From the moment she was born, Raeya Quinn was different. Not the normal sort of different, as in unlike the majority but still normal, but truly unique in a mystical sense. It was as if she didn't belong in the world she was brought into. First, there were her looks; she had a full head of hair somewhere in between the colors of medium and deep red with eyes of grayish green. Her complexion was pale, but not to the point of looking sickly, and she was of average height and weight despite her constant belief that she was too short. For some unknown reason there were always dark circles under her eyes no matter how much sleep she got, and she did get plenty for sleep and the dreams it brought with it were her favorite escape from a world in which she felt out of place.

It wasn't so much that she didn't have friends; she had those despite copious bullying as a child. It was more that no matter where she went, her beliefs, ideas, thought processes, and overall personality were so drastically different from everyone else's. Her family had tried to convince her that there was nothing wrong with that, but the problem was not shame. No, she was quite fine with being the odd ball. She simply wanted to find a place to fit in and feel a sense of belonging. Her great grandparents on both sides of the family had immigrated to America from Ireland, but Raeya had never been given the chance to visit her ancestral homeland. However she had convinced her parents to take her as a high school graduation present, and her hopes were high that just maybe she would finally feel that sense of belonging when she got there.

Raeya was nothing if not creative, and had twisted her passions for visual and literary art into a dream of writing and illustrating fantasy books. Being as in touch with her Irish heritage as she was, Celtic mythology had always held a special place in her heart. As a child, she was read myths, fairytales, and legends until she fell asleep every night. She had been fond of dresses and unicorns and faeries just like lots of little girls. However around the age of thirteen something snapped. She pulled a complete one eighty and started dressing like a tomboy, but her love of all things magical stayed with her and simply matured. Instead of being the pretty princess waiting for prince charming, she was the warrior maiden who befriended dragons and fought evil. Her last waking hours were still filled with stories, but now she read them herself, and there was one in particular that really captured her imagination.

Although not a terribly big or long book, the red leather binding with an embossed golden title held a story like none she had ever read before. It was the story of the Labyrinth. In all honesty, Raeya had come across it by accident. She made a point of visiting the book store in any new town she visited since the first time she had received an allowance, and one of them happened to be a rather old family owned type of place. It was there that she had hoped to find some rare and unique fairytales for her collection, but she never dreamed she would find the Labyrinth there. Something about it seemed to draw her to it, and as soon as she read the first few pages she knew she had to have it.

Since that day at the age of ten, the book had been entertaining and inspiring every time she read it. As she grew older, she began to analyze the characters both in terms of personality and possible species of mystical creature. She also studied the relationships between them and the motivation behind their actions. Most of the characters had been easy to identify in terms of species, but one was truly baffling; the Goblin King, Jareth. For the life of her she just couldn't come up with a name for what he was, until she remembered her Celtic mythology. Jareth was something called a Tuatha de Dannan, commonly referred to as a Fae and spoken of in their native land as 'the fair folk'. This was not to be confused with a faerie, which by the book's description was a rather nasty little creature that looked like a tiny human with butterfly wings. No, the Fae were far older and much more powerful. From what she gathered, they were something rather similar to the Scandinavian elves, tall, beautiful, wise, very long lived, and quite skilled at magic.

Jareth's personality had intrigued her from the first read through. He seemed to be a very wise and very deep character, who was tragically torn between fulfilling his duties as the Goblin King and attempting to gain the affections of the young mortal girl who had foolishly wished away her brother in a moment of frustration. As if that wasn't enough, he was forced into playing the role of the teacher/villain opposite the mortal girl's heroine; and although he was teaching her valuable life lessons, he could never quite let his true self surface always hiding it behind a mask of taunting condescension and so called cruelty. The closest he had come to being who he really was appeared in the ballroom dream sequence. It was as though he was trying to tell her to look beyond what she thought she saw, for as he had said things are not always as they seem. Raeya felt truly sorry for Jareth by the end of the story, especially when the mortal girl rejected him. It was fairly obvious that the girl didn't think he was serious about his offer and was simply focused on saving her brother. Sometimes Raeya wondered what would've happened under different circumstances; like what if the girl had known who he truly was, and that she had already won her brother back, and Jareth wasn't trying to distract her with that offer. Raeya would've preferred an ending in which the girl fell in love with Jareth as well, but that was just her repressed inner romance fanatic talking. She also couldn't help but wonder; if Jareth did exist and the story was true, had he been able to get over her and move on with his life or had her defeat and rejection of him somehow destroyed him beyond repair?

Raeya sighed quietly to herself. Now was not the time to be pondering such things. If she didn't get her butt out of bed, she would be late for her last day of high school. She quickly pulled on a black poet shirt and a dark pair of jeans before running a brush through her naturally wavy hair and putting on her favorite black headband to keep the shorter layers out of her face. Finally, she put on a silver necklace with a clear crystal ball pendant; when she had found it she simply couldn't resist, it reminded her so much of her favorite Fae. Strangely enough, she also noticed her dreams were substantially more vivid when she slept with the necklace on the nightstand next to her bed.

When she was satisfied that her appearance was far enough removed from the bastard child of hell and death warmed over that she found herself disturbingly resembling when she awoke, she ran downstairs and devoured a few pieces of jellied toast and orange juice for breakfast before bolting out the door to walk to school.

Unfortunately she found herself dreadfully bored as usual with her classes, though considering that it was the last day of school things were worse than normal. Luckily she had a friend in every class who was more than happy to pass notes with her written in dragon script (a font loosely based on ancient runes) so any unintended reader would find it impossible to decipher. When lunch finally rolled around, she ate at light speed given the ridiculously short amount of time they were allotted and then proceeded to doodle in her sketchbook for the remainder of the break. A few more note passing filled classes later, the final bell rang. Raeya could hardly contain her screech of delight. One week from today she was going to Ireland!