“Buttons!”
The rabbit’s ears perked up as he heard a familiar voice call his name.
“Buttons, you came back.”
Damselfly squeezed through the crowd to reach her best friend. The rabbit tapped his foot in excitement, and the two embraced in a tearful reunion.
“I’m sorry I left,” Buttontail apologised.
“I’m sorry for what Luyna said to you,” Damselfly reciprocated.
Buttons hung his head at the terrible memory, though the princess raised his chin so they were eye to eye.
“It isn’t true, Buttons. Luyna may have intended for you to hold me back but that could not be farther from the truth. I could never have gotten this far without you.”
“Yes, you could because you’re very brave, unlike me,” Buttons doubted.
“How can you say that when you went into the wood with me to hunt down a Peritwinkle, faced your nightmares in the Dreamgarden and saved me from a member of The Clay Legion. Even now you risked everything to come here and went alone to the Fairy King’s lair and stole the timepiece from him.”
“It was a fake,” Buttons stated.
“It does not matter to me,” Damselfly responded.
“You risked everything for me and I think you are the bravest little rabbit that ever lived.”
As the two friends shared their tender moment, it gave everyone else perspective on their current situation and a sliver of hope.
“Perhaps if we work together, we can find a way out of the Evergarden,” the Matriarch suggested.
“The sooner you leave the better,” the Fairy King concluded before retreating with his army.
“Can you get us out of here, Bakka?” Damselfly queried.
“I have no idea,” the great smith replied.
After the departure of the Fairy King and his Sprites, they created a circle to discuss what would happen next. Damselfly sat holding Buttontail while leaning against Delridden; the trio were fast becoming inseparable.
“Does anyone have any idea how the timepiece could have been switched?” the Matriarch posed.
“I believe the Fairy King did not know it was a fake,” Bakka stated holding the timepiece which had been left discarded on the ground.
“Then who has the original?” Gregorian questioned.
“It cannot be Death because he sent me looking for it,” Damselfly added.
The group pondered this riddle until Buttons made a poignant statement.
“The Fairy King was sentenced to the Evergarden in a trial like ours, perhaps it was switched then.”
“It would make sense, however it does not tell us who took it,” the Matriarch pointed out.
“What we should really ask ourselves is not who took the timepiece, but who benefits from time being lost,” Phoebus reasoned.
“If we have ruled out the Fairy King then I suppose the other person who has benefited most would be Luyna,” Gregorian theorized.
“That’s right, she practically rules Thronegarden now,” the Matriarch agreed.
“We’ve all heard the stories relating to the Children of the Moon,” Delridden hinted.
“Isn’t one of them supposed to be good and the other bad?” Damselfly queried.
“I always thought Orion was the mean one.”
“Stories are not always correct, though they often have a basis in fact,” the Matriarch offered.
“So if Luyna really did steal the original timepiece, why not restart time?” Bakka asked.
“We will have to ask her, though first we must find a way out of here,” the Matriarch advised.
“Bakka, you created the Evergarden, how do we get out of here?” Gregorian questioned.
The great smith considered this deeply, having thought of little else since Damselfly had asked him the same question back in the Lavagarden.
“I made the Evergarden to be a perfect prison with no way of escape; it is not linked to any of the other gardens and so we cannot travel via a gate. Until recently I believed it was impossible to travel between gardens without using a Garden Gate; however, Damselfly mentioned that Sprites had returned to the Wintergarden, and the Matriarch suggested moonlight might be powerful enough to blast a hole between gardens.”
“Blakast had an artefact that could hold magical energy. Maybe instead of magic he was collecting moonlight to secretly travel between gardens,” Damselfly considered.
“Perhaps we could ask him,” Delridden proposed.
“I’m not sure we would get much sense out of him,” Damselfly warned.
Bakka looked at the fake timepiece in his hand, carefully looking for inspiration.
“Perhaps we could use this timepiece to create an artefact similar to the one Blakast stole, yet there is no moonlight in the Evergarden to capture,” the great smith pondered.
“I hate to admit it but the Fairy King’s magic is stronger than mine,” the Matriarch confessed. “I am too far away from the Magicgarden to draw on my magical reserves, although this does not seem to affect the Fairy King as much.”
“Still, we do not have moonlight,” Bakka reminded.
“Maybe we should create the artefact first and worry about getting the moonlight afterwards,” Damselfly encouraged.
“Without tools or a forge, I will need magic to turn this timepiece into an artefact that can store energy,” Bakka explained.
“That means we need the Fairy King’s help,” the Matriarch pronounced.
The small group looked at each other for fresh inspiration until every other avenue had been exhausted, and yet no one could come up with a better plan.
They would have to ask the Fairy King for his help.
The Fairy King had returned to his tomb along with his faithful Sprites who licked their wounds outside, yet the sorcerer found he could not sleep or rest after discovering that he had been tricked. the Fairy King had believed he was the master of his own fate, that he had stolen time and defeated Death singlehandedly. Even being exiled to the Evergarden was an acceptable sacrifice as long as he remained in charge and free from death. Now it seemed someone else had played him, making the Fairy King believe in his victory while really, he had suffered a humiliating
