There once was a forest fae named Chepi. She wandered the woods and tended to the fauna within. One day, she found a small child stumbling through the brush. While children would often come through and explore the outskirts of the forest, this one seemed scared. She decided to take him to the nearest human settlement. For two days she carried him in her arms, feeding him berries and giving him fresh water to drink along the way. 

When she got near the border, she saw officers and flashing lights. Perfect, she thought, she'll drop him off in the safe hands of his people. Yet, things would not be so easy for her.

A small dart pinched her neck before she could even walk past the tree line. She barely had time to safely rest the sleeping child on the ground before fatigue overtook her. The last thing she heard was voices shouting unfamiliar phrases from behind an alternating blue and red haze.

When she woke, she was in a concrete room held together with metal bars. Fear enveloped every sense. There was no soil, no trees, not even the comforting hugs of the wind. 

After what felt like days, she was taken to trial, a human trial, in a court where she had no concept of the rules she had to follow or the laws they obeyed. 

A tall man in black robes told her she was accused of kidnapping the child and that her innocence was going to be debated before a jury of people she didn't know. A sigh of relief left her: after all, she was guilty of no crime.

However, what she didn't know was that the court thought she was a demon. While demons lived by humans, they held no inherent malice, but that didn't stop the fear that they would turn on them at any second, like in the stories of old. It was this fear that damned Chepi from the start. She just didn't know it.

She was found guilty of her false crime and sentenced to life in prison, which sounds far worse to someone whose lifespan is far greater than any human's and who doesn't know that "life" usually means only about twenty years. In the end, it didn't matter if her sentence was twenty or two hundred: she had done nothing wrong. But her cries and pleas fell on apathetic ears as she was dragged out of the courthouse.

In prison, she could feel herself draining away. The demonic inmates were intimidating, but the guards were even scarier. Worst of all, there was barely any plant life. There was almost none inside the building, and the outside area was desolate as well. It only had dried dirt that could practically be considered sand. Trees and ferns were in her sights, but far out of her grasp beyond the barbed wire. She was targeted almost immediately. 'Fresh meat' was a term she was taught on her first day. A particular group found enjoyment in beating her to the ground when she was on laundry duty. 

The plants within the prison wilted with her, but no one gave this much attention. They simply replaced them with plastic replicas, further distancing Chepi from what gave her life. After only three months, she was completely shattered inside and out.

Then one day something happened that everyone took notice of. An inmate was missing from morning chow time. When the guards went to their cell, they were found dead. Flowers had grown seemingly from their throat, muffling their screams and suffocating them in the night. 

It only got worse. Not two days later, a guard, who was known to be prone to power abuse, was found in the warden's office. Roots weaved in and out of their spine and held their arms in place. They looked like they were crawling with a hand outstretched towards the door. Their face was frozen in a contorted scream. Small vine-like plants with symmetrical leaves dripped from their throats.

No one knew what was happening, and the prison went into lockdown. 

After three days, Chepi's tormentors regained their focus on her while they were in the yard. Despite the guards now being on high alert, they never stopped fights between inmates unless they got out of hand. But something was different. Chepi made no complaints or yells in protest. She just stood there, her arms pulled to her sides, taking blow after blow to her stomach. 

Something interesting happened after the ring leader started punching Chepi’s face. The inmate’s hands began to hurt. When she looked down, she saw sprouts digging into her flesh from the blood smears on her knuckles. She screamed in pain as the tendrils wove in and out of her hands and down her arm, ripping her muscles and cracking her bones.

As she dropped to the ground, the other two inmates lost their hold on Chepi. The broken fae wiped her face before kneeling before the injured prisoner. She gingerly cupped the crying inmate's cheek in her hand like a mother would to her disturbed child. After a moment, more fauna sprouted from the blood covering Chepi's hand and rooted itself into the inmate’s horrified face.

Finally, the shock faded and the guards kicked into gear. They surrounded the group as the ringleader suffered a loud, slow death--blossoms erupting from her eye sockets and vines snaking their way under her skin, ripping them from her muscles. 

Chepi hadn't bothered to smother her throat this time. She wanted to hear every one of the inmate's cries - each moment in proportion to the amount of pain and suffering the aggressors had given others. At this point, she clung to no more illusions. There was no more holding back.

#

It would be days before anyone would check in on the prison. Sunday was when the next food shipment came in. The delivery boys arrived to a musty prison filled with corpses of all ilk, their mummified poses of agony creating the world’s most sadistic greenhouse. 

Sitting in the middle of it all was Chepi. People had failed her. She trusted no one anymore. The only thing she trusted was the plants that surrounded her. The world would be so much better if animal life gave way to plants. If only they would trade opposable thumbs for beautiful flowers, the ability to speak for the ability to produce oxygen, and the penchant for cruelty for the calmness of swaying in the wind. Intelligence gave people the choice to see others as less than them. Things would be better for everyone if they all disappeared into the grass. After all, it was going to happen eventually, why not start now?