[CW: Inanimate transformation scene]

“Fairies! Report!” 

Pip fidgeted as Bloom scanned their loose group of pixies.

“I’ve found nothin’,” Tika said, kicking the heel of her foot along the tree-branch below her. Everyone nodded sadly in agreement while Leaf licked her own nose. The fairy council meeting had begun. 

Bloom let out a sigh. “This has been going terribly.”

“Aww, Bloom. You can’t be down. You’re the one in charge,” Tika replied. 

Bloom nodded. “No, you’re right. And tonight is the solstice. It’s our best chance to find a new princess. No one stops searching until sunrise, you got it?” She scanned the fairies around her, nudging Leaf slightly to make sure she was still paying attention. Leaf nodded back in her best serious-face. 

“Good, we’ll start immediately. If, no, when you find her, you know what to do.” With that, the pixies took off into the skies to continue their search.

Pip was worried; he had been ever since the old queen had passed so many weeks ago. Not about finding a new princess to take her place, that was for other more important fairies to worry over. Pip was worried about what sort of fairy the new princess would be. Would she be nice? Would she want to have fun with them? Would she be mean and boss them all around? Whatever a queen said was law to the fairies. They had a bit more leeway with a fledgling princess, but she would still be ultimately in charge of them. Pip had found the late queen to be rather intimidating. She’d lived a long time, much longer than Pip had been around. Pip had a bad tendency to forget the etiquette and rules he was supposed to follow simply due to how numerous they were. Would the new princess be the same?

Pip searched long into the night. It was, after all, the longest night of the year. It would normally be a night of partying and celebration to the fae. He had drunk so much honey and golden nectar last winter solstice that he barely remembered it at all. But this year they searched out into the cold night air. It was a new beginning in its own strange way, he supposed. 

It was nearly dawn when he saw it. A golden flame shone from atop a tall roof. Pip flew up towards it in slightly mesmerized awe until he hovered above the small tower. Below him was a small rooftop garden, riddled in dry weeds and crumbling dead plants. Lying within was a young human girl with black hair, her eyes closed as she faced the starless city night sky. From within her, the golden flames flickered outward, a sight that only one of the fae could see. 

One pixie after another popped into existence around Pip. Through him, they had sensed it. They’d found the new princess. 

Lizzy was still trying to get used to the fact that one of her best friends had gotten superpowers. She had to admit a little bit of jealousy, but mostly she was excited for her. Not many people in the world were lucky enough to receive them, and it seemed to be becoming less and less frequent as time moved on. Those who studied powers were still somewhat confused on their origins, though they knew it all came somehow from the fae. Whether it was intentional or some byproduct of strange fae magic was still unclear. 

As far as Lizzy knew, getting powers related to technology was exceedingly rare. Scarlett was especially lucky in that regard. Though truly, any powers at all would be pretty cool, she thought. 

Lizzy let out a sigh and opened her eyes. What she saw had her blinking in confusion. She closed them again to rub them fiercely, then opened them once more to the night sky. Floating above were numerous little pixies staring down at her. They had wide colorful eyes, small butterfly-like wings and antennae, and clothing made of leaves. Had whatever it was Scarlett had given her made her start hallucinating? 

“Princess,” one of them spoke. Their high-pitched voice was a tad squeaky or perhaps similar to the jingle of a bell. Lizzy didn’t know that pixies could speak at all. “We’ve found you.” 

“Umm, hello?” she responded. She was a bit too stunned to have any idea how to respond in this situation.

“Princess, we’ve found you!” they said again, much more joyously. Several of them began flying in circles, dancing with one another with small pixie cheers. Others just continued to stare in apparent awe. 

“I -- I’m sorry, I think you maybe have the wrong person.” They all looked at her in confusion. “I’m definitely not a ‘princess.’”

“What!” one of them guffawed. “Of course you’re the princess,” they said with a giggle.

“No, I’m sorry, but I’m most definitely not…” she trailed off.

They looked to one another. “Princess, you’re not -- you’re not rejecting your position, are you?”

Most of them gasped in wide-eyed horror. One pixie appeared to faint as another swooped in to catch them. Another burst into tears.

“No, no! I’d be perfectly fine with being a princess. I just -- I just think that maybe you have the wrong person. You’re clearly getting me mixed up with someone else. I’ve never been any sort of princess. I’m sorry.”

There was a collective sigh of relief that even Lizzy joined in on. 

“Don’t worry, Princess. Let us handle everything.”

“Okay?” 

“We brought you this.” The pixie flew forward to her as she sat up. In their hand was a seed. It was large for a seed, like a rather massive sized fruit core. It seemed rather big for their small hands to carry. 

“It’s a gift?” she asked.

The pixie nodded and nearly fell from the air as they handed it out to her. Lizzy was a tad reluctant to take random gifts from people after what had just happened with Scarlett, but she couldn’t bear to see the little pixies cry again. She reached her hand out and cupped the seed within it. 

To her amazement, it began to glow a light green and hover. It floated slowly closer to her until suddenly the glowing seed soared straight into her chest. Lizzy burped out a sparkle of glowing green dust. 

“What on earth was that?” she questioned them. 

“See, we told you that you were the Princess!” one of them shouted with a spinning dance in the air. 

“What just happened?”

“The Royal Core has accepted you. We should celebrate!”

“There’s not enough time,” another pixie piped in. 

Just as they said that, Lizzy was beginning to feel strange. She stood up to unsteady feet, struggling to keep her balance. “What’s happening?”

“Hmm, should we be this high up?” one pixie asked.

“There’s dirt underneath her, isn’t there?” another answered.

