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.

In case you missed something:
If You Dream of Fairies - I


When it came time to start school, Liz and Maria did it like they did everything: side by side. They held hands as they tentatively stepped onto the kindergarten bus. They shared a seat and both of them pressed their faces against the glass as they waved to their mothers until they could see them no more. The mothers waved just a moment or two longer than that before heading to the garden for their first childless coffee clutch since the girls had been born.

It didn’t take long for Maria to establish herself as a favorite among the teachers and the other students. Her sweet, kind, genuine nature was like a magnet to them. Liz basked in the limelight as well, because Maria was nothing if not loyal. If anyone so much as grinned when Liz did something clumsy or spoke without thinking, the sadness in Maria’s eyes stopped them in their tracks. Maria’s eyes were the color of violets in spring. No one wanted to be the one who clouded them with sadness or disapproval. Certainly no one wanted to disappoint her.

To say that either girl took advantage of this would not be entirely fair. Maria never asked for special favors, the world just sort of granted them to her. The path she walked just always seemed to be a little softer, the air around her just a little sweeter. As for Liz, she never invoked Maria’s name to attempt to secure favor. She merely loved her best friend. If that had some perks, well, who was she to complain about that?

As they left kindergarten behind for higher grades, school work came easily to Maria, too. She just heard or read something once and it became a part of her. Many evenings were spent in the garden with the girls head to head over a book. Maria’s hair was long then, and fell in perfect curls. She preferred gathering it up on top of her head, but a few loose tendrils always managed to escape. This only served to add to the charm of the effect. They would hold their heads so close over their books that those tendrils would become tangled with Liz’s brown pigtails. Maria had a way of explaining things to Liz so that they made sense.