A Long and Rambling Author's Note:
New year, new story. My next big project that's been knocking around in my brain-filled-mind for a while. And now I am finally putting fingers to keyboard. From the current outlook, this story will be a fantasy epic adventure, filled with the characters we all love (and those love to hate). But as those of you who have read my other stories (and especially as my beta knows), stories tend to get away from me, evolving into things I never anticipated. I'll have you know, "All My Friends Are Heathens" (my previous big project) did not end up where I had thought it would when first plotting it out. But, nonetheless, I am oh so happy with the end result there and I'm hoping it will be the same deal here.
Anyway, welcome all. And I hope you enjoy.

A blonde man rushed through the trees. Roots and brambles jumped out as he ran, reaching forward as if purposefully trying to trip him. His hand clutched that of his four-year-old daughter; he tried to keep them both on their feet and moving forward, but time was of the essence and he wasn't sure they were going to make it. Darkness filled the air as thunder rolled through the sky ominously.

"We're moving too slow," he muttered and swung his daughter into his arms. The gateway couldn't be too far from them now. They just had to get there and pass through it. They'd be safe then…he hoped.

"Where are we going, Daddy?" the small child asked, confused and frightened. "Where's Mama?" It wasn't the first time she had asked, but he didn't know how to answer. How to tell her that her mother was involved in a plot to kill him and steal the throne. A plot that called for the blood sacrifice of everyone of the royal bloodline, namely her husband and their only daughter.

He couldn't. So instead, he hurried along with hushed reassurances, giving her a squeeze and hoping it lent even an ounce of comfort.

Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the clearing before him. "Finally," he said, hurrying forward, a heavy weight lifting off his chest. The contingency plan was in place, had been for centuries. He was just the first ruler, possibly in all of written history, to use it.

The veil was nothing more than a glimmer of light to the unknowing eye. If he hadn't been taught, or if he missed the few inconspicuous markers of stones and the mushroom circle, he wouldn't have seen it. He barreled forward with only but a moment's hesitation. There was a chance this wouldn't work, or a chance he was making the wrong choice in running. He looked down to the bright blue eyes of his daughter. One look at her innocence and he knew he had to protect her. This was their best and only option.

Barely catching himself from a fall as he crossed through, he stood up on the other side of the veil. Here, the sun was peeking brightly through the trees above, not a raincloud in sight. He heaved a sigh of relief. They were safe. He allowed himself to smile down at his daughter whose fear had, at least briefly, given way to wonder at the new world they were standing in.

"You're not allowed in this realm without—oh, Your Highness, I beg your pardon." A dark-haired woman whom he had initially missed, quickly dropped into a deep curtsey upon recognizing him. Behind her, a girl who liked to be around the same age as his daughter stared wide-eyed at the people whom had appeared out of thin air.

He took a breath and gestured for the woman to stand. He let out a jagged breath, the full weight of his decision coming to rest. "No more titles. I am only Jake in this world."

The woman looked up in concern, brow furrowed with questions.

"Arcadia has fallen," he told her grievously. "A dark power has taken hold of the land…I found out too late. The only thing I could do was flee. Flee and attempt to save my daughter's life."

*Twenty Years Later*

Clarke sat on her bed, her laptop open in front of her, but she wasn't typing. Instead she watched out the window, listening to the rain patter down. It had been like this all night, and while some people disliked storms, or even feared them, Clarke loved every minute of every type of rain, but especially storms like the one that was brewing in the distance. There was something comforting in the pitter-pat of raindrops, the roaring of the sky, the brilliant flashes that turned night into day if only for a second.

She smiled contentedly as she looked out her window, musing on what she should put in her illustrator bio for the latest book in the Maxwell series. In the previous ones she had simply been a name on the cover pages, but the author and publisher wanted a little more given the contract they had just signed that named her the illustrator the rest of the series.

Glancing at the computer she half-read, half-recited from memory what it said: "Clarke Griffin lives in the same house she grew up in the northwoods of Wisconsin. When she's not drawing Maxwell and his Might Knights, she's wandering the woods looking for inspiration, sitting at the local diner eating the best pancakes known to exist (in her opinion at least), or tending to her extensive garden."

It summed up her mundane life in a two sentences. And it wasn't as though she didn't thoroughly enjoy living in this house or this town, it just seemed somewhat stagnant. She sighed a looked out the window one more.

Then something subtly caught her attention. She strained her ears. There was a noise, something just out of reach hidden amongst the sound of the rain. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was there. She tried to listen closer, cocking her head slightly, but the elusive noise slipped further away. It was a continuous noise, a little nuanced, a little musical, some give and some take, like a quiet conversation of tinkering voices whispering just on the edge of her hearing.

Her first thought brought a broader smile to her face: faeries or sprites or some other creature from the realm just beyond the veil. She had grown up both reading and listening to stories about faeries and fantasy stories, it was really no wonder that that's where her mind went. She shook her head, she was twenty-four years old, it was long past time to still be believing in faeries. But yet that small little part of her urged her not to give up on that belief; that she just had to listen a little harder and she would be able to understand what the sprites were saying.