“It’s just a small garden! There’s barely anything there.”

“One of you tell me what’s going on!” Lizzy demanded.

The pixies glanced at each other before looking back at her. “You’re becoming one with the Fae.”

Lizzy’s legs were feeling stiff. Her joints cracked as she tried to move them, and her shoes were feeling almost painfully tight. She took a step forward but struggled to move her other leg. As she pulled it up, several roots from out the bottom of her shoe came up as well. Gravity and her poor balance forced her foot back down. She found she couldn’t lift either of them again. Thankfully, she felt more and more stable the longer she stood. 

Her shoes split open, giving way to growing roots, and she looked to the pixies in fear. “H-help,” she struggled to say.

“What do we do?” one of the pixies asked.

“Will her roots reach the ground from here?”

“We could bring up dirt.”

“There’s no way we could bring enough.”

“Can we bring the Princess down?”

They all paused to think. Meanwhile, Lizzy’s arms, along with the rest of her body, were stiffening. She could feel herself spreading out through the dirt of the small rooftop garden as the lower part of her body became roots.

“Hey!” Lizzy’s eyes shifted to her right to see Scarlett stomping towards them. “What are you doing to my friend?”

Pip was nervous. In all honesty, he didn’t think this would work, and he could tell some of the other fairies weren’t so sure either. Unfortunately, no one had any better ideas. The human girl, Scarlett scampered across the rooftop, setting up her manic design. Meanwhile, their Princess looked to be in an unconscious daze. The once-human girl had quickly taken root in the small garden and just as quickly overfilled it. It wasn’t even close to big enough. Had she been pixie-sized, it would have been plenty of room. Why couldn’t everyone just be normal-sized like him?

Pip looked once more to their new Princess. Her bark had barely made it up to her shoulders when it stopped. How was she supposed to bloom into a full Fae Princess at this rate? Several pixies were pouring growth magic into her just to sustain her. It was all his fault. He’d given her the Core, as he’d been the one to find her. But he hadn’t thought about just how small this little garden space would be for her. If only he’d thought it through. 

His friend Nua patted him on the shoulder. “It’s alright, Pip; it’s not your fault.”

“It is.”

“None of us even tried to stop you when you were handing it to her. We weren’t thinking. Besides,” she said, “I think it’s gonna work.”  

Pip looked once more to the human. She did have a thread of the fae’s magic wound within her. Though she was still ultimately only human. Pip knew that humans, even fae-touched ones, could not be trusted. And yet, this human was apparently a friend of their Princess? It didn’t sit right with him. 

“It’s ready,” the rabbit-eared human girl said. 

Gloom looked at her and with a nod, said, “Do it.”

The girl pulled a crank motor that caused a large metal disc around the garden to begin to spin. It picked up speed, and then with a bright flash began carving down into the rooftop. Pip covered his ears at the ear-shattering sounds of tearing metal and fiery sparks. The human had said something about lasers and torches, but to Pip, it just seemed like bright streaks of light that made far too much noise. The rooftop groaned and then with a final creak, fell into the building, taking the garden and the Princess in with it. Pip and the other pixies quickly followed in. 

Several humans peeked around corners to see the little garden now sitting in their living room. They screamed and complained, but Pip ignored them as several other pixies began to chase them off. Instead, he looked to the Princess, who to his relief looked perfectly fine. The spinning disc began burning through the next floor, and the smell of burnt carpet filled the room. 

Floor by floor, they moved down. The human looked on proudly as her machine worked as expected, gripping to the bark of the Princess as they fell down yet another floor. It didn’t take long for the humans to begin to evacuate the building as the large hole to the roof formed through it. It went well until several floors later where it didn’t. Instead of crashing down, the stack of floor pieces tilted against a wall from below and refused to budge. 

The fae-touched girl cursed. “There were only two more.”

“What now?” Tika asked. 

“Now for plan B,” said Bloom. “We give her all the magic we’ve got.”

All the pixies began to circle around the wilting Princess. 

Bloom held out a hand in front of Pip. “No, Pip. Not you. You’ll need to stay by the Princess and protect her while the rest of us are recovering.” Pip nodded and resigned himself to watch. As everyone got into position, Bloom continued, “Okay, everyone, give it your all. We’ve only got one chance at this.”

As one, the pixies began pouring growth magic into the Princess. Her roots immediately began their spread out and downward, while the bark upon her body began to move upward once more. The floors below split and cracked as roots forced their way into them. The building shook and groaned. Dust filled the air around them, causing several pixies to sneeze repeatedly. The lights in the room blinked out, leaving only the glow of the pixies and their magic and the newly installed several-floor skylight. 

The Princess’s roots continued to grow until they branched up along the walls around them, leaving flowering vines and branches full of bright green leaves in their wake. Eventually, pixies began to faint and fall to the side in exhaustion as they emptied themselves of their magic. Pip flew over to them to offer support and a shoulder to lean on as the rest continued. It was beginning to look bleak as pixie after pixie fell until only Tika and Bloom remained. 

Pip watched them anxiously, and as Bloom began to obviously tire, he ignored her orders and hopped into the spell, pouring everything he had into the Princess. A moment later and the glow around her intensified far more than he could have done by himself. 

An exhausted cheer went throughout the group. Bloom and Tika landed fatigued as the rest, but the Princess continued to grow. She’d reached ground. Now they just had to wait.

FlitterPuff

Hi again! Hope that wasn't too bad of a cliff-hanger. And don't worry, the whole being a tree thing is temporary. A big thanks to my new patrons on Patreon! I'm not sure if I should list people on here or not. Thoughts?