• If there’s one thing you should learn from me, it’s that faeries exist. I know, I have Faerie Eyes.


    My mother thought I had an over active imagination when I told her that the forest was moving, shadows slipping around me, trees turning to watch as I walked by. She took more notice when my Sight became stronger, and I would scream instead of stepping foot in the woods.
    Scientists don’t know where the Sight came from, only about one in five thousand people can even claim to have Faerie Eyes, everyone else, like my mother, just thinks they’re crazy.
    And by the time you have gone though enough medical ‘treatment’ centers, you think you’re crazy too…


    “It’s a nice apartment, isn’t it Aerista? Its got a great view and look at all this space!!”
    My mother, Catherine, bless her soul, was trying too hard, mind you it normally didn’t take much to impress her but now her chocolate brown eyes were open wide, her thin lips quivering slightly as she waited for a response, my response,
    “Yeah, mom, it’s really great…”
    I carried a large box into the empty room on the right that was now labeled as my own, my entire existence packed into 12X12 inches of cardboard. The walls of the room were white, the bed was white, the carpet was white.
    I hated it.
    The ‘doctors’ had told Catherine I needed a change, that the woods were helping my ‘fantasies’ develop, so mom being how she was had made a change, moving us from teeming Tennessee to knavish, glacial New York.
    “I already called the school honey, they said they’re expecting you tomorrow morning!”
    “Yipee….”
    I pulled my hair out of its ponytail, the long midnight waves settling around my shoulders and rolling down my back. I caught my gaze in the mirror and frowned, worry lines in my forehead were too clear, I had the stress level of a fifty year old working mom, my lips poked out, the bottom a touch fuller than the top, pouting. My cinnamon colored skin already felt dry and lifeless shut up in a cold high rise building, like a budding plant that slowly wilts into brittle nothingness. The only thing that was the same were my eyes, my Faerie Eyes. They stared back at me, a tornado of smoky grey and fiery orange, framed by thick black eyelashes, making my face more Faerie that human, ha! I wish. I bit my nails, a nasty childish habit as I turned the mirror over, I no longer recognized the girl staring back at me.

    My mom and I ordered pizza and ate on the balcony, trading the sounds of birds and crickets for police sirens and screams. Catherine turned to look at me, an older, more weathered version of myself, except of course, for the eyes.
    “Aerista baby, you understand why we had to move out here don’t you?”
    Her warm voice was pleading, she didn’t want a daughter who saw things, she didn’t want anything to do with Faerie Eyes.
    “Yeah mom, I understand…”
    My voice was soft, dejected but she smiled anyway. She was so easy to please, as much a child as I had become an adult.
    “I’m going to bed.”
    I heaved myself up from the patio chair, slipping into my room without turning on the lights, pulling on an oversized t-shirt and holey sweatpants, my slender frame swallowed in the folds of old cloth, the scent of honey dew and peach blossoms that clung to the clothes the only piece of Tennessee that had dared follow me here.
    The light slowly wheezed on and for a moment I felt like two hands had latched onto my lungs and squeezed tight. There was one imperfection in the room, one darkness in this room of white.
    A flame red flower lay on my bed, nestled among a pile of mossy forestry. Each petal was the color of fresh pricked blood, precise and sharp, like pieces of glass heated together around a central point of ever changing colorful pollen. They curled backwards onto themselves, folding over, the petal surface covered with a minute layer of ash. No flower like that grew in this place, nor this world.
    A single note lay underneath the flower filled with an elegant scripture that said only one word:

    StormFire


    They knew I was here and They were watching



    I lay in my bed, watching the red and blue lights that came through my window, listening to the never ending hustle and bustle of this strange city life.
    The flower stood in a vase filled with water, a pinch of ash, and a single drop of blood from my right thumb, now wrapped in a Spongebob Band-Aid. The flower was a Morgul-Vale, the word meant ’Black Sorcery’ and the Fey had told me about it long ago. It was a plant that thrived in another world, a fire flower that bloomed wide when war and battle ravaged the lands and blood sowed the earth of the Royal Fey, the Hingrel Fey.
    Four Courts ruled the Faerie kind, one for each elemental territory. The Ergin rule the forests, they are quiet solitary fey, the most know green Faeries of legend and the ones with the sweetest disposition. It was the Ergin who lulled me into the woods as a small girl, giving me flowers for my hair and berries for my lips. They took me as their Faerie child and taught me of another world that lived in sync with my own.
    It was the Ergin who named me StormFire.
    The Asril are winged Fey who dwelled high in the skies, their castles made of clouds and mist. Their egos are as bloated as the wind that filled their wings. Their features are light, their skin iridescent and shimmering, so that they can disappear all together in the heavens. Their bodies are long and stretched out, like thin twigs so fragile they will break at a baby’s sigh. Their wings span a length of twelve feet across, as unique and colorful as its maker. An Asril’s true pride are their wings for no other Fey can fly.
    The Wignar claim the waters, the soul farthest from the mind’s picture of Fey. They are slippery blue creatures with wide deer eyed expressions and webbed hands and feet. Their hair is sea weed, their eyes the milky color of the rarest sea shell. Gills sprout from either side of their necks and in their watery castles dwelt creatures of the sea that could make a man die from amazement or die from horror.
    But the Hingrel hold the worst reputation among mortal and Fey. They are dark fiery creatures, with morbid souls that burn from an internal flame. They are stronger than the average human four times over, and yet they could walk through a forest without rustling a leaf, or tread of a snowcap without leaving a footprint. Their tempers are ever-changing, and like fire they are beautiful, beautiful but deadly. Young maidens disappear into their territory, charmed away by a handsome Fey who sings of riches and fame. Young warriors vanish, their hearts set on conquering this twisted Court. Their skeletons hang in its halls.
    They have been ruled for years by a King and female consort, the Firess, both as ruthless as they are lovely. They rule their entire existence unless overthrown by another,
    And to be watched by the Hingrel was a curse before it was ever a blessing.

    Oh Goody.