When fairies are giving each other directions, they have to know the same concepts. Me? I just tell people an address and they use maquest -- or I give them a few cross streets, say right or left a few times, and they find me pretty easily.
When you're in a grove, things are totally different.
Remember how people always used to talk about Eskimos having different names for the kinds of snow and the condition of the snow? It helps them describe places.
Fairies have about a billion words for bark. The describe it by color, height on the plant, condition, age, and amount of sap. Probably other things also. But they have a single word for any kind of bark. Like, the smooth white bark on the white tree in the photo below would have one word for the main part of the trunk at five feet high, and a different word for the same kind of bark thirty feet up. A third word would describe the bark on a hornizontal branch on the same tree. A fourth word describes the bark on the roots that you can see. There's also words for the bark below ground. The dark colored bark in the photo has different words altogether.
It's totally bewildering.
Maybe Bewildering should have been my B word today.
The only reason I mention it is I waited around for maybe an hour because I thought Thumbelina told me to meet her at the tree with the rough bark horizontally oriented near ground level (schplutzitch.) The tree I found is below.
She was late for her olympic training (or at least, that's why I call it.) Thumbelina waited for an hour at the tree shown above before she figured out my mistake and came to find me.
I'm so bummed. (That's also a great B word.)
When you add in the fact that many trees have proper names, and their bark has to be modified with an -ip suffix followed by the name ("Schpluschich-ip Steve" for example) you can see how confusing it gets. A novice would spend a lot of time getting lost.
I've only got two more days to help Thumbelina train for her hummingbird races (see H post.) After that, she's on her own again. I doubt I'll even find out the results of her race once I'm among humans again. I mean, it's not too likely to be televised or shown on a live internet feed. So, on the day of midsummer's games, I'll just be thinking of her. It's about as bad as the days when people had to wait for letters in the mail to find anything out. Actually it's worse. I don't even get to keep in touch by mail.
I guess I'm just a little blue (another great B word) because the vacation is ending soon, and I let my friend down.
I hope Thumbelina's poppies always pout perfectly.
-- Sabrina
I'm a little blue, too. It's not the kind of thing a lightening bolt or a good laugh can fix, either. I think having Sabrina in the grove made everything seem more interesting than any other summer. She's fun to talk to. I like teaching her different fairy skills. Or, at least, the ones she can handle given that the transformation has limitations. She's become a really good friend. Maybe we can make her an honorary fairy and she can print out a little certificate for herself when she gets home.
May your pansies populate the planet.
-- Fresh
