Faetal: A New Adult Fantasy Dark Prince Romance Read online

  Faetal

  by Deiri Di

  Flight of the Dragon Book 1

  [ 1 ]

  A little fat man was trying to climb into Mariposa's coffee mug.

  Mari was sitting in a local coffee joint a few blocks from her house near downtown LA, one of the many quasi suburbs that consisted of run-down houses squeezed between apartment buildings and matchbox townhouses. The coffee house itself was a friendly local place -- comfortable chairs, board games, and always the day's paper sitting out for anyone to read. Mari liked to escape there to nurse a hot beverage. Eighteen years old, she needed a place to get away and snatch some semblance of solitude.

  The little fat man had other ideas. He balanced on the rim. His bare belly splayed over the edge of the mug, his legs wrapped around the handle for support so that he could reach down with one little hand to scoop sips of coffee up to his face.

  Mari jostled her cup, trying to dislodge him. She had to be discrete about it. She learned a long time ago that if she grabbed at or paid attention to things that others couldn't see, it would end badly. Having spent more hours with a psychologist than anyone else she knew, Mari couldn't be caught interacting with the numerous creatures that ran, flitted, and oozed about.

  She wiggled the cup a little harder, trying to make it look like she was swirling her coffee instead of discouraging an imaginary pest.

  When a man walked into the coffee shop, Mari didn't notice him at first, so fixated was she on dislodging her coffee companion. The giggle of preteen girls alerted her, drawing her attention.

  The man was tall and slender with broad shoulders and the hint of muscles under his beige shirt. His features were more delicate than she would expect on someone so handsome, his chin a rounded point, his eyes an almond shape. His skin was a sun bereft pale, and his hair long and gold. He wore a beanie that covered his ears. It was out of place with his outfit and the weather. A sunny day in a California summer made warm hats unpleasant. He must have greasy hair, Mari decided.

  The most unusual thing about the handsome man was that he was using his blue eyes to stare directly at her.

  Mari glanced back down at the table, nervousness growing in her belly. She wasn't the type of girl that cute young men stared at. Half-Mexican, and half a mixture of a few western European countries, Mari was short with dull brown hair, gingerbread dunked in milk-colored skin, wide hips that gave her a booty you didn't see in any magazine. She was a curvy average. Her father always told her she was beautiful, but when Mari looked in the mirror, all she could see was a big bum.

  Mari lifted her cup, forgetting in her anxiety the little sprite that was stealing her drink. She was reminded when the little fat man finally lost his balance and fell straight into her lukewarm cup. He came up sputtering and shook his fist at her, screaming a stream of words that Mari didn't understand. Her imaginary friends all seemed to speak the same language, and it wasn't one that existed in the real world.

  Mari glanced up to see the beautiful man staring at her cup, a hint of a smile on his face. He was looking at the sprite!

  When she put the cup back down, the young man glanced up to find her looking at him again and then glanced away, the slight smile remaining fixed on his face.

  The little fat man climbed out of her cup, yelled a few more undecipherable phrases at her, and then ran off, leaving a trail of coffee footprints in his wake. He jumped off the table, a massive height for someone that small, and ran off behind the barista counter.

  Mari sighed and sat back in her chair. She couldn't drink her coffee now. Instead of leaving, she watched the blond guy wait through the line, order his coffee and then pick it up in one of the large ceramic mugs that meant he would be enjoying his drink in the coffee shop rather than leaving with it. All the while, she imagined how she could start a conversation with him. Maybe a fairy, those mischievous, clawed, spindly creatures with dragonfly wings, would snatch his hat, only to place it in her lap. Or perhaps he would pick up a newspaper and drop it so she could help him pick up the scattered pages. Or maybe he would just fall in love with her at first sight and wouldn't be able to stay away. Mari knew that none of those things would happen, but she couldn't help feeling excited as she thought of them. Just because she didn't think she was pretty enough to interest a stunning guy like that didn't mean she didn't want to.

  Mari sighed again as the man took up a seat somewhere behind her after he got his drink. Now she would have to turn around to look at him, and it would be evident that she was crushing on a total stranger she hadn't said two words to.

  The fat man came back - his stringy, moss entwined hair still damp from her coffee. He clambered up to the arm of her chair. He ran along it and leaped over to the table, fast and quick like an energetic chinchilla rather than the miniature obese man he appeared to be.

  A fairy joined him. Mari had taken to calling the flying creatures fairies despite their lack of resemblance to childhood depictions of cute flying women. They had anorexic looking humanoid bodies with long legs and arms that had extra joints, allowing them to bend in contortionist fashions. Their wide stretched mouths had tiny sharp demon teeth that could crack beetle shells open, and their hands were made up of eight long fingers that ended in sharp claws. Each fairy had a distinct shade of feathers for hair that stuck up out of the scalp and traveled down each back like a mane on a horse.

  This particular fairy had dark purple feather hair with black tips. It stood next to the fat little man, and they conspired in hushed tones, glancing up at Mari as they spoke. She resisted the urge to swat them off the table. Not only would it make her look crazy, but it would also anger the fairy. The last time she upset a fairy, Mari had woken up to find her favorite book shredded and strewn across her bed in tiny pieces. They were vindictive little monsters.

