"Hey, Sarah!"
I rolled over, with a low growl, to see who dared address me at such a time. I was lying upon a picnic table, enjoying the winter sun, and about to delve into a wonderful daydream. Squinting into the dim sunlight, I reached into one of my many pockets and extracted my sunglasses, donning them before sitting up to find the boy who was accosting me.
"Ah, the lovely Sarah," the boy said, sitting on the bench next to me. It was Alex; he was in my math class. He had, unfortunately, been in all my math classes for the past two years, and had also been attempting to woo me most of that time.
"I can tell by the epithet you've found the correct Sarah," I said. "I take it you've been looking for me?"
"Right!" he said, with a grin that indicated he was oblivious to what my tone of voice was implying. "Faithless Avatar is going to be in town this weekend, and I—"
I cut him off. "You were wondering if I, the lovely Sarah, would honour you by allowing the humble Alex to accompany me to their show." I crossed my legs and wiggled my toes. "I have a faire to go to this weekend. Sorry."
"Oh… I see," he said, looking down at the ground forlornly.
"It's unfortunate, really, since I enjoy their music," I said. That forlorn look was just so sad. "If you act quickly, though, you can probably find someone who can manage to accompany you."
With a slow nod, he stood up and walked off. He seemed like a cool guy. Maybe we would be friends if he stopped hitting on me. I lay down upon the table once more and closed my eyes, attempting to call back the lovely daydream I was about to descend into. It was going to be about a forest, and sunset, and magic. It was going to involve walking, and gates, and stars. It was going to star me, and I was going to have silver hair, and I wouldn't need to take energy from anyone else because I would have enough, and the stars and the matrices would help me when I didn't. But it wouldn't come back to me.
I sighed and hopped off the table, grabbing my satchel and slipping it over one shoulder. It's not that I really mind taking energy from people; I just don't understand what I need it for. I don't have any magic, I do sleep (albeit early in the morning, between dawn and math class), and there aren't any gates I need to open up for me. Although, I can see in the dark, I don't get cold, and I am considerably better at math than the other nineteen-year-old girls at my college. Sometimes I think I understand the underlying principles better than my professor, and I just need him to tell me what new permutation to mathematics calculus brings.
I looked around, raising out of my thoughts just enough to take notice of my surroundings. Apparently, I had made egress from the park proper into the woods on its western edge. It was nothing to be concerned about; I knew these woods fairly well. I often spent evenings here, because after the sun went down the hikers and the bikers stopped coming through. It was quiet, and peaceful, and lonely. Sometimes, though, the woods wouldn't be lonely, even though I knew no humans were around. It was during those times that I was the closest to thinking I might be crazy. I could hear someone whispering, and it sounded like it came from right behind me, or sometimes from someone perched on my shoulder. It felt like they were calling to me, but they didn't call me Sarah. The phantom whispers asked for a girl named Azurel, and somehow I knew I was the one they were looking for.
Tonight I could tell I wasn't alone, but it wasn't the phantom whispering, the calling that plagued me deep in the night, when it felt like the whole world was sleeping. It was more mundane, taking the form of footsteps crunching on the grass. It was getting cold enough, had been for the past week, for dew on the grass to freeze, transforming blades of grass into little frosted spikes. They didn't bother me; as I said I don't get cold, and they bend softly and quietly beneath my bare feet. I've just always had a knack for moving unseen and unheard, especially out in the woods. There was still perhaps half an hour of daylight left, so I assumed the footsteps I heard belonged to a hiker, trying to get their exercise in before night fell and the woods became dangerous. Everybody seems to assume that in the dark thieves and rapists form out of the ether to assault whoever happens to be in their way. Either they don't exist, or they avoid a fellow nocturnal predator.
Although I didn't feel threatened—for some reason I never do—I decided to look back and see who it was, mostly out of curiosity. Nobody was there. As soon as I turned, the footsteps stopped and the way behind me was empty. A slight shiver ran down my spine, as I figured that the owner of the footsteps must be following me. I took a few steps to my right, to get a different line of sight in that direction, and still didn't see anybody. Instinctively I looked around, although by all rights whoever it was shouldn't have been able to get any closer to me. As an afterthought I looked up, but nobody was in the branches of the trees, either. I did see that the sun had disappeared, though. Strange, since I had thought there was more daylight left. I shook my head, hard enough to toss some of my curls over my shoulders. I must have been imagining it, much as I imagine those whispering voices. I turned around and continued on my way, not bothering to remove my sunglasses. I could still see just fine. After a few more minutes I came onto one of the narrow dirt trails that snaked through the woods, connecting the park with the lake at the bottom of the hill. On a whim, which is how most of my nightly wanderings are decided, I followed it. The path didn't forge down the hill in a straight line, preferring to switch back and forth, covering considerably more ground than was necessary. I didn't forge down the hill in a straight line, either, as the areas between the paths here had fairly heavy underbrush. Despite the fact that my skirt would get tangled in it, one night I had accidentally stumbled into a fox's den; it bit my ankle before I was able to escape and I had no desire to repeat such an experience. As such, I simply followed the path.
