FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

It had been a wild couple of months that had led Lumen to this point. His village had been raided. He and several of his friends had been abducted and transported from their home in the plane of air to the prime material plane. Lumen himself had been sold to the crew of a large sea-faring vessel to serve as little more than a good luck charm to ensure safe passage through storms, but the crew had underestimated Lumen's abilities. His small size belied the raging tempests of the plane of air itself.

Storm fairy. Mote of Air. Elemental spirit. Lumen had heard a lot of words to describe him since he had come to this world, but few made much sense to him. He didn't understand much about the big races. He had only barely started to get a grasp of their language, but what he did know was that he didn't much care for the old lantern that the crew kept him locked in. The thick walls and fogged glass made his apartment more of a sensory deprivation chamber than a home. He could hear muffled discussions from the crew and could see vague shadows through the glass, but it was only when his lantern was opened that he could see clearly the world around him.

The world was a far cry from the land he had grown up in. Water and sky stretched on as far as the eye could see. The open expanse somehow made him feel even more claustrophobic than his lantern. The silence of the still air was deafening. He longed for the dense thickets and small huts of his fairy village and the raging tempests of the plane of air.

Lumen had no idea how long he had traveled on the ship. Days and nights blurred together, and he was only dragged out of solitary confinement when the wind had grown too still for the ship's sails to be effective. It was during these times that Lumen, with his small, insect-like wings bound with thin bands of string, would be carted out to coax the wind to push the sails along.

The crew obviously didn't know the nature of Lumen's powers. He had very limited ability when it came to conjuring up gusts of air. His specialty was in controlling and redirecting the wind that was already present. In only dragging him out when the wind was mostly gone, they had limited Lumen's ability to do pretty much anything. The gusts he summoned were little more than parlor tricks, and to make matters worse, the region the ship did most of its travels was infuriatingly temperate. With the exception of the occasional light shower, the weather was obnoxiously clear most of the time.

That all changed when the ship one day sailed right into a nasty thunderstorm. Lumen wasn't sure why they did it. Were they in that much of a hurry? Did they have too much faith in their little "good luck charm" to save them from the worst the wind could muster? Perhaps Lumen could have saved them from the storm, but the storm, and the crew, found him in a particularly foul mood that day. Weak and tired from dehydration and starvation, Lumen chose to risk it all at the mercy of the storm than to suffer another day on the ship. When the captain opened his lantern to let him see the fury of the elements, Lumen was immediately taken by the splendor of the of the storm.

Lumen raised his hands to guide the winds. At first, he directed the wind to shift directions and catch the sails. The crew cheered as the ship picked up speed and bolted towards the edge of the storm. Even the normally distant and dour captain flashed the small fairy a nod and a knowing smirk as if to cheer on the tiny fairy, but when Lumen saw his chance, he took it. A large wave rose up beside the ship. Lumen directed the wind to catch the sails and surf along the inside of the tidal wave. The ship was speeding towards freedom. The crew cheered. The thunder roared loudly... and then...

It all happened so suddenly. Even Lumen was caught off guard by the force of the jolt. The wind went from pushing the sails along at top speed to suddenly shifting and slamming against the broad side of the ship. With a harsh lurch, the ship turned sharply and dove directly into the tidal wave it had been riding mere moments before.

Everything was a blur after that. Launched under the waves, Lumen was surrounded by planks and paraphernalia from the ship itself. The vessel had been shattered into flotsam in the span of seconds. Lumen was sent tumbling ass over teakettle under the ocean, and he quickly learned a terrifying fact. He didn't know how to swim! And with his wings bound, he couldn't hope to fly to safety either. It was all he could do to awkwardly paddle to the surface and grab onto the nearest piece of debris he could find. Whether it was fortune or fate was irrelevant in the overall grand scheme of things, but the irony was not lost on Lumen as he pulled himself up from the ocean and into the emptied-out Lantern that had served as his cell for the past few months.

Lumen had no idea how long he had been adrift. He was able to use his limited nature magic inherent in all fae to create enough food and clean water to keep himself from completely wasting away in the sun, but it was barely enough to sustain him. At night he would send fairy lights into the air above him in hopes that someone would become curious and come looking, but with each passing night he became more and more convinced that no help would be coming. He had no idea where he was. He had not seen any ships since the crash. He was less than a needle in a haystack. He was a small spec in a vast expanse of ocean.

Strangely enough, Lumen was eventually found and by a research vessel no less. The crew was an odd assortment of soldiers, divers, and eggheads led by a kindly researcher. The crew nursed him back to health and even taught him the basics of the language of the land. Lumen still couldn't speak it well, and even when he did speak, his small size made his voice hard to hear. Not that he had much to say. These people were all fixated on their tasks - tasks which required far more training than Lumen had had. Lumen knew next to nothing about the world he found himself in, and he knew even less about advanced marine biology. So, Lumen was left to his own devices aboard the ship, and when the tour of duty eventually ended, Lumen and the crew parted ways. It was then that Lumen's journey as a tiny storm fairy in a giant world truly began.