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A Misplaced History


by buds_and_authors

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Dedicated to my family -- for all the times I haven't said sorry.

History is a very important thing. Without history, there is no present. So, I thought that I'd record my history, just so that it's possible for people to know who I am. Or rather, who I was.

      As many of you may have already guessed, my name is Jhudora. My mother, such a long time ago, was a light faerie. Surprising, I know. She was the sweetest, kindest faerie that ever lived -- despite what Fyora tries to tell us in these modern years.

      It came as a surprise to my family that I was a dark faerie. No one in my family liked dark faeries. So I suppose this is why my mother was abandoned by her family in those years. Her family simply left her to her wits, to survive solely on her own.

      "Jhudora, darling, I can't stay at home. I must go and hand out quests," she'd tell me before flying away down towards, what I would later learn, was the rest of Neopia. And then, she'd give such wonderful rewards that the expensive quest items didn't make a difference. Magic is free; food is not.

      She had no help when, as I was growing up, she went very nearly bankrupt. School supplies can be hard to buy when you can barely afford each night's meal, forget breakfast.

      Often we had to sponge off charity, setting aside our natural, faerie pride. Sometimes I wondered if tomorrow we'd be on the streets, no school, no home, no life. We just scraped by, and by the time I graduated from Faerie Towers, Mother was so worn out that she simply lay down on the puffy pink-tinged clouds and fell asleep. She lies there today, sleeping peacefully away the years.

      What drove me to become a true dark faerie, I don't rightfully know. My world was turned upside down when I met a certain person known to the public in later years as the Darkest Faerie; I suppose this was the turning point. She called herself Firroe, never having a mother to speak of and living on her own. No one noticed or cared about us. Who would? Two scrawny, rebellious dark faeries. We were just like every other dark faerie.

      Contrary to popular belief, Firroe was not evil. She was sweet and kind, caring. She looked out for me, protected me. She was my undoing.

      "Jhudora, would you like something to eat?" she asked in her motherly manner. "I'm suspecting you're getting hungry now, aren't you?"

      I nodded. She smiled. "Well, we don't have any neopoints to buy any food," she said sadly. "I suppose we'll have to fly all the way to Neopia Central to get some food from the Soup Faerie."

      Tired and weary from our endless flying and walking, I didn't want to go to Neopia Central. "We'll just get some from a store," I said easily.

      "But we don't have any --"

      "I didn't say with neopoints."

      She looked at me, confused. "Oh, Jhudora! You wouldn't!"

      "It's the only way we'll get any food!" I cried. "We're too young to hand out quests, we don't have any money to get a job, what are we supposed to do?!"

      "Sleep. Go to the Haunted Woods and find some other dark faerie to stay with," she suggested, anything but stealing. This is what made me steal that food. She deserved it.

      "No. You'll have food, Firroe. I want to do something for you. You're so kind that it's my duty to get some for you." I smiled and flew off.

      But how to steal food? That was the real question. Stealing food wasn't something they'd taught us about at Faerie Towers. No, the other faeries had all been prissy, stuck-up, neopoint-stuffed little snobs who'd been able to do anything they had so much money.

      Even now, my hand shakes with fury at the thought of such discrimination. Of such prejudice, just because I was a dark faerie.

      I went into the Faerie Foods store. Casually, I slipped four cakes into my pocket. The storekeeper didn't notice.

      "Can I help you?" she said benevolently.

      "No, I'm just looking," I assured her and she attended to the other customers while I stole all sorts of goodies. No one saw me and soon I turned to her again. "I'm actually not that hungry. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow."

      She smiled and waved as I went out. I flew back to Firroe -- which was quite difficult as I was weighed down by the many small cakes and big cakes that I'd managed to stuff into my pockets.

      "I did it!" I said proudly when I landed next to Firroe. I sat down and took out all of the cakes.

      "Jhudora!" Firroe scolded. "You shouldn't have been this greedy -- even when stealing!"

      "Yes, Firroe," I said and hungrily bit into one. "But there was just so much and I thought that we could take it with us and then I wouldn't have to steal again for a while."

      "Oh," she said before biting into a cake guiltily. "I guess it doesn't really matter. If Fyora were giving us neopoints as charity, I suppose we would have spent them there, buying these things. We're just taking our charity without their permission."

      "That's it," I said with a smile. "We just have to be careful."

      And so, from then on, we stole what we needed, taking anything and everything. Before too long, we were expert thieves. After a while, we moved to Neopia Central so there was more shops and we didn't have to keep going into the same shop saying "No, I don't like any of this, I'll come back tomorrow" because that would get a little suspicious.

      "Jhudora," Firroe said one day, "I don't think we should do this anymore. Can't we play games or something? You know, this isn't really right, now. We have the chance to make neopoints. We could just play one game, then play Dice-a-Roo until we get some food," she suggested.

      By this time I'd realised that I liked to steal. I lived to steal. Stealing was all I did. Firroe was putting that in jeopardy. I suppose it was the dark faerie in me coming out. I narrowed my eyes at her.

      "Are you thinking of turning good, Firroe? If that's the case, I think that I'll have to turn you in."

      "You're the one that does the stealing!" she snapped. She shook her head. "Jhudora, you deserve better than this."

      "Do I? Really?" I demanded of her. "I don't think so! This is my life! I'm choosing this, Firroe. Wherever you go, this is my path."

      That day, Firroe left. I don't know where she went, but the next time I saw her was at the Faerie Festival. She was completely changed. So un-mother-like that I didn't recognise her.

      "Jhudora," she said coldly when passing me.

      "Firroe?" I asked in astonishment. "Is that you?"

      "Don't you remember me?" she asked, slightly sad. "I thought we were closer than that. My mistake," she snapped.

      And with that, she went away, her cloak creating a breeze through the faeries. I could see her wiping something from her eyes but I didn't dare believe that it could be tears. This new Firroe didn't cry, she was too cold and hard. I had lost Firroe.

      I went home, tired and worn out. The life seemed to be gone from me. Seeing Firroe that way was terrible. She had once been so kind, so gentle. And now look what had become of her. The one who had been my mother when times were tough was no more. There was an imposter in her place.

      And standing on a cloud, detached from Faerieland for some odd reason, I cried. My tears fell onto the cloud beneath my feet and it turned a sick purple. Faeries were not supposed to cry, least of all dark faeries. Firroe had been the exception.

      But Firroe was gone now. She is no longer a mother to me, she is no longer the faerie she used to be. She is the Darkest Faerie, and I am nothing but her second in command.

      To this day, I regret what I have done to Firroe. She resides at the bottom of Maraqua, where she will stay for another seven hundred years. Who knows if I'll still be here when she awakes, I can only wish that I will be. So I may say that I'm sorry, for the first time.

The End

 
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