Cursed Grimoire Fragments: Charms &Troubles #2
Full title: ‘Charms and Troubles of Ladies of all Species: Knowledge Gained from the Marriages of my Avatars’
"Darling, it isn't going to fit"
"Seriously? Is it too big?"
"No darling, I'm struggling to believe this, but it's too small"
"We've never had this problem before"
"It's really quite shocking"
"You couldn't..."
"It's really well made"
"I'm sorry, the one time I get you a dress..."
"It's fine, really"
"I'm going to give that tailor a piece of my mind"
"Darling, please, no!"
"He's clearly making light of weefolk! I'll show him we're a big deal!"
Within a certain enchanted forest, there was a certain tree. Hollowing out the mighty tree was a very large, but very small labyrinth.
Large in that it spanned the whole of the tree, tall and wide as mountains.
Small since it's passages were made in mind of peoples no taller or wider than a palm opened up in halting motion.
None lived there, lost and consumed by Father Time, and the small treasures, some made small by magic, some rolled up, and some small from the start.
Within one chamber was a rarity, a fragment of a heretical arch-mage's magnum opus. Ronova Casameo, Mage of Mating's cursed grimoire ‘Charms and Troubles of Ladies of all Species: Knowledge Gained from the Marriages of my Avatars’
This fragment was focused on the descendants of those who left the flower fields for the love of mortals, giving up the blissful immortal fleeting lives they had.
Wee fairy folk cut loose from the blossom, only just managing to keep their wings.
Pixies.
...
...so if you are not weefolk yourself, or do not possess a means for full or partial shrinkage, or even... reinforcement of a partner, you shall find it a strain on the pairing you would have with a pixie maiden.
Putting aside those difficulties of size, of the dangers while sleeping of rolling on top of your wife to her death...
In a cold sense, as with many of the weefolk they make for exceedingly economical spouses. Little to feed, little to clothe. Indeed it is in the nature of needing less that weefolk supremacists base their idea of superiority. The biggers, they say are wasteful, clumsy and stupid.
Pixies having flight, are not so given to such sizism. Of course there's a natural distrust that the flightless have for the winged.
Speaking of wings, those of the pixies are most like the butterfly's. Beautiful.
They're quite delicate though, and pixies are wont to become depressives once their wings are sundered, so take special care of your beloved, given that a mage has an easier time keeping bond with a pixie, a few protective magics, something you'd should be doing for any lady are important.
They're on the whole a shy and fearful kind, though occasionally some show almost reckless bravery. Encourage the retreating to move forward, discourage the advancing in moving forward!
It bears repeating again how matching her size will make things easier. If you both live in a home of size fitting to weefolk she can take on wifely duties, and have some of her womanly nerves at ease.
If you are giant to her tiny, you will keep her somewhat better than an exotic bird, cooking and cleaning for you both, lest the hollowness of lovers making seperate meals blooms. From one seperation comes more!
There's a special charm however to a tiny lover fluttering to your cheek to hug and kiss, or slumbering full of trust in the palm of your hand.
Hands of a larger lover are something a pixie maiden will find endlessly fascinating, and should you make clothes and furnishings for her yourself by hand it shall be hard for your union to break.
If you are larger than her, by gifts like these will you lower her fears and guard. Indeed there's many a farmer or scribe who unknown to all keeps a pixie wife hidden from all else, some even have a pixie mistress, betraying their own partners, truly scum, and such unions are usually childless.
If you hold such ambitions the curse I've layered earlier should be transforming you into an immobile ball of flesh soon.
Now, back to the matter at hand, children. There us good news in that once the logistical issues are surmounted, ever since the ascendance of that servant of Mother Goose, the Nameless Stork, mothers may risk their lives still, but issues of size and shape are not as cruel as they were. Still, being descended from beings that at first were never born in the manner of mortals, they have a difficult time of it. She might still desire to fly here and there, but you must not allow her to, it is a great strain and if she is mid flight when labours occur, tragedy shall be the result.
You will have to take special care if you are the larger to support her against her child who will rapidly grow larger than her and in cruel innocence and later vile rebellion torture her badly since she shall be so weak in comparison. You cannot count on your child having a caring gentle nature.
In spite of being a weefolk, they're not terribly fertile so it may prove difficult to sire children even when you have solved the practical matters.
Pixies can be found throughout Absurdia, an exceedingly common kind, but usually they live in the shadow of villages, towns and cities.
Even now, one might...
The rest of the fragment was torn, and all the pixies of the Labyrintree were no more, but surely they still quailed in the homes of larger folk, hiding from those, and defending themselves from rats, mice and countless savage insects.
Indeed, a pixie would marry a giant to escape a life of murderous vermin and desperate scavenging, yet would giant prove lover or seller of pixie parts?
Not all love as Ronova Casameo.
...
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It's funny; in a story I've been working on for... entirely too long, now, there's a fairy/pixie character with whom many of these highlighted issues are pertinent to her story. Her wings are damaged, so she's forced to rely on the "biggers" to get around until they heal properly (and she'd be as good as dead otherwise). She has the protagonist sleep on the floor rather than share a bed because she's afraid he'll roll over on her and crush her in his sleep (and she thinks it's demeaning that she would have to sleep on the bedside table). She's also the first to suggest running away at any given moment since someone of her size learns quick that most conflicts aren't worth fighting (though I wouldn't call her shy by any stretch of the imagination). She's not a romantic interest but... let's just say the "size" conversation does come up during a candid moment of baseless speculation. They just make for such delightful characters. In this story, humans and fairies are genetically incompatible, so there's no talk of off-spring, but that does raise... interesting possibilities of how a conventionally-sized child might behave if their mother was only a foot tall and completely incapable of handling them - "You cannot count on your child having a caring gentle nature" is an unfortunately apropos line. I also never gave any thought to how easy it would be to have a fairy side-piece... unethical, sure, but also clever. I'm left with much to ponder and many ideas for tales I'm not sure Substack is fit for.
That being said, I look forward to further installments in this series. It seems that you're setting up some larger world-building that I'm curious to see develop more. I especially like that none of it is intrusive - one of the biggest issues I often see in many fantasy, short and long, is an obsessive need for author's to front-load exposition and world-building instead of either drip-feeding it slowly throughout or just - and here's a novel concept - trusting the reader will infer things naturally.