Nutella pancakes

The distant cackling of a kookaburra’s laugh. The muffled sound of a passing vehicle. The hushed conversations of the couple in the corner. This was Aria’s only company as she anxiously waited for her expected visitants. Who knew what the day would bring? A month ago, and the young woman would have loved a distraction from the mundane nature of her everyday life. All she seemed to do was to go to school, work part time as a lifeguard, and sit at awkward family dinners with several siblings uninterested in anything but their phones, and an aloof father who was always far too interested in his latest girlfriend of the month to notice anything else.

It had been a whirlwind of a fortnight ever since the news had been sprung upon Aria and Conan…especially if you considered that neither one of them had known about their true heritage and had simply been stumbling upon their supernatural traits all throughout their adolescence.

Like most teenagers, Aria had been surviving her final year of high school by keeping her head down and chin up. The final countdown was on until she could leave that prison-like institution that passed as a place of learning and guiding adolescents to adulthood. She had been minding her own business as per usual when she bumped into the new guy and her whole world had literally flipped on its head.

As cliché and as teen film like as it was…Aria’s world had literally flipped when she had fallen over at the sheer intensity of the shockwaves that had emitted from their physical contact. Thankfully, Conan had fallen as well, otherwise she would have been simply a damsel in distress type figure that swooned at the first glance of an attractive guy.

Whilst to the rest of her classmates it may have looked like pure clumsiness, from Aria and Conan’s perspective something had awakened in them…an illogical pull towards a complete stranger that went far beyond anything the two of them had felt in their human existence.

After awkwardly introducing themselves and proceeding with their day, the magnetic bond between the two of them had seemed to worsen the longer they were apart. When they both found themselves having slept walked several kilometers to meet halfway between their houses on the town’s central lake…that’s when they knew that something unusual was going on, not that the pair of them were not accustomed to abnormal events.

Conan had actually stopped cross country due to his supernatural speed and had been aware of his flight ability for several years, whilst Aria herself had been hiding her ability to control the Elements ever since she had put out a kitchen fire with her mind before she had even started kindergarten.

After a few overly emotional conversations that seemed to have flipped from accusatory to angry to almost romantic in the space of a few minutes, both had resigned themselves to the fact that the bond between them was clearly the work of a higher entity and that they might as well accept it. Within a few days of simply accepting their connection and working out a way to live with it, an eccentric, yet weary looking figure had joined them at one of their midnight meetings at the lake.

With a brief introductory statement of ‘Do you know how hard it was to find you both?’ followed by ‘Thank Gaia that the bond between you two brought you together’, Aria and Conan’s heritage had soon been sprung upon them. They were changelings. Fae changelings.

As the heir’s to warring Fae Courts, it had been the scandal of the millennium when their soulmate bond had been revealed. Frightened for their children’s lives, both the Seelie and Unseelie courts had temporarily locked their children’s minds and sent them to live as human changelings whilst the ruling families of the Fae could sort their politics out.

Due to the immortal lives of the Fae and the very slow maturing process, the hundred-year-old heirs could seamlessly blend into human society as ten-year-old children. Of course, both Aria and Conan’s parents hated the bond between them yet were resigned to the fact that a soulmate bond was a sacred thing and could not be broken. However, to protect them for as long as possible, both royal courts had worked their magic and seamlessly blended both Fae heirs into the human world as if they had always existed there…and so the Aria Nichel and Conan Brackenworth identities had been created.

Nearly a decade on in the human world…which was almost a century in the Fae lands, and the royal courts had finally reached a peaceful consensus and were ready for their soulmate bonded heirs to return…hence the arrival of Andre.

The cyan haired, middle aged looking Fae sent to find them had been on Earth for only six months and was ‘totally fed up with humanity’ as he frequently repeated to both Conan and Aria’s amusement. Despite his small stature, the Fae’s exorbitant personality more than made up for his lack of height. In a valid attempt to blend into modern day mankind, the Fae had tried to dress as a human but had found that the latest fashion trends really did not suit his style…and hence Andre’s love of metallic clothing and 70’s style fashion was born.

As the front door to the quiet diner opened with a soft chime, Aria could not help the smile that crept across her features as she took in Andre’s latest ensemble. With his 70’s disco style and a shimmery vest almost the same shade as his hair, it was no wonder that Conan caught the young woman’s gaze with a smirk and a silent eye roll as both men came to join her at the table.

This latest early morning meeting at the quiet diner was not the most remote meeting place, but both Conan and Andre’s love of the place’s pancakes could easily overpower their desire for privacy. Besides, if the other customers heard what they were talking about…they would think the three of them were insane. With Andre’s eccentric appearance, Conan’s reputation as the quiet new kid, and Aria’s ability to simply blend into the background…they were fairly certain that no one would care enough to approach them.

Still, Aria had insisted on the early morning meeting just to be safe…there was no point in attracting unwanted attention, especially when they were going to be discussing on how to leave the human world safely. Unlike when they had been Fae children, Conan and Aria had been in the human world for too long to simply be whisked away back to the Fae dimension through either Andre’s, or their own still locked down magic.

Once they were back in Fae their minds would be unlocked and thus their power and memories would return to them…but until then, Aria and Conan had to sneak away from their human lives themselves and get to a Fae portal. If both Heir’s came into contact with stronger magic, the shockwaves that they had felt at their connection would seem pitiful in comparison and would probably break the spell that bound their powers in the mortal world in quite an alarming and damaging fashion that would inflict extensive injuries.

“So…are you both ready to go home my Majesties? We have court uniting to do and Fae treaties and the like my lovebirds.”

Despite muttering this over a mouthful of Nutella-soaked pancakes, neither Conan or Aria could hold back their own smiles as they met each other’s eyes and lightly reached for one another’s hands under the table.

“We are ready.”