep going!"
Tink was obviously not fine. She was shivering so much that her wings twitched spasmodically, making her flight ridiculously erratic, and her teeth were chattering at a rate that made her sound like a woodpecker. But she didn't want to be the one to make them turn around and lose even more time getting to Anna and Elsa, despite the fact she was in danger. After all, who knew what those girls were up to now?
Peri just grabbed Tink and, ignoring her sister's protests, started flying towards the warmer section of Pixie Hollow, pulling Tink along behind her. She couldn't believe that both of them had totally forgotten about Tink's winter clothes. Especially Tink, since she was the one who needed them. How could she have forgotten it was a bad idea to fly into the Winter Woods wearing nothing but a sleeveless, backless dress that also left most of her legs bare?! Especially since she had almost died of hypothermia a couple days before!
Tink was getting worse. Despite the fact her wings wouldn't break in the cold anymore, Tink could barely fly. She dropped to the ground and desperately stumbled through the snow. Her hands were already blue.
Peri flew down and grabbed Tink under her arms. She lifted her twin up, which wasn't exactly hard because the Pixie Dust made her very light. Flying Tink back to the warmer side of Pixie Hollow was a bit tricky, because she had to resist the urge to glance down and see how Tink was doing.
When Peri got to the warm section of Pixie Hollow, her personal flurry appeared. She frowned- this was definitely not what Tink needed. But there was no way to fly Tink anywhere without subjecting her to the flurry, and there weren't any fairies around who could give Tink a ride since they were all working.
Peri placed Tink gently in some comfy grass and left, saying "I'll be back in a minute. Stay here." Tink didn't respond; she was too busy soaking up the sunlight, trying to get warm. Truthfully, she had been relieved when Peri had decided to turn around, because she had been to stubborn to.
Peri flew on to Tink's room and let herself in (very few of the doors in Pixie Hollow are locked). She stared around Tink's room, annoyed at how cluttered it was, since it would take forever to find anything in there. She went over to Tink's wardrobe and began rummaging through it. Finding the coat, pants and boots were easy, though the boots had somehow ended up in opposite corners of Tink's wardrobe. The earmuffs alone took a couple minutes to find, and Peri spent forever looking for Tink's mittens; she had practically emptied the entire wardrobe before she'd discovered that they were in the coat's pockets.
Feeling sort of stupid, Peri left Tink's room, not noticing that the snow from her flurry had accumulated and was starting to melt and leave puddles. She set out with the whole bundle of clothes in her arms, which was a little awkward. After flying back to where Tink was, Peri handed her twin the winter gear. Tink put it on gratefully and felt pleasantly warm, despite the fact that wearing winter clothes in warm weather usually made her feel like she was burning.
Tink got up to get going as soon as she'd put on her clothes, but Peri said that it probably wasn't a good idea for her to go back into the cold weather when she was still recovering from it. Tink agreed, mostly because she wanted to avoid another trip to the healing-talents, though she didn't like thinking about what Elsa and Anna could be up to. Those two sure knew how to get in trouble- Tink guessed that she'd inherited some of her personality traits from Elsa, such as a certain disregard for rules.
While Tink warmed up again, Peri would fly on ahead to try to find Elsa and Anna. Tink was sure Peri would do it, she was more than capable of doing things that were much harder than simply finding two little girls.
So Tink settled back into the grass and decided that she'd wait for a while before reentering the Winter Woods. It was very pleasant over on this side, she thought, and now that she was on the warm side, she wasn't sure she'd be able to force herself to enter the harsh cold. Just like her experience with hypothermia a couple days before, Tink wasn't quite herself; she was rather tired and her brain felt clouded. She told herself she wouldn't fall asleep this time, however, so she tried to make herself uncomfortable enough to prevent drowsiness.
Peri shot off towards Dewey's library, and was actually somewhat glad that Tink wasn't with her. Although Peri loved her twin, it was sort of nice not having to worry about Tink's reaction the the cold.
When Peri arrived at the library, she barely slowed down as she tried to barge through the door. She heard somebody shout "Periwinkle!", and she recognized it as Anna's voice. She looked around for Anna but didn't see her. There was just Gliss and two fairies she'd never seen before that looked frighteningly like Anna and Elsa.
