Excerpt: Another Name

In his hands he held my journal, plucked from the fingers of the little fairy burglars. He traced the lily on the cover with his finger as though there was nothing in the world unusual about being stared at by a gasping, sweaty teenager while holding her journal after rescuing it from a pair of fairy hoodlums. He simply exuded casual confidence like no one I had ever seen before. Idly he flipped through a few pages as I tried to catch my breath, my legs and lungs aching from exercise that I was unused to. A moment passed, then he tossed my journal to me. Too worn out to catch it, I allowed it to fall to the ground, kneeling slowly to pick it up.