More than a Dream
AN: This is based on a recurring dream I have been getting. I have added to it and it has a few characters in it who are loosely based on characters from Bleach. I do not own the original characters, but I feel as though they have changed enough to be my own characters. The names they posses are the same as from my dreams, instead of their original character names. You'll have to figure out for yourself just who is who. I am writing this down kind of just to get it out of my brain and kind of because it's just such an incredible dream I want to share it. I intend on drawing the characters eventually. With that being said, please enjoy!
As a child, I had friends who were twins. Mei, a girl, and Tei, a boy. Their dad had died when they were young and their mom raised them. She was good friends with my parents and they were our neighbors, so we played every day together. They weren't just any friends to me but more than that. Mei was like my sister and we tormented our parents with our extreme rambunctiousness. Tei was like the big brother, being the older twin and both of them being a couple months older than me. He was always calm and introverted and wouldn't talk to people even as a young child unless he knew them really well. We would all play together and laugh and scream and run. But there was something different about the twins. I am a regular human, but they are Popkins. Not something most storybooks talk about, but a fantasy creature nonetheless. A Popkin is a type of fantastical being that when a human hears their laugh, the human will turn into a baby. Kind of a weird trick, if you ask me, and they can't do much else. They live a lot longer than humans although they look human for the most part. Their mom made me a hat to wear that was a knitted beanie and its purpose was to magically keep the twins' laughs from doing anything to me. Our parents wanted us to be able to play well and I never forgot to wear my hat, knowing that I wouldn't be allowed to be friends with them if I didn't wear it.
That friendship was intense and powerful and we spend the better part of our first five years together almost consistently. But shortly after the twins turned five, their mom and them just up and moved suddenly and my whole family was in shock. I did not leave my room for weeks and I constantly cried for them to come back even after that. I started going to school and as time passed I began to be able to cope with their absence more and more. My family stayed in that same house for years, until the year I was going to turn 18 and then they decided it was time to leave my childhood home and move somewhere I would no longer feel alone.
My backyard held a forest that was filled with fairies of all kinds and I had grown up playing there, so even though being in the home brought me sadness over my lost "siblings," the forest was my favorite place to be. I was constantly playing or running or walking among the trees and I learned to speak the fairy language. Tei and I had always known the fairy queen who lived in the wood, and although Mei was uninterested, the fairy queen cared deeply for all three of us. She told us stories and would play with us and introduce us to all the fairies in the wood. When the twins moved, she always avoided any questions I asked her about them though. It was as if she knew what was happening all those years and never let on. When I let her know that my parents and I were moving, however, she disappeared suddenly and for a week after that I couldn't find her. None of the fairies from the forest knew where she was either and their community began to fall apart. One day, as I was helping the fairies try to work through some issues and at the same time fighting off my own depression about moving, the fairy queen quite literally popped into being again in front of the whole council. I was rushed from the forest and that night was a fitful one for me of nightmares and fears related to moving and losing all the fairies, whom had become my only friends. Little did I know what would be awaiting me the next morning.