Changeling

Lexi looked at herself in the hall mirror. She was supposed to re-dye her hair that weekend, it had been over a month since the last time she went to the salon. Her hair looked dead, the black fading to a dingy dark color, and the purple bleeding through to show the highlights they covered up. She was about to be on the road again to a place full of magical creatures, looking like trash.

She fluffed her hair absently, half-hoping something would happen to make her hair miraculously look better, but of course nothing did, and her hair still looked terrible.

"That won't do at all."

Lexi turned to the woman behind her. "You scared me, Margeux."

The blonde just smiled. "I know. It's fun. Now about that hair."

"I know it looks bad."

"Horrible really." Margeux grabbed the girl by the wrist. "Follow me. We're fixing this before you head off to the realm looking like that." She dragged the girl to her bedroom and shoved into a vanity seat. "Hmm… I think you really should just let your natural color show with an easier cut."

"I don't really know about stripping the color of my hair out. It'll feel like straw."

Margeux smiled, too sweetly for Lexi's liking. "What did I say about doubting me, sweetie?" She picked up a brush from the vanity and held it to her lips. "Hmm…maybe a little longer. I like the wave in your hair…Yep I know what I'm going to do."

Margeux slowly pulled the brush through Lexi's hair. As it moved, it took away the colors, leaving a medium brown in its path. Her hair kept going past its length as the brush ran through it, finally stopping just below her chin all over. Margeux brushed all the way through her hair, creating that same color and length all over, letting the natural wave in her hair fall into soft curls. Lastly, she brushed Lexi's short bangs just a little bit longer, sweeping them to the side.

The younger girl reached up to touch her brown locks, as if making sure they were real. "Wow." Her hair felt softer than it had since she was a small child. "That's amazing."

The blonde gave her a soft grin. "Maybe now you'll start trusting my techniques. Now come on let me get you some clothes."

Lexi looked at the witch, who was indeed a good bit shorter and smaller than her. She didn't think any of the woman's clothes would fit her, but decided against asking about it. Instead she was soon given a purple one sleeve top, a dark pair of blue jeans, and a plain pair of black flats. Out of habit, the teen began looking for the size on the tag.

"Quit that. They'll fit. Go change." With that, the woman pushed Lexi towards her private bathroom, closing the door behind her.

The shirt was much more comfortable than Lexi had thought and clung to her sides giving her a shape she didn't know she had. The jeans hugged her hips and thighs in a way that exaggerated her curves. She opened the door slowly. "What kind of magic clothing is this?" She turned in the mirror, trying to figure out the illusion behind it all.

"All I did was change the size." Margeux's lips curled upwards. "The magic in that body is all yours, chick." The blonde stood, leading her out of her room. "Remember this next time you go shopping and you start looking at t-shirts."

Lexi was shoved out of the doorway, bumping into Dillon as she stumbled into the hall. She looked up him, meeting his confused face. "Oh Lexi. I didn't know who I'd ran into."

The girl blushed a bit, stepping back from him. "Sorry. Margeux just kind of threw me out here." She laughed nervously, suddenly self conscious of her new form.

"I see you got a Margeux-ver." He chuckled, a warm smile playing on his lips. "You look great."

She watched his green eyes take her in, causing the pink on her cheeks to darken. "Thanks…"

"I had to get her ready to meet others of our kind. I couldn't let her go with you in the rags she had before."

"I didn't think she looked bad before."

He was still looking over her as Lexi ran a hand through her hair. "I'm going to go grab my stuff." She turned away quickly, making her way back to the guest room. She didn't have any stuff. She only had a service station tooth brush, and two outfits, one of them borrowed from Roger. She had just wanted to run away from Dillon in that moment, and shot out the first thing she could think of. And as she walked away, she could feel his eyes watching her leave.

Lexi made her way to the car once she'd filled a plastic bag with her small amount of belongings. "Dillon's not driving?"

Roger leaned his head back in the front seat. "He's been driving this whole way. I figure it's my turn now."

"What about the enchantment?"

He just shrugged. "No point. I can't block out everything from seeing us even if we were somewhere stationary. Not for a long period of time at least. And if there are elves, fairies, witches and who knows what else after us then there's no point putting up the same enchantment I did before."

Dillon slid into the back seat. "So I guess we just hope for the best."

Lexi looked between the front and back seat, considering it carefully. "Where's Sven?"

The green eyed elf laughed a bit. "He's having trouble putting his new wings away so Margeux's trying to help him. When he gets here though, he's going to sit with Roger, though." Dillon leaned up and gave his uncle a large smile. "Right my favorite uncle?"

