The Curious Case Of The Fairy, The Leprechaun And The Mountain Troll

Lockdown is hard, I think we are all agreed on that. You do what you have to do to get through the day. I used to run marathons and write novels. Now I sofa surf and watch daytime television. It has a hypnotic, mesmerising hold on me and there are no depths to the chat show rabbit holes I can vanish down. Anything but have a constructive, fruitful day. I thought I’d seen it all. Until yesterday that was, when I stumbled across the curious case of the faerie, the leprechaun and the mountain troll.

All three live in Seattle and were formerly members of the human race before deciding to identify as the above. The lady faerie seemed to be the boss and explained how the three of them had formed a polyamorous relationship after hooking up at a local festival where such like-minded folk met and mingled. Pre-Covid of course. It appears that faeries, trolls and leprechauns are just as vulnerable to the pandemic as the rest of us. Who knew?

To be fair, the mountain troll did indeed look like a mountain troll. 6’ 9’’ tall, broad shouldered and as grizzly as they come. When he spoke though he came across as quite an intelligent, mild-mannered chap with a gentle self-deprecating sense of humour. The leprechaun sounded decidedly non-Irish but again appeared a polite, genial soul. All three of them seemed content and most important of all, happy. It was certainly not the norm but, for them, it seemed to be working.

Trolls have a pretty bad reputation. When they’re not lurking under bridges harassing passing children, they’re kidnapping and planning to eat hapless hobbits and dwarves. And this negative press hasn’t improved in recent years. Now when you hear the word ‘troll’ it conjures up nasty, anonymous accounts on social media whose sole purpose is to inflict pain and misery on the rest of us. Internet trolls are everything that is wrong about society today rolled up into one toxic, hateful ball.

So it was good to discover that not all trolls are desperate to crack open your bones and suck the marrow from them. The world is a grim, scary place at present and there seems little to be positive about. But here were three individuals living their admittedly very different lives in prefect peace and harmony. They weren’t harming anybody else and doing their bit to add a bit of sunshine to our lives. Us humans can learn a lot, even from the humble mountain troll.