Taken from Sanity ~ Love Chemistry

The lady with the candle-light dress took my hand and smiled. "I would love this dance."

First time a girl had said yes.

I felt fancy wearing this suit - I had found it the room I woke up in - but she remarked on how plain it was. Compared to her shimmering, yellow, no - orange, no - red dress that reminded me every bit of a flame, I supposed it was.

"You know, we live for extravagance. And you're one of us now. You live for extravagance, too." She noticed my pointed glance at her dress. "You like it?"

She twirled out of my arms and back in, keeping in perfect time with the music as we glided across the marble floor. "How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Since yesterday, I think."

"Wow. You were just Taken, then. What from? Was it happy? Or is that a painful question?"

"Far from it."

"...You're never goin' ta amount ta nuffin. Ya ain't no son a mine, walkin' 'round like tat, not carin' bout your poor old pa who done nuffin but take care'ya since the day ya were born. Out wif ya and ya ain't comin' back, ya hear?" screamed Pa, like every day. He never meant it. But that didn't take the sting off his words. Often I wished I could just escape to somewhere, town, another country, France, even. But I had no money - any I earned was taken from me. So I walked down towards Tipper's Creek, my hiding spot. Nothing, no one could find me there.

"Sorry, what was that?" asked the candle-dress lady. "I didn't hear."

"Wha...?"

But that day, when I arrived, something else did too.

Call me loony, but they were faeries.

Little people that sang and danced around, whipping my hair into incredible shapes and disappearing into the fog, only to reappear seconds later. They whispered.

"Come with us... come with us... escape..."

Escape.

"Yes... escape... come with us..."

And so I did.

I woke up in a stone room, on a bed made of glass. Confused, I sat up, seeing nothing else but an incredibly tiny door and a posh suit stretched across the foot of the bed. With nothing else to do, I put the suit on.

Without getting any smaller, and without the door getting any bigger, I opened it and slipped through... into this. A party in a hall with giant, vaulted ceilings and any number of beautiful people sashaying across the gilded floor, the music floating from an orchestra on a dais. The kind of thing I'd only ever dreamed of.

"Did I do that? Oops!" laughed my dancing-partner, interrupting my internal memoir with a splash of water. "Welcome back, Dreamer! Well, we have a name for you at last. Would you like to know mine? It's Flair! How fitting, yes? Do you have a Sponsor yet?" she babbled, leaving me entirely confused. Dreamer? Was that my name?

Of course! How could I forget my own name?

"Sponsor?" I questioned, not knowing what that was.

"Of course! I'd offer to be yours, but then we couldn't dance like this any longer. We'd be considered related," she whispered, as if revealing a dark secret. "You want to dance, don't you, Dreamer?"

"Flair, share the good dancers every now and then!" giggled another lady who didn't walk - she bubbled. "Pleasure... my name's Pleasure. What's yours?"

"Dreamer," supplied Flair, unfazed by this new and rather overwhelming piece of work. Pleasure was wearing a translucent blue and white - or was it green and black - dress that changed shape whenever she moved.

"Oh, please, Dreamer, may I have this dance? It's so rare we get new ones Taken around here."

"What?" I asked, befuddled.

"He's so cute!" squealed Pleasure. "Does he have a Sponsor?" she inquired of Flair.

"Not yet... do you know anyone?"

"Oh of course, of course, but let's not worry about details now. It's introduction time!" Pleasure winked at Flair.

And so began a whirlwind of a ball that led me through well over fifty partners, each one worlds apart from the prior, but still so much alike. And after I had met every lady in the room - there were no men - I found myself back in Flair's hands, utterly confused.

"...Flair? The music's stopped..." For some reason, this scared me.

"Yes, yes, the ball is over, silly!" she chided. "Now come with me, we'll get you fixed up and find you a place to stay 'till someone agrees to Sponsor you..."

She said something more, but I wasn't listening. My head was a whirlwind of thoughts. Since I had arrived, I'd been confused. Now pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place.

