Fairies

"Fairy Land"

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"Fairy Land" Details

A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

-- William Shakespeare --

I've always had a great interest in fairies since I was a little girl.
I was so fascinated by the idea of these tiny, winged people living in the woods and meadows, giving locals some joys and troubles. I read many, many books about fairies and little people and dreamt about seeing them one day.

I think I was 10 years old or so then. One afternoon, I came home from school and rushed out again to the nearby woods. There, among the tall trees, was a little patch of clearing and a stream, and this had been my favourite secret place for months. I'd never seen anybody there. It always had been so quiet and somewhat magical, but especially this particular afternoon, the air was filled with something so special. The clearing was covered with white star-shaped flowers, which I could recognized as a well sought after medicinal plant, I started gathering some for my grandmother.

While I was wading through a mass of flowers to pick the very best ones, something flew right into my sight. As I fell back and looked up, I saw a tiny light hovering in the air. First, I thought it was a bug. But then looked closely, I realized it had no wings or body or anything. Just a tiny white-blue light there. The radiating light was only 1cm or so in diameter, swaying one side to another, then suddenly moved right toward me. It stopped at about 20cm away from me, hovered there for a few seconds, and then as suddenly as it appeared, it flew away into the sky and disappeared.

I looked everywhere in the clearing and in the woods all afternoon to find the blue light again, but all to no avail. After the encounter, I went back to the place almost daily, but I never saw it again.

It was nothing like the fairies I saw in the books, but I believed it to be one of them. Years and decades passed, and I still don't know what it was.
Sometimes, very strange things happen in the woods...