“A flower crown?” Faonari asked, peering inquisitively at the gift dangling from Aurelia’s fingertips. 

The loop was constructed primarily from a ring of daisy-like buds, each one interlocking with the next by the stems. Thin wood formed the ring, soft and malleable. The petals that burst from the buds were white and pink, and the centers a golden yellow. It had all come together in front of her very eyes, and yet she hadn’t truly recognized what the structure was intended to be until that final flourish.

“Very observant! It is something of a crown, Good girl. Come now, let me try it on you.”

The fairie, her eyes a vicious green, her hair a muddy pink, grinned that wicked grin and flounced back toward her. Faonari had remained near the stone that was quickly becoming something of a home base for her. It was smooth and comfortable, and conveniently placed right next to the one that Aurelia had used.

The girl cautiously stood up, stretching a little. Her sandaled feet wiggled as they touched the overflowing water from the glowing spring that had seeped into the moss and stone of the surrounding glade. In all her travels, Faonari had never been somewhere quite this inviting before. Its warmth of character was disarming, and there was only one predatory creature she needed to watch out for within it.

Aurelia towered over Faonari, just a little bit. The top of her head barely came up to the fairie’s very generous bust, and oh dear, she was blushing again. What a frustrating biological reaction. She certainly wouldn’t want the fairie getting the wrong idea about her priorities. She hoped Aurelia didn’t notice the crimson hue of her cheeks. If she did, she didn’t let on as she leaned down, crown in hand.

“May I place this on your head, little adventurer? Do you accept my gift?”

Something stirred in her tummy at that wording, tingling fizzles. There was that buzzing warmth again, spreading now. She really, really needed to get that under control. She wasn’t a wide eyed child with an academy crush. She had serious, mature problems in need of fixing, and this woman was just offering her help. She owed her an equally mature response.

“I do accept it. Thank you, Aurelia.”

The petals settled on her skull, and she felt the feather touch of the fairie’s fingers as they brushed against her delicate elven ears. Surely just a coincidence, she thought. Aurelia had no way of knowing how sensitive they were. And yet, Faonari shivered from head to toe at the motion, a ripple of arcana settling around her.

“Hold on, was there an… is this enchanted?”

The taller of the pair seemed elated at Faonari’s deduction. She clapped her hands and then clasped them together in front of herself.

“Why yes! Goodness you’re ever so clever. This crown is enchanted. It allows for a finer level of control… over your perception of the curse, among other things. Can’t have you disappearing on me again! I was beside myself with worry!”

Faonari allowed the weight atop her to shift into a comfortable position. She didn’t mind it, it was the perfect size, and seemed to stay exactly in place. The petals were soft and delicate. Even the wood was malleable enough to avoid notice by way of scratchy bark.

“Okay, I suppose that makes sense. If you were scrying on me already before we even met, it’s not like I’m missing out on some bastion of privacy while you’re helping me. And more… perception isn’t a bad thing.”

“Exactly! Perception, and that other one. It’ll be helpful.”

They both exchanged an awkward giggle, breaking a tension that Fao didn’t fully understand. Then, before her brain could really get to working again, Aurelia took her by the hand and began circling the glade, bringing her along.

“What are we doing?” The bewildered elf exclaimed.

“Figuring things out! I might just have something that will help.” The fairie teasingly replied.

Aurelia handed the adventurer a large wooden bowl that she procured from somewhere within her waterfall, and they kept moving around the space in a loop.

“So uh… a bowl? That’s not exactly what I was picturing.”

“What were you picturing?~ Something more scandalous?”

Fao stammered in response. “I don’t- I- I’m not sure. Nothing actually. Nothing.”

She didn’t think about a lot of things. Aurelia simply chuckled.

“Oh, it was just a joke, sweetie! You’re quite tense, little adventurer. Did you know that?”

“Can you blame me? I’m very out of depth here. You would be tense too if you were cursed.” 

