Astrid spent the next morning worrying about what to do with her new problem. She'd tried using the web to search for answers but her descriptions brought up weird digital images and nerdy world of war craft games. She thought about getting some books out from the library but decided against it when she recalled not returning the last ones she burrowed which meant she'd be facing a charge if she ever showed her face again.

She laid for a while, wondering if she truly was insane, but elaborately, so in fact that she'd hallucinated a entire species.

In the end she decided to ask her mum about it.

Down in the kitchen she hovered in the doorway, looking for the best way to breech the subject. Best to just go for it.

"Mum what would you say or think if I told you...about people that look, I don't know, strange?"

"How so?" Her mum asked warily. Her facial expression told Astrid she didn't want to beat around the bush. Astrid didn't know how to reply without sounding crazy, so she went all out with the truth.

"Like moving vines and thorns on their bodies and strange marks on their skin and-"

"I think you've been reading too much of nanas journals darling" Her mum interrupted, a relieved and amused smile upon her face. Clearly she had been worried for a moment. She still should be Astrid thought.

"You mustn't get carried away with her stories Astra, they can scare a girl. They're not very nice" her mum added her tone growing sterner. Astrid noticed a brief haunted look pass over her mothers features as she stared at the dark murky water in the sink. "That's the only thing that surprised me about your nana, writing those awful books."

She snapped out of her trance and continued to wash up, leaving Astrid with racing thoughts. Astrid hadn't held much hope of her mum knowing what was going on but she had to try just incase and now she had hope that her nana might have had an idea instead.

Trying her best to leave without causing suspicion, Astrid quietly took on the stairs before sneaking into her nanas room. She had passed away recently, and her room hadn't really changed at all. It wasn't a shrine or anything, though her and her mum had both been devastated by nanas death, the car crash had sort of forced them to stop grieving and the room hadn't been touched since.

Astrid took a moment to sit on the bed and breathe in the familiar smells. Lavender, pine and something spicy. It had been just the three of them for so long, girls together without any men to dictate their lives. The box bedroom made her feel a little more at ease, like her nana wasn't really gone at all.

Her nana was a hoarder and had things from all over the world stacked along shelves and piled on boxes and small tables. Astrid smiled up at the star charts pinned to the ceiling, alongside various other space posters. It was only now that she could fully appreciate how weird and wonderful the old lady had truly been.

Scanning an overflowing bookcase and thumbing through a few of the old books Astrid eventually pulled out one of the journals. They were craftily encased in ordinary book covers which struck Astrid as odd. Why would she be hiding them?

Opening it up she flicked through the thick, well loved pages uncertain what she was searching for until she saw it. With a frown she returned a page that caught her eye. Accompanying her nana's scrawled writing was a worryingly familiar drawing. One that closely resembled the girls she had seen outside the café toilets. Her heart beat quickened at the unexpected discovery.

Brushing a finger over the drawing, Astrid felt an unsettling sickness pass over her. She fumbled through the bookcase to find the other journals before retreating to her own room.

After a few minutes of quick reading Astrid felt like she'd fallen into an old fashion Grimm fairy-tale. Her nana had truly written some horrific things but that wasn't what had her terrified. What made Astrid feel sick to the stomach was one paragraph in particular right at the end of a journal titled 'the sight', the last entry her nana ever made into that particular book.

"After I fell down the stairs and hit my head I started to see strange things. At first I thought I was crazy but after years of searching I have discovered that I have what is dubbed 'the sight' an ability to see things where others cannot.

I have seen terrible things since my eyes were opened, and any I have met who understand my suffering have assured me that it is a curse like no other. So far they have left me alone, as much as they leave anyone else alone but lately I have seen the same Faery too often to be consequence.

He is strong, and as evil as they come. I fear for my life and Andrea's but most of all I fear for Astrid and the way he looks at her so hungrily. She's so fragile it makes me sick to see her unsafe. Andrea won't home school her, she won't listen to me, she doesn't understand. I must protect them both from the dangers they cannot see."

Astrid stared at the paragraph for a while, dazed by how it made her feel. The mention of the word Faery had thrown her. Was that what she was seeing now? Faeries? The idea alone was ludicrous. Faeries were at the peak of make believe creatures, they were supposed to be small and cute, with little wings and golden dust! The creatures she had seen were things of nightmares.

