Chapter 2
POV: Maeve?
I can’t believe I was actually doing this—on a plane to Shannon Airport. Yes, Shannon, Ireland that is.
I was on my way to the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival just as Gran had predicted. And like always, she was right. Gran was always right, about everything, and today proved it.
I wrapped the cheap airline travel blanket around me and propped my pillow against the window and tugged my sleep mask over my eyes. I had just gotten done eating some nuked airplane meal and took a melatonin to get me to sleep. Maybe when I woke up this would all be some hilarious dream, one my over active author mind conjured up.
But when I blinked my eyes open, tugged off my sleep eye mask, then looked at the green airline seat in front of me, I knew it wasn’t. This was real.
I was really going to County Clare and to a matchmaking festival.
I glanced down at the time on my phone and realized only two hours had gone by.
Damn it, I muttered to myself as I put down my tray table and I opened my laptop. If I had another five hours left of this flight then I might as well try to make the best of it at least. A little research would do me some good.
And thank god, for wifi on planes, because that was the only thing making this flight somewhat bearable.
The first thing I typed in the search bar was Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival and I found a plethora of articles to boot. I must’ve read at least eight articles–fully at that and learned the in’s and out’s of Lisdoovarna and the decades old tradition.
To sum it up, the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival is a month-long event held every September in the small town of Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland. It’s Europe’s largest singles festival for matchmaking, drawing tens of thousands of people from Ireland and around the world, great so I wouldn’t be the only American here (hopefull). The festival has music, dancing, socialising, and the traditional matchmaking service of long-time matchmaker Todd Daly who maintains a historic “Lucky Book” of profiles.
Gah, it sounded gag worthy. Literally.
And how could we forget…that the festival dates back more than 160 years.
This thing was a tradition for their people, and it seemed most of Europe. And I was going to use it as research for my next book.
I guess crazier things have been done, I mean thousands of people do attend the festival thinking they’ll actually find true love in less than a month in the middle of nowhere in Ireland, so I guess using the event as research for my next novel wouldn’t be any less insane.
A month long.
The words replayed within my mind on a loop.
A whole month living in County Clare, Ireland, knowing absolutely nobody and staying in a small cottage by the sea, which probably happened to be haunted.
I could do it. I could make it work. I could be social. I could mingle with the locals. I could feel comfortable living in a cottage by myself as the wind howled each night. It could work.
But would I make it?
Well, I guess I’d have to, because I was about an hour away from landing in Shannon now.
And maybe I’d even enjoy it—dancing cheerful Irish gigs, dating handsome Irish men, drinking freshly brewed Guinness, and actually enjoying a vacation for once.
Or so I told myself.
Because as the plane began its departure process, my heart dropped in my stomach. Hard.
And I knew it wasn’t just the turbulence or physics here, I knew it was something more—something inside me that was preparing me for the unknown. Maybe it was Gran, somehow telepathically speaking to me, or maybe it was my broken heart that wanted for more—that actually hoped for true love—or maybe it was the author part of me—-that lived for fantasies and tried to find romance in every single thing she did.
But who really knows? I guess I don’t even know myself.
I bit my lip as I kept thinking about the photos of the festival and the quaint little town on my computer screen. It looked picture-perfect, it looked fun, and exciting. It looked like a once in a lifetime experience.
Maybe I should embrace that—the fact that this could actually change my life instead of thinking about how it’ll just remain the same?
So before the plane’s wheels hit the Irish concrete, I swore to myself one thing: that skeptical Maeve of America was out, and optimistic, party Maeve was in.
Outside my plane window were hills of rolling green—endless and bright. Small figures hovered in the distance, tiny colorful houses across the land, and in the distance vast blue—the sea that extended for miles and miles until it was out of view.
I’ve never seen anything more beautiful. I’ve never seen a town so picturesque that it looked like a land out of the storybook.
And before my feet even landed on Irish soil, I felt within my bones that I belonged here and a part of this land also belonged to me.
I decided that should be the premise of my story—that there is beauty in uncharted beginnings.
I know, I know, I did a total flip-flop from two days ago. But one thing about authors is we change our mind as much as we change our plots. And I’m going to make the best out of this one.