Furry Friends and Fairy Dust

Mom, remember the corgi we had when I was little?

Or, I should say the corgi you had. Of course you remember—Angie was with you long before I was ever born, as you so often loved to remind me.

I still remember the stories you used to tell me about her. “See this?” you would say, tracing the lines of darker fur across Angie’s shoulders and back. “The way it’s shaped like a harness? That’s called a fairy saddle. Many corgis have them.”

Even though it wouldn’t be my first time hearing this story, I still would gasp in awe as I traced those same lines. “Why?” I would ask. The answer never got old.

“Because there’s something special about corgis,” you would say. And then you would tell me the story of corgis and fairies, how the little dogs were the little people’s noble steeds who pulled their carriages and carried them into battle. “They were friends,” you said. “That’s why Angie sometimes barks at things we can’t see, or runs off for a while and comes back later. She talks to them. Goes away to visit them. Isn’t that right, girl?”

Your corgi would thump her fluffy tail as you cupped her face in your hands, her shiny dark eyes looking into yours, and the two of you would stay like that for a moment like you were sharing a secret. A secret I had yet to learn.

Remember that time Angie disappeared into the woods behind our house for an especially long time? You weren’t even worried about it, but it was starting to get dark and I was afraid for her. I went out to look for her, but it got even darker and I felt like I was suddenly miles away, and I couldn’t figure out which way was home. And as just I was starting to panic, you found me, and I ran into your arms and told you I was trying to find Angie.

“Angie isn’t lost,” you said. “She’s just with her fairy friends. We can’t follow her.”

I asked, “But what if she doesn’t come back?”

“She will when she’s ready. But she will come back. She always does.”

You were right, as usual. When I woke up the next morning, there was Angie at the foot of my bed like she’d been there all night, not a piece of fur out of place. Her wet nose nuzzled my cheek as I threw my arms around her neck. Of course she came back. She always did.

Until that one day she didn’t.

That morning, I woke up and couldn’t find her in any of her usual spots. But I found you, sitting at the kitchen table with her collar in your hands.

I remember it being the first time I’d ever seen you cry, and it scared me. “Where’s Angie?” I asked, and I was even more afraid for the answer.

You didn’t say anything for a long time. And then you whispered, “She’s gone.”

“But...she’ll come back, right? She always does.”

When you shook your head and said, “Not this time,” that’s when I understood.

You’d always believed Angie was special. But not even fairies could keep her here forever.

You were never quite the same after that day. I missed Angie too, of course, but when you lost her, it was like you’d lost a part of yourself.

I wondered why anyone would want to have a pet if it couldn’t live as long as we could. Why someone would allow themselves to be subjected to such heartbreak, sometimes not just once, but over and over again. I never wanted to be that someone.

Then I grew up, and one day I found Gwynni.

Or rather, she found me. I hadn’t necessarily been looking for her.

It was a rainy afternoon when she showed up on my doorstep, wet and looking pitiful. She was wearing a collar, but there was no sign of her owner nearby as far as I could see, so I figured she was lost. I brought her inside and dried her off.

Her collar was one of those leather ones with the nameplate on the side, which is where I checked and discovered her name.

“Gwynni,” I whispered, to which the dog looked at me and tilted her head. “That’s pretty. Where are your people?”

There was a number engraved on the collar too, so I called it. No answer. I tried again later. Then again, a few more times. No one ever picked up.

At that point I could have taken her to the animal shelter, or looked for someone else who wanted her, but I didn’t. Even though I never wanted a dog after Angie, least of all another corgi, something in me just couldn’t let Gwynni go.

Despite how much she reminded me of Angie—or perhaps because of it.

The place where I now live has woods behind it, just like our house did. Just like Angie, the woods are where Gywnni goes to disappear.

I remember that whenever Angie used to run off, she never returned bedraggled, the way other dogs would have if they’d spent most of their time wandering around outside. She always looked exactly like she had before she'd left. But Gwynni…

The first time she wandered off after I let her outside, she came back hours later with something like glitter in her fur. I brushed it out and didn’t think much of it after that, assuming she’d must have ended up at a sparkle-obsessed child’s birthday party or something while away on her little jaunt.

But then it happened again the next day. And the next. And then, for the first time in years, I allowed myself to remember the stories you used to tell me, Mom. And I allowed myself to wonder…what if they really were true?

I wanted to laugh at myself, a full adult considering the possibility that fairies could be real, but the truth is, I think I missed that part of me, which I thought I’d buried a long time ago. The part that wasn’t afraid to at least imagine.

So I did the one thing you always said we couldn’t do. I let Gwynni out one day, and I followed her into the woods.

I followed her as she trotted nose to the ground, tail waving in the air. As she vaulted over fallen logs and scrambled through underbrush. She seemed so sure of where she was going. Periodically she glanced over her shoulder as if to check on me, maybe to tell me to keep up. But she kept going, and I kept following, even after the sun had sunk low behind the trees.

When she finally stopped, her head high and ears perked forward, I stopped too.

The forest was quieter than I had ever thought a forest could possibly be. The only sound was the slight rustle of leaves in the trees.

Gwynni barked once, a sharp sound that rang through the air.

And then I saw it.

A tiny spherical golden light, twinkling in the growing darkness.

Then another.

At first I thought they were fireflies. Which were beautiful, but not nearly the answer I’d been expecting. Had my dog really been coming all the way out here every day just to play with glowing beetles?

But then more and more lights started twinkling, and I realized that fireflies usually didn’t blink in colors other than yellow. Not in pink, silver, purple, blue, green, and every other color imaginable.

Also, they were too big to be fireflies, and moved too erratically, and flew too loudly, making a soft buzzing sound as they darted through the air.

They surrounded Gwynni, and she barked happily and spun around in circles. One of the lights settled on her back, right over the crisscrossing lines of her shoulders.

That’s when I knew.

The light moved to the top of my dog’s nose, and she trotted over to sit in front of me, pawing at my leg like she’d brought it over to show me. I knelt down and, without fully knowing why I was doing it, held out my hand.

The light moved from Gwynni’s nose to my open palm. Even up close, I couldn’t see what the source of the light looked like. But something fluttered against my skin, tiny wingbeats, like holding a butterfly. And when the light flew away, a fine coating of something shimmery was left in my hand, something that I had seen on Gwynni’s fur several times before, something like…

Fairy dust.

I don’t remember how long Gwynni and I stayed out there, surrounded by all those twinkling lights. The next thing I knew, I woke up in my bed with the morning sun peeking through the window and Gwynni sleeping curled up beside me. I wondered if it all had been a dream. If it was, it's never happened again since that day. Maybe it was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Maybe that's what you meant when you said we couldn't follow.

But my palm still sparkles in the sunlight, as does Gwynni’s fur whenever she comes back—and she always comes back—from her intermittent wanderings.

“It was real, wasn’t it?” I asked her once, just because I had to be sure.

I didn’t actually expect an answer, of course. But my corgi lifted her head and her shiny dark eyes met mine. I reached out to hold her face in my fairy-dusted hand, and that’s when I learned.

This was our secret.