Time to do Something

There is no such thing as magic. By extension, no magical creature could be real either. Logically, I knew that. I kept thinking those very words, over and over. Yet, somewhere deep down in my mind, I hesitated.

This hesitation did however not turn into anything more. For some, it may have eventually become a will to act, or at least to find out the truth. But that was not me.

I spent my days reading. Working. Reading. Maybe writing a few words every now and then, but never all of it. Never everything that popped into my mind. After nearly a week of nothing out of the ordinary happening, I discarded the notion of a "curse" entirely.

For, you see, I had been cursed. If nothing else, I had certainly been told so. The curse supposedly required me to write, to at least note down a couple of words about every idea that entered my mind. Disbelief would not have seemed strange to most people in such a situation, especially considering how the “fairy” that told me this looked like nothing more than an ordinary girl.

All of this was merely what she had told me. I figured that it must have been a prank. But why, why would someone have gone out of their way to prank someone such as me? A regular nobody, who never did a thing worth mentioning.

This was another normal day. I had woken up. Eaten. Gone to work. Was now on my way home. All of it boring and entirely normal. Definitely not worthy of being cursed, I thought, as I passed the area where I first had met the “fairy”. The newly fallen snow was the one thing that was different from back then.

I had done the very same thing six days in a row after meeting her. Not a single part of my routine had changed. And just as expected, nothing had happened, just like the rest of my life before the encounter. I expected the same thing this time.

A small voice at the back of my head expressed some small semblance of worry, but I disregarded it. Not out of scepticism, but out of laziness. I still kept reassuring myself mentally every day I walked past. I ignored those reassurances too. Still, they were persistent.

“What about that idea you had yesterday?” ,They told me. “The one before it? The one after? The hundreds of others you have had the last week alone?”. “The dark romance? The realistic fantasy? The one about the crazy girl? The one where the hero becomes the dark lord?”

I disregarded all of these nagging thoughts too. They couldn’t be real. I kept going. Rounded the corner. There, I found her.

A girl. Huddling in the snow, wearing an oversized coat. Red hair. She looked up at me, her eyes seeming weak. What I had been thinking at the start of the week came back to me. The words I could have written down, but didn’t.

“A girl. Her eyes, meek as if seeking salvation. Left alone out in the cold, with nothing but a coat much too big to warm her. Leaving her was never an option.”

I realised what this meant for me. It was all starting to come true. First, a meeting. Then, struggle. Fighting. Hardships. But also love, and a turn to evil, at least from the perspective of others. A big battle, and then an end where only the misunderstood villain and her beloved remains.

The thought was terrifying, but also exciting. Something to end my endless life of nothingness, to finally push away my constant lethargy. I knew what lay ahead. Yet, I still took the girl’s hand and helped her up.

Together, we walked away, our story only just beginning.