Unremitting Ardour

Into the woods, Lana bravely thought to herself.

She was bound to be killed. Yet she wouldn't dare turn around until she found him. Her one and only. Her mate.

They'd abandoned everything to be with each other.

He had given her the smallest of diamonds but their love was a never ending crystal light. She'd screamed yes the very instant he'd knelt before her and could even pop the question. She was an easy target to shed tears and he'd loved that about her. Her tears fell in a pitter patter form to the fertile ground as he kissed her. A kiss for the ages.

His hand traced her neck in spiraling movements. Her sensation and want for him burned like a thousand suns and the kiss made it evident. The word passion surged through the routes of the kiss never faulting away. His tongue slid down into her throat and deepened the kiss. She pressed her lips against his even harder. Their love was exploding and the container had been unlocked. Her hands wrapped themselves around his neck.

  Out of breath, she released him as they smirked vivaciously at each other. He leaned his forehead against hers. She only had to stand on the tip of her toes the slightest to reach his lips whenever they kissed. When she reached for his hand she felt the static between them electrify, she could have sworn. By the way he stared down at their intertwined fingers, she knew he'd felt it too.

Everything had felt so right back then. Now she missed his everything.

His high cheek bones, his soft flesh, his hand on hers, his fanatical kisses but most of all she remembered how his eyes lit up when he was around her. She missed his hand tracing patterns on her back. She missed the way he tickled her when she was blue.

But now the woods had devoured him and she was seeking him out. She would never stop until he was in her hands again. She reached for her army dressed canteen; she threw the water on her paling face.  The water would hide her tears and deceive the lurkers of the night.

She heard owls hoot so suddenly it frightened and her careful stride became disrupted and awoke the beasts. Lana's fear embellished her whole entire being. She broke a twig, she'd been careful enough not to until now. Teeth flashed before her.  No they were sharp white fangs that could consume her in a millisecond. Her heart pace quickened. She stepped back and snapped another twig awakening more of the monstrosities of the night.

Out came a normal looking boy. His hair was out of control. He was a werewolf without a pack. Lana tried to conceal her anxiety. His eyes shared its color with the moon. His lips were extremely full. He was tall and attractive but she didn't want him. She already had a piece of heaven in her life. That was why she had cast herself into this hell hole to find him and free him.

"What's a pretty girl like you doing around these woods?" His voice was tantalizing.

She kept her mouth shut.

"I asked a simple question pretty girl." Lana eyed the distance between them. Her half human half faerie running wouldn't help her. She was bound to ground when she'd chosen to live on Earth with her human love.

She'd never wanted to have her wings be spread after she'd sealed her fate with her love but now the want was so enticing but Earth's non –magic crust bound her to it. She swallowed a huge lump that formed in her throat.

"L-L-L-Looking for someone of importance to me." She slowly squeaked out. Her eyes never on him.

"Who might it be?" She finally looked at him. His smile wasn't appealing but brought terrible shivers down her spine.

"It is none of your business who it is." Lana said with the slimmest hint of valour.

The boy moved with incredible speed and was soon at her side. Her hand gripped her pocket knife. She was a faerie or at least had one time been a full pledged one. She still had her expertise in all areas.

"Is it your lover boy?"

Drat. It was impossible for her to lie, which was a high faerie rule. Even after sacrificing her citizenship as a faerie, the little rules still had her bound to obeying them. She couldn't say no and protect her 'lover boy'. Her body gave her no choice in the matter.

"Yes." The answer came out of her without her consent. Cursed faerie gene, she swore to herself.

"Well let me tell you something pretty girl. Anything that come in these woods ain't ever getting out without being changed or dead," His answer aggravated her. She grew a stronger grip on the knife.

"That knife won't help you against a force like me." He smiled.

"This isn't just a knife. It's an enchanted dagger that can kill any life source and you are one." The truth forced itself out of her.

