Caitlyn King - On Fairies

 There was a book in my elementary school library, titles Fairyology. It treated fairies like an actual subject to be studies, with 'witness' accounts, trinkets and baubles. There was lingering interest on my part, but some of me remained partial to the stories.

J.R.R. Tolkein wrote an essay concerning fairy stories. He said that the road to fairyland is not the road to Heaven, nor even to Hell. That thought interested me. Not to Heaven, nor to Hell; fairyland is, presumably, filled with fairies, and yet they do not go to Heaven or Hell when they die (if, that is, fairies can even die).

So, from a Christian lens, what does that make fairies? Does that make them something unGodly? Or perhaps it makes fairies something even more natural. It's debated if animals go to an afterlife, most would rather believe than not. But that is still Heaven or Hell.

Maybe fairies are something more like nature herself; something undoubtedly alive but absent from our minds. We do not wonder if the blades of grass beneath our feet, or the trees surrounding us go to Heaven or Hell, even though they are capable of pain. They live in Faerie, a land or realm separate from ours, a dangerous place. Maybe separate from humans, and for that they are perhaps better off.

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