Prompt from adventure:

You just found out that you have been brutally lied to.  The mission you were sent out on was meant to keep the best fighter occupied while the enemies attacked the realm.  Is it too late to still turn the tale in favor of the magic realm or will this be the last of your magical adventures?

***

It was an overcast morning that Raga found the fey's bowl upside down on her doorstep, in its usual place.  She frowned, straightening, dropping the spoon back into the honey jar.  "Decided to move on, have you?"  She'd grown rather used to the fey's help, despite her better judgment, and frowned again in annoyance that she'd be disappointed by their departure.  Regardless, she put the honey away, tied her shawl more tightly against the cool air, and collected her spindle and distaff from beside the door in preparation to go watch her sheep.

The bowl was in the center of the doorstep now.  It was still upside down, but there was something laid atop it.  Raga crouched down, squinting at it: a pebble, worn smooth as an egg, and a bit of algae, still dripping river water.  "Something's by the river?" she asked the air, but there was no response.  There never was.  Raga sighed, tucking her distaff under her arm as she straightened, beginning to pull a thin twist of wool from it already, the motion second nature by now, requiring barely any thought, and soon she was making her way across the hills and toward the river, her favorite drop spindle of snakewood and whalebone whirling away beneath her restless hands as she went.

The river burbled and rushed, pine needles pushed along its edges, grasping algae trailing tendrils from the roots of trees dipping their toes in the water.  It was cooler still beneath their shade, a slight chill in the air, and the birds were quieter.  Raga looked in the water, but there was nothing but river stones, tossed smooth and round.  She looked along the bank, but there was nothing but mud and roots and grasses.  She looked up in the trees, but there was nothing but pinecones and a chittering squirrel.

"What is it you want me to see?"

There was no answer.  There never was.

She looked again, but still found nothing, and so, with a sigh, turned and trudged out of the woods and back over the hills, past her cottage and toward her—open pasture.  The gate stood wide open, like she'd never leave it, like she hadn't left it.  A few of the sheep were close to it, looking nervously back at the others, who remained huddled at the back.  "And what is all this?" Raga roared, with a voice she hadn't had in decades, and the sheep quailed before her, and there was a squeak, something diving behind them.

"I feed you, give you a contract, and you steal from me?"  Raga's hands worked the faster, the spindle a blur as it danced.  With a sharp tug, she pulled the yarn free of the distaff's wool, snatching the spindle from the air and hurling it out over her sheep, one end of the yarn still in her hand as the rest unraveled in a delicate net, and she pulled it tight with a flick of her wrist, and walked across the grass to see what she caught.

The fey was person-shaped, in the way a doll is person-shaped, with skin like bark and the yellow tuft of a dandelion where hair should be.  Raga crouched down, peering closely at it to make out its face: a rough crack for a mouth and two eyes like polished seeds, pure black.  It shrank back from her, but the net had it caught, and it couldn't move far.  "I said I don't feed those who help themselves."

A sheep baaed.  Raga looked up with a frown.  The sheep had one leg forward, but was pulling back toward the rest as though it had caught its foot in something.  Scooping up the netted fey, she tied the leading yarn around her waist like a belt, the fey clinging to the strands of its prison as it looked out in fear, and walked slowly toward the distressed sheep.  Its foot wasn't caught in anything, but the nothing had caught it quite firmly.  Raga lifted the netted fey a little from her side.  "I have your friend, and I'll have you too, if you don't show yourself soon.  A contract's been broken, and I'll have my recompense."

It wasn't nothing at all, but a little man made of grass and pine needles with shimmering wings like a mayfly and a tiny crown of dandelion seeds and little red berries.  He flew up to stand on top of the sheep's head, wings fluttering every now and again to keep his balance as the sheep shifted nervously, and stared imperiously up at Raga.  "No contract's been broken," the fey said in a thin, high voice partway between a summer breeze and a mosquito's whine.  "I have come to claim what's mine."

"My sheep are not yours."

"Mine is the sky, and all it contains, and all that belongs there, and these," the fey gestured dismissively to the sheep, "have wandered off, and I have come to collect them."

"These," Raga said with one eyebrow raised, "are sheep, not clouds.  But I shall make you a deal.  You can have all of the sheep who will follow you out of the pasture by sundown, and good luck to you with them.  But if you can't get any of them, then you will leave, and you will leave me alone, and you will leave this one alone, too," she said with a gesture toward the netted fey still at her waist.  "I've a sense you ordered it to help you, but we still have a contract between us."

The fey prince huffed, wings fluttering with annoyance, but agreed, and Raga went and sat on the fence and spun new yarn and watched as the fey prince huffed and puffed and yelled and whined and pleaded and cried and the sheep didn't move an inch, stubborn, temperamental beasts that they are, and finally the last of the sun's light faded from the sky and with a shout and a stomp, the fey prince vanished, and didn't bother them again.