For a moment, I just sat there in Poppy’s arms, completely stunned by the sudden kiss and at a loss for what to do in response. Her lips were so soft and warm against mine. I had never been kissed before, at least, not on the lips. I had only ever experienced kisses on the cheek or forehead from my mother and sister, and this was so very different.

The passion of her lips on mine caused my heart to flutter wildly and my breath to quicken as they crashed together with an intensity on her part that I would not have expected from a seemingly awkward and shy girl like Poppy. Then it felt as if she was going to pull away, that her lips were going to leave mine. Even in my shock and confusion, I didn’t want that, and my body reacted, eagerly reciprocating by kissing her back before my mind could truly comprehend what was actually happening.

Eventually, we needed to part to come up for air, and as we both sat there gasping from our amorous efforts, she cupped my face in her hands and gazed at me as if she was holding some great treasure in her cupped hands. My tongue didn’t seem to want to work so all I could seem to do was stare back as my heart hammered away in my chest and I tried to catch my breath. The moment ended when she seemed to realize what she was doing and released me as if she’d been scalded.

An awkward silence fell over us as she sat there with a look of stunned horror on her face, Breeze watched over us with an odd smirk on their face, and I tried to process what had just happened. Poppy was so pretty and while she could be awkward and shy, she was also very sweet, and I liked her. I really liked her, and she just kissed me… and I kissed her back. Everything before that was a fuzzy and indistinct blur as my mind couldn’t seem to stop focusing on that kiss, and how much I wanted her to kiss me again.

That horrified expression on her face was like a knife to my heart though, as both its rapid beating and my breathing slowed and then quickened again in fear. Did she not like it? It felt like she was really enjoying it. I was too after I started kissing her back. Did I do something to upset her?

I tried to focus on something besides her quivering lips and how much I wanted to feel them on mine again. What were we doing before the kiss? Wait, I was having a panic attack, but why? One glance down at her naked body made my face flush, my building desire for her spike, and served as a reminder of what had happened… what I had done. Some clumps of damp paper still clung to her body in places, but they did nothing to preserve her modesty.

Of course, Poppy was horrified. I humiliated her. The thought was enough to extinguish the flames of desire that had been kindled during that kiss and had briefly elevated at the sight of her naked body. I could once again feel anxiety circling like a shark in my chest, faster and faster as my tension built up.

I felt horrible again, I had probably embarrassed her so badly. I looked away, trying to control my breathing and thoughts to stave off another anxiety attack. I couldn’t face Poppy like this, guilt gnawing at my mind as I tried to get myself under control, and I wanted to be anywhere else but where I was right now.

Moonlight’s gentle voice encouraged, -Yes, calm yourself, Lily. You…-

Whatever she was saying was lost to me as nausea, dizziness, and disorientation crashed over me like a tidal wave. It was a good thing I was already sitting because I probably would have fallen on my face or ass otherwise. As it was, I had to close my eyes for a moment to shake off the disconcerting feelings that had briefly assaulted my senses. Thankfully, whatever it was passed as quickly as it hit me, but I could tell without even opening my eyes that something was off.

The floor beneath me felt different, cooler, and more yielding. The texture was different too, and the air seemed fresher somehow. A sense of familiarity assailed me, the scent of animals and manure, the distant sound of horses and cattle, and when I opened my eyes, I realized why. I was home.

No, this couldn’t be right, it had to be a dream or something. It looked like home, but there were so many differences, completely aside from everything seeming gigantic, of course. The only thing that seemed completely unchanged was the massive oak tree that I was sitting underneath with an old rope swing hanging from the lowest branch. It sat on a hill near the rear pastures and gave a good view of the ranch. Kelly and I had spent a lot of time under this tree, hanging out and enjoying its shade in the summer heat, and even as small as I now was, I would know it anywhere.

The barn, stables, and house were all in the same places as before, but they all looked new, and the house was nothing like the one that I had grown up in and that had been in my father’s family for generations. Both the color and architecture were vastly different; this house was a larger, and much more modern, three-story affair painted a dark blue while our home had been a more inviting and cozier little old two-story in white with dark green trim. Was this some strange dream? If it wasn’t, then how the hell did I get here?