  The little man held out a few chunks of chocolate and a tiny bundle of blue fabric, rhinestones peaking out on one side. The fairy took them from him, tucking them into the little bag made out of woven grass strands.

  The fairy darted forward and grabbed Mari's coffee mug. Before Mari could decide on a good, non-crazy looking way to react, the fairy flew forwards and dumped the coffee across her chest and lap. It dropped the mug to the ground with a clatter, a final insult before flying off. The little fat man pointed at her, said something that she couldn't understand in a firm tone of voice, and then ran off himself.

  Mari was left covered in coffee with a mug on the ground and every patron in the coffee house looking at her.

  She scrambled to grab napkins, her face burning as snickers filled the room.

  She immersed herself in trying to draw the coffee out of her soaked clothing with the few napkins she had when a hand full of them snaked around her chair and into her view.

  "Need a hand?" an accented voice said from above her.

  Mari glanced up to find the stunning guy leaning over the top of her chair. She stood up, hyper-aware of the wet stain covering her chest, belly, and the top section of her pants.

  The golden-haired guy held out the napkins to her, a smile still on his face. Mari took them from him, overwhelmed by a nervous excitement that she thought she would only feel in the presence of a favorite celebrity. She dropped them on the table, grabbed a few to toss on the floor, and began mopping up the mess, thereby pushing them around with her foot.

  "Let me help you," he said, taking a few of the napkins to wipe the chair she had been sitting in. The strange accent in his voice made his consonants sound lyrical, and she couldn't place where it was from.

  Mari wiped the floor with a frantic pace and then gathered the napkins together in a soggy brown bundle.


  "You should wear coffee every day," the man said, the subtle smile still on his face.

  Mari couldn't stand it anymore. Her embarrassment and total lack of experience in talking to strange guys made the problem worse until Mari had no other option.

  She panicked.

  Mari snatched the last of the wet napkins out of the man's hands, startling him. She stammered out an incoherent thank you, slammed the napkins into the coffee house garbage, and ran.

  "Wait!" the man called after her, the surprise and dismay clear in that single word.

  Mari didn't wait. She bolted out the door and ran the entire way home.

  When she arrived at her house, a dilapidated townhouse wedged in a row of eight of them, she had to stop and pant, hands on her knees, as she gulped in short deep breaths. Mari wasn't overweight, but she wasn't the fittest person either, and the few blocks from the coffee house were more than she could handle.

  She was angry with herself. She saw the cutest boy she'd seen for a long time who may be able to see the creatures that no one else could. That exotic guy could prove that she wasn't crazy, that they didn't just exist in her head. Instead of being cool and suave, she ended up with coffee all over her. Even then, she could have saved the situation with a witty comment or joke, but she didn't. She ran like an idiot.

  If Mari saw that fairy again, the one with the black-tipped purple feather hair, she was going to smush it with a dictionary - or better yet dump a pot of coffee on it!

  [ 2 ]

  Mari thought about the encounter for the rest of the evening. She couldn't get the man out of her mind. She worried that she hadn't seen things right, that he hadn't seen the fairies and sprites, that it was wishful thinking that an attractive guy would come along and let her know that her mind wasn't broken, that there were awful little critters that only a few could see. Mari worried that maybe she had seen things right and that she ran away from the first person that could understand her.

  When morning came around, Mari woke up knowing what she had to do. She had to find that guy again. He might not want to talk to her after the way Mari acted, but she still would try to repair the damage. If he could see the things, she could maybe he would give her a second chance to make a first impression.

  Mari felt a thrill of excitement.

  He was handsome.

  Maybe he would be more than just happy.

  She rolled out of bed and began picking out an outfit. She wanted to look attractive, but Mari never sacrificed comfort for appearance. As excited as she was about the guy, she would still wear jeans and a t-shirt.

  Mari ran down the stairs of the narrow townhouse. As her hand touched the front door, a voice rang out from the kitchen.

  "Mari! Get in here!" Cathy bellowed.

  Mari navigated her way back through the hallway to the tiny kitchen.

  Cathy, her stepmother, and her dad sat at the card table wedged in between the stove and the back door that led to the alley. When all three of them sat down for dinner, they had to pull the table out, blocking the door.

  Cathy and Mari's father, David, sat there, their morning mugs of coffee within easy reach. Cathy came into their life just a year after Mari's mom walked out. At six foot two, Cathy towered over Mari and her dad. When she was younger, she was a fashion model, selling scarves and modest t-shirts with a big smile. As she grew older, Cathy never managed to sell her image or smile more than that, and after a while, she couldn't even get jobs posing in slacks and sweaters.

  That was when she met David.

  "Where are you off to?" Cathy asked.

  Mari crossed her arms. Cathy had been an authority figure in her life since she was eight, but Mari still hated it when Cathy tried to tell her what to do.

  "Honey," Mari's father interrupted. David was a high school teacher at Mari's school, and, as a consequence, he was home for summer break just like she was. He could read Mari like a book, and though he didn't always know how to deal with his teenage daughter, he at least could tell when she was irritated. "We just need to know where you are. Safety first. What if you never came back? We wouldn't know where to start looking!"

