“Elsa’s Fairies”

“Elsa encountered the elementals of both earth and water; she met them in gardens and woods, by streams and lakes. Something told her that these beings intermediated between the gross physicality of the world experienced through the senses and the subtle spirituality of the celestial domains. She apperceived that just as the fleshy integument of the human encapsulated its spiritual essence, so the entire cast of the world appearance, from stones, to plants, insects, animals, and planets had, indwelling their materiality, a similar discarnate quintessence. These insubstantial creatures did, in fact, resemble miniature human beings, just as artists had always portrayed them. They had faces and bodies and even smiled up at her, warming her heart. There was no telling when the elementals would show themselves, but Elsa noticed that they usually appeared when she was dreamy, abstracted, simply wandering around a place, not thinking concretely, but simply being. She often noticed them out of her peripheral vision and then turned to face them head on. Most often they appeared in groups of two or three, but sometimes, individually. “At play” was how she later described the beings. One of them would stand on a geranium leaf and then rise into the air, several inches above the plant, and hover there. Another might spring from one bright-yellow, black-eyed-Susan petal to another, gaily jumping as if from one diving board to a second. A third would slide down the smooth oblanceolate surface of a lily-of-the-valley leaf, only to bounce up from its bottom into a position astride the pedicel supporting one of the modest, down-bent, bell-shaped flowers of that sweet-smelling plant. There it would rise and fall as the wind moved the stalk, clutching it with both barely visible hands, little legs splayed like a bull rider, all the while beaming up at Elsa.”