A fresh, calm afternoon. Sunlight trickles through gaps in the branches, leaving stains of golden light on the ground. On the side of the wooden house’s steep driveway, a patch of trees filters out the sun. Their leaves shine as they attempt to stand guard against the glow. Birds converse in short chirps all around, and ever so often one of them breaks out into a trilling song.
It is the perfect day to be fairies.
Through a delicate deer path, a girl slips through the tall glowing sentinels. She hears her sister already in the hideout and quickens her pace to go by the fir decorated with a small red wooden fairy door. After a moment, she passes through the trees and reaches the top of the hill, where the path inclines downward, carpeted in plush moss. Below is a flat rock outcropping, a meter or two wide, before the rock suddenly falls away vertically to the road.
The girl pauses at the bottom of the hill, at an empty stump where the incline flattens. With a dramatic gesture, she drops a crumpled brown leaf into its hollow. Having paid her fairy toll for entry, she ducks under the lazy branch of an arbutus tree into the fairy hideout and greets her sister.
In their sanctuary, there are several flat areas of rock cleared of damp moss on which to sit. Weeds inch over the ring of rocks for cooking dinners on the right. They soon section off tasks, with the girl assigned to breaking off dead twigs of broom bushes to cook for spaghetti while her sister swiftly makes a fire by arranging fallen orange maple leaves in the firepit. After barely a minute, the spaghetti is ready and seasoned with small herbs and flowers.
While cooking meals is certainly entertaining, what calls them to the hideout most is the sense of excitement as a car passes on the road below. Being fairies, they cannot be seen by anyone, so the drone of a passing engine spurs them into action. Quickly, they must duck to the side, behind a tree, to avoid human recognition. After the vehicle’s departure, they slowly sneak out of their places to resume their activities.
Above where they sit, in the branches of a thin sapling, a bird resumes its song.