"She lives in a fairy tale somewhere too far for us to find.

Forgotten the taste and smell of a world that she's left behind."

"Hey! Do you have a problem?"

The shouting went ignored yet again. The young woman kept her face buried in the book she'd been reading, leaning back in her desk chair. Her silky straight hair, the golden color of wheat, was parted to the side so that it fell over her face, making a curtain to hide her from the world. At least, the entire left side of the world. Andra Riley sat in her seventh period Honors Algebra, having finished her homework early so that she could read. She was three pages away from the last page of the last book in the entire Drizzt series. She would finish today.

For the past ten minutes, the beautiful (in her own mind) teen in the row beside her had been repeating the same things, and until now it'd been easy to ignore. "I said, what book is that?" "It's really rude to ignore people you know." "I'm talking to you, stupid!" Just like every day, Brandi the Brat was taking extreme delight in poking her with a long pointy stick.

Finally, it was apparent that she wasn't going to stop any time soon. Andra sighed and looked up at last, flipping back her head to get the hair out of her eyes. She knew what was coming. It didn't hurt a lot anymore—after the first few times she'd learned that if you don't hear the words, they have nothing to hurt you with. The first time she had cried, and the humiliation had never left her. Now Andra never cried. Not in private or public. That was what just they wanted.

She just needed the noise gone so she could read. Three pages left and she needed to know how it all came to its bittersweet end. "What?" she answered curtly.

Brandi let loose a frilly little giggle, a sound maddening beyond reason. Andra fought hard to keep from scowling. "What book is that?" the brat asked, smacking her gum loudly as she talked. She leaned over to try and see over the top of Andy's novel.

"I highly doubt that you care." She started to delve back into the pages, back to her second world.

"Humph, well." Brandi flipped out a cell phone, apparently getting another meaningless text from her cheating boyfriend she loved so much. "You're probably right; I've got much better things to do with my time."

Andra suppressed a bitter retort of a rejected outcast.

Suddenly, a new voice joined the limited conversation, the only voice that held the ability to use words like a sword. Andra had trusted her—a faith not lightly placed—not to use them that way. A slight-figured, dark-haired girl turned around in the desk in front of her: Kara. Over the past months she had become closer to Kara than most of the other people she knew—excluding Chase, who served as Andra's big brother and best friend.

Andy looked up, expecting some kind of defense from this, a true friend. What she got instead was, "Andy, really…you should maybe consider giving up those books."

Andra's eyes filled with confusion, suspicion. Had that been buried there all along? "Mhm. Why?"

She exhaled shortly, a sound of impatience. Her eyes rolled in exasperation, the expression of someone who's tired of explaining things to a person who just doesn't understand. "You're jus—It's just weird. You know?"

From the corner of her eye, she saw Brandi toss a smug grin in Kara's direction.

Andra said nothing—couldn't if she wanted to. Her first thought was a distinct image of Cattie-brie's face, plastered on top of Kara's face for so long, melting off and falling to pieces on the floor. As soon as the initial horror began to fade, Andra's eyes steeled immediately, shooting repelling 'how-could-you' needles into that suddenly unfamiliar mask. Silent, but roiling inside, she pointedly turned sideways in her seat so that her back was to both of them and dove back into The Two Swords, the bright blonde curtain falling back into place. Her face was hidden; she could have let the tears roll and neither of them would have ever known. She wanted to.

But Andra never cried.

She didn't move the entire remainder of the class. She read fervently and finished the book. The sense of completion and finality at first was tempered, but she came to realize fully the bittersweet fact…There was no more. This was the end of her second—better—world. Her second home. She could hardly believe it ended that way…that it had to end at all…

The bell rang. She gathered her things mechanically and left, pointedly looking at nothing but what she was doing. She didn't look at either Brandi or Kara. She was first out the door.

...

