The Fox Faery

Note: I have taken a small liberty with the prompt, I haven't submitted anything in such a long time, I hope you'll forgive me. So this is a story about an outsider failing to fit in.

Faeries are by nature vivacious and sociable, but as it is with humans, each has his or her own specific traits, with qualities and flaws in various measure.

The faery whose story I’m about to tell you was called Lorelianna. In contrast to most of the Fair Folk she was a very timid creature. She loved the animals of the forest, and would often seek their company, as she found them easier to deal with than her kin.

There, always on her mind, were three faeries that caused her great distress by their teasing and taunting. They sung teasing songs to her of her shy spirit. The words cut deep into her soul, and she grew unhappy and withdrawn. If she could have seen their hearts, it might have changed her fate, for there at the deepest of them she would have seen envy and fear. One envied her skills with the woodland creatures, the other her poise, and the third envied and feared that her own companions were paying so much attention to her.

Oh yes, faeries might not be so different from humans after all. We were once but of the same kin.

But poor Lorelianna did not see in their hearts, and where empathy and understanding might have been born, more fear and pain grew in their stead. She began to spend more time with animals, and in particular, she grew very fond of a family of foxes. Alas, as is often the case with a problem that is avoided rather than confronted, it grew larger. The more time she spent with animals, the more problematic relating to other faeries became. So much so that she could only look at herself through those three faeries’ eyes. She no longer saw what other folks might see in her: the sweetness of her voice when she sang with the birds, the fairness of her face and above all the kindness of her heart. She felt herself being tarnished and could find no comfort.

In time, she learned a spell to turn into a fox. She would slip on a fox’s skin, say the spell and transform, pointy nose, bushy tail and all. She ran with them then, at night, red and silver under the stars and moon, and she would feel free. The wind and the scents of the forest would come to her in a rush of absolute ecstasy.

Little by little, she came to spend more and more time as a fox. Soon what began as short night-time excursions turned into days of living a wild life.

Sadly, the three faeries did not see this with a good eye. Who was she to master such a complex spell and be accepted of the forests’ creatures when her own kind mocked her? Who was she to be so strong and independent when she was supposed to envy them? And who was she really, to occupy their mind so, when she should be nothing to them?

They found her one evening and they took her fox’s skin away and burned it, and as they sang and laughed cruelly, she cried and cried. But slowly her despair turned into a cold resolve, and then she said the spell and transformed into her fox self.

You see, the fox’s skin was not necessary to the transformation, the fox’s skin was there to help her tame the dangerous magic, to differentiate her fox self from her faery self. With that link to the magic gone, she would be a true fox and would quickly forget who she really was.

She might have found her own happiness in this, she was free at last, and she soon found a male who was courting her; she was barely aware of having ever been anything else.

But for that one song, she might have been happy.

On a full moon night, when the forest was brimming with its magic, she came to a brook to drink the clear water. And there he was, a lovely fey man. With eyes of hazel, and a voice so achingly gentle, it woke some dormant magic in her. He was singing.

Time out of mind, a fair maiden haunted these woods

Her snow-white feet walked bare on the cool morning dew

And before her light steps, the animals gather’d

And where her soft hand trail’d, the flowers grew brighter

With a sweet voice she sang, sang to the red Reynard

Of her opaline dreams and of her dark sorrows

He listened enraptured, with his head on her lap

But in the shadows a Fey man longed for her love

Alas

They could not see my fair maiden through my eyes

Alas

The Moon held her so tight, a secret to his heart

My sweet Loreliane, she now runs wild and free

Time out of mind, a fair maiden haunted these woods

O fair Loreliane,

You never saw me…

It was no Shakespeare, whose words have even come to the ears of the Fair Folk, but these simple words pierced her heart more surely than Juliet’s dagger. She had been loved. She had seen only the hurt and pain around her, but someone had seen something else. He had seen her kindness and her true nature; he had not mocked her: he had loved her. And she found that she loved him for this, for his quiet grief, for his song, for his soft voice like a caress that made her fur stand on end. And she recalled herself then, for a moment she could grab at this strand of humanity that is love, and she overcame her spell.

She stood naked in front of him, clad only in her faeryness, and he fell at her feet and kissed her knees.

Alas, this could not last. Her spell was strong and by morning she was a fox again, she woke in his arms, startled and yelped in surprise. He sat up abruptly, took in the morning sun and the distressed fox that was trembling a few feet away from him and understood.

‘Come back to me at the next full moon,’ he said to her, ‘I will wait for you’.

She had been her fairy self just long enough to understand his words in her fox form, so she came back at the next full moon and he was there waiting as he had promised. But, try as she might that night, she could not prevent turning back into a fox when the sun rose. The full moon gave her some of its magic to help her alteration, but it could not last.

For a time they tried to be happy with this, but their love was not of the kind that is sung in songs after all. Faeries are fickle, he tired of waiting and one bright moonlit night, she found no one awaiting her by the brook.

But she had the scent of Fey on her now, and every full moon she would painfully recall herself; her fox mate deserted her too as he sensed the shift in her nature, and its alienness frightened him.

She spent the rest of her life trapped between her two selves, unable to find happiness or comfort in any of her shapes.