Chapter Text
Once upon a time, in the home of a young girl named Alicia, lived a night light. It was elegant, shaped like a tiny blue fairy hiding among the foliage of a magical garden, and shone in every color of the rainbow come dusk. For many years, the girl cherished the light - it allowed her to sleep peacefully, knowing that its light would scare away all who tried to harm her.
However, there came a day that the girl, now a middle schooler, could no longer appreciate the night light. It sat atop her desk every night, mocking her as its colors shifted gently against the dark of the room. Alicia couldn’t stand it, so she eventually shut it into her toy chest for good.
Lighty couldn’t remember how long it had been since she last saw Alicia. Had it been a week? A month? A year? It’d been hard to tell in the toy chest; sunlight rarely shone down into it, if at all. For however long it had been, she had sat patiently on her toadstool for something- anything- to happen, but nothing ever did. She wondered to herself if it was all a mistake, if Alicia had simply forgotten to retrieve her one day, but the longer she spent inside, the more she began to doubt it. Lighty yawned; thinking like this would do nothing but waste whatever battery power she had left, so maybe a nap would do her good. Sighing, she leaned back on a tiny pillow she found early on into her stay and drifted off.
Her nap didn’t last for very long before she was rudely awoken by the harsh clicking of the toy chest’s lock. When she looked up, it took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the soft morning light filtering in through a window. Lighty’s eyes darted around, looking for her savior, but there was no one to be seen.
“Alright, fairy, are you awake yet?” A gruff voice startled her, prompting her to sit up and look around frantically. Still, there was nobody in sight.
“Who are you?” She blurted out, distraught at how odd her own voice sounded. She hadn’t had the chance to use it for years.
The voice hummed, “We’ll get to that, fairy. Alicia needs your help-”
“Alicia?! Is she okay? How old is she? Does she need help sleeping again?” Lighty stood on her toadstool and bounced in place, eager to finally hear news of her best friend.
“If you would stop interrupting, I’ll be getting to that. Come on, out you go. There’s a lot to go over in a short amount of time.” The fairy felt a shove and a harsh gaze (?) at her back, prompting her to get moving and climb a small pile of discarded building blocks and dollhouse parts to vault over the edge of the chest. Surprisingly, the fall didn’t even leave a scratch on her plastic surface. Brushing off her dress, a shadowy figure vaguely resembling a teddy bear materialized in front of her. Its only distinguishable feature was its hard expression etched into the void in orange that seemed to scrutinize her every move.
Lighty cleared her throat. “So- what’s the plan?”
The shadow beckoned for her to follow it as it led her toward the full-body mirror that took up half of the back wall of Alicia’s room. “As I was saying earlier, Alicia’s mind is being plagued by… dream demons. They put her in a coma, and I don’t know anyone else who’d step up to the job of actually killing them.”
“...Hypothetically, if I were to say no, what would you do?” Asked the fairy, blinking.
“I’d probably make you go either way,” it replied.
“And why don’t you just… y’know… do it yourself?”
“You’re kidding me, right? I’m a shadow, in case you couldn’t tell already. Whatever’s in there is larger than myself. I’d get my ass kicked in a minute.” Even though the shadow’s body language was nigh unreadable, its glare spoke volumes.
“And you’re sure that we have to kill everything?”
“Look- fairy, are you up to the job, or not?”
Lighty huffed. “Okay, fine. Let’s go already!”
As the two approached the mirror, the shadow beckoned for Lighty to stop where she was. It reached out towards the mirror, an orange glow emitting from its hand, and suddenly it began to ripple and pulse with the same light.
“Step on through,” said the shadow, standing off to one side. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Lighty wasted no time in jumping through the mirror-turned-portal, and didn’t look back. Not even as the shadow flickered back into a real teddy bear for a moment, a wry grin on its face.