A Goddess Visits
You don't expect a goddess to visit you and start talking about your writing - or the lack of it.
Yet here she was, dressed in a garment so thin that it was nearly transparent if the sun hit it just right.
And here with some message for me.
Of course, she didn't get to it right off. Like her dress, she used her conversation to get my full attention before she could tell me what that message was.
Excerpt:
A goddess came to me last night.
She said there was a gold mine between my ears, but I'd have to start using it.
Until I did, I could spend none of it. And would be working hand-to-mouth for the rest of my life.
She wore a gossamer-thread shift over her, which was a bit distracting. Golden hair, clear blue eyes. None of this covered her feminine features very well.
Have you ever seen gossamer? It's extremely thin, and rare. It's the stuff young spiders put out in order to catch the wind and fly to their new homes. Of course, it's the same stuff web silk is made from, so is extremely tough. When you walk through the woods, you'll find that across trails and catching in your face. So tough that you can almost hear it "pling" as it breaks. So thin that you barely see it except when you catch the sun glinting off it.
So making an entire garment out of this would be expensive, and humans wouldn't find it possible.
"Fairies." She said.
"Huh?" I asked.
"Fairies collected and wove these strands into cloth." She said.
"Well, that would make sense. Providing you believe in fairies." I replied.
"They don't need you to believe in them. That rumor got started by a writer and his stage play." A slight frown crossed her face. "Fairies only appear in your universe if you believe in them. That's the trick. They still exist regardless of whether you believe in them or not. But they only show up if you ask them, or expect them, even as a stray thought."
"Like the odd times that you see a single small branch waving in the wind, but you feel no wind, and nothing else is moving." I said.
"Exactly. But that might not be a fairy. Might be a goblin. Might be a poltergeist." she said.
"Could be helpful. Could be dangerous. How would I tell?" I asked.
"Only by accepting it as it is and figuring out how to talk with it. If you can't see it, you haven't accepted it enough, yet." she answered.
"So I see only what I want to see." I said.
"Sure, like it's always been. Like you don't hear the teacher sometimes in class. Like when you 'tune out' to some recording and find it 'rewritten' when you listen to it again - new sections you'd 'never heard' before. This is old stuff. You've been through this. Selective perception." She idly played with a loose thread on the bed's quilt...