In his sleep, Tamsin dreamed of home. A wide stretch of dazzling green field. The sun golden in the far distance. But it turned red as it sank, darker as it disappeared behind the horizon. The green field darkened too. No longer green and springy under his flank but cool, hard, misshapen.

It felt like it was moving now. Falling away from underneath it. It was a millipede again, a raging torrent of water, a crumbling bridge. He could hear the stone disappearing. Falling away. Scattering against the halls of the dungeon far below and echoing down the drop.

He was falling too. Tumbling and spinning, his stomach lurching, his head whipping back at a painful… or what should have been painful, angle.

But then Tamsin was awake. The ground wasn’t giving way underneath him, he wasn’t falling. It was cool and dark, yes, the dungeon a little lonely for a courser who thrived off of the company of others. Perhaps he would find companionship soon.

Although Tamsin had broken up the battle of the beetles, convinced them to see the error of their ways, they had not stayed with him. He’d slept in a cool alcove, bundled up against the chill on the dungeon, a beetle with their glittering crystals and shiny horns on either side of his head. When he’d awoken, they’d both gone.

Quietly, just to himself, because there was no one else to know anyway, Tamsin had hoped that they may have returned. Peeking open one eye, he found that was not the case.

“Ah well,” Tamsin said, sighing, shaking his head as he stood, arching his back as he stretched, standing from his curled up position. “M’sure Rolo and Bolo… are… fine…”

“Wait... Huh?” Finally, sleep shaken from his eyes, Tamsin blinked dazedly at his equipment strewn haphazardly around his little camp. Not because of the haphazard nature, Tamsin had, of course, left the camp that way the night before, but because everything sparkled.

“What the…” Tamsin said, horrified, as he nosed through his belongings and tugged out his blanket with his teeth. A large pattern in sharp little pieces of coloured glass had been stuck onto the thing. Rendering the blanket both ugly and virtually unusable. It scratched and caught uncomfortably on his hide even now, let alone with this ridiculous, grinning monkey on the side.

A chittering laugh sounded from above him, and he dodged a few tiny seeds that were tossed his way. Hanging over an outcropping, two tiny woven baskets filled with fruit and seeds in their hands, chewing away at the snack, were two brightly coloured little fairies.

“You’ve ruined my stuff!” Tamsin called aghast, scowling up at them, and turning over another pile to find a pack of his rations had been opened. Shiny, sparkling stone and glass had now been added to the hard tack and vegetables.

The fairies threw more tiny food at him, cackling. "We’ve improved it!” They sang, their gossamer wings shimmering behind them as they took to the air, blew some raspberries at Tamsin, and disappeared into a crevice.

With a grumble, Tamsin flopped back down onto his lumpy bedroll, poking through his things to see what else had been bedazzled by the dungeon’s pixies. A handful of other pieces of his gear had too found their way into sparkling enlightenment at the end of the pixies hands, although not all of the pieces were ruined entirely. Just… varying degrees of pretty in equal measure with the ugly.

Resting back down again, Tamsin sighed, catching a glimpse of himself in the shiny backing of a discarded chanfron tumbled in a corner. The tips of his ears sparkled with pale silver gems. He flicked them, curiously, before laughing. It echoed off the walls of the empty tunnel.

“‘Spose that’ll do,” Tamsin murmured, pleased, watching his ears sparkle in his reflection.