It was such a great feeling to put on jeans again. My old green hoodie, my favorite pendant on a leather string around my neck, and my cell phone tucked in a back pocket. It was abnormal to feel so normal.
I let Thumbelina borrow some clothes, too.
I asked her, "Why can't we fly? We could zip around in there like bats."
"Because of the bats already in there. We'd get in their way, and they'd get in ours."
"Don't you have echolocation?"
"No, and the bats couldn't bounce sound off a fairy even if they tried. You're safe in your normal human form. I'm only safe where your clothing covers my body. That's why I needed a hoodie like yours. A real one. Made of fibers. That way the bats won't bonk into me."
"Are fairies made that differently from humans?" I asked.
"Duh."
Well, a fairy is at least built of the same kind of sarcasm I 'm used to. This whole vacation has been one reminder after another that fairies are built of some different kind of matter than me. Sarcasm is the one thing we truly share.
"Let's go," I said, and switched on my flashlight.
I had kept a ton of things in the trunk of my car when I signed on for this dream vacation. I didn't know if I would need camping gear or special clothing, so I packed a little of everything. Flashlights were included -- including one arranged as a headlamp. Now, I wish I had bought two.
I realized there was a black light on the hand-held flashlight I handed Thumbelina. So, just when we got to the dark part of the cave, I switched off my headlamp, and asked Thumbelina to turn off the flashlight I had given her. I switched it to the black light. I had to get a better look at the ultraviolet make up I heard so much about on queen presentation day. No matter where I looked, there were swirls and dots. Flowers, leaves, trees, slashing lines. Sort of a Disney meets surfboard designer effect. It covered every inch of exposed skin. Thumbelina's make up wasn't as busy-looking. She probably didn't have as many people working on her when it was applied. For all I know, she had to do the whole thing herself. Her skin had swaths of ultraviolet alternating with cross-hatching and diagonal stripes. It was strictly designs -- nothing representational there. I was impressed, though.
"We both look so awesome," I said.
"Yeah, about that . . . " Thumbelina said. "You will always have ultraviolet glowing on you -- even after you go back home."
This took a second to sink in.
"What?"
"Fairy make up is permanent. Like really permanent. Lifelong permanent."
"You mean I will be glowing my way through any haunted house I go to from now until I die?" I was a little stunned. Ok. More than a little. I was blown completely away.
"Yes. It's in your contract, you know."
I turned the flashlight to it's full white beam -- the extra brilliant super nova setting -- and shone it right in Thumbelina's face. "I didn't see any 'permanent UV' clause."
"It was part of the 'life changing' experiences paragraph."
"That paragraph was totally vague."
"Well, I was going to mention that there are options to modify the deigns. Your skin has to be covered by the same amount of ultra violet, but it could be repositioned if you wanted it to be mostly in areas under your clothing."
I was starting to get used to the idea of being UV enhanced. "Well, I have to check the face designs before I make any kind of decision, don't I?"
My make-up kit was back in the trunk of my car. I stormed out of the cave, and found a little mirror.
Back under ground, I finally saw the ultraviolet makeup on my face. What can I say? Only the queen had a better set of designs. Thumbelina's work on my eyes had so much delicacy, I wanted to take a photo and post it online right then and there.
Thumbelina was a little on edge. "Well, how do you like it?"
"It's the best make up I've ever seen."
"Do you think you'll want to move some of your make up to less visible areas?"
I honestly didn't know about that. I told Thumbelina I'd decide later. So, switching off my UV flashlight, I got the normal light on from all the flashlights.
I told her, "You're just lucky I think the designs everyone made are pretty -- otherwise there'd be a lawsuit. The first cross-species lawsuit in the history of the planet."
I put my mirror into the pocket of my hoodie. Then we had our tour.
The cave is so much cooler when seen with a fairy. She knows the whole story. Or at least, Thumbelina knew about two hundred years of the story from first-hand experience. But she was aware of a lot more history because she listened to lots of stories when she was younger.
