Waiting for my Happily Ever After

"Fairytales are real, and they walk among us.

"I should know, I’m one of them. Beauty, mistress of the hundred year nap, the 50 foot ponytail, and the glass slipper two-step, at your service. Chances are, you’ve seen me slinging lattes at the Tale’s End Café, a favorite safe house for us fairy folk since the invention of the camera; since we became inspiration in a can, to be bartered and traded by authors on the black market.

"There should be more to it than that, but it turns out my ever after is only happy enough. I don’t get out much, my job’s only perk is all the free coffee in the world, and the charm has rubbed off my handsome and dashing prince. But I have a plan to turn things around. Tonight is our anniversary, me and the prince. Tonight, we have a date that’s gonna rekindle the old flame. Tonight is going to be page 1 of our new life."

200 years ago, the invention of the camera allowed fairy folk to be trapped, packaged, and sold as bottled creativity. Folk quickly abandoned their magic castles and secret lairs for cities, hoping to blend into the mass of humanity without losing who they are, what makes them special.

Today, relations between mortals and Folk have settled into a delicate detente of hide and seek, catch as catch can. Authors grow fat from Folk labor, and refuge becomes harder to find as technology nibbles at the edges of the world’s mystery. It is a status quo that will end with the disappearance of dreams, when the last Folk vanishes in a flash.

That is, until an accident between Beauty, an empty camera, and a too-pink hubcap margarita changes everything.