Never trust a fae.
Never give them your name.
Never fall for their tricks.
Three simple rules that Enid should have followed, three simple rules that she forgot.
In the remote Welsh mountain village of Aethelney, Faeries are real. But unlike trad...
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Alone, Enid made her way back through the forest.
A strange, mystical fog fell around her as she climbed over tree roots and ducked beneath low hanging branches, deep in thought.
Once the fairy had left her, she had contemplated ways in which she could return to Elfhame, to Aneurin, but the cave had never reopened.
Now, she had nowhere to go but home and hope that he would find his way back to her, just as he had always done.
Night had fallen by the time she reached the Fae ring at the edge of Aethelney.
With sorrowful eyes, Enid glanced down at it, the large red toadstools glimmering in the light of the moon.
It was the only sign that the Faes had ever been there.
It was the place where Enid had first met Aneurin, and now, it was all she had left to remember him by.
Slowly, she approached her mother's cottage, not knowing if her mother was even still living there. After all, how much time had passed since she had left?
She pushed the door open with a creak.
The fire lay unlit, there were no plates laid out on the table, nor any sign of human life.
"Mama?" Enid called out, stepping over the threshold and into the cottage, greeted only by silence and a cold chill that bit at her cheeks and hands.
Her eyes moved over the dusty furniture and empty cottage.
Perhaps her mother and grandmother had left. Perhaps Enid had been trapped in the land of the Faes for far longer than she realised.
It was then that she heard it, the soft whisper from the top of the stairs.
"Enid?"
She looked up, tears stinging her eyes at the sight of her mother.
"Mama?"
Her mother hastily ran down the stairs, pulling Enid into her arms and sobbing into her shoulder.
"I thought you were never to return!" She cried, sniffling as she pulled away to look at Enid, her hands cupping her cheeks and wiping away her daughter's tears.
Before Enid could explain all that had happened to her, her mother began to hurl question after question at her.
"Where have you been? Do you know how worried sick me and your grandmother were?!"
"I-"
"You dared to leave the house without my permission. I gave you strict orders to stay close to the house!-" Enid was a mere voyeur to the changing of her mother's emotions, unable to soothe her nor get a word in edgeways. "Where were you all this time? I have been sitting by the window waiting for you to come home, I have been out in that forest countless times calling your name, and now you return mysteriously out of the blue."
