Todd the shadow Gelert shut the book he was reading with
a bang.
"Hah! Stuff and nonsense!" he said scornfully
to nobody in particular.
His sister, Lizzie, a blue Zafara, reached for
the book and read the title that was emblazoned across the cover.
"Faerie Folk" she read out loud. Lizzie
flipped the book over and read the summary on the back of it. "A fun collection
of stories and legends staring Faeries of all shapes and sizes." She looked
up to her brother's scornful face. "I didn't know you read things like this."
"I don't. I found it in your bookcase and it
looked so dumb that I just had to read more. Whoever wrote it had an overactive
imagination. Why, just look at this," he said, flipping the pages of the book
till he came to the story of a small Faerie named Nidia who had travelled out
of Neopia, to a different world. "It's ridiculous! You can't travel out of Neopia!
There's nothing out of Neopia. Other worlds don't exist."
Lizzie just shook her head.
"You don't know what you're saying. This isn't
just the figment of someone's imagination. Nidia really exists, you know. In
fact," she said, checking out the front cover of the book, "she wrote this book."
"Tsk tsk, I think someone has been reading
one too many Faerie stories," said Todd. "Nidia might be a real Faerie, and
I say might, but that doesn't mean that she really did travel to other
worlds. There's just no such thing as parallel dimensions."
Lizzie was properly miffed.
"You want to bet on it?" she asked him with a
scowl.
"What do you want to bet?" he asked tauntingly.
This was too easy, he was so sure to win.
Lizzie chewed her lip thoughtfully.
"How about my whole collection of Usukis?" she
said finally. This was an enormous concession on her part, as her Usukis were
her most prized possessions.
"All right!" Todd said eagerly. He could make
a whole lot of Neopoints selling them off to some girls in his class. "Get ready
to lose, my dear Zafara sister," he told her smugly.
"Don't be so sure about it, my dear Gelert brother."
***
"You're sure about this?" whispered Todd nervously.
They were outside Nidia's NeoHome on Faerie Castle
Road. Lizzie had dragged Todd all the way to Faerieland to find out if there
were, actually, other worlds.
"Of course. This is the only way to find out
if Nidia really did travel to other worlds or if she only invented it all. We
have to ask her herself." Lizzie rang the doorbell.
The door creaked open. Lizzie and Todd both gasped
at the same time. Lizzie gasped because the old earth Faerie which stood before
them was not remotely like the young beautiful Faerie which she had dreamed
about. Todd only gasped because at that exact moment, all the Faerie fondant
he had eaten earlier that day gave a mighty turn in his stomach.
"What do you two want?" the old earth Faerie
asked suspiciously.
"Well... errr... we would like to ask you a few
questions, miss Nidia," said Lizzie, suddenly at loss for words.
"You don't say. Well, why don't you come in,
young Neopets." And with that, she threw the door open.
Lizzie and Todd sat on a sofa in face of Nidia.
She offered them some tea, but they politely declined, as the tea didn't look
that good, and besides, the house smelled slightly musty. But what else could
you expect from an earth Faerie's house?
"So," Nidia said significantly, "what did you
want to ask me?"
Lizzie gathered up her courage.
"Well, we were reading the book you wrote, Faerie
Folk." She took out her copy of the book to show to Nidia. "And we were
wondering, well, did you really travel to all those different worlds out of
Neopia? Or did you just invent it all up?"
Nidia looked at the young Zafara in amazement.
"By the Queen Faerie! You don't mean to say that
you actually believed that story?" she said, giving a small dry laugh.
"Of course I didn't! Why, there is no such thing as other worlds. This story,"
she said, waving the book in front of Todd's muzzle, "is a figment of my imagination."
She rose, giving the book back to Lizzie. Then,
she ushered them back to the door.
"Now, it was very nice of you to come visit me,
my dears, but I am afraid that I don't have any more time to waste on you. Be
sure to read my next book when it comes out, but, for pity's sake, don't go
believing everything you read!"
She then closed the door in their faces.
***
"I told you so!" said Todd smugly to Lizzie back at their NeoHome. "There is
no such thing as other worlds! Now, pay up."
Lizzie sighed. Not only had she lost her whole
collection of Usukis, but also, all her dreams on Nidia and other worlds had
been broken. The world just wasn't fair. Oh, well, it served her right for talking
about things she didn't know about.
"Hey guys, what are you doing?" said Somerandomowner,
their owner, coming back from a shopping spree in Neopia Central.
"Lizzie's giving me her whole Usuki collection,"
said Todd with a grin as Lizzie put all her Usukis in a big bag and gave him
the heavy bag.
"Uh, right..." said Somerandomowner, staring
at them. Sometimes, he just didn't want to know what was going on with his pets.
He headed to the kitchen to put away what he had just bought.
"What about owners? Where do owners come from?
Maybe they come from another world. That wouldn't be a figment of my
imagination," whispered Lizzie to Todd, in a vain attempt to win back her Usuki
collection.
"Maybe owners are a figment of our imagination,"
Todd whispered back, already heading out the door to go sell his prize.
***
Somerandomowner logged off Neopets. It was getting quite boring, feeding his
pets every day. Maybe he didn't want to keep playing on Neopets. He was getting
way too old to play with virtual pets, anyway.
Somerandomowner felt a twinge of remorse. It
was like leaving his friends in an other world. But then, he dismissed that
feeling. After all, Neopets was only an online game. It's not like it's real,
he told himself. It's only the figment of some person's imagination.
The End
Author's Note: All the characters in this story are fictional. Somerandomowner
doesn't actually exist, he's just some random owner.
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