Some good news, at last! Today we were given permission slips for our parents to sign for a field trip next week. I know, I know, all school field trips are terribly dull, but, hey, it's better than listening to another long lecture on fairy lore or some other unbearable topic. And this one might actually be interesting--we're all going to pile onto great blue herons and ride to the Olympic Range Dwarf Mine.
I should explain how the whole bird-riding thing works. When fairies need to go further or faster than they can go by flying themselves, they ride on birds. Now, many birds see fairies as something that belong on a menu, so only certain types of birds can be trusted--and they have to be paid in whatever type of food they like best (except fairy, obviously!)
For short trips we like to use bats, since we're too big for bats to eat but they are willing to carry us for tokens they can exchange for passes to our insect farms. Most of the bat trade goes to fairies who have been out drinking honey, which is intoxicating to fairies. (I've heard that it doesn't have the same effect on humans, but that you have your own fun beverages.) For fairies, nectar is OK to drink any time, but mix it with bee spit and it makes us go completely loopy. Drunk fairies have a way of flying into trees and buzzing cats, which is a recipe for disaster! The Honey Control Board, of which my father is unfortunately a member, has tried over the years to convince fairies to hire bats to take them home after a big night out. This is the origin of those annoying "Drink a Vat, Call a Bat" ads that earned me the charming nickname BatButt. Why couldn't my father have a different, less embarrassing job?
For groups, we usually hire cranes or herons, who can carry up to 20 fairies at a time in exchange for fish. The school is hiring herons for our trip next week. I wish they didn't smell so, well, fishy! Still, anything to get out of class!
I'm kind of excited to see the Olympic Mine, because that's where they say Queen Maeve's crown was forged. I'm sure they've got lots of beautiful treasures! I wonder if they have a gift shop? I could use a little tiara for the upcoming spring ball...
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Trouble with Boys
Sigh. I can't believe it's been over a week since my horrible Valentine's Day. I guess life does go on, even if it is tragic and pointless.
Titania met with Vik, but told him she couldn't go out with him. I told her not to be silly, that she shouldn't put her own love life on hold just because I am doomed to a life of misery and spinsterhood. She claims that she honestly doesn't want to go out with Vik because he just isn't that bright. I guess it's true that a boy who puts a great big Valentine's card on the wrong girl's locker isn't overly-gifted in the brains department, but he is sooooo handsome! I think she's just doing it to be nice. She knows that seeing her with Vik would just be twisting the knife in my already broken heart.
Speaking of Titania, she said a very strange thing yesterday. She got a funny look on her face while I was crying--yet again--over Vik, and asked me if I'd want to know if she knew about a boy who really did like me. As if that could ever happen.
I was about to tell her that I appreciated her efforts to make me feel better, but I am done with boys and am seriously considering becoming a hermit for my remaining days, but I never got the chance. Titania's older brother Ardan came roaring out of some nearby daisies and began pelting Titania with dirt clods. For absolutely no reason! You would think, wouldn't you, that if the Fates were so cruel as to make my best friend and I star-crossed in love, they could at least have spared us the indignity of having older brothers!
Is it possible Titania and I are setting our standards too high? Maybe instead of looking for boys who are good-looking and have more intelligence than your average toad is just asking too much. Perhaps we should just set our sights on finding boys who aren't completely bonkers!
If only we had some wise older woman to turn to for guidance. We don't. My mother is a hopeless bookworm who would probably trot out some ancient story about a lovelorn banshee on the highland moors, and Titania's mom would have a complete nervous breakdown if Titania even admitted to knowing that boys exist! As a result, we are both left without a compass upon the sea of love, destined to be swallowed by the waves without a trace. It's so sad, I think I may cry again.
Titania met with Vik, but told him she couldn't go out with him. I told her not to be silly, that she shouldn't put her own love life on hold just because I am doomed to a life of misery and spinsterhood. She claims that she honestly doesn't want to go out with Vik because he just isn't that bright. I guess it's true that a boy who puts a great big Valentine's card on the wrong girl's locker isn't overly-gifted in the brains department, but he is sooooo handsome! I think she's just doing it to be nice. She knows that seeing her with Vik would just be twisting the knife in my already broken heart.
