The door slid shut, leaving the four of them alone in the profoundly uninteresting room. A long, heavy silence fell. Gilda, having nothing else to do, sat on her unsupportive bed and began methodically sharpening her axe. The soft shing, shing, shing of the whetstone was sharp and angry in the quiet room, each stroke a protest against the forced inaction. Sparks flew from the steel.

​Zazu, finding a comfortable corner, attempted to meditate but found the room's flawless perfection to be deeply distracting. A mind needs imperfection to find its balance, and this place had none. Pip, meanwhile, was pacing the ten-foot length of the room like a caged animal, muttering about invisible traps and the psychological horror of clean surfaces.

​Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He stopped directly in front of Gilda. "So," he said, his voice a low, desperate hiss. "Wanna go see the town?"

​Gilda stopped sharpening her axe. The silence that returned was somehow even more boring than before. Her gaze drifted from the perfectly white walls, to her perfectly unsupportive bed, and finally to Pip's hopeful, desperate face. She let out a long, weary sigh—the sound of a warrior choosing the lesser of two very bad, very non-violent options.

​With a final, resigned grunt, she stood up.

​And that was all the encouragement Pip needed. His face lit up, and he immediately moved to wake Zazu, who had fallen into a deep, scholarly slumber in the corner. "Zazu, wake up. We're going on a reconnaissance mission."

​Zazu's eyes blinked open slowly. "A what?" he murmured, still half-asleep.

​"A HEROIC PATROL!" Sir Crumplebuns declared from his post by the door, having overheard Pip's words.

"It's not a patrol," Gilda grunted, cutting Sir Crumplebuns off. "It's a walk. We're bored."

"A heroic walk!" Sir Crumplebuns corrected brightly.

Zazu, now mostly awake, sighed. "I suppose it is an opportunity to observe their city's design," he said, which was his way of agreeing.

Getting out of the room, however, proved to be their first challenge. The door had no handle, no hinges, and no visible seams. To Pip, this was a classic sign of a high-level trap. He spent a full five minutes on a thorough, professional inspection. He pressed the floor tiles in front of the door, searching for pressure plates. He ran a fine, dwarven-made wire along the edges, feeling for the tiniest crack. He even pressed his ear to the cool, white surface, listening for the faint whir of internal gears.

Finally, having found absolutely nothing, Pip was about to declare the door a perfect, un-openable seal. But Gilda, who had grown impatient with his quiet, intense prodding, just walked up to the door and said, "Open."

It slid open with a soft, polite hiss. Pip stared at the open doorway, then down at his uselessly intricate tools, a look of deep, personal offense on his face.

The doorway opened onto the same unnervingly perfect street they had been hurried through earlier. For a long moment, the team just stood there, breathing in the quiet, sterile air of the Fairy Realm capital.

It was Pip who finally broke the silence, rubbing his hands together with a hint of mischievous energy. "Right," he said. "Now that we're unsupervised... where to first? I saw a bakery on the way here. Bet the pastries are trapped."

"NAY!" Sir Crumplebuns declared, pointing his Spoonblade at the tallest, most intimidatingly perfect tower in the distance. "A TRUE HERO DOES NOT SEEK PASTRIES! HE SEEKS AN AUDIENCE WITH THE QUEEN! WE SHALL MARCH TO THE HIGHEST SPIRE AND DEMAND A PARLEY!"

Gilda gave them both a weary, unimpressed look. "We are not investigating a bakery, and we are not demanding a parley," she said, her tone flat. "There will be no traps, and there will be no audiences. Just a simple walk. Let's find a park."

She wanted something simple—grass, trees, something that didn't require a form to look at. It was the least complicated, least bureaucratic thing she could think of. So, they began to walk.

Their search for a park took them deeper into the capital. They passed fountains where the water arced in perfect, synchronized parabolas, never spilling a single drop onto the surrounding stones. They saw fairies with tiny, silver shears trimming hedges into flawless cubes, their movements quick, silent, and identical. There was no birdsong, no idle chatter, just the faint, constant hum of ambient magic.

They found a park a few blocks later, and it was breathtakingly perfect. The grass was a uniform green, every single blade exactly the same height. The trees were arranged in a flawless geometric spiral. The sheer, orderly perfection of it all made Pip's paranoia flare. A rogue's greatest ally was a good, deep shadow to slip into, a place to hide and observe. He immediately began searching for one, only to discover that the magical light from the sky above was perfectly diffused, leaving no shadows anywhere. It was a place with no cover. To a rogue, that was the most dangerous kind of place imaginable.

Zazu, meanwhile, approached a particularly interesting-looking silver-leafed tree. As he leaned in to inspect the bark, a tiny sign popped out of the ground. "Unauthorized botanical analysis is a Class-C infraction," it chimed softly. Zazu recoiled as if the tree had just insulted his ancestors.

"MAGNIFICENT!" Sir Crumplebuns declared, undeterred as he marched onto the flawless lawn. He spotted a perfect-looking rose and leaned in to take a heroic sniff. A tiny, silver sign instantly popped out of the ground. "Please maintain a regulated distance of twelve inches from all horticultural exhibits," it chimed. Sir Crumplebuns stumbled back, deeply offended.

Gilda, ignoring this nonsense, just wanted a moment of quiet. She found a spot under a perfectly shaped willow tree and sat down on the grass, which was as soft as a feather bed. She was just leaning back on her hands when a soft, three-note chime echoed from the air around her. Ding-dong-ding.

"Lawn usage is scheduled for 3:00 PM to 3:15 PM," the disembodied voice spoke. "You are currently in an unscheduled reclining posture. Please rectify."

Gilda's eye twitched. She stood up.

Sir Crumplebuns, having been rebuffed by the flower himself, saw Gilda's failed attempt at rest. He clearly decided that what the moment needed was not quiet, but a display of heroic vigor. He began a series of valiant, if wobbly, lunges with his Spoonblade. He took one particularly heroic lunge, his foot slipped on the unnaturally smooth grass, and he tumbled sideways, landing with a soft flump.

When he stood up, he saw the horror he had wrought. His fall had bent a single, perfect blade of grass at a ninety-degree angle. It was a tiny, insignificant imperfection. But in the flawless perfection of the Fairy Realm, it was a serious offense.

Another chime echoed, this one lower and more serious. Dooooong.

Every other fairy in the park, who had until now been gliding past with serene indifference, stopped. They all turned in perfect, silent unison to stare with horrified judgment at the tiny, bent blade of grass.

And across the park, three spherical golem-polishers and two taller, more imposing-looking golems holding what looked like silver nets stopped what they were doing. They all turned their smooth, featureless faces towards the team. And then, silently, they began to glide in their direction.

Gilda's eye twitched. She looked at the bent blade of grass, the staring fairies, and the approaching golems. It was, she decided, the most stressful-looking park she had ever seen.

_______________

Author's Note:

And the team's first day out in the city is already a disaster! I had so much fun writing the perfect, stressful park. A flower you can't smell, a tree you can't analyze, and grass you can't sit on—it's the ultimate "look but don't touch" environment, and a nightmare for our very hands-on heroes.

Of course, it's Sir Crumplebuns who commits the first act of "vandalism" in this perfect city: he bends a single blade of grass. And in the Fairy Realm, that's apparently a major crime that warrants a full, silent, and frankly terrifying response from the "park police."

The team wanted to see the town. It looks like the town is now coming to see them.

Thanks for reading!

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