Young Writers Society

Ralph had been made with a sole purpose: making little things stay insignificant as they are.


He was less than an inch tall and would look like a fairy from a distance, except he was made of steel. His body was steel, his wings wrenches but his heart was golden. Because he was so little, he would fly and describe tiny bursts of light that reflected from the surface of his body. His creator was proud of him, yet Ralph stayed hours and hours still, looking through the window to the murky, wet, rainy weather that lied across the door and would most surely be his death.


While his creator had went to the groceries, Ralph squeezed within a fringe between the window frames and flied away to the village. The fields were filled with green, yellow and orange, the houses were square, round and hexagonal and it didn’t take long for him to find other people. Unlike his creator said, there were all kinds of shapes, colours and textures in children, men and women. He followed those people and found the market.


Though he was smaller than a thumb, his heart pounded louder than a bell. Head to toes, he froze and fainted, falling to the ground in a blissful sigh. To his mind came the thought of getting near, close and rear. He felt shy, but not thinking was not living. By touch alone would I tell! The next day, he went back to the city. He looked every corner and ended up finding her near the fountain. From behind her, he could hear her sing:


Slowly, and without her noticing it, he came near her ear and sat on her shoulder. As she scrubbed and soaped her vests, he kept still in awe. But when she felt an itch on her shoulder, her hand poised above Ralph. Ralph was amused by her tickle, but as the lady felt the unwanted lump up her shoulder, she jumped back and tried to smash him in her hands. In amidst of disgrace, fear and sudden rage, Ralph tried to defend himself by pinching her hair.

If Ralph were a real fairy, he’d have magically escaped. But Ralph was no fairy, he was made of steel, wrenches and gold. He was just an invention who thought by touch alone he would tell. But love is no invention, and love alone had been his ruin. And on the uncertainty that lies there, between perishing and withdrawal, he lay alone, broken and clammed to the rock, waiting, waiting… just waiting.

It had been his daughter’s first day of school. She’d bounced out of the car and folded her faerie wings neatly into her bag. She could take them out again at lunch. He’d beamed and waved goodbye as she scurried off, her Tinkerbell backpack stuffed with more toys than books. He’d worked hard to foster her imagination. To raise her on faith and ambition. He was sure his little girl would do wonderfully.
That afternoon, as he strode into her classroom to bring her back home, he came upon a scene that caused his heart to sink. His sweet girl stood hiccupping up sobs next to her teacher, dirty tear streaks marking her usually glowing face. He ran and picked her up.
“What happened?”, he demanded of the teacher.
“Hello Mr. Grayfen! I’d been wanting to meet you. You have a really adorable daughter! She had a little run in with some of the more rowdy kids in the class today, but don’t worry, we’ve already had a stern talk with them and they’ve agreed they won’t do it again,” she chirped, clearly oblivious to his hardening face.
“Why was I not called?”, he asked, deadly calm.
“Oh, it wasn’t anything serious, she was crying for a little bit but I think she’s okay now. She’s a very brave girl. If you want, I can speak to the kids’ parents about buying her a new pair of fairy wings.”
Her wings?!
“I don’t know where you got such pretty ones from, though. Maybe they can pay yo-”
He cut her off. “That will not be necessary. Good bye, Miss…”
“Wittle.”
“Ah yes, Miss Wittle. I shall see you again, I suppose.” He marched off to the car with his daughter clutched tightly in his arms. After silently driving for a bit, he addressed the mess on the passenger seat beside him.
“What happened?”
She drew in a long, hitched breath and poured out her tale. Of sharing her hopes and dreams with her new “friends”. Of telling them about faeries and magic and things beyond what the eye can gleam. Of being laughed at. Of being told it all doesn’t exist. Of the people around her trampling and crushing it all. And not just metaphorically.
“Dad, you told me faeries exist. You lied to me.”
He said nothing.
That night, once he’d put her to bed, he finally sank into the sofa to rest. The wings lay on the table in front of him, glimmering in the lamplight. Tattered, bent and beyond repair. He closed his eyes tightly and transported himself into the past. A scene. Her mother. Laughing as her daughter climbed into the curly tresses cascading down from her ponytail like midnight water. Shaping wire. Painting, gluing, waiting. She had been a wonderful artisan with an imagination that won the heart of all who discovered it. He’d tried to preserve that in their daughter; he didn’t ever want her to feel like something was missing, just because her mother was gone. And now the wings she had made that day, that her daughter would put on every morning and refuse to take off until bedtime, the ones he’d had to convince her to put aside so she could wear her backpack to school, those very same wings were destroyed. And so was his daughter’s spirit.
He’d fix this though. His own way.
And every day he went into the shed.
***
She lay in bed, waiting for her father to come in and tuck her into bed. He insisted on still doing this, despite her being fifteen. Oh well, at least she got to see her father properly in that time.
They’d drifted over the years, the distance between them a far cry from the friendship they’d once had. An uneasy mistrust of her father had settled in her heart, and besides, he was spending more and more time in that shed of his after work. But whatever, she wasn’t interested in seeing him anyway and the whole bedtime routine was just annoying.
That night was different.
He rushed into her room like an excited puppy, wiping dirt from his face. “Come,” he breathed, “Come outside and see!”
She stepped out of their house, on that warm, summer’s night, to a transformed world. Glowing, mechanical faeries flew hither and thither, almost realistic in their complex interactions. Her backyard was filled with them. Right in the centre stood the faerie house they had made when she was little. That she had wrecked the same afternoon she threw away her dreams. The very same dreams in front of her right now.
*****
He held his breath, waiting for her reaction. For her face to glow once more, the shimmer in her eyes turning them to gems. For the plan, on which he spent every spare moment of his last ten years, to come to fruition. For the rekindling of her imagination.
“Is this a joke?”
His throat tightened into a lump.
She continued, fuming. “Is this what you’ve been doing in that shed of yours for, like, my whole life? You think you can suddenly win me back with some creepily good, flying robots? Did you seriously abandon me all these years just for this? Whatever, Dad, you picked the wrong day to pull your rubbish. I have a maths test tomorrow and I need to finish studying.”
She turned to storm off, but suddenly, a blue faerie alighted on her nose. She gasped.
Hold on, he hadn’t added coloured lights to them.
He peered closer at the faerie until he realised his surroundings were growing brighter and brighter. He slowly turned around…to see a million lights encircling them. In a glimmering rainbow of colours, they swirled and twisted around them, dancing an ethereal ballet.
Tears glistened on her teal washed face until the faerie flitted away to join her kin.
“They’re real,” she whispered. All was still for a moment.
Then in a burst of spectacular colours, daughter threw herself into father’s arms.
And on that warm, summer’s night, imagination had been restored.

The steampunk fairy
clinks, her home in nature gone.
She is the machine.