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Joey is cleaning out his grandmother's attic. She's dead and he's occupying the house for the time being, since his dad and aunt are tied to jobs elsewhere in the country and he's unemployed. Cleaning the house out isn't fun, but he's got Reeses Pieces in his pocket and a record on and it's tolerable. Better than living with his deadbeat roommate for another year of lease. Maybe he'll keep the house. It's paid off and everything.
He steps back, dragging his broom.
And then he's in another world, it smells green and it's eighty degrees and the air is so startlingly clear and look at the flowers -
Joey says ack and leans forward along the path of his broom. And he is back in the attic. There's snow heaped against the window. It smells like dust and Grandma.
What the hell.
He leans back again. Verdant summer.
Forward. Attic.
When he's done this enough times that it starts feeling stupid more than fantastical, Joey carefully leans into summertime and puts his broom down and tries walking back without it.
Works just fine.
He leaves the broom there, laid across two worlds but somehow fully visible in each, as a signal of where the thing is, and walks into the warmth.
He explores. It's pretty, it's a nice change of pace, he can't hear his music from here but there's so much to look at.
He finds a tiny person, can't be more than a foot tall, with a dumb hat and dragonfly wings. The tiny person is surprised to see him.
"Whose mortal are you?" asks the tiny person.
"...What?" It speaks English, why the fuck does it speak English.
"Are you new? Nobody's snapped you up? Well, watch out. Don't let any food or drink pass your lips and definitely don't tell anyone your name. But I'm not going to hang around you, somebody'll be after you, you're trouble." The tiny person tips its stupid hat and flies away.
Joey blinks, and turns around to head back for his marker. It was past this rock here.
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He can, quite evidently, live with that.
But then afterwards he teaches her to make roast beef sandwiches and says she can have one.
But then afterwards he teaches her to make roast beef sandwiches and says she can have one.
Joey continues to be terrible. Food continues to be delicious. He is not a man of great dietary variety himself, but he will get her new things when he likes how she behaves. When he doesn't like how she behaves he refines her instructions until he does. She's not allowed to leave the house without him (let alone without clothes on sufficient to avoid arrest and cover her wings) or talk to strangers or take food from strangers, but she is allowed to cook, and lounge around the house in the nude, and ask him for things and convince him ever so nicely that he might want to give them to her.
feel-so-free
She becomes an amazing cook pretty quickly. A lot of the things she asks him for are new foods to try, or to try making. Most of the rest is books to read and pretty clothes to wear.
Joey legally changes his name and starts going by Jeff with everybody except his stubborn mother, who he calls seldom; while he is on the phone with her he sends his fairy into another room to cover her ears and loudly hum. Eventually he acquires a job at a bowling alley. He goes on occupying his grandma's house, now his. He tells his friends that his "girlfriend's" name is Maria and that she is shy. "Maria" is obliged to act shy when they're around. Joey-called-Jeff is not sufficiently into the practice of saving money that he won't buy "Maria" nice things sometimes when she behaves.
feel-so-free
"Maria" sometimes manages to behave. Sometimes she doesn't, and needs to be told not to do things. She can be remarkably creative about finding things she has not yet been told not to do.
feel-so-free
And yet, somehow, she keeps doing these things. Sometimes she'll go several months without doing anything annoying, and then Jeff will wake up to find that she has emptied a bottle of bleach onto the living room floor or poured all the alcohol in the house down the kitchen sink or neatly unpicked every seam in all of his shirts.
She is obliged to clean up after her misbehavior. And she gets revised and tighter orders, every time. And then she gets punished.
Well, she never manages to make him mad enough that he no longer wishes to have a captive ageless fairy who is obliged to obey his every command. He really likes having a captive ageless fairy who is obliged to obey his every command.
It's pretty swell to be Jeff though!
Jeff has a niece. She is born when Jeff is thirty-five (after he has had his fairy for fifteen years) and comes around occasionally once she is going to college in the area (when Jeff is fifty-four, and has had his fairy for thirty-four years). Maria is not supposed to talk to her. Jeff only ever calls her "pumpkin" when she's around, because he remembers about the name thing.
Jeff has a niece. She is born when Jeff is thirty-five (after he has had his fairy for fifteen years) and comes around occasionally once she is going to college in the area (when Jeff is fifty-four, and has had his fairy for thirty-four years). Maria is not supposed to talk to her. Jeff only ever calls her "pumpkin" when she's around, because he remembers about the name thing.
feel-so-free
She doesn't especially resent any mortals who are not Jeff. It's not like they're the ones doing this to her. It's not like they know.
Jeff's pumpkin niece finishes college and winds up living nearby.
More time passes.
Jeff gets sick.
Very sick.
More time passes.
Jeff gets sick.
Very sick.
Well, Jeff may be very sick but he's not dead yet.
While he is in the hospital, his niece visits him, and then she goes over to his house.
"Aunt Maria?"
While he is in the hospital, his niece visits him, and then she goes over to his house.
"Aunt Maria?"
feel-so-free
"Hi pumpkin," she says, which is just about all she is allowed to say to the pumpkin niece.
"Um, Uncle Jeff told me that I should feed you a piece of candy because he's dying? He said a lot of things. He said you wouldn't be allowed to say much and come to think of it you've never said much. Is he going crazy? I didn't think cancer made people crazy."
"...If you don't want me to literally put this mini Snickers in your mouth because you are not secretly a fairy and Uncle Jeff is crazy go ahead and do, like, anything, to indicate that?"