Gabriel Jeroschewitz, June 13th, 2026, dedicated to all those druids. Who didn’t believe in angels, unless they ate some of the mushrooms they found.
The Angels Had a Hard Time Understanding Each Other
On a Tuesday – or was it a Thursday? Maybe either Friday or Sunday. Time gets a bit fluid when the Sidhe are around – was the annual Gathering of the Druids held in the hollow hill of Ballysomething-or-Other? Or perhaps it was just me wandering in because I mistook a luminous mushroom for breakfast.
The druid – the one named Ciarán, or Kevin, or Terence – I don’t know which one – he had eyes glittering with the most gorgeous, winged angels I had ever seen. These angels were spectacular, doing little turns behind his eyes.
“Aye, so I was saying,” said the druid. “The Sidhe have gifted us with the art of – “
“Scuse me, pet,” said a voice from the left eye. The angel at the left eye was leaning against the iris, having a drink of cloud-infused mead. “Did ye say the Sidhe have gifted us wae what now?”
“The art,” said the druid.
“Ah – right. The airrt. Got it.”
The Irish angel from the right eye chimed in. “They’re no’ listening to ye at all, ye eejit. He’s frae Inverness, that one. Thick as two short planks, that accent.”
“Shut yer gob, Belfast,” said the first angel, sounding somewhat aggrieved.
“I’m from Cork, actually – ” started the angel from the west, presumably Ireland.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re all the same to us, aren’t you?”
“The druid sighed – the sigh of someone who has been through this many times before – and raised his staff. A blue glow emanated from his staff. Several of the older druids appeared to have angels in the air above them, performing aerial reconnaissance of the situation.
“Now, now,” said the druid to the group of gathered druids. “The Sidhe taught us the sacred art of shapeshifting. Would any of you like to show it?”
No, this was a mistake.
Aside from the fact that most druids can turn into animals, there was one very spirited druidess from the western coast who’d been trying some experimental shapeshifting of her own.
“Oh no,” said the druid standing beside me. “Not the goose again, has she?”
A dramatic transformation took place. The emerald, green light swirling around the druidess ended with the emergence of an extremely elegant goose standing in her place.
The goose honked.
The angel from the Scottish druid’s left eye seemed to have had enough of the conversation between the angels. “I’m goin’ doon the pub. Does anyone want anything?”
The Irish angel seemed scandalized. “We’re in the Other bloody World, Brian. There’s no pub here.”
“There’s always a pub, Sean.”
Sure enough – a tavern sprouted from the ground before the druids. It looked out of time – constructed from solid moonlight and wisdom of all time. The tavern read “Tír na nÓg’s Most Excellent Tavern” in elegant cursive script, with a much smaller message beneath stating “Under New Management (Please Don’t Ask What Happened to the Old Management).”
Inside the tavern was everything one would expect of a mixed medieval and enlightened therapist’s waiting room. Druids of all ages were scattered throughout the tavern area and engaging in conversation with their angels.
“I tell ye, it’s no’ right,” said a druid to another. His British angel was talking to a Welsh angel who had just materialized out of thin air. “I changed intae a tree last Tuesday, right? Lovely oak, I was – very grounding. But then I forgot how tae change back. I spent three hours as a tree. My missus was not best pleased.”
“The Sidhe have much to answer for,” said the other druid.
An elderly druid – with the unmistakable aura of the original angels – was levitating about six inches off the floor in a corner of the tavern. He looked as if he were having an argument with himself. “Time travel,” he was muttering under his breath as if he were. “I need to go back to when I came here. Warn myself not to eat that mushroom, Eoin. Not to eat it – bloody well not!”
Out of the corner of the tavern moved a colour – a being of luminous beauty, the colour of green and silver – as if she had just glided through the air from one part of the tavern to the other. The Sidhe were magnificent – almost like the embodiment of that feeling of awe one feels when looking at a sunset in the evening.
Yet they were also rather bastards in their appreciation of beauty. All very well to be without satiation or to be beautiful beyond measure – but at some point, in the existence of time, you wanted to eat a cheese sandwich.
“She’s watching us,” said the Irish angel to the Scottish one.
“Ye ken what I feel,” said the Scottish one, looking slightly scared. “She knows I called her a bastard.”
“She probably knows everything about us,” said the Irish one. “She’s the spirit of all living things.”
“I know,” said the Scottish angel.
The two drank a little more and chatted about nothing and everything for several hours before the druid who started the evening stood up once again.
“Friends,” he began. “Druids. Angels. Whatever that goose is – “
The goose honked in dismissal.
“We are at a crossroads,” said the druid. “The Sidhe have gifted us with many things – art, science, the ability to turn into goats – but there is something calling to us from beyond the magical realm. Something larger.”
The angels fell silent. Even the Scottish and Irish angels who were arguing about whether the pronunciation of “cú” was pronounced “coo” or “koo” fell quiet.
“There is something beyond the Sidhe, beyond beauty, beyond the Otherworld,” said the druid quietly. “I think it’s time we went and found out what it is.”
The Sidhe in the shadows between the Worlds watched silently. They had known this would come. For hundreds – thousands – of years they had planted the seed of longing within the hearts of human beings.
Outside the hollow hills, outside the green veil of the woods, beyond even the shimmering boundary of Tír na nÓg – something waited. Something patient for the druids – and for the rest of the world – to come forward and see what was beyond.
The angels – luminous beings from Scottish brains and Irish eyes and British swords – all fell into perfect harmony in one perfect moment.
Perhaps that was the answer – the first – and the start of everything else.
Unless, of course, I ate too many mushrooms.
Either way, something had shifted – within the druid world and perhaps beyond – into what we call reality. The Sidhe had done their job – to spark the hunger in the hearts of human beings.
Now it was time to see what lay beyond the veil.
The goose, for what it’s worth, seemed unbothered by whatever revelation the druids had just made.
Some people are satisfied with being beautiful – after all.
Bless them all in all.
