She doesn’t need to look far, Skygate has placed her in the area for the most direct route to her internal target, “Nice shot! Skygate never fails.”
Better than she knows because it’s not only the right world in the right universe, plane and dimension, but also a correct match to the right time which is not as easy as you may think, because although not a time portal, Skygate still has to know the time anywhere and place in order to synchronise his ends.
“Okay then, where am I supposed to get into this one, exactly, though? Let’s have a closer look-see.”
She is looking for the easiest way to gain access to the sleeping-rooms, one of, which should be somewhere very close by or at least as close as possible.
Oh, did I not say? If you have not already noticed the obvious, Lilium can see perfectly well in the dark. Even the total black-darkness that you rarely see, or not see, if you see what I mean, in your electric world. She needs this talent to find her way around when on dark tasks. She can however, like all Fairies (and fairies too) if they so desire, glow, emitting her own luminescence to the extent of creating an almost natural daylight, illuminating a surprisingly large area if she so wished. A useful but odd natural born gift for beings who live almost exclusively in a land of unceasing sunlight! Now.
Tonight she will not be using this talent, she obviously, and quite rightly so, does not want to be seen: this would give the surprise away! Not to mention the forced and hard-won secrecy surrounding the Fairy mystique: well, they do have an image to maintain don’t forget.
All the barred and quadruple-glazed windows, carbon-fibre hatches and steel doors are secured, very secured, surprisingly so. Not even the tiniest of cracks to shrink further down to size in through. Humans don’t like the outside air getting to them apparently, but this place is tighter than most.
A rapidly whispered spell tells her the thickness of the walls: too thick to spell-jump through. She is too tired for such short-cut spells anyway, but she has spotted the place Skygate must have appointed for her entry.
“Aha! a powered air mover, good, that has to be the place, and will surely do as well as anything when there is nothing else!”
She flitters to the second-story of this three-storey mansion, towards the electromechanical device set into the wall. She senses the strong flow of inside air around the hole before she gets too close, telling her of its potentially unobstructed connection with the inside.
The buzzing noise from it, nonetheless, does not fill her with glee, “Gobling dung!” which is about as close to swearing as she gets, “It’s moving!”
Fighting against the outward rush of air she is lined up with it now and she can see, well, almost see, the fan blades nearly invisible with speed down the thin pipe in which the machine is housed.
Taking an involuntary but deep breath, swelling her newish, but getting more provocative by the century, bosoms and spluttering at the taste of it, she sighs, “Right, no problem, I can handle it: I hope!”
Muttering a lesser incantation, she concentrates on the switch she senses inside as being the operator for the fan’s engine.
Nothing happens, “Hades! it’s well stuck.”
It is in fact not stuck as such, but the toggle had been partly removed, in effect blocking the pipe for some reason.
“What now? If my spell power wasn’t so run down I could perhaps have burned out the driving mechanism.”
Burned it out? She could you know. Fairies, the sentient ones that is, may look like butterflies, to a being on a running scemel, but ...
She hovers, sucking on her lower lip, ruminating her next move. Lilium is not her happy self, “What a place, if this is the easiest way in.”
Dogs are barking close by. Dogs, if you do not know, can sense Fairies and other things you are unaware of, that is why they stand there barking at apparently nothing. Very annoying creatures. Although warning is part of their job, so they are to be forgiven, perhaps.
The noise makes her mind up for her, “Better move before they wake everyone up. That I do not want!”
Capable of absolute invisibility naturally, the possibility of being seen should not be an obstacle to a Fairy: normally. Lilium, however, like most young things, burns up a lot of energy, in her case her spell power, playing trivial tricks on spiders and owls etc., and of course, for fear of missing something of interest, not getting adequate rest. To conserve energy, her body simply turns some things off and in this instance it is her invisibility. It wouldn’t be too bad if it was light because light helps to recharge them also. She does not bother to turn it back on because she needs the power.
“Nothing else for it then,” she frowns.
