Dragon Fey by Mara DragonClaw (top 10 books to read txt) 📕

With this on her mind, Aria flew off in the direction of the Hollow knowing that the plan that she and Jacob had formulated wouldn’t work right if she got in trouble for being late in without having signed in for late berry picking.

Aria arrived at the Hollow way past over-berry-picking-time, or OBPT. When she came through the door to the Hollow, a small thing that was more of a back door than a grand entrance, she was greeted by the scowls of two of the elders.

“Where have you been?” Asked one of them, a female with monarch butterfly wings, Aria remembered that her name was Mirtia. She was by far Aria’s least favorite of the elders.

“I’ve been gathering berries,” Aria said defensively, holding up a weak excuse for a basket of berries she had managed to find before coming back to the Hollow.

“We might have believed that, if you had returned on time!” That was said by Decion, a male fairy with prepona butterfly wings. He was Aria’s second least favorite elder. At the moment, his wings were doing what Aria considered the most annoying thing a fairy’s wings can do: They were flapping unreasonably fast for no practical reason, the bright blue on one side of them flashing between the light brown of the other.

“I got held up.”

“By what exactly?” Mirtia asked even more hostilely than she had asked her first question.

“I- uh- ran into a twauge,” Aria scrambled for an excuse other than the truth.

Twauges were similar to squirrels. In fact, they were essentially just squirrels with piranha teeth. Squirrels that ate meat. Now, that might not seem very intimidating, but they gang up in groups of around 20 and usually ambuse their prey. To a normal fairy, even one twauge was a nightmare. They were notorious for eating fairies and members of the other smaller fey-races.

Of coarse, to Aria, a twauge wasn’t a big deal. Her talent with animals essentially gave her a ticket to anywhere in the forest; nothing really bothered her at all. But because this was one of the “not normal” talents that Aria possessed, the elders had forbidden her from using this skill. And because the elders didn’t believe it possible that she had disobeyed them, they assumed she had somehow gotten past the imaginary twauge without using her gift; something they believed to be impossible.

“Really, only one twauge?”  This was said by Decion.

“Yes, just one. I think he might be one of the one’s that separate from their quarrel to start one of their own.”

“Do you really expect us to believe that you got away from a twauge without using your curse? You couldn’t have encountered one,” Mirtia. Man, these guys are like a pack of wolves!

“Well, I don’t care what you believe, because I did,” Aria tried to shove her way past them; she failed horribly.

“You dare attempt to touch us with those- those things?!” Exclaimed Decion, gesturing wildly at Aria’s wings.

“Oh please. They weren’t anywhere near you. And you aren't going to die if you call them wings, you know that right?” Aria continued to try and shove past the two.

“I’m writing you up for a public offence!” Declared Mirtia as she scrambled in her pocket; presumably for a pen and pad.

“What should it be for?” Decion asked excitedly.

“How about existing?” Aria said it sarcastically and rolled her eyes, but somehow the old fools couldn’t tell she was insulting them.
“Good idea!” The two of them said in unison. Mirtia began to scribble furiously on her pad, Decoin whispering things in her ear for her to write down on paper.

Aria rolled her eyes again and pushed past them. This time, in their giddy excitement at writing her up, they either didn’t notice what she was doing or didn’t care.

As soon as Aria got out of the sight of the two elders, she quickened her pace as she walked. The last thing she wanted was for Calea to get all worked up over her being out late.

When she got to the ledge that separated the homes from the public buildings, she flared her wings and walked off the edge. When she was about two inches away from the next platform down, she gave her wings a downstroke and shot back up in the direction of her house. This was probably her favorite thing to do when coming home. She loved the rush of the wind as she fell, and the moment of true weightlessness when she pushed back up.

After a minute or two of flying, she landed at her house’s front porch. She pushed open the door  with her shoulder, holding her basket of berries with both hands to make it appear heavier. “I’m home!” she called to the seemingly empty house as she walked into the kitchen and put her basket on the table, acting like she had to heave to get it up.

“Mom?” She called questioningly. Normally if Aria was ever out late, Calea would be waiting at the door for her and would talk Aria’s ear off until she had gotten about half a million apologies for making her worry.

Aria went through almost the whole house before she looked at the door again. On it was a note that said:

Aria,

Sorry I’m not at home yet. I got called into the G.O. to do some extra work and I’ll be out almost all night. There are some dehydrated berries in the cupboard that you can rehydrate and have for dinner.

