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From Mud to Royalty: Part Three


by thesundims

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Ruka tucked her head down and folded her wings in. Within a second we were dropping towards the water below, faster and faster until I was positive we were going to plunge into the icy waves. Just as I was closing my eyes and bracing for impact, she spread her wings and leveled out, just barely scraping the surface of the sea.

     “It feels so great to be free!” she screamed to the sky. After she got all of her excitement out, she asked me, “So what are you planning on having the Fountain Faerie paint you?”

     The question caught me off guard, I hadn’t even thought about it. I just knew that I didn’t want to be clay. “Well, I suppose plushie would be pretty cool.”

     “Ew, you don’t want to be plushie. That shows that you’re really soft; you want to be manly. How about pirate?” she offered.

     “No, that’s a bit too menacing. I think Mystery Island is a pretty color.”

     “Pretty is for pansies! I have the perfect idea - royal! Then you can go home looking like a king!” She was shouting into the wind again.

     “That would actually be pretty cool. But about that, I don’t think I’m going home any time soon,” I said, and I was sure she was thinking the same thing considering her love of freedom.

     “I was waiting for you to say that. Now I can tell my dad that you forced me to go somewhere else.” She did a flip in excitement. “So where do you want to go? Mystery Island? Terror Mountain? Or we could go to Moltara!”

     “I was actually thinking of going to the Altador Cup; it just started. And Faerieland is on the way, so we don’t have to go back at all.”

     “The Lost Desert is on the way too! I’ve always wanted to go there. My dad says he took me there when I was a baby and visited Coltzan’s Shrine. He says he felt lucky after that, so he bought a scratchcard and won a Lost Desert Paint Brush from it, so he painted me desert. I’d love to go to that shrine. I’ve heard stories that sometimes you can see the ghost of Coltzan in the distance; wouldn’t that be amazing?” She continued rambling and telling me every story she had ever heard about the Lost Desert, and soon she was so engrossed in her tales that she didn’t even notice that I wasn’t paying any attention at all. Only when a purple speck in the distance came into view did she stop talking, “I also heard that you’re allowed to visit Jazan, I’d love to get some of his guyli- oh look, it’s Faerieland!”

     ~~~

     Ruka carefully landed on top of a hill overlooking all of Faerieland.

     “This is so depressing,” she said. “I’ve visited Faerieland once before, prior to it crashing. The faeries used to be so happy and welcoming, but right now there don’t seem to be any in sight!”

     “There’s one!” I pointed to our right. She was in a pond handing a potion to an Acara that seemed very ill.

     “That’s the Healing Springs; the faerie there is always happy to help. But where are the fire and light faeries? They used to liven up this place.”

     Just as she said that a light faerie swooped in from our left. “Jhudora is such a pain,” she muttered. “Oh, hello, would you mind getting me a-”

     “Sorry, no thank you, we’re in a hurry.” Ruka grabbed my hand and pulled me along the path. “When I said liven things up, I didn’t mean their quests; the faeries are really irritating when it comes to getting stuff for them. It’s easier to just talk your way out of it.”

     We continued walking down the path. As we got closer the Faerie City, I noticed that there were more faeries flying around. Ruka rushed me past all of them and we continued up the path toward the Healing Springs. She stopped me when we reached a fork in the road.

     “Isn’t Faerieland beautiful? I wish Brightvale were this colorful, but instead everything is either green or some shade of brown. How much worse can you get?” She sounded like it was a rhetorical question, but I responded impulsively.

     “I’d rather live in an actual city that’s dull than a small, colorful village.” I started murmuring halfway through the sentence, but she looked like she understood.

     “Right, I forgot, you’d take anything but Kiko Lake.” She paused and looked around. “Look, I think that’s the Rainbow Fountain!” she said as she pointed to our left.

     Cascading down from trees that towered higher than Fyora’s castle itself was a waterfall that glistened with all of the colors of the rainbow. It entered several ponds on its way down as the colorful water gently wove in and out of the tree branches. It was so elegant that I couldn’t help but think that the faeries had used some sort of magic to create this beautiful sight, but everything seemed so natural and perfect. The water finally ended in a sparkling pond only ten feet away from us. A bed of rocks formed stairs into the pond, as if it were meant to bathe in - surely another sign of the faerie’s magic.