Then moves off, holding her arms pressed tightly against her sides. Reciting something to herself, she executes a precise backwards loop in the air some-way from the pipe to gain rapidity, now getting smaller and smaller, due no doubt to that small muttered spell not taxing her energy greatly, she folds her wings totally thin and flat against her dragonfly blouse, moves her arms forward, outstretches them like a diver before her, head tucked between them out of harm’s way and with eyes tightly closed, not too sure she can achieve what she is attempting and not wanting to watch and now going at such velocity the very air before her is screaming in its panic to get out of her tiny inertia driven way, she aims herself straight at the shredding blades.
****
Like a dart from a Demon’s t-bow, she whizzes unflinchingly right through the blunt whirling blades. Only her immaculate timing and speed, and maybe a bit of magic, saving her from instant death, shattered if not sliced, into liquidation like some lowly egg. Even for an egg an unpleasant demise, to emerge through the other side, if you have not guessed, or this book would not be as fat would it? looking back over her shoulder.
“Phew! And to think I have to go back out through there! Oh well I will think more on that when I get back to here.”
She spells on a little something to warn her in case she is being watched, “It’s a bit weak but better than nothing,” she concludes while looking around to discover herself in a smallish room full of obnoxious fake scents pretending to be pine glades and musks and things you may not want to be embarrassed with knowing about.
Humans, and many other things, insist on inflicting these repugnant odours on their persons. Covering themselves from head to foot and all parts in between when stepping out of the big tub used for bathing. In actual fact they even bathe in such smells! Perhaps it is to hide the messages their own natural fragrances broadcast: who knows? I don’t think they do or perhaps they wouldn't do it. Thankfully she is soon away from the smells.
Out through the usefully already open door, she flutters down a long darkish corridor looking for her target. Doors are on all sides, she can sense their emptiness through the closed and polished hardwood, except for one in the distance which is occupied, hence her reason for going this way.
She goes a little faster, high up, close to the ceiling. Although there is no other sign of life, at least within range, her previous spell gives her the not-distinct feeling she is being ‘observed’, “Odd, there seems to be nothing around though.”
She is almost blissfully unaware of the well hidden electronic sensors strategically placed to register movement, after all, in themselves they offer her no danger. Fortunately they are set so that Lilium is too small to trigger off any response. I will not mention the cameras.
Eventually she arrives at the only occupied room on this level, and this door is wide-open for some reason. Seeing that her intended target is in there, and without any real worries and with no hesitation, she zooms into the room like a moth chased by an angry wasp: of which she has had practice.
“There he is. Such a little one. Well, for one of them. Juniperus bless him.”
The room is not completely dark. A bit of a glimmer emits from a small light sat on a low table in a corner at the end of the room. This little mite must be frightened of the dark. Unlike many of the child’s reasons for fear, this one will easily be overcome, as it will discover as it gains age: if this one does.
Why did I tell you that? It isn’t relevant to this story, but that’s me for you, so let’s get on with Lilium.
Fortunately most of the room is still dark enough for her to leave a trace of sparkling semi-particles in the air behind her as she slows down. A sort of Fairy trade-mark and one of her personal favourite delights.
Lilium alights on the bedhead surveying the sleeping face below her. “Oh no,” she exclaims quietly, “Bang in the middle: would be.”
The boy’s head she means, on the pillow. It would be very odd if the face was not, on a human that is. With one delicate flutter she lands at the side of the pillow which towers over her like a large snow encrusted knoll.
“Right then. Let’s get on with it!”
She rubs her hands together, takes a deep breath, drops down on all fours, wings folded again, and with quite a bit of careful effort riddles and pushes under the pillow.
Oddly, even when so small Lilium still retains the full-strength of her normally larger size, but even so the journey to the centre of the pillow and back is not without a measure of un-Fairy like grunting and cursing. Not real curses, good grief no! she has no desire to harm the child in any manner: or his pillow.
Eventually her tiny head pops back out from her struggle, “Whoo, that is NOT the way to do it!”