Sorry,

Calea

Aria wasn’t all that surprised. Calea regularly got called into the Guild Office to do some extra work, and it was often late. Of course, usually Aria was home when she left and Calea never needed to leave a note saying where she was.

Because she had some fresh berries, Aria ate those instead of the ones in the cupboard. In her flight back to the Hollow, she had managed to pick up a couple of black raspberries and was pulling out some of druplets to eat when a knock came at the door.

“Who could that be?” Aria said out loud as she walked to the door. She looked out the peephole but could see no one.

“Psssssssst. Aria, open the door, it’s me!”

“Jacob!” Aria exclaimed as she opened the door, allowing Jacob to slip inside, “What in Sarea are you doing here?”

“Shhhh! Be quiet, someone will hear you.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“We need to leave. Now.”

“Why?”

“They’re after me.”

“Who?”

“The elders.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Why?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” He was getting impatient.

“All right, okay. You can tell me when we leave. I certainly don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to. But first, I need to write that note to Calea.”

“There isn’t any time! I already have my things, you just get yours and we’ll leave.”

“Jacob, I really need to know what has you all worked up.”

Jacob sighed in submission, “They want me to do it.”

“What?”

“The elders,” his voice dropped low, “want to use me to bring him back.”

“WHAT?!”

“I said-.”

“I know what you said Jacob. Why would they want to bring him back?”

His voice dropped into a different kind of whisper, a scared one,“To get rid of you.”

Aria stumbled back, and ran into the bench that was conveniently placed right behind where she had been standing. “What?” she asked in the same scared whisper.

“See that note?” Jacob nodded to the note on the door, Aria nodded back, to shocked to speak, “Calea didn’t write that note Aria, the elders did. They have Calea. She tried to stop them and, well they made her tell them where you were. They sent people to wait for you to come back, those people failed. Now they are going to come for you directly, they are coming here.”

Despite his kind tone, Aria still burst into tears. Jacob sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders to comfort her, she accepted them gratefully. “Oh, Jacob,” she cried into his arm, the tears running down her cheeks in hot streams.

“I know Aria, I know.”

Aria wiped away her tears and tried to put on a smile, “Well then,” she said, “I guess we do need to leave now. I’ll get my things.”

She got up from where she was sitting and went up the stairs to her room, Jacob stayed by the door to, “Keep watch.”

She pushed open her door half heartedly, her spirit crushed at what the council was willing to go this far, “And just because I’m different,” she said bitterly as she grabbed a bag from the top shelf of her wardrobe and started to pull open the drawers of her dresser to get her cloths.

Aria had just finished putting the last  of them in her bag when she heard a furious banging on the door. She heard the cracking of wood and Jacob’s cries, “Aria! They’re already here! Run!” she heard shouting and the pounding of feet on wood, then a final cry, Jacob’s, followed by a thud and then, silence.

“Jacob!” Aria called, scared for her friend’s safety.

“She’s up here!” More shouts floated up the stairwell and through Aria’s open door. The pounding of feet on wood became louder, they were coming up the stairs.

Aria was terrified. She slammed the door and shoved her dresser in from of it along with a few plants before scrambling to get together the last of her things. It wasn’t very much, just some basic tools including a sewing needle, and a first aid kit with some utensils for mixing your own medicines included.  

Just as the men- Aria assumed they were men- started to pound on the door she managed to shove her last item in her pack: the only gift she had ever received from her biological parents, a clumsily sewn stuffed dragon toy that was found with her as a baby. The odd thing about it was, it had fairy wings.

As Aria pushed open the window, the dresser blocking the door gave, and the men came in. “We’ve got her cornered!” One of the men yelled joyously. This earned a whoop from the rest of the men that were waiting beyond the door. Aria frantically pulled herself up to the window, it had to have been the fastest she had ever gone in her entire life. But it wasn’t good enough to save her.

Just as she was about to push off, she discovered that one of the loops on her bag had gotten stuck. She could drop it, should drop it, but most of the things she would need were in there. All it took was this split second of hesitation for the lead man to fully push aside the things that Aria had used to cover the door, upending a very unfortunate clay pot filled with yellow tulips all over a small ball of pale blue fuzz.

When Aria had finally freed her bag and gotten into lift off position again, the lead man, a fairy with large red dragonfly wings whom Aria had managed to identify as Furmius, had crossed the room and was now an arm's length away from her. Just as she pushed off, he reached out and lunged for her ankle.

He didn’t