A spark of green faelight flitted through the nursery window as the last rays of day faded from the sky. At its a center a faerie, no bigger than a single mote of dust. It flew around the room once, twice, three times, before finally settling on the edge of the cradle.
“Took your time getting here,” sighed a voice light as the wind.
The faerie shook its head, regarding the human infant below sleeping below. “I came when I could, Woost. The child isn’t in any actual danger.”
“Yet,” Woost replied. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“Perhaps,” the faerie said. “These things are never entirely certain.” It paused a moment, contemplative. “Still, best be on with it.”
With that the spark lifted off from the cradle’s edge and flitted around the infant’s head. There was a tiny, infinitesimal sneeze, and a fine mist of dust drifted from the faelight and settled onto the infant’s face. Tiny glyphs formed along her brow, just slightly darker than her skin.
“There,” said the faerie. “That should be enough. For now.”
“What happens now?” asked Woost.
“Nothing,” said the faerie, landing on the pillow next to the infant’s head. “Now we wait. And make plans. And hope for the best. Nothing can happen until the child comes of age, anyway, not now that she is bonded and sealed. And humans age so frustratingly slowly. So we have time.”
There was a long silence, as faerie and elemental alike watched the infant sleep. It was finally Woost whose voice broke the stillness.
“Strange how something so small and fragile and… mortal can be so wound up in the threads of Fate that extraordinary measures such as these must be taken in order to protect it,” he said.
“Such has always been the case, my friend,” the faerie replied. “Fate has always been influenced most heavily by the finite and the measurable. It’s almost ironic that it’s that very mutability upon which it seems to rely.
“Take care of her, Woost,” said the faerie, lifting off from the pillow and flitting to the window. “She’s important in ways only she will be able to understand.”
“I will be the very air she breathes,” the elemental promised.
“I know you will.” And then the faerie was gone.
