Chapter Text
She could barely take a breath before the pole came toppling down towards her as hands shot out as if to catch it. She scrunched her eyes tightly. She felt a tug in her stomach, now was not a good time for that. The air around her stopped. Sophie pried open her eyes as she took in the sight in front of her: The pole stopped falling, and it stayed floating.
“It’s okay, you can put it down.” The crisp voice startled her from her thoughts, as the pole came crashing towards the earth.
Fitz ran and threw both of them to the side, the spot she had been standing covered in dust from the now-broken telephone pole.
Luckily, Sophie landed in the grass. A groan from her side found Fitz against a bright yellow fire hydrant. She immediately got up towards him, assessing the damage to the best of her abilities. “Are you okay?” She stuck out a hand to the crumpled boy.
Fitz looked up and grabbed it, “Yeah, yeah I am okay.” He hoisted himself up, not a glance towards the destruction. “What about you, are you okay?”
“Yes-”
“I am sorry, I should have-- I shouldn't have spooked you like that. You need an explanation, but not here. Do you know someplace?” Fitz bit his lip, looking anywhere but at Sophie’s eyes.
She sized him up, hands still holding each other.
“Follow me.”
Sophie dragged Fitz towards the San Diego Zoo; a place with a crowd, even through the firestorm. Quickly, they started running as the massive parking lot came into view. For the first time in her life, Sophie missed hearing thoughts. She had no idea what Fitz wanted--and it changed everything. Her mind ran through terrifying scenarios, most of which involved government agents throwing her in a dark room and stabbing her with a ton of needles. She kept one eye on the road, ready to put her speed to use at a moment’s notice.
She will be fine, nothing would happen with so many witnesses.
“What do you want?” she asked when they paused by the wall, resting a hand on it to catch her breath.
“I’m here to help you, I promise.”
His voice sounded sincere. Didn't make it easier to believe him, though.
“Were you looking for me?” She tugged out a loose eyelash, more than a little afraid at his answer.
He opened his mouth, then hesitated. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell you,” the whisper was more than concerning enough, but the thought was chased away with his sudden headshake. “I don’t know much. My dad sent me to find you. We’ve, well he’s, been looking for a specific girl your age, and I was supposed to observe and report back to him, like always. I wasn’t supposed to talk to you, I just couldn’t figure you out.” Fitz’s voice quieted down at the end, as if he was scared of punishment for not following the rules.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re…different from what I expected. Your eyes really threw me off.” He threw his hands in front of him in defence, “Not like it’s bad, brown is good. Brown is more than good, they look, uh, nice.” A red tint covered his neck.
“Oh. Why is brown weird?” She touched her eyelids, suddenly self-conscious.
“We all have blue eyes. So when I saw them, I figured we had the wrong girl again. But we didn’t.” He looked at her with something like awe. “You’re really one of us.”
She stopped and held up her hands. “Woah. Hang on. What do you mean, ‘one of us’?”
He glanced over his shoulder, frowning when he spotted a crowd of fanny- pack-wearing tourists within earshot. He pulled her away from the gate, to a secluded corner behind a dark blue minivan.
“Okay, I don’t know any other way to explain this, so I’m just going to rip it off like a bandage. You’re…you’re not human.” He waved his hands in front of himself before she could get a word in. “But it’s okay, because neither am I, or any of us looking for you. I-We’re elves.”
“Okay? Sureee.” She raised an eyebrow, getting ready to leave the crazy madman. She locked eyes with his unimpressed ones. “Wait, you’re serious.”
At his nod, she started deadpan laughing, “Ha ha- so if we are really elves, are we the run-of-the-mill ‘live-at-the-North-Pole’ type elves, or are we ‘strange-ice-and- death’ elves, or are we ‘ride-on-a-horse-and-shoot-people; elves?”
“I don’t know what any of those things are, but none sound right.”
Sophie made a noise of hurt, “You don’t know The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit ?! How sheltered are you?”
Fitz huffed a sigh, “This is serious.” He got this indignant and cute little look on his face before saying, “And I’m not sheltered. I get to do plenty of things, some of which anyone else of our kind doesn’t. Elvin culture is just different and entirely separate from humans.”
She shrugged with a mental self-slap. “Fine, I’ll be serious for one second. How do I know you’re not lying? For all I know you could work for the government and are trying to kidnap me for some experiment.”
“I’m not trying to kidnap you. My dad is an Emissary, but not me.”
“Oh fun, a government drone! Well how do you know that I am an elf? You just met me. And how do I know you are really an elf and not faking it?”
“Sophie, think about it. No human can read minds like we do. They can’t actually see and hear their thoughts like we do, no human could lift a phone pole like you did.” He sighed again and ran a hand through his hair, causing the dark brown keratin strands to stick up. “Look, I can prove it to you.”
She raised her other eyebrow, “Go on.”
“Watch closely.” Fitz squeezed his eyes shut and quickly disappeared, just as quickly coming back into view a foot to the left. Sophie jumped, eyes widening when he did it again and ended up close to her side. His laugh rang out at her panic. “‘t’s called blinking. Most elves have an ability, but all elves can blink, among other skills, and hone their abilities.”
