It’s them.

 

“Let go of me!” yells Mirabelle, hitting against the side of the hand that has roughly grabbed her which has yanked her out of her tree. She looks in panic up at the face of a human — one that she recognizes — as he turns down and calls down to the ground below.

 

“I got it!” says the man excitedly.

 

The man is the stocky man who has often been running through the park during the day with hands full of books and scrolls. Below, down at the bottom of the tree, is his lanky, meandering companion. “Huh… Well,” replies the droll man. “I’m surprised,” he says, with a fairly blank and lifeless expression. He looks around the park and then listlessly shrugs, starting to yawn.

 

“Show a little more enthusiasm!” says the man from up in the tree down to him, pointing with his free hand. “This is huge!”

 

“HEY!” yells Mirabelle. What should she do? Should she use her magic? But that’ll hurt them…

 

The man in the tree looks at her. “It can talk!” he yells back down to his colleague, ignoring the distressed fairy.

 

“Get down from the tree,” replies the man down below.

 

The excited man sighs, shaking his head. He rummages into his bag with a free hand, ignoring the kicking and fighting fairy, and then pulls out a jar that he throws her inside of. Mirabelle yells, flying up to collide with the lid just as he screws it on.

 

“STOP!” yells Mirabelle, not really sure what else to do.

 

The man climbs down from the tree and then shows her to his colleague. “See?” he asks, as they watch her buzz around, pressing her hands against the lid to try and open it from the inside. “Smaller than I thought it would be.”

 

“Let me out!” protests Mirabelle, looking at the tall, quiet man instead, if the other one is going to ignore her. “You can’t do this! It’s illegal!” she argues, remembering all of the different posters and ordinances posted around the city declaring her to be a protected natural asset.

 

“That’s good,” replies the tall man, not to her but to his colleague. “It’ll be worth more.” He nods his head. “Come on. Let’s go.”

 

The excited man nods, looking at the jar that Mirabelle is in.

 

She’s not really sure why, but he shakes it a little, and she falls around, hurting herself on the clear glass, before he throws the jar into the bag and pulls the drawstrings shut, sealing her inside a dark place.

 

---

 

Mirabelle lays in a ball, holding herself as the jar inside the bag jostles around as they move.

 

It’s them.

 

Them.

 

She hadn’t seen any of them since her arrival here in this new life, since her rebirth. The people who took everything from her, the people who killed her and everything she loved back then, the people who destroyed her home. There are humans in this city, yes, but they weren’t them.

 

They have different expressions, different gesticulations, and different auras of spirit.

 

— These are the people who she hates. They’re the only thing in this world that she hates more than herself.

 

Maybe this is all her fault. If she hadn’t locked herself in her home all day for almost a week on end, if she had been outside at night with Grace like she would usually be, then they wouldn’t have caught her, right? Why are they doing this? It’s against their laws. She’s protected. She’s safe. That’s what they said, and that’s what they promised.

 

She hates them so much.

 

Mirabelle screams, her voice muffled because her teeth have plunged into her own arm, biting down as hard as she can make them out of sheer vexation. It hurts.

 

This is her fault.

 

She should have been making shoes. She should have been making boots. Instead, she did something bad, and now bad things are happening to her — because she deserves it. She’s a bad thing. She deserves bad things.

 

“Quiet!” hisses a voice from outside. Mirabelle screams as the bag is shaken violently and she flies around, hitting her head against the glass. The fairy starts crying, a black, inky mess leaking out of her and pooling around her body.

 

---

 

“Fifty thousand Obols,” says the voice. She doesn’t recognize it.

 

“Not a chance,” replies one that she does, even through the muffling dampening of it. It belongs to the excited man. “For the last fairy in the world?” he asks. “Seventy-five,” he counters.

 

“What am I supposed to do if it dies?” asks the first man. “It’s a large investment for one creature,” he expands. “I only ever buy monsters in pairs,” he explains. “Given the nature of my work. You understand.”

 

It’s quiet for a time. “It’s a girl,” replies the excited man. “Figure something out to have her make more fairies. I don’t know how these things work, okay?” he asks. “Get creative. Seventy-five,” he says. “You should be excited for this price,” he says. “For the very last fairy in the world?” Mirabelle feels the bag shake. “Nations would go to war over this. This price is nothing. It’s a steal.”

 

“And just the same, you’ve come to me and not the king,” replies the stranger. “Let me see it,” he says. “Sixty, if it looks healthy and strong.”

