Erica C. Swan said 8 years, 11 months ago:

“Oh, tell me about the ring again! I haven’t heard that in years!” Said Mia sitting on the floor trying her best to contain her excitement. She looked around at the walls and shelfs which she hadn’t seen since her last visit. Few things had been rearranged and a little dust and age were covering various objects. The chair in the middle off the room was filled by Aunt Winifred. She was the same with her hair twisted on her head in a little stump and her clothes old and patched. But since the last visit she had managed to get some Gray streaks and sombre wrinkles around her eyes.

“The one with the ring? That was forever ago…”

“Please try to remember. Please!” Mia pleaded.

“Enough, you sound like a dying bird. Now I will try, for you,” she said more softly. Then paused to try to remember the tale. “Now I was around your age. Still in school but wasn’t leaning much. We lived in the same house, the paint was as fresh as I was. Mother and father were still here. But outside our neat sheltered house was the woods. She paused remembering the eerie feelings it gave her. “Wasnt scary, it was regular with thickets and thorns. But at night you could hear it.

Mia leaned in closer,”Hear what?”

“The fires. No, not fires. Stars. It sounded like stars trickling and burning in the distance. They would sing all night, but come day they would go out.”

She paused. “The woods had a certain…feel to them. It was a place between living and dying. They light from the sun was faded landing in motley patches on the ground. The trees were lush and over grown but sank to the ground. The path was-”

“Auntie!What about the story?”

“I’m telling it and you should try to listen. Now we’re was I…Oh, the path was dirt and patted from some pack of animals. But this path so long and narrow was dragging me in. Leading me to trouble, my father always said. And I was as curious as a student in a library then. I followed the path passed the-”

“Thats when they got you! That’s when they came!”

Aunt Winifred stared sternly at her and Mia quickly closed her mouth and featured for her to continue.

“As of was saying, down the path past a meadow of vibrant flowers with scents to match. I slipped into the meadow reminding myself I could always go back home when I wanted. Mia-the flowers were unlike anything you could imagine…They were unlike any of my pictures in my botanical journal. But the strangest were the petals like milky white with a marble yellow mixed in. They faced not the sun, but the ground as if they were going the other way home…”

“Auntie, aren’t those called mushrooms?”

“Dont be foolish. They were flowers. And these flowers were snapped in a circle around something hidden.”

“The Fairy ring…” Mia whispered.

Aunt Winifred nodded. “A legend passed down from gardeners to keep children out of their patches. But when I saw it, so circular and mysterious, I knew it couldn’t be a legend. It sent my curiosity aflame. The sun started to set and I could her the stars…coming from the circle…I stepped in.”

Mia held her breath.

“About bed time for you,” Aunt Winifred said standing up brushing herself off.

“But did the fairies come? We’re they kind? We’re they evil? Oh what did they look like? Can I see them?”

“Off to bed, maybe when your older…” She said shooing her out. Mia, full of disappointment, left to go to bed. Her dreams will be full of fairies her Aunt never talked about.

Aunt Winifred closed the door behind her then sat at her desk.

“Maybe when she’s older…”

There are somethings you cannot tell children, weather they are fictional or not.