Chapter 2

I stalked out of the changing room. Amber and Claire were nowhere to be seen, so I continued through the quiet store past the racks of diaphanous, gauzy material and exited into the street.

Yet again, I was struck by the alien visual cacophony of the city. Every building was uniquely carved and bedazzled, like some ball-room dancer had gotten her hands on an award-winning architect’s designs at the last minute. No two buildings were alike, nothing matched, and yet somehow everything complemented each other. The city was like a giant fractal – when you approached it from far away it presented a collage masterpiece of color and aesthetic design, but the closer you got to it, the more detail you found. Within each facet, you would find twelve more intricacies. It was like a giant Gaudí installation, but infinitely more complex. In fact, my grandmother had informed me just the other day that Gaudí had been part fae, too, although he had never been to Elysielle. I guess some things were just in the blood.

Tearing my eyes away from the red and purple balconies shimmering in the warm rosy sunlight, I turned to see my friends waving at me from an outdoor café down the street.

I rushed to join them, just barely avoiding being jostled by a troupe of street performers. Amused by the group’s antics, I turned and walked backwards a few steps, watching them retreat from view.

“Hey, watch it!” A thin, reedy voice rasped at me. I spun around to just miss stepping into a boy’s lap where he sat cross-legged on the stones drawing with chalk. All my training kicked in and I vaulted over him instead. Of course, that meant that now my hands were covered in chalk, and I’d messed up part of his drawing.

“Look what you did!”

“Oh, man, wow, I’m really sorry. I totally didn’t see you there.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of obvious,” he muttered petulantly. “Now I’m going to have to fix that whole section.”

He waved his hand and we both surveyed the damage. He’d managed to draw an incredibly realistic 3D view of a rock well, complete with a massive opening showing the moon and the starry night sky I’d always taken for granted. Looking at it, you felt like you would fall straight into the sky.

“This is amazing,” I said, kneeling down beside him. The boy seemed near my age, maybe just a year or two younger. His dark sk