Dear friend,
It is with great joy that I announce this: The Merry Fairy participates in the Back to School Steam Celebration event, which will take place starting today, August 25th, and until September 1st, 2025. This week, the game features a 10% discount, effective as of today at 7 pm CET.
I had been hoping to prepare a rich update for this wonderful occasion, but I realised one thing: since July 9th, when I had the great joy of celebrating the Grand Opening of The Merry Fairy, I had not really allowed my heart to slow down. This is no good way for a Fairy to nurture her magic!
Last week, I left all the unfinished new things to rest, and I had a little bit of an adventure. For the first time this year, my Caretaker and I left Fairyland, and we went to a wondrous, magical place called Dalhalla to watch The Last Ritual performed by one of my favorite artists, Heilung. Here is a very short clip that I captured with my old phone, for a glimpse of this magical experience:
Witnessing this ritual felt like stepping into a mythical past where all creatures treasured their deep connection and were well aware of the powerful magic that encompasses us all. During this ritual, time lost all its meaning, and my heart danced, sang, wept, and grieved, and I felt very, very alive. The music, the dancing, the entire performance embraced all of me, and I listened not just with my ears, I saw not just with my eyes - this was a ritual that swept through all of me.
When The Last Ritual was over, I felt an overwhelming wish to run back home, to Fairyland. The heartbeat evoked by the Heilung drums is something familiar to me, though far more gentle. It's what I sometimes can hear, faintly, when I am close to my tree friends. The howls are my howls when I walk in the forest, only my audience is composed of deer and squirrels, and on occasion, a curious fox. What Heilung evoked for me through music is the way the untamed forest feels to me, untouched by machines, perhaps a little scary to a heart unaccustomed to wilderness, and yet warm and welcoming like an elder whose wisdom bears the mark of ancient times.
The Last Ritual felt like a fitting end to a chapter of my life, a deep breath taken as I embrace and let go of old fears, thoughts, and burdens that I no longer need to carry. It is something I was meant to go through, so that I can make room in my heart for something new.
As I got home, I felt ready to tackle something I spent most of my life believing it would never happen: getting my driver's license. Until recently, the story I allowed myself to believe was that I am and will forever be unable to drive a car. Furthermore, one big internal conflict that I had to resolve was my love for this beautiful planet of ours and the terrible harm we inflict upon it in so many ways, including the excessive use of cars. But knowledge never harms, and it is simply unwise and unfair of me to put all the burden of driving on the Caretaker, considering that Fairyland is so remote. And so I have been practice driving with the Caretaker for a while now, and he feels I am ready for my exams. I have scheduled my theory exam rather soon. Getting my driver's license is my main focus now, and I am so proud and excited about this! Wish me luck!
The second thing in need of space in my heart is the courage to open up about my great dream. My dream is to preserve the forest, to let it be untamed and wild, and to celebrate a way of life that adjusts to her kind generosity, without the need to shape, control, and forcefully remove that which is old and wise. Sadly, the way we look at and treat the forest today makes no sense to me. Whole patches of forest are clear-cut for timber, and even when they are not, tended forests are regularly trimmed so that some trees can grow thick and tall, which makes the most profitable timber. But I fall in love with trees every day, and my heart is so often broken when I see them cut down.
It is such a perilous adventure for a tree to come to life - the forest feeds so many, and from hundreds of seeds that fall to the ground, only a handful get to grow roots and become beautiful young trees. It is those trees that are first removed when preparing a forest for clear-cutting, as well as slightly older trees that are seen as useless, in the way, and are rather great for firewood.
But when you watch a forest for long stretches of time, you understand her generosity. Trees are living creatures that communicate with each other, care for each other, and care for everything and everyone that lives around them. It's enough to look up to see just how much care they have for one another - the phenomenon called crown shyness or canopy disengagement looks like an elegant puzzle where crowns grow around and are complementary to each other, gracefully allowing space so that all can thrive. Every year, some trees bow to the power of the wind, offering themselves for their family and friends as well as for any use of timber. Every year, the Caretaker and I explore the forest, enjoying the wilderness that is left and taking only what the forest offers.
The forest needs more friends, a lot more friends - and my dream is to do everything in my power to enable that. Any motivation for success that I have for The Merry Fairy connects to that. My dream is to create the Fae Forest Foundation, an organization that can act as a legal guardian of the local forest, and that can allow research and care for the forest in alternative, non-invasive ways. With the help of my talented Caretaker, who holds a law degree, I want to create a way for everyone to become a guardian of a tree or a patch of forest, and create many ways in which forest owners and forest lovers can collaborate to preserve it. Above all, and well aware of my selfish local focus, I want to make sure that I never have to stumble upon cleared or clear-cut areas of this beautiful forest that surrounds me. When that happens - and it happened in extensive areas just now :( - I feel like taking a walk on a cruel and senseless battlefield.
I seldom talk about my dreams and motivations because there is a part of me that feels this may not be the proper place to show one's heart. In commercial terms, The Merry Fairy is a tiny, independent, and not particularly profitable project. I have no well-calculated plan, no strategy for financial success, and no other desire than to be as honest and as creative as I can. I forged something that can grow, and that can nurture my creativity and my artfully expressed hopes of a gentle life, where one can let oneself be enchanted by the magic of just being. The Merry Fairy is still a tiny little seed, reaching boldly for the stars, with a beautiful forest to look at as a role model.
I am currently quietly preparing a new feature for the game, the first since launch. It's unpolished for now, and I have not yet managed to capture the essence of what I want with it, but I hope it will become a worthy compass for one's heart.
Thank you for reading!
PS: Thanks to the incredible support of Dames 4 Games, The Merry Fairy gets to be at PAX West! If you are in Seattle and plan to visit, you can play The Merry Fairy in the Summit Building in room 440. I would be very happy for any pictures of my game at PAX, if you are visiting ❤️
