I Wish

Chapter 63

So… I almost fell to my death. I almost fell to my death an awful lot. What kind of lunatic thought that this present-jump was a clever way to get around must have been really crazy, really bored, really over capable, or my personal favourite all three put together. Speaking of personal things, I discovered that the way up to the tree was my personal hell. Particularly during the part where I was cussing out everything that contributed to my dumb desire to try and scale this thing when I realised that it was most likely not all that dangerous for the inhabitants of this world. They had wings, any falling that occurred could be turned into flying pretty easily. The ability to fly would actually be pretty f*****g nice right about now.

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But if they could fly, then why did all those gifts look like they’ve been climbed a million times before? Who would have bothered, when they could just fly up? So if they’d all climbed up, what was it exactly that had stopped them from flying? I swallowed, and started to get very nervous about the possibilities. It would have been nice to only worry about monsters, but frankly with this place having it’s very own great big scuking vortex could be the reason nobody flew, for all I knew anyway. It wasn’t likely because of the general rule of thumb to this place was, if you think it’s going to happen that ain’t it. Still, there was only one way to find out, and I wasn’t going to touch that with a ten foot f*****g pole. Why? Because if it all went very much in the direction of pear-shaped, I didn’t have wings. Can you say ka-splat? I’d avoid that at all costs, thank you very much. Which left me paying far more attention to my surroundings than I was before. Not that it did me any good. I was still very much taken by surprise.

“Are you going to stand around here all day, or will you be going up to the tree proper?” someone asked exasperatedly, interrupting my increasingly paranoid thoughts. I almost had a heart attack, and seriously that particularly organ had been misbehaving an awful lot lately. It was nowhere near as terrifying as the potentially fatal fall I had. The wind rushed past me, almost toppling to my death over the side of the box. Well, that’s not quite accurate. I had yet another instance of, almost, falling to my death. I’d jumped a mile out of my skin when they’d spoken, and was already teetering on the edge of the box I was standing on, and I fell. From the tallest of them all. Needless to say I screamed so loudly that I almost burst my own eardrums, and grabbed out frantically at anything I could reach. The weightless feeling was enough to make me feel like I was drowning. A ratty ribbon saved my life, I grabbed it as I went over and tore up my hands holding on to it. The ribbon shredded as I slid down, the zipper-like sound it made echoing in my ears. As for my hands? They stung, the old blood stains all the way up making so much more sense now, and I hissed. The ribbon fibres digging into the damaged skins. As quickly as possible, so as soon as I slowed down any, I wrapped my whole body around whatever would hold me up. Every one of my muscles tense with exertion, because it was a long way down. A very extremely long way down, and then I went and made a donkey’s mistake, because guy’s…. I was looking down, and I think that I may have just discovered the mistake that I had made. Oh, if this isn’t what to stupid to live looks like I don’t know what was. I whimpered, and it was a tiny and pathetic sound. Getting squashed in a throat that was currently doing it’s best to impede airflow. I could see my face reflected in the glass of a nearby hanging ornament. Another glass ball, this one filled with cosmos flowers and… glitter? I looked pale, and my outline shook, which belatedly I realized was because I was shaking. What had I been thinking? Why did pretty things have to make me so, so dumb. Usually it was just my wallet that took the hit, but this was ridiculous. Why? This was not as fun as it was supposed to be, because if things were how they were supposed to be, then I would be here with Ivy.

Now Ivy may have been just as land-locked as I was here, I was betting on the worst with my luck, but I’m telling you right now I had every faith that if she had been here I wouldn’t have fallen at all. It was a solid moment or two before I could unhook my body from the death grip I had on what was essentially my lifeline. Sweating bullets the entire way. Great big shaky breaths wracked my body, and I tried to calm myself. Needless to say that only lasted as long as it took for me to get back up there. Scrabbling and scrambling to climb over the edge, and drag myself up to… we’re going to go ahead and call that solid ground, and hope that the universe doesn’t disagree too much. I was exhausted, and tripping out, which made what my eyes were seeing all that much harder to believe.

