Sands of Time [Kuroo Tetsuro X FemOC]

Chance Encounters

In the innocent years of childhood, Jade first met him. It wasn't a long meeting, only an hour or two, in fact. She had been playing on her own in a nearby forest when she felt the desire to wander. Her wings glittered as she hopped from sun pocket to sun pocket. Her laughter, loud and jovial, filled her ears until the sounds of a boy crying had caught her attention and she quieted. It was the curiosity of a child that sent her straying that much further from her family home.

Not too far from where she'd been playing, Jade found the boy. From what she could tell he had tripped and skinned his knee. She watched him curiously from behind a tree for a few heartbeats before that curiosity pulled her further. Her father's warning of Humans was the farthest thing from her mind as she approached the boy.

The boy had dried his tears quickly when he first saw her before staring, mouth agape. "Are you real?" He'd managed to whisper, awestruck.

A smile danced on her lips and her nose crinkled when she giggled. "Are you?" Jade had countered easily.

The boy frowned and stood, his injured knee forgotten as his own curiosity blossomed. "But you have wings and your ears are pointy and you're flying!"

It was then that her father's warning of Humans rushed back to her. But he was little and, according to Jade's oldest sister, Human children made up all sorts of stories that their parents brushed off as make believe. "Wanna see a magick trick?" Jade asked in reply, settling her bare feet gently in the grass. The boy nodded his head eagerly. "Close your eyes and count to ten," she instructed.

When he did she concentrated. It wasn't a painful transformation, only slightly uncomfortable as her Faerie wings shrank back into her shoulder blades and she grew an inch or two in height. Her ears rounded out and became more proportional. Jade's transformation to her Humanoid form completed just as a resounding "TEN!" echoed around her.

"How did you do that!" The boy hurried around Jade in wonder. He poked at her back and picked at her hair trying and failing to find where everything was hidden. "Where did they go?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you." Human's most commonly greet with a handshake, her mother had told her once so she stuck her hand out. "Call me Jade. Like the stone."

The boy took Jade's hand with only slight hesitation. "Kuroo Tetsuro but my friends just call me Tetsu-chan."

"Tetsu-chan." Jade smiled. She wasn't sure what to think, what with his name sounding like honey in her ears and her heart leaping like wildfire in her chest.

For being children they were surprisingly content with sitting in the woods and talking. Sure they played some too but they mostly talked. Jade told Tetsu-chan all sorts of stuff about her people that he believed were just stories but were real. She told him about the time her oldest sister, Nyra, tried to run away with a wood nymph only to be brought back after a couple of days by the nymph's mother. She told him about the time when she was littler when her parents first found out she possessed the ability to wield weather magick like her mother. Tetsu-chan had clung to every word, mesmerized by the idea of Fae and what they could do.

When Tetsuro's father burst through the trees Jade had been so frightened that her concentration faltered and she shifted back to her Fae form. Instinct alone had her fleeing.

"Tetsuro, you were supposed to be fetching water." The voice boomed through the trees, anger and disappointment evident by the man's stance alone.

"I made a new friend, Papa! She's – " Tetsuro's smile disappeared when he didn't see her "-Jade?"

Almost half a mile away Jade was alighting on solid ground again. Her ears, once again pointy, twitched at the sound of her name, still heard clearly despite the distance. How badly she wanted to go back to him; to at least say goodbye to Tetsu-chan; to see his smile once more. Her chest ached in unfamiliar longing.