Hi everybody! I'm back!
So on a random note, in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, it first says that all the fairies were born when the first baby laughed, but I just realized that in the end Wendy tells her mom that a new fairy is born every time a new baby laughs for the first time. At first I thought Disney had changed that, since I hadn't noticed the second part, but it turns out it's cannon to Peter Pan.
Also, you know how last chapter I wrote that new fairies were a sort of rare occurrence for Neverland? I can't speak for anyone else, but I can't envision the fairy population being as large as the human population in the 1900s (since that's when this is taking place). So somehow a bunch of laughs wouldn't become fairies, so I'm assuming a lot of them would die.
I can't actually determine what size I imagine the fairy population being. Because to me, it seems relatively small and tightly knit, but I also feel like there would be at least as many fairies as there are people in a small country, probably more. So... I don't know how those would go together, because you can't possibly know thousands of people really well.
So now it's Elsa and Anna's first full day as fairies. This chapter could sort of be viewed as a one-shot in this story
"Okay, Anna" Fawn said as she flew, her brown waist-length braid dancing behind her as her wings beat it around "Are you ready to begin your first day with the most amazing talent a fairy could have?!" She paused for a bit of suspense and then exclaimed "The Animal-Talent!" striking a pose in midair that said"and guess who has it? Me!"
Fawn set her body back in a normal position, and continued. "We have the best job ever, because we get to work with animals all the time!" She glanced beside her, where Anna was looking as if she were about to explode with excitement.
Anna was currently wearing what Tink called her "adventure outfit", which Tink had lent to her when Anna had shown up at her door that morning, asking for something to wear since her Arrival Garment was ripped. The outfit consisted of light green leaf jumpsuit, leaf boots tied together with vines, a buttoned mini capelet which was also made from a leaf, and a vine belt. The outfit was completed by a leaf hat with a feather sticking out of it, much like Peter Pan. Ordinarily, the outfit had one of Tink's iconic leaf dresses over the jumpsuit, but Tink hadn't lent one of those to Anna.
The forest floor beneath them was sprinkled with patches of sunlight and carpeted in mushrooms, plants, rocks, fallen leaves, nuts and some wildflowers. There were plenty of animals, and they were easy to spot since they trusted Fawn and didn't try to hide from fairies in general. The sound of birds chirping and a gently babbling brook added a soothing effect to the forest. Overall, it was a natural paradise, the kind of place Clumsies on the mainlands were slowly destroying with cities and the like.
Anna had her mouth open, spellbound, as she looked around her.
Fawn continued flying and asked "Now Anna, have you had any experience with taking care of animals before?"
Anna tore her eyes away from the landscape in order to look at Fawn and respond. "Yeah! One time I found a baby chick with a broken wing in the garden! I hid him under my bed so I could take care of him, even though Mama said not to. But he got out and peed and pooped all over the floor. Then he fell down the stairs." Anna made this sound like a vast wealth of experience.
Fawn was momentarily taken aback, which was a rare event in of itself. "Um..." She stalled, trying to figure out how to not hurt Anna's feelings, "I was hoping for something a bit more... successful." The experienced animal-talent felt a flicker of worry shoot through her. She hadn't forgotten Tink's attempt at trying to learn the animal-talent, shortly after the tinker's arrival. Hopefully this training wouldn't follow in Tink's footsteps, since that whole event had been a disaster.
Anna was back to gazing around her, and started looping around trees as she flew, leaving Fawn's previous statement hanging.
Fawn debated about what to start Anna out with. Fawn didn't consider Anna's previous experience with animals as very useful, and she wasn't sure how talented Anna was. But she certainly knew she wasn't going to start Anna off with teaching birds how to fly. Tink had sort of discouraged her from starting fairies out with that.
Deciding, Fawn set off, making sure Anna didn't get left behind. They flew around tree trunks until they reached a specific tree, which Anna didn't see anything particularly different about. Fawn made a chattering squawk, and a fuzzy head appeared. A squirrel that was a good deal taller than Fawn and Anna appeared, followed by four baby squirrels.
"Hey Fuzztail" Fawn greeted the mother squirrel, once it had scurried down the tree trunk, followed by the four little squirrels. "How about you have some alone time? We'll look after your babies."
