Fairies couldn’t possibly be real. Angel blinked and looked again in front of her, trying to comprehend exactly what she was seeing and she was thankful that Janessa was beside her also with her mouth hanging open. Hovering in front of them was an honest to god fairy. It was even coloured, like the ones from Sleeping Beauty, completely green. A second one, this one blue, descended down to the girls’ eye level as well and seemed to inspect the humans.

The two girls had just gone to a park for an afternoon walk on a late fall day. Both were bundled against the cold: Angel in a pair of converse, leggings, a wool sweater, scarf and puffy vest thrown over top, and Janessa in Nike Jordans, black jeans, and a denim jacket over a long sleeve top with a scarf loosely draped around her neck. The drop in temperature definitely discouraged anyone from going out but the two had needed to get out of their place after a lengthy project meeting and the heater was probably broken and working overtime, pumping their apartment up to unbearable levels of heat. 

Angel felt her mouth open and close a couple of times but was unable to form any words. She’d heard urban legends of fairies living in the area, but who the hell believed those? Little pixies causing mischief and distracting unsuspecting travellers before stealing their things or leading them astray in the woods, it sounded like fairy tales made up to scare children from running off into the woods. And yet here she was staring one in the face. After a minute or so, the fairies took off over her head, causing both her and Janessa to spin around. Or at least they tried to. Her feet tried to separate and got about three inches apart before they jerked back and she tripped over her own feet, face planting in the carpet of leaves that coated the forest floor. 

Angel rolled over, sitting up and staring at her shoes which now had their laces tied together in a complicated knot. Janessa seemed to have realized the same thing as she was rolling over onto her back, her Jordans now laced together. When the hell did this happen? She wondered before motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and her head whipped around. There were now four fairies, with the two new additions coloured orange and red. They were  giggling maniacally and pointing at Angel and Janessa, which is when it clicked in Angel’s brain that the original two fairies had simply distracted them while their friends had gone about tying the laces of the very distracted girls. 

The mischievous fairies were all laughing now, watching the two girls tugging helplessly at the knots their laces were very tightly tied in, and while the girls were distracted the blue fairy seemed to get an idea and chittered to the others. Both Janessa and Angel were oblivious to the blue fairy rising up and raising her hands. Something was chittered and both girls soon realized their scarves had magically loosened from around their necks when they floated up in front of their faces. It was almost too much for Janessa now as panic crossed her face. “Angel what the fmmph!” 

Opening her mouth had provided the perfect opportunity for the scarf to pull itself between her teeth and tughten. Two loops of thick scarf was more than enough to muffle Janessa’s curse and her hands immediately flew up to try and pull it away. Angel didn’t have much time to admire her friend’s plight as her own black scarf gagged her, ensuring the girls would be unable to summon any help or scream at all. The thick material made sure of that. 

Both girls continued to struggle and pry at their scarves, with no progress made they both turned to glare at the cackling fairies. This was going a bit beyond the mischief Angel had heard of in the stories, the shoelaces sure but past that she was now in uncharted territory. Then it became progressively worse as the fairies chittered and leaves rustled behind them. Both whirled around, expecting to see something approaching behind them but all they saw were leaves blowing around in the wind. “Wmmmmph gnnnnn mnnnm?” Janessa complained, still struggling with her scarf. 

More rustling caused Angel to look away from her friend, and this time it did look like something was moving under the carpet of leaves. She turned back to try and point it out to her friend. “Jmmmmnnn!” She cried out upon seeing her friend again. 

Vines of some kind had erupted from the ground and latched onto Janessa’s wrists, fully exposed as she had been trying to undo the knot in her scarf behind her head, and they had overpowered the Latina girl until her arms were held in a box shape behind her back, elbows at 90 degrees and her hands touching the opposite elbow. The shock of seeing her friend get progressively bound distracted Angel enough that she didn’t notice the vines rising up behind her until they latched onto her wrists and yanked her arms behind her back. Despite her struggles, the vines easily overpowered her and she noticed one of the fairies waving her arms like she was a musical conductor. The ropes sure seemed to enthusiastically follow direction as soon both Janessa and Angel found themselves tied in strict boxties, complete with vines wrapped around their chests to form a harness. With their legs still restrained with their shoelaces tied together, they were now fully bound and gagged. 

And apparently the fairies were not fully done with them. The next set of rope-like vines attached to the back of Angel’s chest harness and hoisted her up in the air. She quickly found herself dangling ten feet in the air, twisting and turning but now looking down at the ground far below her feet and feeling vertigo beginning to kick in. Janessa had at somepoint lost her shoes while being yanked upwards, her socked feet now free and kicking around as she spun in a circle. Angel guessed the fairies didn’t like that though and soon more vines bound Janessa’s legs into a single limb, and then more came for Angel just for good measure. 

The fairies spun around the girls, still laughing like little maniacs as they inspected their captives. Despite how distracting the little demons were, Angel looked upwards in an attempt to figure out what exactly the girls had been tethered to. She couldn’t make it out through all the leaves and branches, but she hoped that for Janessa and her’s sake, that it was one of the stronger branches up there.