At the bottom of the hill the woods and underbrush opened onto a grassy field, which was separated from the lake by a beach of small, smooth stones. I walked over to one of my customary sites, a fallen tree that made a rather excellent seat, and sat upon it, bringing my legs up to rest my feet on a patch of moss. My satchel I left on the ground next to me. The lake was rather beautiful at night, with the way the moon reflected off the dark water. On the other side of the lake were a few homes and it was early enough yet that their inhabitants had not thought to turn on their external lights. It was just me, darkness, and two moons—the one in the sky and its twin on the lake. Staring at the moon on the lake, I had almost lost myself in peaceful contemplation when I saw something that shocked me out of the meditation and caused me to pull my glasses off. It was gone now, but I could have sworn I had seen the reflection of the moon change colours to a pale blue. I must be tired—first I'm hearing things, and now the moon changes colour. I hopped off my perch on the tree and went through my satchel of many things, eventually pulling out a sleek black swimsuit. A swim, I felt, would do me some good. I changed into the swimsuit, taking care to put my clothes and glasses back into my satchel, and left my coat folded up on top of it, before skipping down to the shore. I'm not quite sure why I skipped, it just felt like fun. It had been a couple months since I last took time to swim in the lake, and I was a little excited about doing so again.
The water was cold, but it was lovingly so, wrapping me in its embrace much like the darkness of night was wont to do. I didn't shiver; it wasn't bothersome cold. But it was invigorating, delivering a slight shock to my body that I welcomed. I actively swam around for a bit, but eventually I found myself just floating on my back, somewhere near the centre of the lake. It was a beautiful night, and lying upon the surface of the water seemed like a lovely place from which to look up at the sky.
Clouds rolled in after some time, obscuring the moon and most of the stars. A small cluster defiantly remained visible, in a patch of sky that the clouds refused, or were unable, to cover. They looked almost familiar, as if they were a set of stars I gazed upon every night. They were winking, in that manner that stars do, and it felt almost as though they were talking to me. It felt like they missed me; like they were calling to me. And as I stared up at them, trying to figure out what that meant, the whispers returned.
"Azurel. Azurel, you are lost. You are lost and we miss you. We miss you and we need you. We need you, but you are lost. Come back to us, young Azurel. Young Azurel, wake up. The dream is a lie, and the lies make it real. Stop believing the lies and come back to us. Wake up."
Strangely enough, I did wake up. I woke up coughing. Okay, something's wrong. Assessment: I'm lying on the shore of the lake, bare legs still in the water. I'm still wearing the bathing suit I put on last night. Last night, I say, because the sun is up. Was I in the water all night? That would explain my shivering. As I sat up, I noticed a little girl, maybe ten years old, stood a few feet away, staring at me. When I turned my head to look at her, eyes squinted most of the way shut against the sunlight, she turned and ran. I stood, and made my way slowly back to where I had left my stuff. I was cold, a feeling a bit unfamiliar to me, and my whole body was sore. It seems like I'll get cold if I stay in the water all night. I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but I would guess it was around the time the stars started talking to me.
"Bloody hell!" I exclaimed when I got back to my fallen tree. My things were gone. I sighed, and crossed my arms over my chest, partly to try to still the shivering. Also because I was currently flat-chested and didn't want to be seen that way. With a quick glance to the sun, I could see it was near the time I had class. The school was only a few blocks from here, my house nearly a mile. I wouldn't be able to get home and back to school in time for math. With my bulges in all the wrong places like this I couldn't go to school, so with a bit of annoyed resignation I began the walk home.
The winter sun wasn't quite warm enough to dry me off very quickly, so I had to rely on a slow evaporation to get the lake's water off my skin. I felt almost dry about halfway home, although my swimsuit and hair were still a bit damp. Fortunately I wasn't shivering any more, although the soreness that permeated my muscles remained until I walked in the door, where I stopped with a start.
