The Lost Girl... (Faith, Hope and Tranquillity #1)

CHAPTER 13

Lily's POV

I screamed aloud in frustration at having missed Silver. I was finally starting to add things together. Silver knew more than he was letting on, and David was partly right, someone who had entered my life recently was causing things to happen to me. I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it before, but Silver and the guy in my dream looked very similar. I was always so angry when people watched cartoons and the hero looked the same as the goofy guy/ girl in normal life. I had literally done that. Silver was a key to this, and I needed to know how. I was stomping and growling on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what my next move would be.

A few people looked at me with varying looks of worry or disgust, but I didn’t care. Everything was messing with my head but there was one thing I felt certain about now. Silver was at the centre of this. It had taken me a while, but I suddenly remembered the voice, and the man in my dreams… Of course, it was Silver! I literally face palmed myself. I really was an i***t! I needed to talk to him asap!

I hadn’t realised I was cradling the fairy tale book, but I decided I would read it once I had spoken to Silver. I pulled out my phone and dialled his number. No answer. I decided to take a wild guess at where he would be. Remembering our conversation last night, I ran for the nearest bus to the beach.

UNKNOWN POV

“I knew it was him!” The masculine voice said, anger rising in his throat.

“Does that mean…”

“Yes! We must stop him getting closer to her!”

Lily’s POV

I was sitting on the bus, feeling empty and numb. I think everything that was happening so far was finally starting to mess with me and I just didn’t want to feel anything anymore. Whilst on the bus, I decided I might as well start reading the book. I enjoyed reading, so despite feeling very dubious about how this could help my situation, I read on.

Once upon a time, (cliché, I thought to myself) there was a kind and loving king and queen who were struggling to have children. They had tried everything and were feeling at a loss. The queen would spend hours just staring into space. The king loved his wife very much and decided he would do absolutely anything to help his wife be happy again. He was the king of the sun elves and had a duty to his kingdom, but his love was in pain, and this made him a weaker king. One day he decided to visit his cousin, who was half dark elf, half sun elf. He told him a story about dark elves who held great power and were able to grant wishes but at great cost. The king didn’t care about the cost and decided he would seek out the dark elf king. The dark king granted his wish for a child and heir but made him promise that his youngest daughter was to be married to his son, the dark prince. The king, not thinking about having more than 1 child, promised, and left knowing that in 9 months they would be blessed with a child. True to the dark king’s words, the queen fell pregnant. She was overjoyed and did everything to make sure the baby would be healthy and happy, not knowing the agreement the king had made. He knew he should tell her, but he couldn’t stop the happiness he now saw in his queen. 9 months later, she gave birth to three lovely, triplet girls. The first with dark chestnut hair and equally dark eyes, which they called Voronwe, the second with golden hair and vivid blue eyes, which they called Estel, and the final with hair like the night but with wild green eyes, which they called Sere. Despite being triplets, the girls all looked extremely different.

I had to stop reading as I had reached my destination, but at least I knew how the story was relevant to my dreams now. The names of the children were the names of the girls in my dreams. I needed to read the rest, but there were more important things to deal with now. I needed answers from the one person who could give them to me. Even if the story would fill in the story from my dreams, I knew, somehow, that Silver had answers for my real-life story.

I jumped off the bus and ran as fast as I could, hoping deep down that I had picked the right place to find silver. I ran to the place Silver had taken me before, the silver birch tree overlooking the beach. As I had thought, Silver was sitting under the tree, his head in his knees, his arms wrapped tightly around his legs. He looked so defeated. My heart started beating fast, not sure if it was feelings of pitifulness or because I might actually get some answers. I stopped looking at him, a flash of light once again hit my head as a vision of the small silver-haired boy from my dreams floated into vision again. Was that supposed to be him? As if he had been hit with the same vision, he jolted up and stared straight at me. Our eyes locked, just for a few seconds, before I started towards him. However, as I did, he started to get up and leave.

“PLEASE WAIT!” I shouted; desperation clear in my voice. The shouting caused him to stop in his tracks, but his back was still to me. I could see him tensing up, his shoulders raised as if he was stopping himself from running. I continued moving towards him. If I could just reach him, maybe he would stop and talk to me.

“What?!” He said, quite viciously. I winced at the venom in his voice.

“I just want to talk… I know…” I bit my lip, I hoped I was right and not making a complete fool of myself. “I know you’re the one who’s been helping me in my dreams.” He whipped around and stared at me again, I was quite close to him, so he looked down into my eyes.

“W…” He straightened up. “What are you talking about?” I bit my lip again, I wasn’t wrong, I knew I wasn’t. I took a deep breath.