Realization struck her like a charging rhino. "Jingles." Peri cursed under her breath, even though she didn't usually curse. "What have you done?"
Despite the situation, Elsa couldn't help thinking about how odd it was to hear Peri's voice. Sure it had been odd with Gliss and Spike, but hearing Peri's voice was more startling because she'd spent the last several days with her and had only heard bells. Elsa loved the sound of it, even though Peri had just cussed.
The fairy who looked like an older Anna said "We're fairies now, Periwinkle!" Peri was also a bit startled when she heard a little kid's voice come out of an adult's mouth. Then again, she was looking at a child literally trapped in an adult's body.
"I can see that," Peri said with only a hint of anger or annoyance, already sure of how it happened. "But why did you use the wand when we told you not to?" At this, Elsa piped up, frowning "You didn't tell us not to use it! You said it would only work for fairies! You lied to us! You lied!"
"I did lie," Peri admitted as she picked up the wand, realizing that Elsa had just crushed her argument. Besides, the girls hadn't known any better, since they had been told it wouldn't do anything to them, so it wasn't surprising they'd decided to poke around. Peri was sure that she and Tink would have done the same thing in their situation.
"But it was to keep you safe! I didn't want you to make any wishes you'd regret." Anna had looked at Peri like she was crazy when she'd suggested they might regret their wish. Elsa looked thoughtful, but not regretful.
"Why would we regret this?" Anna asked out loud to emphasize the look she'd shot at Peri a second ago, giggling at the thought of somebody not wanting to be a fairy. Peri had a very good guess. She remembered Vidia's wish had been to fly as fast as she wanted and as long as she wanted, and Vidia had ended up hating it- actually this was true with a lot of fairies' wishes (though Peri doubted she would ever regret her wish, since all it did was give her a complete talent).
Peri didn't answer, but she had a hunch that Tink would be called into service sometime in the future to try to force the wand to reverse some of the wishes.
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The library door opened a couple minutes later and Lord Milori entered, though Spike wasn't with him. Lord Milori politely shooed Gliss away before closing the door behind him.
Elsa and Anna were staring at the floor by this time, and they saw a pair of icy-teal leaf boots stop in front of them. "Well, well... what do we have here?" They slowly looked up, past more teal leaf clothes and a snowy-owl-feather cape, to meet Lord Milori's gaze.
Elsa thought she'd seen him somewhere before, but she couldn't remember where. She'd forgotten that he had helped her create Peri's personal flurry the previous day (to be fair, she had been focusing on her powers, and hadn't really done more than glance at him). Elsa didn't say anything, because she would feel really stupid if it turned out she'd never seen him before.
"It's not every day I see new faces." Elsa and Anna didn't respond as they wondered whether or not he was going to yell at them for fiddling with the wand. Realizing that his eight-inch stature was probably intimidating to the five-inch fairies, Lord Milori knelt down and said gently "You're new fairies, I presume." Of course he already knew that they were, but perhaps he'd get some sort of response. Figuring out that he probably wasn't going to yell at them, Anna said "Yeah."
"I'm Lord Milori, ruler of the Winter Woods." the winter Lord introduced himself formally. Immediately, Elsa and Anna got to their feet and curtsied respectfully. They'd had lots of practice at this back home in Arendelle whenever a King or Lord or Duke visited the castle, and their parents had made them practice before such visits, too.
However, Lord Milori was a little bit puzzled by their reactions- how did these new fairies know about curtseying or bowing right away. He quickly cast the thought aside. After all, they had talked to Gliss and Spike and Peri, so maybe one of them told the newcomers. Or maybe they'd read it in a book, since they were in a library. Anyways, it didn't matter.
"Can you fly yet?" Lord Milori asked softly, with a hint of sadness in his voice (apparently Spike had forgotten to mention that they couldn't). Lord Milori had long since accepted his broken wing, but he still couldn't help feeling a twinge of loss whenever he thought of it. Anna shook her head and said "No, we need the sparkly stuff."
Peri had been silently trying to tell Lord Milori that she needed to speak to him, but he had focused one Elsa and Anna and hadn't really seemed to notice her. So Peri had eventually just blurted it out, interrupting Lord Milori in the middle of something he was saying. The Winter Lord had looked startled for an instant, but his face cleared immediately after. He nodded towards her, slightly curtly, and the two tried to move out of Elsa and Anna's earshot.
