Of Fairies and Noontime

Book Nook

"Here we are. Enchanter's Library." Ellabelle extended her arm, showing off the cute yet large building.

Hadley took in the sight for a maximum of ten seconds, then immediately let herself in. And she wasn't disappointed when she did.

Books crawled across every wall, inside every nook and cranny, between corners and stuffed on shelves. It smelled like the old, papery smell of ancient books bound together with leather and twine. Every inch of the place was covered in material to be read; Hadley had no idea where to begin. She wanted to take each individual book off of their shelves and spend a moment in time with them.

She was so enthralled by the atmosphere of the library that she almost didn't hear Ellabelle ask her, "So? What do you think?"

Hadley searched for the right words to say. Nothing could do it justice. "It's... perfect."

Ellabelle's face was glowing a bright red. Ever since Hadley landed in her life (literally), her world seemed so much brighter. She took the time to see the beauty in the things she was used to seeing every single day. She started thinking about the hard questions, and if there were even answers to them all. Everything seemed so much more fresh and new, as if she was putting herself in Hadley's situation and experiencing everything, as if it were her first time seeing it all.

Hadley headed towards the section entitled, "Human Resources." Ellabelle bit her tongue.

"What's that mean?" Hadley asked, skipping up the stairs and looking up and down the wall of books.

Ellabelle scratched the back of her neck. "Eh, it's nothing."

Hadley grabbed a random book off of the shelf. She was somewhat taken aback by the title.

"Horrors of Humans, Volume One." She read, her voice riddled with concern.

Ellabelle merely stared at the floor. "Well... you know... we have to have some reasonable entertainment." Was the only thing she thought to say. It only made the situation worse.

"Entertainment?" Hadley questioned. She turned to a random page, examining the contents of the book. There were terrifying drawings inside of ferocious demons gobbling up a fairy's remains or pulling apart their limbs to turn into golf clubs. Hadley was horrified.

"What are these monsters supposed to be? Are these creatures something that you guys have to fight around here or something?" She asked. When she didn't get a response from Ellabelle, she looked back up at the title of the section they were in. She flipped through more pages of the book, but many of them sang similar tunes.

"There aren't even any humans in this book." Hadley said, a tiny laugh following her voice. She looked Ellabelle dead in the eyes. "Is this what you guys think humans look like? And act like?"

"Not me, I mean... I already knew... it's just that..." Ellabelle gave up. She had too many fragments to make an understandable sentence. "It's what we've been taught. Since we were children. They always taught us that humans were like demons... that they liked to snack on us for fun and that they have sharp teeth..." Ellabelle looked almost as if she was about to cry, as if she'd been holding this in for an eternity just waiting for it to burst out.

Hadley just looked at her, feeling sympathetic as ever. She looked Ellabelle right in the eyes, then smiled really wide with all of her teeth. "Look at me," she said through her teeth. "My teeth are perfectly flat."

Ellabelle couldn't help but smile. She could feel the tears in her eyes. She knew that she had to open up to Hadley, and soon; she couldn't hold all of these secrets within her anymore.

"Thanks, Hadley." Ellabelle laughed. She made sure to lower her voice. "I've never met a human quite like you."

After standing in the Human Resources section for a while, just staring at the horrible pictures within that book, the girls sighed. Hadley took the book and simply dropped it on the floor.

"Come on, I have something to show you." Ellabelle said, taking Hadley's hand and leading her through the library. They found themselves in the Fiction section, and Ellabelle flew up to a higher shelf. She graced her finger across a few of the book spines before pulling one of them out.

Hadley's eyes wandered over titles of books in front of her, seeing a bunch of different books that looked old yet interesting. A lot of them did look entertaining.

Ellabelle landed next to Hadley, handing her the book that looked a bit different than the rest. It was a purple book with golden accents, and on the front in shiny gold letters, it read, "Garivo."

"It's my favorite book of all time," Ellabelle smiled. It was another one of those times when it was genuine again.

"I'll read it." Hadley said.

This moment brought her back to merely one day ago, when she was sitting at Dask's dining room table drinking tea with her best friend. He showed her a book that she wanted to read herself. And now, she was an entire world away from him. She felt strange without him there. She was so used to having him, that when she didn't, she suddenly felt lost and alone, surrounded by stranger fairies.

But Ellabelle was her friend. And Catra and Lue were both her acquaintances. So why did she feel so alone? It was most likely because she was the only human pretending to be a fairy in a world where humans were seen as fairy-eating demons. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

"Hadley?" Ellabelle's voice brought her back to reality. "Are you ready to check out and do a bit more training?"

Hadley held the book to her chest, as if it were her memory of Dask himself, not wanting to let it go. She nodded, though. She wanted to know everything she could about fairykind and, more importantly, her fairy friend.

The two fairies headed over to the counter, where a middle-aged fairy was leaning on the wall, nose deep in a book.

"One book, please." Ellabelle piped up, setting Garivo on the counter.

Without looking up once, the library fairy opened the book to the last page and firmly stamped it, closed it, and handed it back to her customers.

Hadley stole the book from Ellabelle's arms and held it up to her chest, feeling her body warm up with exuberance. The mere action of holding a book made her mood just a little bit brighter.

"We can stop for a bite to eat, drop off your book, and head back out there." Ellabelle mentioned while trying to lay low in the village. "Alright, Kira?"

Hadley paused. Who in the world was Kira?

"Kira?" She inquired.

Ellabelle realized her mistake, feeling her stomach turn. She mentioned the unmentionable; the very thing that made living in her world so excruciating.

"Oh, aheh... sorry, I don't know where that came from. I'm so scatterbrained sometimes," she laughed awkwardly.

Hadley could tell that something was wrong; she was learning more and more how to read Ellabelle's emotions. However, she didn't want to risk losing her friendship over a subject that was obviously touchy. She made sure to keep quiet.