In time, a human appeared in the window. The one human looked to be a younger adult, probably not far along in their twenties, but more than old enough to have outgrown the ability to see fairies: an ability most lost around the age of twelve. Their hair was short; they wore a T-shirt with a mended hole in the shoulder. As far as Lime could tell, they were utterly ordinary and entirely alone.
The one human made a pot of oolong and sat down to drink. Lime watched as they sipped tea, read a paperback book, picked at one of their fingernails, and eventually returned to the interior of the house, out of sight, having done nothing whatsoever suspicious or even interesting. Pipsqueak hadn’t lied. The human was no threat.
Reassured, Lime took wing and ventured closer. A most beguiling vine grew along the kitchen window. It was some species of morning glory, but strangely and richly colored, with flowers banded in pink and gold and pale, translucent green. Lime imagined the suit of clothes she could make from this vine: beautiful, colorful clothes that would be the envy of all fairy-kind. Plucking the stamen from a flower and transforming it into a glowing needle, she set to work.
All afternoon, Lime struggled to recall the tricks of weaving, sewing, and spell-casting involved in the making of clothes. She harvested flowers and leaves. She spun green fibers into glossy-smooth thread. By the time the sun had begun to sink beneath the horizon, she had sewn a fine hat of petals. She removed her old, wilting cap and placed the new one on her head, proud to have remembered the lessons of her childhood.
Lime held her old hat, the withered purple orchid, in her lap, and thought back to the warm and southern island where it had grown. Unpleasant, long-forgotten emotions swelled in her chest. She shred the orchid to bits, and cast it to the ground.
Night fell and the flowers closed and Lime could no longer work, so she passed the late hours in other ways. She spied on the human again, watching as they cooked and ate dinner. (Dinner, she noted with a little thrill of disgust, was roast chicken.) She re-enlarged one of her books and read by the pale green glow of her own body. She waited eagerly for morning.
At the first light of dawn, she sewed the bodice of her new dress, which she embroidered with a pattern of interwoven suns. She placed each stitch with utmost care, pouring all of her heart and thought and magic into that one little garment. She had almost completed the circle of suns when the sound of footsteps broke her concentration. The human had come outside and was stomping into the garden, right towards Lime’s window. Snatching up her bodice and thread, Lime flew into the trees.
The human lingered in the garden for a while, pulling weeds, pruning dead flowers, and humming an off-key tune. They ventured indoors and back several times, then at last returned inside for good. When Lime was certain all was clear, she flew back to her vine, where she found a scrap of notepaper scrawled in enormous handwriting.
“To the fairy who’s probably doing this,” read the note. “Please stop killing my Convolvulus magnifican vine. Thanks in advance—Erskine.” A more cautious fairy might have been afraid, but Lime was too close to finishing her dress, and wasn’t about to let a mere piece of paper scare her. She crumpled the note into a ball and picked up her sewing.
She had finished her bodice, and had just started piecing together a skirt, when a fairy—the same blue fairy from the community garden—twirled down from the sky and landed at her side, exclaiming “Ha! So you really are here!”
Lime edged away, scowling. “What do you want?” she said.
“I was just curious what happened to you,” said the blue fairy. “That’s a nice hat, by the way, and a nice dress—what’s done of it.”
Lime clutched the dress to her chest. “You can’t have it,” she said.
“I don’t want it!” said the blue fairy, laughing. “I was complementing you.”
“Oh,” said Lime.
“Have you decided to stick around the woods?” asked the blue fairy. “If you’re planning to settle down, you know, our clan will take you.”
“Your boss said the clan was full,” said Lime.
“Old-Timer says a lot of things,” said the blue fairy, “but she’s a pushover. If you hang around a few weeks, she’ll get sick of telling you to leave and let you in. Promise.”
“And why do you want me in your clan?” said Lime. “You were going to make me eat a bug!”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” said the blue fairy. “Like you’ve never eaten a bug on a dare before!”
“I haven’t,” said Lime.
“Really?” said the fairy. “I have—or a slug, at least. That’s why everyone calls me Slugsy now. Anyway, do you want to join the clan? You can tell us stories of all the places you’ve been.”
“I haven’t been any places,” said Lime. “And I don’t need a clan.”
“You have to have been some places,” said Slugsy. “Where’d you come from?”
Lime picked at her embroidery. She supposed, really, there was no harm in telling. “I came through the roots of the world,” she said, “from the Great Origin Tree Library.”
“And before that?” said Slugsy.
“Nothing before that matters,” snapped Lime.
“And why’d you let your old clothes get so raggedy?” asked Slugsy. “What happened?”
“I was reading,” said Lime, “and I lost track of time.”
Slugsy scratched at her head. “You were reading so long that your clothes went bad?”
“Right,” said Lime.
“And how long was that?”
Lime consulted her inner clock. “About twenty-five years.”
“I see,” said Slugsy. “You know, you’re kind of weird, Loner. But you’re also pretty brave, messing with Erskine the human.”
“Why?” said Lime. “They’re just one human, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
Before Slugsy could finish her sentence, a bundle of amber sparks shot from the trees and snatched the hat from her head. “Got your cap!” shouted Pipsqueak.
“I’ll get you!” said Slugsy, hopping into the air. “Sorry, Loner. See you later.” She chased after Pipsqueak quick as a bat on the hunt, and the fairies’ twin lights, blue and amber, vanished into the distance. Relieved, Lime took up her needle.
In the low light of afternoon, she stitched a ruffled lining to her skirt, attached skirt to bodice, and enrobed the whole garment in sparkling, semi-visible strands of protective magic. Casting her old dress aside, she changed into her freshly-made clothes. The skirt billowed around her soft as dandelion fluff. The embroidered suns gleamed clear and bright as words on a page. The dress was perfect: colorful and comfortable and scented and clean.
Lime nestled into the coils of the morning glory vine—now bruised and nearly flower-less—and watched the sunset, aglow with contentment. She was so content, so peaceful, so snug in her new clothes, and so warm in the early autumn sun, she didn’t even hear the window open. She didn’t notice the gamy, chemical smell of human presence; she didn’t see the looming shadow. When she finally felt the rush of air, and heard the scrape of metal against glass, it was too late. She was no longer snug among the leaves. Glass walls closed around her and a metal lid, pricked through with holes, sealed her in. She had been trapped inside a great salt-shaker and holding the salt-shaker was the one human, Erskine.
Stifling a cry of panic, Lime dropped to the bottom of the salt-shaker and curled into a ball, pretending not to exist.
“I can see you, you know,” said Erskine. Lime glanced up. Her eyes met the human’s own. It was then she realized she had been deceived.
“You can’t,” sputtered Lime. “You can’t, you can’t, you’re too old to see me.”
“I can,” said Erskine. “Some people never grow out of it. Did you really not know? I figured all the fairies around here knew about me already.”