Nyssa:

“Morea,” Nyssa called. She ran frantically to the riverbank where her friend lived. “I’m here.”

Morea’s poor Mulberry tree drooped over the water’s edge. A large, ugly crack ran through one of the larger limbs. The damage was done in a storm the day before. Sunlight glittered through the treetops as if to play an ugly joke. The weather here would maim one day and the next, the sky is blue and the breeze pleasantly warm.

“Morea?” Normally Morea would rush to meet Nyssa when she visited. The little dryad would dance around her, humming and singing. Today she lay at the base of her tree, cradled by its roots. Her normally vibrant skin, usually tinged with a healthy green, was pale. Her bright eyes were dim. Her red-gold hair stuck limply to her sweaty skin, the flowers woven into it withered and ragged.

“Morea,” Nyssa moan, falling to her knees beside the sick little dryad. The damage the storm had ravaged on the mulberry tree had condemned Morea to a drawn out, painful death. As the tree died, so did its dryad.

Unless Nyssa did something about it.

“Don’t worry, Morea,” Nyssa said, rifling around in her backpack. “I got something that will help you.” She pulled out a wooden bowl and a rounded bit of white quartz, about the size of her palm. The opaque stone wasn’t particularly pretty, but it was very special.

It was a charm stone.

Nyssa dipped the bowl into the river, scooping up some water. The she placed the stone inside it. Nyssa muttered a charm for good health and healing under her breath and held the water up to Morea’s colourless lips. Nyssa had seen the dryad's lips pale yellow with the new growth of mulberries, then flushed with pink and red as the fruit ripened. Then finally, a deep purple, stark against her light green skin. Never had she seen Morea’s lips this pale, ashy grey.

Nyssa’s muttering grew more frantic. She poured the cool liquid into Morea’s mouth and then scooped up another bowl of water and repeated the process. The next bowlful was poured onto the tree roots, and the next and the next. She also poured a few drops onto the cracks in the bark.

Satisfied she did all she could do, Nyssa sat back and watched, waiting for signs of improvement. The fae had assured her that healing would start almost immediately and that everything save the severest of injuries could be cured using his charm stone.

Morea slept, cradled by the rough trunk of her tree. Slowly, colour began to bloom over her skin. Chlorophyll green tinged her cheeks and her hair no longer hung lifelessly. Her lips were flushed with a freshly bitten pink and dewdrops clung to her eyelashes. Even the flowers tangled through her hair perked up, reaching for the sun filtering through the leaves.

“You are going to be late for work, my Nyssa,” Morea whispered, her voice rasping from lack of use. Her eyes fluttered open, now as vibrantly green as her leaves. Nyssa laughed, relieved. She threw her arms around Morea’s neck, crying and laughing into her hair.

They stayed like this for a while, tangled in each other’s arms. Morea was Nyssa’s oldest friend after all. She’d planted Morea’s mulberry tree when she was only twelve. They had grown up together. Nyssa was not going to leave until she saw that the dryad was completely recovered.

“You should have seen it, Morea,” Nyssa said, nestling down beside the dryad, a wicked grin on her face. “That fairy didn’t know what hit him.”

“The Fae are a dangerous Peoples, my Nyssa,” Morea said firmly, her voice trilling beautifully despite her sober tone. “You should not goad them so.”

“You do not need to worry,” Nyssa pulled a face. “I took precautions. They didn’t even know my name.”

“They know what you can do and what you look like,” Morea pointed out. “One day, People are going to come looking for you.”

“Well today is not that day, worry wart.”

The sun was close to setting when Morea finally convinced Nyssa to go home. She waved to the tree, which had started to regain its foliage already, and grabbed her bike. Morea was right, Nyssa was going to be late for work. It was lucky that she knew a shortcut.

She pushed her bike to the top of the grassy hill and pointed it towards the river. There was a slight shimmer right at the bank of the river where her usual shortcut was. If you looked closely, you could see where the light changed between the sunny riverside, and the other places the shortcut lead to.

Nyssa kicked off, pedaling madly towards the water. She needed a lot of momentum to make it through the boggy riverbank to where the light bent around her shortcut. Her bike shook wildly, bouncing over the dips and rises in the grass and building up speed. She stopped pedaling, allowing gravity to do its work, and crouched low over the handlebar. She was vaguely aware of Morea calling a farewell before she entered the void between places. There was a whoosh as the sound disappeared, sucked out of the very air. For a moment, there was emptiness, then, a rush of sound and blinding light. Passing briefly through a deserted alleyway, she was quickly thrust out into a busy street, narrowly missing a pedestrian.

“I’m walking here!” he yelled, shaking a fist at Nyssa who was already disappearing down 8th Avenue. She almost plunged headfirst into a parked taxi because she was laughing so hard. She sped down the busy road, the Empire State Building disappearing quickly behind her. Her nimble bike could navigate the traffic effortlessly, weaving in and out of the slow-moving cars. She could make this trip in her sleep, she’d done it so often. The quickest way home to Liverpool was a quick bike trip through New York City to the shortcut in Central Park which led to a small town in the highlands of Scotland. From there all she had to do was bounce around London a few times before landing practically right outside her little apartment above the shop where she worked.

The whole trip usually only took her half an hour.

To make it to work on time, she needed to do it in ten minutes.

Hope you enjoy this chapter. The next part is from Del's POV and perhaps it includes Del and Nyssa meeting for the first time =)