Acquaintance
The forest just beyond Alfea’s wards was quiet—too quiet for most fairies to wander into after dark. But Minari moved through it like she belonged there, the moonlight curling around her like it, too, knew her name.
She wasn’t lost. She never was out here.
Tonight, her magic itched beneath her skin. She was planning to train, but something in the air had changed—heavy with enchantment, it wasn't her. Like a spell had been cast and left half-buried in the undergrowth.
She heard a sound. Somebody or something was in pain. It was groaning in pain, so much pain that it was like dying. Minari tried to find the source because she wanted to end it.
A shadow was lying on the ground, blood everywhere. She couldn’t tell if it was a dog or something else—just that it was bleeding, and the darkness around it felt wrong.
She knew something was off. Even if it looked and sounded real, it wasn’t. The dark and evil atmosphere on the woods, animal that cries with pain... Those were not true.
She knelt, fingertips grazing the ground. A shimmer passed through the moss, barely visible. An illusion spell. Subtle. Woven into the trees. Powerful.
Minari narrowed her eyes.
Most fairies wouldn’t have noticed it. Most wouldn’t have dared to disturb it.
She snapped her fingers—and the illusion shattered like glass.
The forest groaned, deep and slow, as the magic recoiled. For a moment, everything went still. The animal’s cries ceased, as if it suddenly realized it was never in pain. Then a voice cut through the air—sharp, amused, and edged with challenge.
“Well, that was rude.”
Minari turned, voice wasn't familiar.
A girl stood at the edge of the clearing, dressed in black and violet, eyes gleaming in the dark like twin obsidians. She was beautiful in that dangerous, magnetic way—too composed to be surprised, too confident to be local.
Minari didn’t stand up from the ground. She wanted to feel the ground and grass, wanted to feel reality. “Was that your spell?”
Of course it was. She could still sense the magic flowing from her. It wasn’t the only thing she felt. It was weird. Power was lingering from the girl to Minari.
Darcy smiled, slow and deliberate. “It was. Impressive that you broke it.”
“Of course, I wasn’t going to watch your torture.” Minari said flatly.
“Even more impressive,” Darcy replied.
She recognized her. Darcy, a witch from Cloud Tower. One of three sisters that troubles fairies with their chaos. She never met them but saw them in mixed school parties or some clubs at the town.
They stared at each other for a moment, the air humming with tension—not hostility, not yet. But something colder. Curious. Coiled.
Darcy tilted her head. “You’re not like the others at Alfea.”
“And you’re a long way from Cloud Tower,” Minari replied.
Darcy stepped forward. “Maybe I was looking for something.”
“Or someone,” Minari said.
Darcy’s smile sharpened.
Neither of them moved. Neither backed down.
The moonlight flickered between them like a challenge.
Minari stood up slowly, like she was waiting a move from the witch. When she straightens completely, she put one of her hands to a tree beside her like she did to grass when she was on the ground.
She could sense her power; she was doing something. The air around her started to wave like water, reality started to shift. The forest became darker and darker any second.
Minari didn’t let this break her. She knew they were in illusion; she understood it. She was a fairy of manipulation and hypnosis—no one understood illusions better than her.
“Let’s hope this turns out to be a pleasant introduction, fairy. Next time, I won’t be so polite.” Darcy stepped back without turning her back on Minari and disappeared in the darkness that she created herself.
“Weirdo.” Minari muttered and breathed out. She raised her hands and used her powers to clear the darkness fog and wave at the air. If it was somebody else, probably they would throw up from the waves and darkness, but it wasn’t.
She knew witches from Cloud Tower could be too much. She knew they were dramatic. But what was Darcy doing here, so close to Alfea? That was suspicious.
She headed back to school. She went to the woods to study but after what she saw that animal that was on agony, made her change her mind. She was going to use manipulation on some trees or flowers to see if she can control them for her convergence class. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
She looked over her shoulder, just once, toward where the illusion had shattered.