From another face in the endless hoard, a peculiar pair of eyes followed as she wove her way through the flowing crowd of students. The halls were overrun with high school teens all rushing and pushing each other, eager to get the heck home. Some roughhoused while others laughed and talked, and the school echoed with the sounds of dismissal. The main gallery was made up of tall ceilings and giant windows to let in the early-evening sunrays, one huge staircase in the center, and a wide rail-encased square cut into the floor that allowed you to stand on the second floor and look down on the first. Chase Archer—they called him that, at least—had his back propped against the rails lining that decorative hole. His eyes stared out of an angular face and from behind a shaggy mane of blonde-and-brown, shoulder-length hair, which he hadn't tied back today like he normally did. He had one foot propped up behind him on a lower rail and one hand stuck in the pocket of his forest-green jacket. His eyes burrowed intensely on his mark, not once losing track of her.

As she came within earshot, his visage changed. He waved casually in the air and called with a bright tone, "Andy! Over here." She looked up, tossing back her wheat-colored hair, visible relief on her face when she spotted him. She moved agilely through the crowd to get to him.

"Chase," she groaned, plopping her head down on his shoulder. "Ahh, you have no idea how stupid my life is…"

Chase gave a laugh: the sound of sunshine on treetops. "A'right, kid—whose head do I beat in?"

Andra smiled, overwhelmed suddenly. There was yet one comrade in her life who was still steadfast. She told everything about Kara and Brandi, loving the chance to vent. He listened without any sign of boredom or complaint, and when she'd stopped, she felt so much better. Chase was the only cup to her emotional bottle—even he didn't hear the deepest feelings behind her emotional walls, but he knew much more than everyone else. Here was at least one person left in the world she could count on.

She'd known Chase since freshman year, two years ago now, and immediately he had become to her the big brother she'd always wanted but never had. In all of N. Androos High School, maybe in the entirety of her town of Louisville, KY, she had never known a person equal in character. He liked to fight, perhaps too much, really—but he only fought for the right things. He was owner to an air of headstrong nobility and dazzling vibrancy, an unbreakable policy to never cut his hair short (no matter how much his mom griped), and a towering, lithe, muscular frame of 6'4". With a dress of mainly denim jackets and ripped jeans, his coolness was conveyed. It wasn't boasted like peacock feathers, but rather flowed off him effortlessly, like the quiet charm that he didn't even seem to be aware he possessed. The only glitch was that he was a bit off about things; sometimes it was like he didn't know what you were talking about or didn't understand certain normal, everyday actions. Figures of speech confused him, though he adapted well to uncomfortable or awkward situations. It was like he was an extremely adaptive but still a bit lost exchange student from some far-away country (world).

And he had the strangest set of eyes. They were pale purple—lavender. Andy thought of Drizzt Do'Urden every time she caught sight of Chase's eyes. But she would have to avoid that now, after what just happened to her last real-life storybook character.

When she had finished, Chase shook his head in empathy, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. The oddity of the action apparently was lost on him, "Some aren't what they first appear to be. Sometimes they don't live up to the grandeur we build around them." There was another thing: he talked strangely. Like he was from poetic England or a well-written novel. He was a pleasing sort of strange.

Andy smiled, her eyes filled with intense gratitude. But she couldn't bring herself to express any spoken feeling…she couldn't say, "Thank you, thank you, oh please Chase don't ever change." All she could offer in reply was her famous universal answer: "Yeah."

They parted, Chase clapping her on the back with a reassuring, "Chin up, kid. See you around." She liked when he called her "kid;" it made her feel like his sister. She said goodbye and started away, trudging down the gallery stairs. A few steps down, though, she remembered something she'd wanted to ask him about History class, and turned back around with her mouth already forming a shout.

Chase was nowhere to be seen.

Andy glanced around, brows furrowed in confusion. But she simply shook her head with a small shrug and turned back down the stairs, hoping the bus driver hadn't taken off yet. Buses around here were like planes: they do not wait.

...

From around the corner of the now-emptying hallway, Chase's lavender eyes still followed her every movement. Without taking his locked eyes away, he dropped a hand inside his oversized, forest-green jacket, fingers tracing the flawless contours of an onyx figurine hidden within.

She was finished. She was ready.

"I'm more than a bird; I'm more than a plane.

I'm more than some pretty face beside a train,

And it's not easy…to be…me."

