Little Bundle of Joy
‘Well well!’ There now came a much more jovial voice from all around.’ ‘Aren’t you a tough nut to crack?!’
The master winced with hatred and while there came a thousand cheers of stadium-like joy. The image of the wizard seemed to fall apart into a rain of tiny falling people. It was as if the whole thing was just created out of a thousand pixies taking on its form. Now, like a pane of glass smashing, this illusion was shattered, every last shard, a Fairy screaming with joy as they fell.
As the image smashed to pieces, the gloomy walls of the Lionbiters arms reappeared from behind. Within moments the bar had returned to its normal shoddy self and nobody even had even drop of moisture on them. It was as if they had never even been soggy in the first place.
As the hundreds of tiny Fairies dashed away in the shadows, becoming a gaseous mist in the air, this left just one of them standing proudly in the middle of the floor, hands on their hips, no taller then a pint glass. Everyone eyed this Fairy up and down. In response he stretched himself to his full eight inches, as much to show off the grandeur of his costume than make him appear any bigger.
Head to toe this fairy was a one pixie-bling-machine.
He began with a crown of dainty golden curls entangled with a headdress of diamonds and pearls which jangled along with his neon-silk fairy-wing earrings. The rest of him was robes of silken tunics and fluffy scarfs followed by flapping bell bottom pyjamas adorned with great strands and scripts of precious stone and gleaming shells. In fact, this Fairy was so intricately adorned in detail that you could probably read his entire family history just by looking at him from jewel crowned head to gleaming anklet-ring-adorned toe.
‘Well well, if it isn’t a F-A-I-R-Y…’ The master growled a constipated whine at the tiny man standing before him, ‘the only thing I hate more than a Wiz…’
“I know, know, Petal chip!!’ The Fairy beamed with joy, his voice like liquid sunshine. ‘The only thing you hate more than a Wizbag staff wielding scum twat! Well here I am! Your worst nightmare!‘
The fairy now leapt forward on his bare feet, head banging his great head of curls flowing down from his headdress of precious stones, with great swings that made all the rows of beads animate with a cascade of vivid neon colours. Then he did a little catwalk, carrying with him his equally small but incredibly stylish musical instrument. He strummed effortlessly against its various sets of 100-plus strings, as he started to a do a stage run up the length of the bar until he was well within stepping distance of the Masters foot.
By now he was mere millimetres from standing on the dragoon steel toe cap of the Masters left hob nail boot. He made a little bow, all his jewelery, including his prominent little fairy-wing ear rings, making far too many jangly twinkling over tones one so small in stature had right to make.
At this point the Master looked like he wanted to bring down all walls on top them just to express how much he hated the nerve of this little being before him.
‘Oh you love the pain my me causes in your yoou!’ The Fairy purred without even a slight hint of sarcasm. ‘The feeling is most happily mutual! I have journeyed the uniderverse far and wide to experience the full gamut of MOUTH emotion and, ’ He put his hands under his chin and let out a sigh. ‘I think I have found in you one seriously tragic source of despair which I absolutely adore!’
The Master’s frown deepened into a grand canyon of furrows and he opened his mouth to speak again. But he was speechless as how he was meant to express the depth of his inflamed, gut-burning hate. A rage that thickened his arteries right now. He felt like the air was dense with thorns digging into his flesh.
‘What’s that, Petal chip?’ The Fairy almost sung. ‘I suppose you want to know my story and why my Power Animal here decided to take on the form of such a powerful Wizard just for you!’
He pulled on tiny pendant around his neck with a fully alive, living face, which was now sticking its tiny tongue up at the Master with defiant mischief in its eyes.
‘Not really, mate…no…’ the Master finally managed a couple of words.
‘Well’ the Fairy continued, ‘it was a toss up between my power animal taking on the mood of Akashlessly or Ri
‘Is this supposed to be some kind of….’ This master was remarkably restrained in his words, his voice barely above a whisper, ‘EXTREMELY weird Fairy threat…’
‘Oh no, no dear petal chip, I’m no threat! I am a wake-up call for you to realise the eternal joy within you, your present right now! For my dear, there are forces at work in this universe that could undo your entire family line! They are working tirelessly to see that the Sosighcity gets an apocalypse up the back side!’
The Fairy did a little football kick and cheered as if he’d just scored an invisible goal.
‘Can you speak anything that doesn’t sound like complete and utter horse radish!’ The master snapped back.
’I can! I can tell you a story about two Wizards who hold this Tunelands fate in the range of their staff blast! They are most interested in using Glenofd’raaah like a cute guinea pig for all their future fun! You don’t know how much your life, your present tense, as you know it hangs upon a thread, doomed to change! You must hear my story now and then maybe you will finally smile and say, “Life is just for playing like a instrument. Let us party like there’s no 1999 tomorrow for tomorrow will be beyond your wildest imagination!” So embrace the Wild Imagi-viberation! Embrace the power of melodiemotion and sway like the tree in an incoming storm!’
The Fairy now pulled on the strings of his sea shell-shaped instrument and started a fresh drone.
‘Now sway, sway to the emotional resonance of this Fairy tale I sing, sway back and forth I say! DO It!…’
‘Oh I’ll sway alright.’ The Master mused, ‘WITH MY FISTS!!!’
The Fairy’s words were cut short as four arms lunged at him. But, with a mass of compression out of his strong shoulders, the Master’s knuckles merely rapt against the hard floor, missing their mark by what must have felt like an infinity, for the Fairy suddenly seemed to be somewhere else altogether.
His fists now throbbing with pain the Master’s watery eyes jerked towards the frame of a painting that hung on the nearby wall. The Fairy seemed for all intents and purpose to become part of this canvas now, his image joining that of the classic night-time battlefield theme it depicted, two old empires going to war on muscular horse back. The Master restrained himself. He liked that painting. He didn’t want it damaged. All the blood, guts and glory. It was his kind of thing. Otherwise it would be in pieces right now! Anything to get rid of this vermin problem.
‘Right!’ The Fairy spoke, sounding totally unphased as he continued to tune up his instrument, ‘this will only be a short Fairy Wahail! That’s what WE call it when we tune a tale into melody! It goes a little bit like this!’
Despite the fact that Fairy had become a two dimensional object in a painting, he had lost none of his potency. If anything, being in a slightly elevated position in the of heat of a battlefield seemed to give him even more projection. He started up a melody on his lute gently coaxing a warm fuzziness of over tones and drones from this many-stringed melody maker. He pulled on some pegs and the instrument’s resonator began to expand, giving his melody even more volume and sustain.
As his instrument resonated, he started playing several different layers of melody over each other as if he was a one man band. It was like he was creating a whole landscape of sound and the more layers of ambience he created the more immersive the experience became. He could make his instrument sound like some ancient singer warbling across a vast space of primal emotion, slap strings in a way that sounded like great cosmic drums.
The Master and the rest of the Fairy’s reluctant audience could only shut up and listen, what else was there to do? All the time the Fairy was getting more engrossed in the music he was making, pulling everyone else into this sound field. He held a tiny tankard in his fretting hand which he could drink out of at the same time as sliding it up and down the fret board, making subtle micro-tonal wails with every zig zag of his wrist. At the same time he started to narrate his Whaahail, his voice almost floating on the melody with an omnipresent tone which bounced about the room like it was in ten different places at once.