A Lost Boy

Chapter 1

All children grow up.... Except one. 

The story about this child begins one night in the English town of Magnolia where a woman carrying a basket containing a baby boy was walking to the local shelter for orphaned boys. Upon arriving she held her baby and kissed him one last time before knocking on the door and leaving him on the doorstep with only the basket and a note which had his name and birth date written on it. Sadly though the shelter was not kind to that boy. They fed him very little, the room where they had him sleep was most un-befitting, they made him perform harsh labors around the clock, and if he was ever caught playing or laughing or doing anything they disapproved of he would be locked in his room without supper or worse whipped.

The boy knew very few kind adults in his life. In fact the lot of them were cruel which made him wonder if he would be as cold and cruel as them once he became a man? However he still found ways to remain happy even under the most bleak circumstances and a part of him hoped that not all grown ups were bad. That there were actually kind and caring grown ups out there. That his parents were one of them. He told himself a story in which his parents were good people who loved him and that the people of the shelter took him from them when he was an infant and that someday his mother and father were going to come back for him. 

When he reached his thirteenth year a most remarkable thing happened. He awoke one night to hear a jingling noise like a bell and he followed it into the kitchen where he found that something had been caught in one of the traps set. But it wasn't a mouse or a rat. It was a fairy. A very feisty and somewhat rude fairy. When she first saw him she started to mouth off at him to seemingly no end but finally relented when he freed her from the trap.

Being curious as all children are he asked the fairy where she came from and why she was here. She explained that she came from another world and had come to this one to explore it out of curiosity. Though rude, she was grateful to the boy for freeing her so she offered him to give him something as a reward. The boy said all he really wanted was to find his parents. The fairy could not grant that wish however she could provide him an answer for why he was separated from them in the first place. 

With a little magic she showed him the long forgotten memory of the night his mother left him behind. This led to the revelation that the boy had indeed not been stolen from his parents but left by them and this was enough to finally shatter the boy's faith in good-hearted adults. He now believed that his father and mother had carelessly abandoned him and that all grown ups were wicked creatures that he wished to never become.

"I shall never grow up." He vowed in that moment.

"Stupid boy, no child can avoid that fate." The fairy scoffed at his foolishness but upon seeing the hurt and betrayal in his face, she could not help but pity him and want to help him. "Actually there is one way that fate can be avoided." 

So to escape the natural cause of growing up, he ran away or rather flew away with the fairy to a place where children never grow up. There he could always be a boy and have fun. For many years he was very happy and was sure that he would never want for anything else. 

Oh how wrong he was...

But I will get back to him later. Now I must tell you about a family who lived in that town where the boy was born. The Fernandes family.

They lived in a house off the corner of Magnolia, England. There was Mr. Fernandes or Jellal as he was called by his friends, who worked at the local bank and knew the cost of everything including a hug. In his youth he had been quite the carefree and fun loving lad but upon reaching maturity he had to become more serious and practical. His wife Mrs. Fernandes or Erza was the loveliest woman in all of Magnolia, she had broken a lot of hearts on the day she married Jellal but what man could possibly compete with that of a long time sweetheart? Beauty aside she was also a kind and loving woman who adored children and always dreamed of being a mother.