---

 

Mirabelle sits inside her nest. She’s covered the entrance hole to her tree with some brown burlap, having found more scraps to take from the fruit vendor’s trash. The rest of the material that she had plundered from the seamstress’ trash, scraps of more colorful, softer fabrics, she has lying around here as she slowly starts to fill the tree with it to the brim. As a nest, it’s certainly lacking in a lot of ways. But she kind of likes the way it’s developing.

 

The many different scraps of cloth that fill the hole in the old tree are all colorful and soft, and the rays of the mother-moon, which find their way through her hole-filled burlap curtain, soak into the material, giving the entire space a soft glow of many shades.

 

The fairy sits there, bundled up in an improvised blanket, leaning against the wall as she stares up towards the covered up hole. Her muffin, or what remains of it, is next to her, wrapped in some parchment paper.

 

She can’t sleep, obviously. In a way, she wishes that she could. In another way, she’s glad that she can’t.

 

It’s cold at night. She feels a little better now, having eaten and having warm, soft things around herself to give her warmth. But…

 

Mirabelle stares, not sure if she should blink or not. Her eyes don’t really sting or burn from dryness, but she feels like she’s been staring for far too long now and that she should probably blink, before her brother yells at her again.

 

She blinks, remembering that that isn’t going to happen.

 

The warmth that she feels on her body is solely from the heat that she emits and that then comes back to her as it is trapped beneath her blankets. But it’s not the warmth she used to feel; it's the warmth that she wants to feel.

 

The man, the shoemaker, he had it. She saw it in his eyes. He has the thing that she wants. At least he had it for a brief moment, upon delivery of his work. But that’s something, right? That single second is worth infinitely more than never having that feeling at all.

 

Mirabelle stares at the stars, not sure why they would have given her such a strange gift or why she herself would even have accepted it. It was an odd state of mind that she was in that night. The bad night.

 

Sure, she had every right to be angry, twisted, and disgusted. She feels that’s a self-evident thing. But at the same time, it came so quickly, and then… and then the feeling, the bad feeling, it left her again, so quickly.

 

She just got hungry, and it was gone, leaving her with nothing but an empty stomach and a cold feeling in her chest that doesn’t seem to go away, no matter how many blankets she wraps around herself.

 

- Something cracks.

 

The fairy lets out a yelp, jumping to her feet. Her heart immediately starts racing, the blood of her body shoots through herself so quickly, that she feels light-headed from her snappy movements and breathing, which itself has suddenly become so rapid that she feels as if she can’t keep up with it, despite the fact that she’s just standing there in one spot.

 

Her eyes, paranoid and terrified, scan the darkness.

 

Something is climbing around outside on the tree. She can hear it. She can hear it, scratching, scampering… she can hear little claws pressing against the wood, and she can feel herself being watched, but from the one spot where something could be, there is nothing apart from the light of the many stars that seem to be peeking down towards her through the hole.

 

Mirabelle screams at the stars, her wordless shout asking them what the point of this is all supposed to be. Why is she here? Why did they bother bringing her back? If she doesn’t want to do it anymore, can she just go? Or is she supposed to stay here now anyway? Is this a curse? Is this a bad thing? Is she a bad thing?

 

Something obscures the view of the outside world, and Mirabelle’s hands glow alight, as she continues to scream, holding her hands up towards the shadow, towards the thing that would rob her of her vision of the nameless entities that are either her benefactors or her tormentors.

 

 

She is unsure. The shadow twitches.

 

 

 

 

 

Mirabelle stands there, breathing frantically, her eyes looking at every detail of every window that has appeared.

 

A squirrel… It was just a squirrel.

 

The fairy tries to get herself to calm down, not sure why her body is reacting so fearfully. It’s a fear beyond her control. It’s almost instinctual. Every time she hears a crack, every time she feels… that familiar feeling running through her bones, she just…

 

She just…

 

Mirabelle exhales. - A squirrel?

 

The fairy drops her hands, flying to the hole and peering down at the twitching, headless carcass that lies down at the foot of her tree. Its ruby-red blood, mixed in with the befoulment of her magic, shimmers in the conjoined light of both the stars and the mother-moon. She hangs over the edge of the tree and cries.

 

She has killed another thing.

 

---

 

Why does she give the ducks bread?

 

It is two days after the ‘squirrel incident’ and Mirabelle is hiding in a bush in the park, watching the old lady who she has seen come here so often by herself. The woman who feeds the ducks with bread.

 

But why does she do it? If everyone has to earn their keep here, then what is it that the ducks do to earn their bread? Is it their incredible splendor? The beauty of their glossy, thick, fatty feathers? The deep, soul-moving sonnet of their water-song?

 

*Quack*

 

She shudders. Mirabelle can’t say for sure. But it must be these combined things. It must be that the ducks have simply reached a level of accomplishment so far and so above the norm that they are simply fed for existing.

 

The old woman throws out another handful of bread to the ducks, and then she begins to talk.

 

Perhaps this isn’t a conversation meant for Mirabelle’s ears. Perhaps it is rude or even improper to listen in on it. Hearing words that aren’t meant for her is a bit like stealing, no?