They walked over to a tree near the spring, and the fairie idly inspected the bark and branches. A particularly interesting limb seemed to capture her, and she broke it off, stripping it down to bare lumber as she constructed her words. Unceremoniously, she dropped them into the bowl. The movement was so irreverent that they almost spilled. Thankfully Fao was nimble, managing to balance things before they spilled.

“Twigs? We’re uh… twig collecting?”

“Well. We’re very fortunate. This spring connects with the spiritrealm, and that means it has plenty of helpful plants growing from the mere proximity!”

Aurelia pulled a few leaves off a branch, and began crushing them between her fingers, tossing the flecks and specks of green into the bowl Faonari had been tasked with carrying around, like a child in the kitchen holding onto the wooden spoon. The air was thick now with a sharp vibrant aroma of oily tannins and volatiles, fresh stringent botanical greenery. 

“You’re like the plants in that sense, right? You come from the spiritrealm?”

“I certainly am! It’s a beautiful place...” She paused for a moment, caught in the wisps of a warm daydream. “The suns ooze in eternal sunset, and the Lapindal city of burrows sprawls from one time dilation to the next so each hop sends them rippling into their past selves. The blue willows sparkle like diamonds in the carbonated breeze of the endless spring. Butterfly gardens swarm like locusts made from the concept of rainbow prisms, and rivers of crystal clear water flow through towns of spirits devoted to long forgotten faiths. People are kind there without being nice, and they’re fair without being harsh.”

They soaked in the imaginings for a moment before the fairie gently maneuvered Faonari over to the waterfall. Aurelia instructed her to keep the bowl under the water until it filled up, crushed leaves floating to the surface.

“It sounds breathtaking, in the spiritrealm. It sounds like you love it, as well. I don’t understand why you’re here in Reverie instead of back home?”

They walked back to their stones, and there was a knowing glimmer to her emerald eyes as she replied. “There are some things that you can only find here in Reverie, precious.”

“Well, whatever they are, they must be really special.”

“They certainly are. As for the spiritrealm, perhaps you’ll have a chance to see it one day. But before you can even consider something like that, we’ll have to figure out how to cure your realitycurse.”

Faonari bolted to alertness.

“You don’t know how to cure it?!”

Aurelia stepped back, and held up a hand towards the adventurer. “Goodness, there’s that tension again. Relax, sweetling. We will find a solution. It just requires some experimentation. There’s a lot we don’t know yet.” 

The outstretched hand flowed underneath the wooden bowl, and pushed it up to the girl's lips. 

“Here, drink this.”

Fao held it in both hands and did as she was told. The smell of the concoction was rife with a pungent botanical aroma and it made her wrinkle her nose slightly. But she gave it a try, and discovered that the taste, while watery and herbal, also contained an undercurrent that reminded her of the spiced bark used to make sticky buns back in Kahrabar. She took a second sip, then a third.

“There, that’s not so bad, is it?” The fairie’s voice was like a purr of reassurance. Kind and warm, inviting like her skin.

“No, I was bracing for something worse. I think with that talk of druidic tinctures earlier I was expecting something repulsive.”

She took stock of herself. No changes yet, not that she was aware of at least. Perhaps it was silly to imagine an immediate effect. She wondered then, if it would even be something she would notice, or if it would simply be the cessation of the symptoms that had afflicted her.

“Hey Aurelia. How do we know if it worked?”

“Well. It’ll take a few minutes for you to digest it, and then we’ll know. Why don’t we sit down together on the side of the spring, relax, and let it take effect? I know you liked it last time, you don’t have to pretend~”

Faonari’s eyebrows scrunched a little at the flirtations, but her legs were pretty tired. She’d walked all the way here twice, and spent all that time in the library before that. Come to think of it, she didn’t actually know how long it had been since she last slept, given the impacts of the curse. However long it had been, she felt like she was running on fumes now that it had been pointed out to her. It wouldn’t hurt to sit for a while.

She found a comfortable spot on her stone with the soft mossy surface and reclined so her back was resting on the fairie’s thigh. It was just as warm as she remembered, and although she initially kept herself from putting her full weight into it, the much larger woman didn’t seem to mind at all, and so after a few seconds she let her muscles relax.

