Books line the walls of the small room, filled with huge windows looking out to the wild garden surrounded by high hedgerows. Your desk sits looking outwards, with your bright red typewriter, starkly contrasting with the black and white keys in an otherwise pastel room.

There’s candles lit on every possible surface, amber incense fills the room and your story is slowly coming together. Albeit is somewhat mad fashion today. You are finding it surprisingly hard to concentrate. Is is a full moon after all you think, as you look at it’s face staring through your windows.

You rarely close your curtains when it’s dark. It blocks the connection with nature and where the flower fairies come from. Those being the theme of so many of your stories.

As a chid you believed in the flower fairies. You’d imagine them being there with you, supporting you. One for every aspect you needed, so you imagined. That belief never left you and your fairies went through being in your head to being on the page.

Your stories are written for that magical child in all women, the one that still believes in magic and fairies, but sometimes needs a little extra help to guide her through her life or just the mundane of her day.

This is already your 10^th book now that you’ve written and published. Self-published you might add, as the concept of flower fairy support for women, has not really had the wide-ranging impact that you hoped it really might.

You still have your day job, doing PR for cosmetic brands, you mostly hate. But even though you despise how they objectify and undermine women’s self-esteem, your fear of poverty is too great, so you hang on, in hope that one day your stories, will enable you to step away.

You look at the clock, already late. I must go to bed soon, you think. This day and night working is tiring me out. And look now I’ve wasted 30 minutes looking into space and meandering through my thoughts.

———————-

Outside you hear a noisy rustle of leaves. You jump up to look out of the window. Standing there in the moonlight is a fox. It looks like an image from a magazine you think to yourself. I must keep this bewitching image in my minds eye, for one of my books.

He stands there, looking majestic, with a beautifully brushed coat and thick bushy tail. He really looks like he’s been styled. As if he’s part human or lives with humans perhaps. Maybe he’s not wild?

With that, he moves gracefully towards you, weaving through the mound of leaves you had not yet dealt with and arrives just outside your floor length window.

“Open up” he says. “I’ve come to share something important with you.”

Wow, you think, he really is here to talk to me. You feel immediately flattered, as he excludes a princely elegance. You almost feel chosen, special.

You open up, and invite him in. He stands there looking at you. You look back, entraced by his beautify pelt.

“If you would not mind”, he says, “would it be a terrible bother if you served me a cup of tea and perhaps a nibble ?”

“Umm, yes, of course”, you stutter, feeling embarrassed that you did not think to ask him if he wanted anything. Not that the thought would have ever occurred to you mind you. But the way he addressed it, made you feel like you’d made a bit of a misstep.

Before you could think to say anything more, he said.

“I do like a Lady Grey, with a dash of milk and should you have a lemon drizzle cake handy, a slice of that would fit perfectly.”

“Lady Grey is tea by the way”, he says in an even tone.

“I know, you say. I have Earl Grey, but there is no cake here. I’m on a diet”. You add, feeling the need to explain.

He studies you, then says “of course, I do understand the pressures women put on themselves today”.

You are not really sure what to say to this, so for once you keep quiet.

I’ll go and make a pot of tea, you tell him. Not really unsure of what to even think about all this.

——————-

“Now I think I can help you with your predicament” he says. It seems to me that you are a woman of enormous talent and potential, but you are misunderstood”.

“You are going unrecognized. I do understand that. I am after all a fox, and we are not put on a pedestal. We are both the underdogs here it seems, but I have broken free of my limitations, and now I want to help you.”

Wow you think. He really understands me.

He continues. “Do you think it’s an accident that I came here on the full moon at this time ? It’s a very magical time of the month and of the year I’m sure you know. I landed in your garden by chance, and there I see a woman in need of my help and I want to offer it to you.”

“It must be fate”, he adds dramatically. “Do you not believe in the magic of the stars?”

“Of course”, you, say. “I do believe in fate, synchronicity and my books are about fairies for god’s sake.”

You sense a rapport, you feel understood. Finally someone who listens to you and gets you and your books.

“So my time is precious he says, and I don’t just help anyone. I help those in need with the most potential. It’s quite obvious to me, that you are missing pieces of understanding in business and I am happy to come in and fill that gap for you.”

You feel a twinge of annoyance in your stomach and a thought crosses your mind, that this guy might not be all that he seems, but you push it down hard.

You can’t remember ever having felt so understood, at last for a long while and it must be fate.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a fairy fluttering. She’s dressed up in a most beautiful robe of white silk with flowers flowing from her hair, mixing with the tendrils of her blond curls.

The fairy of purity you think. She must be telling me this is it, this is my chance to bring myself and my books to the big time. You feel immediate relief. Your gut had been wrong,.

As you are basking in the hopes and glow of your new life, away from working in PR and dreaming of being a full time writer, you notice the colour of her dress is changing rapidly, this time to red. Oh my gosh you think, the fairy of danger, you keep watching her, and she’s moving back to white. The changes are speeding up, red, to white, to red to white until it’s really a blurr of pink.

“Listen she says” Listen to your true self.

You look back a the fox, who has not seen the fairy it seems. It’s the same fox, but his cleverness now appears cunning, his etiquette is belittling and his shiny coat you note comes not from within, but from a combed on fake sheen.

A tingling clarity moves through you and then a sense of huge relief. The dawning that the masquerade had almost worked.