Something's Wrong With the Different Realms

Eighteen: Research

Alexa Parisi

"AHHH!!!" I threw my pillow across the room, raging.

Gillian looked up from the book that he was reading and then glanced at Horizon's empty bed. Then, he scooped up his book, brushed a strange of black hair away from his face and swiftly exited the bedroom, allowing for me to seeth in silence.

I walked across the room to pick up the pillow that I had thrown. I couldn't believe that Horizon would betray me like this. Betray Allurie, betray basically every living creature in the entirety of Zenobia. The entirety of Shallngsea even! By deciding to spill some information to some random teenage humans!

Why did he have to do this? WHY? It was one simple fact so why couldn't he shut his mouth? And if he wanted to talk to someone, couldn't he talk to me or Gillian or even Fleur? Why must he spill this sensitive, private information to Isla and Jasper. They weren't even ready to handle this!

I threw the pillow across the room again and flopped onto my bed, lying on my back. I stared at the ceiling. Did some foolish notion get the best of him? Is that why he spilled the information and why he showed his wings?

What had changed? What was it? I thought to myself as I extended a skinny arm to grab at the cheap phone that Fleur had gotten me and Horizon. I unlocked it then decided to flick through the group with me, Horizon, Isla and Jasper.

I thought back to our last weeks of school. Of how we had bonded over music. How we texted each other and helped each other outside of school with writing stuff. About how nice Isla and Jasper were and how relatively easy it was to talk to them. About writing. About... Oh!

At that realization, I shot up and sat up straight, my posture stiff. I clicked open the planning document for our book and read through it. Ending → fairies tell humans the truth and humans help fairies find a way home.

I cursed under my breath and almost wanted to throw my phone across the room as well. But I knew that it would damage my phone irreparably so I threw another pillow instead.

I lay on my bed and curled in on myself. Horizon had gotten foolish. He had probably mistook the ending for the book as something that he thought I wanted to do. Truth be told, many elements of the book were inspired by reality like the discovery of the Sheen and wanting to find a way home. But this part was not real at all. This part I just made up so that we could have some sort of a way to end the story and get good marks in school for having a well-written book.

We were supposed to figure out a way home ourselves. Or at least ask other creatures about their knowledge of the subject instead of just randomly blurting out stuff to some humans who were just being nice to us because we were new. Maybe if he waited, I would've found a way to talk to that figure I saw once, the one that reminded me of a foxglove. They probably knew something. Well... I hope they did.

I shrugged and glanced at my textbooks as well as the piles of paper that were scattered on my bed. I guess Horizon had just gotten impatient. With everything going on in school, all the assignments that we had to do, all the fitting in that we had to do, we hardly had time to investigate the truth, much less find a way to get home.

I understood that Horizon was impatient. I myself was frustrated at the fact that I was left to wander around Earth at the will of some being named Cassie for probably no reason at all. I was stuck here and I couldn't get back to my family. How could I not be frustrated?

But that didn't mean that I was going to tell the first humans that were being kind to me on some sort of foolish sliver of hope that they would hold the key that would allow us to return.