"Um, you know who they are, right?" Peri asked, and then quickly added "My Lord," because she felt a bit of formality might help. Lord Milori thought for a bit, and replied "They look familiar but..."
He left the rest of the sentence hanging, and Peri took it to mean that he didn't know. Then again, who could blame him? He'd seen them once, for a couple minutes, and now they appeared to be older. And who would expect Clumsies to turn into fairies?
"Elsa and Anna?" Peri supplied, hoping it would ring a bell, but Lord Milori didn't show any sign of recognition. Peri sighed and said "You saw them.. yesterday." Had it really only been the day before? It felt like years since then. "Elsa helped you make my flurry. They're the girls we brought here."
"And now they are fairies," Lord Milori said, his tone unreadable. Peri realized she was still holding the wand. Perhaps it was due to the shock of Elsa and Anna being fairies, but she didn't feel any wand-madness.
"But why," the Winter Lord continued as he stared at the wand, obviously knowing it was the cause for this event "did they have the wand in the first place?"
"They didn't know what wands did..." Peri said softly, sadly , while fighting the urge to take off with the wand"I lied to them. I told them wands only work for fairies." Peri found this hard to admit, but she wasn't going to let Lord Milori get the wrong impression about her Laugher or Anna.
"They'll have to leave Pixie Hollow." Lord Milori said softly.
It took several seconds for Peri to be sure she'd heard him correctly, and even then the only thing she could think was "what?!" and "why?!" It didn't make any sense. They'd stayed in Pixie Hollow the past couple nights, and now that they were fairies, and therefore more suited for Pixie Hollow, they were apparently being banished? Peri couldn't find any logic in that.
Anna crashed into her and pulled her into a hug, and a moment later Elsa, who was still a bit too giddy to have recovered from the wand's magic, crashed into her as well.
"Periwinkle! Periwinkle! Come play!" Anna laughed, before irrelevantly adding "It's so weird to see you as big as us. No wait, we're as small as you." Anna giggled at that in a slightly unnerving way. Maybe Elsa wasn't the only one still recovering from wand-madness.
Peri sadly looked at the girls that had come to mean so much to her over the past couple days. Why would Lord Milori banish them when they hadn't even done anything wrong? How would they survive on their own. Even though they looked like adults, they were still children, and only five inches tall to boot.
If they were banished, Peri would go with them to help them live long enough to get home. She was sure Tink would, too, since Tink cared about the girls as much as Peri did (even if it wasn't as obvious).
Peri looked up at Lord Milori and asked "Why are you doing this?"
"I'm sorry. They're not..." Lord Milori didn't finish, since Elsa and Anna were obviously within hearing range, but Peri knew what he would have said. They're not real fairies.
They sure looked real to her. She couldn't see a single sign of them not being real fairies, and if she hadn't known better, she would have assumed they were born from a laugh. And even though they weren't born from a laugh, why would that be any reason to banish them?
I wish Lord Milori would change his mind Peri automatically thought, and the wand twitched in her hand. She hadn't waved it, but the wand decided to grant the wish anyways, since it was bored.
Lord Milori turned back to Peri and looked down at Elsa and Anna. Peri quickly crafted a sheath of ice and slid the wand in it.
"It's time for your Arrival Ceremony. Come." Elsa and Anna glanced at each other. They had no idea what that meant, but it couldn't be bad. After all, Peri probably wouldn't let them go if it was. Peri was wondering why they were having an Arrival Ceremony. All she'd wanted was for Lord Milori to relent and let them stay in Pixie Hollow or the Winter Woods.
So Elsa and Anna followed the winter Lord and Peri through the door and into the cold, snowy landscape of the Winter Woods, while Peri wondered if she'd accidentally made matters worse with that wish.
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Elsa and Anna gazed around as they followed Lord Milori through the Winter Woods. They were walking, obviously, since they were all unable to fly at the moment (or any moment, in Lord Milori's case). Peri walked too, since it would be weird to be the only fairy flying.
Both girls gaped, astounded by the size of everything. The trees had seemed large when they were humans, but now they seemed as tall as mountains. The patch of icy ground leading to the library, which had seemed like a frozen puddle, could now pass for an ice skating rink.
