The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

envy.
    To begin with, it was carpeted with quite the most beautiful rug that Elena had ever seen, the sort of thing that many people would put on a wall, not a floor. It looked like a meadow of the deepest green, dotted with flowers, and was softer underfoot than kitten-fur. The furnishings were of that same old-fashioned style of the rest of the house, but not even Madame Klovis would have discarded these in favor of the newer styles, for they were carved so beautifully that every piece was a masterwork of art. The twin wardrobes were made to look like castles covered with vines so realistic that Elena half imagined that they had grown there instead of being carved. The dressing-table resembled the stump of a giant tree, supported by carved, sinuous, bare roots. The chair beside it was made in the form of a little throne of vines cradling a moss-green velvet cushion, and the divan beneath the window matched it. There were tapestries on the walls portraying a magical forest full of fantastic animals and birds, flowers such as she had never seen. The bed, curtained in heavy green velvet embroidered withthousands of flowers, with a counterpane to match, could have slept four comfortably. So perfectly was it appointed that the headboard had a candle sconce built into it at the right height for reading in bed, and there was a bookshelf already full of books beneath it. Robin stood anxiously in the middle of the room, her bundle at his feet. “Would you like me to unpack for you, Mistress?” he asked, as if he wasn’t entirely certain just how one did unpack.
    â€œOh, heavens no, Robin, thank you,” she told him quickly. “I’m quite used to waiting on myself.”
    â€œVery well, Mistress,” he replied, sounding relieved. “There’s a nightdress beneath your pillow. Good night, Mistress.”
    And before she could reply, he had whisked himself out, so quickly, he might have actually vanished.
    A nightdress beneath my pillow! This dream really was extraordinarily detailed! She set her bundle aside, and turned down the covers, revealing three magnificent goosedown pillows, encased in snowy white linen. And beneath the center one, there was, indeed, a nightdress, such as she had not worn since she was a child.
    Madame Klovis would have died of envy on the spot.
    It was made of pale green silk, tied at the neck and wrists with silken ribbons in a slightly deeper hue, and bordered at all hems with lace three inches deep, made of silk thread as fine as cobwebs. When Elena pulled off her coarse, workaday clothing and slipped it on over her head, it caressed her skin like a soft sigh, and felt so light and ethereal it was as if she was wearing nothing at all.
    She folded up her clothing and set it on the chair—evenif this was a dream, she was not going to start being untidy!—then climbed into the enormous bed. She sank into the feather mattress with a sigh, as the candles in the rest of the room, saving only the one in the sconce in the headboard, went out of their own accord.
    She reached at random for a book, and got something called The Naturall Historie of the Lives of Curious Beastes, which sounded impossibly dull. But—
    This is my dream. If I decide the book is going to be interesting, it will be!
    And so it was. The first “Beaste” in the book was the Unicorn, which evidently led a much more complicated life than she had ever imagined. For a start, it was only male Unicorns who were attracted to virgin maidens; females were only drawn to virgin, chaste men, which, the author observed, were more difficult to come by. “So it is of no usse, to even attempt the capture of the femalee of the species,” he concluded.
    He then went on to the courtship rituals of these shy creatures, and it was at that point that Elena found she was having a great deal of difficulty in keeping her eyes open.
    She had never fallen asleep in her own dream before—nevertheless,