My Daughters

My daughters, as I think is evident from their pictures, are supernatural beings.

Nina is a Fairy. But I don't mean a little winged creature out of a children's storybook. I mean a Fairy out of Northern European Folklore: dangerous and self-willed. The folklore is full of stories about people who spent what they thought was an evening dancing with fairies, only to wake the next morning to find that a hundred years had passed in what seemed to them to be a single night. Nina is the most completely self-willed creature in the world. Beside her a house cat would seem a marvel of rectitude, a veritable St. Bernard. Had Nietzsche known Nina, we probably would have gotten a few more books out of him before they carted him off to the asylum.

Thea is an Elf. Again, not a pointy-shoed-bell-capped elf, like the ones who live with Santa at the North Pole. I mean an Elf as J. R. R. Tolkien envisoned them: beautiful and grave, wise and with ancient souls. Thea resembles nothing so much as Tolkien's descriptions of Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring.