The Adventures of Ruby

Chapter 1
The Dream

“My name is Ruby Wish.” A young girl with purple-y colored hair and red eyes spoke aloud as she wrote her essay for her fifth grade English class. “I am eleven years old. I was born on January 8th, my birthday just passed.” She paused and sighed; she had written the easy part… now she had to write about ‘her dreams for the future’. “This is really hard… I don’t know anything about the future…” She sighed again and began mindlessly chewing on her pencil.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have any idea of what she wanted to do in the future, but she was past the age of dreaming about things like that. If she wrote her true wishes down… everyone in class would laugh at her. “I can’t write that I want to have magical powers…”

In the end she decided to go with some generic future, since she knew magic didn’t really exist. “In the future I hope to be either a teacher or a doctor. I would want to teach gym class or find the cure to a disease. I picked this because I really like gym and if I cured a disease, people would always remember me. I will work hard in school to become a teacher or a doctor.” She finished reading it aloud to check for mistakes. A few eraser marks later (disease is a hard word to spell, after all) and she was done. To Ruby, being a teacher sounded dull, but she really did like gym class. Especially gymnastics and swimming.

“Ruby!” Ruby’s mom called up the steps, “Turn out the light, its late!” It wasn’t that late, but according to her mom, 9 PM was a suitable bed time.

“Alright Mom, alright! I was just finishing my English homework!” She stuffed her notebook back in her backpack and flicked the light off. A minute later and she was snuggled up in her sheets with a giant stuffed bunny rabbit.

That night, Ruby had a dream about magic and a strange world. She dreamt of a beautiful girl about her age with snow white hair that fell below her waist and glowing wings. She dreamt of a weird, white dog-fox that was reading a book. She dreamt of herself, only she had pointed ears and carried a big scythe with her. She dreamt of a playful mermaid who had blue hair and a shimmering pink, scaled lower body. She dreamt of a guy, several years older than her who carried a sword and wore a cape. Just before she woke up, she dreamt of a princess. A lonely princess with long red hair and golden eyes. The last imagine she dreamt of was of a wicked looking woman with blue-purple hair and all white clothes.

Ruby woke with a sharp breath when her alarm clock went off. She barely remembered her dream, only little flashes that seemed to make no sense at all. She tried to focus on it and remember the pieces that she couldn’t, but by the time she went down for breakfast, almost all of it had faded from her mind.

If she had only paid more attention and noticed the little white fox with large, floppy ears which seemed to be following her…

Chapter 2
A History

“Good morning class!” Miss Golden, Ruby’s teacher, clapped her hands together brightly. “I hope everyone did their homework last night? Well, let’s take attendance first.” And with that, she started down the list of the names of the students - all 25 of them. Ruby, as always, found herself at the bottom. Having a “W” last name only ever came in handy when they had to present assignments in front of the class and she got to go last.

“Ruby? Did you have a bad dream last night? You look sleepy.” April Showers, Ruby’s best friend, asked from the desk beside her. It had worked out perfectly that April was the last person in the third row and Ruby was the last person in the fourth row so they could talk.

April had very long white-blue hair that she always kept in two braids down either side of her body. Her braids were tied with little bows just around her hips. Her eyes matched her hair and were also a light blue shade. She was mostly a quiet girl who shared Ruby’s wish for a more magical world.

“I don’t remember, I think so. It was scary but it looked kind of good… it was all about magic.” A few blurry images lingered on the very edge of her memory, but she couldn’t bring them to the front of her mind to actually focus on them. “I’ll tell you what I can remember--”

“Ruby, April! Do you have something you want to share with the class?” Miss Golden snapped from the front of the class where she was trying to start her review on prime numbers.

“No, Miss Golden…” The two girls chimed in together and turned their attention to the board. ‘I hate math’, Ruby pouted as she tried to keep up on her worksheet. ‘I wish I could remember that dream, I liked that world so much better than this boring one.’

Ruby… Something sort of like a static shock rushed through Ruby’s body and for a moment she felt the presence of another being. She jerked her head up and looked around the class room, eyes wide.

April glanced at her friend and whispered, “What’s wrong?” Eyebrows pinched together in confusion and thought, Ruby shook her head and tried to clear her mind. ‘I know I heard something just now. Someone called my name…’

Distracted, she missed the rest of the lesson and only managed to tune back in when the teacher announced there would be a quiz tomorrow on it. Feeling deflated, Ruby tried to pay more attention to her history lesson. She was following along in the book when it happened. It looked like one of the pictures changed, but when she blinked, it was back to normal.

She stared at the pages again and before her eyes, the words and pictures changed again. An image of a proud, royal looking woman adorned the top right of the page. Several landscape shots appeared as well. It looked like a time before now, a past filled with overreaching forests, castles, and mysterious ruins. Her feelings were somewhere between terror and absolute absorption. No one else seemed to have noticed the pages in the book, was it really only hers that had changed?

Determined to read the words before they disappeared, Ruby locked her red eyes on the page and began reading.

The land of Eternia was once a prosperous nation. The Queen was a beautiful and kind ruler who loved her people and the land. She, in turn, was loved by them. The people wrote tales of her greatness and the land bestowed upon her seven magical fairies. Oceana the Water Fairy, Fauna the Earth Fairy, Inferna the Fire Fairy, Aerina the Wind Fairy, Lumina the Day Fairy and lastly, Nocturna the Night Fairy.

Lumina and Nocturna were considered to be powerful even amongst the fairies. Lumina was represented by the Sun and ruled over the day all the good magic. Nocturna’s symbol was the Moon and she ruled over the night and all the dark magic in the land. Together they kept the powers balanced and the world remained in harmony. With the fairies by her side, the Queen led Eternia into it’s greatest period.

The first sign of disaster came when the Unicorns began to disappear. Fauna was the first to notice their absence as the chain of life had been disrupted. Each creature was vital to the smooth existence of the world. Removing any life form would begin to destroy the balance. If enough disappeared, the stability of the world would crumble. Concerned, the Queen sent out many sorcerers to search for the missing Unicorns. They returned without having found any clues.

The Queen suspected someone may have gathered the Unicorns for their powerful magical properties. She feared the reason as to why someone would want to collect that power, however, and began stationing magicians at every entrance to her Kingdom.

The disappearance of the Unicorns was especially devastating for Fauna, for they were the creature closest to her element, the Earth. Each element had a mythical beast that represented it, except for Lumina and Nocturna. Water was represented by the Mermaids and Mermen - a beautiful, peaceful species who dwelled in the lakes and oceans. For Fire it was the proud and powerful Phoenix. And Wind, which ruled over the skies, had the Dragon as it’s beast.

Following the disappearance of the Unicorns, Nocturna began to sense an increase in dark magic. She felt drawn to the intense strength of the spells. Inferna was next to find a disturbance: the Phoenix population had all but disappeared from the world. Without the Unicorns and Phoenix, Fauna and Inferna began to grow weaker and the fairies feared they would disappear all together.

The dark magic continued to increase, forcing the world into disarray. For Nocturna it became impossible to ignore the draw of the magic she ruled over. One morning the fairies found that Nocturna had abandoned them and they were unable to contain their fears and worries. Without all seven of them to keep the balance and with the disruptions in the Earth and Fire, sickness and disasters began to spread throughout Eternia.

Crops and plants began to wither and wild fires broke out, uncontrolled. On the first night of the third month since the disappearances of the Unicorn, the Queen called the fairies and her most skilled sorcerers and sorceresses to her. Using their combined strength, they sealed away the remaining elemental beasts so they could not be captured.

When the processes was over, only Lumina remained by the Queens side. The other fairies had disappeared and the magicians unfortunately had given all their energy into the spell and passed into the afterlife. A darkness had been spreading over Eternia, slowly inching the Kingdom into a never ending night. Lumina was forced to seal away even the Sun and she too disappeared, leaving the Queen alone.

It was then when the culprit appeared. Unlike the Queen, she was not alone. By her side was Nocturna, drawn to her dark magic. After an intense battle, the Queen was overcome. Without Lumina, who fueled the pure magic the Queen used, her power could not hold up.

A new rule and a constant night was established in Eternia. The new Queen treated the people cruelly but not all had lost hope. Sanguine, a young prophet, had a dream many years later that she believed to be foretelling and she spread the words of her vision to all who would listen. She spoke of a girl who would come to save them. She said that the fairies had not died but had sent themselves into other bodies to protect themselves from the new Queens evil desires. She said the Sun would shine again on Eternia and to have faith in the girl who would come.

By the time she had finished the tale, Ruby’s eyes were shining over with tears. The story felt so personal to her, like she could feel the pain and disruption of Eternia and the fairies. She wanted to believe in this world and the girl who would save them. She wanted to help Eternia and see the story have a happy ending.