Once Upon A Time

Chapter 8

In the afternoon when school was over, Nasha and Gregie met up to wait for Elkis to pick them up. The two of them sat on the edge of sidewalk, Nasha decided to kill time by doing her homework and she suggested that Gregie do the same but he was too invested in his story book.

"No offense to your interests Gregie but why are you always reading that book?" Nasha asked him. "You must have every one of those stories memorized by now so why keep reading it?"

"For your information I'm re-reading this book because I've noticed some details around here that are probably important."

"Such as?"

"Take a look at this."

He showed Nasha an illustration in the book that was of a young woman with red hair who was about to shoot an arrow from a bow.

"Her name is Erza." Greige explained. "She's from a magical land called Fiore and according to the events in this story she's living out in the forest alone."

"And?"

"Can you not see that she looks exactly like Elkis?"

"Why did you draw a make believe character in our foster mother's image?"

"I didn't draw this Nasha. This character has been in this book for as long as I can remember and every illustration of her that's in this book is always the same. She always looks like Elkis."

"That's a little weird."

"But it's not just her either. Ever since we've arrived here I've noticed that a lot of the people in this town look like the characters in my book. Here let me show you another one."

He flipped the pages and stopped on the one that showed the illustration of a blue haired maiden smelling roses.

"This character looks exactly like my teacher Miss Lockser and this one." He flipped some more pages and stopped on another one that showed an illustration of a salmon haired young man wearing armor and branding a sword. "Looks like that mechanic friend of Elkis's. What's his name again? Nakku?"

"Alright this is going from weird to creepy." Nasha said as she observed the picture of the character who was the spitting image of Nakku. "Where did you get this book?"

"My mother gave it to me. It was the only thing found with me apart from the blanket I was wrapped in."

"Any idea where she could have gotten this from?"

"No clue."

"Who wrote the book?" 

"Don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? Isn't the author's name written in this thing?"

"No. There's no author name."

"What kind of book doesn't have the name of the author who wrote it?"

"This one does."

Nasha checked the front and back pages of the book but not a single one had any information about who wrote the book or where it came from.

"This is the weirdest book I've ever seen." Nasha said.

"Yeah but you should try reading it sometime. The stories are really cool."

"I'll pass. I think I know the stories of beautiful princesses with hair long enough to climb and little boys scaling giant beanstalks very well."

"Trust me these aren't like the stories you've heard."

"Is that right?"

"Uh-huh. These stories a way different than all the others."

"And pray tell how are they different?"