Once upon a (different) time and place…
"To be one with the rising son!
To be free like the holy ones!
Yearn for the light,
Fear of the night…"
Hearthian Castle Gardens
"...to be one with the rising son!"
Despite his name, Bleak was a very merry fairy. His aura was gray like the stormiest clouds, but his spirit was the brightest of beacons.
In the early morning rays of the sun he journeyed forth on his usual route, taking the time to stop and smell the flowers—thankfully, not all one million and seven hundred two of them. There had been rain that morning and a light dewy haze had settled over the royal gardens, coating everything with a light sheen of moisture.
Bleak was drifting lazily, humming his favorite song to himself, when a certain flower caught his eye. He went and settled between its curved golden petals, chirping, "Oooh! You smell really nice today, Ms. Honeysuckle...what's the occasion?"
"Bleak, hurry it up!"
The shout came from over a wall of neatly trimmed hedges not too far ahead. Bleak was confused at who'd been yelling at him until he remembered he had a sister.
His sister, who usually led him down the exact same path every single morning. This morning they were quite late to start their shift as two of the royal garden's numerous fairy stewards, which was also pretty typical. His sister was bad at keeping track of time, and he, well...
"Coming!" Bleak called. "...um. I promise! One second..."
"Don't get distracted! You always do!"
Well, he just couldn't help himself most of the time. It was quite hard for him to focus when he was always surrounded by beauty and intrigue.
Speaking of intrigue, Bleak had only gone a single foot before something made him stop and gape. A flower was spontaneously blooming before his eyes!
Its bulb swelled then peeled apart with a flourish, presenting four crescent-shaped petals. The flower shook itself generously, almost like it was trying to rouse itself, then fell still. Its pale petals emitted a low but discernable aura.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Bright, come look at this Moon Flower!"
"I'm not!" Bright called back, sounding even further away; he could hardly hear the tingling of her wings. "Pick it up, seriously! Do you really want Mother to catch us slacking again?"
But Bleak had forgotten his bussiness once more, alighting on the flower with a pleased hum. His sister was the stark opposite of him in terms of general outlook and patience, but he wished she would at least stop thinking death and/or misfortune was around every corner.
"Who the—" Bright gasped. "OH, GOD!"
A second, much rougher voice snarled over hers, "Shut it!"
Bleak didn't even notice. He was in his own little world and may as well have been dead for how much he heard.
"Bleak," his sister wailed. "Ow! Stop—OUCH! Let me go! BLEAK!"
"...wait, huh?" he asked mildly, floating free and shaking pollen from his wings. "That you, sis?"
"HELP me!"
"Aw, did you fly into another rose bush?"
"No, she's...AGGHHH!"
Bright was practically choking on her own scream. Bleak sighed, shaking his head.
"Admit it, sis. I told you this would keep happening if you kept flying over the posted speed limit..."
Bleak was very dedicated to his job, so much that he had memorized the entire garden and knew what grew where. On that note, he knew where all fifty-five thorn bushes were planted and that the one nearest was roughly ten yards away to his relative south, nestled next to a topiary of a roaring lion head.
Though when he got there, his sister was nowhere in sight. The confused fairy looked in every direction he could imagine. "Uh, sis, I don't think I see you? How deep did you get wedged?"
"You don't SEE me because I'm not stuck in a stupid bush!" Bright yelled, sounding farther away...and in the exact opposite direction he was in. "Follow my voice!"
"Oops," Bleak chuckled.
That was when he finally heard a second, very unfamiliar voice: "This is the last time I'll say it...shut your face and stop squirming!"
Bleak quickly hovered along, gliding through the light misty haze like a soundless bumblebee. Unlike other fairies, his wings didn't give away his presence and he went unnoticed as he crested a hedge.
Bright's golden fairy aura was wavering, flashing in panic as she dangled in the air. Who held her by the wings was a human girl whom Bleak instinctively thought looked very out of place. She wore clothing that made him think of those who lived on the other end of the empire—those of Serenala, or the Kingdom on the Water, as it was called.
"Hey!" Bleak cried.
The girl jolted. She had been looking in his general direction but hadn't seen him perched on the hedge. "Hey, yourself," she said abrasively, squinting up at him. "How long have you been peeping, Tom?"
"Only for like a few seconds. And my name's Bleak, not Tom. It's okay. People misname and look over me all the time, but it doesn't hurt anymore. Hey...are you a real cowboy? Where's your pistol and seahorse?"
"I'm...a what? I'm a pirate! And I have a ship, not a horse!"
"That's even cooler, I've never seen a real pirate before. And hey...you're pretty. What sort of flower are you?"
"Are you SERIOUS right now?!" Bright shrieked. "Bleak, she threatened to cut my wings off!"
"That was only if you didn't cooperate, which you're still not doing!" the girl said. She sent Bleak a weary look. "You wanna problem? HUH? If not, stay over there and don't move. Got it?!"
"Oh, okay," Bleak said drowsily. His wings drooped and trembled. "Okay, Ms. Flower..."
