Grrr. I don't like the ending.
Inspired by reading The Merrybegot by Julia Hearne
A green field rolled out from under his feet, spotted with sheep and criss-crossed with pebble walls. A dark forest, much diminished from when he'd seen it, blotted the horizon. The sky was, for once, a clear blue with dragon smoke artfully blown across it. As the man walked along a wall, little whispers built up along the ditches.
"'E's come back."
"Oo is it then?"
"That hoity lad!"
"What? You think I forgot where I came from?" he asked. To a chorus of whoops he kicked off his shoes and his socks and let his feet sink into the soft turf.
"You speakin' loik a boggin' noble."
"Sod off, you pixie." A few quick steps and he was swallowed up in old English forest, wild and uncultivated and lovely.
"We'm piskies, you fairy-blinded bogger. You forgot that?" piped up an old, old wizened creature. She had dark, cracked bark skin and a black pointed tongue when she stuck it out.
"I ain't forgot, Mam." he said, slipping into the old speech. "I just been busy."
"Hoity lad." The old one said affectionately. "Not visiting yer old Mam."
"Old bag." he said back.
The little piskies tittered and swarmed 'round his ankles. "Hoity lad, hoity lad, you smells like somethin' bad. Somethin' like badness and sadness."
"I ain't sad. Or bad. I'm just lonely-like."
"You'm always been lonely-like." said another piskie, sharp-eyed for his age.
"And I'm done." He announced, dropping some wild herbs into a plastic bag. He turned to go.
The piskies splashed like a brown wave around him and turned their ugly heads up. "When we gonna see you again, fairy-boy?"
"Lotsa times." he said. "I ain't done yet."
The piskies and the fairies could make him their own again if he stayed too long, and he wouldn't be the failed fairy-boy who grew big by a curse and had his heart melted from a lick of ice. But he liked his life as a sort-of human, and the piskies must have smelled that in the wind and let him pass.