Magic finds me…

A story about finding… and losing? …real magic. And what I’d reluctantly do after.

There was a time I was taken by faeries, from Litha to Lammas, as the year spun warm. No need to riddle through thorn thickets thick. The faeries found me, where I sat in the sun — in a circle where I picnicked, sharing with ants, caressing the bees, giving thanks to the goddess of gardenias and trees.

From moss and from root, they came from the earth. Their touches were words and dark was their song — turning bright clearing to sepia tones — but so sweet that I willingly followed.

Down,down… to a forest bed, blankets of fog. Dream,dream… in the dark where the sun sleeps at night. Spin,spin… in a world so like our own, but the opposite side of the mirror. We rolled along mountains,sang songs to the sky; we lived in reflections, slipped silver inside, more real than the real, forgot about time, portals in portals, the lost of the lost, dancing in grasses through ripples of light.

But portals they open and portals they close. Eclipses hide secrets you wouldn’t suppose. And life with the fae is no life at all: a shadow at best, writ on a wall. All filled with what if, but fated unchanged. Your deepest desires,but scantly arranged. And all who stay there are destined to fall. It’s the moment before — (before nothing at all).

This I do know, but…

I gave them my name, I accepted their gifts, I sipped their words like the finest of wines. Nothing in all worlds could take me away. But that’s before I noticed the signs. They sprouted on trees, in mirrors at night. Some quite marvelous, made mostly of light. They fascinated me. They tickled my mind. There was… something… beyond them… I needed to find…

Alone on the threshold, I dared them to chase. But the fae turned their backs. I stood in my place. “Tell me I have to. You’re making me stay,” I begged the dark creatures, but they walked away. And the portal, it tore me, by heart, through the door. Till I arrived at the place I'd started before.

I blinked tears and day: the realm of reason, with barest of rhymes, and fear in my chest I'd lost more than time. But then – I found in my pockets blank page and a pen. And light, and a song, and what’s left of a storm. And secure in my knowledge I had all I need, I gently pulled closed the door.

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