Of Storm and Starlight

Two

The faerie was kind. He had skin like burnt caramel. His hair fluttered like raven's feathers, and his eyes were like opals - a kaleidoscope of shifting colours. Blue and green, pink and gold. They were the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

He smiled with pointed teeth - shark-like. And yet his opalescent eyes were kind. He didn't scare her. No, with him, she felt safe, in a strangely warm way.

With translucent butterfly's wings the colour of his eyes, he descended from the sky above. He was a guardian angel who had come to her rescue, and she had never seen such a wondrous sight. He lit up the forgotten drainage pipe with his ethereal glow, and offered her a kind smile.

"I am Adon Corentin," he told her, his voice like a hot chocolate on a cold winter's evening - comforting. "What is your name, young fae?"

"I don't know," she answered. Her voice was small, and yet it echoed in the concrete tunnel. "My name never really belonged to me."

Adon simply lifted her to her feet with an encouraging smile. "What do you wish your name to be?"

She did not know. She was not Andrea Llewellyn, and yet she was nobody else, either.

But then she remembered.

The voice. The warm, familiar voice that whispered a word into her mind; a word that sunk deep into her soul. That word felt so real, just as her pain and sadness was real. It did not give her false hope as Andrea did. It was not the foundation of a false life in which all she held dear would be ripped away from her. No, that word - that name, was true.

Rai.

She knew with a certainty that settled deep in her bones that she had found who she was.

She looked at Adon and smiled, a glimmer of happiness sparking within her for the first time in weeks. "My name is Rai."

His eyes widened in shock, but he schooled his expression so quickly that Rai must have imagined it. A trick of the light.

Adon smiled again, and took Rai's hand, engulfing her in the warmth of his magic. "Let's go home, Rai."