Away with the Faeries

After he’s finished she slips away from him. Nightgown. Bare feet. Down the stairs, skipping the third from the last that creaks like a bone about to break. Sian pauses at the kitchen door and listens to his snoring reverberating through from the floor above. She isn’t worried. He never wakes. After coming, Albert sleeps like he’s already dead.

Out she goes into the garden. The patio and the grass and the stepped flowerbeds shine in the moonlight, everything edged silver-white. A full moon today, hanging over the house like a Christmas ornament.

She stops at the outside tap. Cold, cold water. She rinses her hands. Peels up her nightdress and splashes it (gasping) onto her belly. Feels the dried come that Albert left there become slick and liquid, slippery. She rinses it away and flicks the wet from her fingers before setting off across the lawn.

They’re waiting for her. Silvery, soft voices burble with excitement as she pads across the dew-damp grass. Three of them today. Tiny, glowing bodies. She’ll never get used to seeing them, she thinks. So small and so perfectly formed – each one no taller than her forearm is long, but so complete and precise. And those wings…

They’re like butterfly wings. Translucent webwork. Fragile and glassy, but stronger than you’d think. They’ve let her touch them. Let them brush against her skin. The first time it happened Sian felt dizzy with the intimacy of it.

“Is he asleep?” asks one.

“Dozing?” says another.

“Snoring!” supplies the third, prompting a burble of giggles from the other two.

“Dead to the world,” confirms Sian. “Popped his cork and then went out like a light.”

They like word play, the faeries do. It makes them laugh, and Sian thinks that the sound of their laughter is just about the finest sound in all the world.

“We could hear him,” says one. The blue one – each of their skins is blushed a different tone, as if they’re standing under different coloured lights. “The way he was grunting and grumbling. We thought he’d never finish. Big, clumsy beast.”

Sian grimaces. “He’s my husband,” she reminds them.

“Men are funny creatures,” says Blue. Red does an impression of a man, her tiny chest puffed out, stumping feet. Green flutters up. Looks Sian in the eye, smiling. Such miniscule teeth. A perfect, naked, faerie body.

“You should leave him. Come and live with us,” she says. “We’d pop your cork. We’d make you float. We’d show you how. Give you wings like ours.”

Sian sighs. “One day,” she says, which is what she always says. Green rolls her eyes, but even as she does she’s fluttering closer. Sian eases back and back until she’s lying down, dew blotting through her nightgown. She can’t see Red or Blue, but she can feel their heat of their lithe little bodies, perching on her hips, pulling at the hem of her nightgown. She’s naked beneath. Wet with something that isn’t dew.

It never takes them long to make her come. The light sensation of their touch. A warmth that spreads from the point of contact, seeping through her skin. Magic. It’s the only explanation. They nestle their tiny bodies between her legs, and she hears them giggling, feels them burying themselves into the folds of her, their strong little bodies. High-pitched, delighted. The gentle stroking of their wingtips against her thighs.

Green, meanwhile, lays against her breast, playing lazily with a nipple. Little hands clutching, tiny tongue licking. Her warm, heavy, miniature body, shivery with giggles. Sian can’t help but moan. And the moaning makes the faeries shake with excitement, redouble their touching. She feels like water, rippled by a sudden invisible force.

The ripples build. Deepen. Become waves. Roaring waves. Froth and foam. Crashing on beaches. Sian bucks against the ground. Spreads her legs. It feels good to spread them. The warmth of the faeries melting into her, becoming her warmth. Becoming. Coming.

She waits until she’s stopped shivering before she opens her eyes. They’re gone. They always disappear when she comes. Always at that moment when her body becomes an arch, a fragment of moon, bliss, bliss, bliss. They disappear, and she comes back to the real world, finds her fingers between her legs, slick wet with herself.

Sian sighs. Sits up. Shivers in the cold moonlight. Although she knows she won’t find them, she looks for them anyway. Even the slight glow of their bodies far off in the dark would be enough. Nothing. Only an owl calling. Only the silver grass. Only the glassy, frozen-in-amber feeling of her own receding orgasm.

She’ll do it someday, she thinks to herself as she stands and turns back towards the house. Any day now. She’ll run away with them, away from the perfect little house, away from Albert, away from duties and chores, away from everything. She’ll run away with the faeries and never come home.