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"This is the place?"
"Supposedly."
Agatha peers into the dark woods ahead, flexing her fingers nervously. Behind her, Niamh sits in the car, her face wearing the distinctive frown she makes when she's trying to look nonchalant, but is actually deeply affected.
"What's wrong?" Agatha asks.
"Nothing." A beat, then she sighs and continues. "Just... be careful, okay?" Something in Agatha's chest constricts, but she ignores it.
"I thought you said it's probably all fairy stories anyway?"
"Yeah, it probably is, but you should still be cautious. Fairy shit is no joke." Niamh insists.
Agatha got the bright idea to try and find a fairy while visiting Niamh's family in Ireland. She didn't even really want to come, things had been awkward for a while with Niamh. Agatha likes spending time with her, sometimes even likes kissing her, but sometimes she gets a little too close or comfortable and something in her starts to recoil.
She started to assess her past relationships: Ginger, Simon, Sacha, and found the same issue with each: herself.
She did end up coming, and now she's glad. Because once Niamh's grandparents opened up, they were a treasure trove of magical history. Namely, fairies.
While fairies fucked off from the English World Of Mages hundreds of years ago, apparently the Irish ones were a bit less eager to disappear entirely.
"They tend to keep to themselves and don't appreciate being spied on, but if you meet one and approach them openly, they can be amenable." Niamh's grandma had told her. "Sometimes they'll even trade with you."
"That's how we got Niamh!" Her grandad added, just as his granddaughter entered the room, swatting him on the head with a well-practised eye roll.
"Stop telling people I'm a changeling!"
So now they're parked on a narrow road beside a forest she got Niamh's grandad to circle on a map, Agatha with a pocketful of junk to trade and Niamh with a pair of earbuds and a podcast to catch up with. She made it clear she didn't fancy the hike.
And so Agatha sets off alone, picking her way through the trees as the sun climbs higher and higher across the sky. It's not so dark once her eyes adjust, the sun dappling across the mossy floor as she explores deeper and deeper. A few times she sees movement, but it's always just a bird, or a waving dryad. They seem to like her. Once she sees a deer and it's fawn, and stops to watch them pass.
It's far into the afternoon and her water bottle is running low when she stumbles i to the clearing. It's not the first she's found, a little pocket of morning but grass and some mushrooms, but this one is different. In the centre is a circle, made of more mushrooms and pebbles, with a tree stump in the centre. She's heard of fairy circles, of course. Could this be one?
She picks up another pebble from beside her foot and tosses it in to the circle. It lands on the ground rather anticlimactically, and she huffs.
"Someone's moody." A voice from the tree line makes Agatha jump. She turns to see a figure, perched on a low hanging branch. It has short, choppy brown hair, through which she can make out the tops of pointed ears, skin the colour of amber, and large, dark eyes, greener than the foliage that surrounds them, set into a sharp, angular face.
"Oh! Hello." She says, trying to hide her nerves.
"Hello." The fairy mimics, it's voice almost identical to Agatha's. She almost feels bad about calling it "it", but then it smiles with too many teeth, and she feels her gut instinct may have been right. Niamh's warning echoes in her mind as it asks "What's your name?"
Agatha knows better than to give that sort of information out to fairies.
"You can call me sister golden hair."
"Ah, clever girl." It draws out each word like it's savouring it.
"I'm looking for a fairy."
"So I heard?" It smiles wider, like a shark. Agatha has faced far scarier, and doesn't flinch.
"You heard?"
"You said as much to girl who brought you here, by the road."
"It's rude to eavesdrop." Agatha says, but the fairly merely laughs, the sound like raindrops pattering on a still lake.
"I want to make a trade."