Wait, maybe the whole hospital thing was a dream. A glance downward at my feminine body and hands and my Poppy-altered hospital gown quickly dismissed that idea. I decided that I needed a closer look. If I really was in Montana somehow then that would explain why Moonlight had been cut off, I was way out of range for our mental bond to work. It might not explain how I got here, or how to get back, but maybe I could at least confirm that I was where I thought I was.

I took to the air, flying toward the buildings, and fortunately, people never seem to look up and I was small enough to avoid notice so far since the unfamiliar ranch hands were focused on their work. At least, I think they were unfamiliar since ours were likely either killed or captured during the Incursion. I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure though since it’s hard to make out most identifying features when looking at the tops of people’s ginormous heads, or worse yet, hats.

There was a voice that was all too familiar though, even if it seemed much louder than ever before. And that was saying something since Uncle Pete had always seemed like a loud-mouthed jerk to me whenever he and his family visited us. He was bigoted, opinionated, arrogant, and generally won arguments by being bigger, louder, and more threatening than his opponents. He was even a bully to his wife and kids. With him here and barking out orders, it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened to the family ranch after we all either died or disappeared during the Incursion.

By the time I landed on one of the fenceposts, well away from the work going on, I was already feeling exhausted and needed a break. I was still getting used to flying around a hospital room and needed to work on my speed and stamina. At least I was close enough now to get a better look around.

Cows, and just about everything else, are so much louder and more intimidating when you’re like five inches tall. Despite my new, smaller point of view and the different buildings though, there was this eerie sense of familiarity. This was my home. Emphasis on the word ‘was’ since it had changed so much in the past three years. Still, there were places and things that I recognized.

There was the old well that had been covered up when I was five and almost fell in, the copse of trees near the front pasture where Kelly and I would always start our daily horseback rides, the place where…
Grief and loss clutched at my chest and tears came to my eyes as I spotted the general area where my dad had been cut down by Titan weaponry. I looked away, only to find myself looking at the area where Mom and our housekeeper, Nancy, had been snatched, and then the newly built stables. The building might be new, but the location was the same.

My mind flashed back to that day, terror squeezing at my heart and lungs as I clutched at my knees and rocked back and forth, trying to dismiss the images from my mind. It was too late though; I was already living through it again in my mind’s eye. Dad being cut in half and both halves of him falling to the ground in slow motion, Mom and Nancy screaming and telling me and Kelly to run as they were gripped in those massive hands, Kelly telling me to hide with Moonlight and riding off on Sundancer, the roof being blown to bits, and then my sister’s and Sundancer’s screams as she was snatched from the horse’s back and the mare was crushed under the Titan’s foot.

I was hiding under the blankets with Moonlight in her stall again, that red eye sweeping over us, before the Titan’s massive fist snatched me up, batting Moonlight aside and leaving her a mangled corpse and blood everywhere. “No! It didn’t happen that way!” I tried to tell myself. “Stop it! I don’t… I can’t…”

I couldn’t breathe and the gasping sobs wracking my body weren’t helping as I desperately tried to cling to reality and shake off the horrible vision. Moonlight was alive, we both had become Altered. I was a girl now, a pretty little Water Sprite named Lily. I was going to join the Vanguard. I was going to find my mother and my sister and save them. Thought by thought, I battered away at the grim visions that had sunk their claws into my mind, pushing them away and loosening their grip.

In the end, I was a sobbing and trembling mess, but I was a sobbing and trembling mess who had won. I knew that I needed to get out of here though, I needed to find a way to get back to the Fairy Ward in Amethyst Harbour. This place held nothing for me but traumatic memories now and I didn’t want to live through that again.

I was still trembling and wiping away tears when I got shakily to my feet and started to think about my current situation. I was definitely back in Montana, but how? It was like one minute I was sitting across from Poppy with Breeze watching over us, and the next I was here. Did I teleport somehow? I was pretty sure that wasn’t a normal ability for a Sprite, at least, from what I had been told about our abilities in general. “Wait a minute… did I Wake?” I mumbled to myself.

