The Diary of Joy

Games

11. Peace, the year of the Phoenix

Dear Angel,

Today I decided to grace you with the unique honor of learning a bit more about the awesome games I have made up and other fun games that we often time play.

Last time I mentioned Who Did It Game and I bet you are dying to know what type of game it is, and how it is played.

Well, I am here to enlighten you into the secret that is The Games of Joy.

For this particular game, I might have had some human games as inspiration but that doesn't matter. What matters is that the final result is unique and completely my own.

Even though some of my siblings (read Mischief) don't want to admit it, they love each and every game that I come up with because they are all awesome.

Who Did it Game is fairly simple. There is a mystery that we have to solve with the help of clues that are written down on the leaves that are scattered around the board.

As we move around the board and gather the clues we are close to finding out who did something wrong.

For example, who ate the honey from the kitchen cupboard, or who stole the cakes from the ovens, or even maybe who broke the window.
The first person who guesses any of the mysteries right is the winner.

Of course, the board is not always so friendly because there are some magical traps that might stop one in one's mission, such as a splash of sleeping potion, an unruly plant that wraps around you and so on.

All of those are of course my invention, but even I don't know where they are. Before the game, I spin around in the air and throw the magical creations at random.

They are made so that you can't see them until you are trapped by them but there is always a way to get out if you try hard enough.

My favorite one is the Bedtime trap which just puts you to nice and peaceful sleep where you wake up well-rested and energetic.

My least favorite one is Bathingtime trap where you are suddenly plunged into a huge lake and you can't get out until you are perfectly clean.

It can be such a troublesome one to deal with for us with the wings, but my brothers and sister seem to thoroughly enjoy that one.

Still, no matter how fun my games usually are, sometimes, I have to admit, my games don't turn out as fun as I hope.

Okay, fine, I admit. Sometimes some of my games go so astray that even I can't bring them back to being the magical creations of a unique being that is me.

One of those games that had gone bad was Mischief's fault, well at least I feel like it was her fault.

She wanted to play a game of shops, something I think human children often play but since she didn't seem satisfied with the shop she made I decided to help her out.

In that 'shop' she had rectangle-shaped rocks that represented cheese, some mud shapes the represented cakes and so on.

So helpful as I am I decided that the best way to help my sister out would be to turn all the imaginary products into real ones.

Things didn't go as well as I hoped.

First of all, it turned out that Mischief didn't actually want real cheese, just something that resembled cheese more. Secondly, soon after being created the cheese started emitting a terrible smell that could be smelt everywhere, across the whole magical and human worlds.

Okay, I might be slightly exaggerating but that doesn't change the fact that the smell was just horrible. I don't think I have ever smelt anything worse than that.

Needless to say, mom wasn't really happy with me making the yard smell like human dump sites but with a little of her powerful magic, we managed to clean it up fairly quickly.

That was when I decided to stick to the things I was good at, to stick to making fun grass games which are similar to what people call board games only of course much better and not try to meddle in my sister's games.

Usually, all of my games are created in a way that non-magical beings can play them, but sometimes dad and I play some magical games since mom tries to keep the air of authority around us and others don't have any magic dad is the only one who plays those games with me.

One of the most fun games to play is Spin-o-Fly which is, of course, my own creation which dad highly appreciates.

For us to be able to play this game we have to go somewhere where mom and the others won't see us because they are jealous of how much fun we have, or worried about our safety.
One of those two things.

We go to any meadow, and then we stand on the ground next to each other.

When dad says go, we started flying up into the air while spinning in circles which is not an easy thing to do.
After we have gone far above the ground we stop spinning and try to find our way down which becomes more difficult than you can imagine since we both feel extremely dizzy.

Suffice it to say, that the landing is not always the most graceful one and from time to time we would even hurt ourselves, but we were always laughing so hard and having so much fun that we wouldn't even notice the smaller issues.

The one who landed first AND upright was the winner.

I must say that although I won most of the time sometimes the honor belonged to my father.

Once we stopped being a giggling mess (yes, an adult elf could turn into a giggling mess if he chose so) dad would magically return to his elf self that is to say he would get rid of the wings, and we would walk back home in companionship.

One time, we got so carried away that we didn't even notice that the night was falling, and we still had to go through the woods to go back home so instead of using any magic, for fear of attracting any of the other more dangerous inhabitants of the forest, dad carried me home.

He knew the path so well that with me in his arms he was able to expertly avoid every stone and hole in the road, I was thoroughly impressed.

Even to this day, I remember being scared of the dark and snuggling up closer to dad every time I heard an unfamiliar sound but the fact that he just went on without even flinching gave me the necessary strength to not panic.

It was the scariest yet the best experience of my life because dad was there with me and I knew as long as he was there nothing bad could ever happen to me.

Once we got home, mom was furious, but we managed to convince her that we got carried away bird watching.

Even to this day, I highly doubt she believed us, but still, she accepted our excuses without saying anything at all, and I was glad that she let us get away with our obvious lie.

That's mom, she always has this uncanny sense when she should let us be and when she should yell her wings off.

Anyways, I am getting hungry. I better go find something to it before Chatterbox eats everything in sight. For someone who talks so much, he sure manages to find a way to eat everything he gets his hands on.

Until next time,

Your friend, always,

Joy