Aetherrealm and The Thief of Dreams

Chapter One

A pair of shadows were cast in an empty alleyway as the dusk of day came with the dawn of autumn. Summer had finally come to an end and with time, the smells would go with it. The city air was always thick with the acrid stench of cigarette butts and mud water. Even tonight, as the night descended, old men took to their tobacco sticks and peppermint chewing gum, as the shops emptied out their basins through the back doors. When it gets colder, the breeze will carry the air upward, away from the sensitive nostrils of the city peoples, to bother the birds instead. But for now, their noses were full with the scent of the town.

However, for our friends idling in the narrow backstreet, the air smelled subtly of flowers. It did little to negate the stink of cigarette smoke and dish water but it was a miracle that such a delicate scent could be distinguished under such circumstances. Perhaps there was a garden close nearby, or maybe the floral fragrance was only distinct to the senses of the two unusual teenagers roving through the town like tourists, trailed by an aura that detached them from the regularity of the world around them.

A girl with ghoulish silvery white hair picked at the scabs on her palm as her deep brown eyes stared up at the starless sky. Her lips were stained red with blood in all the places she had peeled the skin off of, her hands soon following suit.

"I really don't think you'll find what you're looking for in there."

Her counterpart, who looked like a lanky boy with an old scar across his left eye, but was actually a disguised elf, was fishing through a dumpster, his face grey with soot and his jet black hair covered in cobwebs. When he looked up at the goddess-like girl, his pupils were a magnificent red and holding his gaze, his lips curled into a smile.

The pair of juveniles had been wandering through the city for weeks in search of answers, that being the only explanation the boy could offer.

He experienced visions while he slept, of strange things hidden in strange places; places that called out to him, and they wouldn't stop until he obliged. So far he had gone in search of a fountain pen at a coffee shop, a math book on probability at a small corner shop bookstore, and now, a candy wrapper in a backroad.

Although all he had been led to was an ordinary pen with an empty cartridge and a regular math textbook with zero answers, he didn't stop looking; and the girl, despite her reservations, well, she would follow the boy anywhere.

The two had met not too long ago; an orphan girl obsessed with fairytales and an elf boy straight out of one.

She was taken by him, as anyone would be by an elf given their natural magnificence, but she also felt an instinctual pull towards his likeness, like she belonged by his side; if that was a good or a bad thing, she was yet to discover.

The elf was also intrigued by her, the girl with the bright eyes, behind which were hidden a tragic past. A young girl, barely seventeen, who put her trust in a curious creature from a strange far away land and followed him on his quest, wanting for nothing more than his company.

The girl watched sleepy eyed as the elf boy dug his way through dumpster after dumpster. She had trusted in his intuition and tracked through the vast city with him, but watching him now, worn out and covered head to toe in dirt, she was beginning to feel an unsettling resignation.

"Do you even know what you're looking for?" The girl asked as she examined her own shabby appearance. Her nails were chipped and her clothes were closer to rags, and as her fingers poked through the holes in her oversized shirt, the elf answered.

"Yes. A candy wrapper of some sort."

"And you honestly believe that garbage is going to bring you one step closer to solving whatever this is?"