⊹.✮₊⋆ HEXES AGAINST THE SUNSET ⊹.✮₊⋆

 

We were girls together. We were fairies, pirates, myths, daughters, wolves, mermaids, sisters. And we could be anything we hoped for if we squinted our eyes and whispered to the wind—we could be eternal if we wanted to, just like our promises written with glitter gel pens beneath the family tree. Right there, my eyes intertwined with Giulia's words: "They wouldn't understand it, so nobody needs to know about how we become fairies, ok?" I agreed with a smile. No one else knew that we had magic running through our veins, that we understood the words that crashed against the leaves, and that we cast spells with the waves—no one ever believed in us; they barely looked into our eyes. So it was not hard to hide the fact that we were everything they never wanted to acknowledge—we were pure magic. Bones made of silk, veins made of sugar, eyes made of crystals, and wings made of wishes. Pure magic.

Shouting against the sky we called our home because the stars and the clouds saw us for what we were—fairies. G and her long, sunburnt blonde hair always danced at night. It was her duty to paint new constellations, touch the stars, and give them brand-new meaning. She helped lost eyes find the light, and she kept dreams alive—she was raised by the waves just like the moon, and with her fingertips and magical whispers, she brought dreams to life. She was the fairy of the stars, and she was everything I wanted to become one day. But just like the night didn't become as beautiful as we know it all by itself, the bright blue sky also needed us—needed me. My job was shaping the clouds into horses, and foxes, and any other daydream one’s eye could be caught on. I had to make sure that the sun was kind and the blue was not sad or maybe too bright; my job was keeping everything alive. Our lungs inhaled that; this magic was everything that kept us going.

But every day, when the sun laid his head on the Tropic of Capricorn (Giu's sun is in Capricorn), they came after us—the fairies of the sunset. With their waif bodies and avid eyes, they didn't want to be forgotten; they didn't like having such a short life. They used to curse the daylight and kill wishing stars; they wanted the world to be a perpetual sunset, and we could not let this happen. Nature is balance, and sisterhood is a promise. And hell, we promised to take care of the stars, shape the clouds, and color their dreams—we were sisters because of that, not because we shared the same blood through our veins, but because we promised to take care of the skies as if they were all we had. The clouds were our home, and the stars were our best friends; how could we allow them to take that away from us? How could someone rip our dreams from our flesh? They wanted us dead. They wanted an eternal sunset.

We spent our days running away from scary dinner parties and surnames; we used to aim at the sky, and gosh, we swore we could fly! We did! We were fairies, after all. And we couldn't let the perpetual sunset come to fruition, could we? Give up on our dreams? Promises written in magical pens are not supposed to be broken. So when the sunset bled through our blues, we couldn't let it burn, we couldn't let them win! We fought every day for years against them. Just so we could be fairies again, just so we could be girls together—because we swore we could fly! And the waves used to bring us messages from "Dreamland," our own planet where we met in every dream of ours—fairies need to sleep too, myths have dreams too. And the waves brought us back to Earth every morning; how do you think mermaids come and go? Through the portal of the waves! Just like the moon, the clouds, the stars, and the fairies, of course!

Hope is born where girls close their eyes tight to forget about their families yelling in the living room. And we were more than girls—we were more than fairies, even! Every day, we got to be knights fighting against the sunset spell, the never-ending days, and our fathers' eyes that turned red from anger. We swore he could spit fire. We swore to have witnessed that before. Because we did! And monsters are real, and we tried to hex the sunset because it bled through us, and it wanted to close the gates to Paradise—gosh, we cannot let them take that away from us! So we fought against the simmering set of eyes just so we could tiptoe through the stars and draw wishes between our new constellations. Because we made a promise that we were not only sisters—we were fairies, pirates, myths, daughters, wolves, mermaids—we were girls together, running away from houses that felt too big, men that spat fire, and evil pairs of eyes telling us that we could never be fairies. But we were, and the wind spoke to us.