Roger huffed in response as Lexi slid into the back seat. As she did, a blonde fairy ran out of the psychic shop. "I'm here!" He was moving stiffly as he put his bag into the trunk.

"How did you get them to stay in?" Roger cranked the car as Sven opened the door front door. The blonde only laughed, raising the back of his shirt a bit to show the fabric wrapped around his back tightly. Roger laughed. "I guess that works then."

Sven turned in the seat a bit towards her. "Lexi your hair looks very nice." His smile was wide and bright, full of excitement as Roger pulled onto the road.

The renewed brunette smiled softly, thanking him as she toyed with the ends a bit. It didn't feel like she'd gotten a haircut, with fresh soft ends and the smell of hair dye and expensive hair spray. It felt like someone had put a new head of hair on her scalp, baby soft all over. She glanced over at the boy sitting next to her nervously, blushing as she saw his green eyes watching her play with her hair like a child.

If she wasn't mistaken, she might have thought she'd seen him blush as well as he turned to face the window. The blonde chuckled lightly in the front seat and turned back towards the front window, buckling up as he sighed. "Time for another seven hours of driving."

The ride was long and boring. Dillon attempted to liven up the trip with games of car bingo and "I-Spy." Roger tried to find a station that lasted longer than an hour before losing signal but finally gave up after a while of reaching nothing but static every so often. Lexi perked up after seeing the first signs of Nashville. "We're almost there?"

"We're actually heading to a small town right past Nashville. White Bluff." The younger elf told her, leaning against the window, bored of the long drive.

"Never heard of it…"

The pair of green eyes squinted with a smile as he turned to her. "Exactly. Because we don't want it to be heard of."

There were no signs for White Bluff, Tennessee. There wasn't an exit directly into the town, so instead they had to take an exit to a highway to get there. A blank dead highway. The first sign of life was a small gas station just beyond a green traffic sign reading "White Bluff City Line." Everything about the town was small. Small roads, small stores, small houses. Even a small amount of people walking through the town, some glancing at the car as if it were an intruder from some far off land.

Roger parked the car in front of a small brick house. The only thing that distinguished it from being a residential building, actually, was the sign in front of it. "Jennie Woodworth Library."

The library from the outside was no bigger than the size of a small convenience store. "This is it?" Lexi looked around the town as she climbed out of the car. "This is a magic realm?"

Sven laughed and ruffled her hair lightly. "This is the way to the realm."

Roger nodded and headed towards the door of the library. "Come on. And don't draw too much attention."

The library looked even smaller on the inside, almost as if someone had taken their home and started collecting books to lend people over time. Lexi half-wondered if that was how the Jennie Woodworth Library had started. The only person besides the four of them inside the small building was the librarian herself, staring at the four.

The small woman peeked at them from behind the nameplate on her counter, finding the courage in herself to ask them in a small voice, "Can I help you?" She seemed stunned to see four people she'd never met before.

Roger waved her off and headed down the hallway, followed by Sven who gave the woman a grin and thanked her. Lexi caught up to the two with Dillon behind her as Roger walked into a room with trees painted along the walls. "Children's books? Are we going to jump into a fairy tale?" Her fingers played over the worn wood that made a small rocking chair.

The dark haired boy chuckled behind her. "When will you stop pretending nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen?"

Sven walked over to the wall of trees. "I'm heading over while you guys talk." He took a step toward the wall, and disappeared into it.

"That's the entrance?" Lexi looked at the wall carefully. "And humans can't go through?"

Roger shrugged. "They can. But most of them don't have the magic to do so." He walked over to the wall. "Go on and go through if you can."

The brunette touched the wall slowly, feeling nothing but the plaster against her fingers and the grooves of the paint that made the trees. "I don't think I can…"

"Step into it." The older man pushed her gently. "I think you can."

Lexi turned and looked at Dillon before looking back at the man pushing her. "I'm going to make a fool of myself…" Nevertheless, she stepped back, and walked straight towards the wall, bracing herself for impact. Her eyes were closed when she hit, falling back on her rear painfully hard. "Ow…"

She rubbed her forehead gently before pushing herself up and dusting the dirt off her hands. Wait…dirt? Her blue eyes finally took in her surroundings. She hadn't run into a wall, she'd run straight into a tree, falling back onto a dirt path, instead of the carpet of the library floors. And the laughing she heard didn't belong to Dillon or Roger. Instead it belonged to the blonde fairy that was waiting on her, sitting on the limb of the tree she'd collided with.

Lexi glared at Sven half-heartedly. "Oh hush you." She brushed the dust from her backside with an embarrassed blush playing across the bridge of her nose.