Once they reached the snow, they encountered what appeared to be craters, and it was a bit of a shock for Elsa when she realized that those were their human-sized footprints from before. She pointed this out to Anna, who gave a loud "Whoaa!" She would've jumped in one if Lord Milori hadn't grabbed her first.
Anna started to shiver, and Lord Milori draped his outer cloak made from owl feathers around her shoulders. It trailed behind her for a couple inches, but it kept her nice and warm.
They eventually arrived in a circular patch of ice close to a waterfall of Pixie Dust that supplied all the winter-fairies with their Pixie Dust. Around the circle of ice were ice pedestals, much like the toadstools warm fairies used for their arrival ceremonies.
Lord Milori told Elsa, Anna and Peri to wait and he went off to get all the winter-fairies. He did this by riding Mama Owl around and having her hoot, which was every winter-fairy's cue to gather in the "meeting place", which was also where Arrival Ceremonies took place.
Not all the winter-fairies came directly to the Arrival Ceremony spot. There would have been too many, so most of them hovered in the background, high in the air. A couple fairies from each winter-talent flew into the circle.
Winter-fairy talents aren't quite like warm-fairy talents. They're more intermixed, so a winter-fairy can do all of the talents at a fundamental level, but will outshine in a specific one. For example, Peri could craft delicate snowflakes, but since she specialized in the frost-talent, she was much better at making ice and covering things with frost. With warm-fairy talents, however, fairies are rather hopeless at other talents. For example, most fast-fliers are horrible with animals. Hence why Tink was unable to switch her talent after trying to do so in the days after her arrival.
The other fairies flew outside the circular patch of ice so only Elsa, Anna and Lord Milori remained in the circle. Lord Milori paused for a bit. The traditional poem that welcomed new fairies to Neverland- "Born from laughter, Clothed in cheer, Happiness has brought you here" - didn't quite seem appropriate. However, it was a tradition, so Lord Milori altered it to "Born with laughter, born with cheer, happiness has led you here."
Okay, so it didn't exactly make sense, but it had a nice ring to it.
"Let's test your wings." Lord Milori said, again slightly sadly, as two winter dust-talents poured Pixie Dust on Elsa and Anna. (Some fairy talents, like dust-keeping talents and animal-talents, had both warm-fairies and winter-fairies). Anna had to take the cloak off, and she fluttered her wings along with Elsa. Elsa rose in the air, but Anna struggled to no avail. This went on for a bit, before Anna's wings started to droop.
Lord Milori wrapped the owl-feather cloak around Anna, who looked close to tears, and whispered "It's okay. Your wings won't work in cold weather. But I suspect they'll work just fine in the warmer part of Pixie Hollow."
Anna nodded and Lord Milori gently pushed her towards Peri, who was waiting on the outskirts of the ring. One thing was certain- if somebody's wings didn't work in cold weather, they wouldn't have a winter-talent. Peri muttered this to Anna, who looked confused.
Fairies started placing objects on the ice pedestals. A snowflake was on one, a small ice sculpture of a fairy was on another, and so on. Once they'd moved back to the outskirts, Lord Milori instructed Elsa to walk around and find out which one was her talent.
Elsa didn't get the chance.
All of the objects, except for the animal-talent and dust-keeping talent, floated over to her and glowed with a light so bright everybody had to shield their eyes. Once they could see again, every single fairy gawked at Elsa, who shifted around uncomfortably. "Did I do something wrong?"
Nobody answered her. They were too shocked. This was unheard of. None of them even knew it was possible for the objects to move. Ideas about wind formed in many fairies' minds, even though they hadn't felt the slightest breeze. After all, if an object glowing brightly meant that somebody was very talented in a specific talent, than the objects moving must mean they were about a hundred times more powerful.
Recovering from his shock, Lord Milori said "It appears you are quite... talented, Elsa." Anna clapped enthusiastically at this and cheered for Elsa, but stopped because of the look Lord Milori gave her.
A smile touched Elsa's lips when she was complimented, though she was also confused. What was so special about this whole talent thing. After all, everybody had talents, right?
Questions began to form in fairies' minds. Which talent would Elsa be officially part of? How was she so powerful?
