Header image: https://i.imgur.com/cnZif1F.jpg

It has long been known that strange and wondrous things occur on a child's thirteenth birthday.

In some places this is celebrated by taking the child on their first hunt, or their first dance. A feast is thrown, or a solemn ritual, all things to symbolize the coming of age.

Whatever the case, when night falls, it is the child's duty to kiss their parents goodnight and go to bed early. Before they go to sleep, they fill a saucer with some milk, smear a pinch of bread with honey, and set the two out on the windowsill closest to their bed.

The children make sure to think grand and happy thoughts, hoping that they doze off to grand and happy dreams. They say the grander the dream, the more special the fairy's blessings will be.

This has never been proven, but the fairy does come.

Each child has a fairy assigned to them at birth, one who watches over them when they are very young, until they grow up. Fairies love to play with little children, sometimes even whisking them away to their magical lands. The children seldom return.

This is why until they come of age, children everywhere are told to lock the windows, and sleep with horseshoes underneath their pillows.

But when the day comes that they grow too big to be carried away, the fairy will arrive, bringing with it a special blessing, made only for that child.

Fairies are an unpredictable people, so the blessing can be anything from the ability to hold your breath for seven minutes, to turning blue when exposed to sunflowers.

Most blessings are useful, in their own way-many a craftsman owes their skill and fortune to a good fairy blessing.

Some children can go for years without discovering what they were given.

Very few blessings are truly harmful.

Fewer still are destinies.

Once in a thousand moons, a fairy will deem a child worthy of a magnificent blessing. One that can grant them extraordinary speed, strength, wit, one that will forever change the child's life, sending them down a path filled with adventure, tragedy, and intrigue.

Many Heroes owe their beginnings to this, and as such, most children dream of being the one that receives such a gift.

In this respect, Gallia Stonestreet was no different. In her excitement, she'd ignored all the festivities her parents had arranged for the morning, unable to take even a single bite of food.

When night finally fell, she vigorously kissed her parents goodnight, and set out a large jug of fresh milk, a huge loaf of bread, and a stack of honeycombs. The windowsill almost collapsed under the weight of her gifts. She jumped straight into bed, and was immediately fast asleep, much to the surprise of her parents.

She hadn't needed to think grand thoughts. She dreamt of grand things every night.

And tomorrow, she was going to make those dreams a reality.

Reality, however, had different ideas.

Much, much later that night, Gallia's fairy finally stumbled its way to her window, still hungover from last night's equinox forest rave. Head fuzzy with drink, and wishing it was in bed instead, the fairy stumbled into Gallia's gifts, now completely frozen over by the cold. They toppled off into the snow, and landed with a crack.

The fairy squeezed underneath the winfow, muttering something about shift adjustments and overtime as it did. It pulled out its slightly bent wand, and searched the room for its target. There it was, bundled up under a mountain of pillows and blankets.

The fairy pulled out a list from somewhere, and checked to see if it was in the right house, at the right time.

With none of its kind's customary grace or flair, the fairy quickly whipped up a random blessing, and began to chant it into reality.

"Unworldly beauty be, let thy color, uh..." The fairy squeaked, trailing off when it realized it had forgotten the rest of the words.

It cleared its throat, and decided to start over, with one it was sure to remember.

"Magical mighty of mystery, oh when the spirits..."

Damn. Forgot it again. It was never going to a forest rave again, the fairy swore, at least until next week's.

It was already beginning to sweat from the exertion of another botched spell. The next one would have to do it. Maybe something more mundane?

"Cornflower blue, when autumn does come to....you....you...damn it!" The fairy squeaked, completely frustrated.

"Speed and wisdom, strength and long of breath, blablabla, a thorny path to lead, family's fire Friday...ARGH!" the fairy screamed, all pretense of grace completely evaporating in years of pent up rage and job dissatisfaction. It snapped its wand in two and tossed aside the pieces, throwing itself down into an absolute tantrum. Glitter flew into the air as it flailed about, coating the bed in its shimmery.

The fairy positively glowed red, but continued in its rage, as a fairy is wont to do until either the feeling burns out, or it does.

And it did. Rather spectacularly for something so small, the tiny worker exploded into a nimbus of sparks and colors.

All to the absolute awe and bewilderment of one Gallia Stonestreet, who had been woken by the noise, and sat from the other end of the room, watching as the fairy combusted into a pile of glittery ashes on top of her brother's bed.

Stunned, and slowly realizing that she'd missed her blessing, she sat there until morning came, and her parents came into the room to congratulate her, only to find her and a very young elf where their baby son had been the previous night.

Their immediate thought was to burn it with iron, and toss the pointy-eared monster into the woods to slowly die of exposure.

Fairies at their worst would sometimes replace the children they'd abducted with changelings, exact replicas of the child which always grew up to be stunted, or a bit slow in the head, or just a general nuisance for the household.

The acceptable approach was to get rid of the changeling, leaving it somewhere where no one could hear it cry, but it was in this moment that Gallia saved her brother's life.

She'd seen it all happen, she swore, saw what the fairy did, laying blessing upon blessing on young Langolier until it exploded, holding up a fistful of the ashes as proof.

Bad enough that she should have her blessings stolen, she wept, please, not my brother, too.

Awe creeping into their expressions, the parents held Lang up with newfound joy, celebrating without so much as an apology or a consolation to Lia.

The boy would grow up to prove himself different from what they'd expected.

The girl wouldn't.