hwango

Hello, children. You know, for a moment there I was genuinely baffled as to who could be knocking on my door. What with the positively torrential rain I felt sure I wouldn't get any visitors. Ah, I see. You can't run around and play outside because of the weather, so you thought you'd come ask me for a story, and of course it's not as if I could be doing anything very important. Very well. Leave all those muddy shoes by the door, and try not to drip on the floor too much.

Let's see, what sort of tale would be appropriate for a day like this? What? Something bright and cheerful? Have you forgotten who you're talking to?

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a fairy by the name of Lyra Cracklekin. Lyra lived in a magical tree whose soul she had bound into a small silver jar and buried under a patch of venomous brambles. Yes, this tree did so have a soul. No, not everything has a soul - Lyra being a ready example. Well yes, she had the tree's soul, just not one of her own. Now stop interrupting me.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. Now, fairies come in many varieties and shapes and sizes, and Lyra happened to be a hobgoblin, which meant she was gnarled, ugly, bad-tempered, and generally not a pleasant sort of person, as one might infer from her treatment of her tree's soul. Unusual among fairies, this meant she was more or less exactly what she seemed.

Not far from Lyra's tree there lived another faerie, this one a pixie called Plurvge. Plurvge used to have another, more pixie-ish name, probably with the word "dancer" in it, but unfortunately her name had been stolen from her by wicked human children several years previous, and now she led a miserable, lonely life shunned by the other pixies. She lived in a small patch of weeds. Lyra tolerated her presence because she liked the musical little sounds of the pixie sobbing over her lost happiness.

One day, a sunflower sprouted between Plurvge's patch of weeds and Lyra's tree. The seed it grew from was buried and forgotten by a squirrel some time previous, but I don't want to get into the squirrel's story because I don't want to overcomplicate things. For the sake of completeness I'll just say that when the squirrel was a little boy his name was Timothy before he became lost in Fairie and transformed into a squirrel for the crime of stealing a pixie's name. No, not Plurvge's name - see, I knew it would only overcomplicate things.

Anyway, Plurvge loved the sunflower because it brought bright, cheerful color to the otherwise dismal little blotch of land in which she dwelled. Lyra despised the sunflower for pretty much the same reason, even though she only ever saw it by moonlight because she couldn't leave her tree during the day without being scorched by the light of the sun. Plurvge also loved the sunflower because Lyra hated it, because Plurvge had always suspected that Lyra was the one who helped the wicked human children steal her name in the first place. See, things are already complicated enough without Timothy and his tragic journey into Faerie to find his lost sister who had been turned into a tree.

Plurvge doted on the flower, making sure it had enough water, chasing off hungry-looking insects, tending to the tiny planets so they didn't fall out of their orbits, and so on. What? What do you mean, "what planets?" This was a sunflower. It had a little system of tiny planets, asteroids, and such. Plurvge even managed to find it a comet. Look, I can't help that all of the sunflowers you've seen don't have fully-developed planetary systems around them, okay? This one did.

Anyway, Lyra often thought about tearing the flower from the ground and stomping on it, but was reluctant to do so in case its spirit was strong enough to burn her much like the sun overhead. This was a reasonable fear, since Plurvge was doing an excellent job of caring for it.

Now, if you thought finding a comet small enough for a flower was difficult (and it really was), then you can imagine how hard it was to find a hive of bees willing to risk getting their feet burned harvesting nectar from the sunflower. But eventually Plurvge managed to persuade a few brave bees to make the attempt. Indeed, it was tricky and delicate work, and even with all of the care they took one bee got slightly scorched and the sunflower's innermost planet was knocked out of orbit and sailed off into the sky. But in the end they managed to get enough nectar to make her some very special honey.

Plurvge left her honey hidden poorly enough that Lyra would be able to spot it without realizing she was supposed to, and being the wicked, cruel creature that she was she immediately stole and ate it. I'm sure you can imagine what happens to a sun-fearing creature who eats honey infused with that much sunlight. The fire fused her bones together into one solid piece, and her skeleton is still standing to this day. Birds nest in it, I believe.

And so, Timothy's sister finally got her revenge.

What? It does so make sense. Yes it does.

Anyway, the lesson here is never to track mud all over an old man's floor. And not to steal souls, names, or honey, because you never know when doing so might lead to a complicated chain of events that culminates in you being burned alive from the inside out.

Oh, look, the rain has stopped. Why don't you children go play in the sun?