Page 26 of Chased By the Fairy

As usual, his hair was tied back, but Jeffers had asked that two braids be added to the front. He constantly pushed them behind his ears.

I think he wants me to look more like a bug.

For the first time in his life, he felt wonderfully dressed.

When he’d been first told to don the clothing, he’d thought,I wish Cypress could see me like this.

What he’d worn with Cypress in the town was terrible in comparison to this, disgraceful even. Sorrel would have lookedso out of place with him. Still, a mild smile curled his lips as he remembered dancing with him and each heated kiss.

It was still the best night of his life, even if it ended up turning out so horribly.

Even his ‘cage’ was nicely decorated.

Within Jeffers’ rather large establishment were multiple small nooks, with broken, uncoloured glass being utilised as wall-sized windows. There were multiple nooks on many floors. Inside them, Sorrel and dozens of others were trapped.

Jeffers’ establishment was some kind of menagerie for the odd. Although a few people paid to leer at his special collection, mainly Jeffers was the one who walked around and admired them all just past the safety of the glass separating them.

How long have I been here?

It felt like forever.

He looked around his nook. He thought the fairy lights above had been turned off perhaps four times – maybe more, as he hadn’t started counting straight away.

They illuminated a floor softened by fur hides, feathers, and colourful cloth. His bed was made from a walnut filled with cotton fuzz, and there was a lounge formed by some kind of mossy log.

If the space wasn’t so narrow, he may have used the walnut and the log to smash his way through the glass, but he couldn’t get enough of a swing to do so.

At least it was warm, since winter had fully come.

His gaze slipped to the butterfly sprite trapped across from him.

Her wings were two colours, making her appear to look like different species. Her left was bright orange with black lines and yellow dots, while her right was blue with black lines and purple dots. Apparently split wing colour was a rare phenomenon in butterflies, and even more so in sprites.

She was small, even in comparison to him. She must have only stood to his chest height, but she had quite the large personality.

Despite having been stuck in her pretty cage since spring, she constantly shouted at Jeffers from behind her glass, bashing on it, demanding to be let go.

Sorrel had already given up doing that, as he wouldn’t waste energy on something that mattered naught.

Instead, he rested back on his moss chair, and stared up at the lights with a listless, hope-fading gaze.

“Why do you not fight?” Serenity asked from across the way.

Who she was talking to, nobody knew. Likely, all of them in their nooks.

To her left, Sorrel occasionally peeked at a male albino squirrel sprite. How Jeffers had managed to capture such a large sprite was impossible to imagine, and his nook was more fortified than Sorrel’s.

To Serenity’s right, a pink grasshopper sprite barely moved, as if they had given up.

“What point is there in fighting?” Glay, the squirrel, said. “If I can’t get out, what hope is there for you smaller animal fairies?”

He had a good point.

“There must be something we can do,” she whined. “He’s even violating the treaty by keeping a flower fairy.”

“I’m not a flower fairy, remember? I can’t use magic,” Sorrel rebuffed, letting his head roll to the side so he could look at her. “I’m not even an animal fairy.”

He was an ugly freak, apparently, as Jeffers and many of his patrons liked to sneer. That had been hollowing over time.

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