Speaking of Titania, she said a very strange thing yesterday. She got a funny look on her face while I was crying--yet again--over Vik, and asked me if I'd want to know if she knew about a boy who really did like me. As if that could ever happen.
I was about to tell her that I appreciated her efforts to make me feel better, but I am done with boys and am seriously considering becoming a hermit for my remaining days, but I never got the chance. Titania's older brother Ardan came roaring out of some nearby daisies and began pelting Titania with dirt clods. For absolutely no reason! You would think, wouldn't you, that if the Fates were so cruel as to make my best friend and I star-crossed in love, they could at least have spared us the indignity of having older brothers!
Is it possible Titania and I are setting our standards too high? Maybe instead of looking for boys who are good-looking and have more intelligence than your average toad is just asking too much. Perhaps we should just set our sights on finding boys who aren't completely bonkers!
If only we had some wise older woman to turn to for guidance. We don't. My mother is a hopeless bookworm who would probably trot out some ancient story about a lovelorn banshee on the highland moors, and Titania's mom would have a complete nervous breakdown if Titania even admitted to knowing that boys exist! As a result, we are both left without a compass upon the sea of love, destined to be swallowed by the waves without a trace. It's so sad, I think I may cry again.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Disaster
My life is over. No, wait, that would be too good to be true. The problem is, my life isn't over! My life will probably never be over, because it's a never-ending spiral of doom from which there is no escape. My life is a bottomless pit full of troll mucus and toad droppings. My life--but wait, you don't know what happened, do you?
I suppose it's really all my fault for thinking somebody like Vik Blueangle could have left that Valentine's Day card for me. In case you didn't guess from the last paragraph, that is simply not how my life works. If it had been a note informing me that my skirt was tucked into my underpants, or that vice-principal Snodgrass wanted to see me in his office for a fun round of "Miss Brownwing, what do you intend to do with your life if you can't even pass a simple Fairy Math test?", that would have been believable.
But no, idiot that I am, I ignored twelve-and-a-half fairy years of life experience and allowed myself to hope that, for once, life was about to hand me something that didn't turn out to be a handful of slug slime.
I was up at the crack of dawn ransacking my unbelievably boring and out-of-date wardrobe trying to find an outfit that didn't have "child of a librarian" stamped all over it--WHY are mothers allowed to dress their children in such dismal, humiliating things?! Finally I discovered that if I rolled one of my skirts up at the waistline, it looked almost fashionably short. Topped off by a lacy spiderweb sweater I bought at The Toadstool a few weeks ago (and kept hidden ever since) the outfit didn't look that bad. I was able to cover up the sweater with my coat, but I forgot to roll the skirt back down and Mom had an absolute fit when I came down to breakfast! She made me go back upstairs and change. Never mind, I thought, I can just roll the other skirt up later.
At school I borrowed some wing dust from Titania (I'm not supposed to use it until I'm 13, but I figure I'm close enough) and tried to brighten up the green spots on my wings. It looked so nice I decided to try some on my eyelids, even though the box said "For wings only--not for use on face!" It went pretty well on one eyelid, but then a flake of it got in my eyes while I was doing the other one, and it stung like crazy! I had to stick my whole face under the sink to rinse my eyes out while a gang of Noires (you know, the ones who paint their wings black with coal dust and smoke dandylion puff seeds in the bathroom and talk about how depressing life is--they should try MY life if they want to be depressed!) laughed at me.
Outside the bathroom, Titania asked if I was OK, because my eyes were puffy and my face looked a little green. I realized that wetting the powder on my eyes had made it run down and stain my face a nice light green. Lovely.
But on to the real show, the clandestine meeting with my secret admirer! I was really hoping it would turn out to be Vik, because I had seen him by the lockers right before I found the card. Titania gave my hair a good tease to try to make it a little less flat, I rolled up my skirt, and at five to Noon I bravely walked down the hall to the Fairy Dust Lab, with Titania hiding around the corner cheering me on.
Lo and behold, Vik was right there! He looked so handsome, leaning against the lab door in his air ball team jacket, that my heart literally stopped for a second! I had to force myself to keep walking! Finally, I went right up to him and said, "Um, um, um, Vik! Hi, Vik!" Brilliant. Thank you, brain.