"You think." He extended his fangs and with speed was next to her ready to sink them into her juicy neck.

"If I were you, I would stop in my tracks. Do not even dare to lay a hand on me werewolf," Lana's heroism grew out of somewhere that she herself couldn't quite pinpoint.

"You know what I am. Your fake knife story doesn't scare me one bit."

Lana shook her head. She'd warned him. If only he had known that faeries could never lie.

"Let me just see how your flesh tastes and make you mine. With me nothing could harm you," He growled.

"I do not want to be yours."

"Your red hair is so uncommon around here; I want it all to myself." He reached for her but she flinched out of his path.

"I am not some worthless junk you can get with smooth words." She said with a sturdy voice.

"Your violet eyes are so enticing." He continued. He showed no interest in letting her off peacefully.

"I said let me be!" Lana lost her cool.

"I gave you a chance and you let it go." He withdrew claws from his knuckles just like the Wolverine character she'd seen on television. He swung at her and caused her to bleed out of her inner right elbow. He licked the blood out of his claws and smirked at her. Lana stood her ground. Faerie's blood was an unhealthy thing to have. It caused delusions and insanity. Lana knew that her blood was addictive so she had to stop him from coming back. She knew what she was going to have to do.

She yanked her dagger out of its hold and flicked it in her hand nonchalantly. Her faerie agility still resided with her. She thanked the Lord that he hadn't taken that away from her too. She leaped an enormous jump over his head and launched the dagger in the seconds before she touched ground. It was an accurate hit. She had hit his heart and now he would bleed to death. Then he would become a vapour that would ascend into the air and be blown across the plains of the Earth. His screams made her face lose the minor color it had left on it.

Fear once again came over Lana. She had killed.  No matter his cruelty no one deserved to pay the price of death. Yet she'd done it to continue her mission for her sweet love. More tears of agitation at the world flooded her eyes. Her faerie tears were valuable so it was in her best interest to not cry and attract bidders. It sickened her that even after walking away from the faerie life, it still was with her in more ways than one.

She walked and forced her human legs not to give in. She'd been used to walking but such a gait as this made her want for wings strengthen.  The craving for her wings was a desperate one but she'd had her wings ripped right off of her back for her love. Don't give in, she repeatedly told herself.  Lana was a fighter; she hardly quit.

She continued in her walking and stumbled upon a house that seemed to be constructed of sticks and leaves. She still had her dagger for protection and was not eager to see if this house was the uglier version of Hansel & Gretel's captor's house. Yet for some odd reason, Lana felt herself drawn to enter.  She reached the doorstep and knocked softly on the door.

"Hello. I am coming visitor. Do please wait." The voice was hoarse and repellent.

"Who do we have here?" The owner of the house was horrendous in sight.

The woman wore a tattered skirt with loose linen at its hem. Her shirt was constructed of moss and sticks and its reek was outstanding. Her hair was gray with some black streaks. Her nose was too plump and her face consisted of boil and her eyes were dull and grey.

"Greetings. I am tired and famished and would love a one night stay." Lana's yawn proved her statement. Regardless of the woman's appearance, Lana needed rest and the woman seemed friendly enough.

"Oh yes! Do come in and make yourself at home," The woman vibrantly spoke and her pulverized looking teeth flashed.

Lana did her best to not open her mouth and let the witch know of her true looks but she couldn't. When she had meant to say thank you instead her mouth said, "You are an ugly woman and your house is simply repulsive." Cursed faerie gene.

Lana covered her mouth in awe but the woman showed no change of feelings.

"Does that bother you massively dear?" The woman asked.

"Not extremely," That was the truth.

"Great. There is a lovely couch over there, take a seat beautiful girl."

"Thank you but compliments don't sit well with me," Lana's modesty was outstanding.

"But they must. Your cheek bones are pure perfection. Your face is of ceramic beauty."

