The Gratitude of a Bottled Faerie

     'Let's see,' she thought inwardly, the last thing she could remember was falling asleep under a large tree in the center of one of the many fields on the outskirts of Meridell. But nothing else was actively coming to mind as she sat in her glass prison.

     The little faerie was about to give up all hope of finding out what had happened to her when she let a small gasp escape her ruby lips as her mind idly recalled that a dark figure had hovered above her still body as she lay half asleep, enjoying the warmth of the weather and the coolness of the shade simultaneously. She remembered trying to fully open her eyes to investigate who was watching her, however whatever the creature had been, she never really had a chance to see, for all she could remember after that was darkness.

     "Who was that who was watching me sleep?" the faerie pondered aloud.

     "Do you mean who was it that put you into that bottle?" replied a muffled voice.

     The dark faerie whirled around in her bottle, and for the first time took notice of the fact that there were others like her, faeries that had been imprisoned in bottles similar to her own, each giving off a faint hint of the color of the element that they each represented. The dark faerie pinpointed that the voice had come from a entrapped fire faerie, a few bottles away from her own.

     "Yes, I suppose so," replied the dark faerie in a stupor, however realizing for a fact one thing: she was in a lot of trouble.

     "Have you ever heard of the Lupe they call Balthazar?" replied the fire faerie.

     "You of all faeries should know of him, being as its YOUR fault that we're in these bottles," grumbled a light faerie a distance away.

     The dark faerie averted her eyes away, she was more than familiar with the monster that her kind had created; the dangerous Lupe who hunted faeries. Was that who had been above her when she had opened her eyes, Balthazar?

     "Yanel," the fire faerie chastised the bitter light faerie. "That was in the past; this faerie here had nothing to do with the creation of Balthazar, and you are well aware of that."

     The light faerie, although ready to let her vengeance flow free upon the dark faerie for what her kind had done in the past, fell into a silent brood.

     "What's your name?" asked the fire faerie. "You may call me Nazzara."

     "I am Lyra," replied the dark faerie, feeling more out of place now than she had before. "Why is it so dark here?"

     "We are in Balthazar's satchel," Nazzara replied. "He only opens it to place another captive faerie into it, or to dispose of us at a random market place."

     "I see..." murmured Lyra, her faint voice echoing about her as it danced off of the glass surrounding her. She was starting to feel tired, perhaps even overwhelmed at her fate. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and reopen them to find herself back under the tree she had fallen asleep under.

     She could hear the other faeries about her continue to talk amongst themselves; however, she had ceased to listen long ago. She was drifting in and out of consciousness, hoping each time that she would awaken from this nightmare, until she had finally entered into a restless slumber.

     "Huh?" Lyra mumbled as she felt her body shift to the side of the glass bottle; she was moving.

     She managed to get her body into a sitting position despite the fact that her small world was shaking about her as if she was at the epicenter of an earthquake.

     "Wake up, little faerie," came a harsh growl.

     Lyra, although still shaken from her bottle being tossed about, made her eyes contact with the voice that had spoken. Balthazar! Lyra gasped; she never thought that Balthazar would look so ferocious, so ferocious that it caused a new sensation to dance its way down her spine; fear.

     "Our time together has ended, wench," Balthazar grumbled at her as he passed her bottle to a shady looking merchant.

     Lyra's bottle was thankfully placed on a shelf next to the fire faerie, Nazzara, rather than the light faerie that she didn't take too much of a liking to, although she didn't blame the light faerie's bitterness towards her and her kind and their ancient mistakes.

     Lyra looked around at her surroundings. The trees appeared to be tropical in nature, and the Neopians walking about had on flowing skirts of many bright colors and shorts that resembled swimming trunks. This must be Mystery Island, she thought to herself.

     Just then her violet eyes darted to a Neopian and his excited Kougra bounding in her general direction. The male Neopian poured a large sum of Neopoints onto the counter and exchanged a few words with the owner of the shop. The owner then whirled about and removed one of the bottles a few spaces away from her own off of the shelf; an air faerie that Lyra hadn't had the time to speak with.

     The merchant handed the bottle to the excited pair and began to recount his income after they had bounded away to do who knows what with the purchased air faerie.

     "I heard that some people collect us," a water faerie said to Lyra after seeing her stare after the boy and his Kougra with a perplexed look upon her face.

     "Some are kind, though, and release us," Nazzara added.

     "I see," Lyra responded gloomily. She sat down in her bottle and began to rub at her hooked wings; they were starting to cramp, and for the remainder of the day she watched as one by one, the bottles on the shelf disappeared until she was alone on the shelf. Night had come, and the merchant that ran the shop had closed up for the night, leaving Lyra alone and miserable.

     The next day, the merchant received new merchandise which he placed haphazardly about his store, not noticing that he had accidently placed a large Box of Wheat Flakes in front of her bottle; so alone she sat for another day, having nothing else to do aside from reading the nutritional facts on the back of the Wheat Flakes.

     "What's that glowing behind that box?"

     "I don't know, let me ask."

     Who was that talking? Lyra wondered half asleep, and unaware that the sun had long since risen. Sunlight poured in from all directions as the large box in front of her was removed.

     "Look, it's a bottled dark faerie!"

     It was a Neopet that had spoken to his master, a teenage girl with long black hair and glimmering amethyst eyes. Lyra watched as she was inspected from the counter by the young girl and her Tyrannian Peophin.

     "Sasuke... I don't know, we are pretty short on Neopoints lately, and we still have to go grocery shopping for the week; you know how much you and your brothers can eat!" replied the girl.

     "But look how sad she looks in there," the Peophin continued.

     The young girl looked at the Lyra once more and heaved a sigh, "Alright, Sasuke, but you had better not complain to me about there being no food to eat when the end of the week rolls around."

     "Yay!" The Peophin leapt up with excitement.

     'Are they just going to put me on a shelf like that water faerie said some Neopians do?' Lyra wondered to herself as the merchant retrieved her bottle from the shelf when he had seen the raven haired girl remove the required amount of Neopoints from her shoulder bag. 'No...' thought Lyra, 'There is something about that girl and her Peophin that makes me feel comfortable.'

     "Here you are, Miss," said the merchant while greedily racking all of the Neopoints off of the counter.

     "Thank you very much," the girl and Peophin said simultaneously. "Let's head home before we spend any more Neopoints!" the girl laughed to her Neopet.

     "Okay," Sasuke replied, bounding ahead of the girl with a gesture that he wanted to race.

     "Oh, I see how it is, Sasuke!" The girl laughed, racing after the Peophin who had had a head start.

     "What are you going to do with her now that you have her?" the Neopian asked Sasuke.

     Lyra watched as the Peophin thought the question over in his head.

     "She looks so miserable in there," the Peophin stated.

     "Yea, she does," agreed the long haired girl.

     "Can we?" Sasuke asked, knowing that his owner knew what was on his mind.

     "Do what you will, Sasuke; I bought her for you after all."

     Lyra braced herself as the teen girl lifted the bottle off of the table, far more carefully than what she had been used to, and was overjoyed when the cork of the bottle was pulled free from the rim of the glass. Lyra wasted no time escaping the nightmare of a prison, making the bottle jump from the young Neopian's grasp.

     "Thank you!" cried Lyra with her honest gratitude, and gave the kind Peophin a small peck on the nose, blessing him with the ability to gain life back in battle with the ability Drain Life. And with that she was off, making her way back to Meridell to settle some unfinished business with a certain tree.

The End