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Description
It was like seeing the whole universe in one little clearing, a million galaxies woven like Christmas lights and tinsel around a perfect Christmas tree; each luminescent sprite a gaseous Giant, a burning star of one thousand different light frequencies and unimaginable colours. This was all a human’s descriptive capacity could muster of the scene whilst their pupils dilated in wondrous transfixion, as each twirl of an inhuman body, with their twig like limbs and slender jaw lines, and each non chalant flicker of a powdered wing, sent a thrill of electricity through the onlookers’ veins.

Not the pixies of regular stories and not the new pixies of the horror stories that were now becoming fashionable in the human world, these People belonged neither to the tales of traditional folklore, nor to a modern child’s nightmares. These pixies were neither solid nor transparent; they held within them a jagged glimmer, a light that twinkled, unfolded and refolded in consistent randomness. They danced to the vicious pulsing of their dark hearts, and moved in inhuman ways, smothering both their partners and themselves with their magnificent wings; sliding fluidly around their neighbours in exotic, frenzied madness. It was as if they were all really the same being, links in the same twisted chain; one entity of various colours and wavelengths in a spectrum of conflicting light and dark, day and night, good and evil.

Their wings were of splendid varieties and markings, smattered with unusual symbols, personalised designs and unyielding colours, as if liberal artists had come and melded onto these perfect bodies everything in the world that was beautiful and useless. One female looked as though she had doused her body in glue and then run through a burning window, the shattering glass becoming one with her. It now clung to her blood stained form like a death veil, her wings a collage of broken shards, twinkling with her every movement; tears of her flesh lifting slightly in the subtle twilight breeze.

Another pixie appeared as though she had been drowned in some past life: so blue and frail was her skin. Her wings were black and skeletal, and it seemed impossible to the uninvited guests that she should ever fly. But she did. With a sadistic laugh at a fellow, drunken pixie dangling drunkenly from a branch, she spun high into the glittery air and was gone. It was strange and dark how easily they ignored one another’s pain, and when one fell and was crushed under the ritualistic dancing of their people so that their wings bent at ugly angles and their squeals manifested above the drone of accumulating body heat, none of the other pixies made any move to help. The cocktail of drugged laughter, hungry dancing and excessive drinking continued in what Shiza thought to be a slideshow of moral decay.

Her thoughts were interrupted as something thick and wet began lowering itself, sluggishly, down the side of Shiza’s face. The girl gave out a strangled gasp and lifted her hand to inspect. “It’s just brew,” the goblin at her side said without turning to look at her, “If you stand under a night flower, you’re going to get brew on you.”
Aware of the position of ridicule she had found herself in, she hurriedly stepped out from beneath the seeping bud. The glue like substance was now tangled in her hair but her attempts to wipe it away left her looking more dishevelled and feeling more foolish. “Leave it, and don’t eat it,” the goblin snapped, turning to face her this time. Shiza could hear the tone of annoyance in his normally deadpan voice and this made her flush without knowing why.

The scene before them was simultaneously horrifying and stunning and the four of them stood there transfixed. Only Aiman, the goblin boy, stood looking with relentless disgust until dawn grew wider over the land, and bodies, caked in glitter of many dimensions, began to let out awful squeals and crumble into dust before their dance partners. The sight made Mir scream, Aiman’s hand locking over her mouth in a swift swooping motion. A pixie, who had been lying, dozing provocatively over a large mossy root, which had somehow thrust its way free of the soil, jerked her head towards the direction of the scream. Her eyes shone hideously and turned black with her acknowledgement of the trespassers. She rolled over, her back arching, and out from her spine five bone coloured blades began slicing through her porcelain skin, now sadistically etched with raw red veins. Small fangs appeared inside her tiny red mouth, and ugly yellow claws sprang from her delicately crafted nail beds. She used these now to quickly saw around one of the blades, yanking it viciously from her back with an eruption of flesh that instantly healed, and held it threateningly in front of her in preparation for her attack. Beside her Shiza could feel the disturbance in the air as Aiman strung three arrows into his bow and let fire. A sticky yellow substance that had inked the tips of the arrowheads spattered her as it flew, singing, into the belly of the pixie, who flew backwards from the force. Roaring now, the pixie stripped her body of the arrows. It was as if the arrows had been articles of clothing she had got tired of and had decided to throw away. Her wounds healed quickly. Shiza could see a purple, horrible rage seize up inside the pixie’s eyes as they cast themselves upon their enemy one last time. They gazed with loathing at Aiman’s bow, but not at Aiman, and they smiled mockingly at Mir’s wide open eyes, then they blinked twice as they passed over Shiza but, like with Aiman, they didn’t seem to register her. They lingered longest on Kite’s white, boyish face, and a hungry interest briefly consumed the fiery rage. And then her eyes clouded over, and the Pixie staggered backwards tripping over the large root she had previously lain upon, and then, in a burst of blinding light, she dissolved.

