Well, when I said this was just a short story…I lied! Okay, not really, but I changed my mind thanks to those darling reviewers. Much appreciated!!

So, anyway, disclaimers…wait! Ha!! I don’t need one!! I own this thing down to the last punctuation mark!! I’m used to having a disclaimer on Fanfiction. Sorry for the long wait!!

Running up the street turns out to not be such a good idea. It’s a really steep hill, you see. So I continue and walk up slowly, looking all over the sidewalks for flowers, and, seeing them, look for my friends, or more flower people. If there are any. There have to be, right? They have a queen and all.

I stop to study a beautiful poppy, and take a picture. When I bring the camera away, there’s a guy there. “Get away from here!” he yells. I’m taken aback—literally—stepping away from him. “What?” I ask. “Can’t you hear, or are you just stupid?’ he sneers. As rude as he is, I have to admit, he has cool hair. It’s bright, bright red, the colour of a poppy, and short and spiky. He scowls at me with black eyes, like a bird’s, human shaped, but thinner, pointier, and crosses his arms across his chest. He’s wearing a black vest and black pants, and black boots with really, really intricate designs in red. “What are you staring at you dirty human? Get out of here!” I blink, confused, and he starts yelling some more. “You are stupid! Stay away from our people! I saw those two bubble heads bring you to see the Queen and I’m telling you right now: you have no business here!” I frown at him, wondering if humans did something to him, or if just has a chip on his shoulder.

“Lilyree and Rosamirth aren’t bubble heads, and they’re my friends,” I say, stepping forward and kneeling so that I’m below him. He stands in a poppy flower, looking down on me. “The flower people aren’t friends with humans! We’re superior, and only idiots would lower themselves to your level!”

“You know, you say you’re superior, then you call some of your own people idiots. That’s weird.”

“There are always exceptions in races. You should know that human.”

“Oh yeah? Any exceptions in the human race?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? Who could possibly meet your standards that’s a human?”

“Edgar Allan Poe.” I stare at him. “Really?”

“Yes.” He seems embarrassed to admit, because he turns red and looks away from me. I smile and put my camera on review, looking at my latest picture. Just a flower. So I didn’t catch him. He just appeared after I took it. Discreetly tilting the camera up at him, I snap a picture of him. Setting on review, I see a great full-length picture of him.

“What’s your name?” I ask, trying to pocket my camera before he notices I’ve gotten a picture of him. “Hey! What are you hiding there?” It’s too late. He sees the picture of him on my screen and dives at my face. Leap-frogging back, I take off up the street, the poppy faery chasing after me. He flies behind me, translucent red wings twittering rapidly as he tries to catch me. His wings look like thin, thin cherry lollipops, see through, but red, as if you could eat them. Like red mica I guess. They have black swirling designs that look like wrought iron on them, and I’m amazed he can fly with wings so delicate.

He chases me into the woods, and after minutes, I fin myself at the brook, almost squashing a pink blotch. “Hey! Watch out!” a high voice calls from near my foot. “Gwen. Interesting appearance.”

“Oh, hi Rosamirth, Lilyree,” I say, greeting the two flower people, and getting my head smacked into by a stick, and a small body soon after. “Ouch!” I yell, right as Lilyree flies up from a smooth rock where I see she was listening to my Discman.

“Poppin! She’s a friend, don’t attack her!”

“Why should I listen to you, you crazy, careless, soil brain?!”

“Why? Because Lady Valery says it’s okay for her to be here. We’ve even made a trade, of friendships and objects.” She points to the Discman, and Poppin looks down at it, then I pull out the pendant given to me, and his head whips around to look at it.

“Oh great, so you’re bringing in human technology and giving her precious faery material in arts! What is wrong with you two?”

“Us two?” Rosamirth asks, flittering up to the quarreling duet. “Are you questioning Lady Valery’s rule?” she asks, baring her teeth at the red-faced flower person. “No, of course not, just her sanity!”

