Fairy Stories & Other Tales

 Mary sat wearily on the ground bathing herself in the afternoon sunlight.  It was a necessary kind of sitting, for her legs had simply gone out from under her, so heavy was the burden of having no one to talk to and no one to play with for such a long time.  Everything had begun to feel flat of late, and the nature of the day itself did nothing to suggest otherwise. It was a strange, abandoning kind of day, when the world felt Fae and fruitless and forlorn.           It was with a kind of curiosity, then, that Mary had an abruptly pleasant thought: the sun felt nice on her skin.  Without knowing why she did it, Mary raised her palm to the light as if she could catch it.  As she did so, suddenly her hand was filled with a glowing ball.  An instant later droves of fairies appeared out of nowhere, darting at her in every direction until they hovered in midair before her like a host of tiny angels.  'Hello,' she said, for it was the first thing that came to her mind as her eyes li

 In the wishing well just outside the village there dwelt a fairy.  The fairy lived there because inside the well magic grew in great abundance.  Long ago the fairy had been pulled toward the warm glow of the ready magic, as did many a passerby who found themselves gazing into the subtle water to speak a wish.                 But as years turned to centuries, the fairy grew tired of hearing the wants of all those who came to cast their hopes, for the wishes themselves were often for wealth, and pride of place, and privilege.  Hopeful they would come, perhaps weary, and they would speak the words of longing in their heart, only to walk away, the fairy thought, slightly hardened.  As the fairy looked after the wishers, it would grow sad, for the aura cast about them seemed to mark their end.               Then came a day when a young woman knelt upon the stone stoop of the well, placing her elbows on the lip as her head fell into her hands.  It was when the first tears hit the water that

 Once upon a time the world was quiet.   A calm was over all the land and sea.  Peace was found in the highest heights and in the deepest depths.   But, dear reader, know this: that was before things grew.

There was once a mermaid who swam deep in the sea amongst the darkness.   She had seen nothing of light save mere flickers and glints between mica-laden rocks that traveled a reflecting path among the depths where she dwelt.   And of late, she had had little interest in seeing anything more vibrant.             She was, by nature, a solitary creature, but her current preference for her dim-lit caverns and crevasses to the silky, plush mid-layer of the sea—where lived most of her kind—was born of hurt.   For she had been ridiculed for once having had a mad desire to see what it was that lay beyond the sea.             One day a fleck of light caught her eye.   It was unusual in lasting longer than the faint shimmering that so infrequently traveled down from the surface—indeed, every time she turned her eye just so, the light caught.             She swam closer and saw that it was the glow of her own body reflecting off a bit of metal buried in a crack in the rock.   Wedging it out