“I know you’re the guy who has been talking to me in my head, I know you’re the guy in my dreams telling me that they’re memories. I know you are! The voice, the hair, even the eyes are weirdly you. And before you call me crazy, I already know I am! This is driving me crazy!” I snapped angrily, waiting for him to deny it.

“So?” He asked. This caused my breath and voice to get caught in my throat.

“So? That’s … What the heck is going on!?” I was starting to hyperventilate; I could feel my breath getting caught in my throat and something growing in the centre of my chest. He tilted his head and looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“I don’t know…” He replied, turning his gaze away from me. When I didn’t answer, he turned to walk away. I was getting angrier. Why wouldn’t anyone talk to me? I was having dreams about ridiculous things; my head was killing me daily and it was affecting my life. I needed answers. I grabbed his arm angrily, probably tighter than I should have. He stopped walking away but didn’t turn back to me. This caused me to get angrier and the feeling in my chest felt like it needed to burst out. My breath was coming but in short and shallow pants. My vision was blurring but not from a headache this time, it was from the tears threatening to leak out, but not from sadness. This was pure anger.

“TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON!” I finally screamed, the angriest I felt I had ever been. A flash shot through my entire body and the ground started to rumble. Vines shot up and out of the ground and grabbed Silver around his legs and arms. Still, he didn’t move or even turn to look at me. I let go of his arm and looked at him, anger now turning to fear and worry. I had seen this before, the boy Morna in my dreams. Sere had done this to him when she was angry. Was I doing this? Was I in a dream now? “S… Silver?” I asked, fear wobbling my voice. The anger was still there but it was giving way to confusion yet again.

“That’s not my name!” He shouted, finally turning around to face me as much as he could. I could see his fists were clenched and tears were in his eyes. Suddenly it began to snow, and the vines started to wilt away from him. “My name is Celeb!” He shouted.

Silver's POV

For weeks now, I have been watching Sere. I knew who she was. She was my lost princess, my love. However, she had a new life after disappearing. No one knew what happened that fateful night, she just disappeared into thin air as we were playing a usual game of hide and seek. Panic had overcome the entire realm we lived in, and everyone had been sent to find her. She was the youngest princess in the kingdom. I had been searching for her for over 15 years. Not long to an elf, but long enough to miss the part of me that made me whole.

We had searched all over the world of Fallalessie, our homeland. We had also begun to search for other worlds. We had finally arrived at this one, Terra to us, Earth to the humans who lived here. We arrived on a large island and began casting searching magic to see if we could sense her presence, which we did. We arrived at this city and sensed her nearby. When I finally saw her walking out of her workplace, I knew it was her. I ran and told her sisters Voronwe (Faith) and Estel (Hope) and my two best friends, Alda and Morna (Black). Everyone was overjoyed and I wanted to run to get her. However, Estel (Hope) wouldn’t let me. She explained that we needed to be cautious. She had done a lot of research on humans and said they didn’t believe in magic or elves, and they were all fantasy. If we started spouting her missing life at her and she didn’t remember, we might scare her, and she would never try to remember anything or come home with us. So, we immediately found a house near to hers and started watching her. She seemed to be happy. Alda communicated with a sparrow. Part of his powers meant he was able to communicate with wildlife, but he transferred the consciousness over to Estel, knowing she would be able to get a better read on the girl as she was her closest sister. Estel saw that she was safe and happy but seemed to be having nightmares and severe headaches. She concluded it may have been us arriving that caused her magic to react and started her journey to remembering who she was.

We watched and watched for nearly two weeks, and I became increasingly confused and upset that she didn’t recognise me despite walking past her a few times. So, we decided to join her workplace, creating a fake contract for her boss, and applying for the jobs. As we created the contract, we knew no one else would fill the positions as no one knew about the jobs.

However, although she might be our boss, it was clear she had no interest in befriending us. She had her own friends, especially her boss. I couldn’t control myself when I saw she was close to another man, and she was quite close to David. And when I finally felt them kiss for the first time, it broke me, my powers exploded out of me, something that hadn’t happened in a long time since I gained control over them. I caused it to snow, heavily. This caused me to become distant from her, not that she would have realised, but it made me think… maybe I had truly lost her?