He looked at me, but instead of the look of tender longing I had been imagining all day, he just looked confused. "Um, hi," he said. "It's Fenn, right? Or Finn? "
Finn? He didn't even know my name? "Fiona! It's--I'm Fiona," I babbled. When he didn't look any more enlightened, I whipped out the card. "You left this!"
"Oh," he said, the light beginning to dawn. "You're her friend aren't you? Couldn't Titania make it?"
"Titania!?" The truth hit me like a bucket of ice water. My locker is right next to Titania's. In his hurry yesterday, Vik the genius had left his love note on the wrong one. Of course that beautiful card couldn't have been for me.
Tears burned in my eyes, but I managed to stammer out, "Um, no, she couldn't. She'll see you tomorrow. Same time, same place!" I added with a demented laugh. Then I ran back up the hall.
Back in the bathroom, I cried while Titania tried to comb the tangles out of my hair. "I'm so, so sorry," she said for about the millionth time.
"It's not your fault," I hiccuped. "You're beautiful and I'm not. That's just how it is."
"That's not true!" She turned me toward the mirror. "Look at yourself! You're gorgeous!" Even on a good day this would have been a stretch, but with my over-teased hair forming a solid rat's nest and my face streaked with greenish tears, it was a flat-out lie. Nice of her to say so, though.
"You've got pretty eyes, a cute nose, and a perfect figure," she went on, then gave me a closer look. "Except for when you have your skirt all balled up at your waistline, anyway. How did that happen?"
"Never mind." I tugged my skirt back down. "I'm going home. Can you tell Mr. Swallowtail I'm sick and can't make it to Fairy Gold Math?"
"Sure." She really is a good friend.
And so I left school early and went to The Toadstool to shop my troubles away until it was time to go home, but they didn't have any good sales. Such, as I say, is my life. Yep. Troll mucus and toad turds.
I suppose it's really all my fault for thinking somebody like Vik Blueangle could have left that Valentine's Day card for me. In case you didn't guess from the last paragraph, that is simply not how my life works. If it had been a note informing me that my skirt was tucked into my underpants, or that vice-principal Snodgrass wanted to see me in his office for a fun round of "Miss Brownwing, what do you intend to do with your life if you can't even pass a simple Fairy Math test?", that would have been believable.
But no, idiot that I am, I ignored twelve-and-a-half fairy years of life experience and allowed myself to hope that, for once, life was about to hand me something that didn't turn out to be a handful of slug slime.
I was up at the crack of dawn ransacking my unbelievably boring and out-of-date wardrobe trying to find an outfit that didn't have "child of a librarian" stamped all over it--WHY are mothers allowed to dress their children in such dismal, humiliating things?! Finally I discovered that if I rolled one of my skirts up at the waistline, it looked almost fashionably short. Topped off by a lacy spiderweb sweater I bought at The Toadstool a few weeks ago (and kept hidden ever since) the outfit didn't look that bad. I was able to cover up the sweater with my coat, but I forgot to roll the skirt back down and Mom had an absolute fit when I came down to breakfast! She made me go back upstairs and change. Never mind, I thought, I can just roll the other skirt up later.
At school I borrowed some wing dust from Titania (I'm not supposed to use it until I'm 13, but I figure I'm close enough) and tried to brighten up the green spots on my wings. It looked so nice I decided to try some on my eyelids, even though the box said "For wings only--not for use on face!" It went pretty well on one eyelid, but then a flake of it got in my eyes while I was doing the other one, and it stung like crazy! I had to stick my whole face under the sink to rinse my eyes out while a gang of Noires (you know, the ones who paint their wings black with coal dust and smoke dandylion puff seeds in the bathroom and talk about how depressing life is--they should try MY life if they want to be depressed!) laughed at me.
Outside the bathroom, Titania asked if I was OK, because my eyes were puffy and my face looked a little green. I realized that wetting the powder on my eyes had made it run down and stain my face a nice light green. Lovely.
But on to the real show, the clandestine meeting with my secret admirer! I was really hoping it would turn out to be Vik, because I had seen him by the lockers right before I found the card. Titania gave my hair a good tease to try to make it a little less flat, I rolled up my skirt, and at five to Noon I bravely walked down the hall to the Fairy Dust Lab, with Titania hiding around the corner cheering me on.
