Undefined

Lucas Fuller

    The child breathes deeply, gripping clothes that, despite being the perfect size, do not fit. They stand outside a circle of mushrooms, deep in the forest, far from home. Doubts fill a tiny mind, clamoring for attention. Turn back. You know what is expected of you. They all told you not to. You know you’re not supposed to. It’s unseemly. It’s dangerous. It’s disgusting. It’s wrong it’s wrong its wrong it’s wrong IT’S WRO– ​

    They take a sudden step forward, past the edge of what is known and into the danger and wonder of the untrodden path. The chill autumn air gusts past, stirring hair that someone else grew and cut to their own liking. It swirls and dances and lifts the leaves which frolick to a tune just on the very edge of hearing. The leaves twist and blur in a kaleidoscope of color until they are gone, and in their place stands a creature not of this world. Tall, impossibly slender, and possessing an eerie and ethereal beauty, the Faerie gives a deep and courteous bow in greeting. 
    “It has been quite some time since a human has come to our woods. Frankly, I thought you had all forgotten us. What, pray tell, brings you here?” 
    “I’ve come to join you,” says a voice that comes from the child, but does not belong to it. “There’s no place for me here.” 
    The Faerie’s eyes light up as they unfold from their bow. “Not an uncommon request, though typically one needs to see what our land offers before they ask. And you, a mere child who has never once peered past the veil of worlds, asks for this without knowledge of what it entails. Are you sure this is what you wish?” 
    “I have made my choice.” 
    They shrug, grinning wolfishly. “Then all you must do in return is giv–” 
    “–You need my name. Take it. It means nothing to me.” 
    The Faerie pauses, collecting itself. It takes much to catch one of the fair folk off guard. 
    “Very well, then. You must speak it.” 
    “They call me ____.” 
    The pair wait, but nothing happens. 
    “Come now child, you needn’t be cagey. Are you really having second thoughts now, after you’ve come all this way?” The Faerie gives a chittering laugh. “Just tell me your name and this will all be over.” 
    The child blinks, confused. “I did. It’s ____.” 
    The Faerie shakes their head. “That’s what they call you, but it’s not your name, is it? You do have a name, don’t you?” 
    The child looks down, scuffing the dirt with a booted foot. “I guess I don’t know.” 
    “Oh, I see.” The Creature leans against a tree that caves in like a feather mattress, forming an arboreal throne that sifts to cup their body. “You haven’t chosen yet.” 
    The child looks up, surprised. “I get to choose?” 
    “You do.” 
    “But I don’t know what to choose. What did you pick?”
    “I didn’t.” 
    “But you said people could choose.” 
    “Don’t put words in my mouth, dear. I said you could choose. I never said a thing about myself.” 
    “So you can’t choose, then?” 
    "That's the issue with being eternal. You can never change. Free will..." the Faerie laughs ruefully. "Free will, which so many take for granted, is not given to us. I will always do what I have always done, but you... you can change. Grow. Become someone or something different. Yet you humans place restrictions on yourselves. What you can and can't wear, where you may or may not go, what you can say in one place but not in another–” 
    “–Who I get to love?” The child interrupts.
    There is a pause. 
    The Faerie nods and stands, beginning to pace like a cornered animal. “Your greatest gift, squandered for the illusion of homogeneity, of order in a fundamentally order-less world. Clade and phylum and taxon and words words WORDS seeking to make limitless potential become finite and measurable and understandable to tiny brains that should know better, that should know their place, that should know they cannot possibly organize and categorize and put the universe in neat little boxes," they spit words dripping with venom and– 
    The Faerie looks at their hand, seeing that they have driven nails into skin, deep enough to draw blood. The muscles in their fingers relax, and they breathe again. The Faerie faces the child. 
    "Be different, little one. Not because someone tells you to, not because you think others will approve. Do it for you."
     They smile again, this time with real mirth.
     "You are limitless potential,” explains the Faerie. “What will you turn out to be?"     ​
    The child thinks. They close their eyes, putting aside the nagging voices of those that have always wanted to control them. For once, they listen to their Heart. 
    “I am Skye.” 
    The wind picks up, the earth shakes, the wild things of woods long forgotten stir in burrows and dens and nests. The child– no, Skye, thrums with power untold. They both smile then, human and faerie. 
    ​“Skye,” the Faerie says, testing the word on their tongue. “Keep your name. Never let anyone take it from you, for a name is a powerful thing. It holds within it all that you are, but never all you can be. Remember that.” They extend a hand in invitation, and Skye smiles as she has never smiled before. “Come then, Skye… and welcome home.”❧