Part 3: Untitled Novel, Day 21 - Words to Go: 0

She'd been in the dark for so long, but it took a moment to adjust her eyes again to the darkened room after Goldie's light went out, but Prisoner Goldie screamed as her door came open and she saw the little girl fall to the ground in the dim light of the fires burning outside in the city. She took her first steps outside of her cell in years, fell on her knees, and picked the little girl up from the floor and held her against her chest, screaming and crying as she rocked Goldie's lifeless body. The crusted mud on the little girl's jeans flaked as Prisoner Goldie shook the little girl, trying to wake her again.
Why hadn't she rinsed that mud off when she was out at the spring? No, no, Goldie shook her head. She'd never been at the spring. She'd never been anywere in fairyland except the cell The compact. What made the compact so special?
Right. It's a fairy blessing. Floyd had told her that.
Who is Floyd? Floyd is Turin. He's also in cat form at the moment. That's why he'd never come back to save her. Until now. She had all of the little girl's memories in her head. She remembered it all as if she was there. Was it because they really were exactly the same person, just separated by minutes in time? Goldie from that time didn't exist anymore, except, she did. She is me. I am her. I bet I could still send her back to her time. She can't stay here. Where did that compact go? Goldie walked back into the cell, scanning the ground for the little silver compact. The jewels sparkled in the firelight over at the edge of the back wall, near the window. She picked up the compact. She was unaccustomed to being so tall. The ground seemed so far beneath her.
If it caused problems, she guessed she could always make herself shorter. She had one more prisoner to save. Goldie raised her invisibility shields and marched out of the castle through the front door. Goldie's more mature mind understood the abilities she had with the fairy blessing a little more than her seven year old mind did. She used the blessing to navigate the city, through the crowds of dark fairies, to where she'd discovered Floyd the Cat, otherwise known as Prince Turin, was being held. The King had put him in a box in the court house, next to his court house throne. The one he used instead of the castle throne in emergencies. Goldie walked into the room just as the King was pronouncing his decision to put Prince Turin to death.

"No!" Goldie unveiled herself. She stared directly at the King.

"You!" The king roared, rising to his feet. "Arrest her!" he called to a closeby guard.

Goldie cut off the guards air supply with her mind without removing her eyes from the king. The guard fell to the ground.

"Somebody grab her right now!" The king called again, and six more guards rushed at Goldie. She waved her hands and a huge ball of red energy exploded from her body and threw the guards violently against the walls.

The king growled.
So did Goldie.
He sucked in his breath and blew a gigantic torch of flame from his mouth. Two guards had snuck up behind Goldie. They were turned to cinders in a matter of moments, but Goldie remained unaffected. He blew another streak of flames and Goldie rerouted it with her hands, sending it shooting up toward the roof, setting the ceiling on fire.

"I will burn your entire city to the ground if you don't let Turin go, RIGHT NOW." Goldie bellowed at the top of her lungs. "You cannot destroy me," she added in a whisper.

The king only stared at her as the ceiling began to cave in. Goldie started to laugh.
The king covered his head and ordered the guards to let the cat go.

"No!" Goldie shouted again. "Give him back his true form as well. And, the agreement between you and Turin's father is over. He has learned his lesson."

The king knew he would never win against Goldie. He could see the power eminating from her very veins as she stood there begging for him to threaten her. She wouldn't hesitate to kill him if she needed to. The king nodded to Goldie and snapped his claws together in the direction of the cat.
Suddenly, Turin was a fairy again, though he had no fairy powers, still. That was for his father to return. He still fought against the chains that held him.

"Release him," said the king to the guards. Then to Turin, "Tell your father the agreement has been terminated and I've released you in good will. But if I ever see you here again, I will not hesitate to roast you like a pig." The king laughed a horribly evil laugh. The ceiling was falling in chunks now. Turin ran to Goldie and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her out of the building with him. He didn't stop walking until the two of them were outside of the dark city and walking on the road out of the dark forest.

