“Did you ever see a Violet Fairy creeping in a rock garden, along a border?” asks the alluring advertisement in one of those greasy old magazines that was lying around the mechanic’s lounge for the Magician to read while he waited for his smog test.
No, he never did and he’d like to.
On his way home, he stopped at the Seed and Feed to get a package of seed for creeping violets and also a pot of lavender, the Fairy’s faithful love. Every year she grew them all varieties, in all her favored gardens. Mostly in masses, with rosemary and sage, she liked plants that didn’t need much effort or water. In early Venus Moon mornings, she would arrange them in dewy bouquets for impromptu Fairy Rings, where she danced wearing sweet pea and pear blossoms, in still life compositions that drove flower painters mad with envy.
Days later he found he couldn’t stop thinking about the Fairy. Tomorrow before sunrise, the Magician thought, he will go out to watch Venus rise and dance as the moon rises with her, to feel again the cool damp air on his skin, and he will touch the lavender buds gently, to remember her scent.
Fairy was most beautiful when she was in her garden, wearing only mud like war-paint and petals in her hair and skirts of peach blossoms and red cyclamens.
Such contemplation doesn’t help with dinner plans.
It is Sunday evening. He would like to put his feet up, read the paper, cozy and warm in front of the crackling fire, but Princess Thunderthighs and his children expect a culinary extravaganza.
From the freezer, he pulls out a package of tacos from Trader Joes and a bag of frozen corn kernels. There are cans of green beans in the pantry for those who insist on eating vegetables, and, for the head of the family, a cool case of beer.
Although he was loathe saying so out loud, what he really needed was a wand enhancement, but that took money. As if she was reading his mind, his girlfriend croaked his name from the bedroom. He had almost forgotten! With fiendish inspiration he took the creeping violet seeds, his trowel and a small plastic bucket out to the back garden behind his kitchen and started digging around in the earth in the rock wall. He was careful to keep every pink worm live and squirming as he placed them in the bucket.
Dinner fit for a Princess!
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