For those unable to read script/handwriting, I have transcribed the letter below;
From the Rocker of: Grandmother Tansy Thistlebloom
Thistledown Hollow, Whispering Glade
Wrapped in Shawls Since 1857
To: My Dearest Featherling
Somewhere Bright and Curious
[Deliver via Dragonfly Post or Windwhistle Route]
My dearest Featherling,
It’s the coldest sort of evening, the kind where the windows flower with ice ferns, and the wind keeps trying to come in for tea. I’m curled into my old walnut shell rocker — the one your great-great-uncle Barley made with willow legs that creak like gossiping cattails — and my toes are tucked into a warm puffball mushroom. I’ve got a cup of frostberry tea and a very chatty fire. It seems just the night to begin telling you the stories of “the old days,” when fairies like me still remembered how to read bark-script and wore mushrooms upside-down for hats.
Now, let me tell you about the year of the Snow Hiccups.
It was Frostdrop Month, ages ago — before shimmerlamps and warming spells, mind you — and the snow itself caught a case of the hiccups. I’m not entirely sure who gave it to the snow (though I do recall a certain young apprentice fiddling with weather runes under a full moon…), but there it was. One morning the clouds hiccupped and sneezed snow in perfect circles — floating rings of flurries that hovered just above the ground like frosted halos. We called it a “sky sneeze.”
It was terribly inconvenient for sledding, of course.
The pond froze in patches — one for skating, one for splashing, and one that kept playing music if you tapped it with a stick. We used it to dance. I remember young Bramble Stumbletwig doing a whole solo waltz in felted mittens and nothing else — quite a scandal.
Every time the clouds hiccupped, snow came down in the shape of whatever they were thinking of. I distinctly remember dodging a shower of frosty teacups one morning, and at one point, your Aunt Petal got bonked by a snow-hen.
We had to wear umbrellas on our heads, darling. We called it fashion.
And not mushroom hats, mind you — those were for daily wear. For umbrellas, we used pressed lily pad parasols, thimbleberry leaf domes, and, if you were feeling fancy, a glasswing moth canopy that shimmered like a bubble and blew away if you blinked too hard.
Eventually, the Snow Hiccups wore off, and things went back to normal — but for a while, the world felt extra peculiar and extra lovely, like someone had opened the wrong spellbook and decided to *just see what would happen.
And that, my dear, is why I never trust anything labeled
“Experimental Weather: Handle with Wonder.”
Do write me back, if you can. My candle’s flickering, and I think it wants me to stop talking.
All my frosty love,
Grandmother Tansy Thistlebloom
(Still wearing the same shawl since ‘57. It’s practically historical.)