Blisst is a town encased in mountains with a wooden fence that runs all the way around it. The fence includes warnings of animal sightings and such to try and discourage hikers and children from entering the untrailed mountains, and for the most part it does, save for a few reckless teenagers time and again. There are two exits on two sides of town, east and south, for those not equipped to handle small town living, but for the most part, the people who have found their way into the quaint city, have stayed and the people already residents, have never left.
The north-west corner of Blisst contains an empty field adjacent to seven cul-de-sacs, collectively known as the The Edens; with each street culminating at the end of the fence. Trelle lane is the first street of the collection. It contains eleven neatly manicured lawns, five two-story and six one-story houses, on a slight incline. At the base of the street are the Parker-Mosh’s, four houses up from them is where Kym and Tyler reside and two houses up from them are where Pfiefer and her mother live. The top house is occupied by the Diaz’s. Just beyond the eleventh house, stands the fence with wooden posts securing five thin rows of barbed wire between them; separating the civilized parts from the more uncultured territory.
SubAequeus high is located at the base of The Edens, so essentially all kids who lived within this territory had to do was walk down their street, cross the center divider that divided the housing tract from the school, and cut through the parking lot to campus. This was the only path Pfiefer and Tyler had taken since they started Sub High as freshmen, the only path they’ve taken together, and the same path they’ve never taken apart. This was what Tyler was thinking about in between glances at his watch. It was 6:15am and Tyler was waiting outside his house on the curb, alone, because Pfiefer had not shown.
“Fifteen minutes until the first bell.” Tyler said grumpily to himself.
He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night and was mulling over knocking on her door, but he knew she wasn’t there, because if she was there, she would’ve been here, with him. So he opted against it. Besides, he didn’t want to have to explain to Persephone where they’d been last night and why she wasn’t with him now. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep that lie about the mall alive for very long, not without Pfiefer doing most of the fabricating.
“Come on Pfiefer, you push me to wake up suck butt early this year and you don’t even show your second day because of a boy.”
Tyler had not slept a wink. He could remember him and Fife on a breezy day underneath the ash discussing their future together. He could remember him getting bamboozled by her. She was glamorizing summer school, insisting that a recent dream had sparked her newfound interest, and it was the only reason he had even considered her offer. She was glossing it over with promises of graduating early, sprinkling in an apartment in New York and finally topping it with multiple Tonys and Grammys, money and fame, and two huge mansions side by side so their kids can grow up together; becoming greater friends than their parents ever were, if that was at all possible. And all he had to do was commit to summer school and attend the early session in the fall, 6:30 am-2:30 pm for his 10th and 11th grade years.
Although summer school is seen as only a necessary choice, like one made when you’re failing and in need of graduating, it became a way out for them both. A future goal to work towards, and for Tyler it became his obsession. He couldn’t picture doing anything without Pfiefer there to give him advice, or a laugh, a solid ear to listen, or shoulder to cry on and if this solidified them in the future, he would’ve given anything to make it happen, especially his beauty rest.
And now this boy was going to threaten it all and he wasn’t even real, so why now? Dreams were movies you have when you are asleep, thought Tyler. Even if dreams were to imitate life, at some point becoming more of a premonition in waking life, still, how could that possibly affect their plans? It’s not like she is some sort of sorceress who will someday save the mythical land of Narnia and all of its inhabitants. She could have her dreams in New York. It may even help them to actualize their future goals.
But this wasn’t the reason Tyler couldn’t sleep last night either. This was not the reason he tossed, and he turned. Because of a stupid boy who showed a girl a few amateur magic tricks. Tyler had ten years on this boy. It was the fact that Pfiefer could be so naïve to him. She was usually so smart when it came to boys. Sure, she’s had her crushes, but they’ve never lasted more than a day, three tops, and she never let it affect them; their friendship. But here she was running around like a love-struck teenager, at all hours of the night, completely abandoning all common sense, abandoning her best friend, abandoning their future. Her promise.
“What is she looking for?” he wondered out loud.
There had to be more about this captivation with a box that, coincidentally, a boy from her dreams led her to, Tyler thought. There had to be a dissatisfaction of some sort. A dissatisfaction with plans etched in promises. Only dissatisfaction could provoke a spark in a girl like Pfiefer; a curiosity to discover that which she does not possess, but that which she wants to.
Four years ago, he thought he would lose her when he came out. It wasn’t that he thought she would never speak to him again, that was impossible, that just wasn’t Pfiefer. But he couldn’t see them surviving together. He couldn’t see them growing older, and wiser, and stronger together. Ever since they were six, they talked about marriage. Best friends forever, they would never be apart, but when he told her he was gay, to Tyler, there was no more common thread, nothing absolutely ensuring they would last; until her dream. Side-by-side mansions, proof that he would never lose her, but now he felt he has.
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Thirty minutes ago, Tyler stood in the very spot Pfiefer stands currently. Pondering over time, and how much of it he had left with his best friend. Just before retiring to the fact that she wasn’t going to show and making the lonely trek down the hill to school. And now here was Pfiefer examining time from a different position. She reached into her bag, and pulled out her watch. The two slender hands showed 6:45 am and Pfiefer grew terrified. She wasn’t with Eres more than two hours, three hours tops, but over nine hours had passed. Yet she didn’t even have time to figure out that riddle at the moment. She instead, gave up on attempting to bring him back and ran in the direction of her house, opting to blow off Tyler since he hadn’t waited around for her anyway. Still mad about last night she presumed.
When she reached the door, Pfiefer hesitated for a few minutes. She ran over the list of excuses she had come up with after putting her snapshots away, reminding herself of the one she had settled on. She turned the knob slowly, saying a quick prayer, hoping that her mother was a terrible parent. Out running errands, mindlessly drumming away, completely unaware of her daughter’s twelve-hour disappearance. Pfiefer could dream, but her nose doesn’t lie. So, she opened the door slowly, took a deep breath and walked inside..