 

But still, Mirabelle stays, and she listens to the story that the old woman tells the ducks, the one she tells them every day as she sits here all by herself. The story of her life, that she has no-one else to tell it to. It’s a long story, but from her perch of a branch in the bushes, Mirabelle, the curious fairy, listens. What else is there to do?

 

---

 

Starlight shines into the back window of the shoemaker’s workshop as Mirabelle sits on top of the table and works.

 

Tonight she is dotting the parchment, drawing in the holes, which she assumes are for the laces and for decorative frills and other details like the man had done. Though, she tries to keep it as simple and plain as she holds for reasonably possible.

 

Unfortunately, it’s hard for her to know which holes are important and which ones are just there to look nice, so she constantly flies back and forth to a shelf, looking at the pair of very simple boots there. Eventually, however, she seems to get the right idea of what’s important and what isn’t.

 

Once she’s finished that, she does as she had seen the man do, starting to cut out leather from a thin sheet, using the thick parchment as a stencil.

 

Mirabelle hums, her wings buzzing excitedly as she works well into the night.

 

---

 

Thanks to her new ability, she doesn’t get sick from eating the muffin that is slowly becoming… questionable, more so with every passing day. The same of the segments of good fruit that she scavenges from the regrowing garbage piles.

 

It still tastes foul, but her stomach doesn’t pang in painful protests about it anymore.

 

During the day, she watches the shoemaker, learning everything that she can from him. She learns how he takes new orders for shoes and hangs them on his already overflowing wall. She watches how he starts the process of making boots, of making shoes, of making sandals, slippers, and any other conceivable covering of feet, apart from anything armored with metal. Metal boots seem to rather be something for the man across the street, the smith.

 

During the break of night, she works alone in the workshop, making progress on her first pair of boots, and then, during the depths of the moonfall, she returns to her tree and rests there.

 

Sleep might not come to her, but she still finds some odd, lonely comfort in the tradition of it. She likes to just lay there, close her eyes, and let all of the things she has thought about and learned that day flow through her mind like a gentle trickle of water.

 

Then, come the morning, she makes her way out of the city once more.

 

Any other fascinations she might have had have left her now, of the human-people and their ways. The cruel fairy, Mirabelle has eyes only for the shoemaker and his craft. Boots are the only thing that she thinks about, day in, day out. Even as she watches the people moving through the park during the sunlight hours, all she can think about are their boots.

 

---

 

Days have passed.

 

She had detailed the leather cut-outs and fitted them together. Then she, not able to use her own foot so well after all, since she needs to hammer the sole in, needs to make a small mold of her foot.

 

This isn’t easy at all, and she ends up carving something vaguely foot-like with her glass shard out of some soft wood.

 

It’s not perfect, but… it’ll probably do.

 

Once the ‘foot’ is set inside the leather, she begins to wrap it around towards the bottom, before starting to attach the sole. It’s a process in and of itself. The man uses nails and strings covered in wax that he pulls together very quickly to hold the sole in place, but she doesn’t really understand that process. So she opts to go simpler and more basic, simply attaching things together with some glue and some nails.

 

Nails in her size are of course an issue as well. That is until she finds some small metal clips, that the man uses to hold his papers together that she can break apart into usable bits. Surely he won’t mind. It’s just a few.

 

---

 

More days pass, and Mirabelle sits there, an odd feeling in her chest as she looks at the boot. It looks right.

 

The fairy’s wings buzz and she flies over to grab some staining color from a small container, dipping a rag into it and then smearing it over her boot.

 

---

 

On the next day, after that’s dried, she finally, eagerly waits for the man to retreat to his bed and then flies in, taking a dip of wax and polishing the boot with her rag with a fervor in her eyes and an ache in her arm that she chooses to ignore.

 

Then, finally, after perhaps close to two weeks of work, Mirabelle’s single boot is done.

 

The fairy stares excitedly.

 

 

Sure, it’s not the best thing ever. It looks a little wobbly and uneven. Some of the leather is sticking out here and there. The strings are just pulled through holes rather than metal eyelets like the man’s human-sized boots.

 

But this is hers. She made this.

 

Joyfully, she rips out the fake foot, shaking the boot out to get any splinters out, and then slips it on.

 

Mirabelle smiles and stretches her leg out as she pulls on the strings of her single boot.

 

She doesn’t know how exactly a boot is supposed to feel, honestly. But her foot feels warm; it feels snug.

 

The fairy gets up, tying the strings together as best she can. Her posture is a little uneven because of the height of the single heel. Holding her arms out to her sides, she tries to walk. It’s kind of hard and uncomfortable, to be honest. The material of the boot isn’t bending at all, and it's scraping against her soft skin, which kind of hurts. But the sound is nice.

 

When she steps down onto the wood of the table, it makes a nice, satisfying ‘clack’ that just feels... right when she walks.

 

Mirabelle smiles, looking down at her other, still unclad foot.

 

She knows how she’s going to spend her next two weeks.

 

 

 

 

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