The German grinned brightly at her, wings fluttering proudly over the girl as two more walked into the forest. Neither of them, she noted, walking into a tree as they did.

Their ears were long and pointed, the way they were when Dillon first told her what they were. Dillon's ears were almost covered by his hair but peeked out from his locks with their length. The site should have been foreign and strange to her, but the look fit the boy too well for her to think he was anything less than beautiful. His eyes shone brighter than before; his deep emeralds shimmering with the power of the land they'd stepped into.

Roger's gray eyes were changing as well, his irises swirling like smoke around his pupils. He stood proudly as if finally revived from the week's events. "Let's get to town." With that, he took the lead in front of the group, heading into the forest.

Lexi looked up at Sven, who flew back down to the ground to join them. "No point hiding anything here, huh?"

Her friend smiled and shrugged. "More like we can't. It's rude, first off, and second, there's so much power swelling here, it brings out everything in us. Every ounce of magic in us is surging to join in." His violet eyes were deeper, and his gold hair was brighter. They all looked so new. She couldn't help but look down at her own pale skin on her hands, reminding herself of how plain she was in comparison. Sven took her chin in her hand and pushed her face up. "You too. Don't you feel it?"

Lexi took in a deep breath. She did feel it; the rushing feeling of her heart pounding in her chest. Every ounce of energy in her wanting to flow from her fingertips. The blood in her veins was racing to keep up with the power inside her. "I thought so." Sven smiled at her as he patted her back. "You're one of us, Lexi."

Dillon came to her side and grinned. "And the magic looks good on you."

Lexi followed the boys through the woods, catching glimpses of small fluttering lights along the trees. "Pixies," Sven had identified, "probably playing a game." She watched as the gravel path turned into stone, then to cement as the trees parted, revealing the town behind them.

The realm she'd walked into was probably no larger than the town they'd left from. Where humans in White Bluff were scattered and sparse, however, the roads here were filled with witches and elves and fairies and Lexi didn't know what else walking to and from their destinations. No one looked at the group as if they were aliens from another world as they stepped into the crowd of people, Roger still leading the way.

"Where are we going?" She asked, trying not to lose the group in the mass of people.

"The court embassy. So we can tell them what's happened." Roger stood taller than most the people that surrounded him, and was easy to keep an eye on as he rushed through.

Lexi kept her head focused on him, keeping up best she can, glad to have the other two behind her in case she fell back. "Psssst." She heard the sound, but kept walking. No one would have needed her attention there. "Pssssst. Changeling." She stopped then, looking around, meeting a pair of gold eyes. "Come here."

She knew she shouldn't, but couldn't stop her feet from moving. Her mind told her to turn back to Roger, but her legs took her to those eyes, putting a face to them as she got closer. She heard Dillon and Sven behind her, calling her back. "Come here, Changeling. I have to talk to you." The voice was sweet, and dark at the same time. She could hear the footsteps of her friends catching up to her as her feet sped up.

At last she made it to the person calling to her. A woman, much taller than her, with silver white hair draping around her. Her gold eyes shimmered and her full lips curled into a smile as she spoke in that dark sweet voice that had brought Lexi into the alleyway. "Wren's changeling."

Her blue eyes widened at the woman. "Who are you?" She took in the woman's ears, normal length, no wings. Not a fairy, not an elf.

The tall woman smiled, lips curling high into a grin Lexi'd never seen on anyone before. "Come with me, Changeling."

Lexi saw Dillon run up to her out of the corner of her eye, but kept walking behind the woman. A cold chill ran down her back as she told her legs to stop. She felt a hand on her wrist finally, her body pulling against it as if it were willing to leave her arm behind in order to follow the woman.

Dillon's grip never eased as he wrapped an arm around her waist, lifting her from the ground. "Lexi stop. Where are you going?" He covered his alarm with a calm voice as he turned her around.

Her blue eyes widened as her legs finally stopped. The woman was nowhere to be found as she looked around them. "Where did she go?"

"Where did who go?" Green eyes searched her worriedly as Roger and Sven caught up with the two.

"A woman." Lexi described her to the three of them, telling them about the sweet voice and strong pull on her.

Roger sighed deeply. "That would be Katerina."

Dillon looked shocked. "Kat? She's helping him now?"

The older elf shrugged. "They all followed him before, I don't see why they wouldn't now."

"Wait wait. Who's Kat?" Lexi looked between the two, confused.

The brown haired boy sighed deeply, leaning back against the brick wall. "My ex-girlfriend," he grumbled, "a siren."