My aunt enjoys all sort of fairies and collects them from all over the world. She does this collecting right alongside piggy banks, which takes up the front hall of her home, and I always found myself learning something new about the woman whenever she brings a new fairie home for her shelves.

A fairy that is light blue and looked to have dripping water from her body starts the collection right at the top left of the collection shelf. My aunt got the fairy because she said it reminded her of the years she spent right next to Lake Michigan. The fairy is lightly dressed and stares out of her container with half-lidded and somewhat bored eyes that make the fairy look as if she could come to life at any simple second. The pedestal she sits on, which is crooked and has a single step raised so that the fairie’s knee was high enough the fairy could rest her head on it. The light blue, almost light green wings are lazily sprawled out and had a tear-drop shape to the very tips and are covered in a sort of glaze that makes the wings sparkle under the right lighting conditions.

The next fairy, a very small one, is a pale ballerina in a white cloth with painfully adorable wings that are close together and look somewhat out of place and off-size with the rest of the small figure. The ballerina is reaching with a single hand out and a foot raised backwards and has this almost painful look on her face, and from this single fairy I learned about the dreams that my aunt had and about the ones that she still reaches for and believes in.

A few spaces away from the ballerina, is a figure of two fairies that are holding hands together in a sort of praying manner, and as they are on their knees and with their eyes closed, I am willing to bet that they are actually praying should they actually be alive. The fairy on the left, a young boy with wings that are small and rounded, is slightly taller than the fairy on the right, which is a young girl with wings that are slightly rumpled and not as shiny as the brothers wings. It didn’t take me very long to figure out that the twin fairies were to symbolize the two children that my aunt had; the lovely joys that were my niece and nephew.

The fairy that was right next to the twins was a fairy that I found to be ironically breaktaking. The young fairy, a female, was dressed in a light blue cloth that was tied around her waist with a golden belt. The fairy had this long flowing blond hair and this bright hazel-colored eye (the other closed in a wink) and wore this lovely smile on her face. The fairy was surrounded by a whole bunch of cats and blooming flowers, and her wings, while smaller than what would typically be expected of a fairy that size, were brilliant and a lovely shade of green. When I asked my aunt about the fairy, I had gotten a whole-hearted laugh in response and was told that I was what encouraged her to buy the fairy as it reminded her of me. Even to this day, I still disbelieve this story as the fairy is beautiful and I am a bit on the plain side in terms of personality (as on a good day I’m only somewhat apathetic) and the fairy was completely beautiful and playful-looking.

Every fairy she has, even a dull looking fairy that looked more like a cow mixed with a horse and with wings, tells a different story or a memory or a thought that goes along with my aunt, and I find myself learning something new every time about her when ever she gains a new fairy for her collection. Gifted fairies tend to hold sentimental value, fairies with wide wings tend to tell a story of her past, children fairies tend to be related to a child in her family. Fairies that look more like animals with wings than they do fairies are a show of memory of any and all past pets she has ever had. All fairies tell a story, and I often find myself just enjoying the stories that they tell.