Goldie studied Turin as they walked.
He was, surprisingly to Goldie, a lot like a normal human being. He was taller than her, just a regular man until the wings at his back peeped out from behind him. Goldie expected him to be small, like Tinkerbell. Then again, when it turned out that Kiffen was a fairy, as well, her pre-conceived ideas about fairyism were smashed into little pieces. But, being that Turin was a good fairy... it seemed logical to Goldie that he'd be a little bitty thing, like when Kiffen was pretending to be good and he made himself tiny. Maybe it was just a notion in her head that the smaller a creature is, the scarier it isn't.
The smoke from the dark city was thick out in the woods. It was hard to breathe. Goldie adjusted her fairy blessing accordingly and breathed a little deeper. In all her years in capitivity... Even she wasn't sure how many. She could tell she'd grown taller, but that didn't tell her much... In her years of captivity, the hate in her heart had been welling up. She hated her captors, she hated herself for having such a need for adventure. She would have been just as content reading a book, rather than exploring the house, but she'd let her curiosity get the better of her. She'd somehow remained positive for the entire time of her captivity. Now that she was away from the darknesss, the bars, the screams, the death. Especially the death, the murder.
She couldn't hold it down anymore. And, Turin was the only one there. She'd been making mindless small talk without listening to what she or Floyd had been saying. Suddenly, she vomited words.

"I can't believe you sent that little girl to save me... you, you sick freak," she shreiked the last word as she walked toward him. "She's dead because of you." Goldie whispered, wagging her finger in his face.

Cat/Floyd the Cat/Light Sprite Prince Turin stopped walking, shocked at Goldie's outburst. His wings twitched behind him as if he was preparing to take flight.

"I didn't send her to be killed," he threw back through gritted teeth. He quieted his voice and spoke sincerely and imploringly. "Goldie, she isn't dead. She is YOU. You feel her, don't you? You have her memories? That girl is not gone. She's still here, standing in front of me. You're older, but she was always you. Do you understand that? The two of you are the same. She'll never be gone."

"It sure feels like she's gone. A little girl walked into my dungeon and she took the time to pay attention to every single one of those prisoners. She took the time to send them where she wanted so badly to go. But, she couldn't go home. She was stuck. And, now she's dead."

"You're not dead."

"Yeah? How do you know? She's dead, so I must be!"

"That timeline is moot, now, because you are alive. You have her memories. She's alive, the same as you are. She's standing right her in front of me!" He rubbed his arm across his nose violently. After pacing on the wooded road for a moment, he held out his hands, palms up, and shrugged his shoulders. "I admit it. Maybe I made a mistake, but changing your timeline was the only way I could figure out to save you. I knew if I changed the timeline, you would return to that room AFTER you'd originally been taken. Kiffen knew that someone was going to come in after you and once I sent the fairy blessing through, there was nothing else to do, but wait till you found it and follow you in. I promised to get you out of that cage, and I did. Can't you at least thank me for that?"

Goldie was prepared to scream bloody murder at him, when she noticed movement behind the trees lining the road.
A growl came from the forest. "You can thank him later," the voice said. "Or, if you hate him so much still after I kill him, I guess you can thank ME later."

Kiffen stepped into the road, a dark laugh rose from his throat. He looked at Turin, shaking his claw at him as he announced, "You know, you had me fooled for a long while. As soon as you disappeared, I knew what the story was. I'd figured it out. I knew I shouldn't have left the girl alone, but I got overly cocky. I thought I'd be able to find you first, because I knew I should have been able to sense you if you were following us. You used the sylphs? To find us? Sylphs speak mostly lies," he said now, speaking to Goldie. "But, because the royal light sprites are so much better than everyone else," he spat. "They do whatever they're bid."

"Go away! There's nothing more you need to do here. You're the one that got her into this mess, I'm the one who got her out."