His sister sighed in disgust. "For the love of Noh, show some urgency for once in your life...look at how she's holding me!"
"Does it hurt?"
"Yes! And it's shameful!"
"What can I do?"
"Not just sit there, maybe?"
"I'm not even sitting, though!"
"OH, FOR—both of you SHUT! UUUUP!" The pirate shrieked. Bleak saw that her hair—which was already swirled up in some odd hairstyle—seemed to stand further on end. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot and she looked a little crazy at the moment.
He said, "I like your hair. How do you get it to stand up like that?"
The pirate immediately drew her sword. Bright squealed when it was leveled at her face.
"You. Don't talk until I say so," the pirate said calmly to Bleak. "Or else she gets it. Okay?"
Bleak held his little hands to his mouth, aghast. There was a distinct tingle beginning to beat within his heart, one that reached all the way to the tips of his wings. He had a sense for odd things and that morning, something had told him this day would be a bit different...
Tetra was past the point of furious.
Second to the fury was the madness of confusion, like one could get after wandering around a maze that seemed to go on forever. Then again, that's what she'd been doing ever since opening her eyes that morning.
It was one sort of shock for her to wake up in a place she wasn't familiar with. When she had looked around, the next bout of realization had jolted her all the way to her feet. Somehow she had already known. Link wasn't with her. He had just been present, then it was like she had blinked and suddenly found herself lost and alone.
She immediately started wandering around, calling out for him. The morning was dampened with a heavy, unshakable silence. The gardens were pleasant but to her unfamiliar eyes, everything soon began to blur together in an endless expansion of colors, twists, and turns. At several points she had stopped, confounded, feeling as though the world was wavering around her. She usually didn't get so disoriented as easily as she had...
Then, she heard something. There were voices, though the one that was nearer had woken her up for the second time that morning.
"Link, hurry it up!"
She was sure of what she heard. She immediately laid in ambush, ready to throttle Link in case he had gotten distracted (as he often did) and was meandering about with someone else.
But all she had gotten were two fairies, not that she felt like throttling them any less. She wasn't having any more nonsense at the moment.
Bright sighed, going limp. She had given up completely.
"What do you want from me?" she asked. "Have mercy...I'm already late for shift. Just do whatever you want and release me. I don't even have any sort of treasure on me pirate, we don't even get paid with human currency..."
"I don't want any stupid treasure," Tetra yelled madly, shaking the fairy by her wings. "I heard you say his name! You can't tell me you didn't!"
"Who or what are you talking about? Who's name?"
"You said Link. Where is he? Where'd you see him?!"
"I was calling Bleak, that other fairy over there!" Bright squawked. "You heard wrong, airhead!"
Tetra growled. She jerked her head over to the dull-colored fairy, who perked.
"Oh, can I talk now?" Bleak asked.
"Don't get carried away," Tetra warned him. "Have either of you seen another person wandering around here?"
Bright sighed heavily. "Uh, no, no other human should be present in the royal gardens at the moment. That includes you, girl. How'd you even get in here?"
"Oh! Oh!" Bleak cried. "Are you maybe looking for your cat? You look like a cat person."
"What?" Tetra snapped.
"You know, it's a bit of a bother how they like to sneak into the gardens. I got pounced on just yesterday afternoon when I—"
"I clearly said another person!"
"Is he a fairy?" Bleak asked obliviously. "Like, a ball of light with wings like us? Oh! So he's a new hire! I would never think humans and fairies could make friendships, you know, ever since the Great Fairy Culling all those years ago—"
"I am LOOKING FOR ANOTHER PERSON," Tetra roared. "A person. Another human like me. How many times do I have to say it?"
"Oh, just once. So another person, huh...no...you're the only one so far. What does he look like, then? We can tell the other fairies to look for him. Well, after they yell at us for being late."
"Yes, yes, please give us a description so we all can move on with our lives," Bright said, sounding as though she wanted to find the nearest volcano and fling herself in.
Tetra's jaw was clenched so tight it was beginning to creak. She had to take several moments to breathe. She was really trying to get better at being patient.
"Okay," she said calmly. "Tell all your fairy friends to look for a blonde doofus about my height, maybe one inch shorter, with huge bug eyes with an even bigger stomach. He's not hard to miss...he's dressed like a complete dork."
"Is he dressed like you?" Bleak asked mindlessly.
As Tetra sent him a dangerous stare, Bright quickly elaborated, "He means like a cow—I mean pirate! He means, if this Link is dressed like a pirate."
"...no. He wears mostly green," Tetra said.
"Oh, no wonder you can't find him! Everything's green here," Bleak said. "Well, not literally everything, but like, roughly eighty-five percent of everything."
"Thanks for pointing that out, never would have noticed..."
"We'll let the others know, I promise. Oh, but hey! Hey, Ms. Flower...Mother may still be around here somewhere. Maybe you can go ask her for help."
"What? Are you nuts," Bright cried. "Have you lost your mind between waking up this morning and now?"
"Who's 'Mother'?" Tetra demanded, suspicious.
Bleak answered, "She works in the castle."
"What castle?"
"Er...that big one over there?"