Fuzztail was a longtime friend of Fawn. When Fuzztail had been a baby, she'd broken her leg and Fawn had helped her. She'd played a lot with Fawn over the years, and she trusted the animal-talent completely. She rubbed her fuzzy tail briefly on her young in an affectionate sort of way, made a chattering sound as if warning them to behave, and scampered away to do who knew what.
Anna was smiling at the adorable baby squirrels, who were at least as tall as she and Fawn were. The squirrels started to dart in the direction their mother had gone, but Fawn called them back. "You're mom is coming back soon, but in the meantime, we're going to have fun."
Turning back to Anna, Fawn said "One of the most important things we animal-talents do is teach animals how to do a whole bunch things. Right now, we're going to help these squirrels gather nuts".
"Why?" Anna asked curiously, since five-year-olds still have quite a lot to learn about the world- and Anna had just become part of a new world. Besides, Anna couldn't remember seeing squirrels in Arendelle, so she knew next to nothing about them.
So Fawn explained about squirrels storing nuts for when food was short. Anna nodded, still smiling at the baby squirrels. Flying up to one of the squirrels, Anna snuggled close and closed her eyes in bliss, loving the warm feeling of its soft fur.
Fawn watched her, somewhat reassured. There was no doubt that Anna loved animals and they loved her, which was obviously a good indicator of her being an animal-talent.
Once Anna had finished hugging the squirrels- she'd gone and cuddled with the others too, and the squirrels seemed to love it as much as she did- the group huddled around a spot in the forest which contained about a dozen nuts in what could loosely be called a pile.
"So, we're pretty much going to find all the nuts we can and add them to this pile." Fawn told Anna and the squirrels, before explaining to Anna "it's so they'll learn how to collect nuts. Pretty soon they'll move on to storing them in trees, but they might as well learn the basics first. We're going to help them."
Anna grinned and nodded. Ordinarily, she'd find such a job tediously boring, but ordinarily she wouldn't be doing it as a fairy or with adorable baby squirrels.
She flew off in the opposite direction as Fawn, each of them bringing two squirrels with them. Anna spotted a nut on the ground and landed near it, stumbling slightly because her landings still needed a bit of work.
Frowning slightly, she glanced down at the nut on the ground. To a fairy, it was around the size of a bowling ball. Anna bent down to pick it up, thinking of the time she'd tried to lift a large vase and had dropped it because of its weight. She brightened when she realized it wasn't all that heavy, despite her small size.
Once Anna's squirrel companions had each picked up a nut, they returned to the pile, deposited the nuts, and set off again, glimpsing Fawn and the other two squirrels doing the same. They repeated the process again... and again... and again.
The pile of nuts grew steadily. The squirrels started just leaving whatever nuts they collected at the bottom of the pile, since they could no longer reach the top. Fawn and Anna continued increasing the height of the pile.
Eventually Fawn left to check on some other animals, trusting Anna with the squirrels. Her parting words were "look after them, okay?"
Despite the novelty of being a fairy and working with squirrels, Anna was starting to get bored out of her mind. So she talked to the squirrels and tried to fancily throw the nuts into the pile to make things slightly more interesting.
One time, one of the squirrels climbed partially up a tree in order to try to drop a nut on the top of the pile. The squirrel let it fall and... Whump!... accidentally hit Anna in the head. Anna yelped and glared at the squirrel before hurling a nut at it in mostly playful revenge.
The other three squirrels chattered and tossed three acorns at Anna in retaliation. Anna shot into the air and dove towards the pile. She scooped up three more acorns- an armful for a fairy- and flew upwards again, preparing to unleash them on the squirrels. A war had begun.
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Tink finished yet another acorn basket and flung it into the pile. Given that the fairies had left all there equipment in Arendelle, they needed to replace a lot. Tink started making a new basket, but her mind kept drifting to the wand.
She didn't have it, currently, since Queen Clarion had locked it up for a couple days in order to prevent Elsa and Anna from making any more wishes. Tink couldn't wait to tinker with it. She figured if Elsa and Anna ever wanted to switch back to being human, she could get the wand to do so. She'd reversed wishes before, so she was sure she could do it a second time.
Finishing yet another acorn basket, Tink wondered if Elsa and Anna would ever regret turning into fairies. They'd seemed pretty happy about it. Then again, why would anyone want to be a Clumsy?
