by Winter, Eden
Malcolm adored me, of course, and was never put off when Isabelle randomly invited me on one of their many outings.
“You should bring a friend,” Isabelle would say to me. And I would need to remind her that I didn’t really have any friends anymore, especially not after what had happened. I was surprised that she had even forgiven me, but I guess her loyalty was based on the notion that blood was thicker than water. That, and Isabelle had always had a forgiving nature.
There was also the fact that I would become too nervous to try to make new friends. I wondered if anyone knew about my past. We didn’t live in too big of a city, so there was the constant fear that people knew my history whether they knew me or not. Then, there was the fear that I would resort back to certain old habits that naturally made people drift away from me. But the loneliness and self-denigration was beginning to take its toll. I needed to step back out into the world without needing my older sister to be around to protect me. I had done it before, but I had gone about it the wrong way. I was older and wiser—and by wiser I meant more nervous—now.
I was feeling different a few weeks after that strange day in the park. I had been spending too much time at home with Tangerine, and I wanted to be outside. I didn’t want to hide under a black hoodie and glasses. I wanted my peach skin to feel the warmth of the bright red sun and to actually look into the eyes of fellow fairies, and the eyes of witches, pixies, humans, and shapeshifters. I wanted to be a part of the world again. Even though it was full of beings with mystical powers, it actually wasn’t much of a scary place.
So, after patting my little cat’s head, I stepped out of my small bungalow and went for a walk. I didn’t live too far away from town. There was a big field behind me full of houses that looked just like mine. The outside walls were covered in grass with two windows at the front and a doorway that curved on the top like an arch. They were made in such a way that it was impossible to become too hot or too cold once inside. They may have been small, but I was quite short myself, and I didn’t need much to be happy.
I was wearing shorts and a shirt with straps. My bare arms welcomed the warmth of the sun shining down on me. I was going to walk into town, get some groceries, and be as friendly as I could be to the people I would pass by on the street.
There weren’t that many people out and about anyway. It was our day of rest. There was no reason to be out unless it was to enjoy the outdoors, or if there was a festival of sorts happening that involved most of the people who lived here. I smiled at each one anyway. The smiles came so naturally to me in this mood. I didn’t know why I was so cheerful, but I thought it was for the best that I didn’t question it. Life is always about experiences, so I was going to do my best to live without too much thought behind the things I was feeling.
The walk to the store felt even shorter this time. I had lived in the same bungalow since I left school and had been frequenting that particular store for the same number of years. Even with that in mind, it still didn’t seem like I had gone very far at all. Yet, there it was just a few blocks away. I know it must suck to be someone who works on a day of rest, but I was so grateful the shop was open that day. I wasn’t sure where else I could go to fully experience my chipper mood that didn’t involve worrying about bumping into someone I used to know or just the overwhelming queasy feeling of familiarity and dread because of the memories associated with each place.
I was going to have to explore and find new places to spend time. Hopefully, that meant new people as we - Whoa!
I stopped walking. I felt a strange pulsing around me. I can’t properly describe it. It felt like the world around me was shaking, but it felt that internally I was vibrating. Everything was quivering and shaking but completely still at the same time. It didn’t last very long. I was about to close my eyes in order to keep my balance when the vibrations stopped.
It took me a moment to realize the strange sensation had gone and I was holding my breath. If there was anyone on the street I was walking down, they probably would have thought I was in the beginning stages of a fainting spell. I pulled myself together and stood straight. My eyes scanned the street around me, and I made a quick glance behind me just to make sure I was alone. There was no one in sight.
That brief dizzy spell had now confirmed something I had all but forgotten, namely that the weird sensation I had felt at the park a few weeks ago had really happened. But I didn’t see any people this time.
I started to walk again. I took short, slow steps just in case there was a chance I would feel the world spinning again. I didn’t even get dizzy. Everything was still, and everything was moving, and my mind and soul felt like they were fighting to escape my body.
What was all of this about?
I walked down the cobble road and began to whistle to myself. Right now, being alone worried me a bit more than seeing people who weren’t really there in front of me. I was getting close enough to the shop that the dull florescent glow of the sign outside was now legible.
West Lake House Haberdashery was what it was called. A haberdashery implied it was a small store with only the bare minimum and basics for surviving in modern society, but it was actually more of a convenience store. It wasn’t a part of a chain of supermarkets, so I guess haberdashery was the best they could do as far as the name was concerned.
I quickened my pace and walked into the store. There were many people inside I could see. It was rarely a bustling place anyway. There was a part of me grateful there weren’t many folks inside, but there was still the part of me with thoughts lurking in the back of my mind that said whether it was one or a million people, there was a possibility there was someone who knew and might already despise me.
I lowered my head and walked down the different aisles. I had picked up a small basket by the door, and I started swinging it while I searched for something I needed.
