Dust (Of Dust and Darkness) - By Devon Ashley Page 0,72
trying. My head pulls forward again. “I don’t know, Jack.”
“Look, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to. How about I try experimenting with the dust? I’ll start small, like an earthworm or something, and make my way up…determine if we can even consider this kind of magic.”
Maybe it’ll work. I just don’t know. But I feel kind of bad for anything he dusts if it doesn’t work out.
He takes my silence and lack of facial negativity as a yes, and begins to lift upward.
“You’re going already?” I’ve hardly seen him lately.
“Yeah. I’ve got traps to set if I’m going to have anything to try this on.”
He departs, and I sit and lean back at an angle. I’ve got a lot of leg exercises before me today and I’m hoping this will aid my digestion along. I have to hand it to Jack. He’s bound and determined to get me out of here, especially if he’s considering such drastic actions as testing dust on animals. It’s frowned upon by my species, so I’m pretty sure it is by his species as well. But I suppose with as much time as he’s spent in the forest getting lost with his friend Bastian, he’s probably got a few spots he can work in without being noticed by other fae.
But even if he can find a safe way to use dust on the animals, do I really want him trying it on me? Possibly getting caught and punished for it aside, pixies have seriously messed themselves up doing this in the past. Even I’ve witnessed a mishap or two. An older pixie named Berry once thought her nose looked too big for her body, so she tried to size it down. She made it so small she couldn’t even breathe through it. It ended up no bigger than the length of an ant. The elders didn’t imprison her since she did it to herself, but they did decide to make her live with it for a year before they would allow it to be fixed. Luckily for her, the effects wore off after a month and they didn’t redo it just to punish her further…she had learned her lesson.
Berry was lucky, because plenty of others have suffered permanent effects. One male had monstrously oversized biceps, uneven on both arms so it looked super ridiculous, and another attempted to permanently paint her eyebrows, resulting in a funky green stain splotched all over her face.
Pixie dust wasn’t meant to be used on pixies. Its main purpose is to aid the growth of nature where natural methods like fertilizing and replanting fail. And organisms like plants and trees are far less complicated than our bodily structures, so they’re easier to manipulate. Which is why I’m so afraid of Jack thinking the only way to get me safely out of here is to sprinkle some dust on me. That, and it’s possible I’ll be so disfigured no one will be able to look at me without cringing; if they find the courage to look at all.
Jack stops by in the morning long enough to tell me he’s gotten the dust to stretch the length of an earthworm and a mouse spider without complications. I shiver in disgust at the thought of that spider gaining mass. I’m a nature girl and I love all of Mother Nature’s creatures, but still, anything with fangs or pinchers creeps me out.
“What else are you going to try?”
He shrugs. “Depends on what I find in my traps today.” I sigh and shake my head. “Don’t worry, Rosalie. I’ll find a way to make this work.”
I huff. Sure…no problem. You just have to find a few animals to play with first. The idea doesn’t sit well with me, but I decide not to mention it. As well as I’ve gotten to know Jack, I’m pretty sure he feels bad about doing it. And I know he wouldn’t move forward if he thought it would truly hurt them. Still, the idea of what he’s doing goes against nature, and I can’t help but feel guilty for being the reason.
In just two days, I might be free. Those words overtake my thoughts as I fail to keep count of the number of laps I make around the hole. In just two days, I may permanently disfigure myself. I may not make it past the spriggans, through the woods, or down the river. Or even find my way home. But it’s possible