//------------------------------//
// Chapter 26: Little Problems 
// Story: Sisters of Willowbrook 
// by Starscribe 
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Derek squeaked quietly, settling down onto her haunches. She wasn't the brave wilderness-explorer that Charlie used to be, this was all new to her. Everybody knew what you were supposed to do when you got lost: she should stop and wait for rescue. 

The ground was uneven under her hooves—hopefully she was on the path. If she wandered off...

"Firefly!" she yelled. Her voice didn't carry the way it should've, like it was being actively muffled by so many leaves. She shouted again, louder. "Firefly? Risk? Where are you!?"

The undergrowth rustled around her. Bright flowers emerged in the space around the path, bright purples. They almost matched her coat, but they weren't lilacs. "Where is everyone?" She rose, circling around herself. "They were right behind me!"

She stopped to listen, ears straining for even the smallest sound. Maybe they'd slipped into something, like a ravine concealed along the path. They might be shouting for help, far beneath.

She listened carefully. At first she heard nothing at all, until something cut through the sound of rustling leaves. There was a set of... wings! Tiny, even smaller than a dragonfly. Her ears really were that good!

She spun, even though the sound would be completely useless to her. Charlie had wings, but they wouldn't sound like that!

Something landed in front of her, touching down delicately on the head of a huge flower. She thought it must be a butterfly at first, at least for a split-second. But her eyes rebelled against that impression. It had the right kind of wings, but the body was... wrong.

She stared, mouth falling open. It looked like a pony, from its four legs right down to the little face and big eyes. Its huge wings were shaped like a butterfly's, but transparent like a dragonfly.  For once, there was a creature that wouldn't look down on her.

"Hi there," she said, voice still cracked and tearful. No matter what she wanted to think, this must obviously just be an insect. Nothing smart could be that small. But the rules were clear about butterflies. "I'm trying to figure out what you are. You're so small... I thought I was tiny."

Up close, the creature was even cuter than she imagined. Its limbs had different proportions, its legs were longer, its body smaller, and there was a huge puff of fluff around its chest. She couldn't even guess what its sex might be, not down at that size.

"That's no way to make acquaintance with a perfect stranger now, is it?" said the bug. Its voice was small, but the grove was so peaceful and quiet that she could somehow still hear it clearly. "Yer hardly much of a thing yourself, girl."

She blushed, tucking her tail between her legs. Proof or not, Derek was positive the bug knew exactly what it meant when it said things like that.

The speaker struck her as slightly more masculine than feminine, but its voice was at least two octaves higher than her own. Nearly at the edge of the range she could even comfortably understand. "I'm sorry." Her ears folded flat on her head, and she stared down at her hooves. "I didn't think..." She hesitated. Telling them she didn't think they could be a person was probably not the best approach. "Have you seen my friends?"

"Maybe." The bug lifted up into the air in front of her, buzzing a slow circle around her face. She backed slightly away from it, so she wouldn't bump into it by mistake. It was so close she could smell it—the nectar of flowers she'd never experienced before. "Maybe I have. Why should I tell you where they are, hmm? I bet you can't even tell me what you are."

"You're any different?" she snapped, before she could stop herself. "I don't know what you are."

The bug stopped right in front of her, so close that part of him vanished behind her muzzle. "Don't confuse your ignorance. I'm a breezie, and you are... something that shouldn't exist. Or it shouldn't exist again." 

"Confounding," said another voice, from nearby. This one was just as small, though Derek imagined it was slightly more feminine. Another bug appeared from out of the forest. She was soon joined by several others, with fluff as diverse in color as any of the ponies of Willowbrook. 

"Impossible," said a third voice.

"Perplexing!"

A cloud of little wings circled around her, blurring with colors and voices that all melted into each other until she couldn't tell them apart. Only that first bug, with their distinct yellow coat, managed to remain clear to her through the crowd. He was watching her, while all the others were only playing with her. "You're not wrong," she finally squeaked. "I don't know what I am. I look like a little horse, but I'm not one. Can you tell me?"

The bugs stopped in place. A few of them drifted to either side, clinging to branches and leaves of nearby plants. More just hovered there, wings beating so rarely she couldn't imagine how they stayed airborne. "Spoken like a fairy," said the first one, levitating just in front of her again. "It's good to speak the truth to strangers, some might turn into your friends. They need to know if they can trust what you speak. So good of you not to lie. Trouble with the truth is, it feels like you never say anything."

"Words of a contract!" squeaked one of the little ones from just beside her. "So precise! But what does it mean? Ponies can't tell. Mortal ears don't listen. They just want the crops to grow. They want their sick cows to get better. They want to find fish out in the sea."

"Noble pursuits of pollen and steam!" said another.

"What do you think you are?" the first bug asked. "We know you mean only the truth by your answer. If that is what you mean. We'll know otherwise."