"Lies Madam. Lies." Lana shook her head not believing it. When she'd been in the court of the faeries, compared to the others, Lana was less than average in beauty.

"Do not call me Madam. I am Lady Sapphire. Those are not lies. Your red hair is so unusual in any part of the world. Even magical creatures cannot attain such a color. Your eyes are another hard to thing to have. They are violet and make you stand out. You have immensely slender legs. True beauty."

"Thank you Lady Sapphire," Lana believed the old lady and smiled a real smile.

"But then again, all faeries are beautiful but no faerie has your color of hair."

Lana gasped. This Lady Sapphire knew of her previous life, but how?

"Do not gasp child. I know everything and I must have everything. I know you bound yourself to these woods for your search of your lost love. I can save him but he earned his fate. You will be surprised to know that he is somewhat safe."

"How do you know?" Lana asked intently. How did the woman know of her love?

"I am a witch child. Your love was drawn to the woods by the siren calls of The Bagnio Girls. They are a faerie's most hated enemy. They saw you happy without your magical lifestyle and took your happiness away from you. They used a spell on your lover and trapped him and made him in love with them. Humans are so easily tricked."

"How can I help him?"

"I can free him for you," The witch suggested right off the bat and too hastily.

"Thank you,"Lana stopped herself from embracing the witch.

"But I need something in return."

Lana thought about this. Witches always asked for a lot than they would give out. She would see it through. No matter the price because this was what love was.

"Anything. I would willingly do anything to free my other half," Lana kept in her sobs.

"I cannot do it for nothing. But the price is high child."

"Name it." Lana gritted her teeth.

"Your whole being." The witch answered.

"What?" A confused Lana inquired.

"I need your faerie traits as mine. I will simply cast a spell that will allow me to take your ageless beauty, agility and such."

"Will I lose my red hair and violet eyes?" Scared of the question she already knew the answer to, Lana asked.

"Yes. You will be an old ugly brute with gray hair and gray eyes like me. Are you willing to lose all that make you what you are for a simple love?"

But it wasn't a simple love. It was something fantastically indefinable. Lana gulped down the lump in her throat and didn't say anything.

"Yes." She finally answered.

"Wait, how do I know this is not a trick?" Stricken with curiosity Lana became.

"I will give you an orb that will let you see every minute of his life. Even bathing times if you so wish." Lady Sapphire folded her arms across her chest.

"I would love to see that. Will he remember me?"

"Questions, you have too many. Alas I must answer. He will remember but glimpses of you. He will think of you as a summer love that his heart was strong for and he will always love. But  his knowing about your faerie life will disappear. Once more you will be nothing more than a summer love. Then at one point, he may even forget you."

Lana bit her bottom lip in frustration. She didn't want to be forgotten. One more question.

"Will I be able to return to the faerie world ever ?"

"My dear, you are the one who left the faerie court to be with a human. You are still connected to the world now because of the little faerie attributes you still possess," The witch continued, "You will be completely severed from the faerie world."

Maybe two more questions.

"Will I die?"

"Of course child you will like all other humans. Once I take what I need from you, you will be just a human."

"At least I won't have another lifetime of feeling alone and being unable to die. "

"Exactly."

"I can expereince how it feels to lie."

"I love your optimism." The witch smiled.

"He would always say that to me."

Faking her way to look strong and sturdy is what Lana tried her hardest to do. She tried to let go her wonderful memories and times with him.

Laady Sapphire directed Lana over to the window and Lana went.

A memory jugged up at the back of her head.

His hands were around her waist pulling her in closely abrasively but passionately endearing. His touch still sent tingles down her spine. He kissed her head and then down her neck line. She could feel his eyes on her. His eyes were mesmerizing. Being here with him gave him the comfort she needed. It gave her certainty that her decision to abandon her previous life in the other world was worth it. Love was a word that had been a stranger to her until she'd met him. Her rock.