“Lady, are you crazy?” I shouted accusingly, pulling myself to my feet and dusting off the layer of snow I’d acquired on the way up here, “Are you trying to kill me?” Except… there was no one there anymore. I spun around trying to see if maybe they were just standing on another box. One of the lower down ones that were closer. They weren’t, and it was weird because even though I couldn’t see anyone I still felt like I was being watched. “Hello?” I asked suspiciously, peering downwards.

“Up here,” they spoke softly, and sounded thoroughly amused by the whole situation that she’d just caused. I tilted my head upwards and just about fell straight off the damn box again. It was with every bit of restraint that I had that I didn’t stare, or let my mouth fall open for worrying amounts of time. I blinked though, how could I not? What I’d seen at first glance was absolutely correct, and as interesting as it was I was also sort of asking myself, the f**k?

“Bird-person,” I said in surprise before frowning and correcting myself, “Person-bird? I don’t know, this is new. Hello.” A girl was hanging upside down from the nearest branch… and I don’t mean that she was holding on with her legs and hanging there. SHe was just standing on the branch, normally, but upside down. Like gravity was for suckers, and logical reasoning didn’t exist. That last one didn’t surprise me much, it was pretty par for the course.

“Person-bird, I think? Mira,” she corrected, jumping up from her perspective, and flipping down from mine. Coming to stand next to me. “They call me Mira, what’s your name?” Mira asked me, shifting a short feathery lock of white hair behind her ear while she waited for me to answer. She wasn’t much taller than I was, and she was fluffy. Not curvy, or rather not just curvy because she definitely was that, but actual feathers-involved fluffy. Her ears didn’t sit on the side of her head, they had moved up and were cute feathered triangles. Like an owl, a snowy owl because this was the OG winter wonderland, with white with black speckles.

“I’m called Rose,” I replied back with a smug smile on my face, and it wasn’t that I regretted giving Ivy so much trouble for the name thing. It was really nice to know that little trick, because if the overly sarcastic smile she gave in response demonstrated anything it was that she was resentful that I did. “Nice try,” I added. Her face scrunched up and she looked pouty and annoyed. When Ivy did it, it was pretty much guaranteed to get me to do what she wanted me to unless I was being particularly stubborn. This chick just irritated me, seriously it went from making me all melty with Ivy, to making me want to punch Mira in the face for what was almost the same thing.

“Now see I was having a thought here, and I don’t know what you think, but we could have a lot of fun. Could have gotten into so much trouble, but I suppose it’s probably for the best that you were too clever for me,” she replied with a wistful sigh. Mimicking Ivy was not a smart move, it was just… something that was starting to trigger me.

“Depends on how you feel about that pretty baby blue dress being stained red,” I commented with a smile that made it seem like I was being humorous, rather than deadly serious. She was iffy, and she had to go.

“Don’t like me that much? Shame, and more than a little bit defensive. Makes me think that you do like me, a little at least. I don’t think you’re going to hurt me right now,” she pouted in an overly sweet voice, crossing her arms one over the other, and turning her head away in a huff. As if I were being particularly offensive, and she was the whiny popular girl in an early 2000’s movie.

“You make a lot of points that are irrelevant. I’ve got a mate, her name is Ivy and she’d happily have you ripped apart and choking on her namesake,” I said blandly, and it could be misconstrued as a threat. Threat implies that there was a way in which you could comply that would save you, this was not the case.

“Ivy’s girl? I appreciate the heads up,” she said with a shudder before winking at me but I was thinking that she already damn well knew that, “Will you be going up?” On the other hand, wasn’t it nice that I didn’t have to further explain that, or put two and two together for her. I wondered if this was something unique to Mira, or if living in the human world had severely ripped me off.

“Yes,” I replied as if everything else she had said was irrelevant, and I did my best to ignore the tingles I had at the idea that Ivy could still be looking out for me, even though she wasn’t here. Mira’s grin became downright sadistic, and she leaned forwards into my space with both arms behind her back and crossed ankles. Her eyes glowed manically, and it was almost enough for me to second guess my decision. However, I didn’t climb all this way just to cop out now.

“Then you must remember the rules. Stick to your objective, don’t fall for distractions, and be careful not to wander into the Summer court. Anything could happen to you there,” Mira told me in a pur, “This is a place where you could easily end up somewhere where there is no coming back from good luck.”

Good luck indeed, I very much resent how much she undersold how much I was going to need that.