Moonbeams and Grass Stains

   I'm only pretty in one place. Your dreams.
   Okay, that's more than one place. There's more than one of you. Not that many - you Big Folk take up a lot of room and aren't good at using your space. But this isn't a story about you. Not you in general. We have enough of those.
   This is a story about Foster.

   I once spent my nights going room to room. Here in Seattle, there in Istanbul, over about in a tiny, unnamed community. I've been everywhere. I even went to Antarctica once. The scientists, the only people there, did not fall deep enough asleep to dream, too cold, too wound up. I saw one dream there; he did not get warm enough to sleep. He got too cold and escaped into dreams until that dream faded to black.
   It's the closest I've ever come to dying.
   Dreams are where I come alive. My powers work only there. I can be anyone, not just an ant-sized pixie.
   I stuck to cities after that, never visiting the same dreamer twice. Nothing is more alive than a city.

   But Momma got a premonition last night that everything in my life is going to change.
   The only prediction she ever got wrong was three centuries ago, and that was only because she got hare and hair mixed up. I wish I could assume she just got a few words wrong, but all she said was, "Your life will change tomorrow night."
   Not much room for misunderstanding.

   I slide down a moonbeam, slick as waxed petals, into a room. I land on a cushion of papers haphazardly stacked. Even my tiny frame, no heavier than a speck of dust, shifts the precarious pile. I never affect things physically. I like this room. I flit upwards.
   Most messy rooms are mounds of dirty clothes and trash, hiding ant inhabitants and nixes. They aren't pleasant. I don't like messy rooms.
   This room's differently messy. Books form towers and walls. Papers carpet over the blue carpet. It smells liked faded spray deodorant and paper dust. I take in another breath. I smell starlight and morning dew. I slip down to another sheet. Grass stains and wet dog.
   I can smell his words. A feeling begins to build up in my chest, like warm honey.
   When I fly up to his bed to dive into his dream, the feeling hardens like cool sugared roses.
   I see his ink-stained hand flopped over his face.
   And I love him.

   Only one problem. I'm Fae. He's not. I can see him, but he's never allowed to see me. He can't know of me.
   At least, not while he's awake.
   Maybe my lame power to visit dreams has its uses.