My satchel lay on the chair just inside the front door, with my trenchcoat folded up neatly (neater than when I left it) on top of it. Poking out of a sleeve was an index card. I retrieved it, and stared in puzzlement at the single word that was neatly printed on it:
believe
After a few minutes, I shook my head and let the card flutter to the floor. Staring at it like that was giving me a headache. What bothered me more was that whoever took my stuff from the lake brought it here for me with an enigmatic note. I felt rather startled, a little bit confused, and very sore. I needed a nice, warm, preferably long bath.
Life, fortunately, resumed going normally for me the rest of that week. Alex had been sweet enough (although I'm sure he didn't notice me rolling my eyes at him) to make a copy of the notes for the class I missed, and told me there was a test that Friday. I took it; I feel fairly confident that I did well.
It was at the renaissance faire that weekend that my life pulled the rug out from under me again. As usual, I was a faerie. There were five or six of us who all dressed up as faeries and harassed the "mortals" at the faire—glamourbombing, one of the girls called it. Given the weather, I was the only one in bare feet like a proper faerie. This was the first social group to accept me as a fellow girl, though, so I tried not to complain. Late Saturday night, when we were supposed to be frolicking about the camps bestowing random poetry on people who were more than likely trying to get some sleep, it decided to snow. It snowed at about half the winter faires, which was why the others complained about the costumes, so my fellow faeries were refusing to leave our tent. I went out anyway, since I don't get cold. Rather convenient, that.
I had a snowball in hand, ready to attack a few sleeping people, when I heard footsteps in the snow behind me. A lamp a few feet behind me cast the shadow of another winged figure. I turned towards her, feeling slightly confused.
"I thought you weren't going to join me," I began, but whatever I had planned to say after that fell out of my head when I saw the figure that stood behind me. It was a woman with faerie wings, although it wasn't one of my friends. She was in a dress and shoeless like me, but she had on colourfully striped stockings. She had a slightly ageless face, as though she could have been the age of my grandmother and still looked younger than me. There was a faint purple glow coming from her wings, but that, strangely, wasn't the part that bothered me the most. It was her eyes. Not only did they look unnatural—although I couldn't say how, exactly—but they seemed to look into me, as though they saw something inside me that I was valiantly concealing with my pale skin. There was questioning in those eyes, and understanding, and what looked a little bit like sadness.
"Azurel, why?" she asked me after what felt like much too long of her staring directly at my soul. Her voice was faint, like it came from a great distance. It also echoed slightly, or maybe it resonated with… something. She had an accent that sounded a bit like English or Irish, but also not quite like either. I was clearly still in shock from the sight of this woman and whatever she was doing to me, because I couldn't seem to come up with an answer. I wasn't even sure what she was asking me. As though she sensed my need for clarification, she continued. "You're hiding from us, from yourself. Why do you cause such pain to you?"
"Wait," I said, since something she said to me finally penetrated the haze that persisted around my mind, "who is Azurel? Why do you all keep calling me that?" Maybe it wasn't the best question. Who the hell are you people, also came to mind, as did, Why do I need all this energy? Why can't I kiss anyone, and why am I afraid to hug my friends for too long? But I didn't ask those. I just asked about this weird name they gave me. I stubbornly avoided wondering, Are you a faerie? Am I a faerie?
"It is your name, child. Your real name. Don't you remember anything?" She seemed so serene, so patient. As though I was a small child who needed her guidance, and she was used to dealing with the limitations of a child's knowledge.
"No, I…" I began, but trailed off faintly. I did remember things. It was going to be about a forest, and sunset, and magic. It was going to involve walking, and gates, and stars. It was going to star me, and I was going to have silver hair, and I wouldn't need to take energy from anyone else because I would have enough, and the stars and the matrices would help me when I didn't. I shook my head. What did that all mean? Who was I, if not Sarah? Azurel. That didn't mean anything. It may have been a name, but what did that tell me? Silver hair. Pointed ears. A capacity for passion greater than anything on this earth, and a capacity for sorrow equally deep. The ability to love another sentient to such a degree that no human could, to love one so much that being apart for too long caused physical pain. Wanderlust so powerful that an entire planet isn't far enough to walk. I felt faint. I could feel a headache coming on, like my mind was going to vaporise and escape through my eyes, then turn around and come back because it was lonely. My vision started to blur, and I think I was swaying unsteadily. Hopefully the other girl would catch me when I fell… She was standing closer to me than I remembered, I must be concerning her. With a strong effort, I tried my best to stand steadily. She smiled sadly and shook her head.
"No fear," she said, and then kissed me. It felt like a bright light exploded at the back of my eyes.