Her bedroom door slammed open so hard it rattled the mirror hanging on her wall. She didn't even stop to see if anyone had heard and come running. If they had, they'd have gotten a door slammed in their face; Andra whirled around and kicked it closed. But she had to drop her armload of school-junk and pinwheel her arms to keep from falling, like some kind of idiot cartoon. Andra scowled. The rest of her junk went flying from her hands as she flung her jacket and bag across the room. It didn't matter. Who the heck cared—and why should they?

With hot, angry movements she bent and jerked off her shoes, one arm propped on the desk. One blue Chuck Taylor spun through the air, shoelaces flying wild, and was followed by its partner. One toppled the wastebasket in the corner, while the other sailed straight for her precariously hung mirror. Andy looked up in alarm as the shoe slammed into the defenseless glass. Reflexively she gasped, holding her fists up in front of her as if she could counteract gravity. It hit the floor in slow-motion, wooden frame splintering, an ugly crack slithering right through the center of the glass.

Andra's arms fell limp at her sides. She closed her eyes as a shuddering sigh escaped her, and with it, all the heated motion dispersing into thinner air, as the fluttering papers from her notebooks settled quietly on the carpet. Her eyes stung with warm tears. She screwed them shut tighter, but aside from that and her slow panting, didn't move for several moments.

So ends another wonderful day in the beautiful life of Andra Riley.

She could ignore the paper-wads and prissy giggles and shoulder-bumps in the hallway. "Anti-social," she could ignore that. "Fantasy nerd," she could usually ignore that. Because she knew that people like Brandi were pointless and negligible. It was the Karas of the world that mattered. But not even she was constant. Not even she could resist the hollow, temporary fame that came with the shiny popularity of the Brandis of the world. There were no heroes. Somewhere else, maybe, but not in her tiny corner of the world.

Where was the nobility? The strength, the ideals? Loyalty—whatever happened to that? Meanwhile she was still waiting for the renowned triumph of the oppressed.

Finally, Andra drew in a slow, deep breath and sighed, bending over to start the cleaning process. Her fingers closed softly on her jacket first, lifting it out from under a Calculus textbook that flipped over with a soft and ignored thud. Childish. Tossing junk around the room like a stupid brat… Stupid. But okay, whatever. She'd be a big girl and clean up after her tantrum.

Stupid shoe. Stupid mirror. Stupid Andra.

She spotted something on the ground and her eyes softened. "Oh!" she whispered, dropping to her knees to retrieve the paperback from where it lay open on the floor. She stood as she straightened out the bent pages. She hadn't meant to do that… Andy closed the book, caressing the front cover as her eyes stared at the cover art depicting the lone drow ranger surrounded by a hoard of snarling orcs. She produced a broken smile. The last book in the Drizzt saga—she'd finished it just today.

Why couldn't life be like that? There, loyalty was never broken. Adventure, heroics, triumph against impossible odds… Love. Friendship. Unbreakable bonds of it. And no one ever left you to fight alone.

Exhaling again, she placed the novel on her bedside table. 'It's alright—It will be,' she thought to herself as she went to the window beside her bed. She needed crisp, cold night air and the serenity of starlight. She thought of Faerun. She thought of the Companions of the Hall. She thought of Drizzt and Guenhwyvar as she flung back the curtain.

The view outside she knew to be of her trailer park—the street in front, the neighbor's yard beyond, a rigged ball goal attached to the side of the same neighbors' single-wide trailer—was almost entirely obscured in calm, clear night. And how easy it was to imagine a face of pitch-black skin painted seamlessly somewhere out in that moonless dream.

...

She stayed at the window until time demanded she get her Algebra homework done. She had to retrieve her book and papers from the lingering meson the floor, then sat down with them at her desk. The question she'd wanted to ask Chase was about which page they were supposed to do, but when she opened her book, she saw to her relief that she'd written it down. It didn't take more than a half hour—an excruciatingly long half-hour—and she was done. She glanced at the TV, decided it couldn't compare to some good book, but then remembered that she was all out of book. She sighed and simply returned to the widow, crawling onto her bed, which was directly underneath the portal. She stood on her knees and reached for the curtain.

