Chapter 17: 17: Pixie Songs and Elven Mead

With the realization that her egg was being illicitly sold, Danika suddenly understood that it wasn't that the item had been so large, but that the oddly humming voices must belong to pixies. 

"Hey! Be careful with it!" protested one of the pixie voices. 

Her egg stilled, and the first voice said, "I'm just examining it, I'm not going to buy it if the sparkle just rubs off you know." 

A pixie voice replied, "It won't rub off, it's not pixie dust!" 

Danika was puzzled. She was supposed to be half pixie, half dragon, shouldn't the pixies know about her? One of them should be her parent, right? 

The other voice asked the important question, "Where did you get it then?" 

Danika listened intently for the reply. "Someone or something snuck it into our nest," explained one of the humming pixie voices.

The other voice asked with skeptical amusement, "Someone snuck into a pixie nest? One of the nests rumored to be better guarded than a dragon's treasure?"

Danika had no way to communicate to the voice, her suddenly formed theory, that the Jade Emperor was the one who'd put her egg into the pixie nest. 

One of the pixie voices grumbled, "It was that dragon's fault, who goes around setting places on fire just because they don't like a little morning song I ask you?" 

The other voice chuckled and said, "I see, so your nest burned and when you'd moved in to the new one, this egg was among yours? How careless." Danika's egg spun making her feel a little dizzy, and the voice continued over the high pitched humming laced protests of the pixies, "What if it's just a mimic egg?" 

"If it was a mimic egg, it would look exactly like a pixie egg," snapped one of the pixie voices. 

"Hmm, is that so?" the other voice asked. It was an oddly neutral voice, and Danika couldn't guess the speaker's gender with any certainty.

There was a subdued humming that made Danika think the pixies were whispering to each other. 

The voices bartered with each other for some time. Danika's egg was still, and the bottom of it was warm. She struggled to stay awake, but wasn't too surprised when the world dissolved into golden sparkles before a conclusion was reached. 

The Sandman greeted her with a silent flourish, and then a silent sand film played out. A group of pixies created a nest near a dragon's cave. The dragon chased the pixies for awhile. A tiny pixie played tag with the large dragon. The dragon moved to a different cave. 

The pixies battled with an invading force of goblins who were harvesting trees at an impressive rate. A number of pixies and goblins died. The pixies moved their nest into a small tree close to the dragon's new cave, and the goblins didn't dare approach. The dragon returned to its old cave.

For awhile the pixies stayed where they were, with the dragon between the two territories. A nest full of pixie eggs hatched in turn, all except for one in a corner. That egg didn't hatch, it just kept growing. The pixies eventually grew too numerous for the small tree, and migrated to a larger tree closer to the dragon's cave. 

The dragon burned the large tree slowly from the top down, giving the pixies plenty of time to flee. The pixies claimed a tree growing on an outcrop in the middle of a small lake. When the eggs were placed into their new nest, the overly large egg that hadn't hatched was finally noticed. Three pixies carried the egg away from the new tree. 

Danika slept. 

When she woke up, it was midday in the real world. She wondered how much of her sparkling sand dreams had been a true account of events in "Living Jade Empire" and how much had been mixed dreams of her own subconscious piecing together clues.

After Danika finished her morning routine it was already mid afternoon. She wanted to rush back into "Living Jade Empire", but a couple of days would already have passed in the game while she slept. Since whatever had happened with the sale of her egg had already happened, she decided that she'd better work on the job she had taken instead. 

After working her way through a series of complicated quest chains in the older game, Danika entered a phase of monotonous grinding, and opened "Living Jade Empire" on her phone again. It really was convenient being able to access the game through multiple interfaces.

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Only one thing seemed to have changed for ZipZing, she had a new ongoing quest, although it was possible that she just hadn't noticed it the night before. "Survive until Hatching" had a timer counting down with 34 hours remaining. She was still stuck in her egg. From the mobile interface she couldn't be sure if her egg was moving, but she suspected that it was, as patterns of light and shadow moved gently across it.

Danika propped her phone up and glanced at it frequently, hoping new dialog would pop up and inform her what her current situation was. After awhile her vigilance was rewarded. 

Voice: "Oh hey, you're finally connected. Can you make time to identify this enchanted egg I traded that elven mead for?" 

Voice: "Are you there? Hello?"

Voice B: "Please tell me you didn't trade twenty-thousand coin worth of elven mead for an unidentified egg?" 

Voice: "Um… it seemed like a good idea at the time?" 

Voice B: "Fine, whatever, it was your share. Sure, if you can meet me in Elmdale in about half an hour."

Voice: "You're still in elven territory? I'm just outside the human capital." 

Voice B: "How, nevermind, tell me later. Ok, I'll portal over. Meet me at Briar's." 

Voice: "Alright, thanks!" 

The dialog ended, but the changing light and shadow across her eggshell seemed to speed up. Danika hurried to a good save point on the older game and then shut it down. She was across the room and into the VR-medi pod in record time. 

Her egg felt a bit chilly and jostled and swayed to the rhythm of hurried footsteps. She had no way to communicate with her purchaser, even though she really wanted to ask about the enchanted description given to her egg, so she pulled up her menu screens while she waited. When she flicked over to her her character sheet, there was a new 0 point skill in her list: Strong Luck.

When Danika brought up the description it said simply: "Activates randomly." She wondered if it was the token the honorable Lin Hao had mentioned. A zero point luck skill didn't seem very useful. 

Briar's turned out to be some sort of cafe or bar, from the background clinks and conversations when ZipZing's purchaser arrived. The man they were meeting arrived a few minutes later.

Danika clung to her shell with her claws as she was swung out for display and her egg landed with a bit of a thump on a much warmer surface than wherever she'd been riding. Since her egg was then turned about and rolled over, she guessed that it had been the man's hand that she'd been placed on.

He said, "It is quite pretty at least, very sparkly." 

The neutral voiced person asked, "Can you tell what it is?" 

There was a fairly long silence, while the background noises of the establishment were all that could be heard. Danika thought that her purchaser was being surprisingly patient. She herself was practically bouncing with impatience.

Finally the man said, "It keeps failing. It says, oh, I see… it's a living creature. I can only identify objects. We need Terri for animal identification?" 

Her purchaser replied, "Oh… right." A pause and then, "She's logged in, but not replying." 

A woman's voice asked dryly, "Why would I send a reply when I'm already here?"

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