Lo and behold, Vik was right there! He looked so handsome, leaning against the lab door in his air ball team jacket, that my heart literally stopped for a second! I had to force myself to keep walking! Finally, I went right up to him and said, "Um, um, um, Vik! Hi, Vik!" Brilliant. Thank you, brain.
He looked at me, but instead of the look of tender longing I had been imagining all day, he just looked confused. "Um, hi," he said. "It's Fenn, right? Or Finn? "
Finn? He didn't even know my name? "Fiona! It's--I'm Fiona," I babbled. When he didn't look any more enlightened, I whipped out the card. "You left this!"
"Oh," he said, the light beginning to dawn. "You're her friend aren't you? Couldn't Titania make it?"
"Titania!?" The truth hit me like a bucket of ice water. My locker is right next to Titania's. In his hurry yesterday, Vik the genius had left his love note on the wrong one. Of course that beautiful card couldn't have been for me.
Tears burned in my eyes, but I managed to stammer out, "Um, no, she couldn't. She'll see you tomorrow. Same time, same place!" I added with a demented laugh. Then I ran back up the hall.
Back in the bathroom, I cried while Titania tried to comb the tangles out of my hair. "I'm so, so sorry," she said for about the millionth time.
"It's not your fault," I hiccuped. "You're beautiful and I'm not. That's just how it is."
"That's not true!" She turned me toward the mirror. "Look at yourself! You're gorgeous!" Even on a good day this would have been a stretch, but with my over-teased hair forming a solid rat's nest and my face streaked with greenish tears, it was a flat-out lie. Nice of her to say so, though.
"You've got pretty eyes, a cute nose, and a perfect figure," she went on, then gave me a closer look. "Except for when you have your skirt all balled up at your waistline, anyway. How did that happen?"
"Never mind." I tugged my skirt back down. "I'm going home. Can you tell Mr. Swallowtail I'm sick and can't make it to Fairy Gold Math?"
"Sure." She really is a good friend.
And so I left school early and went to The Toadstool to shop my troubles away until it was time to go home, but they didn't have any good sales. Such, as I say, is my life. Yep. Troll mucus and toad turds.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Valentine's Day
Oh, happy day!!! For the first time EVER, I got a real Valentine's Day card, one that wasn't from my mom or one of my girl friends. It was a big red heart with pink lace around the edges, and it said, "Roses are red, violets are blue, you don't know my name, but I'm in love with you!" It was stuck to my locker with snail glue. Sweet, don't you think?
Of course, Titania (who has the locker next to mine) had to go and say she thought it was a little creepy, but I think she's just jealous. Half the school's male population is in love with her, with her red hair and bright wings, but today she's jealous of me. ME!!! This is the happiest day of my life!
I wonder who it is? Could it possibly be my secret love, Vik Blueangle? I've been in loooove with him ever since I saw him make the winning hit in our school's championship air ball tournament. He has white-gold hair and blue dragonfly wings, and he is the handsomest boy in school. I always thought I was too drab to catch his attention, but he was right by the lockers when I got out of class. Who knows?
On the back of the card was a message, "Meet me at noon tomorrow by the Fairy Dust Lab if you want to know who I am."
What am I going to wear? WHAT AM I GOING TO WEAR!!?
Of course, Titania (who has the locker next to mine) had to go and say she thought it was a little creepy, but I think she's just jealous. Half the school's male population is in love with her, with her red hair and bright wings, but today she's jealous of me. ME!!! This is the happiest day of my life!
I wonder who it is? Could it possibly be my secret love, Vik Blueangle? I've been in loooove with him ever since I saw him make the winning hit in our school's championship air ball tournament. He has white-gold hair and blue dragonfly wings, and he is the handsomest boy in school. I always thought I was too drab to catch his attention, but he was right by the lockers when I got out of class. Who knows?
On the back of the card was a message, "Meet me at noon tomorrow by the Fairy Dust Lab if you want to know who I am."
What am I going to wear? WHAT AM I GOING TO WEAR!!?
