It happens every year. Even though I try to visit all the regions in our beautiful Fantasy Faire, even though I aspire to photograph each one and write something from each one, I often end up feeling more at home in one special one than anywhere else. This year, it’s Lunafae.
From the aerial vista to the little details, it’s as if every detail was placed exactly and precisely in the right place. Now that I’ve had a little experience with various bits and pieces of the Faire, I have some idea of how much time and work it takes to put all the little pieces in place in exactly the right way.
My late husband, the engineer, admires the way everything is laid out. Like a clock, he says.
I say, is it a clock? If it is a clock, it is a love clock. Lunafae is a love letter to the moon.
He calls me a hippie and fluffs my very short hair. “You’re like a very soft hedgehog,” he says.
“Let’s look at the moon stones,” I say.
Each of these photos shows one of the moonstones. Each one comes with a different quote about some aspect of the moon. I love walking around the garden’s edge and discovering each of the stones as I go. My poor, long-suffering late husband shakes his head and talks about how the stones were put together and how all the maths work.
In fact, he gets so engrossed in how the maths worked and working out the phases of the Lunafae clock, I just head to a bench, stretch out, and soak up the day.
Fact is, I could really just sit and soak in Lunafae all day. In fact, I’ve done it more than once. There are so many places to sit and write, think, daydream. Visiting doesn’t seem enough: I kind of want to live there.
This year marks the fourth anniversary of my husband’s death from cancer. Every year the Faire is a place where I can be with other people whose lives have been forever changed by the disease in its many forms. And getting involved with Fantasy Faire is one thing I can do both to honour his memory and help in what small way I can to make a better future or a better present for cancer sufferers, survivors, carers, and families. I don’t do a “Why I Relay” post every year; it’s wrenching for me to remember and write about the experience of watching the love of my life fade away and die.
And so, instead, I pictures us walking hand in hand through the gardens of Lunafae.
And, OK, we’re speculating between ourselves about the strange bunny phenomenon at this year’s Faire. We can’t decide what’s causing it, but we’re having fun making up stories about it.
It’s been a rough year. I think it has been for everyone. A series of personal blows kept me out of work for some time, and then I started working from home when the UK went into lockdown. I got a late start on Faire blogging and photographing this year because working from home in the age of Coronavirus meant I didn’t feel confident to take holiday for the first week of the Faire and had to wait until week 2 to have the kind of time I need to put together the kind of photographs and blogs I create.
Ah; he’s done with the maths! Now we can begin again. And there we are, my late husband and me, walking through the gardens. We go slow, because we have all the time in the world. Like the moon, we grow dark and bright, dark again, and bright again, and we make tides and spur seasons, and some say we make magic.
We’ve stopped now to listen to the demifae harpist play some Irish standards on her glass harp that looks kind of backwards but isn’t completely. We sit on a bench. We hold hands. We lean on one another and watch the sunset. It’s how every day should end. How every day should have ended.
Love,
Gwen
Lunafae is one of 18 regions in this year’s Relay for Life of Second Life’s Fantasy Faire. You can visit Lunafae, but do so before the Fairelands fade into the mists after 10 May, 2020. Sponsored by The Looking Glass and designed by Sharni Azalee, Lunafae is a wonder to behold, and I hope that when you visit there, you will see even part of what I see. Long before I got to know Sharni, I admired her work from afar, and her beautiful creation this year has brought me so much I haven’t spent a faire day without visiting the region.
Three Twisted Knots 
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