Fuji-San's legend

Deep in the hidden caves and passages of Fuji-San lives a species that we humans call faries. These are night-faries and a good deal rarer than day-faries, but nevertheless humans have continued to stumble upon them. Being night-faries, they must live in the dark and can only come outside once evening starts and must come back inside when morning comes. Japan's residents see them and mistake them for fireflies when they have dinner on night-picnics or go star watching. And gradually, this legend, The Legend of the Faries, formed:

It is night and there is a full moon. The moonlight is cool and misty on Fuji-San's rocky surface and on this particular night night-fairies have chosen to have their Moonlight Dance. It is a marvelous sight for onlookers and little children often dream and ask themselves what it would look that. Every version of this legend has a different description of the dance. Fairies flying, lights glowing, bodies twisting and dancing, babies laughing…But this night is also a sad one. In night-fairy folklore, on the Moonlight Night, the Devil descends on Fuji-San's peak and hunts. The night-fairies dance their dance to protect the kind and ward of the Devil. They have done this for millennia. Though one night, the Devil found a weakening in the moonbeam web the night-fairies had spun. So he slipped through. The night-fairies were fast asleep, tired after the dance and snoring in their respective holes. The Devil crept in and ate the newborns, for he believed young flesh to be the best. He ate every baby, until one mother felt a pang in her small heart and awoke, searching for her son. Soon the entire colony was alerted and the Devil fled. Because even though night-fairies were night-fairies they had adapted to the bright twinkle of stars and the almost dreamy light the moon gave off. And so a section on their head now lit up with said light and that light was what was driving the Devil away. The Devil was also a night creature, but a complete one who lived in absolute darkness beneath the Earth's surface with not a shed of light. He could not withstand a hundred night-fairy beams at once. So he fled.

The next night, families mourned. It never happened again, but still night-fairies have an entire night reserved for sorrow, to curse their carelessness. And it is with this story, this fairy-tale, this legend, which grandparents always manage to put their restless grandchildren in bed and lure them into sleep.