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"No! No! No! No!" Anna frantically cried out as six nuts came plummeting towards her, dropped by the three squirrels in the branches above her. She couldn't just move, because then the squirrels would steal her stash of ammo- she'd learned that lesson the hard way. The fourth squirrel was even poised on the trunk of the tree, ready to claim her pile of nuts if she left.
The squirrels had teamed up, which hardly seemed fair. This was as unfair as having to go up against Elsa in a snowball fight. Currently, Anna was trying desperately to hold her ground, and was doing fairly well considering she had three opponents. Actually, if she hadn't had all those unfair snowball fights with Elsa, she would have been totally doomed in the art of projectile warfare and probably would have surrendered by now.
Anna got clonked by one of the falling nuts, though she was glad it wasn't her head that got hit. Picking up two nuts at once, she hurled them upwards as hard as she could, letting out a warrior cry. One of them missed the squirrels in the branches entirely and the other hit the branch instead of the squirrels before gravity took over and they came back down towards her.
"Oh come on!" Anna screamed, accidentally stepping away. Even Elsa and her powers weren't this hard to beat, because there weren't three of her. Immediately, the squirrel that had been on the tree trunk jumped down and landed between Anna and the pile of nuts she'd gathered for herself.
When Anna tried to reclaim her pile, the squirrel actually pounced on her, pinning her down with its weight. Anna struggled to get out from under the squirrel, long past the point of relaxing in its fuzziness now that adrenaline had taken over, as the other squirrels carried all the nuts from her pile into the trees.
"No! That's mine!" Anna shrieked, but the squirrels paid no attention. The squirrel that had been sitting on Anna let her wriggle free, and the fairy hastily flew behind a tree trunk for cover.
Pressing herself against the tree, Anna knew she needed more ammo. She scanned the ground around her for nuts without seeing any.
Peering around the trunk of the tree, Anna saw the squirrels approaching the pile of nuts they'd been collecting before Fawn left, which had been severely diminished since their fight started. Abandoning safety, Anna sprinted towards them, forgetting in the excitement that she could fly.
Once she reached them, she dove into the pile of nuts, grabbing as many as she could and causing the others to roll in all directions. She looked up to see the four squirrels looming over her, looking very unhappy.
"Hey! You stole my pile!" Anna said defensively, and flew upwards as fast as she could. One of the squirrels grabbed her ankle, and started to pull her down. Anna fluttered her wings as hard as she could and tried to squirm free. She dumped her stolen acorns on her captor and escaped, laughing with triumph. She quickly became horrified, however, when she realized she was again out of ammo and saw that her opponents were all poised to throw nuts at her.
Anna rocketed upwards and weaved through the branches for cover. She let out a squeal of delight when she saw the pile of nuts the squirrels had stolen earlier sitting unguarded in a tree. She touched down on the branch, giggling and rubbing her hands together. Now the squirrels were doomed!
Casually dropping two acorns, Anna cheered as she watched them fall and hit their targets. Again and again, Anna rained nuts down on the baby squirrels. She spun around in midair with her leg extended, attempting to rapid-fire kick the pile at the squirrels in an attempt to imitate a move Elsa used in snowball fights where she spun around and somehow sent multiple snowballs flying. Anna's grazed one of the squirrel's tails and hollered "Got you!"
The squirrels started to run away, and Anna called out "Don't be poor sports!", but the squirrels were already out of her sight.
"Oh no!" Anna muttered, knowing that she was supposed to make sure they didn't get away. Fawn had specifically said that, and she didn't want to disappoint her animal-talent mentor. She abandoned her ammo and shot off in the direction the squirrels had gone.
Fortunately, finding them wasn't very hard. The four baby squirrels were behind another tree, gathering nuts. Figuring they were just getting more ammo, Anna flew back to her stash in the tree.
Where are they? Anna wondered as she sat in a branch. Were they planning a surprise attack? Glancing around the ground, she only just realized that they'd undone all their previous work.
She started to get worried when they hadn't appeared after a couple minutes. She abandoned her stash again and soared around, searching for them.
Hearing a chattering sound, Anna followed it and saw the baby squirrels running towards one of the more populated parts of Pixie Hollow, each carrying two acorns. Frantically, Anna zoomed towards them, but they had too much of a head start.
