Chasing Fairies by T. Prince, tk_prince@hotmail.se A reckless bounty hunter may end up becoming the game herself. Reida groped her way through the dense shrub, and finally came upon a small clearing. The trees and flowers were ruddy with the glow of the morning sun. In the exact middle of the clearing was a fairy ring, with dragon flies the size of ravens nesting on the gem-colored mushrooms. The air was alive with the song of birds, crickets and a distant choir of frogs. Even a city-dweller like Reida, who had never set foot in a place like this before, could tell that it was the exact place in which you would go looking for a pixie. But it was not just any pixie she was looking for. A few days ago she had been contacted by a haggard-looking wizard who had offered her a fine reward for bringing back his most prized possession: an extremely rare aurora pixie he had come to name "Pooky". In fact, the poor old coot was so eager to get her back that he had agreed to pay Reida one fourth of her reward upfront! Reida had spent the rest of the day doing some half-hearted research on pixies, and quickly come to the conclusion that the whole thing would be a piece of cake -- apparently, pixies were no taller than a foot, naive and innocent by nature, and quick to form sentimental attachments to beautiful places. Reida had already located the most fairy-like place in the forest, and now all she had to do was wait, sneak up on Pooky, bag the little thing, and finally carry her sparkling little carcass back to the gilded cage where it belonged. Pleased as punch, the bounty hunter scouted the clearing for a good hiding place, finally deciding on a hollow tree trunk. She easily wormed her slender frame into the wooden tube. Her clothing -- the usual rogue get-up: tight-fitting leather pants and jacket, dark boots and a pair of bronze shoulder pads -- seemed to blend in well with the colors of the wood, as did her olive skin and dark brown hair. While she waited, her thoughts drifted to her favorite subject -- her reward -- and soon she was again delirious with fantasies of golden trinkets and jewels and enchanted artifacts. But besides wealth, what Reida loved more than anything was freedom. The life of a bounty hunter was perfect for her: she woke up and went and slept wherever she pleased, she worked alone and on her own terms, and if the money was poor, she could always resort to thievery (which was almost as fun). Yet there was also a sadistic touch to the fact that she now earned her living taking away the freedom of people who were really no more guilty of criminal behavior than herself. She loved seeing the terror on the face of some over-confident thief as he realized that he was being wheeled off to prison, or the crushing disappointment of some bratty runaway teen as it dawned on her that her short excursion into the world of adult freedom and delights was over -- and she loved knowing that their defeat would buy her a few more months of the very freedom they had lost. It was the proximity to her own eluded punishment that excited her -- of knowing each time that the person who was getting his or her just desserts could just as well have been her, but that it was not. For this reason, she frequently spied on the people she had just caught: delighting from a distance in hearing the thief wail through the bars of his cell window, or catching a peek of the disobedient runaway being spanked into glum obedience over her hated step-mother's knee. Suddenly, Reida noticed something moving in the middle of the fairy ring. She squinted in the reddish light and caught a glimpse of a tiny head of fiery red hair and a pair of bobbing, translucent wings. The bounty hunter crawled silently out of her hiding place, grabbed her fairy catcher -- which looked like a large butterfly net -- and began sneaking across the clearing. Moving silently was one of the many arts that Reida prided herself on having perfected, and it did not take long before she was standing right behind her target. "Pooky", it turned out, was a pretty, youthful girl with ivory white skin, and the fine, slender limbs of a teenager. She did not have much clothing on -- only a tiny red tunic ending halfway down her thighs -- and she was resting her back against a particularly large mushroom, with her legs curled up in front of her. Reida did not waste a second: she lunged forward and slammed down the net, trapping the pixie as well as the mushroom. "Playtime's over, Pooky! It's back to the cage for you," Reida said, feeling the pixie squirm under the net. "What!? No!" the pixie cried in what sounded like a child's voice. "Who are you? Did the old man tell you to do this?" "Sure, and he's paying me handsomely for it," Reida said with a chuckle, producing a thick sack from her backpack. "But I don't understand! The old man... he didn't need me for anything! He just kept me in a cage day after day for no reason, and I hated it so much! Why would he care if I was gone or not? It couldn't possibly make any difference