the first and last
The mistletoe mystery
‘’Have a merry Christmas.’’ the introverted boy murmured as his last customer for the night left his nursery with a bouquet in hand. The boy had a rather peculiar name given to him by his grandmother, it was ‘Fionn’ meaning fair or white. His grandmother claimed that he glowed a pearlescent glow under the moon light on the night of his birth. Aside from the strange stories alluding to magic of every kind, Fionn lived a rather normal childhood, his family owned a small but notable in the outskirts of town. As long as he could remember as a toddler he would be helping his grandpa plant new seeds in the early hours of the day, trotting around his mother at the register and picking up any loose change that fell to the floor as the sun set and at night he would curl up with a cup of milk with molasses as his mother sang him to sleep. He never attended school until he reached the fourth grade due to it being located in the heart of town. Things were going smoothly for the little champ until they weren’t, until his grandmother passed away.
The doctors said that she had been battling cancer for quit sometime and that it had finally gotten to her after 3 long years of constant pain and suffering , this revelation explained her strange behaviors to an extend . Before her death she would roam the gardens as the sun went down, talk into the trees as if they talked and overall spent most of her time either in her bed or in the garden .Granddad soon followed his beloved a year later, he was said to have died of natural causes.
. Time passed and Fionn’s mother found a job in town as a cashier in the local supermall to help them survive in the wintertime, when business would be at an all-time low. Fionn would spend the time he had after school tending to the seedlings and after he was done for the day he would climb up into the tiny tree house built by his grandpa built after the death of his grandma to watch the sun go down and to gaze at the stars above . Life was mundane but bearable.
That was the case until now , after he ate his share of dinner Fionn tucked himself into bed and drifted into dream land however this escape from reality was short lived because the next thing he felt was a sharp sting in his ear after all his mother had been pinching it for a good minute or two . The reason for this assault was the gaping hole in the ground which was filled up by a seedling 2 days ago. Was it a feral animal? Maybe a thief? Did he forget to put in the seedling after he dug up the ground? , all these questions rose and fell in little fionn’s mind but none could be answered. After hearing an ear full from his mother Fionn filled the hole with a new seedling and went about his day. However the same theft occurred the next day and the day after that. After finding no signs of a break in Finn’s mother chalked it up to Fionn’s own inadequacies. But Fionn couldn’t careless as he was now on a mission. On a mission to clear his name.
The next seedling he sowed had fishing wire wrapped about the stem and in the roots of the plant, the string went throughout the garden, over the fence and through Fionn’s window. The plan was simple, tie the string about his finger, wait for the thief to make his move and to then follow and hopefully catch the bastard red handed. As night fell Fionn readied for battle, he waited patiently and just as he was about to doze off the string tie around his pinky tugged. Fionn wasted no time and ran after the cause of the frail little force and it lead him deep into the forest beside his house. Only after he saw the stolen mistletoe seedling placed hastily on the forest floor did he realize that he was known in the deep dark forest, alone. But he wasn’t alone though, little lights similar to colorful starts flowed in the air above his head, at closer inspection they looked like flower petals, after he grabbed one out of the air he heard a low wince. The thing in his hand was no petal, it was alive. The tiny creature looked as if a human was shrunk down to the size of a dime. It had dark locks and fair skin, the creature was dressed in an elaborate gown made up of flower petals from all different kinds of flowers. The dress was hemmed with delicate silver and gold threads. It was a fairy! Before Fionn could do anything the creature yelled at him in a high pitched voice to release her at once! He compiled but demanded an explanation. The grumpy fairy explained that her kin was known throughout the land for their marvelous garments and to make them they required flowers of all kind, before all this Fionn’s grandma was their main supplier but after her death they ran into a flower shortage thus to keep up with the demand they resorted to stealing. The revelation shocked him but made sense when he thought of his grandma. In the end both parties came to an agreement Fionn would supply the furies with flowers in batches every month and in return they would keep out of the garden and protect the plants in the wintertime. The fairy gave Fionn one of her dresses as an apology, which Fionn kept with him throughout his life. Occasionally he would also gift the fairies extra flowers on the day before charismas for their annual charismas party dresses which were even more lavish.
