As The World Falls Down

Chapter 1

To be a fairy was a complicated, complicated thing. To be born without the promise of ever dying was a double-sided coin that you and your family had been tossing for millennia. On one hand, you will be beautiful forever, your skin forever sparkling at the highest points of your face, your body always moving gracefully. The food would always be plentiful and taste incredible, the drinks would always be pouring and always get you buzzed at the very least. There would be no worry of money, there would always be good company, and the sex would always make you finish.

On the other hand, all of these things were only guaranteed if you stayed with your community in the same forest that they too had remained in. Forever. Sure, the forest was large, and it was beautiful, but there was only so much exploring to be done after a few hundred years or so. And there was only so much conversation to be had with the same people, year after year, staving off the same boredom as you. Sometimes, one would pull you aside and push you to leave, begging for you to find the freedom they never had the guts to go out and get.

The beauty and the horrors of the experience tended to blend together more than if you had been born a human, or an elf, or even a goblin. Not that you had ever wished to be a goblin, or an elf, or a human, but that may be because you didn't even know what they were until you had dared to venture outside of your circle and found no way back.

You knew now. You knew more than you had ever thought possible, actually, and you hadn't decided whether or not you were grateful or completely and totally overwhelmed at all hours of the day. Perhaps you could be both, you wondered, sitting on the ground outside of where your circle had once been, the same place you returned to every night just in case they decided to open their doors to you again. A week had passed since you had first wandered past the limits of your community, but the trees stayed as silent as they had the very first night. When you had stumbled through, you looked behind you to see the trees had parted just long enough to make way for you to fall through, and then shifted back together and had stayed that way ever since.

"Shit," you had muttered, trying to look through the minor gaps in the tree trunks, even peeling back bark to see if you could catch a glimpse of something you knew embedded in the tree itself. Turning to face the new surroundings, you had found yourself in a perfectly circular, grassy, shaded clearing. You could tell you were deep within the heart of a forest, and upon further inspection, you realized where you had ended up didn't look all that different from the fairy circle you had just left. The trees overlooked you in a similar way, and the grass had a familiar, silvery quality in the light of the moon peeking down at you. The main difference was the complete emptiness that had immediately settled over you, making the fine hair on your arms and legs stand on end. You had never known what it was like to be alone, and after that first week, you knew not only that, but what it was like to be lonely.

During the day, you wandered in a new direction, hoping to find some new place to belong. This forest was just as extensive as the one you had emerged from, it seemed. The first two days, you had come across the same gaggle of goblins, who were so horrific in personality and physicality that you had taken off running after a few desperate attempts at communication. They were so much smaller than anybody you had ever met before, and they were so ugly you couldn't help but sneer at the memory. You had found some familiarity when you had encountered an elf, whose appearance was like if a fairy had been drained of their magic and left slightly less ethereal, but he had not spoken in a tongue that you had ever heard before. He drew you a map in a patch of muddy earth, hoping it'd lead you to some kind of civilization, but the turns you had taken had landed you right where you started. That was the most frustrating encounter by far. So close, and yet so far.

When a full week had passed, you had come across a girl, perched on a fallen branch over a river that tumbled over rocks leading down a valley. Her eyes and skin were fair and contrasted harshly to the dark hair that floated in a feathery cloud around her heart shaped face. You had marveled at how pretty she was, guessing by her lack of extraordinary features that she was just a human who happened to have an unearthly kind of beauty. She was dressed simply, reading a book in yet another language you didn't know, and a large, white dog slept by her side.

"Hello," you said shyly, and she startled, looking up at you. She stared in silence for a moment, her cheeks flushing, but you didn't bristle at her apparent admiration. You were very beautiful, and you were starting to think that it would always catch others a little off guard. Your eyes wandered somewhere between blue and grey and moved like a stormy sky beneath curved lashes and strong brows. The emerald green blouse you wore dipped deep down on your chest, leaving the subtle curve your cleavage exposed. The finely woven dark pants you donned hugged you from hip to calf, right down to the leather boots you wore.

"Oh, hello," she responded finally, closing her book and laying it in her lap. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so," you answered, already losing tension in your shoulders and legs. "Could you point me towards the nearest village? I've been stuck in this forest for a week now."

"You mean to tell me you don't know where you are?" the girl asked, genuinely astonished. Her dark brows knit and she got to her feet, tucking her book in a satchel you hadn't noticed 'till now. "Where did you come from, then?"

"Is it important?" you asked, suddenly defensive.

"It's just...well, The Goblin King doesn't really let just anybody into the Labyrinth's forest, so I figured you had to have come from somewhere important." You blinked.

Is that where you were?, you wondered absently. You didn't feel like you were in a labyrinth. Seemed like a regular forest, but then again, what did you know of regular anything?

"My community comes from within this forest," you admitted after a beat. She seemed trustworthy enough, and if she told, you could simply hypnotize the memory away. Leave her an empty shell, if you really wanted. "My fae circle closed behind me so I'm looking for somewhere to go."

"You're fae?" she blurted, looking even more astonished than she had before. "My goodness. I didn't know there were any left."

"What? Could you please just tell me where to go to get out of here?" You were starting to get annoyed with this girl, and you played with the thought of wiping her memory after she helped you just for fun. She straightened a little and hopped off the log to stand before you, looking up at you. She was at least a foot shorter than you, and she tipped her chin up to smile.

"I'll guide you, Jareth always makes sure I find my way to the city." She stuck her hand out to you. "My name is Sarah, what's yours?" You hesitated, staring at her outstretched arm in confusion before she sighed and grasped your lithe hand in hers, shaking it up and down like a ragdoll.

"It's a greeting," Sarah explained gently, and you nodded slightly, still a little irritated with her for daring to touch you but feeling grateful she'd get you out of here.

"I'm Y/N," you introduced yourself, shaking her hand back with vigor. She flushed again and pulled her hand back, snapping gently to wake the sleeping dog, who woke with a bark and rushed to her side.

"It's nice to meet you, Y/N," Sarah said kindly. "Let's get going. It'll be dark before long, but I'm sure we'll be out long before then."

She started off down a path to her right (you could have sworn you hadn't seen it before...) and you followed, keeping pace with her and the dog that walked in tow behind the strange girl. If you hadn't been so distracted by the interaction, you might have noticed the white barn owl watching keenly from the trees, it's sharp gaze eyeing you from head to toe and setting off after you and your companions.