Today, however, hit the worst nerve. She was holding his hand in front of everyone. Despite her wanting to become my friend and feeling what she felt for me. Yes, I knew her heart pounded, and I knew she felt our connection even if she didn’t know what it was yet. Alda warned me ahead of time, but it didn’t prepare me for the shock. But then she let go and I thought maybe finally meeting me and getting to know me slowly would have caused her to have second thoughts about her relationship. She seemed to notice how angry we all were t her. But then we sensed her pain and ran to help her and walked onto the scene in the office. I had projected myself to her and I knew she saw me, but it wasn’t me who brought her out of her trance. It was him, David. Despite not being magical, her soulmate or even knowing what was going on, he was able to calm her down, he was able to stop the pain. The pain that I knew someone was inflicting on her to stop her remembering me. I couldn’t stand there and watch, so I fled, fled to the one pace that reminded me heavily of her and sat under the tree with my memories. Cradling my knees, I thought back to the day I met her.

Elves find mates like other mythical creatures, but we only know each other by a thin gold strand that connects us to the heart. We didn’t realise we were destined to be together until we shared our first lunar dance. A dance which makes the masculine elf sing a tune which creates the thread to his 'forever love', then each half follows the song and thread to each other. Usually, you're around 16 when it happens. I was due to have my first, and hopefully last, lunar dance later that year after meeting Voronwe, Estel and Sere. However, things happened very differently between us.

My father, king of the moon realm, had decided to visit the sun kingdom to welcome the new princesses. They would have been around 12 years old but looked like 6-year-olds. I was moping as I didn’t want to be there, it was boring being a prince, not allowed to do anything fun. I also didn’t want to have to entertain three spoilt princesses. Everyone knew the sun elf king and queen couldn’t have kids, so they would be the most spoilt children in the world, and princesses, nobility, which usually meant being pompous or stuck up. Yes, I was a prince, but my father raised me alongside our kingdom. I trained with them, and I was as ‘normal’ as anyone.

I was 16 (despite looking like an 8-year-old) but still considered a child. I hated it. I had seated myself around the large pond situated just near the large house of the sun king and queen. I was freezing the edge of the pool on and off, trying to control my powers, which were getting stronger and stronger each day. I had started humming a song, a song I had always heard in my head but never knew where it came from. I assumed it was a lullaby from my younger years, but it stayed with me. Suddenly, a small girl approached me, she sat down next to me and leant on my shoulder.

“I feel like you’re singing to my soul” she said, with a matter-of-fact tone. I looked at her, furrowing my brows in confusion. She didn’t bother me and stayed leant on my shoulders, her eyes closed. Shrugging my shoulders, I started humming again. As I did, I heard the girl singing but when I looked at her, she wasn’t singing. But I could clearly hear her voice, it was beautiful and mesmerising. She suddenly turned to look at me.

“Do you see the golden thread between us?” She asked, giggling, and trying to grab thin air. I couldn’t see anything. “It’s connecting us.” She smiled and stared at me. Her beautiful green eyes looked at me. I felt like I could see an entire world in those eyes. Her long black hair cascading down her back framed her beautiful face, and the small freckles on her face made her look remarkably cute. Suddenly, I realised the song was coming from her, but not her lips, from inside her. I panicked but was also excited, she was perfect. I knew what this meant, so I got up and mumbled a farewell before running to my father to tell him what had happened. As I reached the house, the two kings and queen had exited the house and were walking towards us.

“Dad!” I was out of breath and panting. “Beautiful… song… black hair…”

“Wow! Calm down son!” he laughed.

“Sere! Come say hello to Celeb!” The sun king shouted.

“I’ve already met him dad, he’s my gold thread buddy…” Suddenly, all the grown-ups looked startled and looked at me in awe.

“Now you make sense!” My dad bellowed, laughing and slapped me on the back. “Guess we have nothing to worry about now, hey Sven?” But King Sven did look worried.

I hadn’t realised it at the time, but the main reason for us visiting was to set up an alliance with the sun kingdom and I was supposed to marry Voronwe, but she refused. Although she hadn’t met her soulmate yet because she was too young, she was madly in love with a fire elf who lived amongst her subjects. He was a little older than me, but he also loved her too. I was so glad she had refused, as I knew Sere was meant to be my queen.

Suddenly a flash hit me, and I knew Sere was standing right there. I couldn’t face her but when she shouted, I couldn’t walk away. We had been warned not to tell her anything, just in case she had been tampered with, and the fact her memories were warped screamed black magic. She needed to fight the darkness and remember herself to break any sort of curse she might have on her. I didn’t mean to sound as harsh I did, but I was hurt, upset and a little bit angry that my life had been turned upside down and my love didn’t even know who I was. I decided the best way to separate us right now was to deny everything. However, when she called me Silver again, I snapped. I was sick of hiding, sick of pretending.

“My name is Celeb!” I shouted. I knew I was losing control of my powers again as snow started to drift around us. Sere just stared at me in complete surprise, but I could see recognition in her eyes. I knew she was having dreams, but had she really connected more dots than we thought?