The Light of Pixies is Their Own (Long Distance Stabbing, Orange Peel, Rose Petals, Vanilla)(8-390-2)

As so many of my teas do, The Light of Pixies is Their Own started with a survey.

It was created for one of my first-post-reboot Tea of the Month Club subscribers, as one of her answers from the survey led to this tea.

It has been languishing without a name since November of 2023 – I knew some of the authors she enjoyed the works of, but had not read more than a single book between them.

Fast forward to February of this year, when a friend told me she needed me to read the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire for tea naming reasons.

This led to me blazing through the series far more swiftly than I had expected, as I had been battling a nasty case of Reader’s Block for quite some time.

It also led to many teas. So many teas. Some made it into tea journals, some were notes tacked to the corkboard on the workspace cabinet, some are only just starting to be dealt with properly, as the post-its strewn through the books produced a 3 page file of tea ideas.

As it turns out, a world where magic has scent is dangerous for me, from a professional perspective.

Fun. Inspiring. But in a borderline overwhelming deluge kind of way.

From this point the post will touch on spoilery things from Book 5 (One Salt Sea) onward. So be warned if you have not read the series and are planning to and have a memory that holds on to tidbits.

The foundational teas that I create all have a loose theme where my preference is that the names for teas created with them will be attached to said theme.

In Long Distance Stabbing’s case, this theme is archers and archery. (I could definitely see it expanding to cover modern distance weaponry specialization as well, but no character with such has come with a tea idea as yet.)

Whenever I think of pixies, archery comes to mind. Little tiny bows, with needle arrows, usually coated with something – ranging the scale from itchy and annoying to “oh dear I seem to be unconscious.”

Poppy and the Summerlands pixie colony made an impression from their first appearance, and their story (both hers singly and theirs as a group) left a mark. (In that way that a good story does.)

I’d come back around to 8-390-2 to try to figure out a name for it for what felt like the hundredth time, and the Daye series was still fresh in my mind. Partially because the reading of it was recent, and partially because it inspired so many things that I’ve been steeping in the world as I build tea lore for it over the months since I finished the books.

Originally I misremembered the colour of Poppy’s light (orange rather than pink), and was going to turn this into a salutary tea for that character specifically. Her choice and her sacrifice and her new beginning with the Luidaeg was a beautiful thing, and she (and her story arc) deserve a tea.

However, the longer I thought on it, even with pink working with some of the bits of the rose petals I use, making this one her tea felt forced.

But the thought did lead me to thinking about the plight of the pixies in so many places in the Daye series. The being forced to die, caged and alone, to light the festivities of others – especially as there were other options available, within magic, much less when one considers technology… is perhaps the worst example to start with, but it is illustrative of the offhand depersonizing treatment of pixies that even Fae not considered to be especially cruel are capable of in the books.

The path chosen by Patrick Lorden that Simon Torquil continued, first because of love, and later because of understanding can be found as an echo in this tea, both through the name and because of the usage of rose and orange.

One of the striking things about Simon’s character was the ways he found to push good things through the weak points in a geas that had not been intended to leave him any wiggle room. There could have been outright surrender to it, but there was not, and I have loved the evolution of that character so far, and it was a journey that I needed to see.

So, The Light of Pixies is Their Own is a salute both to the pixies themselves, and to the characters in the books from October to Patrick to Simon and on down the line – who choose to treat the smallest of the fae as fully endowed with rights and personhood and consent and all those important things they hold dear for themselves.

Organic Ingredients: Long Distance Stabbing (Green Kukicha, Roasted Kukicha, Golden Yunnan), Orange Peel, Rose Petals, Fair Trade Roasted Vanilla Powder

Batch Size: 2.7 oz, approximately 76 grams, 30+ servings

Containment: Loose Tea (5 serving sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag or Tin)), Teabags (Single Teabag, 5 Teabag sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag))

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