That was when the strange feeling started coming back to me. I groaned, hoping this time would be as brief [or even shorter] than the one I had had just a few moments before. I hoped I didn’t need to faint or anything so dramatic. I wanted to draw attention to myself as little as possible. My insides lurched, but nothing was spinning. I only knew that the sensation was familiar, even though I wasn’t becoming dizzy because of it.
I stood as still as I could and stared blankly into space, and then I sensed someone coming my way. I was still in the middle of the aisle, but I could feel there was someone who was going to turn the corner and come face to face with a woman who looked ill and was still as a statue.
I breathed and tried to get hold of myself before the person came, but it was too late. Someone had stepped into the same aisle I was standing in. Their head was down because they were reading the label of something they were considering. Their hair was long and black and falling around their face so I couldn’t see them clearly. I looked at the person’s arm and almost gasped aloud. There were tattoos up and down this person’s whole arm. He wasn’t wearing long sleeves like the day I had seen him as a sort of phantom in the park.
It was the tall human with the beautiful eyes. He looked up when he noticed someone was standing directly in the middle of the aisle. I was still feeling the weird sensation and was too afraid to move in case I fell down or something. He gave me a strange look, and his thick black eyebrows rose slowly, expecting me to move or speak.
“Can I help you?” he asked. He had a slight accent that made his voice sound like a low wind chime.
“No, I…” I said. I began breathing from my mouth to calm my nerves. He probably suspected I was some sort of lunatic.
“Oh, well excuse me,” he said. He was still very confused, but he was polite. The light above us illuminated his jet-black hair, and that wasn’t helping me with my breathing.
“Sorry,” I said. I finally shifted, fighting off the dizziness that was coming on as slow and heavy as molasses. He walked by me and gave me a toothless smile that people did to be polite, but it really meant they didn’t care a
nd wanted to be away from you as quickly as possible.
“Wait!” I heard myself shout at him after he walked by me. I turned to him, feeling off but knowing there was something I needed to say to him. I wish I’d figured out what that was before I yelled at him. He turned around. He had a patient expression on his face.
“I’m Samantha,” I said. That wasn’t what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t think. There was no right way to say I had seen him before, and whether it was the future or the past was unclear. I wanted to ask him about the friends he had with him in the park. I wanted to know if he had any way of knowing why I was able to see him that day. It must have been him who was making me dizzy. I was dizzy before I saw him in the park, and I was feeling off right before I got into the store, and then again right before he turned the corner and I saw him face to face for the first time. But how do you ask a perfect stranger how it was you had seen them before?
“Hello, I’m Peter,” he said. He gave another toothless smile and did a slow nod of his head to solidify how awkward this encounter was.
“Are you new here? It’s just… I’ve never seen you before,” I said. The wibbly wobbly feeling was subsiding, and I sighed with relief. I hoped with every ounce of me it was going away because maybe my meeting this guy was supposed to happen, and I would never have to experience that terrible sensation ever again.
“Kind of. I’ve been here a couple of months.”
I wanted to ask where he had moved from and why he had decided to move to our little town, but I didn’t want to prolong my agony any further. I wasn’t sure of the right way to tell him I wanted to see him again. I knew the apples of my cheeks were red because of this meeting with an attractive stranger I may or may have not seen before.
“Do you have any friends here?” I felt like a child again. Not having a proper connection with someone in quite a while had made it difficult for me to remember what small talk or even what holding a decent conversation was like.
“I’ve made one or two actually. One of my coworkers isn’t too bad,” Peter said. He wanted to leave. I could sense it based on his expression. The best thing for me to do would be to smile and to go back to my shopping. But I couldn’t move from where I was standing, not when I could feel inside of me there was something I needed to do or say before I went on my own way again.
He was new enough in our small town that I doubted he had ever heard anything about me. It wasn’t like I was famous or something, but for people around my age group, I was a social pariah for the most part. Everyone had every right to be upset and to be put off by me. Except Peter.
“Hey, my new friends and I were planning a trip to the park at the end of the week. Nothing fancy. We were going out by the lake and maybe swim or fish. Is that something you’d like to do?”
I blinked several times without speaking or changing my facial expression. The last thing I expected was for him to invite me to something. It was possible he was simply a nice guy, but that didn’t make it any less weird to me.
“Oh. Well, I wouldn’t want to impose,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be. You’d be my guest. You can bring a friend if you’d like,” he said. He still looked like he wanted to leave, but I was beginning to think I was terrible at reading people.
“I don’t really have anyone,” I said. I looked down and started to inspect my fingernails. I had started the terrible habit of picking them if I got nervous or if they felt even the slightest bit uneven. I wasn’t biting them, but it may as well have been the same thing.
“Then you should definitely come,” Peter said. “I think it would be nice. And for the strangest reason, I feel as if I know you from somewhere.”
