When I began drawing and painting various fairytale, myth, and fantasy images many years ago, I had drawn a large number of seemingly unconnected images. When I began planning and writing Red Riding Hood later, I sought out a way to bring the worlds /stories I had envisioned behind these images together.

The elves I had mentioned in the original character page have already been well described/served by these images.

However, I had long debated whether to use fairies and whether to use the fairies that already existed in my portfolio as original fantasy works.

In some mythologies and folktales, fairies and elves are really the same race. It was actually Tolkien who gets most of the credit for making the fairies more the size of humans (aka “elves”). I believe that before that most fairies/elves were smallish creatures.

But when I started writing Red Riding Hood I couldn’t help myself. The elves that Wolfram met made derogatory comments about those pesky fairies. In their world, the “fairies” believed themselves related to the elves. (In their little brains, they think they grow up to be the tall lovely elves that they like to harass.) It’s quite funny in a way (at least to me). They harassed the elves really out of love and adoration more than anything. The poor things believed themselves related to the grumpy elves. (After all, they shared slightly pointed ears!)

It’s quite possible they really are no relation at all and that our dear Elisa might have been responsible for encouraging such a belief when she named these things “fairies” to begin with. An irresponsible elf or two might have further cemented their misunderstanding if they had related something about elves/fairies being really one and the same. (Ahaha. Careless words!)

And what might these fairies look like?

Ah, so back to the old art I did years ago:

They are generally adorable and squeezable. Their wings sometimes barely hold up them up until they are older and slimmer and more like dragonflies than bumblebees.

This particular fairy has a rather amusing story which you can read here. She or her doppelganger is the chubby little pixie that likes to follow the Swan Queen around. (She demanded to make an appearance! ahahaha)