The Arrival Ceremony ended rather oddly. Elsa simply walked to where Peri and Anna were. She carefully looked at Anna, closed her eyes, and began to craft an ice coat almost identical to the one she'd made for Tink, only without wing holes. Anna put on the coat, which fit her perfectly, and Peri returned Lord Milori's cloak to its owner.
Elsa looked at Peri and asked "Is Anna going to do this ceremony too?"
Peri nodded fluttered up in the air, and called Elsa up, which left Anna looking sadly up at them from the ground.
"Here, Anna. I'll carry you." Peri said kindly. She picked Anna up, which was sort of difficult because she wasn't weightless from Pixie Dust. Peri couldn't sprinkle any on her, however, because that would ruin the tradition of Arrival Ceremonies.
Carrying Anna out of the Winter Woods was rather difficult. Peri ended up carrying her bridal style. They finally reached the border, and Peri happily set Anna down. Anna removed the coat, and carried it along with the sleeves in her fists.
As they walked towards Fairy Circle, they heard a shout from behind them. Tink fluttered towards them and looked Elsa and Anna up and down. Her face began to literally turn red in anger, and Peri sensed she was going to start screaming. Peri quickly blurted out "Tink! You'll get to tinker with the wand!"
Tink's face returned to its normal color and Tink actually smiled a bit. She'd couldn't be mad at Anna and Elsa now. Tinkering with a wand was paradise for her, and it made up for any inconvenience they might have caused by turning into fairies. Peri meanwhile, felt she'd set some sort of record for calming Tink down, since Tink normally took a while to get calm.
As Peri led the group towards Fairy Circle, she noticed that Elsa's wings weren't reacting negatively to the warm weather, which wasn't really a surprise given that she'd been fine in all sorts of weather as a Clumsy. Now that Peri had her personal flurry, she wasn't as envious of Elsa's immunity to warm weather.
It was a bit of a shock to see, once they'd reached Fairy Circle, that all the fairies were there. Beck had gathered up all the warm-fairies, including Queen Clarion, once she'd discovered that two fairies were born.
Tink gently prodded Anna into the circle, and Terence poured Pixie Dust on her. Queen Clarion spoke the traditional greeting poem, since she didn't actually know about Elsa and Anna's "birth". Anna cast a confused glance back at Tink and Peri, but uncharacteristically didn't say anything.
Queen Clarion repeated the exact line Lord Milori had spoken. "Let's test your wings." Anna held Queen Clarion's hand as she fluttered her wings, and a broad grin broke out on her face when she discovered they worked. Queen Clarion had to almost pull her back down to the ground.
Fairies from each talent started putting objects on a ring of toadstools. Vidia placed a small tornado for the fast-flying talent on one toadstool. Bobble placed the tinker-talent's hammer on another. Iridessa put what appeared to be a small, dimmed down version of the sun. Silvermist left a drop of water, Rosetta left a flower, Terence left Pixie Dust and so on. Zarina added a small test tube full of Pixie Dust for her relatively new Pixie Dust Alchemy talent.
Anna started to walk around the circle. She first stopped at the Pixie Dust Alchemy toadstool, perhaps drawn to the glittering Pixie Dust. When she touched the test tube, the Pixie Dust lost it's glow. Zarina's face fell. She'd really been hoping to have at least one other member of her talent, since she was currently the only Pixie Dust Alchemist.
Anna looked sad, too. But Queen Clarion reminded her that there were other toadstools with other talents, and Anna's face brightened. She picked up the Pixie Dust for the dust-keeping talent, and that lost its glow too.
The light-talent's sun died out. The water drop exploded. The flower died and wilted. The tinker hammer fell to pieces and got dangerously close to breaking Anna's toes as the parts fell to the ground. Anna gave a surprised yell but didn't jump back. She poked at Vidia's whirlwind, only to have that die to. The cooking-talent was ruled out, too.
Anna turned to the last talent left, which was a bird feather representing the animal-talent. She approached it and slowly reached her hand out, somehow knowing the significance of this moment. Her hand curled around it, and she picked it up. It didn't do anything aside from sparkle a bit, but at least it didn't fall apart.
The fairies clapped politely, but all of them were wondering whether or not Anna really had a talent for animals. After all, the objects usually did more than just sparkle. Once Elsa knew what the talent stood for, however, she felt slightly relieved for her sister. Anna had always been the one bugging their parents for pets. But then she remembered that their parents always said that five wasn't old enough, and her relief vanished a bit. But then she saw the grin on Anna's face, and Elsa began to clap uninhibitedly. She knew Anna would be great.
