DIVENIRE // tsfgae oc

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙤𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚

" In the forest primeval,
A school for good and evil,
two towers like twin heads,
one for the pure,
one for the wicked,
try to escape; you'll always fail
the only way out is
through a fairy tale."

Josephine had known invisibility their entire life. 

They had known silence in the halls of castles older than time, cloaked in the sweet embrace of the dark, they had known the breath of wind and the lack of fear that followed nights on the sea. They had watched beasts old enough to challenge time itself crest the waves not far from their home, they had seen the spines of leviathans litter the sea floor. All alone, of course.
They were an elf, a worshipper of the hunt-father, a follower of their glowing house. An inevitable part of being so was experiencing the impossible. 

But this?

This was intolerable. This was absurd! And no one had thought to mention how big the schools were!

The twin castles faced off like men of war, the Evil school off to the left a mirage of black and red, thick vines blackened by ash shores creeping up decrepit stones. The whole castle looked minutes away from caving in on itself. Beside a moat of what looked suspiciously like tar, humanoid wolves yanked drenched children up onto the shore and shoved them towards looming doorways. The mouth of a breathing beast.

Closest, on the right, was the School for Good. Its spires were built of pristine marble topped by crystal blue roofs, glimmering in the sunlight and wrapped in lush green vines. Big, pink flowers drooped down from windowsills and over doorways, their leaves brushing the heads of students passing beneath. The shores beside a shimmering lake of clear blue were paper white, as if they were made of crystals as well. Surrounding the school were rich fields of green, peppered by pastel flowers and girls rising from the earth.

All girls, Josephine noted with a grimace. If their father had sent them to an all girls school, there'd be hell to pay—

That's when one of them started fighting a fairy.

A girl with bug-eyes and a dome of black hair was actively batting at a minuscule fairy when Josephine turned around, desperately trying to knock the poor thing out of the air. She yowled at it as it bit her hand, then her neck, then her back. Other fairies— small, fragile things— tried to subdue the rouge, but the dastardly thing bit its friends too and continued berating the girl. 
Then the fairy flew far too close to the girls mouth, and she open her jaw and swallowed it whole.

Josephine cupped a hand over their mouth to muffle their laughter. 

All around them, sixty gorgeous girls gaped at the fairy-eater. She looked shell-shocked, like a cat in a nightingales nest.  Then she paled and banged her fist against her chest and coughed up the bedraggled fairy. 

In the distance, sweet bells rang out from the pink and blue glass castle. The buzz of fairies came to a halt— it had been such a constant sound since Josephine had arrived in the Western Woods that they hadn't even acknowledged it— and then a pair of the winged miniature humans grabbed onto Josephine's jacket and yanked them right off their feet. With little effort and Josephine clutching their bag to their chest, the fairies hoisted them across the lake— not toward the blackened school, good riddance, but towards the glass castle.

Most of the girls— and the added addition of a very confused Josephine— were dropped before golden gates.

But not all.