The squirrels gleefully threw their ammo at passing fairies, getting glares once they made contact. Anna caught up to them and said "Guys! We're not supposed to be here! We're going to get in trouble!"
If Tink had heard Anna say that, she would have laughed at the irony. As if that had ever stopped Anna before.
But the squirrels were having none of it. They were treating the other fairies as if they had been their opponents in the acorn-fight, by throwing things at them, grabbing them, and even sitting on them. Anna blanked out for a moment and just stared. Things were all falling apart and she hated it.
Anna desperately tried to herd the squirrels back into the woods. She wasn't sure how Fawn would react, and she really didn't want to disappoint her. She'd knew that performing one's talent well was a vital aspect of being a fairy. Fawn had believed that Anna could take care of the squirrels, and Anna was determined to show that could could handle it.
However, the squirrels ran away from her, thinking that they were playing a game of chase. They darted around, knocking aside any fairy artifact that wasn't attached to the ground. The squirrels ran into Tinker's Nook and caused even more mayhem. Many machines the tinker-talents had worked so hard on were broken as the baby squirrels plowed into them.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Someone screamed, and a short plump fairy with brown hair appeared. It was Fairy Mary, the leader of the tinker-talents. Flying up in Anna's face, Fairy Mary asked in a menacing tone "Why are these squirrels running around and ruining my tinkers' work?"
All the tinker-talents were staring at Anna. Clank could be heard asking "Isn't that the new fairy, Bobble?" and Bobble's reply of "Aye, Clankie!" was equally audible.
"Um..." Anna started, at once at a loss for words. She glanced around her and saw that the squirrels were also watching the proceedings.
Tink stood watching with her arms crossed. She was more than a little annoyed at the destruction at so much work. She figured she could let Anna face Fairy Mary's anger. She turned and walked away, returning to her workbench, but she felt horribly guilty. She'd been in a similar position numerous times, especially right after her arrival. She'd ruined a lot of things back then and had unintentionally destroyed months of work. She still remembered, after eight years, how horrible she'd felt, and how all she'd wanted was for someone to not be glaring daggers at her.
Tink sighed and fluttered back to all the other fairies. She must be turning into some sort of softie, she thought. Flying up next to Anna, Tink addressed the other tinkers in a somewhat accusatory way. "You've all made mistakes, haven't you?! Cut her a little bit of slack. She's new."
Suddenly, a very angry sound came from behind Tink and Anna, and the crowd of fairies gasped. Fuzztail arrived, and loomed over her babies, who suddenly looked very meek and innocent. Fawn was with her, looking disappointed. It was almost worse than anger, Anna thought, especially since she'd been trying to prevent Fawn thinking poorly of her.
Fawn had actually been observing Anna working with the squirrels, as a sort of test of her abilities, which sadly seemed to need work.
Fuzztail seemed to scold her babies for a bit, and then curtly led them away. The fairies watched them go.
Sighing, tinker-talents began to collect up the broken items to be repaired, and many of them continued to shoot nasty looks at Anna, who looked as if she might cry. Fawn and Tink led Anna away, and Fawn asked "What happened?".
Anna told them, and Fawn sighed. She often played similar sorts of games with animals, but not when they were supposed to be working. And she'd have to make sure the baby squirrels learned it wasn't okay to attack fairies like that.
Fawn's worried feeling was starting to return. Sure, Anna had been able to interact with the animals, but they hadn't listened to her when she told them to stop. And she needed to learn what not to teach the squirrels, and how to not encourage bad behavior. Fawn sighed. This had been as disastrous as Tink's animal-talent lesson had been eight years ago.
It looked like she'd have to train Anna as much as she trained her animals.
Wow. This one was a lot shorter than normal. Kind of brings back memories of my earlier chapters. But despite its shortness, I rather liked it. Sorry Elsa and Peri weren't in it.
Poor Anna. Everything really went horribly, didn't it. Good thing Tink and Fawn are supportive (by the way, I don't think it's out of character for Tink, seeing as she'd been there).
So will Anna improve, or will she face the same problems? And what's happening with Peri and Elsa? Stay tuned.
I should be able to update multiple times in December, because there's the holidays.