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Joey is cleaning out his grandmother's attic. She's dead and he's occupying the house for the time being, since his dad and aunt are tied to jobs elsewhere in the country and he's unemployed. Cleaning the house out isn't fun, but he's got Reeses Pieces in his pocket and a record on and it's tolerable. Better than living with his deadbeat roommate for another year of lease. Maybe he'll keep the house. It's paid off and everything.
He steps back, dragging his broom.
And then he's in another world, it smells green and it's eighty degrees and the air is so startlingly clear and look at the flowers -
Joey says ack and leans forward along the path of his broom. And he is back in the attic. There's snow heaped against the window. It smells like dust and Grandma.
What the hell.
He leans back again. Verdant summer.
Forward. Attic.
When he's done this enough times that it starts feeling stupid more than fantastical, Joey carefully leans into summertime and puts his broom down and tries walking back without it.
Works just fine.
He leaves the broom there, laid across two worlds but somehow fully visible in each, as a signal of where the thing is, and walks into the warmth.
He explores. It's pretty, it's a nice change of pace, he can't hear his music from here but there's so much to look at.
He finds a tiny person, can't be more than a foot tall, with a dumb hat and dragonfly wings. The tiny person is surprised to see him.
"Whose mortal are you?" asks the tiny person.
"...What?" It speaks English, why the fuck does it speak English.
"Are you new? Nobody's snapped you up? Well, watch out. Don't let any food or drink pass your lips and definitely don't tell anyone your name. But I'm not going to hang around you, somebody'll be after you, you're trouble." The tiny person tips its stupid hat and flies away.
Joey blinks, and turns around to head back for his marker. It was past this rock here.
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"But you can be other people's - vassals - and you're mine because of the Snickers and so you really do have to tell me the truth because I said to?"
"So if I told you my name it would be safe for me to go to Fairyland."
"What all is in there?"
feel-so-free
"Lots of fairies. Plants. Sky. I wasn't there for that long. I hadn't been alive more than a minute when Jeff caught me."
"Wow."
"My mom always wondered why you looked so young. My dad wondered how Uncle Jeff managed to find a girlfriend," mutters pumpkin niece to herself.
feel-so-free
"Well, now you know. I'm a fairy. I started out looking this age and I'll keep on looking this age forever. And he found a girlfriend by kidnapping one."
"So you weren't really his girlfriend. I guess I should stop calling you Aunt Maria, huh."
Pumpkin niece thinks.
"My name's Rose," she says cautiously.
"My name's Rose," she says cautiously.
Rose laughs.
"Maybe. I'm not positive that you're not dangerous, still. Uncle Jeff wasn't lying about you being a fairy, he might not have been lying about that either."
feel-so-free
"You made me tell you the truth and I said I'm not dangerous," she points out. "I can't take vassals and I don't want to hurt anybody, except Jeff, who I can't."
"Can you get other people to hurt him, if I let you?"
feel-so-free
"Yeah," she says. "But he's dying anyway, so I wouldn't bother, I'd just go back to the fairy realm."
"But you might change your mind, and he's my uncle." Pause. "Do fairies have magic? Could you fix him?"
feel-so-free
"I don't have any magic but what I said," she says. "There's magic in the fairy realm but I wasn't there long enough to learn any."
Rose gets up.
"Show me Fairyland," she says.
"Show me Fairyland," she says.
Rose is very impressed with Fairyland.
Like her uncle before her, she goes back and forth a couple of times to make sure she knows where the place is; she scuffs the grass near it as a marker in the absence of a broom.
"I can eat fairy food and it's safe because you know my name, right?"
Like her uncle before her, she goes back and forth a couple of times to make sure she knows where the place is; she scuffs the grass near it as a marker in the absence of a broom.
"I can eat fairy food and it's safe because you know my name, right?"