A Tale of Two Worlds

The lightning was her favorite part of the thunderstorms that frequented her small town. Lightning never struck the same place twice; it was unpredictable, and Hailey Jordan always thrived when she didn't know what was going to happen next. It was a game, really, a game that she didn't want to play all the time but ended up enjoying and winning at in the end.

Her mother had gone to bed ages ago, already cursing the storm that had kept her younger sister awake until close to midnight. She had had a long day at the university, her faculty research on the views of witchcraft in the medieval ages driving her to a book of old court records that was nearly six inches thick.

A flash of light caught Hailey's eye, and she felt her lips curl upwards at the bolt of electricity that had struck the mountains in the distance. The two were always in a duel, it seemed, one never giving into the other's power.

"Lee-Lee," a quiet voice broke her reverie of silence, and Hailey's head whipped from the window to the door. A girl was standing there, one hand clutching the door handle like her life depended on it and the other gripping the neckline of an oversized t-shirt that had used to belong to her father.

"Evie, come here," Hailey whispered, removing her hands from the windowpane and offering them out to her sister. As soon as Hailey acknowledged her presence, Eve released the door handle and launched herself across the room and into Hailey's arms, automatically curling herself up in her older sister's lap. Hailey reached one arm down to wrap around Eve's waist, the touch stirring Eve and prompting her to peek her eyes out from where they had been buried in Hailey's torso.

"Why is it raining again?" Her voice trembled, a pathetic comparison to the thunderous rumble outside.

"Well, the fairies down here on Earth noticed that the plants were starting to die, so they told the Queen of the Fairies that they needed rain to live."

"But I don't like the noise," Eve whimpered. A bolt of lightning attacked the mountains once again, the hit followed by a roar of thunder as the sky cheered in victory for its ally. "Or the scary light."

"Well, you know the legend behind the thunderstorms, don't you?" When Eve shook her head, Hailey continued, pointing outside towards the mountains, where the storm clouds were most visible swirling angrily in the sky. "The fairies live in the depths of the mountain, and every morning, they go to the highest point and tell the Queen whether the plants and animals down below need more water. If they do, the Queen raises her hands to the sky, and rain falls. One day, the King of the Sun got angry that the fairies were causing rain and covering up the light, and so he created two monsters, Thunder and Lightning, to scare the fairies and get rid of the rain. They are always in constant battle, but the rain always defeats the Thunder and Lightning and drives them out of the sky, and its victory is shown with a rainbow." Eve's eyes were wide, the fear in them replaced by fascination.

"Really?" she whispered as if scared that if she spoke too loudly, the spell of the story may be broken.

"Yeah, so when you wake up, a big rainbow will appear in the sky. But it'll only come out if you go to sleep." Eve gasped audibly, pushing away Hailey's arms and jumping out of her lap, not wasting any time in running out the door and across the hall back to her room, the soft thud of her footfalls fading with every step she ran down the hall.

Hailey rolled her eyes, resting her chin against her palm. She remembered when her father had told her that story, and, as her mother recalls, Hailey used to react the same way Eve did now. Her fingers grazed over the necklace she wore, the sole charm the most important thing she owned that reminded her of her father. It was small, but it caught the light whenever it turned, giving it the appearance of being bigger than it actually was. To an unsuspecting eye, the charm just looked like a gem encased in a protective wiring, but deep in its center, only visible if one looked at it the right way, was the engraving of a crown.