There was no scream from Mir this time. Instead she fainted ungracefully into some nearby moss and decaying night flower before Kite could catch her. Shiza blinked, and turned around to Aiman who stood straight-backed, looking at the spot where the pixie had vanished. “Did…What...Are they all dead?”  She asked, unable to find an appropriate line of questioning other than this.
“No,” The boy replied coldly “…Unfortunately.”
Shiza decided to ignore the snipe, focussing instead on the incredulous nature of what he’d said. “Not dead! But I just saw them burst like party balloons stuffed like Christmas turkeys with too much helium! How they could not be dead?” But Aiman didn’t answer for a long time and so her question hung, like criminal, in the misty dawn. Behind her the sun was finding its place between the fluffy looking clouds and the rosy pinks and watered down oranges could be seen bleeding into the watery blues and purples of the fading night. The atmosphere glowed palely now: the absence of the pixies allowing it to take on a purer state.  All that could be heard, if you had well adapted hearing, was the slow formation of condensation on the forlorn and weary leaves, and the closing of the night flowers.

“That’s how they return,” The goblin answered finally, walking closer towards where the last pixie had exploded into a thousand iridescent particles of light. Crouching, he ran his long fingers across the damp earth.
“Huh?” This time it was Kite that had asked the question. He was kneeling beside Mir and had placed her head on his lap, “She’s a bit worn out by all this…err, excitement,” he said when he saw Shiza gazing at the two of them.
“Yes,” Aiman replied “It’s a sort of teleportation method by human description.”
“Can’t be too comfortable,” Shiza murmured. Aiman turned to her; his face composed, and said, “No. It’s quite painful actually, not that you’d ever know.” He turned from her then and walked off into the forest. He expected them to follow, which, after Kite had heaved Mir onto his shoulders, they did without pause until the sun had reached its highest point in the sky and a steamy haze had begun to rise from the sizzling banks of mud that formed their path. The forest had transformed and taken on a barren quality. The embarrassment on Shiza’s face, however, remained unchanged.

Description
It was like seeing the whole universe in one little clearing, a million galaxies woven like Christmas lights and tinsel around a perfect Christmas tree; each luminescent sprite a gaseous Giant, a burning star of one thousand different light frequencies and unimaginable colours. This was all a human’s descriptive capacity could muster of the scene whilst their pupils dilated in wondrous transfixion, as each twirl of an inhuman body, with their twig like limbs and slender jaw lines, and each non chalant flicker of a powdered wing, sent a thrill of electricity through the onlookers’ veins.

Not the pixies of regular stories and not the new pixies of the horror stories that were now becoming fashionable in the human world, these People belonged neither to the tales of traditional folklore, nor to a modern child’s nightmares. These pixies were neither solid nor transparent; they held within them a jagged glimmer, a light that twinkled, unfolded and refolded in consistent randomness. They danced to the vicious pulsing of their dark hearts, and moved in inhuman ways, smothering both their partners and themselves with their magnificent wings; sliding fluidly around their neighbours in exotic, frenzied madness. It was as if they were all really the same being, links in the same twisted chain; one entity of various colours and wavelengths in a spectrum of conflicting light and dark, day and night, good and evil.

Their wings were of splendid varieties and markings, smattered with unusual symbols, personalised designs and unyielding colours, as if liberal artists had come and melded onto these perfect bodies everything in the world that was beautiful and useless. One female looked as though she had doused her body in glue and then run through a burning window, the shattering glass becoming one with her. It now clung to her blood stained form like a death veil, her wings a collage of broken shards, twinkling with her every movement; tears of her flesh lifting slightly in the subtle twilight breeze.

Another pixie appeared as though she had been drowned in some past life: so blue and frail was her skin. Her wings were black and skeletal, and it seemed impossible to the uninvited guests that she should ever fly. But she did. With a sadistic laugh at a fellow, drunken pixie dangling drunkenly from a branch, she spun high into the glittery air and was gone. It was strange and dark how easily they ignored one another’s pain, and when one fell and was crushed under the ritualistic dancing of their people so that their wings bent at ugly angles and their squeals manifested above the drone of accumulating body heat, none of the other pixies made any move to help. The cocktail of drugged laughter, hungry dancing and excessive drinking continued in what Shiza thought to be a slideshow of moral decay.

