When I was a young child I lived in Missouri for a time... no, not misery, Missouri- if only I had a dime for everytime I heard that joke, maybe I would have graduated University by now. I loved it there, Missouri that is. I was fascinated by the woods that surrounded one particular home. I remember my sister and I would spend hours outside exploring those woods, it's a wonder we never got lost. I have spent majority of my life living snug between two mountains, but I have never seen trees as dense as they were when I lived in Missouri and the glory of it was that the woods in Missouri were my backyard. Granted my family was not used to the poison oak and poison ivy that plagued the area we lived in at the time, but understand that we were quick to learn what ground covering to avoid and we spent many sleepless nights pink with calamine lotion. That's not the point of this blog, though. The point of this blog is that fireflies are fairies in disguise. I learned this fact at the tender age of seven.
I remember the first time I saw a firefly flying. I was standing out on the back porch of our home staring hard into the woods that were turning black as the sun quickly sunk below the horizon. I remember feeling scared because my mind was being taken over by my imagination and my imagination was playing through all the horrible scenarios of what could happen to me if I wandered alone into those woods... the scenes involved the Elf King tricking me into an eternity away from the safety of my family and among his kind, or gremlins sneaking around in the undergrowth that would trip you and then pounce on you before you knew which way was up again because the dark was so thick. I imagined witches that looked like trees that would wait for little girl's who left the safety of their home at twilight and would end up lost in the night surrounded by trees that were really witches waiting for those naughty little girls to go to sleep before they took them away and boiled them for soup. I know what you're thinking, and perhaps you're right... I might have been a disturbed little girl, but mostly I had an overactive imagination. But, I digress. It was during my imagining of witches as trees that I became so scared standing alone on that porch staring into the black of the woods that I felt hopeless. I thought to myself, "Isn't there anything safe in those trees?" My mind played back the recent events of it's memory- kidnapped by elf king, gremlins tripping and eating me, witches pretending to be trees waiting to boil me... I couldn't think of anything safe and that's when I saw it, a light... the most delicate of light floating against the backdrop of night. If you weren't looking with intent, you would miss it. It was like a slowly falling shooting star only it was floating, and like a shooting star it exacted the same outcome as I immediately found myself feeling hopeful just watching it knowing that if I made a wish as sacred as a prayer that my wish would come true, even if I were to become lost in the black of the forest. But, I didn't wish anything. I wasn't greedy and I wasn't in danger and at the time I couldn't think of anything that I needed. And, then there were more. They were filling my backyard, these floating shooting stars.
I became ecstatic and I called to my parent's. They came out and one by one my siblings came out behind them and there we were, all of us standing on our porch surrounded by floating light. My parent's explained to me that these were fireflies... the thought was silly to me, "flies that glow" thought I... such silly lies. I knew they were fairies. My parent's let me catch some in the jar to keep as a night light in my room that night and for many nights to follow. They explained to me as they laid me down to sleep that if I get scared in the dark, all I would have to do was watch the fireflies and I wouldn't be scared anymore. I nodded my understanding, but I never slept. I stayed up watching the light in the Mason jar on my dresser and I knew they were fairies. I was mesmerized by them and watching them filled my imagination with memories of when I was a fairy. I wondered how I became a human and why? I was thankful for the fairies because I knew they were the safety in the dark of the woods. I always knew that fairies had a bad reputation for being tricksters and causing more mayhem than order, but I never judged them for it and I thnk they appreciated me for that. I would lay awake for hours thinking up adventures in my head and then I would notice that my fairy family was floating more weakly and their light didn't seem as bright and this was usually always around the time of night that light breaks through, the early hours when the sun begins to make it's presence known again and I knew that something was wrong with my fairy family and so I would sneak out of bed and get the jar and release them outside my window. I'm pretty sure I heard their exclamations of joy as they soared away from me and I knew that I would see them again that night because although fairies may trick and cause disorder, they were the magic you could rely on, they would always come the following night and that comforted me. I never did find out where they went during the day. I suppose they became a part of the rest of the light, like they were pieces of the sun that brought light to the night to make sure that naughty little girl's who wandered alone in the dark found their way home again. I know that the witches hated them because it had been a long time since the witch-trees had had soup made from little girls and I can only imagine how hungry they must have been, but that didn't make me any less thankful for the fairies.
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