"...every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead."

On a regular basis, my 4 year old son will tell me "Mom, I don't believe in Faeries."

Well, okay then, my little Fae touched boy. Of course, though, he believes in Santa Claus, and won't stop terrifying Scarlet about the Brownie that SURELY lives within our walls, because late at night he hears him knocking.

I'm also pretty sure that Mahone believes in Jedi.

So why is it so hard to believe in Faeries?

Well, believe it or not, I do know the severe difficulty that many face in today's society when the choice to believe in Faeries is presented.

It's simple. Science says no. (Though, my husband, having evolved into a deep thinking and distractingly open-minded Anthropologist over the last year and a half, would beg to differ. From an Anthropological standpoint, one must approach any situation, be it voodoo, or evolution, or lore, or even Faeries, with the mind set that yes, this particular thing very well may be THE true thing while everything else lies in sordid fakeness. He also says that the definition of "myth" is everyone else's religion.)

But science also says no to God. And I believe that God, who created science in the first place, also created Faeries.

Or rather, He created an earth that is most assuredly alive and vibrant in spirit. An earth whose trees and mountains and droplets of water possess spirits, very much like our own, encased inside our bodies. Indeed, even rocks and seashells have a spiritual manifestation. Lucky for earthy things, though, it happens to be a lot easier for them to separate their physical forms from their spiritual forms- which also, in most cases, happen to be as tangible as their more real physical form. After all, a mountain or a tree or lake whose spirit were dormant within it's solid body would nearly cease to BE alive.

It's difficult to explain. But the reason for that is that it's difficult to understand. While Faeries are most technically referred to as Elementals, or the physical manifestations of natures elements, not every snowflake has a spirit. Not every single tree has it's own humanoid form. Not every single lake has a lady. In fact, a lone Dryad may be the spirit of an entire, vast, forest with one specific tree that is her very essence.

Some Faeries, like the Tooth Faeries that I have previously written about, don't really seem to have any kind of element that they specifically represent. The same goes for the Queens, and the rest of the High Sidhee, who seem to exist on their own aside from an affiliation to a summer or winter court.

Some Faeries are manifestations of invisible, or emotional elements. Cupid, for example, is the manifestation of love (and/or lust), and Nymphs are like unto him. Others, such as Jack In Irons or Redcaps are born and formed out of the elements of fear and bad dreams while Father Time is the being who came to be because of an ever marching, endlessly running element that is without our control.

The list goes on. Some are just more obviously connected to nature than others. And some Faeries we may never understand in reference to their connection to the earth, except that at some point, they sprang forth to become what they are. And God does not make mistakes. So we must know that they all have their place.

Furthermore, it is important to observe the life lines of Faeries.

The earth does not pass away as our mortal bodies do. The rocks do not avalanche into a crevice and bleed mineral blood. Water, though it forever moves, changes, and evaporates, never truly disappears.

The physical bodies of Faeries are incredibly complex. Any man who has been enticed by a Nymph or Elf will tell you that they are very real indeed. To touch one, which a person most assuredly CAN do, is beyond description. Changelings are people who are half Faerie and half human, and cannot, because of their human tainted blood, survive in the ethereal world of the Fae, which is to say, that they are unable to veil themselves for protection or travel between the planes. To have been born of a Faerie mother doesn't just imply, but confirms that a Faerie's physical form is very alive and tangible.

Daily, we as humans, die. We age, we grow. We develop laugh lines, and one day, we pass on.

Faeries, though, once again, astound us with their complexities. Plenty of Fae never age at all. Titania and Mab, for example, are ageless in their appearance, have ALWAYS been so. Much of the highest of the Sidhe are this way. Puck, Pan, Oberon.

Father Time is by far one of the most mind bending Faeries there is. Each year, he is reborn, a slick and wet and screaming baby, fresh to the world and void of anything foul to weigh on his innocent mind, which allows him to continue the year, aging at a rapid pace, with the conscience of a child. Throughout the year, his mind begins to weigh heavy, and his body grows old and bearded in white, hunched over and ready to find solace in another year, another slate clean to the touch. Resolution, reborn.

And yet, Faeries CAN, in fact, die. Elves and Dwarfs, for example, are quite possibly the very closest related Fae to humans, and while their lives extend for near a thousand years, and possibly even longer, they are as susceptible to frailty and harm as humans are. Flower Fairies, it is possible, possess the shortest life span of them all. They only live for a short season. Trees die eventually, and so do their respective Dryads.

Really, when all is said and done, it is impossible to really understand Faeries, and their forms, their life cycles, and when it comes down to it, the question is: Does it matter?

No. It doesn't.

And if you don't believe in Faeries, for the most part, they don't care. Tinkerbell said that whenever someone says they don't believe in Faeries, a Faerie somewhere falls down dead, and she wasn't lying, really. But she wasn't telling the truth either.

Tinkerbell is a complex little thing in and of herself, and a story for another day. But suffice it to say that most Faeries are pathological liars. They have very little, if any, morality, and if she said that Faeries die when disbelieved, then, at that very moment, she probably believed it herself. But it probably served to get her what she wanted somewhere down the line.