She looked at the clock and stifled a sigh, 1:07 A.M. long past when she should have gone to bed. Marking her page, she closed the book in her lap and placed it on the bedside table before turning off the light and tucking herself under the covers. She fell asleep to the lulling sounds of the oncoming storm mixing with the quiet voices hidden in the rain.

The next morning, Clarke rolled out of bed and got ready to head to the diner that definitely lived up to the small town cliché. As she walked out her front door, she looked briefly toward the path that led into the trees. Her house backed onto the forest preserve, and she had grown up wandering among the trees and down the trails.

She only had faint memories of her home before this one, when she lived with her mother. All she recalled was a huge house full of nooks and crannies, and lots of yard in which to play. Her father had always gone a little quiet when she asked about the time before they moved to Bridgewater, so eventually she just stopped asking. As curious as she was about her mother and her life before age four, in the end, she wouldn't change how or where she grew up. Her dad was a wonderful father and Bridgewater a cozy community; she'd had a happy childhood.

Just as she turned to go down the sidewalk and into town, she saw an orb of light floating amongst the trees, beckoning her. It wasn't the first time she had seen a will-o'-the-wisps, and she highly doubted it would be the last. It recalled to mind the voices in the rain from the night before, but she shrugged both off. Little fantastical things like that were a fact of life for her.

When she was six, she'd come in from recess with a flower crown she found waiting in her favorite hiding spot on the playground. That wouldn't mean too much by itself; maybe a secret crush or some other mundane explanation. But her crown would always stay intact all day, not even wilting before bedtime.

When she was ten, she found a small sparrow that had fallen out of its nest before it had learned to fly. She and her father nursed it back to health. And to this day she swears she still sees that same sparrow flying by and landing on her window sill to sing her a special song.

When she was fourteen, she decided to be friends with the girl that everyone had decided to shun, simply because she wore more hand-me-downs from her older brother than new department store clothing. Once, a group of bullies were coming to give them a hard time when their leader tripped over the roots of a nearby tree and face-planted into a puddle of mud. The twittering laughter that accompanied the fall, seemed to come from the trees as much as the school children.

Then, when she was seventeen and her dad was killed in a car crash, there would be little things that were kind of like a pick-me-up, just for her. And maybe for her dad, too. Every flower in their garden bloomed, and stayed at full-bloom for a week. And the little calming rain that she and her dad so enjoyed, sprinkled down around her at his funeral.

She never really told anyone about the wisps or the voices, the flowers and the like, at least not anymore. When she was younger, teachers would applaud her for her "vivid imagination" whenever she brought it up. And the other kids tried to come up with their own faerie experiences, but Clarke never really saw any truth in anyone's claims but hers. Though Octavia was the one who mentioned the twinkling laughter in the trees, not Clarke, when they told the story of recess to Jake.

Clarke shook herself out of her thoughts as she entered the diner and slid into her favorite booth.

"The usual?" Gina greeted from behind the counter, barely even waiting for the affirmative before shouting the order to the cook.

Clarke smiled to herself and brought her tablet and stylus out of her bag and began to work on her latest illustration.

"What's new, chickadee?" Octavia plunked herself down on the other side of the table.

Clarke took a dramatic pause and pretended to give it some thought, before shaking her head with a smile. "Absolutely nothing. Just working on some ideas for the next Maxwell and his Might Knights book."

"You're so boring. This whole town is boring. Nothing ever happens here," she pouted.

"You can always leave, you know? I'd miss you, but you've been talking about how boring Bridgewater is since we were kids."

"I can't leave," Octavia looked bitter, but didn't offer up any further explanation.

"Because of your brother? I'm sure Bellamy would understand." She thought for a second. "Or he'd at least grow to understand."

"It's not just him. It's other things, too. I don't want to talk about it."

Clarke had known Octavia long enough that she knew she wouldn't get anything else out of her. Ever since high school, she complained about the small town living and feeling trapped, but she always said that she could never leave Bridgewater. No matter how Clarke tried to wheedle an answer out of her, Octavia was surprising closed mouth about her reasonings.

"So, what do you want to talk about? Who's your new flavor of the week?"

Octavia stuck her tongue out as a plate landed in front of Clarke. "She wants to get back to work," Gina interrupted teasingly.

Octavia laughed and got out of the booth, grabbing a tater tot off of Clarke's plate and popping it into her mouth. "Fine, fine. Duty calls, I guess," she told Clarke. "You sticking around till one? That's when my shift ends."

"I can do that," she replied with a smile before swatting the hand that was reaching for a second tater.

The next week that passed was typical. Waking up, going to the diner if Octavia had a shift and would want a booth she could collapse into whenever she had a short lull, working on sketches for Maxwell, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, the usual drill. The mundane drill.

Suddenly she needed a change of pace. Get out of her routine. A walk in the woods, that would help. Fresh air, stepping away from "civilization" for an hour or so. She'd come back with a new perspective for the next set of drawings.

