§358

‘It was around 10 or 11 am in the early summer of 2002, and I was in the bathroom, just starting my bath. It was so warm and bright that I had the small window open, and the breeze was coming right in from the backyard. (There was never a screen on that window because it was a little high up, and too small for a person). I shrugged off my robe, and sat down on the tub edge, waiting for the tub to fill. Quite suddenly, a flickering cloud of little lights came right in through the window and, as though attracted to me, flew close, almost touching, around my head and shoulders. I was so shocked that my brain just froze! There was a tickle in my nose, and something in my understanding just clicked. I said out loud, and I mean, LOUD, (though as a twenty-nine-year-old woman such a thing had never occurred to me as being within the realms of possibility or even reality) ‘Hey! Faeries! Go away!’ And I tossed my head and flicked my wrist. The cloud of little lights zoomed off a little bit away from me, then gathered close together, for just a second, and I almost heard a sound, but it wasn’t quite a sound, really, more of an impression that there was communication between them that I could very nearly hear, like a buzz or a high frequency whine or bells shimmering like when they bless the Host in Mass – and then they flew as one, right out the window again! I was so surprised that I jumped up, naked as a jaybird, shut the window, and yelled out to my husband to come to the bathroom. My knees were too wobbly to support me just then. Whew! Never thought I’d get a chance to tell that to someone who didn’t think I was NUTS!!! Hmm… Let’s see. I don’t think there is anything else. This was nearly fifteen years ago. Oh, and I was a few weeks pregnant at the time, just about to find out, in fact. My backyard at the time was overgrown with blackberry thickets, dandelions and bluebells, and our part of Portland is in the Southwest portion, in a place called ***, which we are very privileged to still keep very green and lush. There is a lot of ivy, oak and holly here, and the Wildwood and ***, one of the largest urban parks in America, are just a few miles away. The Wildwood Trail is beautiful and over thirty miles long, and *** covers five thousand one hundred and fifty seven acres.’ ‘A cloud of small, flying lights. Warm, white lights.’ ‘Buzz or high, shimmering bells that I could almost, but not quite, hear.’ ‘[I thought fairies] probably because I don’t believe in angels or aliens. And I don’t believe in ghosts as conscious individuals, except on Samhain when they might peek back across the Veil from Summerland, if they haven’t yet been reborn into new human lives. The way the cloud of lights came in from the outside when I was just naked and enjoying the breeze, just simple emotions, I guess, seemed to suggest faeries. Odd. Never thought it might be some other thing. Plus, when I addressed them by name and told them to go, they did!’ ‘I don’t know [what fairies are]. Not like us. Some form of sentient energy. They are not human. From the stories I’ve read, they are a very mixed bag. Their personalities seem to be bipolar at best and sadistic at worst. This was the only time they ever came to me, and it was startling but okay. Still, better to leave them to themselves. I don’t open doors I can’t close, nor invite things I don’t understand. But if I ever came across an old man in the wood, I’d give him half my lunch and my water to drink, and talk to him much more politely than I did to whatever flew around me in the bathroom fifteen years ago when I was naked! Least I learned that much!’