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luminous, lit from within like Tiffany lamps, providing the only source of light here on the dark side of the moon.
Now they are settling more or less in the shape of a crescent, awaiting the arrival of the speaker. They are all talking at once, so the atmosphere is buzzing with commotion and very few are looking up to greet the visitor. Today’s specially appointed speaker is Lucy Light Featherwaite who has been chosen, evidently, not for her eloquence, but because she has been absent for the last half dozen meetings and the gals want to know what’s up. At last she arrives, floating down like a feather, swinging this way and that and taking so much time about it that all the yakkers stop and gawk at her wondering what for heaven’s sake is holding up the show.
And now that she has lit on the ground, her features spring into life. She is wearing a bright purple wig, an emerald cloak made of satin with a stiff, queenly collar, a pink tutu (with leggings to match) and huge black patent leather shoes. She wears a silver crown cut out of cardboard and covered in tinfoil and she bears a star-tipped wand made to match. She has painted dots on her face that resemble freckles, only they are green, and her eyes are round and blue as the sea. She carries a well-worn carpet bag, into which she has stitched the names of every place she has ever visited over three thousand years.
Now I won’t tell you that she’s getting a warm welcome. The mood is generally disgruntled here on the dark side of the moon. For one thing, she is late. But it wouldn’t matter, the gals would still be annoyed. It appears that they’ve been unemployed for far too long, to put it plainly. Their conversations indicate that they’ve been laid off by the human world, due to disbelief. Oh, they might have some influence when a child is under four, but when they get into school and learn to read, the fairy godmother, along with all her gifts, is sent packing.
Fairy godmothers have been organizing regular meetings for over five centuries, but they’ve lost heart, it seems. They’ve given up and stalked off to distant planets and moons around the solar system. The only thing keeping them together is this monthly ritual meeting on the dark side of the moon. The rest of the time they’re out doing mischief, or sulking in caves, or perhaps trying some remote form of communication in the hopes that one day they’ll be received. They are all experiencing the grief of going unrecognized, and lest we think that this has no consequence for human beings, we need only look into any set of wonder-less eyes.
Most of the fairy godmothers have taken to gnawing on bones, which is what they do when
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