Within five minutes she was in her walking shoes heading down the path behind her house and onto the trails. She took a deep breath, relishing the fresh air. Yup, this was exactly what she needed.

The gentle breeze lifted her hair, twirling it around her face and tickling her nose. As she sneezed, a twinkling laugh echoed through the wind and leaves. She turned her turned her head in the direction from which it seemed to come, but it evaporated as quickly as it came. As much as she had grown used to the quiet undertone of natural phenomena, the voices in the rain, the quiet laughter, the flowers, etc., she swore it had been happening more and more frequently as of late.

She shook her head and continued walking and taking in the smells of trees fresh after a rainfall. Then she heard it again, a small giggle that was followed by quiet voices, the twinkling echo of bells adding to its otherworldly feel. Furrowing her brow, she listened harder as the leaves began to rustle louder with a sudden strong breeze. Leaves parted and she saw, not one, but two wisps swirling around each other in a small dance. Clarke's lips parted in a small smile; she almost felt like she was intruding on something special; she had never seen two wisps at the same time.

They stopped for a second before seemingly stepping in her direction and then darting further away. Not thinking, she took a step toward them. They bobbed excitedly and moved a little further. She caught her foot right before she stepped off the trail. Every story she had ever read or saw (aside from Disney's Brave) told her that she shouldn't follow the will-o'-the-wisps, that they led unwitting people astray, getting them lost or killed.

A third light appeared ahead of the others. She looked around. What was the worst case scenario? She knew these woods like the back of her hand and had a good sense of direction. The chances of her getting lost in here were slim and there weren't any cliffs to lead her off or bogs to drown her in. And it was the twenty-first century, she had her cell if she needed to call for help.

Taking a risk, she stepped off the path and into the trees. There had to be a reason there were more wisps than she had ever seen before. The three orbs darted and danced together leading her further away from the main trail. She followed them, weaving her way between the trees and feeling the rough bark on her hands as she used the trees to help her along the difficult parts of the pristine terrain.

First one orb vanished, then a second, and finally the third. She picked up her pace to find the reason for the disappearances, when a voice startled her. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Princess." Clarke jumped, tripped over her own feet, and landed flat on her butt. She whipped her head to the side to find a man casually leaning against a tree several feet away. "You see that?" He gestured to the spot where she had been about to step, a near perfect ring of mushrooms. "That's a faerie ring. You step into that and you might never come back to this world."

Clarke rolled her eyes as she pushed off the ground to gain her feet. "You're an ass, Bellamy. When are you going to give up on that stupid childhood nickname?"

"I don't think I ever will, Princess," he emphasized. "The amount of times you and Octavia played faerie princesses and forced me to? Yeah, I'm not letting that go."

"Whatever. You enjoyed it, Sir Bellamy."

He didn't acknowledge the name, but pushed off the tree. "What are you doing off the path, anyway? I know you know the rules. And there are plenty of trail signs."

"Looking for inspiration for my sketches. And I followed a deer path," she lied. "It's not like I would have gotten lost in the woods."

"The marked trails aren't just for that," he told her and began prodding her to leave the small clearing they were in. "It's to protect the wildlife, too. Can't have people tromping through the trees, disturbing the animals and their habitats."

"Take only pictures, leave only footprints. Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. I wasn't disturbing anything. And you're off the designated trail, too."

He shook his head with a wry smile. "Except it's my job to maintain the preserve. And to keep people like you safe and on the trails. Now, head on home where you won't make my job harder than you already are."

She looked around and found herself back on a main trail. Apparently she hadn't gone too far off to begin with. "Fine, whatever you say, Ranger Rick," she retorted with a mock salute before heading back up the trail in the direction of her house.

"I'm watching you, Griffin," he warned.

"Don't you have better things to do?" she smirked over her shoulder. His laughter followed her around the bend in the trail as he vanished from sight.

She sighed and looked into the trees. "Sorry, wisps. Perhaps another day."

More Author's Notes:

My beta, TheAmazonian, found a song for this story when we were looking for music inspiration for the title: "Lights," by Ellie Goulding. Alas, none of the lyrics made for a good story title, so it's just here as a little note.
PS
I really hate coming up with titles. The title "The Will of the Wisps" was meant to just be a stand in, my own note to identify this story in my folder of stories, but a better title remained elusive at the moment, despite my and my beta's best attempts. Therefore, I will reserve the right to change the title, if some inspiration should strike.
Also, to make it not quite as boring of a title, in my mind "Will of the Wisp" refers not only to the fae entity itself, but also their will, their desire, to get Clarke to take that step through the veil.

As always, favorites, follows, and reviews are without fail appreciated. Seriously, they make my day.

And if you want, come find me on Tumblr, DracoTerrae9099. It's a bit of a hodge-podge blog, though still mostly The 100/Bellarke (I think), but it definitely follows Bellamy's early mantra of "whatever the hell I want."