Story entry 25 - Asleep in the Garden

Liffeys are small. About four to six inches tall and covered in a fine, but dense, mossy fur. Laloux had a fondness for the arcane creatures and always looked for them during her visits to Ireland. Even looking for them, they are easy to miss due to the fact that they hide well and even in pain sight, they camouflage with the surroundings perfectly. Liffeys love damp and green areas and are often found near waterways or ponds and the most common place would be near their namesake, the River Liffey. One quality that Laloux loved about the Liffeys is that that moss will grow where a Liffey makes its home and Laloux loved moss of all kinds. If a liffey lived in one place for long enough, a wide variety of mosses would begin to flourish.
On her recent trip to Ireland Laloux hoped to find some and convince them to move to Baltimore and help with the moss that grew on the stones and bricks in the dark and damp corners of her backyard. She wanted all types of moss. A wide variety of cushion moss, different kinds of sheet moss, a few kinds of rock cap moss, but most importantly she wanted an enormous selection of haircut moss to use in some of her most rare teas and tinctures. With the right ingredients, she could make potions that would charm the fairies, stop aging and need reverse it, make trolls sleep, and that is just to name a few of the recipes she knew.
Laloux knew what to look for and she finally had success on the riverbank of Waterstown Park near the base of the Farmleigh Bridge. There were a dozen and they were doing what they love to do - which is sleeping. Second only to building camouflaged fairy homes, which is more of a favor that they do for them as a barter for protection. The Liffey have no self defenses and can be very vulnerable if they are sleeping outside of their homes (which look like a moss covered rock), so the protection the fairies provide is essential to their survival.
It was after a lot of bartering and discussion that two of the Liffeys decided to go with Laloux to Baltimore, Maryland. She promised them protection, plenty of food, and travels to anywhere they wanted to visit. The return trip was thrilling for the two Liffeys (Brín and Peadar) and when they reached their destination they immediately settled down for a nap in Laloux’s garden in a small sunny spot near a rather large fox skull that she had placed there last year. The moss that had taken root last year, already looked healthier with the Liffeys near by and Laloux smiled as she slowly leafed through her potion book. Exhausted from the trip, but quite content.

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