It was the only logical explanation. I was told to keep my eyes out for any unusual abilities or weird things happening around me since Fairy class Altered usually go through their Waking within a month or two after emerging from our cocoons since we don’t emerge until our new bodies are fully grown, and puberty is essentially finished. So, my special ability was some kind of teleportation then?

As cool as that sounded, I had absolutely no idea of how I even did it the first time, let alone how to repeat the process. I needed to figure this out, but where should I start? I decided that it would probably be a good idea to think about this somewhere where I wouldn’t risk people seeing me. I had been lucky so far, but sitting or standing on top of a fence post probably wasn’t the best idea if I wanted to avoid notice.

After a quick look around to make sure that none of the ranch hands were looking in my direction, I started stretching out the kinks in my limbs and my wings so I could take to the air again. I was thinking of making for the roof of the house where I could hopefully avoid human interaction. You know that thing I said earlier about humans seldom looking up? Well, I was still just as guilty of that while getting used to the whole flying thing.

Looking up to figure out a flight path that would avoid notice as I was getting ready to work my wings again is what saved my ass. I let out a squeak of pure terror, too scared to even properly scream, as I dove off the fencepost, narrowly avoiding the outstretched talons of the red-tailed hawk that was trying to make a meal of me. I was halfway to the ground below when I managed to get my wings working and got into a hover for a few seconds before taking off as fast as I could for the nearest building that I could hide in, which happened to be the barn.

Fortunately, the bird of prey didn’t follow me. Whether that was because it had lost track of me during its attempted snatch and grab or because it didn’t want to work any harder than it had to for its dinner, I neither knew nor cared. I was far too concerned at the time with finding a good place to hide, where I hopefully wouldn’t become something else’s dinner, to worry about it. My luck was holding, and as usual, it was all bad because that was when the cat spotted me.

I almost didn’t see the tabby chilling in the loft, too panicked from my recent close call with the hawk. It was the movement that caught my eye, as its head and ears turned toward me, and I was immediately back in the air with the feline in pursuit as I darted around the inside of the barn and looked frantically for a place to hide. My wings were feeling like lead, and I had just suffered a near miss as the cat tried to leap into the air to catch me, when I spotted it.

There! I could see a slight gap between bales of hay that I thought I could fit in and put all the energy that I could muster into my wings to outpace my pursuer and slip inside. There was nothing dangerous to me inside, but I barely managed to scooch backward far enough to avoid the cat’s paw, claws on full display, swiping inside and trying to catch me. “G-good kitty, nice kitty, please go away,” I whimpered as my heart threatened to explode in my chest.

Breathing heavily from both exertion and my near-death experiences, I leaned against one of the walls of hay in my shelter as I attempted to calm myself down and catch my breath. Eventually, the cat lost interest in me. Well, that or it was just prowling around and waiting for me to leave my hiding place. Unless I could figure out how exactly I managed to teleport here, I was in deep shit. I was snack-sized to just about every carnivorous animal in the area, I didn’t dare leave my shelter with that cat prowling around the area, and I had no phone or implant to contact the hospital with.

I collapsed into a sitting position and hugged my knees as I tried not to listen to the cat moving around the hay bales when I started to sob again. I didn’t want to be here. I was scared and tired, and all I wanted was to be back at the Fairy Ward with Poppy and Moonlight. It was then that I was hit with another tidal wave of nausea, dizziness, and disorientation.

“Lily?! Breeze, she’s back!” I heard Poppy’s familiar voice call out before a pair of arms wrapped themselves tightly around me. “Where were you, Lily?! We’ve been worried sick! You j-just disappeared and you’ve been gone for over an hour!” The Fire Spite’s voice was shaky as she clung to me tightly, nearly crushing me in a hug for a moment before letting me loose.

-Are you well, my Maiden? What happened? You gave me a fight when I could not reach your mind- Moonlight’s voice asked more tenderly.

“M-montana… r-ranch…” was all I could get out verbally as I sniffled and opened my waterlogged eyes to see a blurry image of Poppy looking down at me in concern. She was in a paper gown again, but it looked like she either hadn’t bothered trying to change it into more normal-looking clothes yet or she just hadn’t thought about it. I tried to give a better answer to Moonlight, but I was too emotional to properly form the words in my mind either.

