a place where they’ll never exist.

stopping to lift a tattered leaf of soft browns, golds & greens from her path on the forest floor, eugenia, the ever present and beautifully effervescent fairy of these wondrous woods, shifts her gaze slightly to the right, a soft glimmer of light falling gently on her cheekbone, sunlight cast through the thick canopy of maples and birch. her ears perk ever so slightly as they naturally do when she senses a sound out of the ordinary array of forest chitter & chatter. this was not a squirrel, nor a raven or a crow, these sounds she knows like she knows the sound of her own breath. “aha, human it must be” she says quietly to herself.

adept at making herself unseen and unheard (though the hearing part she has come to realize does not disturb or intrigue humans nearly in the same way a slight flicker of her fairy wing might, she is still careful to quiet her soft hum) she tucks herself into a comfy emerald green mossy corner and uses the leaf, still in her hand as extra camouflage, propping it up in front of her, using a tiny stick for extra support.

the voices are gaining in volume and she can feel the gentle rumble of the earth that these giants create as they tromp their way down the path. luckily for her, eugenia finds the vibrations rather soothing and settles into a more relaxed state.

“well, it looks like you’re just going to have to do it” she hears one voice say “i know it’s annoying and frustrating and might even seem like a waste of time” the voice continues. “especially since you just did it last month”.

“do you really think everything will be compromised if i don’t?” says a slightly deeper and in this moment, more frantic voice.

“ahhh, yeah, definitely, it’s like our whole lives exist within these systems now…most, if not all of our personal information is up for grabs, and we never know who’s grabbing!”

deep sighs are released as the footsteps continue to near, and then stop quite close to eugenia’s clever little hiding spot.

the conversation continues as the two humans come to an overall agreement of the importance of tackling this task in a timely fashion.

eugenia sits and listens, slightly bewildered by some of the words exchanged. she’s come to understand the spoken human language quite well over her lifetime, as the place she dwells is popular with their type. rightly so as the beauty is astounding and the magic is palpable, to even the most mundane. however, there are some things in the language that she is unsure if she will ever understand, and within this conversation there exists one of those things.

the two start moving again, more quietly now, having come to at least one simple conclusion on this walk.

eugenia unfurls herself from her cozy emerald green mossy corner, dropping the leaf back to the earth for further composting, stretches her wings, softly starts humming again, immediately in tune with the earths frequency, and goes about the rest of her waking hours.

that evening, as she settles into her fair-weather sleeping quarters, tucked beneath a blanket of the softest, fluffiest feathers from her forest kin, she gazes up to the dark sky full of shimmering stars and ponders for the final time today, what on earth did they mean when they said “reset your password”? she runs through a few different possible scenarios in her mind, finally deciding that she hopes she never needs to know, as she drifts off into a blissful sleep where dreams of waterfalls and babbling streams await.