"Oh? And what do you have to offer?" She empties her pockets onto the grass between them. An unopened bottle of sparkly purple nail varnish she stole in sixth year, found buried in the bottom of her suitcase. A pink satin ribbon she had worn in her hair for the ferry ride from England. A woven friendship bracelet Ginger gave her at a party- she feels a bit bad about giving that away, but couldn't find much else that might interest a fairy. And a small, intricately engraved tea spoon that Niamh's grandparents insisted she take. "I don't know why, but they go mad for the things." The fairy sizes up each meagre offering, then tilts it's head.
"And your water bottle." Agatha unclips her tacky, blue plastic water bottle from her bag and swallows the last of it's contents, then drops it onto the pile. The fairy smiles, and this time it feels more like a gesture of genuine pleasure.
"And what is it you want?"
"Answers. Maybe a cure."
"Ahhh. Of course." It inclines it's head, so she goes on.
"I feel like there's something... wrong with me."
"All humans feel that way. Go on."
"I don't love people right." She admits. And then the floodgates open. "In every relationship I've ever been in, I feel like there's something wrong with me. I pull back from things you're supposed to like, freeze up or shut down or just bolt. But I don't underdtshd why. I want to be with somebody, I want that connection and life, but it's like some other part of me resists. I'm with a girl and it's amazing, I want this to work, so so much, but I just feel as though I'm broken inside and I don't know how to fix it."
Agatha stops with shuddering breath, and the fairy stares at her, smile gone. "Well?"
"That all sounds perfectly normal to me."
"You don't understand." Her shoulders slump. "You're not a person, you won't get it."
"I'm not human, but I'm still a person. Do you think fairies don't have relationships?" It scoffs. "Do you think in the centuries we live, we don't watch our human neighbours, and see how their love works the same as ours?"
"Then how does what I'm going through sound normal to you?" Agatha growls. The fairy shrugs.
"I admit, the boxes aren't normal. Humans... always trying to sort themselves and each other into boxes. I like girls, you like boys, he likes both, she likes neither. How narrow minded." It snorts derisively. "People are not made to be put in boxes. Maybe you are not so normal, maybe I misspoke. You are perfectly imperfect."
"What are you saying?" Agatha asks.
"My best guess... You are somewhere in between. Both and neither. You want some things, other things? Not so much. That's normal!" It tuts. "Maybe not such a clever girl after all."
Agatha turns it's words over in her mind.
"So you're saying... All of this, everything I feel, it's just a sexuality crisis?"
"I don't know what that word means." The fairy frowns. "I just think you need to tell your lover that you are somewhere in between liking them and not liking them. If there's any hope for humans left, they will understand. Or try to."
Agatha sits down on the grass, closes her eyes, and thinks.
Is it possible that the fairy is right? That Niamh will understand if she just tells her "hey, I half like you. I like going on dates and kissing you and the nights when you stay over and pass out halfway through an episode of bake off, but my heart feels like it's being squeezed too tightly when your hands start to wander, or you talk about moving in?"
Maybe it will blow up in her face and she'll lose the good stuff they do have. Or maybe Niamh will understand. The only way to find out, is to try.
She opens her eyes again to find the fairy say across from her, painting it's nails worn the sparkly purple varnish. It looos startled for a moment, then raises a questioning eyebrow.
"A pleasure trading with you." Agatha nods as she gets to her feet, then sets off the way she thinks she came without looking back.
"If you go left a bit you'll find a stream you can drink from!" The fairy's voice calls after her. "Follow that and you will make it back to the road by sundown!" She has no idea whether she should trust it, but veers left and indeed finds a river.
She makes it back to the road in one piece, and Niamh has reached over and opened the door for her as soon as she reaches the car.
"Did you find a fairy?"
"Yep."
"And? Are you ever going to tell me what you wanted to trade for?" Niamh asks. Agatha meets her eyes and feels her heart skip a beat.
"Start driving. I'll explain once we're out of earshot." She knows what she wants. It's only a matter of if Niamh wants it too. Isn't that the case with all relationships? Isn't it normal? Perfectly imperfect? She takes a deep breath, and begins.