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Changelings
OK, people. I want to know who started the whole changeling rumor! Today in Ancient Lore we discussed the beliefs humans have about fairies and why so many of them are rubbish. The changeling story is my absolute favorite. Really well thought-out!
According to humans, fairies will sometimes steal a human baby, substituting a fairy baby, or sometimes even just a baby made of wood.
Now, I like humans, I really do, but sometimes I have to ask myself: Are you completely insane!? Leaving aside the whole question of why, let's focus on the how for a moment. Your average adult fairy only weighs about an ounce (except for old Mrs. Elderberry. I'm pretty sure she weighs two.) How on earth is a fairy supposed to lift a human baby? We're not that magic!
Even a batallion of fairies would have trouble moving a baby, and then they'd be faced with the dilemma of where to put it. I doubt if even the California Redwoods contain a hollow tree big enough to raise a human. And how would we feed it? We're talking mountains of food here, every single day! More than most fairies (again, except for Mrs. Elderberry) can eat in an entire year.
And good lordy lord, what about the diapers? I'm not even going to go there. Really. Not to mention that a baby's screams can break fairy eardrums from fifty yards away. Our own babies are loud enough, thank you. Let me tell you, your babies are safe from us! We don't want them!!!
Along with these logistical problems, don't you think even the most dim-witted human mother is going to notice that her baby has shrunk to the size of her thumb overnight? Or is suddenly made of wood? Honestly.
Here's what I think: I think some long-ago human got sick of listening to his neighbors' baby yell all night long, and made the whole thing up to get them to start shutting their windows. I mean, think about it! What other explaination can there be?
According to humans, fairies will sometimes steal a human baby, substituting a fairy baby, or sometimes even just a baby made of wood.
Now, I like humans, I really do, but sometimes I have to ask myself: Are you completely insane!? Leaving aside the whole question of why, let's focus on the how for a moment. Your average adult fairy only weighs about an ounce (except for old Mrs. Elderberry. I'm pretty sure she weighs two.) How on earth is a fairy supposed to lift a human baby? We're not that magic!
Even a batallion of fairies would have trouble moving a baby, and then they'd be faced with the dilemma of where to put it. I doubt if even the California Redwoods contain a hollow tree big enough to raise a human. And how would we feed it? We're talking mountains of food here, every single day! More than most fairies (again, except for Mrs. Elderberry) can eat in an entire year.
And good lordy lord, what about the diapers? I'm not even going to go there. Really. Not to mention that a baby's screams can break fairy eardrums from fifty yards away. Our own babies are loud enough, thank you. Let me tell you, your babies are safe from us! We don't want them!!!
Along with these logistical problems, don't you think even the most dim-witted human mother is going to notice that her baby has shrunk to the size of her thumb overnight? Or is suddenly made of wood? Honestly.
Here's what I think: I think some long-ago human got sick of listening to his neighbors' baby yell all night long, and made the whole thing up to get them to start shutting their windows. I mean, think about it! What other explaination can there be?
A lovely day at school
School today. YAWN!!! Our principal, old Mrs. Elderberry (and I do mean old--she has to be at least 10,000 years and counting!) decided once again to make the whole school assemble in Big Stump Hall to endure another of her endless rants. Her topic of choice today: Wingism.
I should explain. Different fairies have different types of wings. Some, known as Papilliae, have wings that mimic the local butterfly population. Others, like the Odonatae, mimic dragonflies. These are the two main wing types, but there are others. We're all fairies and it doesn't really make any difference, but of course some people have to go and cause problems.
Some of the Odonatae in our school started calling the Papilliae "Butterbutts." Naturally the insulted butterfly-winged fairies could not let this go without a response, so somebody started calling the Odonatae "Skeeterbrains." Very, very mature.
It caught on like a rash, and soon every single wing type had its own rude word associated with it. Mrs. Elderberry wants it to stop, so she told us all about it during what was supposed to be our lunch break.
Honestly! After spending a delightful morning listening to Mr. Swallowtail drone on and on about Ancient Lore, we had to spend our entire lunch break listening to Mrs. Elderberry go on about "everyone being fairies no matter what our wings looked like" and "equality of the fairie folk." Yada yada, rant rant rant. She finished up by giving us a list of the newly-banned wingist slurs, and said that anyone caught using one of them would be kept after school to shovel up bat guano left in the school clearing by commuter bats.
