Yesteryear Fiction

Beyond Reality
By Amanda Firefox


“You have no idea how shallow you are!” She screamed as she hurled the can at him, bristled as he caught it and set it lightly on the counter. To her soft, fae-elven eyes, the world was a seething mass of swirling neon energies, but to him. . . he was human; he saw none of it, felt none of the exquisite washes of light, the touches of emotion imprinted and hanging in the air, some so thick that they made her iridescent spirit-wings quiver. Being fully human, he stood like an anchor in the midst of the wild, disturbed light, as cold and material as the flat, mechanical reality he perceived. Sputtering, hands clenching, she fled, left him in the stew of ether he couldn’t see, the mass of energy and emotion she could no longer stand.

“Fae!” He called after her, but she didn’t stop, just closed her eyes and shook her head as she pushed on. Distantly, she heard the clatter of something falling in the hall behind her, something breaking on hard floor-- his voice again. “Fae, wait!”

But she didn’t wait, couldn’t. As she pushed herself through the thickening wash of ethers, she felt the rushing sigh of the flat world he called reality gathering around her, a filmy skin on the surface of everything that lay beneath, something tangible, something that sought to hold her back. All is energy, she told herself. All is energy, and energy cannot bind me.

Somewhere in the haze of misty, particulate reality, she caught the distant, faded edge of his voice again but felt no remorse, pushed past the barrier of his reality and into an ocean of light that pulsed beyond, alive but serene, a place of mind and spirit where the only rules that bound her were the ones she chose to accept.

In the womb-like pocket of soul that hung somewhere beyond reality, she curled into herself and became a tiny spot of dust in the light, made herself small as she shed tiny, etheric tears for him, for the man who could not follow her there.


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Amanda Firefox is a fiery little brunette who spends as much time at the beach as she can manage. She doesn't write much, but when she writes, it's almost always about her favorite subject: boys.