After I managed to calm down enough to speak and think more clearly, I told them about my little misadventure in more detail and Breeze gave me a quick medical exam to make sure I wasn’t hurt anywhere. When they were done, they said, “I can’t see anything wrong physically, Lily, but I think that after your ordeal you should rest until dinner time at the earliest, you’ve been through a lot. Are you sure you were at your former home in Montana? Teleportation isn’t a common power expression, and I’ve never heard of anyone with that kind of range before.”

I quickly nodded as I insisted, “I’m sure of it, Breeze. That was the place where I grew up.”

“I’ll ask the hospital powers experts about it,” the nurse told me after a moment of thought, “maybe they can figure out some way for you to test it and figure out your limits. I still need to talk to them about getting some other materials for Poppy to work with anyway.”

-The next time you decide to disappear like that, my Maiden, try to at least bring me with you. I cannot keep you safe and healthy if I am not with you,- Moonlight added in concern.

“I’ll try,” I promised her, “but I’m not even sure how I did it yet. I don’t even have a handle on the magic thing yet.”

Breeze left the ward to go talk to the powers experts, leaving me and Poppy essentially alone, if you don’t count the ethereal Unicorn in the room and Nightshade, who was still in lockdown in her little house where she wouldn’t be close enough to pick up on any negative emotions. The latter was probably a good thing with the emotional state that I was in when I returned. I was considering going to my new little house for the rest that Breeze had recommended when Poppy blurted out, “I’m sorry!”

I just blinked at her in confusion for a moment, not entirely sure what she was apologizing for. Whatever it was she looked really upset and even more awkward than usual. After a moment, I managed to stop staring into those sad orange eyes long enough to find the words to ask, “Sorry for what?”

Poppy looked briefly away before forcing herself to meet my gaze and replying, “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that earlier, but you’re so pretty, I really like you, and you had me so worried when you started freaking out, and I didn’t even know why. I didn’t know what to do and got Breeze and they said you were having a panic attack, and I was just so relieved when you snapped out of it and seemed to be okay. Then I kissed you and you vanished. So, I’m sorry if I freaked you out by kissing you, I was being stupid and impulsive. I got caught up in the moment and I wasn’t even sure if you’re attracted to girls or not. I’ll give you some space if you…”

I didn’t let her finish, taking a deep breath and interrupting with, “Poppy, I kissed you back.” I let that stew in both of our minds as I tried to find the words for what I needed to say. “I… like you too, and I kinda want to kiss you again. I’m just… I’m sorry for embarrassing you earlier. That’s what I was freaking out about when I had my panic attack, and when I disappeared. I was happy about using my magic and feeling playful, but I didn’t think, and I destroyed the nice outfit you made. I swear, I didn’t mean to do it or see you n-n-naked.”

Her eyes went wide, and to my surprise, she started giggling. “Th-that’s what you were freaking out about!? Didn’t I tell you that I’m constantly destroying my clothes with my magic? Everyone in this ward has seen me naked, often several times a day. Honestly, I’ve kinda gotten used to it over the past month.”

“B-but you looked so shocked,” I protested.

She managed to cease her giggling as she countered, “I was silly, I totally wasn’t expecting you to actually use your first real attempt at magic to try to put out my flames, but I guess I did tell you to do that.” Then she seemed to become nervous again as she looked away and her cheeks flushed, taking a deep breath before asking hesitantly, “Do you think I could… kiss you again, Lily?”

My heart skipped a beat, my breath caught in my throat at the thought of it, and my cheeks turned bright red as well. “I… I think I’d like that.”

She didn’t hesitate for even a second once my answer was given. She pulled me in close, wrapped me up in her arms, and then her lips claimed mine once again. For a time, all that I was aware of was her arms around me, her lips engulfing mine with urgent fervor, my racing heart, and the fire that was building up between my legs as tired to give back as good as I was getting. I was a girl, being kissed by another girl who I really liked and was attracted to, and I don’t think that I had ever felt this wonderful in my life.