Books are a uniquely portable magic. ~ Stephen King

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

If You Dream of Fairies

Whimsical Wednesdays

If You Dream of Fairies
is a story I wrote for my daughters and niece last summer. I will present it here in serialized form. It was my first foray into fiction.


If fairies were real, Liz thought, they would look like Maria. She had delicate features and long slender limbs. Her nose turned up just a bit on the end and there was a gentle sprinkling of light freckles across it. She wore her strawberry blonde hair cropped close and tousled. The overall effect was ethereal. She moved with such grace and ease that sometimes people around her didn’t notice how she got from one place to another. When she spoke, her voice conjured visions of gentle waves lapping over seashells on the shore. Her compassion for other living creatures was boundless. She showed the same amount of careful attentiveness whether the needy party was a lonesome older person, a heartbroken younger person, or an injured sparrow.

She was, in short, lovely.

Liz was quite sure, in fact, that Maria was the loveliest being to ever exist. Liz was her opposite in every way, yet they had been best friends for as long as either of them could remember. Their parents had been neighbors when they were but wee and the two young mothers would clutch their cups of coffee or tea and gossip while their babies napped side by side on a blanket they’d spread near the garden.

Even then, delicate, fair Maria would lie on her side, curled gently into herself, her tiny fist posed charmingly beneath her chin, her lips sweetly pursed. Liz would sprawl out in an archers pose on her belly, a thin line of drool marking a steady path from her slightly open mouth to the blanket they shared. She was what people liked to call a hearty baby.

As they learned to sit and then to crawl in the same garden, Maria would gently explore the flowers, barely grazing them with her curious fingers as she brought their colorful petals to her nose for a sniff. Liz explored the garden, too. On many occasions one of the young mothers had had to extricate flowers or dirt from the maw her chubby little hands had eagerly stuffed full.

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