I stared at the tiny, shiny, silver spoon in the well-wrapped solstice box wishing we’d just gone to the semi-annual Solstice Ball at Castle Ever After instead of exchanging gifts first.
“I did not want to give you love,” he said to me. “So I gave you a spoon!”
He smiled like this made sense. Like the spoon was an appropriate substitution for love.
“Um.” I didn’t know what to say. I tore my eyes from the offending trinket.
“I know love was on your wish list and a spoon wasn’t. But love’s so messy! Just, you know,” his hands sprang into the air and swirled around, “everywhere. And then if things don’t go right, just messy.”
I blinked, my mind still blank. What response did he expect?
“A spoon,” he went on, “is so useful.”
“But it’s so tiny,” I protested. This spoon would not hold cereal or peas. Maybe one or two peas. Definitely not three. Even flower-fairies would struggle to implement this utensil.
“Love starts out small, too. Then grows.”
He was right.
“Does the spoon grow?” I asked, my mind filling with a spoon that gets ever larger until it was a shovel, or maybe it transformed.
He shrugged. “It’s just a spoon. It isn’t magic or anything.”
“Well, thank you,” I said for politeness sake, and I set the gift aside.
He waited expectantly, his brown eyes big, a near-smile on his lips.
He really should have given me anything on my list. I requested more than love. Perhaps, peace and hope had been too vague. A spoon was not near as useful as he thought. Imagine if he’d given me a magic spoon. A magic spoon, yes, that was useful. And why had he specifically mentioned the spoon in lieu of love?
I had a back-up in case the gift exchange disappointed. Oh, how it had gone awry! Initially I wanted to give him joy. But, alas, all he was going to get was this possibly magic bean.
Adria Bailton (she/they) imagines entire worlds and universes to share while spending her days studying atoms, the smallest unit of matter. More of her stories where she strives to create characters that reflect her own bisexuality, neurodiversity, and disability appear in ZNB Presents, Constelción Magazine, and Worlds of Possibility. Originally from the Midwest, she creates from the US PNW, on the traditional territory of several Indigenous nations, including the Stillaguamish, Suquamish, and Duwamish. Find her at www.adriabailton.com