Me and My Shadow

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Gerard's face blanked.

"Oh, well, I guess I had quite a good run."

Frank's brow creased as Gerard spoke. He had seen most human reactions over the years - happy, sad, confused and even angry, but this was a new one.

"What are you talking about?" he asked with the tiniest flutter of his wings.

"I'm going crazy," Gerard shrugged, dropping his hand back to his side, his head jarring in surprise as he heard a small yelp.

Fluttering back up to hover in front of him, Frank folded his arms across his chest, fixing Gerard with a stern glare.

"Next time you do that, how about a bit of warning?" he scolded. "These are wings you know, not a jet pack!"

"Sorry," Gerard replied, surprised at how genuinely contrite he sounded at the rebuke.

"That's okay," Frank smiled in response; he had been warned by his supervisor that the first meeting rarely went well.

"Can anyone see you?" Gerard asked. "I mean, apart from me?" he added as he noted a mischievous smirk cross the fairy's face.

"Of course not!" Frank laughed. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be for me?"

"Dangerous?" Gerard frowned, not seeing the logic of the statement. "How?"

Frank rolled his eyes – it was as clear as the nose on his face would be if Gerard had a magnifying glass.

"Okay," he began, "but first, can you put your hand back up, please? My wings are getting tired. Flying isn't a problem, but hovering is quite draining."

"Oh, er... sure," his brow creased as he realised how stupid he looked with his hand held in mid-air given that no one could see the tiny little man now settling himself in his palm.

"Comfy," Frank offered a broad, satisfied smile, folding down his wings and resting his head and back in the gentle curve of Gerard's fingers. "Now, say you're out walking in a wood, and you encountered a singing frog. What would you do?"

"What like some sort of warbling frog?" Gerard asked.

"No, really singing, like belting out one of your songs."

"You know about my band?"

"Of course I do!" Frank replied astonished at the question. "It's how you don't know about me that I'm surprised about."

Gerard rubbed his forehead absently as he stared at the tiny figure, uncertain how to respond.

"I've only just met you!" he replied, a little too loudly for his own comfort. Continuing at a much more subdued volume. "How could I possibly know about you?"

Frank sighed. His supervisor had also warned him about this but even so, he had found it too difficult to believe.

"Frankie," his supervisor, Pete, had told him, "what you have to remember about humans is that they don't believe in anything but themselves."

Pete was a skilled Fairy with a century of experience in the field. He had been a fairy godfather to dozens of humans and he couldn't recall even one who believed he was what he said he was on first meeting – some never did. Frank knew it wasn't anything that Pete was doing wrong, many of his fellow students had experienced similar issues and all the professors had agreed. Humans were stupid, ignorant and/or arrogant.

Frank wanted to believe differently, he really did, especially about this one. He had to admit, he'd really lucked out with this human – he was so very pretty, so much so that he could almost have been a fairy himself. But he knew he couldn't possibly be that lucky to get a pretty human who also happened to be the first ever to believe in fairy godfathers.