• Chapter 1

    Ring, Ring. David looked at his phone. One glance at the small screen on the front told him it was his mom from home. He lazily closed his sketch book and put it in his bag which was hanging from the branch next to him. Finally he answered his phone.

    “Hey Mom, what’s up?” He asked sounding kind of bored. His mom called a lot to make sure he was ok. She was only a little over protective but she had a good reason to be. They had had a lot of tragedy in their past.

    “Are you ok, Babe? Is every thing alright? He hasn’t seen you has he?” David’s mother’s panicky voice practically yelled through the phone. “He stormed out of the house yelling that he was going to take you away from me! That he would turn you into a man!” at this point she was crying heavily. “T-That this art stuff is for sissies and girls and that no s-son of his would act like a g-girl.”

    “But he isn’t my dad!” David was shocked. This crazy man his mom used to know had suddenly showed up on their doorstep claiming to be David’s dad. Baila, his mom, had denied it and said the man was to drunk to understand what he was saying. She said he could spend the night so that he didn’t get into an accident. That had been two weeks ago and the man still thought he was David’s dad and was refusing to leave.

    “Come home right now. We’re leaving while he is looking for you. We will go where he will never find us!”

    “Mom, what are you talking about? We don’t need to run from him. Just call the police on him and get him out of here!”

    “Oh honey, it’s not that easy.”

    “Why the hell not!” David practically yelled. This man had made their already hard lives even harder why couldn’t they kick him out on his fat but?
    “Just because it isn’t!” Baila was yelling now too. “Just come home! Almost everything is packed! Get over here and help me!”
    “Ok I’m coming.” David said defeated. He hung up and put his phone back in his pocket. As he swung down from the tree he grabbed his bag and slipped it onto his shoulder. Soon he had gotten home. He hadn’t been very far but it still would have been hard to find him. As he reached his door Baila came running out. She tripped and David caught her. She hugged him sobbing. David pushed his mom off him and took a good look at her. His mom had once been one of the most beautiful women in her small town where she had grown up. Her face was normally jovial and light hearted but now it was covered in bruises.

    “Mom! What did that freak do to you?” David demanded. There was no way his mom would have hurt herself like this even though she was a klutz.

    “It’s nothing! Come help me finish getting everything.”

    They ran into the house and scoured it for stuff they couldn’t leave behind. As his mom was in the kitchen grabbing everything of worth David found his cat. She was hiding under the couch mewing pitifully. David tried to get her to come out but she just mewed more loudly. David finally lifted up the couch and with one hand grabbed his cat. David noticed that her leg was bleeding.

    “Mom, Chesh is bleeding!” David was feeling light headed. The one person besides Baila who understood him was his cat and she was hurt badly. Baila rushed over and threw her hand over her mouth shocked.
    “Where was she? I’ve been looking for her! I knew he threw something at her but I thought she dodged it. I’ll finish getting our stuff; you go with her to the car.”

    “That man is horrible! Why cant we get him arrested?”

    “Just go to the car and grab your Father on the way out.” Baila was scurrying about grabbing random little items she forgot the first time. David started for the door. He stopped in the hallway to grab a picture of his dad holding a baby David with a nineteen-year-old Baila beaming behind him. David’s dad died a week after David was born.

    :
    David was sitting in the car when his mom burst out of the house and ran right for the car. Her ponytail whipping the air behind her. She jumped into the car, started the ignition, and threw the car into reverse.
    “He just called and he is coming back. He said if you aren’t here when he gets here we are in for hell.” Baila said to answer David’s quizzical look. As they shot down the street the man came around the corner and started running after the car. Baila stepped onto the gas and David tried to calm Chesh. Soon the man was just a speck in the mirror. He was to over weight to chase the car for more than a moment. Soon they where out of the city and on the empty road to nowhere in particular. After a few hours on the road listening to the radio David decided it was time to ask her.
    “Uhm…Mom? Where are we going?” Baila looked taken off guard.

    “Uh…good question. I think we should go stay with your great-aunt…yeah that’s what we’ll do! We’re going to Applegate.”

    “Where is Applegate?”
    “Kansas.” David’s eyes popped. They were going to drive from L.A. to Kansas. Chesh made a loud complaining noise and put her bloody paw on David’s arm.

    “Um…Can we stop at a vet in the next town?” David asked. Baila reached over and stroked Chesh’s head.

    “Sure, she’s been a good girl through all of this.”

