Elemental

Underwater
after lunch with the sirens,
I found myself discussing politics
with a mermaid
who was none too liberal,
being motivated by the conservation
of the oceans and their life-stock,
but far more so than the trolls
and ogres beneath the mountains,
in caves and crevasses
where little has changed
in hundreds of thousands of years
except for the size of the stalactites
and the stalagmites
and maybe the occasional shift
in the tectonic plates;
I had more luck with the sprites
and the pixies,
but the wind was too fast for me,
and I could not keep up
with the wild hunt,
much less persuade them
to slow down and listen.
The djinn and the dragon
were largely inscrutable,
so I left their fires
with little hope.
But when it became time
for the election,
the whole fairy host turned out,
all in their best glamors,
to vote in the biggest landslide win
for the fae Queen in all history.
Normally the fair folk decline
to engage in mundane electoral rights;
but each knew who best
would protect their realms:
the fauns their forests and fields,
the oreiads their mountains;
the bean sidhe their rivers,
the undines their oceans;
the phoenixes their high places,
the bluecaps their low;
the griffins their aeries,
the sphinxes their deserts.
Only the fey and the feral
care to conserve the wild world -
but this often requires breaking
with destructive traditions;
conservation of the elements
requires real progress of character.