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I don't know if proud is the right word for how I feel about any piece of The Fairy's Daughters, but I'm irrationally fond of it. It's an unfinished retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" set in a fantasy version of L.M. Montgomery's Prince Edward Island. I wrote it before I understood story structure, so it's ridiculously wordy, barely makes sense, and has paper-thin characters, but I still reread bits of it every so often because I rather like the world and because I am a bit proud of how I twisted some pieces of the fairy tale.
Here's the scene where the soldier gets the invisibility cloak from a sylph (who has taken a transparent human form in this scene).
Jem tried to hide his disappointment. “An invisibility cloak?” he asked. “It could be useful, but...the girls are all half-fairy. They can make invisibility cloaks, and they can sense when one is being worn.”
The sylph smiled. “Oh, this is far more than some fairy trick. Try it. You'll see what I mean.”
Jem took the cloak from her outstretched hand. The fabric felt cool and smooth, and seemed to flow, like holding a piece of the wind. He undid the clasp and put the cloak around his shoulders. He put the hood over his head and fastened the clasp at his throat.
His body dissolved into a breath of wind. His consciousness hovered above the ground, without form, though he retained a sense of where he ended and the rest of the air began. With a thought, he willed himself forward, and rose and fell and darted around the hillside. It was movement without a body, with none of the clumsiness of feet and legs and aching lungs, leaving nothing but pure, thrilling motion. He dove to the grasses and darted between individual blossoms, then rose higher than the treetops, feeling the air that was him expand with glorious freedom.
Then he darted back to the ground and hovered next to the sylph, whose eyes had never left him for a moment. Those eyes sparkled. “Very good. You see what I mean?”
Jem wanted to answer, but his voice had blown away with his body. He suddenly realized how helpless his new state was. He had placed on the cloak, but how could he possibly remove it? He didn't even have the voice to ask.
The sylph understood even without words. “You know how to change back,” she said. “You just have to concentrate. Think of how you'd remove an ordinary cloak.”
Jem thought of the arms he no longer had, and suddenly sensed them, as the air at the edge of his form gathered into two arm-like shapes. The rest of the air flowed into a shape like his human body, and he felt the clasp of the cloak by the base of his throat. One arm grasped the pin, even now that it was nothing more than a piece of the air, and undid the clasp.
His body returned, and he fell to the ground in a heap. He watched his chest expand and collapse with each breath, felt the beat of his heart and the thrum of blood through his fingertips, and felt more real than he ever had.
He sat up and ran his hands over his arms and face and through his hair, marveling at the warmth and solidness of his form. With shaky legs, he stood, and took a few moments to remember how to walk, one foot passing by another. After his few moments as the wind, his body felt heavy and clumsy and hardly natural.
He picked up the cloak from where it had fallen and draped it over his arm. He gazed at the sylph in open-mouthed amazement. Even now that he had his voice, he couldn't think of words to put in it. “That...that was...” He finally chuckled. “That was far more than an invisibility cloak.”
“It is,” she said, and ran translucent fingers over the cloak. “And it's one of the most powerful things I've ever given to a human. It makes you a little less than a sylph—invisible, unheard, intangible. You're undetectable by all the senses...including magic.”