to him!" The pixie seemed about to burst into tears. "Well, you see, Pooky," Reida said, "the truth is that we humans just like owning things. It doesn't matter if we have any use from them, if they look nice or make us feel good, we'll keep them around. And that goes for the "old man" too -- he likes keeping you in a cage because you're an exotic, nice-looking thing, and there's not a thing in the world you can do about it." "But I-I'm not a thing!!" the pixie said, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. "You just don't get it, do you, Pooky? You are what he says you are, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's what having power means. Any more stupid questions?" All of this was almost too much for Pooky to handle. Her gentle little soul was accustomed to a world of friendly and pretty things: soft dawns and petting mice and rabbits and the glow of fireflies and rivers of stars in the night sky. She could not fathom why someone would capture her and keep her in a cage if she didn't like it, much less what kind of monster could derive pleasure from it. And then she realized what puzzled her most of all. "B-but why are *you* doing this?" she asked in a trembling voice. "Y-you're not the old man, you have no interest in me! Why don't you let me go? Please let me go!" "Pooky, you little imbecile," Reida said, "I like owning things too. I have to own you until I can trade you for something better. Like money, or a bracelet, or... mmm... a pretty necklace..." Reida placed the sack over the butterfly net, causing the world around Pooky to go dark. The pixie screamed in fear, then found herself swept off her feet, and went tumbling down toward the bottom of the sack. She landed promptly on her rear, and was about to scream again when she noticed a rough crease underneath her sensitive bottom. Getting up on her knees, she examined it, and sure enough -- it was a hole that had been sown together with only a thin thread. It took her about thirty seconds of nimble handiwork to create a large enough hole to fit both of her skinny legs through. Soon, Reida noticed that her cargo had lost a suspicious amount of weight. She turned around, only to discover the pixie hovering in the air about twelve feet away. "How did...!? Get back in there!" the bounty hunter shouted as she moved closer to her mark, but the pixie only turned around and began flying toward safety in the dense forest. "Fine! If you fly out of my sight, even for a *second*," Reida yelled, "I'll destroy the whole damn clearing." The pixie stopped mid-air, pondering the threat. "That's right: I'll stomp on all your pretty flowers, ruin all your mushrooms and hack down all your cute little trees! And I'm PRETTY sure you wouldn't want any of that to happen." The pixie thought for a bit, then turned around. "Fine, I'll stay within reach," she said between gritted teeth. "But if you want me, you'll have to catch me." With those words, she soared ten feet into the air and sat down on the branch of an old, knotted oak. Reida threw her backpack onto the ground and went to work. She welcomed a little challenge, now that she had the pixie's word that she wouldn't escape. After about a minute she had climbed to the same height as Pooky, and nimbly hoisted herself up on the same branch, sitting in a steady position with one leg dangling on each side of it. "Now you sparkling little shit, let's see what y- huh?" Reida said, going silent when she discovered that the pixie was carrying something large and round in her arms. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a roll of rope from her backpack. "Hold on, don't-!" the bounty hunter began, but the pixie had already jumped off the branch and disappeared. Suddenly, Reida felt something move around her ankles. She began kicking her feet, but the noose was already in place -- all the pixie had to do was pull the rope, and the noose slowly closed itself around the bounty hunter's leather-clad calves, until they were grinding up against each other. Reida carefully reached her arm down to untie her legs, but that proved harder than she had thought. She tried leaning a bit further, and then a bit further still, but on the fourth time she applied too much weight and ended up toppling off the branch with a high-pitched squeal. A moment later, she found herself hanging upside down by her tied-up ankles. "Let me go! Let me *go* or I'll *kill* you!!" Reida hissed, her face quickly growing red from the rush of the blood to her head. The pixie perched on a branch just below the human's head, and tugged at her silky brown hair. Reida shrieked and looked down, only to be greeted with a hard punch to the nose. It hurt so bad that it took a while for Reida to process what had happened, since she would never in her life have guessed that such a tiny hand could produce such a vicious blow. "Now you've done it, you little beast!" the bounty hunter cried as she grasped frantically for the pixie. "I'll get you fo-OOOWWW!!" The pixie had grabbed her hand and