 

“Seventy, unconditional.”

 

“Sixty-five,” replies the buyer.

 

“Add one more, and we have a deal,” replies the excited man. Light of a deeply orange hue — fire — glows into the bag as there is the hiss of the drawstrings opening. A hand reaches in, grabbing the jar.

 

“Let me see it,” repeats the buyer.

 

“…What the…” The excited man lifts the jar out of the bag, looking at it. “What the hell? Hey!” he yells, looking at his colleague.

 

The jar is full of water of a dark, murky hue. Mirabelle floats in the brack, holding herself as she looks out around her as the excited man panics. “Shit! SHIT!”

 

“You drowned it?!” asks the calm man. “You ABSOLUTE IMBECILE!”

 

“— No, no!” replies the excited man, slamming the jar down onto the table and turning open the lid. “It’s… it’s a water-fairy!” he lies, making up something on the spot since he has no idea what’s happening. “This is a perfectly natural state for it; look!” he says, reaching into the jar to grab her.

 

Mirabelle floats there, holding herself, as the blackwater is displaced, splashing out of the jar’s rim as the excited man’s hand wraps itself around her body. “Everything is fine,” he says, beginning to pull her out. “Everything is just like -”

 

Her rise up to the surface stops.

 

Mirabelle slowly begins to float back down toward the bottom of the jar, and with her comes a severed human hand that is still holding her. Its skin blisters and bubbles, and the blood hisses as it reacts with the water, staining it an even darker hue of black. The flesh, the bone, the marrow — it all begins to liquefy, melting into the water of the jar as the blackwater eats away at it like a spider’s venom. The excited man screams, looking at his exposed wrist bone.

 

Mirabelle looks at her reflection in the jar, unable to do anything but think of Grace at a time like this. She misses him. She wishes that she hadn’t gotten so lost in self-pity these last few days and had spent time with her friend instead. He would have helped her feel better. He always does.

 

She’s not bad.

 

She’s good.

 

Her hand touches the glass, running along her own wobbling reflection in it as a nebula of blood drifts between her and it.

 

She’s a good fairy. Sure, she’s imperfect and makes dumb mistakes, like with the stick-man. But she works hard to be good. She makes pretty, useful things for the people of the city. She works hard so that they can have nice, safe, and comfortable shoes. She works hard so that she can feel useful and purposeful. She tries her best every day to be a happy, helpful, and good person. She tries so hard to be good, so she is good.

 

It’s they who are the problem.

 

 

Her hand, pressed against the glass wall of the jar, glows for only a second before the spell shoots out. The jar explodes. Blackwater and shards of glass fly everywhere. Mirabelle, the good fairy, lies there in a puddle of blood and blackwater as the three men, struck by the splashing blackwater, scream and clutch their faces, their bodies, and their legs as the poison water slowly eats through them.

 

They begin to collapse, not dead yet, as their feet burn away and then their shin bones. They try to crawl, as if trying to crawl out of a puddle that they have fallen into, but this is not the case.

 

They are the puddle. There is nowhere to crawl; there is only the ability to sink and devolve further into indistinguishable wetness.

 

Mirabelle lies on her side, broken glass around her, as she traces a finger through the water.

 

“I’m good,” she repeats to herself, looking at the reflection below her, its finger touching hers as they meet in the middle. Grace told her so. And he’s good. That means it’s true. Good people don’t lie. That means she’s good, so if she tells herself that, it’s true. Mirabelle smiles, looking at the face next to hers as they drown in their own liquifications, their collarbones beginning to drift away from their necks.

 

Mirabelle, the good fairy, sits upright and looks around herself.

 

Grace had been playing his instrument before. That means he was hoping to see her. She wants to see him too.

 

She rises up to her feet, her wings buzzing, as she looks around the underground room that she’s in, trying to find a way out.

 

Maybe he’s not asleep yet. Maybe they still have time to look at the stars together tonight?

 

— A voice bubbles next to her as its tongue becomes water and its soul becomes the same.

 

Mirabelle, the lovely, kind, and gracious fairy, flies away to leave to do exactly that. And behind her, in the room that she leaves and fully ignores, the puddles of water shimmer in the firelight of the lanterns glow. The many reflections of glassware and metal tools around the space cast pinpricks of light into the black sludge, giving it the appearance of being an ocean reflecting the twinkling of the stars shining so high above in the sky.