How miserable it must be, to be a wizard without magic, a mermaid without a tail, or a fairy without wings.
On the eve of November 19, 1991, a crooked laugh from a crooked smile floated lightly above the dense fog of London. The laugh echoed through the streets and bounced between the rails of old train tracks. Then it leaped up into the sky and stared directly at the face of that famous clock tower, Big Ben. The sunset was purple, blue, and orange, but not red – enough light with which to navigate but too much to detect the faint stars.
The laugh was echoing weaker and weaker, the sound waves growing fainter and fainter, but the stars were not there to help it reach its intended destination. It drifted off with the wind, away from London, away from its place of birth. The air was not freezing, but it was uncomfortably cold for the newborn laugh, waiting for the sun to set.
The stars did not shine until the laugh had made considerable progress east toward Canterbury. By then, it was a faint tinkling, a ghost of a giggle. The laugh struggled its way up into the sky, into the few clouds that were now beginning to settle in, toward the second star.
The winds beat furiously at this height, but the little laugh continued, persevered, and refused to give up. The clouds grew thicker and thicker, the winds beat faster, and the poor little laugh, already weakened with time, felt fatigued and lonely. But it would not give up. It almost fought its way through the coldness and the wetness of the clouds, until suddenly, the sky cleared.
And down below lay an island, difficult to see during this evening hour. The bright eyes of the little laugh, however, did detect the glowing and the sparkling of the pixie dust, to which it was instinctively attracted.
Far, far away from its place of birth, the little laugh settled in a field of dandelions, where it caught onto a single seed and refused to let go. Then the wind brought it into the heart of Pixie Hollow – the Pixie Dust Tree.
When the little laugh, tired and bruised, finally got its first taste of pixie dust, it transformed into a fairy.
A fairy without wings.
