Fairy fight

Cassidy Claypole couldn't sleep. A tapping noise coming from the back garden was keeping her awake.
"I bet it's cats, or foxes, or rats," she huffed as she folded her arms and thumped them down against her chest. "If it is I'll turn dad's hose on them and douse them with water. That's what they'll get for keeping me awake."
In a fit of defiance, she yanked the duvet off her, pulled on her slippers and dressing gown and stomped down the stairs.
"Wretched animals, keeping me awake," she mumbled, as she unlocked the kitchen back door.
Standing on the threshold Cassidy squinted through the still and silent darkness, looking for the culprits but couldn't see a thing. All there was before her was trees, bushes and flowers. Dormant and immobile as though frozen in time.
'Nothing,' she thought. 'But that tapping noise is bound to happen again.'
TAP, TAP, TAP.
'There, I knew it,' she thought. 'And it's coming from my geraniums.'
"How dare they?" she sneered. "I'll show 'em."
Cassidy grabbed the end of the coiled hose and pulled, unravelling it as she crept toward the explosion of yellow flowers growing at one end of her mother's flower bed. But just as she was about to turn the hose on, she spotted, only briefly, a pair of tiny white feet poking out from beneath the foliage. Then they disappeared.
Cassidy got such a fright she leapt backwards. Her breath caught in her chest.
"Tiny white feet, tiny white feet," she mumbled as she stared, goggle-eyed, at her flowers.
Whatever it was hiding beneath the canopy of petals wasn't as startled as Cassidy. It peeled back the leaves and stepped forward, as bold as a shiny copper penny. Cassidy peered closer. It was a tiny person, pale and thin, with shimmering white skin and hands covered in dirt.
"Who are you?" asked the tiny person in a deep, gravelly voice.
"I could ask you the same question," replied Cassidy.
"I asked first."
"I'm Cassidy. Cassidy Claypole and I live here."
"I'm Palian and I don't. It's nice to meet you," he said, bluntly before disappearing amongst the leaves again.
Cassidy rushed toward her flower bed and rummaged through the geraniums, searching for Palian.
"Palian, Palian," whispered Cassidy before locating the mischievious imp grubbing about through soft lumps of earth beside the stem of one of her flowers. "What are you doing?"
"Searching," replied Palian as he continued to dig though the mud.
"Searching for what?"
Palian stood up and thrust his hands on his hips. "My wings of course," he snapped, as though Cassidy ought to have known it.
"Are you...a fairy?" she asked.
"Not at the moment I'm not," said Palian as he clambered over mounds of earth so he could dig in a different spot. "Oh where are they?"
"A fairy without wings. Doesn't that mean you've been bad, if you lose your wings?" enquired Cassidy.
Palian stopped digging. He stomped towards her with a deep frown across his forehead and his rosy-pink cheeks puffed out.
"What do you mean? Bad?" he said. "I've not been bad."
"You have in my books," said Cassidy, indignant. "You've kept me awake and you've been digging round my flowers."
"Well how else am I supposed to search for my wings? Magically wish them onto my back."
Cassidy shrugged her shoulders. "Sounds like a good idea to me."
"Well it doesn't work that way."
"I had no idea they were detachable anyway. I thought fairy wings were, like, stuck to your skin or something."
"Don't be stupid," sneered Palian as he sat down, breathless on a smooth stone. "They have to be detachable. We don't just have one pair you know."
"No I didn't know that," said Cassidy as she sat on the bricks bordering her flower bed and pulled her dressing gown tighter round her body.
"Oh yes, for different conditions you see. When it's snowy we have heated wings that melt the snow if it lands on them. That way we don't get weighed down. When it's sunny we have reflective ones so they don't heat up and when it's rainy we have ones with lots of tiny holes in them so the water drains away."
"So what ones did you have on today?"
"My favourite ones. My aerodynamic ones," Palian sighed. "They cost me five gold nuggets. That's why I took them off, to stop them from getting damaged. Top of the range they are. I won the Annual Fairy Dash with them on. Everyone was really jealous, especially my cousin, Damate. I could see his eyes were green."
"Envious eh?" said Cassidy.
"Yeah. He's not used to losing races."
"And was your cousin with you, today?"
"He couldn't have done it. Fairies don't steal, we give."
"Is that what you were doing today, giving?"
"As a matter of fact I was. Your pretty flowers have come to the attention of our Floral Guardians. They're so impressed with how well they've been tended they assigned me to protect them."
To be continued...