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“Stop moping”

“I’m not. Shut up. You’re not even here” the dark-haired fairy snapped at the vision before her, the face of her lost love. Only it was somehow nothing like Malcolm. Cruel and Malevolent, it had hounded Fiona night and day for so many hundreds of years that she had completely lost track of a time before it had existed. She knew what it was, yet she didn’t want to name it, to acknowledge its true nature. It was the darkness that had grown in her, that was now her. Maybe it always had been. Where one ended and the other began was impossible to determine. She was its source, and it was her destiny, it's way out into the world, the root of all evil.

“Does that matter? You see me, I might as well be.”

"You’re not him" she hissed. It felt like an offence to her memories of Malcolm that it had taken his form, that it used his form to torment her. Malcolm didn’t have an evil bone in his body. He had rescued her when she’d been abandoned by everyone who had known her when she was banished from Pixie Hollow and sent to the Enchanted Forest with no wings and no wand, stripped of everything she had been. He had found her broken, and fixed her body but also her soul and her belief in love and all that was good.

All of that had begun to vanish, stripped away from her being, isolation from everyone and anyone for over 500 years, and the deep depression from losing her husband and son in one smooth moment, left her feeling cold and empty, numb inside. She would be surprised if she could ever feel anything but sorrow and pain and hatred ever again.

“I can take a different form if you’d rather. Would you prefer your mother? Your sister? The Blue Fairy?”

“No” she growled in an instant. She didn’t want to see their faces, those smug, condescending faces as they looked at her, judging her. In her years alone, she had begun to question her life. Had she always been destined to be what she had become? A creature so dark that she had to be banished to a realm outside of reality, the root of all evil that had been and that would come? Was that the reason that her mother had never truly bonded with her, why there had been such walls between them?

“Fine... then stop moping.”
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“You don’t have to be so alone you know”

“What are you talking about?” Fiona’s gaze lifted towards the vision of Malcolm she had yet to shake. How long would it continue to torment her, she wondered. It was certainly unwelcome, but she couldn't quite imagine what life would be like without it. It was company, at least, and without it, she would be more alone than she was with it.

“You have such potential, such power. You’ve not used any of it”

The Black Fairy frowned at those words, irritation rising within her in an instant. She had become so quick to anger these days. “I created the sun in the sky and the moon and stars at night. I created the waterfalls and rivers and forests, even the seas that surround this godforsaken lands. How can you say I’ve not used any of it?”

“You did.. in a way. The realm used the magic within you based on your desires and dreams. You played no active part.”

“I don’t have a wand. What is a fairy without her wand?” She shrugged. The defeatist attitude was new for her, she had to admit. She had never been one to back down, to let anything get the better of her, but years of what she considered endless defeat had taken its toll.

“You don’t NEED a wand” the vision snapped, suddenly looming over her, shaking off the vision of Malcolm, returning to the swirling black cloud that it truly was. She could almost sense desperation emitting from it, “you’re more than a simple fairy. You always were. The blood of a God runs through your veins, and yet you preferred to play human for too long.”

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Fiona felt her hands shaking as she stepped out into the darkness of the forest. The air was still, and the trees were so thick that she could barely make out the moon above her. Everything was quiet, devoid of any life but her, an endless reminder of her loneliness.

"Take a deep breath and close your eyes" the darkness whispered to her, its voice so close to her ear that the gentle lilt of it made the hair at the back of her neck stand up. She did as she was told, her eyes fluttering closed in an instant as she took in a breath. The air of the Dark Realm was so fresh and clean now, since the day the forests had sprung up over the vast land, and for the first time in a century, the fairy felt calm. Almost relaxed. She released her breath, and took another, drinking in oxygen like she had been starved of it for so long.

It came like a crackling at her fingers, like a static shock of energy, jumping between each of her fingers. Her eyes opened at the sensation, but the serene feeling remained in her form. Her gaze focussed on her fingers as the static continued, dark sparks now visible at her fingertips.

"Take a second" the voice returned, but it no longer felt as though it was at her ear. Instead, it consumed the air around her, surrounding her completely "Think about what you want to create and then.. make it appear."

Fear of failure filled her for the briefest of seconds, but who would know? There was no one here but her. If she failed to do as she intended, only she would know. She had been such a timid fairy in her youth, endlessly berated by her mother when she failed to do a spell correctly, but here she had only herself to please. Still, there was no harm in starting small. With a small gesture of her hands, she released her magic, forcing into reality the first living thing to exist in the Dark Realm beside her.

A raven as black as any bird she had ever seen before stared up at her from the ground and with it came a sense of power Fiona had never felt before. She created another, and then another, and with each one came more power and confidence she had never felt within herself before. As the ravens took flight almost as one, the Black Fairy created a pack of wolves, bringing them into existence two at a time, and with each creature she created, the voice faded more and more until it was a mere whisper, no longer needing to taunt her into becoming what it needed her to become.

"What are you going to create next?" it asked, barely audible above the noise of the forest that was now alive with creatures, hunting and living and existing.

A smirk washed over Fiona’s face as she allowed darkness to roll from her fingers once more.

"Whatever I feel like.."