Victoria Ainsley Smith was your average twenty-first century teenager. A solid B student with no clear dreams or aspirations. She ran to class, letting her backpack hit her back. Too concerned with not being late to care about the dull thudding of her head. The thudding of an all-nighter full of Red Bull and video games.
"Ms. Smith, thank you for joining us."
Her teacher stared at her with clear annoyance on his weathered face.
"Sorry, Mr. Davis, it won't happen again" This week she thought.
It was Friday.
Victoria may not have dreams or aspirations, but that didn't mean that she was completely directionless. She knew what she was destined for, everyone in her family was, so she never put that much effort in other things. She knew that at the age of 20, three short years away, she would be summoned to a dark world hidden beneath the streets and bustling life of the city. Her sister went two years before her, willingly.
"Earth to Vas." A tanned hand waved in front of her face. She knew that annoyingly cheery voice.
"Hey, Jake." Her eyes moved from his hand to his face. He was a good looking fellow. He had almond shaped eyes that were so dark they were almost black. His straight hair was slightly gelled back, most girls in their class had a crush on him. Heck, even Victoria herself did, but that was years ago, long before she found him eating the flesh of a dead raccoon behind the school dumpster.
"What's on your mind? Can you see the pixies flying around Mr. Davis' head? It's so shiny it attracts them." He snickered. It elicited a loud snort from Victoria, as she sneakily pushed her glasses down the bridge of her nose to see the little sprite-like pixies rubbing their teacher's shiny bald head. Pixies were truly grotesque things. They were the spirits of the creepy crawlies of the world, flying around like cockroaches attracted to shiny things. Their skin was a mottled green or grey, and their pores oozed a sticky pus that spelled like infection and decay.
"They look like your mom." Victoria snickered, earning an elbow to the ribs from her friend and a scathing glare from her teacher.
The school day had been mostly long and boring. Victoria caught glances of the hidden reality from around the lenses of her glasses. The air was swarming with little black balls of what looked like mold, but were actually a type of fae. They always seemed to clump up around the dank corners of bathrooms. They were also a terrible nusuince, as they were what pixies lived off of, and if pixies knew that you could see them, they would never stop trying to get you to crack in front of people who can't see them.
Her classes were terribly boring, maybe because she hardly put effort into paying attention to them. She felt a tug on her waist-length, dirty blonde hair, and looked back to see an imp, climbing up her back using her hair as a rope. Shit. it noticed that she saw it. The imp giggled, jumping to the top of her head, and launching off it and onto the girl in front of her. The girl reached back, scratching her head, no doubt feeling a small itch from where the imp landed.
Imps are less gross than pixies, but they still had gross flakey skin the color of a fresh bruise. The imp balancing on top of the girl's head was the size of a cat, and started dancing, trying to get Victoria's attention. She instead put her glasses back on, blocking out the world of the fae. She didn't want to deal with the dark world of fairies until she had too.
The bell rang, and Victoria quickly got up, grabbing her bag, and rushing to the parking lot. Jake was waiting for her, leaning against his car snapping mint gum between his teeth, no doubt to cover up the smell of raw meat.
"What did you eat this time?" she asked
"I brought lunch from home." ah, so it was human.
"Did they deserve it?"
"Yea, they were a convicted rapist, doesn't taste that great, but better than dead animals." Jake responded. Victoria grimaced, imagining Jake lulling the man into false comfort with his charms and then killing him to be lunch for the next month.
Victoria opened the passenger side door, and was assaulted with the smell of febreeze and air freshener. Jake laughed t the face she made, before climbing into the driver's seat and starting the car.
Victoria knew she wouldn't end up next month's lunch, as she was the only person that Jake could truly be himself around. She looked out the window, remembering their meeting.
It was a hot humid day, and Victoria was tasked with throwing out the class trash. The middle school was keen on teaching it's students to be responsible for their waste.
She sighed, and walked behind the school only to stop staring at the golden boy of the school, crouched over the broken body of a racoon, eating it. He looked up, and the mirage he cast over himself to look human stripped away. His leathery wings in place of arms with claws at the end, and his teeth seemed too long for his mouth, his eyes were jeweled black, and glittered on the low light. "Fuck this." Victoria said, dropping the trash bag and turning her back to Jake.
"Wait!"
"Uh, no. I'd rather not sit alone behind the school dumpster with a bat demon, no thank you." She responded, quickly walking away.
Ever since then, Jake had been following her around, and they eventually became friends. The car slowed to a stop in the deserted parking lot of a strip mall. Victoria sighed, grabbing her stuff and getting out. "Make sure that my parents don't see you, they'd kill you on the spot if they knew that i'm friends with a Lesser fae." Victoria said, waving as he backed out, with his window rolled down he yelled: "G'day milady, I'll let you get back to your knightly duties!" as he drove off.
Victoria's whole family line always became knights or guardians of the Royal Fae; they spent their entire childhood training to protect them while fitting into the human world. As Victoria walked through the door to the dinky gym her father owned, she felt the air change around her. It became alive, sparking like electricity, whispering at her to just let go of everything and let her be herself. However if she succumbed to such provocations she would surely be cast out of the family. Knights had to remain composed and not become drunk off of the magic-heavy air. This was especially important for the personal guards of the Royal Fae.
"Hey, Victoria, Can you help me back here?" her father called, walking to the back room she faced her dad. He was a large muscled fellow with countless scars and stories. He dropped two large boxes of gym equipment into her arms and instructed her to put them away. Because this was a gym for soldiers in training, and none of the gym patrons were human they burned through equipment easily.
The air in the gym had been buzzing since the Heir of the throne had turned 20 that day, and was revealed to not be another queen, but a prince. Princes were rare, they were hardly ever born in the royal line, and it meant that change was coming. This information was spreading quickly throughout the world of the fae, and was slowly leaking into the human world. Victoria hoped that Jake wouldn't find out, he would never let her live down being a knight to a prince. If I even make it to knighthood. She thought, putting away the equipment. They felt light in her arms, even though she knew that these weights would make full grown human men, like her father, grunt with effort.
Half fae were seen as valuable. They could live in both worlds, although there was always the risk of becoming drunk on magic. She only felt that once before, back on her sister's 15th birthday she, at the age of 10, snuck into the gym to practice a new technique her mother had taught her. The gym was full of magic, magic that was a mirage to cover up the fae and make them look human. She breathed in the magic and felt powerful, so she let herself go.
That was the first time she saw herself as what she really was. A monster. A powerful being. Her hair, that was previously dirty blonde, was almost platinum and glowing, waving as though it had a mind of its own. Her eyes, previously a flat brown, glowed amber, and she had these wings that looked like blades of light and cellophane. Her mother rushed in and swept her up, rushing back to the house to teach her a lesson about restraint.
Thinking of her sister made her feel a pang of sadness. She hadn't talked to her in two years, although the next week she would be coming home on a break. All knights got a break a week after revealing the Heir to the throne. It was supposed to be a break to help them re-energize, although it would only last one night, Victoria was excited to see her sister.
Jane Nicole Smith was the strongest woman other than her mother that Victoria knew. She was practically a prodigy, and Victoria was relieved to remain in her shadow. As long as they paid attention to Jane, she wouldn't need to try so hard, and for that she was grateful.