  Mari sighed and rolled her eyes.

  "I'm going to the coffee shop just down a couple of blocks."

  "And how long are you planning on being there?" Cathy asked.

  "Maybe most of the day," Mari said, turning to leave the kitchen. "I'll be back with enough time to pack to go to my mom's house." Mari was going to visit her mother for part of her summer break and was excited. She hadn't seen her mom since she was eight. Mari had a vague memory of her mother playing with a sprite with her, and she was hoping that maybe she could see them too. Or perhaps her mother was just entertaining the imagination of her daughter. Whatever the case, Mari was excited and nervous to see her mother in person for the first time in a long time.

  "Honey, don't get your hopes up..." her father said. It wasn't the first time Mari was supposed to visit her mother, but it was the first time she had the plane ticket purchased and ready to go.

  "She paid for the plane ticket!" Mari said, almost running out of the kitchen. It would hurt if her mother canceled the trip again, and she didn't want to think about it. She left the house. Arms crossed as she stormed off to a different destination than she’d told her parents.

  Mari would have liked to go down to the coffee shop like she planned, and indulge in a harmless fantasy of meeting that gorgeous guy again and hitting it off despite her previous catastrophic failure, but talking about her mom made her nervous. She didn't want to set herself up for disappointment, a sensation she was all too familiar with. Mari knew that even if she saw the guy again, she wouldn't have a chance with him. Girls like her didn't get guys like him.

  Besides, there was another reason she didn't want to go where she said she was going. It was none of Cathy's business where she was.

  Instead, Mari walked to her local library, a building where she always went when she wanted to live in a different world. Her collection of books was extensive, but it was collected slowly over time. Her father's teacher salary couldn't buy the number of books she read on a regular basis, or purchase an e-reader, so the library was a necessary haven to keep her up to date on her favorite authors.

  Mari smiled at the librarian as she walked through the metal bar that kept track of the library's number of visitors. The librarians knew her by name, but she didn't stop to say hello like she usually did. Mari was too upset. She made a beeline to the fantasy shelves in the back.

  The library was designed so that the shelving rows all protruded out from the library walls, creating a large open area in the center that had tables, chairs, and couches for readers to sit in. A group of girls from Mari's high school were there, sitting around one of the tables and working on glittery posters with manicured nails and bleach-blond hair getting in the way. They were probably working on something for a club or a summer school project. Mari didn't know and didn't care.

  Mari smiled at them when she passed by but didn't bother to go over. They didn't bother to call her over either. There was no point to it. Mari had tried to make friends with that particular group of girls before. Cathy had insisted that she try to be more social, so she gave it a go, just to stop the nagging. The attempt led to her sitting down with them at lunch. It was the most awkward meal ever. The girls gave her strange looks before continuing their conversations about clothes and what happened in the latest TV show they were all watching. Mari brought up a book she just read and got strange looks again. She stayed silent for the rest of the meal period. None of the girls tried to include her in their conversations, and if they did, she wouldn't have known what to say.

  Mari began walking down the aisle of the fantasy section, scanning the shelves. She wasn't looking for just any book; she had a mission. She couldn't be the only person to see the fairies, sprites, and monsters - there had to be others; she was sure of it now. If there were others, then there would be books, and if there were books, sh
e would find them eventually.

  Mari pulled a guide to the fae world off the shelf, a big skinny book, mainly illustrations. The pictures were the usual thing, fairies that looked like little girls, sprites with flower hats, and cheerful grins. She began reading through it anyway. A book with pictures of fairies the way they actually looked wouldn't sell well.

  Mari caught a glimpse of blond out of the corner of her eye and looked up, glancing towards the center of the library. The girls were still all at the table. It must have been someone else. Mari allowed herself to be distracted for a moment by a little daydream involving the guy from the coffee shop showing up at the library. She sighed, forgetting her anger and upset as she allowed herself to get excited over something she knew would never happen.

  Mari began reading the description of the fairies. It was pretty standard for a fantasy book - elusive, shy creatures that little girls dreamed of seeing. She snapped the book shut. No one with first-hand experience wrote it. Shy fairies - yeah, right. Mari pulled another book off the shelf.

  Mari's attention was grabbed again - not by a glimpse, but by a change in sound. The girls from her school, the ones who had been audibly having a good time working together, had fallen silent. Mari looked up to find them casting surreptitious glances in her direction and whispering. No, not her direction. They were looking at the aisle next to her.

  The bookshelves that separated the aisle were metal contraptions bolted to the floor. They didn't have solid dividers between the side - you could see through to the other aisles if you got the right angle over the books.

  Mari ducked a little to look through a lower shelf.

  There was a guy on the other side. All she could see was his waist and hands.

  Mari smirked as she went back to her book. Figures that the girls were distracted by some guy.

  The book she was looking through didn't have as many descriptions. The page she opened to had an in-depth description of elves, their society, and their habits. She didn't think the author knew anything either - Mari had never seen an elf, anywhere. Despite that, she started to read. Just because she was doing research didn't mean she couldn't have fun too.