I stood staring down at a lone spider web poised above the ground. It was dew covered, the droplets gleaming in the sun. I thought, I’m lucky. I’m the only human alive who’ll get to see this particular miracle. Then I grew sad. Do we humans appreciate nature’s intensity? It’s full loveliness? It’s artistic impact on our lives?
I’m a story teller, so I make up stories about everything I stumble onto in my daily life. Doesn’t matter if it’s just a spider web. Like the spider, I weave silken webs, but with words. I find magic in small things. Stretching the spider web, I give the mundane “presence.” I look into the imaginative space, and when I do the spider web becomes a home where faeries secretly live and shower voluptuously in the sun’s nectar. I stretch the story: the faeries flee suddenly, when a crow flies over and its shadow terrifies them.
But . . . where are they now? Where do gypsy bands of displaced faeries hide?
In our minds, mostly. And in childhood storybooks and fantasy fiction. It takes little to be called genius in my book, just recalling the part of you that in childhood gasped in awe at little things, like blow bubbles. Or spider webs. Or your own bare feet on the lawn, toes wiggling, hands clasped.
If you read fantasy and enjoy the lives and characters we writers create, then you’re blessed. You’re genius at looking past the sparkling dew drops and reaching into the imaginative space with us as we gift you with our stories.
Don’t get the big head, dear reader, but we writers need you. I don’t mean to buy our books (a kind gesture). What I mean is that, without you, we’d still be making up stories about faeries who hide from the shadows of crows, and that’s good. But how would we get word out that the faeries need rescuing from their unfounded fear? (Crows have never been known to harm faeries, have they?).
I don’t want to alarm anyone, writer or reader, or innocent crow, but if you’ve got a band of faeries hiding on your lawn, please ask them to return to Mucky. I miss them. Pass the word. Enjoy this day!
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Mucky Manor 