Storytime: Modern-Day Faeries.

September 7th, 2016

Before you read on, you should know that they are very shy, even in these days. Their rural kin and kith may have faded, their own fortunes may have flourished, but latter-day faeries are still rather like chameleons. Most of them are uncomfortable when they are being watched, and content when they are watchers.

They are the most common, and the least-noticed. Walk down a street without seeing it; drive home from work without even looking at the stoplights; stare out the window and forget dinner is on the stove. Hazies are everywhere. They swarm under every brow, behind every eye. In small doses they feed on absent-mindedness and brain farts. In clumps they emit small clouds of daydreams. When over-fed, they secrete lucid mindlessness, a walking sleep that shrugs out thought, emotion, or the senses.
Treasure them for the stories they show you; much can be done with them if you’ve the knack for it, or the work ethic, or the urge. Fear them for the consequences. Too much nothing is not a good thing, although there may seem to be many somethings that are so very worse indeed.

Most things have felt the touch of affection, save for the most automated and remote – an anonymous plastic toy. A scrap of continental bedrock. A fresh puff of Pacific cloud.
Fewer things are cherished. A particularly well-sewn teddy bear. A crib the last four generations of children lay in. A tacky souvenir from a departed grandparent, the ‘made in’ sticker still intact.
And some, a very, very slim some, are loved well and loved long. And it is in these places, around these things, that the slow, old, never-yet-common Yesterlongs converge.
Yesterlongs are patient, which is good because without that they would never get anywhere, or go mad. They linger by nature and love by instinct, and you can tell them by their soft paws and damp noses. A Yesterlong feeds off its home, and feeds back double. What is loved becomes moreso with time, and as its affection grows so too does the faerie. They can be bigger than mountains, they can be bigger than worlds. And at every size, they can fit inside a heart, no matter how small.
Wince when you see nostalgia fade. As it goes, so too must they. And the trip to the next home can be long, it can be hard.
But do not cry. There will always be something new.

If you’ve ever walked on a springtime riverback, you have seen the rushes grow.
And if you’ve ever driven on a weekday morning, you have seen the Rushes dance.
Go! Traffic!
Go! Lunchtime!
Go! Release date!
Go! Weekend!
Go!
Go!
GO!
They are furious in flight but they always move too slowly; they are ravenously hungry but they never manage to eat a thing; they are timeless but always hurried.
Go! Go! Go!
You can feel them in your pulse, in your sweat, in the tightened skin around your widened eyes. Suck in breath through your flared nostrils and smell their bitter acridity. Taste their iron on your tongue.
GO!
Without them, things would still get done. But my, we would be less worried about it.

The Hopesmiths have not been mentioned so far, not because of their importance but because of their detestability.
Hopes and dreams are fragile and snap and crack under the inflexible weight and pressure reality puts on them. Left to their own devices, they will sink and simmer and smelt down into the world again, ready to become fresh inspiration, to be mined again by new mines of new miens.
But the Hopesmiths are watching, and the Hopesmiths are hungry, and they are very small and fast, the fastest of all faeries. A working hope is far too strong for their frail bodies and slim hands, but a broken hope, a crippled dream – these are the tools they need. They will swarm an injured hope like carnivorous flies, stripping it for parts from the outside in and burrowing down to its ragged core.
There they dine, and there they forge, not out of necessity now but purest delight. Frankenstein with malice in his heart; a pernicious Yahweh.
The new-forged hopes that rise up from these ashes are hollow cinders: light, airy, and if one should ever brush a hand, burning and instantly-extinguished. But most remain forever just out of arm’s-length, wafting on the breeze and forever taunting those unfortunate enough to listen, singing the song of Somedays.
Someday I will be rich
Someday I will be famous
Someday my numbers will come up
Someday they’ll call me back
Someday I will be happy
The song has no end. Its only cure is to realize there is no beginning.

The last are the shyest. And they are the strangest.
They will not look for you. They will never find you.
Unlike every other faery, they must be found.
Stand up. Go for a walk.
Look without seeing – not outside, but in. Drop into yourself and fall down a hole without a bottom, turn off the world and shut out the lights. Dim the sounds and quench the people, the so many people you know and don’t know and will know and when it’s all too much, when you’ve gone down as far as you can be.
There they are, fleeting and motionless. The Little Lonelies. A flickering light, down here in the dark at the base of the brain, hiding inside plain sight.
You can dwell on them, these Little Lonelies. You can watch their wings flicker in circles. Hear their tiny, sad songs. Smell the soft scent of their aches and bruises and tiny slow desperations.
It’s not fun, but it’s easy, and it’s distracting. So much safer than the world. So much calmer. So much easier to deal with than people or places or being a person.
You can dwell on them, these Little Lonelies. But you should not stay for long.
They will not take you away. But you may do that yourself.

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