‘Okay, so, today at work I asked a question that made my boss recoil, but apparently, once asked, he has to tell me the full story or ‘bad things will happen’. Which, as it would, immediately piqued my interest.
I did the mash up last night, so I know that I left potatoes in the bin. I was last one out, and first one in this morning, and the potatoes are gone from that bin. Bit of a ‘huh?’ moment.
And my boss … he starts telling me about how they always used to put out roses outside the restaurant when they opened.
“What? Isn’t that expensive?”
“I mean, yeah, but it’s just what you do when you open a restaurant”
What the fuck kind of answer …?
Anyways, the roses always used to disappear, so they had to replace them everyday, (This skinflint spending that much cash?!). One outside the front door, in that little metal thing that I had forgotten exists. It’s above to the right of the front door, a small circle made by 8 vertical bands of metal, each in an ) shape. So, like, the cross-section is a )(. Apparently that’s a flower holder.
And then outside of the back door, apparently the old wooden post there never held up anything, it was just a post with a vase on it. That he drove into the asphalt there.
In the alleyway.
“What? Why would you do something so pointless?”
“Anyways,”, he brushed me off, “like I was saying, we used to put out the roses every night [[emphasis mine]] and they would always be gone by morning. City kids, right?”
“Why did you keep doing this?!”
“We had really good luck opening, I didn’t want to screw it up”
At this point I feel I should stress that my boss is a straight-laced no nonsense, no superstition, don’t-do-needless-things, pennypincher without an ounce of spirituality in him. But throughout all of this he’s defending putting out roses at nighttime, like it’s the most obvious thing n the world.
Just when I think he’s playing the longest, weirdest joke on me, he brings out the iPad, and he starts showing me security footage. It’s indistinct, it’s too dark, he’s trying to point out that the rose never changes from the beginning of the night to the end, but when it gets bright again, the flower is just gone, while the stem remains.
It’s about this point that I realize: This is a faerie sacrifice. This is how you sacrifice things to goblins and faeries.
These are rose faeries. Now you might not know, even if you live here, but Newfoundland has a tradition of rose faeries. We basically took all the stuff british colonists knew about faeries and said, ‘yeah, well, it’s all about wild roses now’. Hike up to Signal Hill from behind the geo centre and you’ll pass a faerie ring of rose bushes that someone planted because of that. (It’s not obvious at first). Later in Newfoundland history, we star replacing all of the rose faerie tales with tales about Mother Mary, (As in, Christianity), whose flower is the rose. Ask around the old folk, they’ll tell you tales about people getting sick or getting well really suddenly, followed by a strong smell of rose. About people working on church roofs, falling down into rose bushes, and not getting hurt. About statues of Mother Mary crying rose oil, indicating that an infant will be left in front of the statue soon. Those are all stories that are actually about rose faeries, but they changed the topic. I guess they still pay respect to them, they just think they’re paying respect to god with rose petals and rosehip tea.
“But what’s this got to do with potatoes?”
Well, he said, he kept this up for about 5 or 6 months, and then the winter started. And back then, the florists in town didn’t stock as much in green houses, there wasn’t enough call for it. So he wasn’t able to get roses.
The restaurant had really bad luck for a while, but then one day, all of the potatoes in the restaurant went missing. Of all the things, not the tenderloin steak, not the fresh salmon, not the halibut, not the cherries, not the fresh baked bread, the potatoes.
And the luck came back.
And he hasn’t questioned it since.
“So, about how many potatoes go missing every week?”
“About 25lbs in little bits”
We turned rose faeries into gluttonous potato faeries.
How does that even happen?!
Was a faerie just screaming “Where are the GODDAMN ROSES?!” while breaking into the restaurant?!
And what the hell happened when it found the potatoes?!
Like, *monocle pop*, “What the fucking WOT?!:, while holding up a potato and looking at it in reverence?
What do they even DO with potatoes?
I mean, the obvious guess is ‘eat them’, but like, did they eat roses?
Are there faeries somewhere swimming in potato water, blessing our restaurant for the earthy smells we have bestowed upon them?!
Just … potato faeries. We have fucking potato faeries in the restaurant where I work.
Potato.
Faeries.
(wondering idly how many people have tagged @seananmcguire on this one.)
Lord knows I was about to.
the neat thing about potatoes is they’ll sprout green shoots just lying around on the counter. pretty sure if you were a fairy deprived of flowers due to winter, those pale, leggy potato sprouts would be fascinating.
look for fairy rings of potato plants next year.
And that’s how we turned Rose Faeries into Potato Faeries
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just moving along like everyone else 