The living room looked exactly as it had before she left. White carpet, white walls and a white couch that sat underneath a window adjacent to a white-bricked fireplace. The two white chairs that angled each other stood opposite the couch with a low table between them. As a child she wasn’t allowed in this room, her mother not wanting her to get it dirty. By now her mother was perfectly fine saturating her once clean room with her dirty emotions.
Before her, was Persephone taking one of the two chairs opposite the couch with a reaction Pfiefer could not pinpoint but was somewhere in between how could you? and I wish this could just go away. Pfiefer took the seat on the couch not wanting to get too close to the lion’s den and stared at her mother furtively, waiting for the silence to be broken first.
“Where have you been?”
Persephone’s tone resonated through the dry air, rattling her daughter. Pfiefer was unaware her mother possessed that particular emotion, she could not decipher if it was anger or something else filling the room and was just about to concede to the verbal lashing she had coming when something within her screamed to consciousness. Something a black-haired boy once said to her, not too long ago. She blurted it out and watched the aura in the room shift to something more precise; angst, maybe, with a sprig of confusion.
“What?” Persephone asked, only trying to prolong the inevitable for a little while longer; she heard her daughter, clear as night. She had avoided this question for fifteen and some odd years but here it was, slapping her in the face. Precisely one day after she knew it would start.
“Did you know about Legend?” Pfiefer repeated slower this time. She savored the power in each syllable, the strength she feltknowing she had, somehow, gained control and tried desperately to conceal her pleasure.
“Wh…who told you about that?” Persephone asked.
“Did you know I have dreams? Dreams that come true?” Pfiefer asked an easy question this time, one her mother had known but never fully acknowledged. She asked another question, followed by the next, “Did you know I am Faery?” She paused before asking more, a vault of questions finally unlocked.
“Why would you never tell me something so…”
Pfiefer struggled to find the right word but settled on, important. A great sadness overcame her and the tears began to fall. Power slowly being replaced with despair and disappointment which was precisely how Persephone was feeling in that moment as well. Pfiefer’s mother wasn’t sure where to begin, so she just began.
“Oh, Pfiefer,” Persephone sighed, “my mother filled my head with lies about me being special with a Legend about a young girl who would go on to do wonderful things, sometimes magical things. And each time she would tell the story, I felt nothing inside me grow, yet at the very same time, something inside her break. On the 247th day of your 15th year, Legend says the story will begin for this girl, and when my day passed, I understood why my mother was heartbroken. She knew, perhaps from a young age, that I would not be this girl. Yet she told me the story anyway, just as her mother did with her and just as her mother did with her.
Persephone did her best to hold back the tears as she watched Pfiefer stare through her in a way that only a loss of respect could capture.
“I knew,” Persephone continued, “from the moment you formed silently in my belly, that you would be special. But how was I to know that you wouldn’t be special because you would cure cancer, or become a normal girl, with a fulfilled life? What my mother did to me was unforgivable and there was no way that I would ever do that to you; fill you with false hope and empty promises.”
“But not even when I was six and I climbed into your bed and I told to you that Tyler’s dad would die on Christmas? Or how about when I was ten and Tyler’s dad did die on Christmas day? You never felt compelled to tell me anything then?” They sat without words for a few minutes.
“I didn’t want this for you Pfiefer…” Persephone started but Pfiefer quickly interrupted her.
“Okay mom, but it’s too late now, it’s here, so tell me the Legend. Tell me what I am. Tell me about my father. Tell me something.”
The tears dried as Persephone prepared herself for the ramifications of her response, “no.”
“No?” Pfiefer questioned, although she wasn’t at all shocked by the response.
“You can still be normal. You don’t have to be Faery. You can grow up a normal girl and travel, and get married, have sons.”
“What about what I want? Why does that never occur to you to let me decide what I want?” Pfiefer stood up collecting her knapsack, after realizing this conversation was going in a direction she did not care to travel in.
Persephone followed her lead and stood up too, trying to convince her daughter once more of her reasoning, “because,” she said.
“Because what?” Pfiefer retorted with stones in her speech. She waited a long time for her mother to answer. A long time for her mother to make things right before she finally retired to the fact that she never would.
“Fine, don’t tell me.”
Pfiefer opened the front door with a force so hard the wall vibrated the table along it and walked out of her house for the second to last time fully intent on leaving it just like that. However, she just couldn’t resist.
“You know mom, you aren’t that much different from the woman you despise the most, you know? In fact, you are exactly like her. She wanted a certain life for you, and now you want a certain life for me. I guess that makes you both wrong.”
“Because you die!” Persephone blurted as she stood in the doorway, watching her daughter edge closer and closer to ruin; blindly. Pfiefer stood motionless, her back to her mother’s face when Persephone finished.
“My mother told me the Legend, over and over, in the same exact way since I was born, not once mentioning my would-be tragic fate. It wasn’t until after my time passed that I found out something I wished I hadn’t. That magnificent and magical girl dies at the end. She dies Pfiefer, and to make matters worse, my mother’s heart broke every single time because that would never be me.” Persephone paused before continuing ever so peacefully, she wasn’t even sure her daughter could hear her, “How could I ever want that for you?”
But she did hear her and she answered her back, just as calmly as it was given, “we’re all going to die, at least I get to decide how I get to go.” Pfiefer turned away and resumed walking down the broken path to a fate she could not avoid. See, destiny is a powerful one and when she calls you, you must come.
This work is created by, written by and belongs to Aecko and shared here for entertainment.