bit down hard on the top of her index finger, causing Reida to pull back her arm with a howl. The pixie floated into the air and rotated 180 degrees until she was hovering upside down in front of Reida's agonized face. Her eyes burned with a feeling that was entirely new to her: rage. And all of it was trained on the big, dumb, vain, selfish and altogether terrible creature in front of her, all of its worst traits seemingly echoed in its crude human features. Compared to the pixie's pointy, elongated beauty, her fine cheekbones and unnatural slenderness, the normally agile bounty huntress looked plump and graceless; her face now seemed oddly circular, her lips thick and babyish, her hips wide, her breasts bulging and her firm backside embarassingly well accentuated. All features considered, to the pixie she looked rather like a great, jiggling slab of meat. The bounty huntress, taken aback by the new darkness in her tiny enemy's eyes, decided to try something new. "Hey Pooky," she began, "I think we may have gotten off on the wrong f-" "My name is *not* Pooky," said the pixie, "I hate that name!" "Fine then, um... why don't we just- uh... I didn't mean to give the impression that I wanted to just take you away and put you in a cage without your, uh, consent... that's something I'd never-" The pixie lunged forward, grabbed hold of each of the bounty huntress' lips, and pulled them shut. "Liar!" she yelled, and then pulled each lip toward her, painfully elongating Reida's plush little mouth into a beak-like shape. "MmmmmMMMMMpppHHHHH!!!" the bounty huntress screamed, before the pixie finally let her lips snap back into their proper place. Once again, Reida tried to grab the pixie, but the latter simply flew two feet backwards and began to orbit the struggling bounty hunter, inspecting her from every angle. She wanted to punish her, but she could not think of anything that would be severe enough, except... The audacity of the idea gave her chills, but it was no less than fair: the human had treated her like a commodity, so it was no less than fair that she should treat the human the same way. Reida had managed to bend forward enough to grab hold of the branch with her right arm, but was just about to reach for her feet with her left hand when she felt a piece of rope close itself around her wrist. Moments later, both her arms had been placed next to each other and were neatly tied together -- leaving Reida hugging the branch with all four of her limbs, breasts pushing against the bark, while hanging upside down beneath it like a monkey. "Get me down! *Now*!" Reida yelled, squirming uncomfortably. Suddenly, the pixie began cooing and whistling, and soon thereafter the whole tree was alive with rustles and chirps. A family of large rainbow-colored birds with long, sharp beaks landed simultaneously on the branch that the bounty hunter was hanging from. Two squirrels came scurrying up the trunk, one of which jumped down on Reida's thigh and burrowed its way into her jacket and undershirt. "Aaahh!!" Reida gasped as she felt its tiny clawed paws scurry across her belly, briefly panicking about which region of her anatomy it was headed for. She felt a tap on her cheek, but had only just turned her head when the pixie stuffed a huge lump of moss into her mouth so far that it almost stuck in her throat. "Mmmppphhhggg!!!" she protested, as the pixie darted off to fetch another a load. Meanwhile, the flock of birds had already lifted off the branch and were now hovering in the air around her. One of them perched upside down on Reida's back, and suddenly delivered a swift peck to her right buttock. "OOWW!! Mwock ibww offww!" Reida yelled, spitting moss. However, she instantly felt a new peck on the same cheek, and then another one, and soon the entire family of birds were gathered, pricking their needle-sharp beaks into various spots on her defenseless rear end. "AAOOWW!! OOWW!! No! AIIE!" As the pecks became increasingly merciless, Reida started feeling a draft around her bottom, and she realized that seat of her trousers was being picked apart piece by piece. The pixie was watching from a distance, delighted at the spectacle. Cruelty was not something that came naturally to her, but seeing this big, greedy troll tied up and getting her just desserts in such a demeaning way made her break into an almost gluttonous smile. The birds were doing a thorough job, and when they finally stopped, the seat of Reida's tight trousers had been replaced by a gaping hole, which -- since she never wore any underwear -- left her wiggling, olive-colored rump on full display. It was around this point that Reida really began to feel scared. Without her protective leather pants, those mighty beaks would surely make short work of her sorry little ass. Not wanting to part with her precious hindquarters, she decided that a change of tactics was in order. "Pooky, baby, I'm *so* sorry for what I did," the bounty huntress began in the most sugar-coated voice she could muster. "Do you know what a bitch