Maybe at some point in the past, the isolation would have bothered her. The others just didn’t seem like they wanted to take the time to understand that she had never been the sort of faerie who enjoyed interaction. Violet always had the right things to say, but never seemed to have the confidence to get the words out in time. The conversations moved on and she was left imagining a delightful repartee with her friends.
The best conversations happened there! She would dazzle with her knowledge and clever, subtle humour and she an her friends would sit and talk for hours. Sadly while she was imagining this, her blank facial expression had given her friends to think she was neglecting them. Consequently, less people wanted to spend time with her. Eventually she began to embrace the solitude, to the point of moving her dwelling to an isolated area in The Dell.
On days like today where the weather was clement, she would sit outside, merely watching life pass by around her and inventing stories for why people were acting the way they were at that moment – Daisy and Rose weren’t skipping down the street with excitement, they had been put under a hex where they were incapable of touching the earth with more than one foot at any time. Likewise Dahlia wasn’t flying back and forward carrying pollen from flower to flower, she was being used in a game of tennis between 2 invisible wraiths.
She tried to get involved, a whispered good morning here and there. One time she had even put up her hand to ask a question in a town meeting but by the time her moment came, she simply mumbled a question and flew out before she even had a chance to hear the answer. Her quiet demeanour simply gave the illusion that she wasn’t interested, or that she saw herself as better than the others.
The time came when the annual Midsummer Faerie Festival was being celebrated. All the town was going to attend except no-one bothered to invite Violet. Her friends simply decided she wouldn’t come anyway so why ask? Lavender felt this was the wrong attitude to have and made her way outside the main Faerie Village to Violet’s home at the edge of the Dell.
She politely knocked the door and waited until Violet shyly opened the door to her friend. Lavender’s invitation to the Festival was passed delicately and Lavender spoke to her friend as she digested the message it conveyed.
“Your friends miss you, Violet. We know you find it difficult being in a group and sometimes we don’t give you your chance to say what you feel. We’d really like to see you at the Festival.
Either you stay here or you come out and join us. You stay in there, that’s ok! You’re safe. Nothing will hurt you. But you go out there… you go out there and you will feel pain. People will not understand all you are and what you can contribute. They will hurt you and fail to see how they’ve done it or why it matters to you. But that doesn’t mean they don’t value you or want you in their lives. I can’t make you want to be part of our celebration, but I really wish you would…”
She hugged her friend and left.
Violet stood with her door open long after Lavender was out of sight, deep in thought at the words her friend had said. They had stirred something deep inside her soul that had been long neglected – a need to belong.
On the evening of the Festival, Lavender was stood with her friends. They had been busy all day at the Festival having fun, riding the bumper bugs, eating and drinking honeyed nectar. But in spite of all their mirth, Lavender still felt a deep sense of disappointment that her attempt to have their erstwhile companion join them had ended in failure.
“It’s not your fault, Lav” said Ivy, noting her friend’s dejection. “You tried but she just doesn’t want to know us anymore.”
She had scarcely uttered this, when the lights went out.
Only a single spotlight on the main stage remained. A sultry voice penetrated the darkness, a mysterious figure in the light.
Suddenly the lights came back on and the tempo shifted into an uptempo number and the recognised the mystery performer as Violet. On stage. Performing! They screamed and danced along to their friend’s performance and realised that just because someone appeared quiet and withdrawn, this should never be confused with not wanting to do something.
Soaking up her friends’ adulation after her unexpected cameo, Violet also had her epiphany moment. She realised that she should not portray her reservation as a weakness, instead to harness it to do the unexpected and overcome her adversity in style.