Hydrangea - Heartlessness

[T]

through gates unknown

He was drunk off his ass and staggering home when he walked by the garden. It was one of those semi private gardens with high fences that made it almost impossible to get into. The moon was full and it was a clear night, the air was chilled but in his drunken haze he couldn't feel it.

The garden had never really interested him before, hell, it still didn't but the moonlight playing across huge flowering bushes caught his eye. Maybe it was just because he was drunk, but the pale flowers were caught between a strange blue or a purple, they were almost like mist captured against leaves. Apparently that last shot (or the last third of the bottle) of whiskey had been a bad idea. It was hard to tell if the flowers were moving or if he was just swaying back and forth.

So he'd been dumped, she'd been heartless and cold anyway. No big deal, right? Not like he loved her, right? After so much alcohol he still hadn't been able to convince himself of that actually. There was still an ache in his chest that hadn't dulled.

Something kept tugging at him to go into the garden and he was drunk enough to follow it. Worst thing that would happen was that he fell asleep on a bench for a while and woke up with a crick in his neck. If anyone tried to mug him it wouldn't really matter, he had maybe two dollars in his wallet and his friend had confiscated his phone as soon as they started drinking so he couldn't text his ex.

There was a large gate, open which was strange for this hour at night, ornately decorated and gilded with swooping designs and motifs. Honestly, he was a little surprised he'd never noticed it before now. He walked by here pretty frequently, how could he have missed gates like this before? They looked almost like they were painted in silver and dripping stars.

That tugging feeling was happening again, could feel it deep in his soul. Or maybe that was the liquor. It was sort of hard to tell. He walked through the grand gates, still wondering how he could have missed them and the air smelled sweeter on this side. Must have been all the weird misty flowers.

The unkempt sidewalk gave way to a pure white gravel walk way that he didn't think too much about, it was actually easier to walk on than to look out for cracks that were out to get him and make him fall flat on his face.

He could hear laughter coming from father down the trail, and what looked like really expensive Christmas lights hung in the air, almost floating in the darkness, lead him down the path. It was hard to see how they were supported or even if they were connected actually, they just sort of floated along the way like fireflies or fairies. The thought made him chuckle. Yeah, right. Fairies.

More laughter and the tinkling of bells pulled him farther in, maybe there was another party. He could sort of use another drink, or maybe just some water, the worst of his buzz was starting to wear off. He glanced up on a whim because the moon really was gorgeous that night and found himself looking at an entire sky full of stars.

It was stunning and entirely impossible, he was in the middle of the fucking city, gardens be damned. Almost immediately, he found himself looking for familiar constellations (the ones he had to do reports on way back in forth grade but also the ones his older brother had pointed out to him when they were little and vacationing up in the mountains and meant home). But there weren't any. Not a single star lead to a constellation, and yeah, he may have only known like five of them, but he knew them by heart and could always find them.

Maybe he really was drunker than he thought. If he did find whatever party he was heading towards, he'd ask for some water. That sounded like a good plan.

Around the curve of the path, hidden by an enormous bush of flowers even taller than he was, he found a girl.

She looked as startled as he felt. Because she was hovering a few feet above the ground and placing glowing flowers in the branches of a willow tree. Her wings were bright and sparking gold, casting warm shadows across her face and, god...Were her eyes glowing too? He'd never seen such green eyes before.

His ex had had crystal clear blue eyes, but they were put to shame by how strikingly green this...fairy's...eyes were.

Oh god. Just how drunk was he!?

"How did you get in here?" She asked him accusingly. Her hair was in pig tails of all things and the pale lavender of her dress kept shifting, almost like the flowers at the gate.

"I walked." He told her with a shrug. It was the truth after all. He wasn't sure why he was so perfectly fine with the fact that she was literally flying towards him. If he were being honest with himself, he had been more bothered when he couldn't find any constellations.

She landed a few feet in front of him, looking him over suspiciously, "Who are you?"

"Soul." he said.

"Were you invited? Did someone bring you here? You don't belong here, we have to get you back." With each question she rose from the ground and he wanted to pull her back down and hold her against him.

"Why? Where is here? What's your name?" Because of all the pressing questions, that last one was actually the most important to him.

She looked panicked. "This is the fairy world, and bad things come for wanderers."

"And your name?" Soul asked again.

"Maka...and I promise to get you out of here alive, Soul. But I can't promise you'll be the same by the end of it."