Pixie Genocide

A tempest of pixies flited and wheeled before me. Hundreds of glass wings buzzed. Thousands of spells flashed and fizzled. Confused, they collided with each other and turned each other into pebbles. Pixie or pebble, the unfortunate fell to the forest floor.

I wiggled my fingers and made them stop. The tempest was frozen in time. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply. I knew what I would find at the centre of their mass: the remains of the pixie queen.

She had been murdered. I had seen the grisly act with my own eyes! I had seen the murderer approach her, unhindered by minion and spell; I had seen her welcome the murderer with open arms; I had seen the murderer shred her like she was made of just paper and ink. I saw everything, but the murderer.

I was horrified at first (Who would do such a thing? How did such a thing happen?); then, I was incensed (I would find the murderer and punish them!); then, I was dreadfully sad (Peridia would never be the same again. I would never be the same again). I wept for a long time.  

Tragedy was not meant to happen in Peridia. The forest was a paradise. The pixie queen was supposed to live forever, in harmony and in happiness. I had created it that way. What had gone wrong?

I walked through the immobile pixies. I raised my hands to my face and gently swept them out of my way like they were the blooms of a rare plant. I paused before the last few that concealed the murdered pixie queen, then swept them aside to reveal what I did not want to see but had to see.

And there she was, in tattered pieces. Every joint broken; every wing smashed. Her eyes crushed; her viscera bare. Her beauty and wonder made ugly and defunct. I wiggled my fingers and all her little scattered parts disappeared. Then I wept again.     

This was not just the murder of a pixie queen. It was the murder of a whole hive – hundreds of pixies – as they would all slowly die of grief without her. This was pixie genocide and I reckoned the murderer knew that. I wiggled my fingers and the tempest of pixies disappeared.

Now I could see the forest and it was slowly dying too. The flowers browned. The verdure withered. The ancient trees shed their foliage and bled. The more I looked the more ruin I saw; as if it was my observation that was causing the devastation. Beauty perished before my eyes. But the murderer had done this. Their malicious act had poisoned the entire forest. Peridia was dying. I screamed. Then I wiggled my fingers and made the forest disappear.

I stood in a blank world. Nothing but white above, below and beyond. Everything I had created was gone.

Besides the tragedy, one other thing remained: a skinny little figure in the distance. I walked towards it.

As I drew close to the figure, I recognised her long golden locks and her brilliant green eyes. She was my creation, but not in this world.

“Peridot?” I asked, not seeking confirmation of who she was, but what she was doing here and why she was looking at me with so much hatred.

“You lied to me!” she snarled.

“What do you mean, sweetheart?” I responded.

She ranted: “You said there was no such thing as fairies! No such thing as magic! No such thing as a place like this!”.

“Peridot, you don’t understand,” I tried to explain. “What I said was true. Those things are just fantasy. Magic is not re–”

“That’s not true! I have seen magic here!” she shouted and then with false control she asked: “Why did you keep this from me?”

“I didn’t want to confuse you. I didn’t want to lie to you!”

She laughed, then let her vitriol return. “But you did lie!”

“You have so much to learn about the real world, Peri–”

She cut me off again. “Like death! Like destruction! Like murder!” she barked.

“Peridot, d-did you… kill… the pixie queen?”

Her lips curled into an ugly smile. “Pixie queen?” she mocked. “You mean your pathetic little bug?”

“Did you?”

She held up her hands and wiggled her fingers. She had. She had opened Peridia; she had seen what I had created; she had loathed it and loathed me; she had created the pixie genocide.

A lump formed in my chest. I looked away and shut my eyes, but it did not stop my tears. Then I dropped to the ground and sob uncontrollably.

I was lost in grief for some time. When I managed to raise my head, she was a figure in the distance again, walking away from me.

I ran after her, calling her name, asking for her forgiveness, trying to explain why I had done what I had done. But she never stopped, I never caught up to her, I never convinced her. Eventually, my words failed to convince me as well. I stopped chasing her and watched her disappear into the blankness. I wiggled my fingers and deleted Peridia from my hard drive.

In the real world, my words started to have little effect on Peridot too. We became strangers. She finished high school, moved to another city to become a doctor, and then travelled the world saving lives in its less fortunate corners.

But one day she came home. She wore her hair short and it was more grey than golden. Her eyes were still brilliant green, but they were surrounded by lines and dark skin. She told me that she was tired and that she wanted to stop thinking about the world.

“I used to work as a conservationist,” I told her. “I tried to save rainforests and all the wonderful life that they support. After years of fighting, I also became tired and disheartened with the world.”

She looked surprised.

“So, I made my own world,” I continued. “One where harmony, happiness, and a pixie queen reigned.”

She looked away. Then turned back with tears in her brilliant green eyes. “Did you forgive me?” she asked.

I replied: “Did you forgive me?”

Sometime later, I recreated Peridia. I recreated the forest and the pixies. I even recreated the pixie queen, and Peridot, with her healing powers, mended the pixie queen’s broken body.