Fairy Stories & Other Tales

The wind whipped the door shut, and the scent of fire was all smoke. There were creatures all about me, some with jagged teeth, others with green tinged skin, and many —even a plethora —with yellow eyes.      They advanced quickly, their jaws quivering, some salivating.      The caretaker's cottage lay in the middle of the forest, easily accessible by all who had need. And I was available to all of them, at every  moment, doing the duty I had long since swore to uphold; making sure that all was safe and the world well. Not an easy task, caring for  wild folk, and yet I had found that it was wild folk who carried with them the greatest gentleness, loyalty, even love.      I was finding in this very moment that my findings had all been false.      My breath quickened, and I prepared myself for the fact that their kindness had broken.      That was when I was slammed into an armchair, and told this was an intervention; for I had taken too little care of myself.      I looked up into y

 Time is ticking.       It is that force, that thing that chimes whenever there is a rare moment. That keeps track of all of life. That offers a record of where the past has been.     It tells the story that leads off into the future, and reminds of things that yet need doing.     When it is seized, it slows.     And when it is passed by, it rockets forward.     Best seize it.     It will go on ticking anyway.

 Once upon a time, the world was old. It had grown that way through eons, but those who saw it at its end could have sworn it came about quite quickly.     Lost in a reverie of protection and an attempt to prolong its being, the world's people tried to make it hold on, to sustain it beyond its dying breaths. For, of course, the idea of the world's death terrified them to their very core.     But there was one among the people who stayed by the world's side, and let it confess all its thoughts, and slip gently into its end.     And when that one thought back to the time when the world ended, she always thought the death had been a good one.

 There was once a path that led from one reality to the next. One would find it in a pit in the ground or a hole in a tree or a strange whirling pool in the midst of a river. And if one was very careful, one could slip in and out of one reality and into the next with grace.     But that grace was hard to come by, for the realities were starkly different, and the key to slipping through gently and with poise necessitated a strength of character and an iron will.     Too often, those who sought to tread the paths confused strength of character and iron wills for demanding, unyielding personhood, and when that happened, to slip between realities was never grace, and only filled with despair.     But those who understood that strength of character was brought about by kindness and an iron will by a gentle spirit found the grace in the slipping.      For only those who fill themselves with kind gentleness can handle the fantastical nature of other realms.