is, Pooky? That's what I've been -- a real bitch. Oh naughty, naughty me! But I know you're a sweet little thing, Pooky, and you don't like what's happening any more than I do-" Oh please, the pixie thought, as she landed on the branch and began untying the ropes around Reida's arms. "-so I'm asking you reaaaaaally nicely to please forgive me, sweetie! Pooky, honey- pie, let's hug and make up, mmkay?" The ropes around Reida's arms were loosened, and a moment later the bounty hunter was hanging vertically by her feet instead. "Wait, hey hey heeey, not in that order! Pooky-kins, if you do that I won't land on my fee-aaaaaAAAAHHHH!!" With a loud thud, Reida landed face-first in the underbrush. She slowly stood up on wobbly feet and stood for a while rubbing her aching head. Her other hand went reflexively to her backside, where she traced the perfectly circular hole in her pants with her index finger, shuddering at the appalling accuracy of those beaks. "Whew, Pooky, you really got me for a moment there! Really scary, lemme tell ya. I sure learned my lesson, yes sir," Reida said, looking nervously around. "So, ah, can we be friends now? Pleeease?" Suddenly she gave up a girly shriek -- something had pricked her on her left breast! She crossed both of her arms in a protective gesture in front of her bosom, but pretty soon there was another painful prick in the same place. Panicking, Reida untied her jacket and continued to shed clothing until there was nothing left on her upper body to remove. The source of the painful harassment was revealed to be the squirrel that had crawled into her jacket; it hung from her tender breast like a tick, clutching it with all four clawed paws, and two red bite marks were visible just above it. "Get off me, you little beast!" Reida wailed and continued to tug at the ferocious rodent until it came off, after which it slipped nimbly through her fingers and escaped into the underbrush. Standing there, one hand protecting her bitten breast and the other ashamedly covering up her cartoonishly exposed derriere, Reida felt helpless and vulnerable. "Pooky, let's call a truce! I real-" Suddenly, her eyes fell upon Pooky, who was sitting on a branch nearby. However, the pixie was no longer alone. Four other pixies in different-colored tunics were sitting around her, all of them armed with little bows. "Is that the one, Valaii?" a pixie wearing blue asked as she placed a tiny arrow on her string. "Yes," the pixie whose name emphatically wasn't Pooky replied. Her friend let the arrow fly. It whirred through the air with a noise not unlike that of a mosquito, and burrowed into Reida's naked shoulder. "OWW!!" Despite the arrow being no more than two inches long, and its tip being nothing more dangerous than a common rose thorn, it hurt like hell! Even after Reida had extracted the projectile, a tiny dark red spot marked the place where it had entered her flesh. "OOHH!!" A second arrow pricked its way into her soft copper-colored belly, just below the navel. Panicking, Reida grabbed a large branch and tried to deflect the oncoming volley of arrows -- but not with much success. A third little arrow burrowed into her hand -- "OUCH!" -- another into her right breast -- "EEK!" -- and another one attached itself to the tip of her nose -- "OOWW!!" Eventually, the bounty huntress figured that she had had enough. She rushed forward with the branch over her head, screaming at the top of her lungs, and finally slammed the weapon into the branch that the pixies had been sitting on. But, to her great surprise, when the branch fell splintered to the ground, the pixies were all gone. "Now, girls!" Suddenly ten tiny hands grabbed hold of the hem of the bounty huntress' torn leather trousers and pulled downward with all their might. The garment fell all the way down to the stunned hunter's ankles, and from then on the brunette was as naked as when she had been born -- everything from her pointy, medium-sized breasts to her shapely buttocks and dark little bush was on perfect display. In a frenzy, Reida began hitting in all directions with the branch, but at every turn the pixies were quicker. One of the pixies grabbed her hair and began pulling her backwards by it. Another one latched on to her nipples and began pulling at them in an excruciatingly painful fashion. A third pixie began to work on her bush -- hovering next to it, she began to rip out large tufts of pubic hairs by the root. "OOWW!! AIIEE!! Th-that hurts! EEK! G-g-get off me, you little-!" she screamed as her hair, breasts and crotch seemed to be pulled in three different directions. Unbeknownst to the bounty hunter, "Pooky" -- or rather Valaii, which was her real name -- was hovering in the air right behind her, eager to add to the arrogant bitch's misery. The humiliation of the big bully was putting the disillusioned pixie in a much better mood, and she smiled to herself as she raised her bow and took careful aim at the flailing giant's round, defenseless derriere. THWACK! "Ooohh!" An arrow