Lana remembered her prior life just like she remembered her love's face. To perfection was her memory. She'd been a slavery to tradition before him. Now she lived freely.

"Do you have to depart at such a dark time?" She mumbled into his chest breathing him in.

"Yes darling but I will find my way back," He declared into her fierce red hair.

"I do not care for firewood as long as we are together." Lana sighed. She hated being without him.

"We will freeze then my beautiful.  You must endure these few hours without my presence so I can hunt some firewood and keep us alive. The chill has come back brusquely. You are not in the faerie court anymore. There are uncomfortable temperatures on Earth that aren't pleasant." He met her lips in a feather touch and released her.

"If you must," She gave in finally. She forced a miniature smile out of her gullet. She never really understood feeling cold until he hadn't come home with the wood and she'd had to burn paper to keep herself warm.

"I will be on my way. I promise to be back in no more than 4 hours. "

He kissed her forehead and she held him so closely there was absolutely no distance between them. Lana loathed the loneliness of being in the cabin with nothing but the dog, Sierra.

"Good bye love. Now before I leave, promise me you won't leave this cabin for your own safety. If something is to happen to me, I don't want you wounded." He said so ever softly.

"I promise. Now leave so your return may be sooner."

"I love you." He told her but she already knew.

"I love you more." Lana said and she meant it.

Two days had gone and he hadn't return. She missed him. She would go looking for him. She told herself.  The fire had long died and she was in need of warmth but she needed him more now than ever. Her promise bounded her to the house though. Yet she needed to be the heroine and bring her love home. After all promises were meant to be broken, he had once said.

Her sweet, sweet Leo. She would save him even if it meant shattering all her remaining faerie traits. She would lose her ageless feat. He couldn't marry a three thousand old faerie that looked her age. He was young and deserved better. She'd lived her life without meaning until she'd met him. She would lose him now and she would die soon.  Find somebody new he would do. He was human.

Lana closed her eyes as she nodded Lady Sapphire's way. The old lady smiled at Lana.

"A faerie giving up her traits for a human. This love of yours is working to my advantage."

Lana bit her bottom lip. She would not reply to the witch's comment. Her body began to levitate into the air. Her so called unique head of hair rose as if electrified. She felt irregular sensations. She felt herself age as her forehead grew wrinkles. Her hands grew tied and full of old skin. Her breasts became saggy in her pink laced bra. Her shut eyelids hurt when she tried to open them.

Lana had now lost everything that made her a faerie. She was now completely human.

"Is he free now?" Tears slid down Lana's cheek as she asked once more biting her lower lip.

"Yes." The witch twisted her arm in weird patterns.

An orb appeared out of the thin air into the witch's hands. Lady Sapphire handed the orb over to Lana. Lana gazed into it with her old eyes.

She saw the beautiful Bagnio Girls. Yet you could see their visible red horns. Their face were porcelains silky shaped. Their lips were faultlessly shaped. Their noses at a great length. They had slender bodies. Their eyes though were a burning red that only Bagnios possessed. They screamed orders relentlessly at him.

Lana took her eyes away from the demons instantly and focused on her husband more absorbedly.

He was becoming free of them. He began to realize what they were doing to him. He grew scared. His mind was no longer theirs to control and contort to do their bidding. As soon as he stepped foot out of the woods he would never remember it. Not any of it.

His brown hair had not changed a bit. That was good.

The witch blew towards the orb and a great gust of wind encircled around where Leo was furiously. Lana witnessed as the witch teleported him to his parents' home in the city.

"He will remember returning from a summer break and his parents will remember a perfect son. It is a good ending for everyone but you." The witch's voice caught Lana unexpectedly.

He quickly arrived at his parents' house. The parents he'd disappointed just like he'd told Lana. The spell would lie to him and make him act the way he never acted to help fit back into normal life.

It hurt her more every time she thought about how he would think of their three year journey in human years as nothing but a fling.

