They say that she is beautiful. They tell me that she is stunning and as vengeful as the shadows on the darkest night. I’ve heard she bites like the wind in a winter storm. All that I’ve heard of her paint her as a perfect collectible and I will get her before anyone else does. Of course, the room in which she waits like a golden gem of an artifact, ripe for the taking, is locked and magically any unauthorized intruders are prevented entry. Even with the shadow paths, I cannot enter the great room reserved for the goddess. Clearly there has been some mistake, but the peasants to created the spells are hardly worth speaking to. They seem a little slow on the uptake, if you know what I mean. Besides, they would surely be jealous that I had chosen the most fashionable original fairy for my collection and not each of them.
Unlike the gem that she is, however, my new toy is alive. She breathes and moves and she can certainly leave the confines of her room. I’ve realized lately that I have been neglecting my collection in favor of spending time with my prince, though he seems to pretend he is more interested in that bitch that came swooping in and stole his attention away from me. If he won’t acknowledge me more than stolen glances at the shadows in secret, then perhaps it is time to leave him to collect dust for a short while instead.
I stood guard over the large, heavy door, watching from the darkness that lurks in the hallways at all times, thrown by the flickering lamplight and torches around the castle. My ugly familiar, with patches of fur recently torn from her sides by the slaves of darkness huddled in the light, closer to the door than I was.
She, not I, was surprised when the large door was swung open by the divinely beautiful woman, and Esi was caught between the door and the stone. There I left her as I quietly followed the goddess down the hall. Though, I had heard, she had only recently been unconscious, lying in state like the preserved body of a dead queen, she looked immaculate and ripe for the collecting. Her hair glimmered like the brightest gold filigree, her eyes like they’d been drawn by a master of art with his tubes and sticks on her face. Perhaps, with my help, she would be able to draw the attention of my prince away from the whore and back to me, where it belonged.
I darted, quick as a small lizard from hide to hide, from my cove of shadows along the wall into the shadow cast by her own frame. They bit harder than stone shadows, and they lacked the warmth that so many other animate casts held. They resisted me, like they knew not how to handle becoming my servant, but in time they conceded and draped around me. What magic the woman possessed I knew not; I cared not beyond what would be prized in the collection. I knew she couldn’t hope to be better than I and so I sent one vine-like tendril to caress her calf and wrap delicately around her leg. It could not trip her, I knew, as her shadow moved with her. But that was not the plan. This was simply for show.
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