***
The exhaust fumes floated up to Cynthia from the highway in a steady flow of hot stinking air, the fairy covered her mouth to stifle her cough. Most fairies didn’t go near the place, but she liked to watch the lights. She was flying about a thousand feet in the air when the feeling of her very soul being shredded came without warning. It was so over powering she froze and began to plummet to the Earth.
Through the pain, Cynthia found her senses and forced her wings back open. Her eyes watered as her wings strained against the rushing air to slow her fall. Finding a light breeze, she used it to help her steer away from the deadly highway and towards some houses not too far from the road.
Using the dim light from a street lamp, the fairy spotted the front yard of a house with long grass and she was maneuvering her way to it when she felt another rip inside her. The little fairy’s heart beat faster than her wings as she struggled to keep from crashing. Thankfully the grass acted as a net and kept her from being injured when she crash landed.
Cynthia’s breathing was short and ragged as she lay still in the grass. She hadn’t felt this degree of agony in over three hundred years. It could mean only one thing, her garden was being destroyed. An equal dose of anger and fear filled her, giving her enough strength to stand and leap back into the air and fly to her garden.
Cynthia’s garden was just down the street from where she had landed. She was able to keep down the pain of the garden’s destruction and concentrate on getting there. In just a few moments her garden was in sight, in reality it was just an abandoned property, but wherever there are growing plants: there is a fairy that guards and tends them. After the humans had left the house, the first thing she did was make it inaccessible by growing trees and bushes in front of the doors and windows to keep the local teenaged delinquents and realtors out.
As she approached it, she could see one teenage boy throwing stones at the windows, hurting her bushes in the process. A boy and a girl were at the edge of the property, acting as scouts while they guzzled down some beers, throwing the empty cans to the ground. The worst of the worst was a boy who was swinging on the branch of her orange tree. There were two other branches on her tree that were hanging by mere splinters to the trunk. White hot rage filled Cynthia and she burst out of her fairy body and into her most powerful guardian form.
** *
“What was that?” the one teen girl asked looking around.
“What are you talkin’ ‘bout Kim?” Mark asked.
“I thought I heard a fire cracker.”
“I didn’t hear it,” the boy replied.
“Hey Lawrence,” Bobby hooted, “Take it easy there.”
Kim and Mark looked over to where Lawrence was swinging on the tree.
“Boy, he sure found a good branch this time,” said the girl.
“Yeah, I’ll say.” Mark replied. It was too dark for either of them to see the haze hovering over the base of the groaning branch.
* * *
Cynthia was making the branch more flexible, allowing the boy to swing farther and farther, without breaking it. Once she was sure the swinging boy had attained the undivided attention of his companions, in the peak of his next swing, she made some pointy twigs grow up beneath his hands. He let go with a yelp and was sent flying right into his stone throwing friend. They fell into a heap. Cynthia whizzed over and had some weeds grow over and around their legs, binding them to the ground. After their first attempts to get up failed, the two drinking came over to help them, leaving the six packs behind.
Cynthia felt giddy; this couldn’t be going better if she had planned it. Floating over to all the beer, she used her will to create small holes in the bottom of the unopened cans. Once the rotten liquid leached out of the cans and into the soil, she gathered up the moisture and forced every drop through the ground and gather where the humans were still struggling with the weeds.
* * *
“What the hell!” Kim exclaimed as she slipped and fell, landing her elbow in someone’s stomach and her face in the mud.
“Watch it,” Lawrence shouted whose stomach she had hit.
She spat out a mouthful of mud.
“You look like a raccoon,” Bobby giggled till his face turned red. He’d taken a hit of acid before joining his friends so he could avoid sharing.
Kim wiped her muddy hand across his face, but he still wouldn’t stop giggling.
“What in the world,” she muttered as she spat out some more mud.
“What is it?” Mark asked.
“Get off of me,” Lawrence said trying to push her off.
“The mud tastes like beer,” Kim replied rolling away from Lawrence.
“I think you’ve had a few too many.”
* * *
* * *
“I swear you guys, I’ve opened only two beers and I haven’t even finished the second one yet,” Kim was saying as she led the others over to the drinks.
“Yeah, right,” Lawrence said, rubbing his bruised arm.
“Hey guys, what the heck,” Mark asked.
“What?”
“These are all empty.”
“That’s not possible,” Lawrence said.
“Check it out for yourself,” Mark tossed him twelve cans bound together with one finger.
“What are we going to do now?” Lawrence whined after he weighed the cans with one hand.
“Go out and buy some more, dummy,” Bobby replied.
“No, I’m calling it a night, this is getting too weird,” Kim said. She held up her keys. “If you guys don’t want to walk, pile in now.”
* * *
Cynthia watched the humans make their way out of her garden, leaving their garbage behind. Her anger flared up again; had they learned nothing?
Summoning up a wind, she sent all the cans flying, and the waste chased the teens out of her garden.
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