Derek's tail tucked between her legs again, embarrassed. There was a truthful answer to that question, and there was the one that wouldn't completely embarrass her. But if she was ever going to keep secrets, this probably wasn't the place. How would fairies react if she tried to lie?

"I'm from another world," she said. "It's my fault I'm here, and I dragged my friend along with me. There's a... little pegasus, she was here. And a unicorn boy, none of this is his fault. He just wanted to help me."

"Back to the city," said a voice from overhead. She couldn't keep all the little bugs straight. Even the male hadn't given her a name. It's just like summoning things in the book. Don't share names. It didn't ask for mine, and I didn't get one. 

"We might show you," said the male. "But first, one more question, then we decide. What world did you come from? Distant sorceress, defiance of boundaries, torn veil. Where did you fly from?"

There was only one correct answer to that. "Somewhere like this, and also different. Somewhere with only one tribe, where no creature in the world has any magic, where survival is a contest my species won. We killed every threat we could find, and maybe one day ourselves too."

The bugs whispered, buzzing around her again. Their amusement was gone. Now those voices were afraid.

"You want to go back to that place, traveler? Honestly?"

She nodded. "I had a life back there. And my friend, Firefly, she doesn't belong here. I should've got caught up in all this alone. She was just there to support me, because she... thought I was insane. I basically stole her whole life. I want to give it back."

"Back!" the fairies repeated, in high voices she could barely understand. Except for the one she was speaking to. 

"You came for our blessing. You want to fly a path that isn't. No magic, no life. They are the same, little traveler. Where life grows, magic must flow—out of air and into birds and flowers and ponies. So much together in ponies, so wasteful—but you are like a dozen lives in one. They bound up power in you, traveler. There's no power we could give you that you don't already have."

The air shimmered around them, and suddenly Derek was standing somewhere else. She wanted to use the word “city” until she saw exactly how small it was. The buildings were trees, with little windows and doors clustered up and down like skyscrapers. A garden of many flowers grew between them, without a single road or path. There were a few bridges, connecting nearby buildings to each other and forming patios where the little fairies could stand.

There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them here, moving so quickly together that they might as well be a single creature. There were others here—Charlie and Risk. They stood in a circle of mushrooms near the center—or rather, they were trapped inside. Occasionally Risk smacked his hoof up against open air, and recoiled in pain.

Derek hadn't been trapped like them. Bugs turned to look at her, and their faces were too small to read their emotions. Surprise, anger, maybe eagerness to see what would happen to her. 

"I know you would only tell me the truth," she said to the bug who had brought her. "So that must be true. But I can't believe you have nothing to teach me. The others have magic—they can fly, they can cast real spells without needing to mark with runes first! I can't do that. I can't do anything."

"You don't know how to do anything," the bug corrected. "That is true. But you can't, that is not. You began by speaking the truth, why can't you end that way?"

"I don't know how," she repeated. "Can't you show me? I want to learn. I have to find my way home, and I don't know how. Maybe nobody does, I'm not sure."

"We can't teach you that," said the little bug. "We know how to go to places that are places, not a void that devours everything that lives. Our magic is the flowers, the seasons, the storms. You could learn these, if you accept the price."

"I don't like the sound of this, Lilac," Charlie said. She might be a fairy-city block away, but from the size of a normal pony, it was only a few feet. "That's a bad contract! You have to read the fine print!"

Derek might be desperate, but she wasn't stupid. "What's the price of your help?"

"Rules," the bug answered. "That's what power always costs—get a little, but give a little of yourself. Ponies can do anything they want—they could even cut down the forests, burn the wildflowers, poison the rivers. They probably won't, but they could. I think you already know a little bit about that though, don't you? All that power bound up inside, like a little Alicorn without any wings. There's already a lot you can't do, and probably some things you have to do."

He floated down, sticking out one of those little hooves towards hers. He hovered there in the still air, watching her with two gigantic eyes. "Promise and we'll teach you to listen to the flowers, but you can't uproot them. Promise, and the fair folk will hear you, but you better not forget them. Swear, and we will make it true."

"And you let us go afterwards? My friends go home with me?"

"Either way," the little fairy answered. "We didn't want to harm them, or they would be harmed. We just wanted to talk alone. Ponies make each other talk."

She considered that. It was the stupidest thing she could possibly do, at least since her attempt to gather magic out in the forest. She was basically doing the same thing now. There's power in me. They probably want to use it for themselves. But would that be so bad? She'd seen Princess Mononoke—nature was never the bad guy.

"How?"

Charlie smacked her hoof into her face. Risk bounced up and down, hyperventilating. But they couldn't stop her.

"My name is Saffron," he said, touching her hoof with his. "What's yours?"

She hesitated for a second, then spoke. "Derek Ashsen." It didn't even hurt.