burrowed into Reida's left buttock. THWACK! "AAH!" A second arrow sunk into her right buttock as well. The pixie placed a third arrow on her string and waited for the right moment. The big, clumsy human continued to flail around -- her olive-colored buns looking rather like giant gelatinous popsicles with the arrow-handles poking out of their fleshy middles -- until eventually she tripped over a root and fell flat on her breasts, causing her butt to jerk upwards and the glutes to part ever so slightly to reveal the tiny black orifice Valaii had been looking for. SCHWING! The arrow went flying, passed perfectly in between the massive soft buns and disappeared into the bounty huntress's twitching anus. Immediately the brunette jerked up to her full height and her entire body seemed to tense up from the unwelcome intrusion. "O-O-O-OOHHHHH!!" Reida wailed as tears began squeezing their way out of her eyes. "Nice shot!" one of the other pixies cooed, and the others joined in with applause. Another one sat down on the bounty huntress' posterior, parted the buttocks gently, and lo, the arrow had disappeared almost completely up the dark cavity. "I-it h-h-hurts! *sob* A-and I wanna g-go hooome!" Reida wailed as big, hot tears came rolling down her cheeks. "What do you think, girls?" one of the pixies asked. "I say let's wrap it up!" "All right then!" The last pixie to have spoken had been hanging suspended from Reida's last pubic hair (the rest of her bush lay in a pile on the ground), and once she had finished, she promply ripped out the last hair -- "OOHHH!!" -- and threw it onto the pile. When Reida noticed that the pixies were abandoning her, she decided to wait for ten seconds before looking over her shoulder -- nobody there -- and then began the painful process of extracting the three arrows from her burning rear. To find the last one she had to rummage around in her own butthole for what seemed like ages, and disattaching it from her interior was excruciatingly painful. Surveying the rest of her body for damage, she discovered with acute embarassment that her olive-colored snatch was completely bare and smooth -- like a child's. Blushing, she ran a finger across the soft mound -- "Yeow!" -- but it was still sore from the harsh treatment. Finally she got up on her knees, and tried to stand up -- at which point she found that her ankles wouldn't obey her. Looking over her shoulder, she was shocked to discover that they had somehow been tied up with vines! To make things even worse, some invisible force was forcing her arms to cross themselves behind her back, and a second later more vines had materialized out of nowhere and tied up her wrists in a similar manner. "H-h-help! It's w-witchcraft!!" She stammered, but fell silent when she heard a distant neighing, followed by the clattering of hooves. A moment later, a magnificent white unicorn came bursting into the clearing -- with the five pixies following right behind it -- and stood scrutinizing the naked bounty huntress. Then, without warning, it lowered its horn and came charging right at her! Reida thought her heart was going to stop. She would be skewered like a goose on a spit! But just as it seemed that her moment of reckoning had come, the powerful horn hooked itself under the ropes tying her wrists together and flung her body into the air, so that she landed stomach-first on the unicorn's back with such force that it knocked the wind out of her. "Do you remember the way, Valaii?" one of the pixies asked. "Of course I do. How could I possibly forget?" Valaii answered with a malicious smile. * * * Horatius the archmage was jolted awake by a loud pounding on the door. The noise sounded funny -- almost as if it had been made by a tiny body flinging itself against the door rather than a hand. He dressed in seven seconds (which was still two seconds slower than a master of telekinesis ought to have mustered -- clearly he was getting old) and made his way to the door, grumbling to himself. Imagine his surprise when, after opening the door, he discovered that coarse unpleasant bounty hunter girl he had hired sitting completely naked and neatly tied up with vines on his front porch. Her hair was a mess and her face was beet red with shame and humiliation. Five pixies, including his very own Pooky, were floating in the air close behind her. And, for some reason, a unicorn was grazing a bit further off. "Loki's fiddlesticks! I asked a wench to bring me a pixie, not a pixie to bring me a wench!" he groaned. "I'm not going to be kept in a cage any longer," the pixie hissed. "But since you didn't listen to me last time, I'm going to make you an offer that no human could possibly refuse: I would like to buy my freedom." "Hah! *You* would like to *buy* your freedom? With what, pray tell?" "This human." The old wizard began laughing so hard that his glasses nearly fell off. "This human? Hah! HAH! Humans are a dime a dozen, Pooky! If I'd wanted this air-headed little thief in my possession I would have cast a mind control spell