We’ve all known an Ambrose Antony, haven’t we? Hopefully not very well, and sure it’s a bit of a cliché, but often clichés have some truth to them. A jock, a bully and generally unpleasant (although inexplicably appealing to adults) Ambrose never met an act of cruelty that he couldn’t get behind. When he left behind his chilling childhood experiments with insects, reptiles and amphibians, he turned to the more sensitive and vulnerable denizens of his own species and unleashed the full power of his preternatural knack for harassment and humiliation upon them. On a day when Ambrose was taunting a particularly shy and artistic classmate with the unremitting chant of “Fairy! Fairy! Faggy Fairy!”, an actual fairy named Rafe with a sense of justice and a penchant for irony happened by, and the result is pictured here. With a whir of his wings and a twitch of his bottom – poof! – Ambrose found himself standing approximately four and a half inches tall and sporting antennae that he hastily stuffed under his football helmet. The wings, he could do nothing about. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” he sputtered, chasing after Rafe and feeling none too athletic with his new wings, “change me back, you – you – Fairy!!” Rafe turned on one of his delicate and graceful toes and sniffed, “Actually, we prefer ‘Phaerie’. And I will change you back when you have performed 1000 acts of kindness and protection for those you used to taunt. Ta!” And he disappeared in a tasteful cloud of glitter. So here is Ambrose, hanging out on a lily pad on a sweltering summer afternoon surrounded by some new friends. Three down, 997 to go. Evidently the prospect of smooching the nearby frog and thereby returning him to his former princely state is requiring more desperation than Ambrose is currently experiencing. For now.

This original artwork and story are copyright Ramona Szczerba 2009. Copyright to this material is in no way transferable with the sale of this item. The buyer is not entitled to any reproduction rights – neither image nor story can be reproduced without my express written permission. Thanks!