A Fairy Out of Her Tale - Dear Diary - 20. Scene 20

9th January 1995

Dear Diary of a Sitting Duck,

I’m not sure how I’m going to sleep tonight. I just had a long conversation with the police officers. They explained what is going to happen to me tomorrow when they discharge me.

Yes, you read that right: they’re kicking me out of this hospital. They think I’m well enough to survive on my own.

Not quite on my own, though. I’ll have a guardian and a fake new family. Or something along those lines. My brain is still melting from all the things they explained and all the information they expected me to memorise like some sort of horrible school test. The officers brought along some other person who gave me a much longer introduction than anyone would ever need. She went beyond the usual name and pronoun, saying she was a “social worker” (whatever that means) and she thought fairies were the most wonderful beings in the universe and her favourite colour was pink. For someone who claimed to love fairies so much, though, she struggled a lot with her Fadalesh. Which was particularly painful to witness when she was ogling about every single little detail of the great care system the Daisenians created.

The worst part is that I can’t even tell you how great it really is, because I paid more attention to the drip drip of the IV bag next to my bed than I did to that woman. I tried my best to treat her like a teacher at school and soak up every sound she made, but after a minute her monotone voice was filled with words that were too complicated and weird to be Fadalesh. All was lost.

That said, I learned that two hours of talking emptied about half of the IV bag. Useful information, I know.

What I did manage to learn in those two hours worries me, though: they’re going to send me to live with this guardian angel who manages a house with four other teenagers like me.

‘Are all the teens criminals?’ I asked when the social worker said they would have similar backgrounds to mine.

‘You’re not a criminal,’ she answered with a shrug. I didn’t have the energy to disagree at that point. ‘You’re officially classified as a refugee as far as our laws are concerned. And the other minors in your new home are also refugees.’

‘What is a refugee?’

The officers gave me weird looks. Maybe they had already explained it? But the social worker didn’t seem to mind repeating it.

‘A refugee is someone who entered our borders looking for safety. They’re fleeing persecution or harsh conditions in their home country and need assistance to rebuild their lives. You are no longer welcomed among fairies, and we have reasons to believe demons are still after you, so it’s our duty to ensure you can live a safe and happy life in Daisen.’

‘The demons are after me?’ That explained the attack earlier, but it was the kind of thing I hoped wasn’t coming back to bite me. You know, that kind of nightmare you’ve seen with your own eyes and you refuse to believe it’s real because if you do you’re going to freak out and do something really counter-productive?

Well, guess who freaked out and tried to run out of the room with the IV still attached to my arm and four police officers (one of them a demon) guarding the door? And guess who ended up with a massive bruise from a needle dislocating inside my arm and doing all sorts of things it shouldn’t do?

When I think about it that way, I can’t believe they’re letting someone like me out in the world…

As it turns out, the demons Morumpi worked for haven’t given up on me. They can track my movements thanks to some blood magic that happened when Morumpi’s blood touched mine. So technically they can barge in at any moment and snatch me away, like that demon tried to do a few hours ago. That’s why they had a demon officer guarding me before. That officer really is supposed to be on my side…

The house they’ll send me to apparently has some sort of protection ward in it that should keep me safe there. The demon officer is back to their guard duty outside. Everyone is convinced I’ll be fine as long as I do as they say.

But a demon did manage to sneak past the guard and invade my room before. How can I sleep knowing it could happen again? I don’t want to close my eyes and be somewhere completely different when I wake up…

I’m going to stare at the window now. I’ll be back to writing once I feel safe again.

Good night. At least one of us should sleep…