Written September 2001
This was written for my 10th grade English class. Yea.
Inside You
Hello Baby-doll. How was your first day of 6th grade?…What’s Mommy doing? I’m cleaning out my-oh! Look at these!…Why, they’re my old faerie wings…No, I wasn’t a faerie when I was little. Do you have a lot of homework?…Good, then I can tell you about my wings.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a faerie. I got the idea into my head when I was 3. I was a thin little thing, and I believed all that was missing to make me completely faerie was the wings. Gauzy, whispy wings that looked like they could never make anything fly, but were just right for a faerie.
When I was 8, for my birthday, I got these wings as a gift. A woman down the road was clever at crafting things, being a fashion designer. She admired my dream, and made them for me. The color is faded now, but they were once a light lavender, and there used to be glitter woven into the soft fabric that made them. They were made so that they could fit onto my shirt where my shoulder blades are without having to have unrealistic straps, and the wire frame was crafted so that the slightest movement of my arms and back would make the wings flap gently, as if they really were a part of my body.
I wore them everywhere. I couldn’t wear them to school, sadly, because backpacks would get in the way, but nothing could stop me from wearing them everywhere else. Sometimes I would leave them behind, like when my family took me to Manhattan or somewhere busy. But my back would always feel naked without them, they had become a part of me. There was a necklace I always wore as well, a small jar full of scented glitter that I had made myself. I had an endless supply of bottles that my mother found for me, and I was constantly mixing flower nectars and water to make the delicious smells to be bottled with the glitter. I would hand them out to strangers on the street, the ones who looked alone or unhappy with themselves at the moment. I would summon up my best smile, and bounce over, and hold out one of the little bottles on a piece of colored string. Without saying a word, after they took it, I would rush off. I remember once I accidentally gave the same boy two necklaces at two different times. Apparently he had been hoping I would make that mistake; as I handed him his second bottle he handed me a bracelet with little silver charms on it.
Later I began to make my own lip gloss, usually out of honey and some other household ingredients. When I was 13 the same woman who made me the wings began to design clothing for me. She had retired, but found that she still had ideas in her head that needed to be made into fabric. She made me thin, gauzy dresses that often had a gentle, torn look to them. She called it her Faerie Line, and I was the only one who ever owned any of it. Every once and a while fashion designers would find me and try to convince me to give them my dresses. But I never did. A couple of times my dressmaker would show me pictures of runway models in dresses that almost looked like mine, but they were missing the final touch to make the models look like they belonged in flowers sipping nectar instead of strutting down the stretches.
…Yes, I still have all the dresses. I believe they’ll fit you in a year or two. I saved them for that purpose, so you could wear them one day.
…No, I never gave up my dream of becoming a faerie. …Oh, why did I stop wearing the wings? Well, I began to worry about them. I was 18 when I moved into The City permanently so I could attend a college there, and I was leaving them at home a lot more than I had ever as a girl. The wire was becoming brittle, and the fabric was very faded as well. At school is where I met your father, a little elfish boy who caught my attention right away. I had dyed my hair the lavender my wings had been, and I remember when I first met him his hair was a dark forest green. We were known as the Faerie Tale Couple on campus; even without my wings people thought I was faerie. That’s around the time I realized that I had been a faerie all along. You see, Baby-doll, not all faeries have wings. Not all elves have pointed ears. Vampires don’t always have pointed teeth, and unicorns don’t always have horns. You have to look deeper, into their hearts, to see what they really are.
…What are you? I think I’ll let you find that one out for yourself.
Inside You
Hello Baby-doll. How was your first day of 6th grade?…What’s Mommy doing? I’m cleaning out my-oh! Look at these!…Why, they’re my old faerie wings…No, I wasn’t a faerie when I was little. Do you have a lot of homework?…Good, then I can tell you about my wings.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a faerie. I got the idea into my head when I was 3. I was a thin little thing, and I believed all that was missing to make me completely faerie was the wings. Gauzy, whispy wings that looked like they could never make anything fly, but were just right for a faerie.
When I was 8, for my birthday, I got these wings as a gift. A woman down the road was clever at crafting things, being a fashion designer. She admired my dream, and made them for me. The color is faded now, but they were once a light lavender, and there used to be glitter woven into the soft fabric that made them. They were made so that they could fit onto my shirt where my shoulder blades are without having to have unrealistic straps, and the wire frame was crafted so that the slightest movement of my arms and back would make the wings flap gently, as if they really were a part of my body.
I wore them everywhere. I couldn’t wear them to school, sadly, because backpacks would get in the way, but nothing could stop me from wearing them everywhere else. Sometimes I would leave them behind, like when my family took me to Manhattan or somewhere busy. But my back would always feel naked without them, they had become a part of me. There was a necklace I always wore as well, a small jar full of scented glitter that I had made myself. I had an endless supply of bottles that my mother found for me, and I was constantly mixing flower nectars and water to make the delicious smells to be bottled with the glitter. I would hand them out to strangers on the street, the ones who looked alone or unhappy with themselves at the moment. I would summon up my best smile, and bounce over, and hold out one of the little bottles on a piece of colored string. Without saying a word, after they took it, I would rush off. I remember once I accidentally gave the same boy two necklaces at two different times. Apparently he had been hoping I would make that mistake; as I handed him his second bottle he handed me a bracelet with little silver charms on it.
Later I began to make my own lip gloss, usually out of honey and some other household ingredients. When I was 13 the same woman who made me the wings began to design clothing for me. She had retired, but found that she still had ideas in her head that needed to be made into fabric. She made me thin, gauzy dresses that often had a gentle, torn look to them. She called it her Faerie Line, and I was the only one who ever owned any of it. Every once and a while fashion designers would find me and try to convince me to give them my dresses. But I never did. A couple of times my dressmaker would show me pictures of runway models in dresses that almost looked like mine, but they were missing the final touch to make the models look like they belonged in flowers sipping nectar instead of strutting down the stretches.
…Yes, I still have all the dresses. I believe they’ll fit you in a year or two. I saved them for that purpose, so you could wear them one day.
…No, I never gave up my dream of becoming a faerie. …Oh, why did I stop wearing the wings? Well, I began to worry about them. I was 18 when I moved into The City permanently so I could attend a college there, and I was leaving them at home a lot more than I had ever as a girl. The wire was becoming brittle, and the fabric was very faded as well. At school is where I met your father, a little elfish boy who caught my attention right away. I had dyed my hair the lavender my wings had been, and I remember when I first met him his hair was a dark forest green. We were known as the Faerie Tale Couple on campus; even without my wings people thought I was faerie. That’s around the time I realized that I had been a faerie all along. You see, Baby-doll, not all faeries have wings. Not all elves have pointed ears. Vampires don’t always have pointed teeth, and unicorns don’t always have horns. You have to look deeper, into their hearts, to see what they really are.
…What are you? I think I’ll let you find that one out for yourself.