The night before our youngest, Ivy, turned 7, she and her mom were drawing a fairy that was somehow involved in a heretofore-unknown holiday called Ivymas. They had to stop for bath time, but Ivy told me in no uncertain terms that I had to write a story about the Ivy Fairy and Ivymas. I think it came together pretty well:
There is a beautiful and tenacious plant called ivy that grows on the side of buildings, covering them in a thick blanket of leaves. You may not know this, but these thick curtains of ivy are a favorite place for certain kinds of fairies to make their homes. They have a name they call themselves, but most people call them Ivy Fairies.
These fairies love to have fun. They play through the air with reckless abandon, turning cartwheels with cardinals, doing roundoffs with robins, and somesaults with sparrows. Because of their colorful wings, humans often think they are seeing butterflies, when really they are seeing Ivy Fairies.
Ivy Fairies are carefree, fun-loving, sweet, and just a little mischievous. But they have one thing they take very seriously, a sort of duty that they have taken upon themselves: they love the ivy that provides them homes and identifies to human beings, and they honor this connection by keeping a special eye out for little girls--or boys--named Ivy, and when they find such a special child in their neighborhood, they undertake to celebrate this child on her or his birthday, which the fairies call "Ivymas."
While an Ivy is sleeping before their birthday, in the middle of the night, the Ivy Fairy creeps up the side of the house--just like an ivy vine--and slips quietly into Ivy's room to deliver a special note with birthday good wishes and perhaps a small gift as a token of affection between an Ivy Fairy and the Ivy that it loves so well.
So: if you ever see a fairy that looks like a butterfly, you might want to yell "thank you!" to her. The fairy will appreciate it, and if it's just a butterfly after all, well, butterflies like to feel appreciated too.
