Time is better as a Puppet (story)

Nephinae has been arguing with with her adopted son Jace recently in the little time she has spent with him, as they do not spend, by Nephinae's standards, enough time together. She is constantly worried about being a good mother to Jace even though she feels she is not very successful at that lately, as they do not have good communication, which makes Nephinae wonders if she is to blame or if all boys Jace's age are like that.

Nephinae remembers like it was yesterday when she first encountered Jace years ago, being a troubled street kid who spent his days doing petty crimes until Nephinae adopted him, however she had never been a mother before so she had no idea how to be a good mother and does what she can in a clumsy way, as clumsy as she is in her fairy duties since she is not usually a good fairy, she usually spends most of her time distractedly enchanting some people and transforming others into objects instead of spending more time investigating how to be a good mother or use her fairy powers for something better.

However, even though Nephinae doesn't seem to be trying hard enough to be a good mother, she can't help feeling frustrated at the thought of being a bad mother and try to think some kind of solution: Jace is growing up and lately he is spending time with a lot of girls he goes to hang out with and Nephinae can't help feeling jealous that Jace has time for those girls but not for her. One of these girls, Lani, is the one that Jace spends the most time with lately, which makes Nephinae pay special attention to Lani to keep her from hanging out with Jace so much. Nephinae even tries to reproach Jace about how all the time he spends with Lani seems excessive to her, without getting to convince him to understand. However, one day while Nephinae was upset after Jace argued with her before going out, someone knocked on the door, so Nephinae proceeds to open it.

[Drawing 1]

To Nephinae's good fortune, the one who came to visit was Lani, who had no idea that Jace had left the house while doing some shopping. So Nephinae realizes that this is a situation she can't waste. On the one hand she can't help but feel jealous and can't quite hide it as she meets Lani face to face for the first time, normally Nephinae had known about Lani from what Jace had told her about her, but had never taken due care to get to know the girl in question.

On the other hand, Nephinae understands why Jace spends so much time with that girl, who shows to be quite cute and nice, even with Nephinae herself when she can't hide her discomfort at Lani's visit. Nevertheless, Lani greets Nephinae and she awkwardly returns Lani's greeting while receiving her with her arms crossed hoping that she leaves as soon as possible, even though she is thinking at that moment how to distract or get rid of Lani so even though Nephinae does not like Lani's presence, she knows that the best thing is to let her go into the house to wait for Jace while Nephinae thinks of some plan that will allow her to finish Lani or get her away from Jace. At the end of the day, Nephinae feels jealousy for not receiving attention from Jace and she cannot control this jealousy, so the need to think of a plan to keep Lani's attention away is stronger than her discomfort to receive her there or derived from all this atypical situation in general, so Nephinae invites Lani to go into the house while she waits for Jace, to which Lani accepts.

[Drawing 2]

Lani, even though she is always a good person and not so bad-minded, can't help but notice Nephinae's discomfort with her presence, so she hopes to try to make her like her as she enters Nephinae and Jace's house. On the other hand it can't help but seem to Lani somewhat strange and suspicious that Nephinae is leading her to a deep area of the house, when anyone would think that the living room of any house is closer to the entrance and not so far away and after crossing several corridors. Finally they arrive in front of a door where Nephinae tells Lani that she can wait patiently for Jace there, so Lani enters the mysterious dark room behind the door.

Once Lani crosses the door she can't see anything inside the room although she does hear some strange sounds of something thin moving violently and cutting the wind (so to speak), then when Lani turns on the light she finds a big surprise: a violent mob of ribbons moving violently like tentacles and going quickly towards her.

When Lani tried to evade the nooses and run towards the door, she quickly collided with the wall as if the door had disappeared, while the nooses were rapidly approaching Lani's limbs. Then she tried to destroy and dodge the ribbon attempts as much as she could but for every ribbon she cut, they turned into two autonomous ribbons which multiplied the number of ribbons she had to fight against, not to mention that these ribbons were getting faster and faster and attacked more and more insistently to try to bind Lani's limbs, as if these ribbons were intelligent or were controlled by some mind more intelligent than those simple ribbons could have (assuming that a ribbon was self-aware of itself).

Finally, Lani is caught by the ribbons being bound by her wrists, her ankles and her torso, while she tries to struggle even though it is useless, as these magical ribbons are stronger than her, or so it seems when they subdue her all together. Just when Lani expected the bindings to be the only one of her problems, thinking how to free herself from them, from her extremities where the bindings tied her and subdued her, a layer of a shiny and rigid material like plastic starts to expand, being immobilized with a forced smile on her face.

[Drawing 3]

Hours later, Nephinae was playing with her new toy, a puppet, she had finally figured out how to proceed when some girl was grabbing Jace's attention and take him away from her. Now Lani is so vulnerable, small and helpless, thinks Nephinae, as she pulls on the ribbons making Lani dance, who only smiles with a blank stare into infinity.

Hours later, when Jace arrived home, at dinner time, Nephinae shows Jace his new toy: now whoever wants to play with Jace will have to be that way, being Nephinae's puppet, and so she will never again be excluded from Jace's social life, she comments while smiling in a macabre way and while Jace worries seriously about Nephinae's mental health, who shows him Lani shrunk in her fist turned into a puppet, which leads him to wonder if Lani is well too.