Her thoughts were interrupted as something thick and wet began lowering itself, sluggishly, down the side of Shiza’s face. The girl gave out a strangled gasp and lifted her hand to inspect. “It’s just brew,” the goblin at her side said without turning to look at her, “If you stand under a night flower, you’re going to get brew on you.”
Aware of the position of ridicule she had found herself in, she hurriedly stepped out from beneath the seeping bud. The glue like substance was now tangled in her hair but her attempts to wipe it away left her looking more dishevelled and feeling more foolish. “Leave it, and don’t eat it,” the goblin snapped, turning to face her this time. Shiza could hear the tone of annoyance in his normally deadpan voice and this made her flush without knowing why.

The scene before them was simultaneously horrifying and stunning and the four of them stood there transfixed. Only Aiman, the goblin boy, stood looking with relentless disgust until dawn grew wider over the land, and bodies, caked in glitter of many dimensions, began to let out awful squeals and crumble into dust before their dance partners. The sight made Mir scream, Aiman’s hand locking over her mouth in a swift swooping motion. A pixie, who had been lying, dozing provocatively over a large mossy root, which had somehow thrust its way free of the soil, jerked her head towards the direction of the scream. Her eyes shone hideously and turned black with her acknowledgement of the trespassers. She rolled over, her back arching, and out from her spine five bone coloured blades began slicing through her porcelain skin, now sadistically etched with raw red veins. Small fangs appeared inside her tiny red mouth, and ugly yellow claws sprang from her delicately crafted nail beds. She used these now to quickly saw around one of the blades, yanking it viciously from her back with an eruption of flesh that instantly healed, and held it threateningly in front of her in preparation for her attack. Beside her Shiza could feel the disturbance in the air as Aiman strung three arrows into his bow and let fire. A sticky yellow substance that had inked the tips of the arrowheads spattered her as it flew, singing, into the belly of the pixie, who flew backwards from the force. Roaring now, the pixie stripped her body of the arrows. It was as if the arrows had been articles of clothing she had got tired of and had decided to throw away. Her wounds healed quickly. Shiza could see a purple, horrible rage seize up inside the pixie’s eyes as they cast themselves upon their enemy one last time. They gazed with loathing at Aiman’s bow, but not at Aiman, and they smiled mockingly at Mir’s wide open eyes, then they blinked twice as they passed over Shiza but, like with Aiman, they didn’t seem to register her. They lingered longest on Kite’s white, boyish face, and a hungry interest briefly consumed the fiery rage. And then her eyes clouded over, and the Pixie staggered backwards tripping over the large root she had previously lain upon, and then, in a burst of blinding light, she dissolved.

There was no scream from Mir this time. Instead she fainted ungracefully into some nearby moss and decaying night flower before Kite could catch her. Shiza blinked, and turned around to Aiman who stood straight-backed, looking at the spot where the pixie had vanished. “Did…What...Are they all dead?”  She asked, unable to find an appropriate line of questioning other than this.
“No,” The boy replied coldly “…Unfortunately.”
Shiza decided to ignore the snipe, focussing instead on the incredulous nature of what he’d said. “Not dead! But I just saw them burst like party balloons stuffed like Christmas turkeys with too much helium! How they could not be dead?” But Aiman didn’t answer for a long time and so her question hung, like criminal, in the misty dawn. Behind her the sun was finding its place between the fluffy looking clouds and the rosy pinks and watered down oranges could be seen bleeding into the watery blues and purples of the fading night. The atmosphere glowed palely now: the absence of the pixies allowing it to take on a purer state.  All that could be heard, if you had well adapted hearing, was the slow formation of condensation on the forlorn and weary leaves, and the closing of the night flowers.

“That’s how they return,” The goblin answered finally, walking closer towards where the last pixie had exploded into a thousand iridescent particles of light. Crouching, he ran his long fingers across the damp earth.
“Huh?” This time it was Kite that had asked the question. He was kneeling beside Mir and had placed her head on his lap, “She’s a bit worn out by all this…err, excitement,” he said when he saw Shiza gazing at the two of them.
“Yes,” Aiman replied “It’s a sort of teleportation method by human description.”
“Can’t be too comfortable,” Shiza murmured. Aiman turned to her; his face composed, and said, “No. It’s quite painful actually, not that you’d ever know.” He turned from her then and walked off into the forest. He expected them to follow, which, after Kite had heaved Mir onto his shoulders, they did without pause until the sun had reached its highest point in the sky and a steamy haze had begun to rise from the sizzling banks of mud that formed their path. The forest had transformed and taken on a barren quality. The embarrassment on Shiza’s face, however, remained unchanged.