“And how do I know this was real?” She crossed her arms, glaring out of stubbornness.
He seemed to debate with himself, sighing and pulling out a weird stick and crystal from his pocket. “There is one more thing I can show you, but it’s going to be dangerous. You also can't tell anyone , my dad would kill me.” He stuck out his hand, “If you still don't believe me, I’ll bring you back and you can forget this ever happened.”
“Alright,” Sophie tentatively reached out and met the hand between them. He had calluses on his fingers. Interesting.
“Concentrate. By that I mean you cannot think about anything else except concentrating on me.”
She gave a tense nod, squeezing Fitz’s hand tighter as he pulled her forward. A warm tingling sensation shot from her hand across her body--like a million feathers swelling underneath her skin, tickling her from the inside out.
What was she meant to do again? Her body felt like it melted into a goo. Right, concentrate on Fitz. Where was he?
Then, before she could blink, the warmth faded, and she cracked her eyes open.
Her mouth fell open at the sight in front of her.
She stood at the edge of a glassy river, lined with impossibly tall and lucious trees, breaking through puffy white clouds. Across the river, a row of spiralling crystal castles shone in the sunlight that made Walt Disney’s “Magic Kingdom” duck in shame. To her right, a golden path twisted towards a sprawling city, elaborate buildings seeming to be built from brick-size jewels--each structure a unique and eye-catching colour. Snow capped mountains surrounded the luscious land surrounding them. The crisp, cool air smelled of cinnamon, chocolate, and sunshine.
Places this beautiful shouldn’t be in San Diego.
“You can let go of my hand now.”
Sophie jumped. She’d forgotten about Fitz.
She dropped his hand, looking around in awe. Another, larger, castle stood between, six smaller ones on either side. The twisting towers felt familiar, but where does she remember them from?
“Where are we?”
“Our capital. We call it Eternalia, but you might have heard it called Shangri-la before.”
“Shangri-la,” she repeated slowly, shaking her head “Shangri-la is real?”
“All of the Lost Cities are real--but not how you’d picture them, I’m sure.” Fitz gave her a nervous smile-- why? Why is he nervous? --and looked around himself.
She smiled at him, it was so quiet here. Just the gentle breeze brushing her face, the soft murmur of the river, and no thoughts piercing her skull. No traffic, no chatter, no more hammering, unspoken thoughts. She could get used to the silence, it would be better like this. It felt right to be there.
But it felt strange, too. Like something was missing.
“Where is everyone?” she asked, rising on her tiptoes to get a better view of the city. The streets were deserted, like a ghost town.
Fitz pointed back towards the centre building, towering over all the others. The green stones of its walls shone like giant emeralds, but for some reason the building felt worse than the others. A serious place, for serious things. “See the blue banner flying? ‘Means a tribunal is in progress. Everyone’s watching the proceedings.”
“A tribunal?” Sophie tilted her head to the side, frowning at Fitz’s quirked lip at the action.
“When the Council--the equivalent of our royalty--holds a hearing to decide if someone’s broken a law. It’s a big deal when it happens, they are rarely broken.” He shrugged, taking a step closer to her.
Well, that was different. Humans broke the law all the time, the government rarely punishes them. They kept escaping.
She shivered. Was she really thinking of humans as something other ?
But how else could she explain where she was?
She tried to wrap her head around the idea, tried to force it to make sense. Being smart meant nothing when what was happening didn’t follow the logic she knew. Sophie looked over at Fitz, eyebrow creasing in anger as he tried, and failed, not to laugh at her predicament.
“Okay,” she said, trying to cling to the remaining strands of her sanity. “How did we get here, when three minutes, thirty-seven seconds ago we were in San Diego?”
He held up the strange stick to the sun, casting a ray of light onto his hand. “Light Leaping. We hitched a ride on a beam of light that was headed straight here with this pathfinder.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
Yeah. You need infinite energy for light travel.”
Fitz just laughed again, despite her hoping he was finally stumped. “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
She pouted, eyebrows furrling in annoyance. He seemed so ridiculously confident--it was unnerving.
“Concentrate harder this time,” he said as he grabbed her hand again. This time, the warm sensation blew past her like a hairdryer on maximum power. A second later, she was shivering, like a cold ocean breeze was whipping her in all directions.
“How do you think we got here?” The spiralling castle was now almost directly in front of them, a singular tree being the only barrier.
Words failed her. It really had felt like the light passed through her, pulling her along with it.
“You look confused,” he observed, staring at her with an unreadable expression.
“Of fucking course I am. You’re basically saying, “Hey, Sophie. Take everything you’ve ever known about anything and throw it away. Wait, correction, you are saying that.”
Fitz nodded tensely, avoiding her eyes at all costs while a hand twitched at his side.
If he was telling the truth, she was just some stupid girl who knew nothing about everything.
No--not a girl.
An elf .