On Miniscule Volant Anthropomorpha

 

A gentleman naturalist is surprised to discover a colony of fairies on his summer estates. The fairies are friends with a local girl who is less pleasantly surprised to discover her friends are being popped into jars of formaldehyde.

You know, on second thought. Why not reverse those genders? There were plenty of Lady (rather than gentleman) naturalists such as Mary Anning, and plenty of men with reason to traipse about in the woods, befriending fairies. The naturalist’s foil could be a gameskeeper or even a poacher, of one of the many underclasses (Irish? Gypsy?) of Victorian society.

But I don’t know. Victorian England has been done to death. Who else has a fairy mythology? I could set this in the Pryor mountains (Wyoming/Montana) and make this a frontier story. That would be fun. Or in middle-Europe, where interesting political things are happening. Some thematic resonance there with the lives of “little people” (peasants) being disrupted by industrialization.

What do you guys think? Are there other legends of tiny people that would make a better backdrop for this story?

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Thanks to Melissa Walshe for inspiring this one.