And suddenly she froze, fingers loosely curled around the curtain's soft fabric. There was a sound from somewhere behind the window. It was like a pulsing hum of vibration, but quite unlike the metallic sound made by the air conditioning unit that sat just outside her window. Finally she recognized it; it sounded very much like the purring of a great cat. But it was so low and deliberate it may have been growling, either. The thought to fear didn't even cross Andy's mind—there was only curiosity. Without hesitation (she wasn't aware of any reason to hesitate!) she pulled back the thick brown curtain.

A brilliant pair of red eyes glowed back at her from the veil of dark.

Shock jolted her like a lightning bolt and she fell back with a shout, all pretense of balance gone with the wind. The curtain fell back into place; the two points of red disappeared behind it. Andra half-lay on the bed, heart thrumming ecstatically, eyes locked on the still-swaying curtain. Her chest rose and fell with electrified breath.

There came from somewhere outside a new sound, like someone scraping a fork against a plastic milk jug. She recognized this one immediately. Her dog made that sound when he saw her through the window—he would jump up on his hind legs with his paws against the side of the house to see inside. He would look in, and as his nose strove vainly to poke through the window screen, his claws would make that noise against the trailer's siding. Claws on plastic underpinning—and her dog was inside for the night.

Andra exploded to motion quicker than a gunshot, scrambling forward to tear aside the curtain again. The sight surprised her even the second time, even though she'd been hoping to see exactly this: the eyes still there, still staring with intense wisdom into her own amber orbs. They locked on her face, pupils no more than vertical slits cut through those softly glowing rubies. They glowed with knowledge as well as red light. The scratching, patterned and rhythmic, stopped. It had her attention. The eyes locked her into a stare—hers of blankness, theirs of depth. Hers of searching, theirs of insight. She spent several long moments just trying to discern the gravity portrayed there.

The points of light disappeared under black eyelids, and with them, the profound stare. Andra blinked, whimpered in disappointment, and leaned forwards with her hands on the sill. Her eyes flicked across the wall of blackness, but the glare from her overhead light made it impossible to see anything outside. With an annoyed grunt, she searched around for a moment and picked up the nearest throwable object—the shoe from her earlier tantrum—and then chucked it at the light switch across her room. Never mind that walking over and flipping the switch would've been much simpler.

Darkness now enveloping her, she focused again on the world outside. The eyes had returned. They'd moved away, it looked like, five or so feet. But even from the distance she could read that knowing, hard stare: a gaze that silently called for her to "Follow," implying that there was hidden somewhere a legit reason she didn't yet understand.

Andy glanced back toward her bedroom door, chewing her lip. What was happening to her mind? If she was finally losing her "tentative grip on reality," probably she should go tell her parents. And she should especially tell them if there truly was some red-eyed looney-bird creeper lurking around outside her bedroom window.

…But that's not what happened in the books. How often she had dreamed for something this exciting, this perfect. Something like this, so impossible, by its very nature became possible, because it defied all reality. Redefining possible. Heh…that was a good one. She should make a Flair.

She glanced back to the window—her faceless friend was still there. That was reassuring; if she was crazy, the vision should be gone by now. Andra looked back toward her door in a final moment of indecision. It was then she realized that explaining such a marvelous occurrence to her mother was even less possible than its actual occurring. And what would she say? "Good heavens, Andra, I always knew something was wrong with you! Now think of all the money I'll have to spend on therapy and medicine and gripe-gripe blah-blah all-about-me…" Yes. That would be infinitely more frightening than any threat of demon stalkers or impending madness.

Andra glared coldly at her bedroom door, turned defiantly to the window, and snapped it open wide.

"Her eyes: that's where hope lies.

That's where blue skies meet the sunrise."

The chill of the night or the thrill of excitement—she couldn't separate the two. Her slip-on shoes grinded dead leaves into the cold concrete of her street's sidewalk, the sound going with her through her progress through autumn's night. She followed the eyes. Most of the time they were turned forward, but every so often they would turn back, as if to let Andra know where her guide was. For she certainly couldn't see them. She got clues, though: the eyes bobbed low to the ground, at the height of a little person or a child or some large animal. The footsteps ahead of her were all but silent, but from what she made of them, they doubled themselves—like there were four feet padding along in very soft shoes. Andy waited with growing impatience for her guide to speak or act or at least show themselves, but there was nothing. It was as is she were following the night itself.