The rest of her body emerges and she turns puffing, to pull out a giant, to her, tooth. This is the easiest way she has learned. Pushing it all the way just causes it to dig into the sheets. It would have been easier to 'Jump' though.
“This is hopeless,” she gasps, almost in tears as she stands beside the milk-tooth, nearly up to her willow-thin waist. “I simply MUST get some more sleep when I get home to my nest. Build up some energy for Jumping and everything.”
Some spells use little power, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of the apparent difficulty of them, but something to do with some natural laws or other. Some just seem to take more than others and that’s an end of it. 'Jumping' took most though. What are Lilium and I on about though? with this oft mentioned - 'Jumping'. Well I will come to that in more detail later so you will simply have to wait.
She was about to recite a simple homing spell over the tooth to cause it to travel to wherever these teeth go, when, “Oh dung!”
She suddenly remembers what could have been an unfortunate oversight causing untold tears and tantrums within this household. Little boy-children are often like that. (Not to mention accusations of theft from other quarters and even eighths.)
Now back down on her stomach she uses her elbows and knees to riddle back under the pillow puffing and panting a third time. She doesn’t go too far in however before she humps up a little igloo shape with her back to allow greater space to work in and sitting on her haunches she pushes back her hair from out of her eyes.
“What is it nowaphase?” she scratches her head in puzzlement.
Lilium is very forgetful. You too would be if you had 800 year’s worth to remember.
“What is it they call them around here now? Groat, Shilling? No I don’t think so, not any longer. Oh well, I can’t hang about, I’ll just have to take pot luck and Snatch-Something-Out-Of-The-Air.”
This is an Old Fairys’ saying, not that she is, old that is, but in reality, sort of, that is often precisely what happens. Tacking-on to a spell a sort of precursor that causes what could only be described as a search around the area scanning for something relevant to be duplicated. Or if that failed, well alright then, simply directly pinching it! No, let’s not say that but ‘borrowing’ instead. No, let’s not say that either but rather just taken. Perhaps in lieu of things you owe them for that they have done for you but you know nothing about. Between me and you, though, I doubt she has the power left to bring anything far, never mind create anything, so let’s hope some cash is very close to hand or she will be in bother!
“Right then. Here goes.”
She closes her eyes, concentrating hard. Solid objects ‘out of the air’ are taxing, but not power consuming, thankfully, but to make it that much harder it does have to be real, too. Ethereal Fairy-gold will not do for this job.
Furrowing her high slanting brows she spreads her hands before her on the bed sheet and mutters a short but complicated incantation under her breath. A green light glistens around her fingers, flowing out to enclose the space around and under her fingers. The light turns golden.
Within a short while, right there on the crispy-clean-white sheet under her hands appears a big golden coin as big as herself, presumably duplicated from one close by. A ‘pound’ I believe, that is if this is England, Terra. Not really gold, though, but that’s not her doing.
Even so she says, “No, let’s not get too generous, it is only a 'token' payment after all.”
Shutting her green almond-shaped eyes tight again and screwing up her little pointed face, she incantates two more times. The big golden-coloured coin eventually shimmers and melts away as its place is taken by a smaller silverish one. A 'twenty-pence piece' I think.
“Ah yes, that will do,” she smiles with satisfaction, “It’s not Christmas! I think.”
It is not, not for awhile at least. It being such a long period since Lilium was asked to help the Christmas Elves and St. Nick., one Terran date when they were behind schedules. She isn’t really certain if it is or not, but she knows it doesn’t feel like Christmas, a feeling rare to be found as the decades pass.
I know what you are thinking, Elves? Father Christmas? - Oh ye of little faith - I say to you! But that was all before the advent of D.I.Y. and mail-order Christmases of course, and perhaps you deserve what you get.
There I go waffling on again.
That task completed, she pushes herself out from beneath the pillow again, being careful not to lift it, and the head, from the bed, and looks at the small tooth.
