Out Of Nowhere - Audio

Prologue:

Years passed before she told anyone what happened—years before there was someone in her life who might believe her.

At first, she didn't accept it herself. Instead, Maya Jade Maguire told herself she was dreaming. Told herself she had fallen asleep for a moment with the sun beating down, and the grass smelling so sweet beneath her.

But every slow-motion beat of time remained burned in her brain. And even though Maya sometimes wished she had been dreaming, most of the time she remained grateful for that magical moment and what came after.

What made it even more astonishing was the silence. Later, Maya would wonder why there was not a ripping sound in the universe. Something. Perhaps lightning and thunder. A darkening of the sky.

But nothing like that happened. No sound. It was an ordinary fall day filled with the smell of crushed leaves and fireplaces. That day, like many before, she had escaped the house and the drama that lay within and come to her favorite place in the park where they let the grass grow into a meadow that rippled in the wind.

It was where she would spend hours imagining shapes in the clouds and daydream. They were dreams of a teenager, yearning to be free of the life she had been born into. She wanted something more.

She daydreamed about fantastical worlds with magical beings, so at first, what she saw didn't surprise her. And then it did.

Which is why even now, all these years later, she still wondered if she had hallucinated or dreamed what occurred that day. But a daydream wouldn't explain her life.

When she finally dared to ask him where he had come from, he said, "Nowhere."

"How can you come from nowhere?" she asked.

He had only smiled at her.

"Okay," she said. "So if you are telling the truth, how did you get here?"

His face grew serious, and he paused before answering.

"I fell."

The way he said it made her wonder if perhaps he hadn't fallen. Maybe he had not told her the whole story. But she didn’t want to know more. Maya was too happy he was in her life.

Much later, when he asked if she wanted to live with him in the place he called Nowhere, she said, "Yes." And he obliged.