The forest was quiet again—but she could still feel the weight of those dark eyes watching her from somewhere just beyond the trees.
She slipped back into her room, quietly changed into her pajamas, and climbed into bed without waking her roommate.
Minari was at her and her friend’s club room. It was a small, cute and a little dark room. It had shelves on the walls with lots of books and a round table at the centre with six chairs. A little rug next to the table, for Minari to sit on it and read a book or to do her stuff. There were charms and spells on the walls so nobody can hear what happens at the room.
It was a club her and her friends founded so they could have some peaceful moments at school time, away from their dormitories. It supposed to be a club that nobody would join, or they (Minari and her friends) wouldn’t have work to do. The club’s name was ‘A club for getting close and helping 1st grade students.’ It was silly but it worked, Faragonda let it happen.
She stood up from her chair and went to her rug. There was a plant for her practice. She sat down and put the plant between her legs. She was going to use her powers on that plant.
She kept her hands on either side of the plant and concentrated. She was going to manipulate it to it’s death.
First part was easy, she had to make it think it is dying, from old age of course. That way, it was going to become older and older every second and come to the edge of death. Hard one was the second part, making it believe it wasn’t dying. After making it sick, she had to cure it. But it wasn’t easy. It was complicated a lot.
An illusion and manipulation of the whole brain was different things. Making somebody see something and make them believe was different. Like Darcy did in the forest, it wasn’t real, but people could believe it is real. The thing is, only eyes and part of brain was manipulated into thinking that is happening. Minari had to manipulate whole brain and body. If it was a human, she had to convince the brain that their lungs were suffocating, their heart wasn’t beating, blood wasn’t flowing...
This was the difference. This way, brain will stop functioning properly and create a dangerous state for the person. Then, the opposite will happen. Brain will think that everything is functioning way better than it ever was. At least, that was her theory.
She started the process. She was inside the brain of the flower. That was different than human brain, it actually didn’t exist. It was a hypothetical brain and easier to control than human brain.
The process went as she thought, this wasn’t her first time doing it. She continued. It was fighting it, but she was stubborn about it. She managed to break it, and it started to slowly age, bow it’s head.
A few seconds later she decided that it was enough, she stopped the first process and moved on to the second one. This was hard. Killing something was easy, but curing it wasn’t so. It was like a wound in real life, making it was easy but curing took time, by itself.
Minari’s main purpose was that, to heal things faster. Yes, she was hurting a plant for it, but it could help them a lot. She could sacrifice some plant for it. The only problem was the nature fairies that could hear plant’s scream, but she put some charms for that to the walls.
Maybe it was cruel but necessary in her mind.
She tried hard to cure it. Released huge amount of power.
It would be awesome to turn to her fairy form and use more power, but she couldn’t. Her fairy form only gave her wings and nothing about more power. She was using her full capacity, or her fairy form had a problem. Faragonda told her to be calm about it so she was calm. She always tried to not to think about it.
She pushed her limits a little bit more. Her mind was getting cloudy, air was becoming wavy; like it did when she was with Darcy at the woods. The thought made her hair stand on end and a momentary shiver came.
She realized she couldn’t feel the plant anymore, so she opened her eyes to see what happened. The plant was standing there, at the edge of death. She decided to end it here for today because she didn’t want to force plant or herself more.
She stood up, put the plant on the table and leaved the room to meet her friends at the cafeteria. As Minari made her way toward the cafeteria, her thoughts still lingered on the plant. The sensation of control she had over it—the feeling of breaking it down, reshaping its essence—was almost intoxicating. She had to admit, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing she could manipulate life in such a way. But as she walked down the hall, she couldn’t shake the unease that had crept into her chest.
Was she overdoing it?
She didn’t really like the idea of hurting a living being, but it became a daily thing. She had to do it in order to learn fully control and healing part.
She saw her friends when she passed the cafeteria door and waved back at them.