As her unseen guide led her along the dark street, the thought that entered her mind was not a question to her own sanity, as would be the normal thought. She'd already decided that if she was going crazy, she was going to arrive with a bang. Rationalism still prevailed, though, as she grew aware of how extremely vulnerable she was out here. There were no streetlights lit, which was out of place and alarming. Would her guide protect her in the event that some night-thug mugger or serial killer appeared? She didn't exactly live in Eldorado; her neighborhood was more than a bit "rowdy," as her mother put it. But generally, the peace-disturbers only hung around the streetlights. Maybe the darkness was her ally.

Unexpected and random, there came an animalistic growl developing from out the nighttime noises. Andra's heart somersaulted again and she froze, head snapping to the left, seeking with widening eyes. The moon and streetlamps had deserted her tonight, but her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the form of a very un-friendly looking dog, advancing on her slowly. She never might have seen it, were it not bright white. It tamped down its muscles, growling maliciously, and stalked toward her as a fox corners a hare. Realization dawned: this was her evil neighbors' horrible beast-pet. They lived at the end of the street and owned the single most abused, vicious mutt on the planet, which attacked anyone who came near. They had to chain him during the day, but (contrary to many important laws) let him loose at night to defend against burglars or family enemies and the like. It was practically Obould in a dog shape.

And its sights were fixed on her.

Andy backed away slowly, hands shakily patting the air as she made pathetic attempts to call to it—"Shh, boy…No, c'mon buddy, down boy…" Her mind drained of all thoughts but terror, drained like the color from her face, as the beast advanced and she realized she was through. Nothing to be done…What a stupid way to die. What kind of an idiot was she? Coming out in her neighborhood in the middle of the night to chase imaginary eyes…

But she had been chosen…she was chosen because she was the perfect one for the journey. It had to be real…

The dog crouched. Snarled. Twitched its flank muscles in the very last split-second of preparation. Andra knew what came next. She had just enough time to throw her arms over her face and scream—and the monster leapt forward.

A feline yowl. Unheard paws bounding from out the blackness. The unseen spring that followed.

A huge black mass was suddenly there, shooting at the dog in a mid-air tackle and sweeping the white beast away. Andy fell backwards anyway, landing flat on her back and scraping herself on the blacktop. There was pain, but her attention was wholly focused on the fantastic, savage battle now erupting before her. Another wondrous cat-like snarl split through the dog's stupid, feral barking. And against the white background of the dog's form, Andy's eyes snatched some frantic, fleeting glimpses of her rescuer. She could hardly believe the picture her mind put together as a result.

It looked like—certainly sounded like—a great black cat.

Andra would have stared like that until the savage fight was done (which actually wouldn't have taken three minutes, tops), except her attention was drawn away in the opposite direction. A light was emerging. At first she thought it was the streetlamps finally turning on, but then she realized that it wasn't that bright…wasn't even electricity. It was…that was a flippin torch! A bone-fide genuine torch, like made out of animal fat and leather or some craziness. And as the light drew closer, its extraordinary bearer was fully illuminated.

With her eyes cast upward, she hardly noticed things as believable as pain, her frantic heartbeat, or the adrenaline rushing like waterfalls over her ears. Those were all reality. The sight before her eyes clearly was not.

Out of the darkness, as out of another world, stepped a figure so graceful he could have been a shade. It was a creature of darkest elegance, with a shaggy mane of stark silver framing a face of black skin. Not the rich brown of an African American; his skin was the color of tar at midnight under a sky with no moon. All the strength left Andra's limbs and a look of the utmost confusion and disbelief screwed up her face. A bird could have nested quite comfortably in her gaping mouth.

"Apologies, my Cosain.* Are you alright?" The shadow spoke, and his voice was like a crystalline stream flowing through some dim, cool forest. A charcoal hand extended toward her, but robotic Andra only stared at it dumbly. He—it?—kneeled gently and spoke again, a reassuring smile on his lips and in his voice. "It's alright. I hardly came all this way to hurt you."