“And what reason do you have for that?” a hypnotizing, low voice asks. We all turn to see a purple haze drift towards the group of arguing faeries. Lady Valery herself. “This human girl is our guest. You have no right to attack, especially with a weapon of war.” I look at Poppin and see that he’s holding the pollen stem of a poppy, but instead of flopping over, it holds rigid, and the top pollen buds are accentuated sharply, like weirdly shaped spear heads. He holds it like a sword, and it holds like a sword.

Popping kneels on the dark, rocky soil, pollen stem-sword thrust into the ground before his kneel. “I apologize Lady.”

“Rise Poppin. Punishment will be as follows: guide Gwen around our world with Rosamirth and Lilyree until sundown, then bring her to my palace.”

“Yes Lady,” he says, scowling deeply. “Ooh, let’s go!” Lilyree yelps, clapping her hands together. Rosamirth flits over across the brook, and to the large rock, that I now notice has a crevice in it, albeit, a rather small one.

“Come one!” Rosamirth yells impatiently from somewhere inside the rock. I judge the opening, maybe ten inches across. “I don’t think I can fit,” I tell her as Lilyree flies up behind me. “With that pendant, you’ll just shrink a bit and become normal once there’s enough space!” I look down at the pendant and finger it a while, thinking. Do I seriously want to? I mean, how weird would it feel?

Sighing, I ask, “So, I just walk through?”

“Yes, now would you hurry up?” Rosamirth asks, growing even more impatient as I stand there. I brace myself and step towards the crevice, closing my eyes. I couldn’t see anything inside the rock, what if there’s something waiting that can’t see the faeries and’ll attack me? Oh well I guess. How often, after all, does someone get to go into a world of magic, and okay, it was sort of like a fantasy book, but that made it kind of cool.

In the next second, my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and being squeezed like a lemon. My body became putty, squishing into a strange shape and being slid through. I still don’t open my eyes, but can hear Poppin mumbling to himself behind me. Something about sissy humans. If the other faeries weren’t so nice, I’d clock him good.

We come out, seemingly just on the other side of the rock, but that’s because I’m only looking at my feet, checking to see if anything’s out of place. I can hear a fiddle going, and it sounds like Granuaile’s Dance, by Celtic Woman, which my dad listens to, and so do I. It sounds more hypnotic though, not of this world, and I look to see where it’s coming from.

Spider trees dot faraway mountains, and leafless trees here are covered in ice. They look like they’re coated in diamond, and maybe they are, who knows in a faery world? As the music dances, so does my gaze, up to the skies, which are blue, but not like our world. This domed lid above us is blue like Caribbean waters, light, but so vibrant that your eyes can’t register it completely. The ground is a pale green, like a cucumber, and it looks soft. Reaching down, I find that it is, like running your hand over smooth, clean cotton that was cut neatly into long, long strands.

An animal is nosing around in the grass, and it looks like a dog. A pale, pale, barely there blue, it’s fur is short and so are is it’s tail, which is only the size of a finger, but it’s a triangle sort of, like I Boxer’s tail, but longer. It has a white blotch on the little thing, and a matching one on one of its dark blue eyes. The nose is a round tipped cone with a white nose at the end, which is sniffing around, and it’s round little body has a chestnut coloured bandana around it, forming a pocket, which contains bulbs, but bright orange ones.

The dog like creature, a roundish little guy, comes trotting over after pulling up another bulb with it’s teeth and plonking it into it’s bandana. “Hi,” I say, breathlessly. I didn’t notice I was holding my breath until I spoke. He sat at my feet, wagging his little tail, and I stroke his head—I don’t know if he is a he, just making assumptions—and find that he feels like softer velvet. “Would you quit gaping at the Shunk and go?!” Poppin asks behind me. “Shunk?”

“That’s what he is. This one is called Bink.”

“Uh, hi Bink,” I say, still petting him as he follows us. Bink almost looks like he’s smiling, and I am too, as I’m lead through the cucumber cotton grass to even stranger, beautiful things, like the glass butterflies that Bink starts chasing as we go.

Well, I am so sorry for the long update!! I know I said within the week and it’s been three, but I got caught up in another story! Sorry!! Well, I’ll try to update soon, and please leave a review!! If no one reviews, how am I supposed to know whether or not to continue??