Seeing her husband this way pained her. Her beautiful 22 year old love. She would never have him back. Never ever. She couldn't return to her faerie world and be cured of her current state. She would die. Lana had once thought that infinite life would be exciting at some point. But now trying to kill herself would cause some effect.

Lana had tried to end herself once. She had gripped the knife and had plunged it into her chest. The knife had done nothing. She dropped it to the floor. There was a bloodless hole in her chest that weaved itself back to a normal form. Lana had remembered screaming out of surprise and not pain. But now she could die with stabbing herself. There was some solace in that.

Months passed and Lana observed her old love graduate his undergraduate program. She saw higher acceptance to attend medical school at Yale.

Leo always had sudden flashes of his time with Lana in his dreams and in class and everywhere else. His mind conceived the lie that she was just a strong love that he would one day forget. The day never came. Leo would curl into bed and he dreamt about her always and nothing else. Lana's face was his daily thought. His parents had not the fondest idea who Lana was.

One night Leo woke up, picked a pencil and drew Lana.  In hEr now old and dying body, Lana saw it and tears streaked down her cheek. She was happy. Leo was remembering how his hands had loved to create beautiful pieces. He mostly drew creations of her. He would always add her torn wings. Even now he still did when he shouldn't have.  Lana was shocked. Leo's brain was tearing apart the spell that had been cast on him. He was unpeeling everything bit by bit.

He would realize the significance she had to him. He would remember her true nature. But the bad to this was he would never know how Lana had saved him. He was bound to think she'd abandoned him. In a month's time, he dropped out medical school. He would chase his dreams of being an artist.

Life was repeating itself. Leo could feel it too. Leo had quit medical school when he had Lana. He had done it to pursue his dreams of being an artist when he was with Lana. For the first time in a long time, Leo cried in his sleep wishing he could have this girl of his dreams in his arms.

Lana in the cabin with Sierra knew it could not be so. The cabin had such memories. Lana lifted a slow finger and stared into the orb.

Leo got up and drew Lana in her never aging form again. His room was filled of her face and her beautiful body. No picture failed to capture Lana. Something had snapped inside Lana's beautiful boy. He wouldn't rest until he had her back in his arms. He had his own apartment and was alone. No other girl could be Lana to Leo. Although that ensured Lana that Leo had truly loved her it petrified her that he would die alone.

Leo heard his phone ringing and reached for it on the close by desk.

"Hello?" He answered.

"Leo is this you?"

"Cecilia?" Leo asked.

"Yes."

"What do you want?"

"Just listen and don't hang up please," She pleaded on the phone line.

"I am still here. Aren't I?" He asked a rhetorical question.

"It isn't healthy. What you are doing to yourself. Isolating yourself and not talking to anyone. I care about you more than I am willing to admit which I just sort of did. You keep drawing pictures of this girl. You said her name was Lana and she was a faerie you once loved."

"What about it CeCe?"

Leo was getting angry but kept his body cool.

"They don't exist. Get that in your head Leo. If you need a girl I am here."

"Lana is real and what about me needing a girl?"

"I love you! I always have! I want you to accept me as yours. If an imaginary faerie love of yours can beat me to you then tell me what I need to do. I love you so much Leo. Are you still there?"

"Yes." Leo said calmly then, "She is not imaginary!" He threw the phone at his wall and it broke. Bits of it crashed around.

He would need a new cell. Cecilia was not important to him. She wasn't in anyway relevant to helping the void in his head relinquish itself. Lana was.

Lana looked into the orb once more and saw Leo crying. She put the orb away. Her every movement was so delayed with her old age. Leo was twenty now. Lana was unsure of her age but she believed three thousand and something. Perhaps eighty in human years. She would be gone in less than five years and then Leo's connection to her would be entirely severed. But she wanted him back.

Lana made up her mind to seek out Lady Sapphire. She was willing to give up more to have Leo back.

Into the woods, Lana bravely thought to herself.