Mel and Chris

Things had been very bleak for the faeries until one smart faerie, who happens to be your grandmother, lied. Grandma Sara (the humans refused to let the faeries keep their real names because some of them were outside of the human vocal range. Nor did they have letters to spell the faerie names.) told the humans that the new baby faeries were unable to do magic because their parents had been bound in iron."

"While this keeps the older faeries enslaved, it freed people like us," Mel’s Mom explained further. "So, in order to stay free, Mel you are under strict orders to do no magic. After all, the new generations of faeries are no different than humans."

Mel supposed he agreed in the ruse. The only real thing that separated him from humans, as far as humans were concerned was the fact that he looked different. He was green. The restriction on magic, of course, made Mel desperate to do even the smallest of tricks. He found his magic itched to be used at school.

Mel found school to be very boring. He had a photographic memory, and access to thousands of years of knowledge in his own mind. It was a very fair, as far as Mel was concerned, advantage that faeries lived forever. It was very unfair that they grew up slowly. Mel was 100 years old, after all. He looked 12, therefore the humans demanded he went to school. It drove Mel nuts. (Author’s note: although Mel was 100 he was really just like a 12 year old human, just don’t tell him that.)

To help pass the time at school, because Mel wasn’t allowed to even make time go faster, he stared out the window. Mel watched the cars drive up and down the street. It made him shiver just a little to watch all that metal drive around. He could do magic inside buildings. He "accidentally" found this out one day when he turned water into wine. Mel just didn’t like knowing that all that metal was the reason his grandparents were someone’s house pets. Mel made himself feel better by watching the unicorns and the griffons prancing and flying. It made him feel a little better to know that some of the creatures were free. Sometimes Mel wished he could turn himself into an animal and run away from all the humans. He couldn’t, after all, that would be magic and Mel "couldn’t" do magic. Besides, Mom would be REALLY mad at that.

Mel tried to keep apart from the other kids. Human’s were very accepting of the fact that they’d made the faeries slaves. Apparently human rights only extended to humans, and now non-magical faeries. Some of the kids teased him because most of his family members were still slaves. Some of them were very understanding and thought that faeries were just people too. Some of them didn’t care either way and picked on Mel because he was skinny and quiet. Mel hated them sometimes. 200 years seemed like nothing when Mel considered how long black people had been slaves. But he didn’t really think that a human president was going to decide his family deserved rights. After all, would you set free someone who had been around when the whole thing started? And probably held a grudge? And could probably turn you in to an animal? And just might be mean enough to turn you inside out?

"Hey, Mel," whispered Christian, the human boy that sat next to him.

"What do you want Chris?" he whispered back. Mel didn’t know why Chris tired to talk to him all the time.