The Language Of The Fay [FICTOID]

“Auntie, did you know there were fairies in your garden?”

“Yes, I know.”

“How long have they been coming?”

“Too damn long.”

The little girl looked puzzled.  “I don’t understand.  Aren’t they magical?  Aren’t they wonderful?”

“Magical?  Yes.  Wonderful?  No.”

“I can’t believe you don’t love fairies.”

“That’s because you don’t have to clean up their precious fairy puke, or pick up their tiny fairy liquor bottles, or recover their tiny fairy panties from the rose bushes.”

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

The elderly aunt leaned back in her chair, squinting at her niece with one eye.  “Go to that drawer over there, the one on top.  Open it and take out the talisman.”

The little girl did as told, taking out a silver ear on a chain necklace.

“Now put it around your neck and hold the talisman to your ear.

“You’ll hear what the fairies are saying in their own language.”

The little girl took out the talisman, looped it around her neck, then opened the cottage window to eavesdrop of the fairies in the garden.

“Oi!  I’m damn well bloody hungover.  Shouldn’t-a drunk so much morning dew last night.”

“You were pretty well knackered, ye drunken old sod.  You tried to pick a fight with Thistledown.”

“Coo!  G/wan, I wasn’t that drunk!

“Yer lucky Thistledown was even drunker, ye wretched old reprobate.  Good thing she was too busy heavin’ in the lilacs to put up with your nonsense.”

“I coulda taken her -- if I twere truly drunk.”

“Ye be drunk all right, you smelly old skank!   When Thistledown wouldn’t fight you, you picked up a toad at the bar and went home with him.”

“I did?  Well, that explains the slime this morning.”

“So tell me, is it true what they say ‘bout toad tongue?”

The little girl silently closed the window, removed the talisman from her neck, put it back in the drawer, and sat across from her aunt, her face unreadable and expressionless.

“Be a love and pour another slug of gin in my tea,” said her aunt.

© Buzz Dixon