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Although, now that I’ve acquired two kittens and a child, I don’t know how much time I’m going to have for art, anyway.
Soon baby Daisy drifts off to sleep and because I don’t really have anywhere else to put her, I place her in the center of my bed. My house is really just a little one-room cottage, so my bed doubles as a couch, and I grab my laptop and lay on my stomach next to Daisy.
The woman told me to take the baby to Fablestone.
I can’t explain why, but the name sounds familiar to me somehow. It’s at the edge of my consciousness, begging me to remember, and I do want to remember. There’s so much going through my head right now, but mostly, I need to get this baby home. I don’t know who the woman was or why she was running. I don’t know if she made it. I don’t know if she’s okay. All I know is that she gave me a task and somehow, I feel like I need to carry out this mission.
If not for her, then I’ll do it for the baby.
When I open my laptop, I do a quick Internet search for Fablestone. Most of what comes up is random gibberish. There are search results from video games and random fantasy novels. There’s a lot of fanfic. Apparently there was a series of stories written with the same name, but that can’t be what I’m looking for.
No, Ellie was clear. Fablestone is a place, and that’s where I need to bring her baby. I’ll find something there. Answers, maybe. I’ll find hope, I suppose. I don’t know. Not really.
I keep scrolling, trying to find anything that could give me a clue as to where Fablestone might be. An hour passes, and then another. I’m tired, and it’s nearly dawn. I need to get some sleep, but first I need answers. Anything.
And then I see the blog.
It’s just one page. One post. One brief clip of information buried about fifty pages back in the search results, but I can tell right away that it’s what she was talking about. It’s got the information I need to find this place, and suddenly, everything makes a lot more sense.
Fablestone is a place for shifters.
It’s a haven.
It’s a secret world where they can live in peace and harmony and not be bothered by humans from the outside world. That’s what Fablestone is, and it’s hidden away in this very forest. It’s hidden away and no one knows where it is except for the dragon shifters themselves.
And I have to find it.
Maybe I’m just overtired, and maybe I’m running on adrenaline, but the blog post makes perfect sense to me.
The world has changed, and with it, so have we. No longer are we free to roam the world without fear or worry. No longer are we free at all, yet Fablestone continues, and with it, the world of flying and magic. If the skies beckon to you just as they did to your parents before you, find your safety at Fablestone. By the fourth stone tower at the brightest point on the fullest night, you will find what you are seeking.
When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with learning about shifters. My very best friend in the entire world was a shifter. Oh, she couldn’t shift yet. That starts after puberty begins, but she dreamed about the day she would be able to turn into a bear like her family. She had big dreams and high hopes, and we used to spend all of our time drawing pictures of people shifting into different types of animals.
The Stone Towers were mythical stories shared about the unusual piles of stone sprinkled throughout Westbridge Forest. As kids, we had all sorts of cool, fun names for the forest, and we had plenty of stories about why they were the way that they were. I asked Margaret’s parents once, why they thought the stone towers existed in the forest, but they hadn’t answered me straight out. They hadn’t answered me at all, really. Instead, they’d given each other these sort of knowing looks, and then they’d told us to wash up for supper.
A month later, Margaret’s parents disappeared. One day, she came home from school and they were just gone. Vanished. Disappeared. I was adopted, and my parents tried to adopt Margaret, too, but there was a problem with the paperwork. A relative, we were told, who had first choice at getting custody of Margaret. When the aunt came to take her away, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
I just never saw her again.
I realize, suddenly, that I’m crying as I’m thinking about this. I need to stop before I wake up Daisy or Mocha or Frappe. The last thing I need is an entire house full of little ones crying or meowing. I already have enough on my plate.
Is that what this is, then?
I look over at Daisy. Is she a shifter baby? Is Ellie a shifter? The word was hovers in my mind, but I can’t accept that just yet. Not just yet. Not when I don’t have more information. No matter what happens now, I know I’m going to find answers at Fablestone, and yeah, this is a really old fucking blog post by an anonymous person, and it’s written in some weird, half-assed code, but if I’m right, and it means what I think it means, then I need to be at the fourth stone tower by midnight at the next full moon.
Another quick Internet search reveals that I have two more days. Well, a day and a half. Basically, I have a little under 48 hours before the full moon. I have less than two days to haul myself, the baby, and two whiny little kittens into the middle of Westbridge Forest on the off-chance that Ellie was telling the truth and that this baby really does need to get there.
If she was bein
g honest, and I feel suddenly in my gut that she was, then this isn’t just some normal baby.
This is a shifter baby, and it could be in danger.
***
I don’t sleep well. In fact, I hardly sleep at all, so when there’s a knock on my door at seven in the morning, I’m already half-awake. I stumble out of bed and push my hair out of my face. Who the hell would be here at seven in the morning?
“Hello?”
