Claire Johnson (Moon Moth Fairy)

… sigh. …sigh. … sigh again. So, Jack needs help with farming the aphids. The little bugs are annoying since they will happily wander off and clumsily but quickly fly off to parts unknown without any warning. Still, it’s easy enough to recapture them or capture a new one in its place. Easy but tedious. Sigh.

I get why we farm them. They grow fast after eating leaves, which we have in absurd abundance. While they don’t exactly taste delicious they have a pretty mild flavor that is easily combined with just about anything you care to flavor it with, making it an ideal food staple for protein. And they are an insect that is still small enough even for our new stature to deal with, while still being large enough to have plenty of meat on them for us. I mean, calling it meat feels a bit overly generous, but still.

I guess it’s better than sitting around and doing nothing. When the change happened I, like basically everyone in our little community, was terrified. I woke up in a cavern that turned out to be my own pajamas and bedding. Suddenly going from 5’8” to 0.3” tall is… disorienting. My own room and home quickly became a **** trap. I was unable to get the attention of any of my family or friends, and had **** but to flee in search of a safer place to live. Between my parents using vacuums and chemicals to clean up, and the tiny spiders and insects around that I am now horrified to realize were probably always there and just too small for me to notice, I didn’t have much choice but to flee. It hurt to leave, knowing I would likely never see my family again… but it was made easier by the Calling.

The Calling. That weird, not-actually-a-sound-but-definitely-something-scratching-at-our-minds, sound that called to all of us. Each of us, from miles and miles and miles apart, called inextricably forward into the unknown. Sounds fancy, but it didn’t take us long once we got here to figure it out. Enough of us stuck around long enough and paid close enough attention to our surroundings to figure out that the rest of the world was losing their shit over people turning into monsters. People who disappeared are being assumed killed or turned into something that fled off into the wilderness. No ones seems to suspect that many of those lost have actually just shrunk to infinitesimal size.

Of course, I have to take the word of others who ignored the Calling for longer than I did. Being so small, our ears don’t really work for the frequency range of regular human voices anymore. It’s not impossible to understand regular sized people, but you kind of have to feel the vibrations more than listen to the sounds. I imagine we are impossibly squeaky to humans, even if our voices were amplified to be audible. But according to those who stuck around to try and listen to their family or friends before leaving, we’ve all pretty much been written off as dead or turned into monsters.

My wings twitch in annoyance at the thought. A monster? Me? I’d be in serious danger from a singular ant. Not even a soldier ant, just a run of the mill worker ant. Luckily we have safety in numbers. More specifically, we are lucky that the Calling exists.

The world is a big place. Even before we became tiny, but now especially. The odds of us finding each other, when we all started out so far apart and from so many different walks of life, would have been basically nonexistent. But whatever changed us all, also changed the plants. In particular, it changed our tree. Some of us had to hitch rides on people, cars, animals, anything big enough not to notice us and heading in the right direction. All of us followed the Calling as the only sense of direction we had after the change. It’s kind of creepy how many of us seem happy to go full on pagan nature worshipping just because a tree is psychically calling to us, but the more reasonable amongst us have come to the conclusion that this tree is basically calling to us in order to form a symbiotic relationship in which we defend it from parasites and it gives us some easy nutrients and a solid means of navigating the world. It’s basically a beacon seared into our subconscious, constantly calling to us. Which makes it very easy to find, even if we wander off a far distance. Honestly, not a bad deal.

Trying to survive on our own is basically just a prolonged **** sentence, but together we’ve managed to build a quaint little community on and around our Fey Tree. Sure, it’s a dumb name. But what else should we call it? We’re a bunch of tiny folk with insect parts. We look like various kinds of fairies. Obviously the tree we all live around has to be a Fey Tree.

I sigh again. In many ways this is an oddly idyllic life. I don’t have to worry about college anymore. Jack has told me multiple times that he is glad he can forget about his bills. But… why? I was always working towards something, whether that be the next grade or entry into a new program. But now… nothing. Despite what can only be called a horrific beginning, as each of us can recall a close encounter with a spider, beetle, mantis, or something or other, we all made it here under the bough of the great Fey tree… and now… we just… exist.

Plans? What plans? Plans for what? It seems pretty clear that there isn’t any going back. This is our new reality. Contacting the rest of humanity? Why? Not only would it be incredibly difficult to find someone who won’t just swat at us, even then it doesn’t seem likely they could do anything for us. And failure would likely mean at least one of us crushed to **** under a casual and barely concerned smack from a human who wouldn’t think anything of it. So… we are all to stick with the tree. Can’t get lost from the tree. It always beckons. Especially when some beetle or other insect starts eating into any part of its bark. Yep, we just… protect a tree. That is our life now. Protecting… a tree.

I like trees. We should totally take care of the environment. Global warming is real, and caused by humans… but… a single tree? The rest of my life? The rest of my new found communities life? A single tree? … I want a cell phone. Or really, I want the internet. If this is the rest of my life, at least let me have a screen to stare at.

But no. No screens for me. Or any of us. I’m honestly confused by the other Fey who genuinely seem to be thriving. I feel like I’m one step away from losing my mind and strangling an aphid.

Okay. It’s okay. Just, do stuff. Yeah. Jack needs help with collecting the aphids. Rebecca wants help collecting random black gooey substances in the hopes of finding something that works as ink for writing. After that there is Michael who wants to look into using insect carapaces for housing structures. Then there is Kelly who wants to investigate the spider Fey’s ability to make spider silk and what we might be able to do with that.

And on, and on, and on. So many things to do, and no real reason to do any of it beyond the need to fend off my own flailing sense of worthlessness in a world I know beyond any doubt will never let me amount to anything whatsoever. None of my achievements will ever amount to anything beyond the boughs of the Fey Tree. And… I’m okay with that. Really. Absolutely. Not a big deal… I’m sure the rest of the world isn’t half as interesting as the couple hundred Fey from around the country that have managed to gather here. Yep. Life… life couldn’t be better.

… I’m ripping off all of the aphid wings so they can’t fly away after this. They don’t seem to have the kind of nervous system that would register that as a traumatically painful event, so I’m morally in the clear… I think. And it will save time by making it so they can’t fly away anymore.

I want to scream. But I’m still under the Fey Tree, so that would almost certainly be noticed by another Fey. Can’t rock the boat. We are all in this together. Just… be helpful. Don’t give anyone reason to be concerned. It’s all good. I’m Claire, the helpful fairy. Need help? I’m happy to assist. Why? Because I’m just helpful like that. Certainly not because I’m desperately trying to fend off thoughts about my own lack of intrinsic value in a cold hard world that arbitrarily shrank me down into a dust mote kicking puff ball. Nope. I nervously stroke the natural fluff collar that grows all around my neck. My dull white and grey scaled moth wings lay flat against my back. In the dark they have a nice soft green glow, but right now they just… are very grey.

… where the fuck is this aphid?