Chapter Two
Walk on the Wild Side
Peter had asked me to meet him and his friends at one of the entrances of the park in the early afternoon on the day of rest after the one where we had met. We exchanged information in case we got lost or wanted to talk before we were supposed to meet. We never did message each other, except to confirm where it was I was to meet them.
I got there a few minutes early [and by a few, I mean about 20]. The last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself by being late and finding out they were all there waiting for me. I didn’t want to make a shitty first impression. I also wasn’t anticipating how quickly it would take me to walk to this entrance of the park. The wait was fine. I entertained myself by pacing and overthinking so many silly things.
One of my major concerns was that this was the same set of people I had imagined in this very park. And that concern was second to the possibility that none of these people would like me. Whether they liked me should have been neither here nor there, but it wouldn’t have made any sense to hallucinate a set of people only for it to be a kooky vision that meant nothing.
Whatever happened, I had to stay. I had to understand why it was that I was ever able to see them in the first place—that was only if it was the same people. It was strange but possible that I was seeing very different people from different places and very different eras. I could have been seeing all of them together because my brain was rebooting itself. They say in our dreams we can only see people we have seen in our waking life, no matter how brief the encounter was. I could have had a waking dream in the park because at some point somewhere in town my eyes happened upon Peter as he was walking by. I only doubted that because there was no way I was going to forget a face as striking as his in just a few short months.
It was five minutes after the time we had agreed to meet, and I was getting a bit anxious. It would have been cruel if he was lying about meeting me and just decided to bail, but it also wouldn’t have made sense. What joy would he get from not showing up and having a total stranger wait around for him? It would only work out if he was nearby watching and snickering at the idea that I was almost excited to be invited on this early afternoon trip with his friends.
“Hello.”
The voice was a little bit to my right. When I turned, I saw Peter walking over to me. My eyes flickered for a moment. He was wearing what I had seen him wear when he was in the park but also not quite in the park. His sweater was brown with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing many of the tattoos he had on his arms. His jeans were dark and tight, and he had sneakers on just a few shades lighter than the color of his sweater. Behind him, I already recognized the pink fairy, the pixie with the large hat, the witch, and the warlock. The two of them weren’t holding hands now, but they were side by side and laughing about something. None of the others had quite seen me yet.
“Peter, hi,” I said. I smiled wide and hoped my cheeks hadn’t turned red to give me away. I was curious and excited. I had seen these people in these clothes before, and I couldn’t figure out why that was.
“This your friend?” the pixie girl asked. Her skin was a tan color, and her hair was the lightest of greys with one dark brown streak in it. Her hat’s wide brim left a shadow across most of her face. She wasn’t much shorter than I was, but her build told anyone within a certain radius that she was a pixie. The dress she wore was tight and ended below her knees. The sleeves were long and covered up about half of her hands. Her shoes were black sneakers with laces the same orange color as the dress she wore. I knew her wings were tucked behind her.
“Yes. We met at West Lake House. This is Samantha, and this is Baylee,” Peter said.
“Doing an introduction without us?” the warlock said. The others had joined us. The warlock’s face was covered in piercings. There was a piercing on either side of his bottom lip, one on his nose, another on his septum, and a final one on his left eyebrow.
“A fairy girl,” the witch said. Her voice was beautiful. It was husky but it was also quite squeaky like a child. She spoke slowly, so even though it was high pitched, there was something alluring about it. The black tribal markings were visible on her brown skin. Her white dress was cotton, loose fitting, and ended right at her ankles, so there wasn’t much to see of the tribal markings
that snaked up and down her body. The warlock had on torn jeans and checked shirt.
“Half-fairy. She’s something else,” the other fairy said. She stood beside Peter and stopped walking. Her hair was so purple that I almost didn’t believe it was its real color. It was such a harsh contrast to the pale bubblegum pink of her skin.
“My dad’s a human,” I said.
The witch and the warlock ooh’d and aah’d at that.
“You sure that’s what it is?” the fairy asked. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable. I wasn’t certain what she was even talking about.
“Pretty sure,” I said. There was the slightest twinge inside me. I was remembering when I was younger and I was quick to anger. I could have lashed out, or skipped a step and just socked her in the face, but I was a changed woman. I had to find better ways of handling my emotions. Not everyone had an irate nature, and not everyone wanted to fight.
“Samantha. This is Reginald, his girlfriend Philomena, Delilah, and you just met Baylee,” said Peter. I doubted that he was able to read my emotions, but it looked to me like he was trying to keep the peace.
“Can I call you Reggie?” I asked the warlock. He frowned.
“No.”
“Yeah, Reginald hates that,” Philomena purred in her unique voice. “You can call me Phil or Philo though. You can call me anything except ‘mean’.”
So far, Philomena was my favorite. She was the only one who hadn’t glared at me or demanded to know what I was mixed with.
“So, are you all new in town?” I asked. Small talk was painful and pointless. I just needed something to talk about while we dragged open the creaking gate before us. We had closed it and were walking through the back section of the park when I started speaking.