It won't make any difference, of course. I could have told Mrs. Elderberry that people will just come up with new names! But nooooo, instead of having a nice chat with our friends, we had to eat our lunches listening to her moan.
To add insult to injury, my brother Tark deliberately bumped into me as I was leaving the Hall to go to an oh-so-interesting hour of Fairie Gold Math.
"Don't worry, Sis, you'll never be called a Butterbutt. You've already got a nickname!" he laughed as I scrambled to pick up my books.
"Bat butt!" cheered one of his trollish pals. See my first post for the explaination of this jem.
I had no choice but to punch Tark in the face, which of course is right when Mrs. Elderberry came waddling out of the Hall. She gave me half an hour's detention for fighting.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, life is NOT fair.
I should explain. Different fairies have different types of wings. Some, known as Papilliae, have wings that mimic the local butterfly population. Others, like the Odonatae, mimic dragonflies. These are the two main wing types, but there are others. We're all fairies and it doesn't really make any difference, but of course some people have to go and cause problems.
Some of the Odonatae in our school started calling the Papilliae "Butterbutts." Naturally the insulted butterfly-winged fairies could not let this go without a response, so somebody started calling the Odonatae "Skeeterbrains." Very, very mature.
It caught on like a rash, and soon every single wing type had its own rude word associated with it. Mrs. Elderberry wants it to stop, so she told us all about it during what was supposed to be our lunch break.
Honestly! After spending a delightful morning listening to Mr. Swallowtail drone on and on about Ancient Lore, we had to spend our entire lunch break listening to Mrs. Elderberry go on about "everyone being fairies no matter what our wings looked like" and "equality of the fairie folk." Yada yada, rant rant rant. She finished up by giving us a list of the newly-banned wingist slurs, and said that anyone caught using one of them would be kept after school to shovel up bat guano left in the school clearing by commuter bats.
It won't make any difference, of course. I could have told Mrs. Elderberry that people will just come up with new names! But nooooo, instead of having a nice chat with our friends, we had to eat our lunches listening to her moan.
To add insult to injury, my brother Tark deliberately bumped into me as I was leaving the Hall to go to an oh-so-interesting hour of Fairie Gold Math.
"Don't worry, Sis, you'll never be called a Butterbutt. You've already got a nickname!" he laughed as I scrambled to pick up my books.
"Bat butt!" cheered one of his trollish pals. See my first post for the explaination of this jem.
I had no choice but to punch Tark in the face, which of course is right when Mrs. Elderberry came waddling out of the Hall. She gave me half an hour's detention for fighting.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, life is NOT fair.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Fat Cat Almost Splats!
OK, so I have to tell you what happened as I was leaving Melissa's last night! BoBo the cat was waiting for me on the roof when I flew out of the window, and he actually leapt up in the air trying to catch me. He couldn't do it, of course. No housecat should weigh 20 pounds, and if anything BoBo tips the scale at a little bit more.
I was startled by the primal yowl he gave as he jumped, but he missed me by about a mile! He hit the roof with a crash that practically broke the shingles, and then started to roll down to the edge. I could see that Mr. Spare Tire couldn't stop himself, not with all the momentum his belly caused as he rolled, so I had to do some quick thinking.
I flew a ways off, turned around, and then flew toward him as fast as I could. I slammed into him just as he reached the edge, and for a second I thought he was going to fall and take me with him. My impact made just enough difference, though, and I knocked him back a few inches. That gave him time to get his claws working, and he pulled his bulk back up onto the roof.
Would you believe, he didn't even thank me for saving his gigantic butt? He just sat there for a minute, licking his fur as if nothing had happened, and then without a word he turned and stalked back into Melissa's window. Seriously. RUDE!
I was startled by the primal yowl he gave as he jumped, but he missed me by about a mile! He hit the roof with a crash that practically broke the shingles, and then started to roll down to the edge. I could see that Mr. Spare Tire couldn't stop himself, not with all the momentum his belly caused as he rolled, so I had to do some quick thinking.