He pointed a wing, and all she had to do was look up past the tops of the highest hedges. There indeed was a castle rising at the far edge of the gardens. It loomed with an unsettling silence and had a pasty sort of glow to it, appearing almost abstract in the odd light of the morning.
Tetra rubbed at her eyes, then tilted her head as she peered harder. Was it her or had it gotten darker? "Is that real?" she asked. "There's royalty that lives there?"
Twitch!
"Ah!" she uttered, immediately jerking her free hand to her temple. She had felt a sudden tweak there, some painless little zap that had radiated all the way to her ears.
Whoa, what was that?
The feeling was brief, but left her feeling as though something terrible was amiss. Now, the two fairies were gazing at her in silence. Tetra was struck with a sudden, dangerous instinct that she had come off as being too ignorant.
"...didn't you know?" Bright spoke up steadily. "Where have you come from to not know?"
"Uh...duh?" Bleak broke in, earning himself a displeased hiss from his sister. "The far east, Bright. She said she was a pilot, remember?"
"It's pirate, not pilot!"
"Yeah, that. So where's your ship, Ms. Flower-Pirate? Can I call you that? How'd you go all the way from there to here? It's just that you seem out of place, no offense."
Tetra started, taking a moment to meditate on that. "Yeah," she admitted. "I am. That's exactly how I feel."
"Sorry to hear that...wow. You and your friend must've gotten really lost. Did you have an accident? A bad one? You don't have amnesia like what happens to people in fairy tales, do you?"
"NO!" Tetra yelled suddenly, startling them both. "I don't! And don't you EVER ask me that again!"
Bleak cowered. "I'm sorry, I..."
"Oh, you little—look, I don't care about what happened before now, all that matters NOW is that I find my Link. That's all. No contest, no arguments on that."
"Your Link?" Bright repeated plainly. "Is he some sort of mass produced entity? How many of him are there? Two? Five? Seven? Don't say four."
Tetra was awkwardly scratching the back of her head. "...that came out weird," she muttered.
"Everything here is weird! I'm telling you, you should see Mother," Bleak said, gaining steam once more. "I call her 'The Pioneer of the Weird Frontier'! Plus, she has the best map in the realm. Seriously. It almost knocked me out of the air when I saw it for the first time."
"Yeah, sure," Tetra said disinterestedly, glancing around. "How do I get out of here, genius?"
"Bleak, show her out," Bright said.
"What if your missing link is here, though?" Bleak asked. "I mean, this whole garden is two and a half square miles of every blooming plant you can think of, plus there's a ton of hiding spots and places to just conk out, see. Does he like to sleep?"
"Pfft, yeah. It's almost like he has narcolepsy," Tetra said, irate. "But—"
"He could be sleeping somewhere! I do that sometimes during my breaks. It's hard enough to get around this place with wings, so I bet using legs is even more tiring."
"Well he's just not here, how about that?!"
"What are you going on about now?" Bright asked, exhasperated. "Are you not holding me hostage because you thought your dumb friend was here?"
"I changed my mind! And don't you dare call him dumb again..." Tetra turned on the spot, hauling back. "Only I can do that! So BUZZ off!"
She flung Bright all the way over the hedges, out of sight and mind. Then, she zeroed into Bleak. He didn't seem aware of what had happened to his sister.
"Hi," he said dorkily. "You're pretty. Did I say—"
"Yes, you already said it, and no, I don't need to hear it twice. Tell me where to go. NOW."
"Okay...go where?"
"I don't know! Just...out of here. Out of the gardens." Tetra paused then sighed, rolling her eyes. "...please."
"Easy! I can do that. Thanks for saying please, too. Oh, so…what's your name, Ms. Flower-Pirate?"
"I'm Tetra," she said impatiently.
"Say! I have a friend with tetraphobia. That's a thing. It's a fear of the number four. He's all paranoid and says the number four is about death, oh and he also believes that old legend about how being left handed is an omen of destruction. Ha! Silly guy, right, all hung up on death and destruction. I don't know where he gets these things from…ohhh, the people I hang around, heh heh."
He led a sullen Tetra over to the start of a marbled path, saying, "Follow the marble always, and keep moving in the direction towards the castle. That way you can make a path without getting lost! It makes navigation way simpler once you know those things. It's better than having to wend through all the flower beds and the topiaries and the hedges and stuff. It's still a maze even to me, and I work here! Though then again, I guess I have it easy, since I can fly over everything...
"But I'll still help you, of course. Just follow me, Ms. Tetra!" Bleak said cheerfully. He flitted off, beginning to sing, "To be one with the rising son...!"
Tetra wanted to strangle him.
Then again, she remembered that she needed to save that energy for Link. His tendency to bumble into trifling circumstances had been part of what led up to this point, really. Now she was stuck with a fairy who appeared to have been born with his head and rear end swapped.
Tetra clenched her jaw tight, glaring down at her clenched hands.
Link, buddy...you're one of the best things to ever happen to me.
But I swear when I find you, I'm going to strangle you to death, bring you back to life, then strangle you to death AGAIN!