• “Dance with me, Sweetheart.” She felt herself being pulled roughly onto the dance floor, before she registered the cold breath against the skin of her ear, and the raspy voice that sounded like it belonged in a different century. The very air around her seemed to pulse with the music that danced around them. The music was dark and airy, dangerous, and intoxicating, irresistible and repulsing. She let slow beat of the drums carry her feet and the voices of the Fey drift off with her mind. She fought down the panic she had come so comfortable with feeling through out her life. Somewhere in the back of that mind a voice urged her to leave, warned her that this was dangerous, but the music told her to stay, told her it was worth the risk. It's hands gripped her and kept her in the throng of moving bodies, where it felt good, right. She knew here wouldn’t have to feel the pain of her father’s death or her brother’s betrayal. She let her mind slip farther and farther away hoping that this was how she would feel when they killed her. She remembered only brief glimpses of the world endlessly swirling around her. She caught sight or creatures that shouldn’t exist, women with hollow backs, men with the faces of fish and people with beauty to exquisite to be mortal .She remembered dancing with men like lions who passed her back and forth, tearing at her back leaving her bloody and euphoric for her next partner. No pain, just the ecstasy of their hands on her. It all stopped though, she saw him, and the pain returned. Her body failed.

    She awoke staring dumbly up at his face as he spooned warm liquid into her mouth. She found herself marvelling at the taste, it tasted like s'mores. The kind she used to make over the fire pit in the backyard as a kid. The warmth filled her body flooding her veins and drove out all the pain that she hadn't noticed till it was suddenly gone . She wondered for a second who he was, why he looked so eerily familiar. She knew he couldn’t have been from anywhere normal, because his skin was tinted green. His whole body was covered in feathers of all colors. Red, blue yellow black all fading in and out of dominance. “They're beautiful” she whispered before the darkness crept into her vision and she faded back into sleep.

    Next time she woke up she was laying on a pile of dark fur pelts in a vast study. The walls were lined with hundreds maybe thousands of books. They ranged from thick leather bound books the kind that you would find in the back of an ancient library, to books with shiny new covers some with names she even recognized. “Is that Twilight?” She asked no one in particular. She tried hauling herself up onto one elbow to get a better look at her new, unfamiliar surroundings but her back ignited before she could make any progress. It felt like f biting into her flesh and she let out a strangled gasp before collapsing.

    “You stay should down; your injuries were rather sever, and the book isn't mine. I'm keeping it for a friend” Said a deep, gentle voice.

    He seemed to appear from thin air, a green magician with a smirk pulling at his mouth. Or so she thought because her wore a tail coat and dress pants, and who wore those anymore except some extremely eccentric magician. He stood in the center of the room; he was at least 6’4 and had two joints above his wrist instead of one. His hair was an unbelievable purple at the roots that faded slowly into a rainbow before finally fading into an oily black, like ravens feathers and somewhere in that that oily hair horns, like a gazelle’s, leapt from his head. She should have been scared, Fairies were bad, evil creatures, her mother had told her time and time again. It was one of the rules her mother had taught her because they both had the Sight. Rule number one was never mess with the Fey, they kill on a whim. This rule had flown out the window when her dad had died. She had ran off looking for a Fairy revel, looking for self destruction. Some part of her wondered how long she had been gone, but most of her attention was focused intently on the man in front of her. As he came forward she noticed that his eyes were wholly black, like the night sky was contained within them.
    “I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. I am Robin Goodfellow, or as most of you kind knows me from that infernal man Shakespeare’s plays, Puck.” The man dipped into a deep bow of greeting.

    As he moved she realized his hair actually a mess of feathers. She thought back to her theater class and the name clicked, Puck from a Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. Was she really talking to the every mischievous Puck? She tried to sit up again or at least prop herself up on a pillow but she couldn’t. The pain in her back was so sever she wondered what could have caused it.

    “So you are Puck?” She asked skeptically “Like, from a Midsummer’s Nights Dream?”
    A light smirk crossed his face “That play portrays me horribly” He said “Back in the day, Me an William frequented the same bar, he wrote the play as sort of a joke.”
    She smirked back at him. She was talking to an immortal creature who had known Shakespeare on a first name basis. She should have been terrified, all her former training told her to run, but Robin’s face was so familiar, so inviting. Not like the Fey by the river, the ones with the hollow backs who looked so needy or the men who had the teeth of sharks that would rip at her throat if given the chance. His face called to her in a different way, she couldn’t explain it. It was like seeing someone you knew through a distorted pain of glass, the new features blending with the old. He came forward, tail coats bellowing in some phantom wind and knelt at her side. His face started to shift, taking a more human form but leaving the brilliant deep purple at his roots.His skin became pale white and his extra joints disappeared. Slowly the face of her childhood friend Robbie started to materialize before her and she couldn’t hold back a gasp. Robbie the guy who had been there through all of her life.

    She tried to think back to the day she meet him, and found she couldn't remember. As she looked back on it, she saw all the signs, she had never meet his parents, never celebrated his birthday, and his face never seemed to age as hers did. He had been there her whole life, and now she knew his secret. He was a fairy, dangerous and forbidden, and yet she wanted him so badly it caused her near physical pain.

    “Robbie” She muttered and dragged her fingers against his pale skin “you’re Robbie” She ran her fingers up into his hair and sighed. She pulled herself up ignoring the searing pain in her back, needing to touch him, make sure he was real .She had thought he was gone forever, a missing person, but here he was in front of her, a fairy and a wonderful friend. Thoughts about her broken body filled her mind, and how he had been mending it. Soon enough their lips met, pain fell away and electricity ran between them sparking up in viciousness as they held each other. And somewhere in the middle of this his glamour dropped away, leaving him as Puck, a Fairy, a monster, and the man she had fallen in love with.