He half-turned back to me, laughing. "A bit slow today, Azurel?"
"You know how I am with sunlight. Let me chase you in the middle of the night, and—" Why am I chasing him? Who is that? Another bright flash, this one clearly in front of my vision.
The trees were beautiful tonight. I crouched in the branches of the tallest one, nearly at its top. The bridges and ladders didn't come up this high, because there were no other trees tall enough to connect to. With effort, I pulled my eyes away from them to look up at the stars. My eyes instantly alighted on a particular constellation, one that I had looked on every night since coming to this world. It was too familiar, after a few decades. I needed a new set of stars to look at. What? I've never seen that constellation before. Whose memories are these? The world flickered; it felt like the tree was going to fall away without me.
I fluttered my wings angrily. Sæna was being aggravating again. "Look, you were gone for a year, so I found a temporary toy while you were gone. I sent him away when I heard you were back through the gate." Why didn't she understand that I need someone with me? That didn't change how I feel about her. Is this… me? What kind of life did I live? Sæna's beautiful, ephemeral, pouting features melted away, washed away like a bucket of water had been tossed across a painting.
Rain. It had rained for a month straight. I didn't mind, it helped conceal the tears. Karel was such a lovely world, and now it was gone. How far would the corruption spread? How many worlds, how many people, would be wiped out by it? Why weren't our warriors fighting it? Sæna squeezed my hand reassuringly. It didn't help.
"I'm going away," I mumbled, half-concealed by the rain.
"I know," Sæna replied. She didn't even sound like she was crying. "Come back to me?"
"Of course. If I can." And with that, I stepped into the gate. I turned back, for one last look at her. It was hard to tell with the rain, but I think she was crying. Not for Karel, for me. And now I'm here.
I awoke to a concerned shout. "Found her!"
By the time I had gotten into a sitting position, a girl was kneeling in the snow next to me. It was Adrienne, quickly joined by the other girls. "Sarah, are you all right?" She was shivering. She had come looking for me barefoot. Two of the others had the presence of mind to grab their shoes from the tent; Allia, the youngest, was shoeless as well, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
I nodded. "Yeah… fine." Far from it, actually, but how could I tell them what happened? How would they understand? "You and Allia look cold. Let's get back to the tent." Allia and Adrienne helped me up. I waved off their support before someone got hurt.
"What happened?" Allia asked through chattering teeth. She was fifteen, and if her parents knew what she was here for, they probably wouldn't let her come. They were rather… conservative.
"I… I'm not sure," I said. "I think I should just lie down where it's warm." Adrienne gave me a look out of the corner of her eye; I don't think she believed me.
The next day we packed up camp and left, the other four seemed too concerned over me for us to play any parting tricks. I spent the ride home staring wistfully out the window; there was something rather engaging about the clouds today. Adrienne kept giving me weird looks, and probably figured I didn't notice. She had good reason to be concerned, I was rather concerned myself. But I couldn't tell her, I'm sure she would think me crazy. I almost thought I was crazy, but it felt so real, so right. And Sæna, waiting for me on some other world. How could I go home to her?
I would really like to be able to say the ride home was uneventful, but it wasn't. Allia took my hand to give it a comforting squeeze. It must have been a testament to my state of mind that I didn't pull away; I just turned my head to give her a reassuring smile. In only a few seconds, she gasped, clearly surprised to discover that I can't safely touch people. Her eyes widened and she gave me an accusing, betrayed look as though I do this sort of thing on purpose, and slumped over onto Adrienne's shoulder. I let out a startled squeak, and got out of the car. I think we were stopped at the time, a traffic light or something similar, since I don't remember getting hurt. It started raining, hard, as soon as my feet touched the pavement, and I ran. I didn't pay any attention to where I went, that I still had a short, tattered dress on and braids in my hair. I just had to get away.
"Sarah?"
I was muddy and wet. I sat on the roots of a tree, arms crossed over my chest. The rain had lessened in the few hours I was sitting here, but I didn't let it fade completely. Adrienne was holding my faerie dress out to me. I didn't take it. It made me feel dirty. It represented the taint of what I was inside, something that craved for more energy than a human body could create. Something that reached out to hurt one of my friends.
"Don't want it," I mumbled. It somehow didn't matter that I was naked; nobody ever came to this part of the woods. I rarely did. I'm surprised Adrienne found me. Weirdly, it didn't bother me for her to see me this way.
