The Fairy's Christmas Fairytale.

Indessa I ran away from home at sixteen when my parents told me that they were marrying me off. I refused to marry someone that I didn't know or love and who wasn't my mate. Their answer to that was to tell me that I'd have time to get to know him. After all, I wouldn't be marrying him until after I turned eighteen. My answer to that was to run away and run as far and as fast as I could. I waited until it was the busiest time of the year for our family, and then I took off. At sixteen, I already had a pretty big bank balance because of all the work that I did, and thanks in part to my grandparents. When my siblings and I were born, they gifted each of us an account that we'd get when we turned sixteen. So I was so damn thankful for that money. Thanks to it, I was able to move far away from home and start a new life. And thanks to a little fairy magic, I was able to stay hidden from my family. That's right, you heard me correctly, I said fairy magic. You see, I am the youngest daughter of the current king and queen of fairies. My mother is the true queen. Her family is where the royal side comes from. Her mother was the queen before her. The crown is always passed down to the next girl in line. If more than one girl is born to a family, then they have a mark that shows up on them. So even though I have two older brothers and one older sister, I was the one who was born with the mark. So now I'm stuck being the next queen of our people. Dont get me wrong, it is a job that I would love to have. If I were allowed to find my mate, the only man that I wanted to marry. I would love to be the leader of our people. You see, even we fairies have mates. We're just like the wolves and other shifters that are out there. (Yes, they exist as well. They just live in their own realms, just like we do.) We have a soulmate as well. The one person who is destined to be our other half. And every one of us wants to find that special person. But my parents seem to think that the only way that I'll be a good queen is by them marrying me off to the man of their choice. I disagree with that wholeheartedly, and this is why. If my mom, who is the current queen, and my grandma, who was the previous queen, got to meet and fall in love and marry their mates, then why cant I? Why was it ok for them to marry their mates, but it's not okay for me? It's just not fair or just. I even explained that to them, but they were still determined to sell me off and marry me to some stranger. I felt like a herd of cattle being put up for auction. They had a big dinner party and invited a lot of their friends. My siblings weren't made to dress up and attend but yet I was. My parents' excuse was that they wanted my future in-laws to get a good look at me without me knowing who they were. So they paraded me around their friends all night, showing me off. As I said, I felt like a cow at auction, as the humans would say. Even though I'm not big at all, I'm actually tiny, that's still how I felt. It wasn't long after that night that I disappeared. You see, my family, the adults anyway, help Santa Claus every year get ready to deliver his presents. Most people think that he uses Elves to help him, and while there are a few, he mainly has fairies that help. And on Christmas Eve, the current king and queen are there to see him off. And it's with fairy magic that he is able to travel between the realms and deliver the presents to the kids all in one night. So I waited until they were busy helping Santa and disappeared. It was easy to do, almost too easy. You see, my brothers and sister were supposed to keep watch over me. But they all got invited to a party and decided to go. Of course, I was invited as well. But I pretended that I didn't feel good and was in bed 'sick'. I waited for about an hour after they left and then packed my bags and left. If you were a strong enough fairy, then you could open a portal to the human world from anywhere. The weaker fairies had to use the stationary portal to go to the human realm or any of the others. Because I had learned how to use the portal, I was able to leave from my room without leaving a trace. So after I had all of my stuff packed up, I portaled out of there. And I never looked back. You see, we all live in the Berryhela Kyramka. The Claus family lives on the northern side of the realm, and we live on the southern side. My family has always been the rulers. And they have always stepped in to help Santa or Nicholas, as we know him. For about two months before Christmas Eve, they helped him. So I had plenty of free time away from them. I had been going through my normal training and had been learning all about my magic. But what my parents didn't know was that I spent a lot of my free time in the library at the castle reading books about different types of magic and how to do it. I learned the stuff that they didn't want me to know just yet on my own. So when they told me that I was to be married at eighteen to a man of their choice, I was able to run and hide so that they couldn't find me. With the magic that I learned on my own, I could change my appearance somewhat to make me look different. I could also hide myself to keep my family or anyone else from being able to find me. It has helped me these past years. When I escaped, I went straight to the human world. Thankfully, I had a set of uncles who lived there, and I was able to stay with them. They didn't agree with what my parents were trying to do either. They agreed that I should be able to meet a man a fall in love, and get married the same way that they did. My uncles are what the humans call the black sheep of the family. My Grandpa, Jareth Meadowlark, didn't agree with my uncle Rowan falling in love with a man. But that is who his mate was, and he loved him. Uncle Rowan refused to take a female mate, and it pissed my grandpa, the king, off. He thought that it made the royalty bad then look bad. But it didn't. So for the last few hundred years, my uncle and his husband have lived in different realms. They lived in the realm with the shifters and the human realm. They dont have much to do with the family. But I have always been close to them. You love who you love, and you cant control who your mate is. With the help of my uncles, I was able to live with them and go to a human high school and eventually college. I decided that I wanted to open my own candy business. I had always loved making different candies and was always making new ones. So once I graduated from high school, I started a small business. Because I was smart and picked things up really fast, I graduated from college a year early. So now, at twenty-one, I have not only managed to hide from my family for five years. But I've also run and expanded my open candy shop as well. Everything has been going great these past few years. I just hope and pray every day that things continue to go my way. The last thing that I need is my damn family finding me and trying to drag my ass back. I'm perfectly happy right where I am. Now who wants some boozy candy canes? They are so damn good in hot chocolate.