The Dance of the Fairies' Revels

When the air moves in sweet, soft breezes and the clouds begin to fan out like wings, those are the nights of the fairy revels.
            One small head pokes its way from a tree’s trunk.  Then another.  Followed by multitudes, as tiny faces press their noses to the air, to see if the coast is clear.  And then shimmering gossamer wings fill the space between the trees as the fairies leave their homes and begin to dance.
            It begins in partners, a dance of aristocracy.  A formal affair, with gentle touches of hand to hand and careful turns of precise points.  Then, as though they have drunk some wine, the fairies’ toes begin to tap, and their music, which comes from the trees themselves, begins to shift.  A reel forms, no partners needed, as fairy feet bound up and down the forest floor in gleeful abandon, as though their heads have moved to heady drink.  The reels pick up speed, no fairy misses any step, until the steps cannot satisfy.  The fairies take to their wings, and that is when the dance becomes a dangerous wild frenzy.  This is the dance the fairies have—the one that is all their own.  It is when the night becomes the fairies’, and peril to those who find it.
            How do I know of these wild nights or of the danger they pose?  I found myself caught watching once, and I have been watching ever since.

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