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I bit my lower lip to keep from laughing. Keffa leaned against a giant boulder, arms crossed, watching Soryn’s distress and grinning like a fiend.
“Seems you’ve finally found some females who want your company.”
“Plenty of females enjoy my company.” Soryn bared his teeth and growled at the sprites, and they flew out of reach, giggling.
Goll stepped ahead of me, his boot crunching on a branch. All eyes snapped toward us, including the sprites.
I gasped as they shot through the air like arrows toward us. I raised my arms, preparing to defend myself. Last time, one had poked and pinched me, flying around my head so fast she’d made me fall into the water. Terrified I’d die from the freezing water, I hurried away into the woods with the three of them squeaking and calling me to come back. I’d intended to after I started a fire to get dry and warm, but then I was captured, and that was the end of that.
This time, none of them attacked. They circled, making cooing sounds. They were the same ones as before, I was sure of it. Their sleek blue bodies with webbed hands and long flipper-like feet were very familiar. The fins jutting from their spines were each a different color—yellow on one, purple on the second, and green on the third, matching their feathery caps of hair and bright, round eyes.
Yes, these were the same sprites, one of whom had made me fall into the freezing water in the dead of winter when I’d been here five years ago.
Their wings were less transparent than those of other sprites, smooth like their flippers since they used them to swim as well as fly.
“You’re back!” the purple-haired one chirped, the one who’d pushed me into the water.
“Now is good,” said the green.
“Now is right,” said the yellow with a nod.
They hovered directly in front of my face, smiling.
“You remember me?”
They all laughed, a tinkling sweet sound.
“Of course,” said the yellow. “You look the same.”
I laughed for I looked much different to my own eyes.
“I’m a few years older.”
“You are worlds older,” said Yellow.
“Worlds older,” chimed Green and Purple together.
Smiling, I glanced at Goll, struck by the look of confusion and wonder on his face. Soryn and Keffa wore similar expressions. I suppose it was odd for these typically antagonistic sprites to be holding a civil conversation.
“Do you know why I’m here?” I asked Yellow.
They laughed and flew in a lazy ring around my head, dancing in the air and singing merrily in unison:
“Ladies, ladies,
listen to me.
Words of wonder I
bequeath to thee.
But mark the time,
a vessel will be
a darkling fae lady
with secrets to see.”
