The Adventures of Draikin and the Light Faerie

     It was a beautiful (if still grey) day in Meridell as Draikin, the Royal Ixi prince, sauntered through the forest, happily eating his doughnutfruit, and completely unaware of the nasty little Ogrin following him. The Ixi prince looked up at the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees and thought of his friend, Ciara. The Light Faerie was going to meet him in their clearing under the broccoli tree, and he couldn’t wait to see her. She was the first real friend he had ever had, and he still found it hard to believe sometimes.

     When he reached the clearing, she hadn’t arrived yet, so he threw himself down on the grass and took the blue spiral shell she had given him long ago out of his pocket. Lying on his back and munching the last of his doughnutfruit, he held it up to the sun, wondering about the ocean.

     Blau, the Yellow Ogrin page, had been able to follow Draikin very closely, since the happiness of the young prince seemed to make caution almost unnecessary. When he reached the edge of the clearing, he stopped, crawled beneath a furrn, and peered out. Seeing Draikin lying in the grass, gazing at a shell, the Ogrin found it hard not to laugh out loud. So this was the great mystery? A clearing where the Ixi could lie by himself and stare at some weird, colored things? It was almost too silly and stupid to report to Miss Taff!

     Suddenly, a brilliant light blinded Blau, and he blinked to clear his vision. Through a haze of light, he heard the young prince laughing,

     “Well, it’s about time you got here!” Draikin was saying, “I thought I was going to be waiting all afternoon!”

     “Oh, hush, Draikin! I’m barely late!” Blau’s vision cleared to reveal a dazzling Light Faerie hovering in the air just above Draikin, who had sat up and was still laughing. Blau’s jaw dropped.

     “Ha,” cried the pretty Faerie, grabbing Draikin’s hat and flying up and down, just out of his reach as pretty rays of light showered from her fingers. “Call me late, will you?” Draikin leapt to his feet, laughing, and the chase was on!

     “Oh, no, you don’t, Ciara! Hey, give that back!” The Ixi leapt into the air after his hat, but the Faerie was too quick and darted to another part of the clearing, dangling it just low enough for him to catch until the moment he reached it, then snatching it away, giggling.

     Suddenly, the Faerie zoomed right over the furrn that Blau was hiding under, and following right behind her was Draikin, charging towards Blau’s hiding place! Blau thought that he would be caught for sure and held his breath. In an instant, however, the Faerie darted back into the clearing, and although Draikin almost stepped on Blau’s tail, he whirled back to follow her. Blau let out his breath in a long sigh of relief. This job was raising his blood pressure.

     “I give up!” Draikin shouted at last, quite out of breath. She was flying high above, laughing. Pouting, he plunked down on the ground. Ciara continued to giggle for a moment, still hovering in the air above him, before growing concerned about her friend. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. Quickly, she flew down and placed the hat back on his head before landing beside him in the grass.

     “I’m so sorry, Draikin,” she started, but the Ixi prince grabbed his friend and tickled her!

     “Ha ha! I totally got you! I got you! You soooo fell for that!” Ciara shrieked with laughter.

      Eventually, the two friends stopped their wrestling and lay back in the grass, panting and looking up at the ever-grey sky above Meridell.

     “I can’t stay very long today, Draikin,” the Light Faerie said sadly.

     “Why not?” Draikin looked at his friend, but Ciara looked away.

     “I have to go home soon.”

     “But where do you have to go? Where is home?” Ciara didn’t answer him but continued to look into the sky. “It’s your guardian again, isn’t it?”

     Ciara sighed. “Yes,” she said quietly.

     “Ciara, come on. You must tell me. Why doesn’t your guardian want you to come to the woods? Who is he, anyway?”

     “Oh Draikin, really, you mustn’t keep asking me that!”

     Hearing the mention of the Light Faerie’s guardian, and the strange secrecy around the subject, Blau perked up beneath the furrn. This was an interesting turn in the conversation.

     “But why shouldn’t I ask you, Ciara?” Draikin asked, and the Faerie hung her head, tendrils of her golden hair falling over her shoulders. “How bad can it be?”

     “You don’t want to know. Honestly. Can’t you just trust me?” she asked softly. Draikin took her hand, smiling at her.

     “Of course I trust you, Ciara. You are my best friend, and I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone! But I also want to understand.”

     She looked at him and sighed, resigned. “But you see, if I speak his name, he may hear us.”

     “Hear us?” Draikin asked, glancing around himself into the darkness of the woods. “I hate to say it, Ciara, but your guardian sounds kind of scary.”

     “Oh, but he’s not really. Most Neopians just don’t understand him. He is good. Really, he is. But people just don’t see it often. And when it comes to me, it’s only that there are—that is—he has other plans for me.”

     “Other plans?”

     “Yes.”

     “Other plans for what? I’m sure if he’s as good as you say, then he must want you to be happy. And I know that you are happy here with me. What could he want for you more than that? What other plans could he have?” Ciara shook her head, and with a flick of her wings, she was hovering in the air again, nervously flitting back and forth in the clearing.

     “Other plans! Other plans!” She said, waving her hands. She turned and looked at him, exasperated, her violet eyes flashing. “He has other plans for what I should do with my time. And for whom I should—whom I should spend time with! He wants to choose my friends.”

     “Choose your friends?” The prince stood up, watching his friend flitting back and forth across the clearing. He felt so much braver than he had when he met her. When Ciara passed him again, he took her hand, and the Light Faerie landed silently next to him again on the grass in her cloth slippers. He smiled at her. “You know, I may be the youngest son, but I am part of the Ixi royal family. I mean, how high exactly are this guy’s standards?”

     Ciara couldn’t help but laugh at his little joke. She, too, noticed how much the young prince had changed since she had met him. She was opening her mouth to tell him so when suddenly the wind stirred up again in the trees, whipping them back and forth and hissing louder than ever before.

     “Ciara!” the moaning, windy voice cried urgently. “Ciara!” Heavy clouds were riding in on the wind, darkening the already grey skies over Meridell. Ciara’s wings flickered, and she began to fly off into the sky. But Draikin grabbed her hand again and pulled her back to the ground. The sky was getting darker by the moment.

     “Ciara,” Draikin pleaded wth her, urgently. The Light Faerie was still looking skyward and trying to pull away, but he squeezed her hand and said her name again, “Ciara! You know that he has already heard you, whoever he is. He knows that you’re here with me, and he’s calling you now. So, tell me before you go—Who is he? You said that he is good, so it can’t do any harm to tell me. Who is your guardian?”

     She looked up at Draikin, and her wide violet eyes were full of tears. “I can’t tell you,” she said.

      She tried to pull away again, but he would not release her hand. Finally, she sighed and looked back into the young prince’s eyes.

     “Lord Darigan,” she said. “Lord Darigan is my guardian.”

     Shocked, Draikin released her without thinking, and before he could catch her hand again, the Faerie had soared into the sky above him like a shooting star.

     He stood gaping after her as the wind whipped around him. Lord Darigan? The dark ruler of Darigan Citadel? He was Ciara’s guardian? How could it be? No wonder she had not wanted to tell him. He wasn’t even sure anymore that he wanted to know it. Beneath the furrn at the side of the clearing, the little yellow Ogrin Blau’s mouth was also open in shock.

     From high above the treetops, Ciara looked down at the Ixi prince anxiously and waved, but the Draikin was too stunned to wave back. Devastated, she turned and sailed away, taking the light with her. And as the terrible wind around the Ixi prince continued to moan her name, the nasty little Ogrin crept on shaking legs from his hiding place beneath the furrn and raced back to the castle. He had all the information he needed.

To be continued…