XXXXXXXXXX
It was dark outside, but the glows of fairies and Pixie Dust cast a comforting light. A fairy sized table was set up in the grass, easily large enough to seat dozens of fairies. Each place was set for a banquet.
Elsa and Anna were sitting next to each other, with Tink and Peri across from them. On Anna's right was Fawn, who was the animal-talent who'd show her the ropes. Next to Tink and Peri was Terence. All of Tink's other best friends were scattered around.
Queen Clarion stood up, tapped her glass with her spoon, and said "To our two newest fairies, Elsa and Anna." She held up her glass and the others repeated the toast.
The warm-fairies had learned about how Elsa and Anna became fairies, and so far nobody seemed to care, to which Elsa, Anna, Tink and Peri were thankful for.
The cooking-talents arrived with food, and everybody began to eat. Fairies had banquets for every new arrival, as a nice way to welcome them. Anna and Elsa chatted with other fairies as they ate. Fawn was telling Anna about chipmunks. Meanwhile, Zarina was explaining some of the science behind Pixie Dust Alchemy to Elsa, who was intrigued.
Terence was quite welcoming, and made small-talk with Elsa and Anna before Fairy Gary dragged him away to do something. Vidia even made some remark about how Anna's hawk wings would help her glide, which, from Vidia, was a compliment.
Elsa and Anna's eyes started to droop halfway through the meal and they were asleep before dessert arrived. Tink and Peri smiled fondly at them, and eventually carried them back to the ice castle Elsa had made. They got Anna's ice coat on her, but not without waking her. She smiled at them, murmured "This is so much better than Bluebell" and fell asleep again, curled up with Elsa.
Peri and Tink glanced at each other. They had no idea what this meant, and they glanced at each other, both of them wondering if Elsa and Anna would get tired of being fairies.
I figured they deserved a nice calm ending after the last couple chapters. Even if the ending was rather lame, I still liked this chapter. Hopefully it's a nice start to Elsa and Anna as fairies. I can picture Anna as a animal-talent more than any other talent, especially because she likes Sven, and because of the scene with the ducklings when she's singing For the First Time in Forever.
Okay, so I'm SERIOUSLY creeped out. I tried to make up some word for Anna's fairy name so that, like I said in the chapter, it was related to Tink and Peri. I came up with 'Bluebell' because Periwinkle is a shade of blue, and it's related to Tinker Bell in that, well, duh, it has 'bell'. I thought I'd totally made it up.
But then I noticed that spell-check didn't underline it, and I thought 'that's weird, is it really a word?'. So I poked around the internet and found it was a flower. Not that weird, right? Trust me, it gets really freaky. Well, I was trying to come up with a fairy name for Elsa, and I started looking for flowers associated with winter, and google brought up some site about flowers that were related to fairies, and guess which flower was on that list.
In folklore, apparently, Bluebell flowers have a bunch of ridiculously eerie similarities to stuff I'd already planned for this story months ago (so DON'T look it up if you hate spoilers). The only thing about it that doesn't involve spoilers is it makes humans fascinated with fairies.
I swear, I had no idea about this. I'd like to say I cleverly thought it up, but I didn't. When I found this out I was like Whaaaaat?! I was just trying to make up a word and now there's all these creepy coincidences! How on earth does this happen?!
Suddenly the idea of fairies abducting me and tampering with my brain doesn't seem so unrealistic ;)
Or maybe I read something about it years ago in the Spiderwick Chronicles or something and forget about it? I don't know, but talk about freaky coincidences!
Holy Macaroni! As of last chapter, this story was longer than Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and now it's longer than the Chamber of Secrets. Which is ironic, because those are brilliantly awesome and this isn't.
Okay. I'm going to keep updating at least once a month, so I'll see you in November. (I was actually worried I wouldn't be able to update this month, which would have ruined my streak of always updating monthly. But I did manage. Yay!)
P.S. Happy Halloween everybody. If you want a cool ghost story, look up Inez Clarke (whose real name was actually Inez Briggs, apparently) of Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. I love the statue, even though I've only seen pictures of it.