Was he…? Could he…? It was utterly impossible—was she finally crazy? They all joked about it. Told her if she didn't quit reading all those crazy books of hers they would start to come to life in her mind. Were they right? Had R. A. Salvatore taken over her brain?

The strange dream offered a crooked smile, teeth shining ivory in contrast to his gray lips. The hand was still extended, palm-up like he was trying to coax a scared rabbit from its hole. "Please believe I know how surprised you must be. But, for a different reason than that which usually shocks the people I meet." He ended with a nervous chuckle—a fail at easing the awkward. Andy didn't notice, of course.

The eyes…the eyes were the tell. The forest green cloak—easily coincidental. The twin sheaths belted at his sides—simple duplicates; she had a pair of her own mounted on her wall. The skin and hair—not uncommon for his…race…Oh come on! There wasn't any other race of sentinent beings in her world but humans. No physical ones, at least. Humans, and unseen ones like angels and God, but no dwarves or elves or centaurs, and certainly no drow.

But the eyes…

It was impossible...which is exactly the kind of adjective that always fails where Drizzt Do'Urden is concerned.

She didn't even know what she was doing—maybe she was just trying to find out if he was a mirage or something she could touch. Her hand moved on its own. Her fingers hovered over his for a moment—he didn't rush her or move himself—and then she snatched up his hand…which did not disperse like smoke or dissolve in any way. He was real. He was touchable. The color, the outside appearance, was foreign and not understood…but the feeling was the same. If she shut her eyes it would be like holding the hand of a human. He was just like her, but for her sight.

He pulled her to her feet as she gaped blankly at his extraordinary face. The action made her shiver against the cold. She hadn't noticed it before beyond a nagging something that lingered at the edge of her mind. The apparition of a dark elf didn't miss her slight tremble. He frowned and reached up to pull his forest-green cloak from his shoulders. "Why did you come dressed as for a summer night's stroll? It is the middle of autumn as well as the middle of the night." He swept the cloak around her shoulders and she grasped it, hugging it to her. It felt like the fabric of adventure and smelled like crushed pine needles.

After a moment of unsure silence, a knowing grin spread across Andy's face. "Ohh-kay, a'right, I get it. Nice. Freakin awesome. Who is it under there?"

The "drow" gained some confusion of his own.

"Well come on now!" Andra chuckled bitterly, as one would laugh after finding out the horrible monster under your bed was a simple dormouse. "Who is it—Chase? Chase Archer, you big ole evil weasel… Whatdja do, roll yourself in coal dust? stage makeup? color yourself with Sharpie?"

Understanding crossed over his dark face, like he'd been expecting something akin to her reaction. He shook his head. "No. I am Dr—"

"No! Huh-uh, no, no you're not!. Nope. I am not crazy and you are not real. No." She looked away, closed her eyes, rubbed her fists in her eye sockets, and yet he was still there when she looked back. She grew quiet and scared.

A comforting smile parted those gray lips, and he spoke again in that foreign language of Fantasy. "I am Drizzt Do'Urden. I do exist in your reality—at least as far as I can tell. And I should think I would be very sure of that, given the time I've spent here."

Dumbfounded, the only thing she could think to say sounded lame and weak to her ears. "What…whassat mean..?"

He didn't hide his slight smile at her composure, which was very much akin to that of a small child discovering a purple rabbit or some such oddity. But he didn't point this out or laugh at her—he simply explained:

"I have been your guardian, Andra."

*Here, the word is used as a nickname. "Cosain" is the Gaelic word for "defend." Pronounciation: [COH-sayn]

*Disclaimer: I do not own Forgotten Realms or the contents of any Forgotten Realms novel. The only character that belongs to me is Andra Riley. All other worlds and characters belong to R. A. Salvatore, that epic genius…

*Disclaimer: The lyrics in the heading aren't mine either. They are excerpts from the following songs (in order): 'Brick by Boring Brick' by Paramore; 'Superman' by Five for Fighting; 'Her Eyes' by Pat Monahan