You know a little about garden fairies. No one wants to be the victim of small curses, but it’s nearly impossible to know what sets a fairy off so they’re often treated like wasps - you ignore them and they’ll ignore you.
Still, half-dead chrysanthemums can’t be a nice home.
You buy a new pot, putting it right next to the old one. The fairy investigates it from time to time, you can see them harvesting nectar, but they continue to live in the half-dead pot.
Thinking it might just like the placement of the pot, you rotate the two. The fairy stays with the now-dead chrysanthemums. It thankfully doesn’t seem to have too much against the move; you don’t think you’ve earned a curse, anyway.
In the evenings, you sit on your balcony and enjoy the sun. Sometimes you see the fairy, sitting outside the burrow it’s created in sun-baked earth. You don’t know where it goes during the day - they’re supposed to feed on nectar but your one pot of healthy chrysanthemums can’t be enough to feed it. Does it harvest from your neighbor’s mini roses? The posies three floors down? You’ve never seen it fly from or to your balcony, but it is nothing more than a tiny, green speck the size of a thumb joint.
It sticks around as summer ends, and you start to get worried. You know it’s not a pet, dependent on you for care, but you notice the flowers are dying and with it the fairy’s food source. You start to leave out caps of honey water, and now, after nearly two months of you and the fairy mutually ignoring each other you have attention.
It’s nerve-wracking, seeing it land on your hand while you’re holding a book. Can you turn the page? Or will that upset it, leading to a stinging curse? You don’t turn a page for a solid ten minutes until it flies off to its burrow.
When you step outside it flies around your head, wings buzzing in your ear.
One evening, you place the cap of honey water not on the floor near the pot, but on your small bistro table. The fairy lands next to it, slurping the water. You’ve never seen it drink before, and try to hide your laughter. Faires are delicate, magical creatures and you expected them to use their hands as a cup. But no, the fairy ducks its head into the cap, slurping. When it sits back on its knees, water drips from its chin. Its hair, really wisps of magic, is weighed down.
It looks at you with round, faceted eyes and sings. You tense, fairies only make a sound when casting magic. Have you finally pissed it off? Have you been cursed?
Slowly, you step back into your apartment. Your bowl of raspberries, which you’d been munching on, is once again full.
You’ve not been cursed, you’ve been blessed.
You cry, glad the fairy likes you that much. Trusts you that much.
It’s just a magical wasp, you know that. It feeds on flowers. They die when the weather gets cold. You shouldn’t feel so connected to what many people consider a pest.
You grab a shallow dish, fill it with more honey water. A fest for a fairy. Slowly, you carry it and your bowl of raspberries outside.
The fairy is on the table’s end, legs dangling and wings flapping like a butterfly. Its gaze zooms in on the dish. You can’t read its facial expression, but you think clapping hands are joy. You set both dishes on the table, and for the first time, enjoy a meal together.