“There, that’s better. You have a very inquisitive mind, Faonari. It’s good that you indulge in its impulses when you’re around me. A strange fairie in the woods gives you a bowl of liquid and you drank it obediently. I want to engender that kind of trust and curiosity. It’s the only way we’re going to get you out of this.”

Fao wrinkled her nose. Something about that didn’t sound right, but she couldn’t fully place it. It was condescending, she supposed, but that was to be expected from a spirit creature. Flirtatious? Maybe. But again, that was quite normal from Aurelia. Besides, her thigh was very warm and comfortable and Faonari didn’t feel like putting up a fuss over the peculiarities of word choices. Better to just calm down and relax.

Aurelia whistled a nice melodic song, and the birds responded in kind. A few minutes passed without the adventurer even realizing. Once the song ended, she looked up at the fairie sitting next to her.

“So… Is it working? Am… Am I getting better?”

She lazily smiled, and Aurelia responded with that sharp grin.

“I would certainly say so. The leaves of an ugasi tree have a nice focusing sedative effect. It seems they calmed you right down.”

“Heyyy! You said it was a cure!”

The adventurer tried to muster a very serious angry face, but all she could manage was a halfhearted grumpy affect. It was easily penetrated by Aurelia’s lack of seriousness at the moment, causing a smiling dopeyness to pool in her eyes until they betrayed the elf’s drug induced irreverence.

“I said no such thing, sweetling! I said that we would need to do some experimentation. And this has been a very productive first step! Now that you’re nice and relaxed, you’ll be able to focus your entire attention on the issue at hand.”

Faonari puzzled it through, but with a tummy full of drugged spirit water the urgency wasn’t fully there anymore. For the first time since she was a very young child facing down the cruel punishments of her school tutors, the skittering tension that told her to always be on the lookout for danger was gone. Her mind was calm, but clear. She sighed, and put her mind to the priorities at hand. 

There was the thigh, of course. It was warm and comfortable, and it would be very nice to feel more of that. There was the erosion of boundaries, and trickery involved in her drinking the water. There were her friends off on the coast that she hoped to reunite with at some point. And there was the curse, meddling with her reality.

All priorities weighed, she felt that the warmth of Aurelia’s thigh and curing the curse were of equal intensity. The other two issues were best addressed later. Her logical decision making was left mostly unimpaired though, and so she honed in on the task that had brought her here in the first place.

“So, the experiments... Did you have something in mind? What would be the next steps?”

“Such an eager girl~” The fairie wiggled her fingers, sparkles of arcana whirling around their tips like fireworks. “We need to learn more about the exact delivery mechanism used to inflict this curse upon you. Was it poisonous alchemy, slipped to you at a bar? Necromantic spellcraft from a powerful lich? A sigil, topical, magical item, spirit bond…”

The adventurer was feeling dizzy just hearing all the possibilities.

“Oh dear, that’s a lot of options.” She let her head lull back into Aurelia’s skin, and idly stimmed the material of her soft silken skirt, as the spirit continued. It was nice to handle two priorities at once, the curse and the thigh.

“Unfortunately, yes. These things make a big difference! But I know what a brave adventurer you are. You’ll endure a few trials for me, won’t you?” The way her tone tilted upwards made the adventurer feel very reassured.

“Anything to figure this out. Truey the uh… the barkeep. He tried to detect the cause of the realitycurse but it was no use.”

She giggled. “Oh you poor thing, oh course not. I don’t imagine he had the tools on hand necessary to figure something like this out.” 

The bowl with its leftover leaves rolled away, out from her grasp, down past her haversack and into the water of the spring. Lights glowed in rainbow hues from within the bubbling oasis as it sunk down, before disappearing entirely into the depths. Still, neither seemed to mind. Still, her breath was calm. Still, her touch was warm.

And then time began once more. The faerie snapped her fingers, and Fao was startled to realize she had been staring up into Aurelia’s eyes. Her grin flowed into a whisper that promised salvation. “Thankfully I know just what we need.”