Call me Evelyn

Call me Evelyn. It's not the name my parents gave me, but it came around and choose me anyway. I won't lie to you and yet everything I'm about to say is complete and utter rubbish.

I didn't understand the first time I was told. But maybe it's like one of those times when your whole world is flipped and it's just easier not to understand and not to believe.

They came for me when I was about five, I didn't know at the time how they knew and singled me out, but looking back now I guess setting an entire house on fire without any visible means of doing so might have done the trick. They also told me it was out of impulsive anger. But I didn't need them to tell me that, I remember now.

I remember the look on my mother's face as she scolded me for acting up, and I can even recall the tone she used when declaring I return to my room without the ice cream bar I'd been craving all day. After that it was a bit of a blur. I do remember the flames and how they made my face feel hot and sweaty. But from then on it was just snip-its of fleeting memory...

a hand closing around mine...my face pressed tightly against my mother's orange sweater as she rocked me back and forth on our front lawn...the sounds of loud hoses and people yelling...

Seeing as it was that very night that they visited me for the first time I probably should have put it together but I was young and tired from my day's adventure.

You're probably by now wondering who "they" are. Well that's a hard question to answer. There are a lot of "theys" out there, but they go by different names. If this clears it up, at midnight on the night in question, a couple elves and a sprite woke me up with some interesting news.

Like I said before though, I just didn't get it the first time. How could I be a Taylazcu, or one of the magical folk (I later found out it was elfish slang for "one who possesses magic") when both of my middle-class, very conventional parents were perfectly normal. But I also found out that faeries don't have "parents", they're born from the things that go unnoticed in life. After examining me for a minute or two, the elf with the dark eyes told me I was born from a tear drop that fell from a small boy when he scrapped his knee in gym class and no one saw it fall. That's comforting.

Oh yeah, did I mention I was a faerie? Yep, apparently I get all sorts of cool powers but not wings. Those are fairies that get wings, the tiny flashy little critters, personally I find them quite annoying, but that's just me.

Actually, as it is, I look sort of human. Well, I could get away with it at five, now, I think anyone could tell I'm not normal. I've never seen a full human with violet, cat-like eyes, jet-black hair that falls in unchanging curls to their waist, and skin without a dot of color anywhere, perfectly white. But maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. After that first enlightening visit, they moved me from my "parents" house to a hidden and small forest surrounded by tall mountains where a sweet old dwarf and his wife looked after young Taylazcues. They left me there for many years, until I grew up enough to be on my own. I never saw the elves or the sprite again but they did leave me with the main and most important rule of being a Taylazcu, that was to never ever reveal oneself to a human, and to forever hide the secret that allows our two worlds to coexist in peace.

But there was one question I never asked them before they introduced me to the dwarfs and took off. And that brings me back to why you're to call me Evelyn.

I asked the kindly dwarf couple many questions about the new world I was beginning to accept and they answered those easily enough. But when I asked why I'd been raised by the humans I thought were my parents for five whole years (something I discovered was almost unheard of), they couldn't tell me because they really had no idea.

But what they could tell me was that my name was actually Evelyn. I denied this. I told them I was called May. May Rosalie Sartian. They told me that was the name the humans gave me and it wasn't my true name. Then the dwarfs proceeded to explain how everyone, even humans had a true name that embodies their enduring soul. I didn't really get any of that at age seven, or however old I was when I was told, but all I know was from then on I made everyone call me Evelyn.