120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

@Magic#December Challenge: The Wild Child

The first thing her grandmother told her when she was brought back to her real family's home was that she had to get married.

"I don't think so!" Endora spat and took out her smartphone to see whether she could still use the GPS to go back to her human family. It wasn't working in the fairy world, of course.

She had known all her life that she was different from the other teenagers, but until that very night, she had thought that there was a rational explanation, i.e. some kind of a rare genetic defect, why she was not as tall as her classmates and her features were far more crooked than theirs. Today was her sixteenth birthday, and her fairy grandmother had thought this was the perfect opportunity to get reacquainted with the baby girl she had once put in the crib of the Miller family's human baby, a baby whose blood she had then used for medical purposes, beauty treatments or something of the kind. As if a fairy lady who looked a few hundred years old really needed to strive for eternal youth! Endora had never seen someone as ugly as her when she had come back from her birthday party and found the fairy witch in her room. She had thought someone was playing a nasty joke on her at first when the old lady had told her who she really was and that her name was not Kimberly, but Endora. Her fairy mother had allegedly been a big fan of a 1960s TV series called Bewitched, which Endora did not even know existed. Apparently, fairy mothers had no milk, so their babies would die if they weren't swapped with a human baby and fed human milk.

It all had sounded pretty crazy even before her grandmother had kidnapped her to bring her back to the fairy world. She had tried to fight her off, but even though she was about a foot taller, she was no match for a wise witch. She had abducted her into a dark forest, which probably wasn't even in the United States, and brought her to some sort of tree house. Here she was supposed to become reacquainted with her fairy parents.

"Our ways are pretty different from the lifestyle you're used to... So I think it would be best if we got rid of your human belongings right now!" her fairy grandmother announced and tried to take her phone away.

This time, Endora was faster and fought her off. The old fairy witch landed on the floor with a loud smash and looked at her granddaughter as if she couldn't believe what had just happened. "You know, my name may not be Kim, and I may not be the Miller's real daughter, but that doesn't mean that I will give up my phone or my clothes for that matter! Besides, I want to finish The Vampire Diaries on Netflix first!"

"Oh, you're already watching an educational programme about vampires?"

"Yeah, something of the kind," Endora said and rolled her eyes. Where on earth was she? Was there really no way out of this? On the other hand, if she kept her cool, her grandmother might begin to trust her at some point, and then she might perhaps find a way how she could escape.

"Do you want something to drink?" her grandmother asked. "It was a long journey, so I guess you must be thirsty."

"Yeah, I'll have a Diet Coke, please. That is Coca Cola, not Pepsi." she replied.

"We don't have anything of the kind here. But you can drink hot water from the nearby stream. It tastes really great!"

"Ill!" Endora exclaimed before she could stop herself.

All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door. Her grandmother opened the door and said: "Olaf! We've been waiting for you!"

Endora had already braced herself to see the snowman from the Frozen movies walk in when she realised that "Olaf" was a young man who didn't look so bad actually. Granted, his blonde hair was too long because the tips of his ears were probably as sharp as hers and Mr Spock's from Star Trek, and the kind of animal pelt he was wearing didn't really look like it could ever become a fashion trend. But otherwise, he looked pretty hot by fairy teenager's standards, she guessed, and he had definitely been working out.

"Olaf, this is my granddaughter Endora. Endora, this is Olaf, our neighbour's son and the first possible marriage candidate I want to introduce to you!" her grandmother announced.

"Hello, how do you like it here?" Olaf asked shyly. Okay, so maybe he was hot by fairy standards, but he was also the kind of boy who would never have found a girlfriend in the human world due to his great shyness!

"It's okay."

"Where do you come from... I mean, where did you live in the human world?" he asked.

"Upstate New York."

"I'm from Boston... I mean, I lived in Boston until last year, I mean." he said, correcting himself. "I think you'll get used to the fairy world quickly. It has a lot of advantages when compared to the human world."

"Like, in the human world a girl doesn't have to get married at sixteen, but can choose freely what she wants to be and who she wants to be with!" Endora pointed out.

"Oh, you can do that here, too," he said and looked at Endora's grandmother. "Hasn't your grandmother told you that the fairy world is essentially run by women?"

"Nope, there are a couple of topics we haven't covered yet," Endora said.

In that very moment, Endora's phone began to ring. Her ringtone was "7 Rings" by Ariana Grande, and she turned it up when she noticed that her grandmother was scared to death of the female voice that was coming from the phone. She didn't know how or why, but her best friend Arizona was calling her and had actually managed to come through.

"Hey, Babe, what are you doing?" Arizona asked.

Endora put her on speaker. "Hey, Doll. I thought I was dreaming that I was hanging out with a couple of weirdos. But now I realise it wasn't a dream."

Arizona obviously thought Endora was joking. "Who are those weirdos and what do they want from you of all people? Like, nobody ever wants anything from you!"

"That's what I thought, too, right?" Endora stated. "But they claim I'm some sort of an abducted fairy child and that I'm supposed to live with them in their fairy world."

"Babe, are you sure you're okay? I can be with you in a sec if you want me there."

"Actually, I do want you here, but I'm not home. I'm in a tree house," she said and laughed. "Like, that's my new home according to them. Oh, and I'm supposed to marry a guy called Olaf."

"The snowman?" Arizona asked and laughed.

Olaf looked at her as if his heart was breaking into a thousand pieces and made a quick dash for the door. Okay, perhaps she should apologise to him later. "No, he is actually a nice guy. You know what, I'll call you when I get home!"

"All right, see ya." Arizona said and hung up.

"Who was that?" her grandmother asked.

"My friend."

"You mean you're ex-friend. Fairies and humans cannot be friends!"

"Who says that?"

"Hammer's Guide Book to the Fairy World. Here's a first edition, which was published in 1544 and will serve as your guide into the fairy world," her grandmother said and took a huge book from a chair.

"No, thank you. I don't even read the books I have to read for school!" Endora countered. "Now would you please let me go home to my family and friends even though they are human... And we both pretend that this has never happened?"

"There is one simple answer to that question: NO!" her grandmother said and took her phone away with one swift swipe of her hand.