on her the moment I met her. Merlin's girdle, what makes you think I could possibly be interested in this rude, unwashed, half-witted, uncultured, pudding-breasted street wench?" "How are the gremlins doing?" the pixie asked abruptly. "Now what would... hrm, making a lot of ruckus as usual. Why do you ask?" the wizard muttered. "Perhaps they need a new playmate?" Suddenly it dawned on Horatius what the pixie was suggesting. A year ago, the wizard had acquired a flock of gremlins that had turned out to be unexpectedly difficult to control. Day and night they were screaming and fighting in their cage, and soon enough Horatius discovered the probable cause: there were no females in the group. Since gremlins were exceptionally difficult to get hold of, for a while the wizard had employed young human girls to serve as their "playmates", intending for these girls to pacify the creatures merely with their presence. But despite the exceptionally good pay, no girl had ever stayed on the job longer than two days, citing intolerable sexual harassment and rough sexual advances as the reason. "Now that is an interesting proposition... I could keep her indefinitely... keep the gremlins happy... no more noise... Very well, pixie, I will agree to that. Please step inside so we can finalize the deal." * * * A moment later, Reida found that she was no longer sitting on the porch of the wizard's house, but somewhere else entirely. The rough wood under her smarting tail had been replaced with cold stone, which acted like balm on her sore bum. Her wrists and ankles were no longer tied. Behind a door consisting of thin metal bars she could see the wizard and the pixie observing her, like two tourists gawking at a zoo animal. Suddenly, a hideous troll-like creature came shuffling up to her from a hole in the wall. It was less than half her height, but its arms and legs looked powerful nonetheless. It held out a paw and touched her on the nose. "Hey you," Reida whispered to the creature, "if you help me get out of here I'll give you something really nice- huh?" While she was speaking, the gremlin had placed its filthy paws on her naked breasts and begun to rub them lovingly, squeezing her soft tit-flesh through its fingers. "Um, OK, sure," Reida mumbled, blushing faintly, "I'll let you do that. Touch my boobs all you like, but remember, you have to help me get ou- HEY!" Suddenly, the gremlin grabbed her by the hand and began dragging her toward the opening in the wall. While this happened, other gremlins began appearing out of the shadowy corners of the cage, all of them yapping and shrieking around her. "All right, you can all touch my boobs! But as I said- YEOWW! Stop that!" The gremlin had given her a sharp smack on the ass, and was now pointing toward the hole in the wall. When Reida didn't do anything, he gave her another spank on the tush -- this time much harder. "OOWW! Hey, LISTEN! It's VERY bad manners to slap a girl on the butt, and if you EVER want to touch my boobs again, you'd be- EEEKK!" The other gremlins were now joining in, shrieking and pointing toward the hole in the wall, and all the while raining down smacks on the naked woman's quickly reddening buns. Suddenly one of the gremlins lunged forward and placed his paw on Reida's unprotected vagina, rubbing it gently with his thumb and index finger. "N-n-no, you CAN'T touch me there! My ladyparts are off-limits- YEEEOOWWW!!" As the slaps grew harder and more frequent, and poor Reida felt her bottom hotten up quicker than that of a naughty schoolgirl bent over the teacher's desk, the brunette eventually had no choice but to go down on all fours and begin to crawl through the small opening. And this was the last that Valaii saw of the disgraced bounty hunter -- two slender legs, a wiggling olive-colored bottom and a shaved snatch being forced through a hole in the wall with smacks and pinches, and eventually pushed all the way inside when a hard gremlin foot gave the hesitant rump a final stomp. The gremlins all followed her inside, licking their lips and rubbing their erect members. "Marvellous," the old wizard cooed. "That piece of tail will keep them occupied for a while. And you, pixie, I suppose you want some reward as well?" "Only that which you had promised her," Valaii said. "I want to know what this 'money' feels like." "You don't miss much, do you? Very well, then, I seem to remember something about a thousand gold pieces, hrm, now where did I...?" * * * And so the five pixies left the wizard's home and set out the way they came, all of them hovering near the ground in order to drag the massive sack of coins that Valaii now legally owned. "Where did you have in mind?" "Just by the bridge, over there." The pixies dragged the sack all the way up to a nearby bridge overlooking a muddy creek. Then, nodding to each other, they unceremoniously dumped the sack of gold coins into the water, watched it sink to the bottom and then began their journey back to the forest, laughing and cheering all the way home. THE END