I had been Taken, whatever that meant, from the mortal realm into Faerie. I assumed by these people. In my world, they were small, and here, they were human - sized. At least that kind of made sense, according to the legends that wove complicated tapestries of magic in the mortal world. There'd been stories galore about children strayed too far into the woods and kidnapped by faeries to come and live in the Faerie world. Something was bad about that... I couldn't quite remember...

Something was dulling my senses. Shouldn't I be at least awestruck at the fact that I wasn't on Earth any more? Shouldn't I be cautious, or excited? But I felt as if nothing was out of the ordinary - surely everyone sleeps in glass beds, right?

But I had no more time to think. Flair had led me to another glass bed and I collapsed upon it like a fish returning to water after a year away. In a heartbeat, I was asleep.

...

I don't know how much time passed, but I awoke on that same bed, feeling happy and at home. No more screaming of Pa, no more scolding from Ma, and best of all, no more disdainful looks from all the other boys my age.

Again, there was a door too small to fit through on the far wall of the stone room. I put on the clothes laid across the end of my bed, and crawled out.

I found myself in a long hallway flanked by many doors, made of stone in the same manner mine was. I walked down the long corridor and scanned each of the glass nameplates hung upon them. Flair, Pleasure, Wonder, Virtue, Creativity, Benevolence, Mischieve, June... tons of others, as well, but each relating to or being a quality or state of mind. Peace, Joy, Fear, Furie, July... I had met all these people at the ball last night... or was it two nights ago? I couldn't remember. Something was keeping me from thinking.

As I reached the end - with a door marked Terror, I slowly turned around, and seeing no way out, I walked back to my end of the hall. As I approached my door, now marked Dreamer, I saw Flair waiting outside.

"Dreamer! You're awake! So you've seen the Corridor, have you? Silly Dreamer. You’re not supposed to wake before us," she chided. Was there a slightly condescending tone in her voice? As if she was talking to a toddler?

No, no, of course not. This is Flair. She helped me. She said "Yes!" when I asked her to dance.

"I... I..." I mumbled, not sure of what to say.

"Oh, you're so cute I can hardly stand it! Now let me see what clothes Pleasure picked for you. Come here for a second, Dreamer."

"Oh..kay?"

"Great, great great. Perfect. Let's do this, then," she told me, nodding. What? What did she do? I was so confused. Nothing had happened. She didn't even do anything but tap my shoulder and look at me.

"Give it a moment, give it a moment..." she told me.

Something happened.

I couldn’t describe the feeling, it was so bizarre. Like turning into a cherry soda, and back again in an instant. In a moment, I was normal again. But something had changed.

Before I had time to think, Pleasure giggled down the hall, arm-in-arm with another woman. The woman she was babbling to shocked me for a second. She was normal. Not at all did she seem affected by this insane world she was in. Walking down the stone Corridor as if she was in church.

“Dreamer, I’d like you to meet Terror,” said Pleasure.

Terror? Normality isn’t… terror. Is it? Is that why I escaped? Why can’t I think?

“Hello, Terror,” I ventured, unsure.

“Dreamer,” she said curtly. “I’m your Sponsor.”

Pleasure gasped. “Flair! Have you been messing with Dreamer’s outfit?”

Flair said something to the effect of no, of course not, but I was consumed in the soda-feeling again. I didn’t hear her. Terror laughed.

Pleasure was getting out of hand, I thought, but maybe such arguments were regular here. I didn’t know anything.

“Dreamer. Come with me. These two will go at it forever.” Terror started down the hallway, then turned when she realized I wasn’t following.

“But…?” I felt obliged to stay. I didn’t know why.

“Come on!”

I went.

She pointed out the names of the people on the wall, clarifying the behavior of those whose names didn’t tell it all. June, apparently, was constantly happy. July was slightly insane. Mischieve was constantly trying to infuriate Furie, which wasn’t difficult. And Creativity and Virtue worked as a team to bore them all to death.

I laughed at the last one, and Terror looked at me strangely.

“Good,” she said. “They haven’t gotten to all of you yet.” She refused to explain herself.

…