I flew a ways off, turned around, and then flew toward him as fast as I could. I slammed into him just as he reached the edge, and for a second I thought he was going to fall and take me with him. My impact made just enough difference, though, and I knocked him back a few inches. That gave him time to get his claws working, and he pulled his bulk back up onto the roof.
Would you believe, he didn't even thank me for saving his gigantic butt? He just sat there for a minute, licking his fur as if nothing had happened, and then without a word he turned and stalked back into Melissa's window. Seriously. RUDE!
Introducing Me
Attention human world!
My name is Fiona Brownwing, and I am a fairy.
Hah ha ha ha hah! I
bet you weren’t expecting that. Most
humans don’t even believe in fairies, and the ones that do have made up a bunch
of stuff about us that is, to be quite honest, a load of bat droppings. I’m here to set the record straight. I mean, who on earth started the nonsense
about us having magical wands and granting wishes? As if!
We have lives, you know.
Some of the stories are true, though. We do have wings, although I’ve
always wished mine were brighter. The Brownwing
family tends to have brownish-color butterfly wings, and although mine have
some green and gold spots they aren’t very colorful. Most fairies have wings that mimic local butterflies
or dragonflies for protection. My best friend Titania
has the most beautiful 'Monarch' orange wings and long red hair. My wings are just brown, like my hair, like
my eyes. Like a mouse, really. Life isn’t fair.
My family lives in an old fir tree at the edge of Bridle
Trails State Park. That’s what you call
it, anyway. There are human houses
around the park, and that’s how I got access to this iPhone, hee hee! It belongs to a young human named Melissa Banks,
who never shuts her window at night. As
long as she’s asleep, I can post stuff from her iPhone and she’ll never know. Neither will
my parents—if they caught me sneaking into a human house, they’d kill me!
Which brings me to my family. What can I say about them? They are, in a word, embarrassing! My father works for the Honey Control Board. He was the genius behind the whole “Drink a
vat, call a bat!” campaign that was supposed to keep fairies from flying
drunk. I don’t know if it actually got
grownups to call a bat service to take them home after a honey-filled wild
night out, but I know for certain it got me
the nickname “Bat Butt” at school.
Thanks a lot, Dad!
My Mum works at the DFL-that’s Department of Fairy Lore, to
you. Bo-ring!!! I have two siblings, an older brother named
Tark, who always smells like the bottom of a mud puddle, and a little sister
named Deirdre. Deirdre is going through
a plantist phase, and it’s driving Mum up the wall. Every time Mum serves roasted potato bug or
stir-fried aphids, Deidre turns up her nose and refuses to eat it. “I won’t eat anything with a head!” she
declares proudly. “It’s murder!” So Mum has to give her extra fairy bread and
grass salad to make up for it. Some
fairies in the plantist movement won’t even eat worms—they say anything that
moves has a soul, we should only be eating plants, blah blah blah. Un-believable!
We are part of the Seelie Court of fairies—that is, we don’t
go around harming humans. Sometimes, we’ll
even help one who’s in trouble. I think
it was the Irish, or maybe the Scots, who noticed us first, and started the
tradition of leaving bread, butter and milk out for us at night, which was nice
of them. The Unseelie Court of fairies
is something you don’t want to mess with.
They sometimes attack humans, and our Queen Maeve does everything she
can to keep it from happening.
I mostly like humans.
Melissa, who at 12 years old is about the human equivalent of my age, has
her own big brother to worry about and she doesn’t like her curly brown hair. I think it’s pretty. At least it’s not all straight like mine! I sometimes untangle her hair for her while
she sleeps, to pay her back for using her iPhone. Seriously, how did the fairy
folk ever get along without Facebook? I
have, like, six different accounts now!
Melissa’s cat BoBo is a different story. He’s a big fat grey monster with yellow eyes
and breath that smells like dead fish, and he’s been trying to catch me for
ages! We fairies can blend in to our
surroundings and hide from humans pretty easily, but animals can always see
us. I’ll admit I sometimes tease BoBo by
flying just out of reach and laughing at him.
He gets so mad! It’s good for him, though—he really, really
needs the exercise! I took him up and down the stairs a couple of times tonight before he collapsed.
Well, I can see that Melissa's alarm clock is about to go off, so I'd better sign off for now. Stay tuned for the latest news from Fairy Land!
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