"That's exactly why I'm going to light your head on fire. I hate it when someone wrecks the things I've worked so hard to accomplish."

He moved toward Turin, now. Goldie had backed up toward the treeline, but Turin stood his ground.

"I don't care what you do to me. She'll never be under your spell again. That's all that matters."

Kiffen still had issues working up the ability to puff fire, he was likely only talking up a big game because he wasn't able to spit fire yet.
Goldie hated bullies and she knew what she had to do. As Kiffen was spouting off another round of threats, he stepped closer to Turin. The prince lashed out at the dark fairy, he likely knew that he had a slight chance, especially if Kiffen had no fire in him, to beat him at his own game. But, Kiffen's claws were sharp. He ran his claw down Turin's arm as he cried out in agony. So, fairies have red blood the same as me, and they feel pain, was what ran through Goldie's mind in her frozen stupor. She was tired of violence and yet she couldn't protect him. She was standing here, watching it happen, with no idea what to do.
Goldie could hear Kiffen's stomach gurgle.

"We had a good run, Prince. Now, it's time to say goodbye."

He gave Turin one last knock on the head and he fell to the ground, beaten once again within an inch of his life, only this time he didn't get in the fight to save his own life. He'd done it to save Goldie. He lay convulsing on the ground.
Kiffen inhaled sharply.
Suddenly, Kiffen was small again, like he had been back in the halfway world. The halfway world where everything started. Kiffen set up his evil fairy ring there, he lured her into it. Even then, Cat had tried to save her. He'd tried to stop everything. When he was sent to her world, he went to find her. He wanted to save her from the first moment he knew her and he'd worked out the perfect plan. The only thing was, he'd have to create a new timeline to do it. And, that took him years. So many years. Goldie had never given up hope that she'd be rescued, she just wasn't prepared for the rescuer.
She knew it was the only thing that he could have done. It made sense that it was the only way. She remembered thinking back in the halfway world that she'd really just like to pick up her foot and stomp on the little Kiffen. He was the perfect size. They were both the perfect size to stomp on.
She realized her head was above the trees. The fairy blessing knew what she wanted.
She giggled and both Kiffen and Turin turned to look at her.
Kiffen's eyes grew wide and he turned and ran away, but in one quick step, Goldie had overtaken him.
When she stepped down on him, a gigantic cloud of glitter rose into the air. A beautiful cloud of glitter, sparkling, glinting, raining down onto the forest road.
And, the bad guys bleed glitter. How unusual.

Kiffen was no more and Goldie was back to her regular 7 year old size and the clothes she'd worn into fairyland. She liked it best that way. She wasn't supposed to be an adult yet.
She stood in the road, next to Prince Turin, whose wounds were healing quite quickly because of his father's blessing and they watched the glitter pieces float to the ground around them.

"I can't stop thinking of you as Floyd the Cat," she said to him.

"Go ahead and call me Floyd. I don't mind." He grunted a laugh, still in quite a lot of pain.

"It'd be fun to just call you Cat, again, like the old days."

"Heh, Cat then. That's fine." He sat up. His ribs had healed well enough to support him, now, though he still groaned in pain. Goldie knelt down to help him. "You know," he said. "Now that you've rescued yourself, there's nothing holding you here anymore." Goldie knew. She'd been thinking about home ever since she walked out of the dungeon.

"I didn't rescue myself. You rescued me," Goldie said.

"You really are her," he said.

"I know I am. It's just so confusing," Goldie sighed and helped Turin stand. "Are you going to be alright?"

"I'll be fine." He limped a couple of steps just to prove he could walk. The cut on his arm was less than half the size it was when it was first inflicted. "Maybe I'll see you around sometime?"

"I hope so." Goldie threw her arms around his waist and hugged him. Not too tight. He was still in a lot of pain. "Thank you so much, Cat. I'll always remember you."


And, then, Goldie wished a doorway into existence that led between her world and the fairy world. Good for one trip. She waved at Cat and stepped through.