I forced the light and airy magic into a slicing dagger. Not its preferred shape or purpose. Slowly, ever so slowly, the little fibers of the rope that bound the dog snapped and untwisted. She would be free soon. The plan was perfect.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s where dad met mom,” the man holding the leash said into his phone. “I’ll come back here as many times as it takes—if nothing else, Lucy likes it.”
They were walking in the wrong direction. Quickly and quietly, I flew around behind the dog, and whistled. Every dog in the entire park alerted at the sound, and there was mass chaos as they all started looking around and barking. I danced in front of Lucy and she started running towards me, intent on the chase. Her leash broke and we were off!
Throwing out sparks, I flitted this way and that as she chased me amidst the flowers. The Human’s speed meant that we had to zigzag back and forth, giving him time to catch up. He kept calling out Lucy’s name and her attention would return to him, but I whistled and sent out sparks to pull her attention back to me.
We were following a thread with Yellow for friendship mixed with Red for lust and Green for comfort with flecks of Blue and shiny Silver for laughter and adventure. It sprung from the Human’s chest and through the park, bright enough that the other Human it connected to must be nearby.
This Human came here often. He was walking the dog, who had a bright Green thread wrapped around his heart. It was one of the only threads the Human ever had while on his daily walks. A single green line surrounded by a tangled weave of color. Humans needed each other to survive, to reproduce, and to be happy. They didn’t spawn from magic like the rest of us. They were pitiable creatures, which was why I was trying to cure this one’s loneliness.
The dog had grown too excited chasing me and was now zooming across the grass of the park, but it was close enough to the new Human at the other side of the thread. I perched myself on his shoulder and waited until the little dog noticed me again. It only took a few short cheers before she ran over and jumped, trying to get to me.
“Lucy! Down!” the very winded Human gasped out. He put his hands on his knees and continued, “I’m so sorry, she’s not normally like this.”
The other Human smiled politely, but kept his distance from the dog, edging backwards.
“Her leash snapped and she clearly wanted to say hello.” He bent down to scoop up Lucy, who was calmer now as I retreated to the branches of the tree above the couple, out of sight.
“I’m more of a cat person,” the other Human responded, before turning away.
The Human holding Lucy flushed and clutched the dog tight to his chest, either embarrassed or insulted, before storming off.
How could they be so oblivious? The two were obviously soulmates, destined to Fall in Love! I had spent weeks carefully orchestrating this cutest of meet-cutes and they were just going to ignore all of the hard work?
***
“Humans are social creatures, though, aren’t they?”
“Not this one,” I responded. “I’ve seen him walk in this same park hundreds of times, but he’s always alone.”
“I thought you said he had a dog,” Twila commented.
“I meant no other Humans! Dogs don’t count. Dogs can’t be soulmates.”
“If you say so,” Twila responded. “After threads snap, I set Humans up with dogs all the time. It counts.”
I rolled my eyes. Ending Sprites were the worst. Their entire purpose was to help a Human pick up the pieces after a thread snapped; they didn’t care about anything important like Love at First Sight.
“Look, Ember, surely there are other Humans that you can focus your efforts on,” Twila said, trying to console me.
“Not like this one. You should have seen the thread. It was the brightest, most intricate I’ve ever seen.” I didn’t want to mention that I had also grown emotionally invested in this Human and his outcome. He was my first, but it was more than that. I cared about more than just his outcome—I cared about him.
We looked around at the Humans surrounding us, threads tangled and tying each other together. The web that it created spanned around the world. Babies generally only had 1 or 2 threads, but they all expanded as they got older. Some Humans only had 8 or 9 threads, all bright ones, while others had hundreds of dull threads. All invisible to them, but not to us.
Twila thought for a moment.
“I recently had a Human who needed connection after her daughter drowned,” she said.
I failed to see how that was helpful. It seemed rather depressing—quite the opposite of falling in love. Did she want me to drown the dog so she could take over? The look I shot her was dubious.
“You can push one of the Humans in a lake! He’ll need to be saved!”
“And if he drowns?” I asked, blinking at the terrible idea.
“He won’t drown, the lake isn’t deep enough anywhere in the park,” Twila said with certainty.
I thought about it. Maybe it could work. I was out of other ideas and clearly desperate, taking advice from an Ending Sprite.
***
It was an endeavor in itself simply to get both Humans to the park at the same time, let alone to the lake, when they could neither see nor hear me, but I managed. It was lucky that the one I was interested in didn’t have his dog with him today. The lake was beautiful.
The Human was on his phone again, this time explaining that he didn’t want to be set up with someone’s best friend.
“I want things to be organic,” he said. “I want what you see on TV.”
I wanted to make that happen for him. He just needed to cooperate.
Waiting until the other Human looked his way, as if staring right through the threads that connected them, took an age. They unknowingly walked closer to each other, spurred by the breezes that I had orchestrated along with some of the other Sprites of this park.
