i met a fae, i think (and she changed my life)
I've lived a very strange life. I once went on a date with a girl that ended in us collecting two other people we'd just met and making it a four-person date. I spent a night in the van of a traveler I'd met only that day. I dated a girl I'd met on the bus, starting the conversation with her with a drawing on my arm.
My propensity for having surprisingly positive interactions with strangers started on a late September afternoon in 2021. My walk home from work went down a trail through a patch of light woods, crossing over the local creek a couple of times. It's a lovely trail, though the woods are nowhere near as dense as a nature reserve or national park (the woes of suburbia). It's still a peaceful walk nonetheless.
Her name was Amy. I saw her crouched next to where one of the small footbridges met the gravel, wearing a lush green wool sweater, a pair of jeans that seemed to be the legs of two different jeans stitched together in the middle, long ginger hair, and no shoes, despite being on a gravel trail. How she wasn't in pain, I'm not sure I'll ever understand.
Initially, I walked past without a word. However, the whole image of her settled in quick, the otherworldly ethereal beauty of a stranger picking weeds at the edge of the trail, and I was helpless but to turn around and say to her, "Hey, I hope you don't mind me saying, but you are effervescent."
Somehow, we ended up having a conversation. I called her fae-like, she told me she fights forest fires in the interior, and we talked about fate. I lived less than two minutes away, so when I offered to do a tarot reading for her, I rushed home to grab my cards.
I may have gotten caught up in the beating of my gay heart, because I also changed into a less work-y outfit and something both cuter and a tad out of my comfort zone. But she thought I was cute, so it was worth it.
The conversation we had about fate extended onward. I argued that fate is something that exists, though different than the common comprehension; rather than fate being the machinations of some unknowable higher power, I drew comparisons to Laplace's Demon, and the theory of all things being a chain reaction extending infinitely into both the past and future.
She argued, however, that fate isn't entirely set in stone, and that there is a potential "true spontaneity".
See, something she told me is that she lives her life chasing that spontaneity. She follows wherever the wind guides her; she started fighting forest fires on a whim, and before that she moved to the middle of nowhere on a dime, and before that I don't even remember. What matters is that she lives her life unburdened by the idea of fate, prepared to chase whatever whim comes her way.
Despite my beliefs, I decided to try something like that. Though, maybe not to the degree she lives; rather than upending my life to chase down whatever dream has started bugging me, I'd do it small. I'd do it how she did it for me. I'd be a random stranger that made someone smile, like she was for me.
I kissed her on the cheek. I got her phone number. She never answered, but I wished her a happy birthday a few days later, and let it be. She told me she thought the afternoon would be better in her head if we were to go our separate ways, be lingering memories of that one stranger that stuck with us.
It stung for a bit, never hearing back from her, but then I started to agree with her. And now, a few years down the line, she's become something of mythologue to me. That one girl whose unending pursuit of the spontaneous upended the way I thought of life.
Of all the things that came after I noted above, I still remember the first time I decided to be a memorable stranger. I was on the bus home from my partner's, and there were some boys having some animated conversation. One of them dropped a bottle of soda, and so I pulled out a small notebook I kept in my pocket and drew one of them a soda bottle pouring out some weird gloop monster. When I gave him the drawing, he was so excited, and showed it to his friends like it was the coolest thing in the world.
And then I kept doing that. I ended up with a girlfriend for a bit because of it. When I ended up unhoused, I made some friends in a hostel with a little sketch, and got a free(ish) ride to the next city over, one with more resources for me, and got to stay in their AirBNB until they went back home. When that time came, I went to a library and saw a girl who I thought was pretty (the traveler from the opening paragraph!) so I drew her a mermaid, and our conversation that spurred from it led to her letting me stay the night in her van.
And beyond that, I've had the confidence to give strangers little joys. I'll often tell passerby that I think their outfit looks nice, or that their hair is pretty. When I'd take the bus somewhere, I'd bring my notebook and be ready to doodle something innocent and silly for someone, giving it some caption like "you look cool" and passing it their way without a word before I got off.
More than three years later, I've become a different person. Despite what I expected, I did end up moving to a new city on a whim and staying there for a year. And while my circumstances could have been better, I made enough friends and good memories that'll stick with me until I'm buried in the ground. I found the courage to do things I never would have done before, all because of a stranger I met in the woods and a nice conversation.
So, Amy. If by some insane chance you're reading this, I've changed my name a couple times since then, and I'm not telling you what it is now, because I don't give my name to the fae. Thank you for changing my life. You've sent me on a completely new direction, one that's had as many trials and tribulations as it's had joys and smiles. While I'm sure some of that shy kid still remains, they've grown into someone new. Maybe someday our paths will cross again. I'd love to take you for coffee, catch up a bit, and then return to being each others' brightly hued ghosts that we let linger, because the haunts are worth remembering.
And if you're not the fae I've met in the woods, hopefully this random little rambling blog post written well past when I should have gone to bed makes you smile. Maybe you've got memories of strangers that made you smile, people you met once and never saw again but they stuck with you as though you'd known them forever.
Or, maybe you can be that for someone. Pay the little joys forward.