That night the baby fell asleep, warm, with a belly full of nut-butter and raspberry mash, listening to Miranda’s fabulous stories of places and creatures from long ago in worlds of imagination and splendour where colours are more brilliant than any that can be seen. Her tales were all the more enchanting to the newborn, because she told them in a language he did not yet understand. Even so, her words were rich in fairy magic. She whispered to him as she rested in a cozy nook of her baby’s smaller ear, the one that was small and round like a quarter and not big and pointed like a carrot. Every word opened a universe inside his mind. The whole night she carried him away to places where the stream babbled poetically over the many lives she had known who drew water from her and the many depths she carried with her always. He felt these babblings like a rush of cool water. He listened to the stars telling secrets to each other, and watched as they winked to each other with promises of silence. The silver minnows with rainbows on their bellies danced in the water and laughed with their wide mouths and played games with their tails in the black rolling river beneath the wise silver moon. The baby ogre understood and loved them all because he was too young to know anything except by love; and he believed everything that Miranda told him, because her stories were beautiful and her voice was beautiful and she, whom he could always see like a glowing pink raspberry star leading him and loving him through all those worlds of dreaming, she was the most beautiful of all.
In the morning, Miss Mourning Dove, Mr. Squirrel, Mr. Owl, and Mr. Snake came over the blue stream as they had come before. The ogre baby woke up when they lifted the roof off of his shelter. The first thing he saw was Miranda holding a huge ruby raspberry filled to the brim with golden honey. When he opened his mouth to smile and laugh, she dropped in the berry and gave him a kiss on each cheek. Mr. Snake slithered into the house and began his study of the ogre child. As he slid over his stomach Etham realized that he was hungry after all of his night-time adventures and began to cry. Mr. Squirrel jumped in to the rescue with his nut-butter and honey-water breakfast specialty. Mr. Owl began to teach him the language of fairies. Mr. Snake, Mr. Owl, and Miranda were delighted to see that despite the legendary blunders and general obtuseness of ogres, her Etham learned readily and quickly.
Miss Mourning Dove flew overhead. She showed him the peace of the blue sky and the white clouds drifting through it. She showed him the sparkling blue water from his small home beside it. She flew high near the tops of the great oaks reaching in their might up from the forest floor below. He saw the world illuminated from the opened roof and tiny cracks in the walls. Things slowly became familiar to the ogre. Etham understood that he was home.
All the while, Miranda flew about or sat in his ear, whispering encouragement and taking even more pride in his accomplishments than she would have had they been her own. In the days and weeks that followed, Etham learned to recognize the ancient forest and its creatures thanks to the daily flights of Miss Mourning Dove; and thanks to the lessons of Mr. Owl, he learned the names for things he knew. His body became strong as Mr. Squirrel filled his belly each day with nuts and Mr. Snake slithered over him in his investigations. He learned that everything and everyone works together in a great co-operation of life, even if they are unaware of it or don’t want to be a part of it. There is no escaping living and dying and rebirth from the soils, but that’s okay, because the cycle of life is worth celebrating with works of the body and creations of the mind.
He loved Miranda above all. He loved how her soft fairy lips kissed his rough ogre cheeks, how her delicate fairy fingers stroked his wiry ogre hair, and how her loving fairy tales softened his blunt ogre spirit. Miranda loved him too. Miranda could only love him. She showed him that she loved him with each loving caress which she let pour freely from her heart. He knew when she kissed him just how beautiful and special he was to her. Each night he fell asleep listening to the stories of the whistling wind as it passed around the walls of his home by the stream. The babbling waters gave him dreams in poetry. Miranda loved that he loved all that she had struggled so hard to give him.