Spark

a fairy story

    All along the highway the streetlights light the way, bathing the path ahead in warm yellow light.  In every streetlight, in the incandescent heart of every lamp, sleeps a baby sprite.  They are born with the evening, they feed on the gratitude of travellers, and by morning they fade to nothing under the harsh light of the sun.  Most of these infant spirits of light will never wake.  Most.

    It was a blurry, rainslick evening.  Water drifted down from the sky in misty sheets, drenching ground and air alike, turning roads into shallow streams that churned and boiled with the passing of cars.  A nearly-full moon blazed futile light high above the dense cloud-cover.  The lesser lights lining the streets burned dutifully in its stead, casting eerie halos of orangeish-yellow in the mist.

    An instant later, in less time than it takes to blink, one of the streetlights lay by the side of the road, it's bulb smashed and it's light extinguished.  A pair of tiny eyes opened, and a pair of tiny wings stretched as a shapeless thing, rather like a firefly without the fly, rose from the wreckage of its home to stare in wonder at the world.

    Past the fallen streetlight, a car lay turned over by the side of the road.  The driver's side was smashed in and loud crying echoed inside.  The little sprite did not notice the car, though.  It's eyes were drawn to two shadowy figures unseen by the passing traffic.  One was a woman, tall and willowy with plain clothes and neat shoulder-length hair.  The other was much taller and vast with many dark wings that flapped slowly and feathers that rustled in strange winds.

    The woman cried and pleaded with the thing, saying, please, please, please.  Comforting wings wrapped around her, and a voice both soft and infinitely powerful replied, I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry.  You can't go back.  Please, please, she said.  He still needs me, she said.  Who will watch over him now, she said.

    The sprite drifted closer, peering through the waving wings at the woman.  She saw it, and said, oh, little spark.  Little spark, have I woken you?  Little spark, will you watch him for me?

    Spark nodded.  It seemed like the right thing to do.  The woman said, thank you so much.  The voice said, everything will be alright.  Then all the wings beat at once, and both figures vanished.  Then Spark noticed the car, and when she flew down to peer through the window she saw inside, amid blood and wreckage, a young boy crying in fear and pain.  Sirens were growing close.  Spark saw her more colourful kin approaching from the distance in flashing, whirling bulbs.  She stepped through the glass of the window and spoke to the crying boy saying, shhh.  Shhh, it's ok.  Your mother's safe.  A kind creature with many wings carried her away.  Shhh.  She asked me to watch over you.  It'll be ok.

    The boy did not hear her, or else did not listen.  He kept crying and crying until the men in the firetruck came to tear open the car door and take him away.