Princesses and Pixies

I met a pixie today. Somehow she escaped from Faerieland and is living in Linville. She was tiny and serious with a brown ponytail that looks like it should be crowned with silver flowers. "Ma petite fée" did not have pointed ears, but they looked like they could be without much effort. She walked in a dreamland all her own, where mortals cannot tread, and spoke with an air of royalty. True to form, she floated around the room--when the other children were busy building with Legos and K-Nex and playing on the computers--with a wand of blue topped with a white snowflake (as seen by those with faerie sight...to others it looked like a blue stick with a white K-Nex piece on top) and asked me quite seriously if I could find a princess in the room (how did she know that's what I love to do best?!) "I am a fairy godmother," she said, "looking for a princess but I cannot find one." (This surprised me not a little considering I knew for a fact that an Elven princess was at the computer that very minute. Apparently I am not the only woman in this area who thinks the name Arwen is quite lovely, but that is a matter for another day.)

You may wonder how I knew this little one was from Faerie. It is easy to recognize them actually, if you know what to look for. This one gave herself away in the library when she told the librarian with a completely straight face, and no forewarning or reason: "I was made to sing and dance" then walked away without a backward glance. (That rhyme was unintentional. Glance is just such a better word than look.) And then there was the comment by the other teacher at recess, something about her living in her own world and being so incredibly happy in it she made others (the adults) wish they knew what went on in her mind. I think I understand.

"There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Story Girl)

"Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold...While he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost."--JRR Tolkien

"If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world."
-- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity