Strawberry Stone

Why is there a teenager in here

The house was quiet, as it had grown to be in the past 24 hours. You could almost hear every breath, every creak of the foundations. Two people wandered around inside, both with incredible care not to make any noise.

Vallnya was incredibly tired, pissed off, and just wanted to lie down on the cold tile ground of the room she was in and let her soul leave her. The last 96 hours of her life have been a complete and utter mess of emotions.

First, three days ago, she learns that her application for a magic permit was validated. Right in the middle of movie night with Lynia and Kyndie. That night, her house was filled with various screams of pure excitement. Pure joy had flowed through her bones at the prospect of being able to do magic again.

Then, two days before, Vallnya was walking home from the Snail Post Office under the rain, letter in hand. She and her two roommates had agreed that she'd wait until she got home to open it, but she'd almost given in to the urge to tear it open as soon as the already concerned employee handed it to her. But, thanks to her amazing amount of self-control (that was a lie, it was the fear of the other customers' reactions that did it), she didn't, and instead headed back down to her house.

A few minutes away from the Barrier, she couldn't help but stop in her tracks, leaning up against a fence to stare into a garden. The fence was bent and mangled by age and plants, a large percentage of its surface buried under miles of ivy, bushes and flowers. The garden was massive, surrounding a house she was all too familiar with. If the old mailbox out front was any indication, it belonged to the Wagnameras. She'd never really seen them, not able to catch a glance without risking being in view. Roundear gardens always captivated her, but this one especially, considering it was the safest to look at due to its closeness to the woods.

Well, that was a bad idea.

Almost as soon as she was about to straighten back up, a giant gust of wind hit her. "Push you back" giant. She tumbled over, her hand slamming onto the old fence being the only thing keeping her from hitting the ground, landing her in an awkward half hover over the muddy ground. The gust was over just as suddenly as it had started, leaving Vallnya to quietly check over everything after getting up. Hair, okay. Clothes, good. Letter, gone. Rings, still on- OH SHIT

Vallnya frantically looked around, but the pale surface of the envelope was nowhere to be seen amongst a sea of greens and browns. The labyrinth of gnarled roots and half decomposed leaves spread out in front of the teen, every step precarious and threatening to send someone right down into the mud. Rain still beat down, the canopy up above providing an almost complete shield against the precipitation. Panic filled Vallnya as she continued on her investigation, her eyes catching on leaves and branches but never on the letter, movements becoming more erratic and out of control as time went on.

She didn't have much more time to continue checking around: a small noise came from behind her, what sounded like a door opening coming to her ears. The door to the roundear house swung open, the inside out of view, but Vallnya could already hear the voice of her mother scolding her. Don't stay around when roundears could be nearby and see you, you'll get spotted!

Being sighted would be worse than losing her letter: it meant that she'd never be allowed to get a magic permit and risked exposing the best-kept secret in all of America. Yikes, imagine being in a history book because you had the biggest screw up in the history of fairies. Not what Vallnya wanted to do. She promptly ran off as quietly as possible, reaching the Barrier less than ten minutes later.

As she stepped through it, a warm tingle ran across her spine, ending in a crackle at the tips of her fingers. She didn't smile as usual, though, her mind taken over by panic as she walked back home. She pushed the door of her house open, finding it dark and seemingly empty of her roommates' usual presence. She stepped in, flicking the light switch on, and immediately was hit by a loud yell of "Congrats!" in various levels and voices.