Larrikan looks up at the pixies hovering over him, and says, “Yes! Sing for the Queen! Where is she?”
The four pixies chorus, “Yay!” and zoom off into the night.
Larrikan calls after them, “Wait!” but they fly off. He stands there for a long moment wondering what to do, until the pixies return.
“Come with us!” and “This way!” and, “Follow me!” cry the pixies. The fourth says, “Oh! Fox can’t fly!”
This seems to be a bit of a shock to the pixies, who circle over Larrikan, discussing it. Finally one drops close to Larrikan and says, “Fly with me!”
Larrikan is opening his mouth to reply when the pixie appears to sneeze a big blast of sparkles at Larrikan, who gets a mouthful of “pixie dust”.
“Ack,” Larrikan replies, and coughs. As he does so, the pixie swoops past him, and grabs his hand. The moment he is grasped, his feet lift off the ground, and he is towed into the sky.
Pixies do not fly in straight lines or gentle curves. They jink and dart all over, delightedly following no visible pattern. They also hand the fox from one to another, casually tossing or dropping him for another to catch.
Larrikan isn’t sure that would be a bad thing. Foxes apparently do not have the stomach to fly.
Larrikan closes his eyes and waits to either land or die.
The landing, when it comes, is fairly gentle, and is in an upper branch of a huge tree. Larrikan clings to the branch as if his life depended on it.
A pixie pulls at Larrikan and says, “Stand up, fox, and talk to pixies, so they will know you aren’t food.”
This gets Larrikan to his feet faster than he thought possible. There are dozens of pixies watching him. With their pointed teeth it is easy to see them all as hungry.
“Hello there!” he says. “My name is Larrikan, and…”
He is interrupter by a cry of, “Ooo! Gather-fox!” followed by being swamped by pixies.
Larrikan has noticed that up close, pixes are a little scary, what with the claws, teeth, and the crazy. This is even more true in groups. There is also a smell that Larrikan had never noticed about them, and wishes he still had not. There is a mixture of cloying sweetness and rotting meat and decaying blood. It is not a good smell.
The excitement and greeting doesn’t last too long before there are mutterings of, “Late!” and “Sleep!” and “Food?” and the pixie colony settles in for the night. Many hang from branches like bats, others snuggling up in crooks of branches. Larrikan finds himself cuddled in a clutch of pixies for the night.