Home to Pixie Town, a story of Dragons next Door for the Giraffe Call
For Friendly Anonymous' prompt.
Dragons Next Door has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
Passiansi was going home for the summer, which was just about forever in pixie years, but her mother had insisted, and her father had shaken his fist, and that had been it; Passiansi was packed up and shipped out Home.
Never mind that she had been born in the Big City and lived her whole life in Smokey Knoll, and her parents and their parents before them; never mind that "Home" hadn't been home for their line of pixies in fifty years or more, sometime around their fifth birthday, the summer before they were officially adults, the family decreed that every young pixie had to visit Home, the pixie city down in the southlands.
The twelve-hour bus ride - the bus driver seemed uncertain about having a pixie on the greyhound, but shrugged and took her full-price ticket. "You paid for a full seat, you get it," the rotund human - or maybe an ogre - had declared, and Passiansi had rode the twelve-hour drive in absolute luxury - dropped her off at an elaborate gate, huge by pixie standards but, to a girl who'd gone to a human school her whole life, not all that impressive. It wasn't even as big as the school doors.
But it was where she was going, so she flew through it. So this was Home, then? Tiny, with aspirations to some sort of Big-ness? Hidden off the side of the highway where humans wouldn't even notice it? A doorway between two stone walls?
She hit the shimmering line of the glamour, and was knocked backwards, nearly falling back out of the doorway. "Woah." She hovered in place, trying to take it all in. It was a carnival and a madhouse and an explosion all rolled up into one, the buildings climbing up into the sky, stacked on top of each other like Christmas presents, the roadways sometimes just tunnels, sometimes nearly as broad as a human street. And in the streets, in little floating carts - how did they get them to float?! Were they hanging from wires? How did it all work - were pixies of every color selling what looked like just about everything.
Passiansi felt for the pocket-full of pixie cash her grandmother had handed her. "You'll need this to get down the rue-rue," she'd told her. "Save the rest for later." Feeling its hard jingle, seeing the thousand beautiful carts, Passi was sure it wouldn't be weighing her down long.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/250013.html. You can comment here or there.
Dragons Next Door has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
Passiansi was going home for the summer, which was just about forever in pixie years, but her mother had insisted, and her father had shaken his fist, and that had been it; Passiansi was packed up and shipped out Home.
Never mind that she had been born in the Big City and lived her whole life in Smokey Knoll, and her parents and their parents before them; never mind that "Home" hadn't been home for their line of pixies in fifty years or more, sometime around their fifth birthday, the summer before they were officially adults, the family decreed that every young pixie had to visit Home, the pixie city down in the southlands.
The twelve-hour bus ride - the bus driver seemed uncertain about having a pixie on the greyhound, but shrugged and took her full-price ticket. "You paid for a full seat, you get it," the rotund human - or maybe an ogre - had declared, and Passiansi had rode the twelve-hour drive in absolute luxury - dropped her off at an elaborate gate, huge by pixie standards but, to a girl who'd gone to a human school her whole life, not all that impressive. It wasn't even as big as the school doors.
But it was where she was going, so she flew through it. So this was Home, then? Tiny, with aspirations to some sort of Big-ness? Hidden off the side of the highway where humans wouldn't even notice it? A doorway between two stone walls?
She hit the shimmering line of the glamour, and was knocked backwards, nearly falling back out of the doorway. "Woah." She hovered in place, trying to take it all in. It was a carnival and a madhouse and an explosion all rolled up into one, the buildings climbing up into the sky, stacked on top of each other like Christmas presents, the roadways sometimes just tunnels, sometimes nearly as broad as a human street. And in the streets, in little floating carts - how did they get them to float?! Were they hanging from wires? How did it all work - were pixies of every color selling what looked like just about everything.
Passiansi felt for the pocket-full of pixie cash her grandmother had handed her. "You'll need this to get down the rue-rue," she'd told her. "Save the rest for later." Feeling its hard jingle, seeing the thousand beautiful carts, Passi was sure it wouldn't be weighing her down long.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/250013.html. You can comment here or there.