Invigorating
Interesting
Impressive
Important
Illuminating
Irritating
Imbecilic
Impolite
I had my second conversation with the queen. From the first meeting, I had no idea she ever got out and did any normal fairy work. I had this impression of her sitting there inside the tree, giving orders and being waited on like Queen Elizabeth. Well, that's not exactly right. The queen of England does a lot of work all over the world. Maybe I assumed the fairy queen was more like a queen bee. She has wings, after all.
I was helping Thumbelina with the daily flower opening. There's no rushing that job. You open them in the right order for the day of the year and the needs of the different animals that use them. I'm getting so much patience from doing this job every day, I'll probably never yell at anyone in traffic again. As I worked on a patch of morning glories, I ran into the queen.
More specifically, I backed into the queen. Bum to bum. We bumped.
It was a little awkward.
But the queen just chuckled about it. She doesn't seem to be the kind of lady who gets riled too easily.
Being a writer, I had billions of questions to ask her. She was available. The work was easy. She seemed quite happy to talk. I learned all kinds of things about her lifetime, the reasons she became queen, and how she manages the administration of a grove of diverse fairies. That conversation, in itself, would be an encyclopedia-sized piece of work. A queen fairy is able to convey a lot more information than just through words. I could actually see what she was talking about as she said it.
Sorry, I'm not going to write that encyclopedia. Just my blog.
I was really impressed when the queen told me that she considers every fairy in her grove a queen in training. That's an unusual attitude -- especially for me. I'm used to the work place where top dog is the only top dog. End of story.
The queen said, "Any one of my ladies could easily be trained to replace me."
Being an idiot (another good "I" word) I tossed off the comment, "Oh, I guess anyone can become pudgy and sweet if they wait long enough."
Thumbelina looked at me as if I had just sprouted a horn in the middle of my forehead.
There are moments in life when you wish your words were a long string extending from your mouth, and you could chase down the worst of them, snip them off with scissors before they reached anyone's ears, and stuff them deep in the nastiest corner of a trash can, to decompose with the worst of the garbage.
That was the kind of moment I was having.
Did I just insult the queen twice in one sentence -- or was it three times?
The queen wasn't even offended.
She chuckled the way she had when we bumped into each other. "Well, my ladies can be any shape they like. Each has such potential to make a difference in the world. I was just expressing my admiration."
I stood corrected.
I wanted to evaporate the way Thumbelina does when she's working under water.
I quickly agreed that the fairies I had met seemed to be capable, intelligent, and hard-working. What I really wanted to say to the queen was that I admired her more than any other person I had met, and couldn't believe my own stupidity, sometimes. Groveling is such an awful idea, though.
I found an excuse to flower-fly somewhere else.
I'm just going to curl up and die of shame.
-- Sabrina
Poor thing. She doesn't know that her comment was no insult at all. Plump or slim makes no difference to us. If we show ourselves to humans, we usually chose a form they find pleasing, and in the last few hundred years, that has been a slim type shape. Among ourselves though, a fairies size just is. That's all. You are what you are if you're a fairy. Saying the queen was plump and sweet was like saying a morning glory is round and white. It's just the truth. And saying anyone could be queen was only echoing the sentiments of the queen herself.
Thinking like a human must be limiting. Trying to watch your manners all the time must also get tiring. It's adorable that Sabrina wants so badly to keep on everyone's good side. She tries to hard at it. Just wears herself out. Maybe by the end of her vacation she'll realize that good sides are all we fairies have.
We're happy to like her. Even when people laughed at her singing, they still liked her.
Being embarrassed. It's got to really hurt. I'll see what I can do to cheer Sabrina up.
May your morning glory glow magnificently.
-- Fresh