    :

    David looked at his surroundings. He was in a meadow with a stream. The plants where odd hues of purple and green. A girl was sitting by the stream brushing out her hair. Her hair was so light a yellow it looked white and her face was extremely pale. The girl was smiling and laughing uncontrollably. Her hair falling in her face; wings flapping trying to keep her from falling over. Her wings… she had wings!?

    David awoke with a start. He was laying in a way-to-comfortable bed in a small hotel room with his mom in the other one. Chesh was lying in his chest purring with her leg covered in a bandage. Her tail was tickling David’s arm. He tried to resist the urge to laugh. Soon he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He laughed really loud waking Baila and Chesh with a start.

    “What are you doing so early in the morning? Dude its 4:00!”
    “Sorry mom. Its Chesh’s fault!” Chesh snorted. “No really! She was tickling me!”
    “Well go to bed! Uh, it’s too early.” With that Baila rolled over and fell asleep again. David waited a few moments to make sure she was asleep then threw the covers off and ran to the closet. On the way he grabbed his sketch book and started drawing the image still vivid in his mind. That girl with the light hair, pale skin, and wings. The wings were the odd part. David just couldn’t get that girl out of his mind. Eventually he fell asleep in the closet with the sketchbook on his lap and his pencil still in hand.

    :
    “La de Dee!” Shelly was walking down the dusty road her long plain skirts kicking up dust behind her. Her plain white blouse a little too big and her corset just tight enough to not fall off. She was singing to herself as she passed the village. The fairies all looked at her like she was crazy. Her wings where a little unclean but that was why she was out. She was going to the stream to take a bath but first she had to buy some soap. She turned into a little shop most fairies avoided. The sign said “Agravain’s concoctions” in spidery lettering.

    “Why, good morning deary!” a little old fairy came waddling through a curtain made of spider webs.
    “Mornin’ Agravain!” Agravain was a retired evil fairy. She had gone soft in her old age and that’s why shelly shopped at her store. There was nothing evil about her now and her potions where the best. “I’m just here for some soap.”

    “I got just the thing dear, hold on a sec.” she waddled back through the curtain. Shelly took in the sent of the store, an odd mix between sulfur and rose water. The old fairy waddled back from behind the curtain and handed Shelly a vile with some evil looking liquid in it. Shelly reached for her coin purse. “Oh that won’t be necessary deary, it’s free.”

    “Oh thanks! Are you sure you don’t want me to pay?” shelly asked.

    “No it’s alright dear, just keep spreading good words about this store and I’ll be fine.”

    “Yes ma’am thanks again! Bye!” with that shelly left the store and headed to the stream. As shelly passed the other fairies they started whispering. She quickened her pace. Shelly was tall for a fairy and rather skinny too. Her hair was always down and when she stood she always cocked her hip. In the fairy world these traits where considered ugly and rude. Yet she had a beautiful face and long white-ish-blounde hair. She was also royalty.

    Shelly passed a group of young pixies playing in the stream just in sight of the town. They stopped playing their game and waved at her, and she waved back. Although all the adults didn’t like her she got along quite well with the children. After walking another twenty minutes she finally reached the place that she had been looking for. It was a place where the stream took a very sharp bend around the hill running right up aganced the forest where it was as black as night. There was a little broken down cottage right on the top of the hill. Shelly positioned herself kneeling on the edge of the stream so she was facing the forest and was hidden from the town. Loosening her blouse enough to pull her wings out the back, she popped the cork out of the vile and started applying the liquid to her wings.
    :
    “David…what are you doing in the closet?” David woke with a start and groggily looked up at his mother standing above him with a look of udder confusion on her face.
    “Oh! Uh…Drawing. I didn’t want to turn a light on in the middle of the night cause-“here he yawned “- it would ‘a woken you up.” David and his mother where in yet another hotel right on the edge of Colorado. He had been getting up at the same time- around midnight- every night to draw the same girl over and over. None of his drawings had come anywhere near looking like her but he was getting closer. Baila snatched the sketchbook out of David’s hands and opened it to the first drawing of the fairy.
    “Well aint she a looker?” David struggled to reach the sketchbook but him mother was holding him down with a foot on his stomach. She flipped through the rest glancing at every one.

    “May I ask why your sketchbook is filled with this girl? And why is she so scandalously clad?” David snatched the book and looked at the drawings. In all of them the Fairy girl was wearing a loose shirt that covered everything but was off the shoulder. Her skirt was tucked in at the top so it was only as long as her mid thigh in the front but was long in the back. He glared at his mom and said, “she’s in the middle ages Mum. That’s how they dressed. Also she is doing something with water in all of them so it makes since she has her skirt hiked up. I mean you wouldn’t want to get your skirt wet now would you?”

