Unfated Love
You already left me a long time ago.
This is part of a Choose Your Own Adventure story, Through the Black Door. Go back to the first chapter. Or return to the previous chapter. Check out the chapter guide.
Asha Bluebell was a strikingly beautiful girl from your village.
You were both eighteen, and you were in love. But you had to keep your relationship a secret. The village condemned relationships between those of the same gender, and you were afraid to lose your lives.
One night, a blue faerie with green eyes came to your bedroom while you were alone and hopeless. She sympathised deeply with your plight. Then she offered to take you to faerie land.
She promised that when you returned to the human world, you and Asha would live in a society where women would be free to love one another without fear.
The faerie’s only condition was that you gift her a bouquet of flowers, because your family sold the freshest blooms in the village.
You were naïve and took her offer. While you were in faerie land, they gave you a glass of purple wine. You didn’t want to upset the faeries and risk losing their help, so you bent your head back and drank it all. It was the most delicious drink you had ever tasted.
Before you knew it, you fell into a deep slumber. When you woke, you found yourself in a soft and luxurious bed. The blue faerie with green eyes told you that it was time to go home.
People said that a day in faerie was a year on earth. You thought that was just a tale to scare small children, but not anymore.
When you came back to the human world, everything had changed. From asking the people around you, you discovered that you were in the twenty-first century. You came from the nineteenth century. It was eerie how the faerie drink had made you sleep for so long.
Your beloved Asha would already be dead. Indeed you could love her freely now — at her grave.
Eventually, you pushed yourself to look for your parents’ graves, though you still had no courage to search for your lover’s.
Your father’s coffin was in a mausoleum. And to your surprise, he had left you a letter in a box. You read it with tearful eyes. Your parents had figured out that you had feelings for your female best friend, even before Asha told them about your disappearance.
A blue faerie had visited Asha and invited her to come to faerie to find you. Your parents did not object. And though they feared what the church might do to girls who liked girls, they also loved you and wanted you back home.
Yet, Asha never returned to the village. No one knew where she was, but your parents thought that she might be dead.
Grief consumed you at the words. And over the next five years, you worked hard to suppress these memories.
The emotional pain is too much for you to bear. Why did the mare force you to remember this? You sincerely wanted to help her, but you hadn’t thought you would have to endure such deep sorrow, and have your reality shattered into something unrecognizable.
The mare shoots you a cold and smug look.
“You’re Shi Lei — the blue faerie who once helped me?” you ask. The mare’s silent stare confirms this. You breathe hard, trying to calm yourself. “What do you want?” You resist the urge to yell at her for deceiving you and separating you from Asha. This faerie could still kill you.
Shi Lei glances away for a while, before glancing back at you. “Go to the church up that hill, and free my son. If you don’t succeed or if he gets hurt, don’t blame me for leaving you.”
You already left me a long time ago, you almost say.
