Beloved - Emrys

November 12th, 2017

Sun filters through the trembling leaves of a maple, casting beams of rainbowed light through the bared panes of the window. The rainbows dance upon my face like the faeries outside twirling amongst the trees leaves.

They smile at me, waving and jumping, dressed in little gowns and robes, some with wings like dragonflies and butterflies, others without. Each one looks different and sprite, smiling and laughing in the trees.

I want to join them, climb the branches and feel the sun on my pale freckled skin and the breeze in my auburn hair. I want to laugh with them, play with them, but each time I touch the thick glass on the window, I am reminded that I can’t.

My fingers graze the glass, timidly. As they do, I see their smiles fade and their delight still.

One faerie, a small dark-haired feminine one with monarch wings and a blue dress with gold strings on it flit to the window, coming to rest on the frame of the panes. She puts both hands on the glass, close to my fingers and frowns. Her red lips part and I hear her bell-like voice through the glass.

“Hey! Why don’t you come out and play!” She doesn’t look like a young girl, despite being only 3 inches tall, but she sure sounds like one. I smile, tilting my head to the side and resting it on the window frame, watching her.

“I can’t,” I say.

I haven’t been outside in such a long time. The doctors won’t let me outside. They let none of us outside. It’s strange to be withheld from simple things such as that, but this is normal here. In order to understand each of our unique cases they have to control our environment and maintain their power over us.

They can’t trust us. That’s why they watch us, and sometimes test us. But it doesn’t always help. It doesn’t always work.

I look out the window, it’s Thursday again. The doctors always come on Thursday. They always come at the same time, just after lunch, with their clipboards and pens and asking the same questions. Always the same ones.

I scratch a fleck on the window, the sound remind me of the pencil on their clipboards. I used to tell them more when I first arrived. When I didn’t understand what was happening. But then my thoughts just wander back to the same question I’ve asked myself for years: “Why did my parents leave me here? Was it because of the faeries? Had they forgotten about me?”

It doesn’t matter. They weren’t my real parents anyway. I had no parents. I recall the day I arrived quite vividly. They’d told me we were going to the doctors. Then they left to get a coffee and hadn’t come back. I touch my face, remembering the tears I had cried for weeks.

The faeries smile and play, always asking me how I am and telling me stories. They are so very unlike the doctors. I think they’re scared of me. When I tell the doctors what the faeries tell me they become uneasy, I see it in their eyes when they visit me. But it’s also slightly amusing to see their reactions.

I remember a time when I told Dr. Reginald about the time he got sick after eating his fiance’s tuna casserole. The look on his face had been priceless, one of permanent shock. I can hear him asking “How’d you know that?” I giggle to myself as I remember.

There was also the time Nurse Fran had lost her kitten. I told her she’d find the kitten on Sunday behind the garbage can. The following week she eyed me like I had a disease and took extra care to stand as far from me as possible during the lunch visiting.

Then, there was Dr Edwin. His reaction was completely different from the rest and that had surprised me. A faerie had told me his tent would rip during his planned camping trip the following week. When I told him, he looked surprised, but the next time I saw him he didn’t react like the others. He’d said thanks. A faerie said he’d bought tape to repair the hole after it ripped, tape he’d bought the day I told him about the event.

Dr. Edwin seemed different to me. But that didn’t change my boredom.

The faeries giggle outside and start playing a game of tag. Their games always make me laugh. These are the moments that I feel alive again. Heart jumping, imagining I am with them. I press my hand against the glass again, feeling the warm sun through the barrier. The heat, like a flash, stirs memories of the tests. Stickers on my brow, a shock through my body, some pain and then darkness. I never completely remember these tests. It's strange, like there's a hole in my memory. I crease my brow trying to recall the tests, but that's all I remember. Stickers and darkness.

I don’t much like Thursdays.

The faerie frowns again, then sits on her knees on the peeling white frame. Her shadow falls on my cheek, cooling it from the sun's magnified heat. She watches me intently. She makes me feel less like a subject and more like a person, the way she watches my reactions and movements. I feel her loving gaze pass through the glass.

It has been forever since I’ve felt anothers loving touch. I wonder what it would feel like to touch another's skin, to feel their heat, and hold hands. It is such a long forgotten luxury of the past. Something that tugs at the edges of my memory, like the tests, but cannot break the surface.

My days were filled with silence and my own thoughts. There is nothing to entertain me here, nothing except the faeries. They play outside, putting on shows for me, dancing and singing while I watch from inside. They can be very entertaining.

I let my hand drop from the window and rest in my lap. I lean against the wall next to the window, dressed in my white patients pants and shirt. The sheets are white, the walls are white. Even the door and floor are white. A single fluorescent light breaks through the white tiled ceiling. The decor is enough to drive a person crazy. At least I have a window. I am docile, compared to the others. I couldn’t hurt a fly; only tell you what it did.

I stand out against the white room with my green eyes and auburn hair. I can only see it through the reflection of the glass in the window. My hair is growing out again. They’d want to cut it soon. I kind of like it though. Stubble is also beginning to come in along my jawline. I wonder if they’d shave that too.

The faerie’s chiming voice breaks my thoughts.

“You can.” she sounds happy. Her rich brown hair bobbing as she tilts her head sideways “When the moon wanes, they will come, and we can play!”

Her smile spreads wide across her face, making me smile with her. She looks so bright and cheerful. It’s contagious like a cold. It sounds like a delightful idea. I turn back to the window, sitting up and look at her through the glass touching it one last time.

“Sounds splendid. I’ll see you soon!” I say, feeling a bubbling excitement rise in my stomach at the thought of running through the grass, climbing the trees and dancing with the faeries all the while.

#Fantasy #Magic