The Rat King's Evil Plan

And now for the next segment of The End of Time:

The sun made Lilette’s eyes squint, and she woke up begrudgingly. Her eyes took a while to adjust to the burning brightness, but eventually her vision was clear enough to take note that she was in the middle of a tree ridden forest. Then, like a pin prick, she remembered the previous night. How Mielou and Ash had had a disagreement over the Pixies, and how Lilette and Mielou were now in a random forest, God knows how far away from each other.
“Mie!?” she called, stumbling about. She walked around for a short while, calling Mielou’s name, she hadn’t looked for long enough to start getting worried when Mielou returned her calls.
“We’re over here!” Mielou called back.

Lilette followed the call around a tree, Ash and Mielou looked up at her. Neither of them where happy.... at all. What had their fight come to? They both looked deeply grieved and in despair. Ash had his arm around Mielou, she had fresh tears on her face.
“What’s going on?” Lilette asked, something wasn’t right. They seemed too upset for it to still be about their fight last night.
Ash took his arm from around Mielou, kissed her cheek, whispered something to her and walked over to Lilette.
“We need to talk” he said seriously and prompted Lilette to walk with him. Lilette’s breathing got heavier, she was beyond worried now.
“Is everything ok?” she asked, trying to stay positive and calm, as they walked along. Mielou was now out of site. They stopped walking and Ash turned to face her.
“No. Everything’s not fine” he was noticeably hesitant to tell Lilette.
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?” Lilette spluttered, letting go of her positive/ calm approach.

Ash sighed deeply and frowned with worry.
“There’s no easy way to tell you this” he began “you’re family are being held hostage.... The Rat Soldiers have taken over Peppermint Tree” he left the sentence hanging, and waited anxiously for Lilette’s response.
Her mouth dropped open slightly. What kind of a sick joke was this?
“You’re joking right?” she said, trying with all her might to believe that it was indeed a joke.
“No. This is no Joke, Lilette” he warned seriously “the Rat King has had a sudden need, or rather: a sudden want, for a family of Elf servants. Don’t worry, you’re family are still at Peppermint Tree. The Rats are waiting until they’ve captured your entire family, because the Rat King won’t allow an incomplete family of servants.... that isn’t his style. Once they have all the members of your family, they’ll recruit them to Rat Cavern, were they plan to make servants of your family. The Rat King is known for being brutally harsh to his servants.... empathy is also not his style” Ash had given her far too much to think about, she hadn’t even accepted that he wasn’t joking yet. She tried to get her head around the situation. She could barely remember what Ash had just said, something about Rats, Kings, servants and her family being held hostage? A million questions whizzed through her mind, she quickly plucked one out to ask.

“Who in my family hasn’t he captured yet?” she said, despite the fact that a question more along the lines of: ‘what can we do to help?’ would have been more fitting.
“Well, you, offcourse” he said, shrugging his shoulders slightly. As Lilette frowned in deep thought, trying to process what he was saying, Ash continued “and that’s not all” he said, the worried look back on his face “but I don’t think I can just tell you”
“Can’t tell me!? Can’t tell me what!?” Lilette said raising her voice in anger. Ash remained calm.
“You wouldn’t believe me” he said certainly.
“Wouldn’t believe you!?” Lilette yelled “I believed that a bunch of rats have my family held hostage! If I believe that, don’t you think I’ll believe anything!?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Ash said evenly, motioning with his hand for Lilette to settle down “It’s something that needs to be seen to be believed..... by anyone”
“Oh” she blushed.

Ash held out his hand for Lilette to take. She hesitated, not wanting to seem too eager. When she took his hand in hers a current flew up her body. She wondered if it was a supernatural power of Ash’s, but didn’t think on it for too long, she wanted to fight her love sickness, and rescue her family.

He flittered his wings and they gained air, Lilette loved the feeling of knowing that the direction they were heading was completely intentional. Despite their dire situation, Lilette felt a mild surge of jealousy, as she wished that she too could have wings and determine the path of her flight.

It didn’t take long – not nearly as long as it would have taken Lilette by herself – until they were flying over a field of toadstools, which Lilette recognised as Mielou’s home town. All the toadstools looked identical to one another from above: large, red and spotted white. Still holding Lilette’s hand, Ash flew the two of them gently down to the field.

From the ground the toadstools weren’t as pretty, all that could be seen of them was their thick brown stems - large enough to house a family - and if Lilette were to look up she would see the wrinkly brown bottom of the toadstool – not nearly as attractive as the hand painted rooves.

Every pale brown stem possessed a door, the doors were often hard to find seeing as they blended in so nicely with the stem, so as Lilette looked around she saw several Fairies feeling impatiently around the stems of their houses hoping to succeed in finding the door, so that they could go inside and have a nice cup of tea by the fireplace.

“This way” Ash instructed, letting go of Lilette’s hand and pointing to a toadstool several doors away. He walked briskly, forcing Lilette to run every few steps in order to keep up.
They reached Ash’s house, Lilette took in a deep breath, full of nervousness and guilty excitement about what Ash was going to show her.