A flood that came right before a deep, hard freeze made the huge crack running all the way to the surface. From that crack, ran a continual ooze of water -- down and around the sides of the cave and into a pool. A single stalactite hanging at the edge of the little pool dripped down -- maybe once a minute. It had gone at that rate on dry days for the last seven hundred years at least.
The pool was home to a ton of critters that Thumbelina could see with no problems due to her expanded vision. When I shone my UV light on the pool, I wanted to catch my breath. There was just so much going on in there.
"Can we shrink down, and see these guys closer up?" I asked.
Thumbelina looked doubtful. "I thought you didn't like going much lower than fun size."
"For this kind of show, I'd go microscopic," I answered.
"Well, there won't be any bats in the water. I don't know of any humans in the cave or even within a mile of here," Thumbelina said. She still hesitated.
"Is it against some rule for me to do this/" I didn't want to get her in trouble.
"Not any rule I know about. It's just not part of the original plan I discussed with the queen."
"Do we need to go back to get permission?"
Deep down, I really like rules. I think most of them have solid reasoning behind them. Being new to the whole fairy world, I didn't want to break any big taboos. I also didn't want to get Thumbelina in trouble. I was really starting to like her -- and that's only partly because of the sweet work on my eye makeup.
Thumbelina considered a second. "Why don't we shrink to fly-size? Then we can swim around without getting eaten by most of the critters in there."
"There aren't any fish?" I asked.
"Not the last time I checked. We're pretty deep."
"Then, let's go!"
We had to take off my outfits and fold them neatly. Then, unfurling wings, and hovering briefly over the pool, we shrunk to a size just below the common house fly. Dipping into the water, I was glad my black light was still shining on the pool. To swim among critters like this would have been terrifying if I couldn't see where they were.
Long millipede guys scuttled across the bottom of the pool. Bubble bodied tiny guys with long antennae sort of floated wherever they wanted. Things that looked like insects. Things that looked like blobs. Big and small and round or pointy. There was so much living in that water, I wasn't sure I would ever think the same way about water that's marketed as "Mountain Pure."
Even if I wanted to speak under water, I couldn't. Still too much like a human.
Thumbelina filled me in on fairy names for all the types. She even knew the latin names in human language for four or five. She showed me how to properly greet the biggest types (the millipedes, and a couple of bettle-like critters.) Then, she told me about their lives.
It was so much better than hearing about life cycles. She knew which individuals hatched in this pool and which had to crawl for many meters to get here. She knew how often there were mass migrations, and why. She also knew which animals irritated the bejeebers out of each other, and how the fairies helped them get along. It was like going to a cocktail party where accountants mingled with hard rock bands and fast food workers, apparently, if you wanted to live in that pool. Different hours of activity. Different goals. Different ways of making a living. Different attitudes. There was an amazing amount of drama in that pool -- and in human meansurements, the thing was only three or four feet across. I wouldn't have even gotten the tops of my shoes wet if I had stepped in as a human wearing my hiking boots.
Fairies ought to bring their brand of education to the science departments of this world.
We spent maybe an hour schmoozing with the locals in the pool.
Once we grew again, I'm the only one who had to dry off. Human trait, that getting wet stuff. It can be irritating to be limited like that.
Thumbelina and I put my clothes back on.
We visited the bats. I got a bewildering life history of the entire colony. My brain, by that point was too fried from hearing about he underwater bugs. I only halfway listened about the bats' lives.
We saw tiny passages we could only navigate at sizes smaller than a mouse. We stayed big and human-shaped, but Thumbelina explained what routes each one took, and the bearing it had on temperatures and what it did for migrations. She explained each color of limestone formation not in scientific terms, but artistic words. I loved it.
To say I was overwhelmed would be putting it mildly.
I spent the whole day in the cave, seeing the life forms, rocks and water in the same way a fairy sees them.
My contract mentioned 'life-changing experiences.'
I just had another one.
-- Sabrina
She went right to sleep after we exited the caves. I actually let her sleep in her car -- still in human form. I thought she was getting too dazzled by new thoughts, and her brain might need the extra space to make sense of it all. She was snoring before I even tucked the last shoe into the plastic bags she had in her trunk.
Pretty good day for me too.
May your rhododendron rock your world.
-- Fresh
