The World Between Us

1. Changeling

The room was filled with people who were his blood. His family. The one speaking animatedly with eloquent gestures... That was his uncle. The one in that corner.... Gossiping with other women... That would be his aunt. And that small boy chasing a toy car, the two boys standing serious and silent beside him, those girls giggling with their heads bent together, they were all... They were all his cousins. He should have grown up with them, played with them. The people laughing and talking aimlessly in this room should have doted on him, spoilt him, been proud of him. But he was a stranger to it all. A stranger to them all, his family, the people who were supposed to be the closest to him, the ones he loved above all else and the ones who loved him unconditionally.
Such was the magic of faerie glamors, it could make the humans forget one of their own.

Did they know who he was? Did they care? He had thought he would make a grand declaration of his identity and they would swarm around him and hug him and love him and he would finally get the love that he had been denied.
But these people, they were so happy. They didn't look like they had a piece missing. They were so complete in themselves, that he had begun to doubt whether he would ever have a place among them. He feared his revealation would only serve to disrupt their happiness, their idea of their family. Now he understood why faeries envied the resilience of mortals. They could grieve for a short time and move on with their lives. But faeries were cursed to remember forever. Like he was cursed. For was he not more faerie than mortal, taken to the land under the hill when he was but a newborn babe with no understanding of this world? When he had lived all of his life in that land of wonders and dangers? It was but natural that this felt like a foreign world to him. Surely it was obvious that these people would never see him even if he was standing right in front of them. Or perhaps they didn't wish to see him, didn't want a strange boy to disrupt their picture perfect mortal lives. Even if he was their own blood.

He feared the story of his birth would break them. They would deny his words, call him a liar and a cheat, despite the fact that he had grown up among folk who could speak nothing but the truth. He would be deemed an imposter and then.... Better to walk away now. Better to know he had seen them, been with them rather than carry the memory of their cruel words to the land under the hill. Better to remember them like this, happy and carefree than see their lives tainted by his story. The story of a changeling, a child stolen from the mortal world by the faerie folk. For no other reason but their own amusement.
Who would believe him?

He moved away further into the shadows from where he had been watching. He would slip away unnoticed, back to Faerie. His home whether he liked it or not. For he would always be one of them. The product of a joke they had played on the mortals, the sign of their triumph.

There was a girl staring at him. She had appeared between one blink of an eye and another. For a moment, he thought she was a ghost, there one moment, gone the next. But no, he realised. She had been hiding in the shadows at the other end of the room, just like him. And she was staring shamelessly at him.

She was most definitely mortal, with unremarkable black eyes and straight black hair that was braided tightly back into a single plait. She was the definition of ordinary. Yet there was a strange longing in her gaze as she looked at him almost as if she was begging him not to be a phantom of her imagination but real. He shook his head. What was he thinking, sympathising with a mortal girl? She would forget and move on. He would never be accepted here. It was foolish to hope for anything else. He glided away out of her line of sight, saw her look around wildly for a moment, searching for him, then saw her shaking her head and lowering her eyes, as if she couldn't believe what an impossible thing she had imagined. He felt a sick sort of satisfaction as he moved away. The faeries had gotten it right. He would never have a place among the mortals. Not when he belonged to Faerie.