NZSpecFic Blogging week

It's New Zealand Speculative Fiction Blogging Week... well, the last day of it. I have had an ear infection so I only found out about it on Friday and since then I have been trying to work out what to write about. Hence the belated nature of my post.

I have never been outside of New Zealand. Not for lack of wanderlust though, just for lack of finances. I do not hold a passport as I have never needed one. However one day the world will be mine...

I have to make that clear, because that is my bias. I don't know any better (or worse).

I suspect that New Zealand is a large part of the reason for my inclination towards speculative fiction, both in my personal reading and in my writing. How can we not love fantasy, when we live in it? Compared with all I have heard of other places, our isolation brings us luxuries that other countries can only dream of. Within a half day drive of where I live, I can be on a snowy mountain top or a sun-kissed beach of golden sands or in the wind-whipped surf of the back-sanded west coast or in lush endless forest or surrounded by grasslands as far as the eye can see. There are trees, birds, living things here that exist nowhere else; the personal freedoms also. But we do not live oblivious to the rest of the world, multi-culturalism abounds. How easy then for us to dream of other worlds, other cultures, other realities, other beings. If there are fantastic creatures then here is certainly a place one would expect them.

She woke, all 4 feet and 2 inches of her, to the sounds of each member of a penny whistle band rehearsing a different tune. Her groggy thoughts edged closer to a simpler conclusion. The Puriri at the bottom of the back garden was laiden with pink fruits. The morning air was alive: with Tui, their bleached white cravats puffed against their iridescent suits; with Wax-eye, darting lime and grey streaks through the foliage; with Grey Warbler only noticeable by their song; and with Fantail looking in askance and expectation at the fruit flies hovering over the fallen plums.

She walked out into her morning symphony, thoughts on the story her mother had told her of two girls who had fooled the world into believing fairy folk lived at the bottom of their garden. On a day like this, her unruly curls shining in the dawning sun; she could feel the magic about her, she could sense revelry, she could believe that there were fairies and their like hidden within the green leafy depths before her. She tried to look out of the corners of her eyes for secretive movements, until she was distracted by the trilling cries of the birds in the Pohutukawa tree, and then by her mother calling out for tea. She dragged her feet slowly back toward the kitchen.

Against the sweet smelling lavenders, the fairy smiled, straightened it's bumble-bee costume, and launched into flight.