The only thing preventing her from laughing the entire idea off was the fact her nana had hit her head before she gained the ability to see these things. After all Astrid had just suffered a car accident, the two incidents correlated with the weird sights she was suddenly experiencing.

Her immediate thought was that she and her nana shared some kind of psychological trauma. Perhaps they had a rare condition that became apparent after a knock to the head? She read the paragraph again and again.

She couldn't think of a creature she'd seen more than once, sometimes it was difficult to even tell the difference between male and female. They were all so strange and otherworldly. In the back of her mind she thought back to the girls outside the toilets and what they had said. When she returned to their drawing, they were labeled as Dark Fae but that was all the information she could see related to them.

She spent the rest of the day in her room reading through the journals, looking for answers. Her nana had written about so much, some things Astrid had already experienced, such as the strange appearance of the so called Fae and the way they touched and played with people. There were many things Astrid didn't understand though and something's she hoped she would never encounter.

The more she learnt, the more she felt a fear creeping upon her. The new information fanned the flames of terror she first felt in the hospital. The written accounts, seeing her nana's memories and imagining how much of a struggle life had been for her in secret also broke her heart.

Astrid remembered her nana as a strict but loving woman with a passion for food and affection. She had been a beautiful person, but now Astrid couldn't help feel that behind every smile, her nana had been fragile and frightened. She wished that her accident had happened sooner, only so she could have shared the burden with her and maybe then it wouldn't have seemed so bad.

When reading became unbearable she kept one journal out and hid the rest in the bottom of a wooden trunk at the base of her bed. The one she kept, held warnings and basic knowledge that Astrid would now need to survive. It was almost as if her nana had feared that one day either her or her mum would suffer from the sight and had written a guide of sorts. Even through this terrible experience she was always thinking of her family.

Astrid wished she could believe that this was all a psychological blip, that it would go away with medical help but somehow she knew deep down that wasn't going to happen.

After plenty of reading, Astrid ate dinner and then put herself to bed. Ever since she'd woken up in hospital she had been constantly exhausted. Her body always ached, still recovering from being thrown around like a doll.

She sunk into her mattress and pillow, pulling the duvet covers up to her chin. Her curtains were shut but the moonlight shone brightly through the material. They were most active at night. She could hear them outside, all the strange sounds they made circulating in the night air.

Occasionally a foreign scream would rupture the calm, a sound that made Astrid think back to certain passages in nana's journal about Faery torture. Luckily it all sounded distant, she did live around a great deal of iron and they didn't like that apparently.

Astrid snuggled deep into her covers and squeezed her eyes shut against their cavorting. The world had suddenly become a secret again, a place full of magic and darkness around every corner. She was alone in this new world and thanks to her nana's written advice she knew that things were only going to get harder. At least here in her bed, she could pretend that she was safe for the moment.

Astrid opened her eyes to see her hands fastened tight around a steering wheel. Her headlights outlined a figure that hadn't been there seconds before. In a moment as brief as a heartbeat she was suspended in mid air, her knuckles white from how tightly she squeezed the steering wheel, her seat belt biting into her neck and shoulder holding her back from the window screen. She had enough time to register in the back of her mind that her car had flipped over, but then everything sped up. Her head hit the drivers side window, the car smashed to a halt on its roof and darkness engulfed her vision.

Astrid opened her eyes with a start. Her heartbeat was treble the speed it should be, and sweat soaked the front and back of her nightdress. She sucked in a long, shaky breath and sat up. It took a second to convince herself that she was in her room, and the only thing restricting her body was bed covers and not meshed up car metal. It was normal to have nightmares about her ordeal, Astrid knew that, had been told it too but she was never ready for them. The smell of blood and smoking tires, the heat of a fire and the pain. Even after she woke, the dream still clung to her, leaving her terrorized upon the fringes of reality. Astrid had experienced her fair share of realistic nightmares, but this one had real-life memories to refer to and they were brutal.

Ignoring the watch on her wrist that told her it was only 4:00am, Astrid got up and dressed in a uniform she hadn't touched for weeks. Now she was awake there was no point lying in bed dreading the day ahead. It was finally time to go back to school and face the music (and the Faeries.)