Land of the Faery

Chapter 1 - Don't go into the light

This night was like every other night. It was like every other night until it wasn't. Lilly lived only a few blocks away from me which, meant it was an easy walk from my house to hers. Nuala did this every Friday night as she slipped on her flip-flops and grabbed her already packed bag making her way out the front door. Lilly was her oldest and truest friend. They had been friends ever since she was a little girl, and moved to Boston where she was adopted by her mother. Her mother never knew much of Nuala's biological parents, only that they had given her up because they were unable to care for her. She never got many details from her mother about the situation. She just assumed they were two people that didn't really want a child. This never quenched Nuala's curiosity about who her biological parents were and what they might be like. She had wondered who she got her hair and eyes from; if her smile was from her father or mother. She wondered if they too had dreams and memories like she did of them. The memories She had of them were fleeting, and they mostly appeared in my dreams. Those memories were usually forgotten from her mind upon waking up, but the more vivid memories sometimes lingered. They were strange- She often saw her parents in fancy clothes and dresses. Many of the memories were of them dancing with other people in similar attire. At times the dreams seemed to be more fantasy and make-believe than actual memories. There was magic in her dreams and mythical creatures. They spoke with accents and sometimes in languages that were foreign to me. They looked like something out of a movie.

There was one memory that seemed to always run through her head and that constantly plagued her dreams. In this dream a man and woman stood side-by-side with her. Each one of them held her too-small hands that had flushed red with the cold winter wind outside. She was bundled up in her warmest coat as the woman knelt down in front of her. She wiped tears from frozen cheeks and said "I will see you again my darling," she silently slipped a pair of knitted wool mittens onto Nuala's frozen hands and placed a kiss on her forehead. The man placed a kiss on her forehead as well before he moved to stand beside the woman. He said to her in hushed tones "the land will lead her back when the time is right, she will be safer this way. We can not risk losing another one of our children." His words sounded painful and it was almost as if he was trying to convince the woman of this decision. They spared another look at her before they walked off arm in arm with my father without looking back. 

This was the dream that Nuala had most often and it would usually keep her up the rest of the night with feelings of dread and longing for people she didn't even know. She desperately wished to meet the man and woman in her dream; at least once more. She wondered if they were her parents or if it was simply her brain playing tricks on her. 

***

Every Friday night, She made her way down these familiar streets down to her friend's house where they watched movies together and often talked and talked into the early morning hours of the next day. Recently they have been obsessed with watching horror movies, especially low-budget movies. Lilly's family were big movie fans, so they had a whole room of bookshelves lined with every movie you could imagine. The girls took their time looking through the horror section picking out movie after movie. They were slowly making it through their collection of horror movies while also depleting their supply of popcorn.

Low-budget horror movies were their favorite to watch. They loved to make fun of the bad acting, animation, absurd plots, and scripts. We were currently in a fit of laughter about one actor's overdramatic poor attempt at trying to look terrified.

"You think they could at least try to make it look more realistic," Lilly said pointing towards the screen where a masked man was currently slitting open the throat of a busty young blond woman. She was also coincidentally the first character to die in this movie. The blood erupted from her neck in pulsing squirts that drenched her clothing and the floor beneath her. The shade of her blood was just a bit too cherry-red to look real.