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!