Disclaimer: I do not own GA or any of its characters.
Thanks a lot for all the reviews. I am sorry I am not putting the names up, but you all know I am on vacation and so have a small amount of time to do this.
I know I said I would finish this story in 3 chapters, but thats not gonna happen coz I keep changing my mind and if I dont publish this chapter i will never get it done. Please do let me know what you think of the twist. I will finish this story in the next chapter and I will try my best to finish it before Halloween.
"Natsume you have totally lost your mind!" Ruka snapped.
"Then how do you explain that there were no marks where I sat yesterday?" Natsume snapped back.
"I don't know. None of us have seen this girl. You not telling me about any drugs that you have been doing?" Ruka said exasperated.
"Real smooth Ruka. Thats exactly what I have been doing." Natsume said sarcastically.
Ruka rolled his eyes. "The way you have been going about her, what else am I supposed to ask to make sense of this mess?"
"Do you really think that I don't know how this sounds?" Natsume retorted, but now desperation was crawling into his voice.
"SHUT UP!" Hotaru snapped and they both stopped and stared at her. After the debacle at the mansion, when they had opened the painting, they had come home, because Ruka had refused to let Natsume speak even one word there.
They had been arguing since then, but now, they just stared at Hotaru like guilty children.
"Natsume explain." She said coldly.
Natsume explained how he had been seeing someone all over the grounds but never found any trace of the person. How he had met this girl on the riverside and how she was something else. He explained the dream, which he hadn't told anyone about before now, and then he told of how she came to him in the grounds, and how they found no trace of her the next day and how he had never been visible from anywhere that she could have seen him.
Then he sighed and fell back onto the couch.
"Thats all there is to it. I don't know what she is, and frankly, I am not sure I want to know." Natsume finished.
"Hey now! Thats just rude. You cannot call a person a "what"!" said an unhappy voice from the terrace. All three of them looked around to see her standing there, looking as graceful and beautiful as ever.
Natsume heard Ruka gasp next to him and resisted the urge to say "I told you so."
"Are you a ghost?" Hotaru asked bluntly.
The girl laughed and it was a beautiful laugh, like tinkling bells. It gave them goosebumps.
"Oh please!" she said with a roll of her eyes. "I am not such a big deal. I am just a... well its hard to explain.. can I come in please?"
"No." Hotaru retorted before Natsume or Ruka could say anything.
The girl laughed again. "I like you human. You're smart but over cautious in this case. I mean no harm to any of you, and I don't really need an invitation to enter. I was just being polite." She skipped inside the living room to prove her point and then sat down daintily on the couch across from Natsume.
She glanced at Ruka and Hotaru who were both still standing, and sighed.
"Sit down will ya? This might take a while." She said exasperated.
They sat on either side of Natsume.
"Right... so where were we.. ah yeah.. what I am.. by the way I am still offended.. I am a person too.." she pouted then chuckled.
"Actually I am not sure how to explain what I am, I guess I am something that shows up in your fairytales. Sprite? Or maybe pixie? I am not too sure, you humans make some very complicated terminology for some very simple things. But you can say that I am a fairy of sorts, or better yet, I am one of the fae."
She laughed at the look on their faces which to her must have been priceless.
"Why are you in the painting of a human then?" Hotaru asked.
For the first time, the fairy appeared sad.
"That is not me. She was... kind... and nice, and a good friend." The sad look was gone, and a fierce determination took its place. "I wear her form to honor her and to remember her. I will look like myself only after I fulfil her wish."
"Who was she?" Natsume asked softly.
The fairy smiled sweetly. "I thought I warned you enough times, boy. Be careful what you wish for, it applies to questions too you know. Knowledge in itself is a great wish."
Natsume sighed. "Why are you here then? Just to tell me off for calling you a "what" and to tell us you are something out of Disney?" he said tiredly.
The girl laughed. Natsume refused to think of her as a fairy. She was too annoying/creepy for that.
"I am just here to make sure your friends don't question your sanity so much that they stop work at the mansion. I want it restored." she said with cool confidence.
"Really? Then why don't you tell us why? What is this wish that you are trying to fulfill?" Hotaru asked.
The fairy sighed. "The girl in that painting, her childhood friend, her love and then her fiancé, used to live in that mansion and her greatest wish was to come there as his bride."
"How will restoring the mansion fix that? Don't you also need the groom and the bride for this?" Ruka asked sarcastically.
"Leave the rest to me human, and do what you were doing already." the fairy said with a thunderous scowl. Then she stood up again with that unearthly grace of hers, left the same way she had come.
"Trust you to find the craziest chick in the country." Ruka said mildly.
Natsume stared at him for a moment, then let out a "heh".. and that started it. They were all still howling with laughter 10 minutes later.
At the end of it Ruka said, gasping for breath, "Ignore our backyard fairy and restore the mansion anyways?"
Both Hotaru and Natsume agreed. They would do what they had set out to do in the first place and if it was something that the fairy wanted as well, then lucky her.