"You have to wear something." When I just sat there, not giving any response, she sighed. I heard a bit of a rustle of clothing from her direction, and when she sat on the roots next to me she was wearing my faerie dress. It was a little small on her. She dropped her clothes on the roots next to me. "Will you wear my clothes, then?" I gave a noncommittal grunt, but slowly started donning her clothes. Her jeans and sweatshirt were a little too big. Idly, I wondered why she had taken off her shoes. She must know I wouldn't want to wear them.
"How'd you know I was here?" I asked.
"Just lucky, I guess," she said with a shrug. "I know you like these woods, so I just wandered about until I found you. Allia's fine, by the way."
"Great, thanks. Are you done?"
"Sarah, what's wrong?" When I turned away she put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. I turned on her with a snarl and she shrunk away, nearly falling off her seat. She was obviously shaken, but persisted anyway, in almost a whisper. "Sarah, what happened at the faire?"
I shook my head. "You wouldn't get it."
"Then what happened to Allia?"
I growled, though this time she didn't move away from me. "I… do that sometimes. All the time, really. I don't want to talk about it. Actually, I don't want to talk. Can I be by myself?"
"I'm worried about you," she said, "and so are the others. Stay at my place tonight? We'll head to school together in the morning."
"I said I want to be alone," was my reply, in a tone that indicated I'd really prefer not to say it a third time.
"Please, Sarah. I'm worried. You don't even have to talk to me, just stay at my place tonight."
The rain stopped. "Fine." I stood, and Adrienne followed, walking home with me barefoot, carrying her sneakers. "It's comfortable, I can see why you do it," she said when I asked her about it.
Adrienne looked tired the next morning. "You're so sad when you sleep," she told me. "I worry about you, Sarah."
She insisted that I stay with her another night. That went on the entire week, and she eventually got used to how sad I apparently seemed when I slept. I seemed to be a bit of an influence on her, she wore her shoes less and less as the week went on. Friday that week she went to school barefoot, and stayed that way all day. We grew closer as time went on; that weekend she insisted I must stay with her another week and I agreed. She occasionally would wear my coat, and I started to carry a few things for her in my satchel of many things. She had been a good friend, but I didn't realise how compatible we were. By the end of the second week she asked me out. I realised I had to tell her.
"If you're crazy enough to be serious about that, you should really know something." She had been writing something, asking me idly to date her as though it was no big deal. I waited until she looked up from her journal. Suddenly, I started trembling. I started thinking about how silly it would sound, even though I knew it was absolutely correct. Adrienne would think I was crazy, and I'd leave her apartment and my best friend would be gone forever. But she was looking up at me expectantly, and I realised maybe it would be safe. "I'm a faerie."
"Oh? Neat," she said, and went back to writing. "Let me know on that other thing." I think she took it well.
Later that afternoon, she came into the spare room I had been using. "You're serious?"
"Huh?" I looked up from the book I was reading.
"The faerie thing. You meant that?" I nodded. So did she, and left the room. It was another few hours before she came back. "I've never made out with a faerie before."
"What?" I didn't look up this time; it was a rather interesting spot in the book.
"Look, this whole asking a girl out thing is a bit new to me. Is it supposed to take all day?"
I made a noncommittal noise and nodded slightly. She came over and sat on my bed next to me, snatching the book from my hands. "Gah, hey! What is it you wanted?"
She smirked. "First, for you to pay attention." I stuck my tongue out at her. "I said I would love for you to kiss me."
I couldn't meet her gaze. This is what I had been avoiding all day. "You know I can't," I said.
She lifted my chin with her finger, just touching me for a second, so that I was looking into her face. "I know. It's all right. We can still do this."
I nodded. My life was still strange. But good.
It was fun, living with Adrienne. Life seemed to return to normal, mostly. I started getting a pain between my shoulder blades that wouldn't go away, even when Adrienne declared herself the world's best girlfriend by giving me a backrub every evening. Seems I could touch her without anything awful happening; I have yet to figure out why. I often wonder if it's always been that way. We would go walking at night and looking up at the stars would fill me with a sense of longing, of loneliness, of having a deep empty spot inside me that I couldn't seem to fill. I started having nightmares of pain, death, and destruction. Entire worlds swallowed by an all-consuming darkness, and it felt like it was looking for me. I would often wake up with a scream or crying, and Adrienne would be there to console me, a sad look in her eyes saying that she wished her hugs and whispers would make the dreams stop. Every once in a while she'd ask me a weird question, like what shape my wings were or how high I had ever flown or what colour the sky was at home. She seemed a bit jealous; I think she wished she could be like me. It didn't seem fair to mention that I wished I could be like her.