by C.L. Bevill
Chapter 21
The More Things Change…
I didn’t pretend that I understood how the firefly pixies could do the things that they did to me. I know that in one moment I was flying faster than I had flown before. I had a contingent of pixies spread out before me, an arrow of green light that pointed the way to my destination. The urgency that I felt was secondary to the guilt over leaving Zach and Kara in a state of worry. Had I known that I was going to be gone for days and not hours, I would have told someone. I would have left a note. I would have mentioned it to Lulu in passing so she could have leapt with cheerleader-like glee and passed it on to her cohorts with elementary school-age reveling. Something, anything, to alleviate the unintentional pain I had caused.
Regardless of my guilt, one moment I was flying. The next moment I was lifting my head from my bent arm and moaning at the pain of stiff muscles. I was inside the cave again, stretched out along an uncomfortable lava floor, not far away from where the pixies were busy with their day-to-day activities. My mouth was dry, and my body was screaming with remonstration. It didn’t feel like four days had passed, but my body was yelling at me that undoubtedly I had been lying there entirely too long.
The pixies flew toward me in a rush, their singsong voices lifted in supplication. I heard several different ones asking, “Is Soophee all right?” “Is Soophee all right?” “Soophee recovers?” I gathered by their level of concern that this was not something they did every day of the week.
I said, “I’m okay.” The voices immediately shushed. It took me a second to realize what I had done. Without thinking about it, I had unerringly replied in their language. The honeyed tones were the same. The pitch was much lower and sounded gravelly in comparison to their dulcet voices. It didn’t sound exactly the same, but it was their language. I started in surprise. “You did that?”
One of the pixies flew in front of my face. I had thought that they looked identical, but having spent time with them, I could see the marginal differences in the shapes of their wings, in the iridescent spread of colors there, and even in the shapes of their eyes. I knew that I had met this pixie before, and I struggled for her name. Ah, it came to me. Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers. She sang to me, “This and more, Soophee. Now all will be clearer for us.”
“Okay, girls,” I muttered. “I’m going to go back outside, and I don’t want to accidentally mush someone.”
There was a singsong yell. “Soophee is TURNING AROUND! We will get CLEAR!” It made me smile although I was achingly tired. Feeling like a giant in the land of the really teeny-weeny, I was extremely careful going out the same way I had come in. I couldn’t understand why it was a little easier squeezing out until I realized a few pounds must have melted off me inside the cave while I was dreaming.
Dreaming? I couldn’t have simply survived in there for four days without food and water, and especially without water. That meant I hadn’t really been asleep or that the pixies had done something to me. Whatever it had been had left me voraciously hungry and thirsty.
“Couldn’t we have dreamed of eating?” I plaintively said in English. The pixies clouded the outside and cast curious glances at my words. Well, I didn’t know what they ate, but I was craving a pizza. Large, thick crusted, with extra cheese and don’t forget the mushrooms. Maybe Gibby had figured out some way of making cheese that would stay fresh while I had been gone.
Once I got outside it was dark. Not still dark, but dark again. The stars twinkled above, and the moon was only a sliver of a thumbnail. It was an indicator that the four days I had been in there weren’t my imagination.
I fumbled for water from the pool, cautious not to disturb the merman-like pixie counterparts in the current. They rushed me as well, their little bodies glowing greenly in the black waters, eager to see what I was doing. After my thirst was sated, I stumbled into the nearby woods and hoped that the pixies would give me a little privacy. Whatever had happened to me inside the pixies’ world hadn’t taken care of personal business, and I couldn’t wait another minute.
When I came back to the pool the pixies were still aflutter with excitement. Several of them were calling elatedly, “Sak! Sak! Sak!”
I shivered. The air had become cold, and I didn’t have an ounce of energy. But I did notice that my breathing was easier. My lungs felt completely normal, and I knew that the pixies had done something about that, as well. “Thanks,” I said softly. I was hungry, tired, and cold, and I couldn’t imagine why it was that I was tired, considering what I had been doing for four days. My muscles burned with disuse, and I was wondering how I was going to make it back to the campground without lying down to get some real sleep.
Zach to the rescue once again. Oh, he couldn’t carry me all the way back, but he did have one of the emergency packs. It had a sleeping bag in it and some emergency provisions. That would take care of anything I needed, provided I could wait for him to show up.
I looked around slowly and went to replace the ferns over the opening to the pixies’ cave, just in case anyone else wandered by and decided to take a looksee.
“Hey,” I sang to the pixies who were still buzzing about. “How long before Zach comes to us?”
The answer was typically pixie-like. “Once Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines gets here, he will be here.”
Knowing that I didn’t have the energy to try to meet him, I huddled by the base of a tree and gathered my arms around my body. The pixies circled the tree and myself and droned comfortingly. I fell asleep with my head against the tree, not even caring that it was cold or that I was sitting up.