Nyamh

This is a story I wrote the other day for class. It's a storybook for children and should be accompanied with pictures, so I had to make sure not to go overboard with descriptions. It's just a draft, so I'm still making changes and making it better, but here it is so far :)


Once upon a time there was a fairy boy who played beautiful music with his violin. Everyone in the fairy world knew of him, and all found joy in hearing him play. The only fairy in all of fairy world who didn’t find joy in his music was the fairy boy himself.

In the human world, there was a girl who loved music. She loved it so much that she could never stay still when she heard it. She would swirl, twirl, and leap into the air, her eyes closed, feeling the air play with her hair. Her arms would float in the air like the most elegant ribbon, and her smile was oh so sweet. In her most tranquil moments, she would tap her toes, and sway to and fro; it was something she couldn't help, her body always responded to anything that could be music.

Her favorite dances were the ones when she'd get lost in the heady rise of a trilling note, and she imagined she flew high into the sky, and as the notes dropped, so did she, the wind whipping past her face as she dove straight down, and as the notes evened out, so did she, soaring over the green grass and trees.

News of this girl reached the fairy boy, who could play music very well, but couldn’t find room in his heart to love it. He heard of this girl in the human world who could dance better than any fairy, and who loved music very much. He heard that when she danced, her feet seemed to hover over the ground as if she had wings and her expression would transform into a face more beautiful than the fairy Queen.

This was hard for him to imagine, since there was absolutely no living thing more luminescent and lovely than his queen. Not to mention that humans couldn’t fly.

He heard more and more, about this girl, from the animals that crossed from the human world into his own; they all talked about her enchanting dancing, and they all seemed beguiled by her. He didn’t know what all of the fuss was about, but he thought he should go see for himself.

He didn’t understand what was so special about this music-loving, dancing girl. It’s not like she could coax wonderful music out of an instrument like he could. So when the animals made their way back to the human world, he tagged along, playing his music along the way.

The girl heard him before she saw him. She was walking along in the woods, listening to the gurgling music of the creek, when her body started swaying to music not from the burbling water.

It was the most glorious music she had ever heard; she thought that if magic were real and if it could be heard, it would sound just like that. She wanted to find where it was coming from.

Its gentle, mellow rhythms and delicately detailed notes danced around inside her heart. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and her mouth tipped up into a smile, all for the beauty of the music. Every moment she couldn’t find it felt like sadness, but every moment she heard it, felt like happiness; she picked up her pace. The quicker she looked, the more frantic she felt, and the more frantic she felt, the faster she walked until she was running, stumbling and breathing hard in her haste.

Finally, she staggered out of the woods and instantly she heard the clear notes and expressiveness of the music. She looked up and saw him at the top of the hill, playing his gleaming bronze violin to the moon.

He saw her inelegant rush out of the trees at the base of the hill. That is her, he thought, she doesn’t look all that amazing.

He continued playing his song, Ode to the Moon, an intricate, breathy song his grandfather taught him. He played the moon song for his grandfather who had loved the sound of the human’s violin so much he made a fairy version. His version was made of the bronze, gold, and gleaming things of his world, and it carried the rest of its ethereal beauty in its sound. The boy played it now- the only fairy violin in both worlds.

The girl stood at the bottom of the hill and stared up at this strange boy. He looked like any other boy, and he even looked around her age, but there was just something different about him. She couldn’t tell what it was. It gave her pause. Should she walk up there and meet this boy who played beautiful music?

She made up her mind and started climbing. The grass she walked on was soft and spongy and smelled like the fresh outdoors. The boy reminded her of the outdoors, but not as tame as the outdoors around her home. She thought he was more like a wild jungle or forest, not like the little woods she just walked through.

She made her way to the top, and stood at an angle to see his side and a full view of his violin; it was unlike any violin she had ever seen. It shined with some inner light and it glowed with some sort of sparkling substance. Instead of a hollow body, gold ribbon was woven throughout. Like the music, it was captivating.

The boy finished his song and turned to look at the girl. She was standing there in her sundress, mouth wide open and her eyes wide, the light of the moon made her eyes seem fathomless, her joy for music even more baffling to the fairy boy. “Did you like it?” he asked.

She nodded vigorously, “Very much.”
He tilted his head toward her, “Would you like me to play another song?”
Her lips spread into a pretty smile, “Would you really?!”

And so he played a song he was sure she could dance to. It was a playful, happy song that would make anyone tap their feet in glee.

And, indeed, she couldn’t help herself. As the light of the moon shone down on them, she danced, her feet seemingly floating, and her face transformed in her happiness. As he watched her, he felt a small flutter of excitement over the reaction this girl had to his music.


So this is what it felt like to play for someone. He rather liked it. He kept on playing and playing until the small feeling in his heart burst into an overwhelming emotion; its warmth spreading from head to toe. He ended the song, and turned to the lovely girl and expressed his bafflement, “How do you feel so happy over such a silly thing as music?”

Her body swayed with the breeze, reveling in its sound and feel, and she said to him, still smiling, “It doesn’t matter if it’s music or not, if my heartbeat dances fast, then how could I not dance along with its rhythm?”

She considered the fairy boy with his somber face, and asked him, “Do you not have the same feeling in your heart that makes you dance with your fingers? Isn’t our love for music the same?”

The fairy boy’s heart suddenly took up a quick beat, as he fully understood what it felt like to love music. It was the bubbling feeling he experienced while watching this girl dance to his violin; it was the way his heart was fluttering with excitement at that moment. For the first time in his life, he wanted to play his violin for the joy of it.

So he took up his violin and played the rhythm of his heart. The glittering night sky and the shining moon were witnesses to the fairy boy playing his fairy violin with a smile for the first time, and the pretty human girl dancing her heart away, her smile having never left her face.