Eventually, their eyes met. Go time.
The dock that the Human walked along was littered with ropes, used to tie up the paddle boats that dotted the lake. I swished the wind so that it picked up one of the ropes behind the Human, right as his foot was moving. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. His hands windmilled wildly, dropping his phone and knocking into the other Humans near him. Two others fell in the lake and, right when it looked like he was going to regain his balance, he toppled into his soulmate and they both fell in together.
“What’s your problem?” one of the casualties sputtered, getting to her feet.
“I’m so sorry,” the Human responded.
“Are you the guy with the dog?” the soulmate asked
The Human, instead of answering, turned around and mumbled, “I think I dropped my phone.”
His soulmate, instead of dramatically saving him, or at least helping him look, scoffed and started swimming towards the dock. I honestly didn’t know who was at fault here this time, me or them. They were never going to Fall in Love at this rate. And indeed, while their passionate Red threads were still there, the rest of the threads had started to develop a sickly Brownish tinge to them. We were going to need to call in a Separation Sprite before they even got together.
Groaning, I let the breezes die down before I flitted away, needing to come up with another idea.
I had just settled on to my favorite lakeside weeping willow to watch my Human continue to look for his phone when Jasper showed up on the branch next to me.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Not now, I’m busy helping these Humans Fall in Love,” I responded, despite the horrible scene unfurling in front of us. The soulmate was angrily pacing the parking lot while my Human looked ready to break into tears as the other park members continued to berate him for his clumsiness.
“I think it’s time we think about moving you to a different department.”
***
I had no idea what else to do. Two attempts had failed. Now these two clear soulmates hated each other and it was all my fault. It had taken months for my Human to step foot in the park to walk his dog again, and I had yet to make anybody else Fall in Love in the meantime. They were both finally near each other now, but what else could be done? They wanted to move me to the Family Sprite division! I didn’t want to help children grow up, I wanted to make people Fall in Love.
Ever since I was a child, it was my dream to become a Love Sprite, and now it was all going to fall apart thanks to some clueless male Human who knew nothing of True Love, despite it dangling right in front of his eyes.
In a huff of anger, I kicked the air in front of me, sending up a huge gust of wind. Immediately worried, I tried to stop it, turning the wind back towards me, but that only created a spiral and the little wind tornadoes rushed off in different directions. A number of Humans on the park path yelled out in surprise, including a familiar voice.
“My glasses!” my project Human yelled, dropping to all fours and crawling around, squinting as he looked around.
The other Human was doing much the same, just on the other side of a large oak tree. I watched in amazement as they crawled around, eventually finding the glasses in the tall grass and putting them on. Could they really be so close and miss each other again?
When the Human stood up, though, he looked confused and a bit dizzy. The other looked the same, and they slowly made their way around the tree, staring at the ground, before finally bumping into each other.
“You!” they said in unison. Everything about their body language screamed anger and annoyance, but the putrid Brown was not as noticeable in their thread, now that they were face-to-face.
“I think you have my glasses,” one of them said.
“I think I do,” the other responded.
They smiled sheepishly at each other, and then traded glasses. The dog chose that moment to run up to them, leash trailing behind her, panting with an enormous grin on her face.
“Sorry, I know you don’t like dogs.”
“Oh, well, just large dogs. Yours is ok. As long as she stays down.”
“We keep bumping into each other. Would you…” he trailed off, brushing the back of his neck with his hand. “Would you want to walk with us?”
The other Human grinned before responding, “I’m not doing anything else.”
***
“I’m glad that finally got sorted,” old man Jasper said.
I started. Why did he always have to move so quietly?
“I guess they had to pick up each other’s glasses to finally see each other,” I joked. At his reproachful gaze, I instantly schooled my expression into something more solemn.
“Did you learn anything from this?” he asked.
“Yes,” I responded. “I need to find the best way to unite Humans, and try and try again, even if I fail.”
“No!” he barked. His face was turning purple. I did not want to be sent to the Family Division.
“Umm… what was I meant to learn from this, then?”
Jasper sighed and didn’t respond for a few minutes. I was worried he wasn’t going to, and just starting to resign myself to the fate of being switched when he finally turned to me.
“True Love is simple,” he said. “You don’t have to try so hard.”
Taken aback, I looked at him in confusion.
“But I did have to try. I had to try three different times!”
“No, no, you just needed to wait until the timing was right. Timing is the most important thing when Falling in Love.”
Well, that was easy enough. Surely I could figure out timing for my future Humans. If I stayed a Love Sprite, that is.
“Does this mean I’m not switching departments?” I asked, a thread of hope creeping into my voice.
“You can stay,” Jasper said with a smile.
My entire body sparked with excitement, spewing out embers, as I looked around for the next Human who looked like they could use a push to find Love. A woman in a bright purple dress bent down to smell a flower in front of me. She would do.
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