Succession at Seventeen

Chapter 3

Three times that morning Diana had texted Jeremy trying to get him to talk to her but every time he had ‘homework’ and she was starting to get a fed up. Unfortunately for her she wasn't nearly bold enough to walk up to him and demand his attention so, during lunch, she met with Ashley to try and figure out a sneaky way to gain his attention.

“I need to talk to Jeremy.” Diana started as she loaded her books out of her locker. She was one of those pour souls cursed with a bottom locker.

Ashley hadn't had the same problem. She was standing a few locker sets down doing her makeup in the mirror she had taped to the inside of the door. “Why?” she asked, her honest confusion apparent in her voice. Ashley said she didn't like Jerem, she said she thought he was strange and creepy. But she didn't treat him that way. Sometimes they would dive into a conversation so intent that they would forget Diana entirely.

“I...I wanted to ask him something about something only he would care enough to know anything about.

“Why not go read one of those nasty ghost books that he loves so much somewhere he can't help but notice? You know he can't keep from talking your ear off about them.”Ashley said with an over dramatic shudder.

Diana grinned, for the airhead that she was Ashley could spin a pretty devious web. Well, devious by Diana's meager standard.

Knowing that Jeremy's class that hour just so happened to be librarian's assistant for a work study program, the nerd wanted to be a librarian or some kind of bookshop owner, Diana waved goodbye to Ashley. Smiling thankfully, she ran down to the library.

Walking into the library Diana looked up at the circulation desk, strewn with three separate stacks of books each at least six books high, she caught Jeremy's line of sight. After spotting her he turned a quarter turn and began digging through the drop bin behind the slot for returned books.

With a sigh Diana walked over to the 100's section dedicated to religious and occult studies. She scanned for a few minutes between the dusty tomes and various bible editions. Why do Christians need so many versions of the bible? She wondered, skipping them entirely. They wouldn't get Jeremy's attention, in fact they would likely give him more reason to avoid her. She continued scanning until she passed the copies of the Qur’an and found the occult studies. She skipped a few cheesier looking tomes like “Witches, Werewolves, and Vampires. OH MY! A compendium.” and settled on one titled “Nature spirits and creatures from Animal Totems to Wood nymphs”

Thumbing it open she looked over a few pages. It looked respectable enough, each page was titled with size 14ish font and small pictures at the top left.

She smiled and walked over to a table easily within Jeremy's line of sight and sat down to start reading. The first page she opened to had a picture of a squat little imp smiling wickedly as he tore out the insides of a plane engine as the pilots watched from the cockpit in helpless horror. The page was titled Goblin. She quickly turned the page and smiled when saw the picture of a small hill with a shining portal on it and a beautiful naked woman with long flowing hair running toward it.

Fae.

A.k.a. Faeries, The Fair Folk, and the Gentry.

A people once said to have lived in what is now England, Ireland, and Scotland. They were easy to find among the fair people that found the isles thanks to their small stature, a faery would almost never stand above four to five feet high, their tan complexion, and their gifts in magic. They were said to have lived in a world parallel to ours that was called the Fair Lands or simply Fae, a land of rolling sweet hills and valleys filled with life and covered in fruits and flowers. A land that always had either warm summer days with soft breezes or gentle rainstorms. A land that suffered a bitter civil war.