     I wandered toward the fountain, leaving Ruka still taking in the beauty of Faerieland in the fork in the road. As I got closer and closer to the fountain, the urge to jump in became stronger. At last I was staring straight down at the slope of rocks. I let myself begin to slide into the water, but just as I was about to touch it, the water began to swirl in a raging current. A wave formed and from it emerged a beautiful water faerie with streaks of color in her hair. She submerged herself in the water as I just stared at the still-aggravated water. A second later she emerged from right below me and shoved me away from the fountain.

     “Were you trying to dip yourself in the magical fountain without my permission? How dare you, begone!” She turned around and swam back into the depths of the water. I began to move towards the fountain again, but as I approached it the water began to swirl even faster and more viciously this time. I doubled back and returned to Ruka, who was now staring at the spot where the Fountain Faerie once was.

     “I don’t think you got off to a very good start,” she pointed out.

     “You think? Come on; let’s just go to Altador now.”

     “It’s too early to give up. Come on, we’re going back.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me back towards the fountain. I felt her moving faster and sensed that she had the same desire I had when I first approached it, so I grabbed onto a rock to keep her in place. Ruka tugged at me and finally broke free. She continued on toward the bed of rocks. As she got closer the water began to splash around once again; however, unlike me, she stopped a couple feet away from the fountain. She stood there and waited.

     The water started to funnel into a whirlpool in the center of the fountain, and out of it rose Naia the Fountain Faerie. She rose a couple yards out of the pond with a flurry of colorful water encasing the lower portion of her body. The water began to curl so that Naia was now eye level with Ruka.

     “Welcome to the Faerieland Rainbow Fountain, an eternal waterfall of magical Faerieland water! Would you like to take a dip and become a whole new you?” Naia’s voice was much more soothing towards Ruka; maybe changing her mind would be easier than I thought.

     “No thank you, I’m actually here because I friend has been humiliated his entire life because of him being clay, and he wants to be painted a different color,” Ruka replied with a hint of sadness.

     “Oh, him.” The Fountain Faerie soared toward me as if she were swimming in the air. “I’m sorry, but he tried to use the fountain without my permission, and for that he will never be allowed in the fountain.” She circled around me a few times then glided back to the pond and gently landed on the bed of rocks. “But you, on the other hand, were so polite and waited for me. I’d love to see a majestic Draik such as yourself become even prettier. Deep inside I know you want to be painted faerie, or maybe Maraquan.” Naia pulled Ruka closer and whispered something that I couldn’t hear.

     “No!” Ruka shouted. “And I did want to get in the fountain, I wanted to sprint toward it and dive in, and I would have if Zurmire hadn’t pulled me back. He made me realize that it was your awful, enticing magic that fueled the idea that being painted a different color would make me perfect. If self control is rewarded, then let him go into the fountain!”

     “Your bravery is remarkable - you’re denying yourself entrance into the fountain when people all over Neopia dream of me asking them for some ridiculous item so they can be rewarded with a dip in the pond, but as you wish.” She sped to me, grabbed my hands, and we pulled into a tight corkscrew as we sped back to the fountain. The surface of the water became as still as glass with all the colors of the rainbow swirling below it as we hovered a foot above it. “So what color would you like to be? I know faerie and plushie are very popular choices.”

     “I’d like to be royal, please,” I said as respectfully as I could after having her hurl me away from the fountain minutes ago.

     Her face was blank for a couple moments, and then she collected herself and said, “I’m sorry, that’s one of the few colors I can’t help you with. You’ll have to get an actual paint brush for that one.” I became depressed once again; I was convinced for the third time in less than a week that I would be clay for my entire life.

     “But aren’t Royal Paint Brushes nearly impossible to come by? Where are we supposed to find one?” Ruka asked from the side of the pond.

     “Well, between you and me, Fyora has a whole stash of them up in her palace; maybe if you can find where she keeps them, she’ll give you one.” Naia set me back down next to Ruka and disappeared into the water, which had turned back into an ordinary pond.

To be continued...

 
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Other Episodes


» From Mud to Royalty: Part One
» From Mud to Royalty: Part Two
» From Mud to Royalty



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