    Baila laughed,” ok, ok you win! Now get dressed and get in the car. We only have another day of driving and we’ll be there.” She then shut the closet door in his face.

    “Thanks mum” he muttered as he got off of the floor and opened the closet. Chesh rubbed up againced his leg as he brushed his teeth. He put his hand in the water and flicked it at her. She meowed as the water hit her, taking her off guard. They got in the car and started off for the fourth day in a row.

    :

    “SHELLY! Where are you?” Shelly looked up and saw her sister, Clara, come running over the hill. She rolled her eyes. She and her sister didn’t get along very well. At all really. Her sister was around eight years old and thought she owned the world. Her hair was the perfect shade of yellow and was long enough to reach the middle of her back. She had dark blue eyes and no freckles. She was wearing a pink princess dress and a small tiara that had small pink gems.

    “What? I’m over here.”

    “Mom wants you to come home right now,” Clara said in a huff. She was glaring at Shelly with vehemence. “How can you show that much skin! As royalty you should keep yourself covered! You’re already a disgrace to our mom and now you’re bathing in a stream?! The gall of it.”

    “For goodness sake! Clara will you stop acting like you own me! I’m sixteen and you’re not a Fairy godmother yet little girl!” Shelly grumbled as she packed up the little bottles of soap and hid her wings again.

    “I’m going to tell mom you said that!” screamed Clara. Shelly got up and stood, towering over her sister, saying “Do,” and walked off towards the castle. Clara stood shocked for a moment then ran after Shelly yelling at the top of her lungs that Fairy Godmothers shouldn’t be so evil.
    :
    When Shelly entered the house she was mobbed by Pixies. They dragged her into a fitting room and started measuring her. Her mother sat in a beautifully carved chair in the corner that was almost as beautiful as she was. Shelly’s mother was tall and elegant with long mahogany hair that reached the floor. Most of it was swept up into a geurgus bun with little strings of sapphires running trough it. Her dress was every shade of blue you could imagine and more. She was the Queen of the Fairies and the fairy godmother of Cinderella herself.

    “I’m glad you came Shelly. We need to get that dress made before you are called into duty.”

    “But mom! I’m not even old enough to have a god child.”

    “Shelly we do not know when your Godchild shall appear and when she does and called for your help you must appear like a beautiful dream and grant her wish.”

    “Why do I have to be beautiful? That kinda makes no sense.” Shelly’s mother’s eyes narrowed and she hissed, “A fairy godmother does not use words like ‘kinda’.”

    “I’m sorry mother. It does not make sense to be beautiful when the only person to see you is your godchild.”

    “Humans will not trust a woman who is not a possessor of other worldly beauty to grant their hearts desires. They are a fickle kind of creature.”

    “OW!” shelly yelped as a pixie put a corset on her and pulled it tight. The pixie measured the width of her waist and then called out, “twenty-four inches!”
    “That won’t do,” another Pixie said, “tighten it to nineteen and then we’ll call it good.” Shelly gasped for air as the first pixie started yanking on the corset again. “It won’t budge past twenty-two. This girl has a lot of excess weight.”
    “Ok put her in a smaller corset. It might be the first is to big.” The pixie loosened the corset. All the air rushed back into Shelly’s lungs and she promptly fainted.
    :
    “Here we are!” David looked at the house in shock. It was an old Victorian house with two stories and an adorable picket fence around the front yard. The Back yard was about a city block in size. There where cloths lines in the front yard and a small, old dog house next to the stairs leading up to the front porch.
    “What do you think? Its a little town and country I know but bear with me. At least we get internet all the way out here.” David looked at his mother in amazement.
    “Mom, I know I’ve been kinda a brat this whole time but thank you for dragging me out here!” Baila’s jaw dropped. “This is the best house I’ve ever seen! And this town! How many people live here? Like fifty? This is awesome!”

    “W-well I’m glad you like it,” Baila shock her head in a confused way. “Well if you like it we better start moving in. help me with the boxes.” David jumped out of the car and rushed to the trunk to start unloading. This, he decided, was pure fate. How else could they have ended up in the perfect place to draw and not be disturbed? David thanked God as he entered the house and saw that all the ceilings where twelve feet high and all the rooms spaces.