The Leprechaun
Nine hundred years of cobbling paid for this crock. Now — tell me again about your shortcut.
Who they are
The most famous of the solitary fae, and the most misread. The lore never finds him at a rainbow; it finds him at his last, spectacles down his nose, working on one shoe — always the one shoe, never the pair finished — and his crock of gold is not luck, it is wages: coin by coin, centuries of mending the dance-worn slippers of the trooping fae. Catch him and he owes you three wishes, and he will keep his word to the letter — the letter, mind — and empty the careless through the loophole. The tales are full of men who tied a red garter to the ragwort over his gold and came back to a field of red garters. He sits in the hearth-nook now, ember-glow on his buckles, a rowan-and-red-thread cross on the beam above him.
Drawn upright — the teaching
Do the honest work well and the reward is genuinely, unshakably yours. There's no real magic here but diligence — cobble the shoe, keep your word, and the gold at the end of that road is truly yours to spend. Earn it plainly and no loophole, no market, no clever stranger can take it back.
The working
Finish the one shoe before you start the second — whatever the shoe is this month. Keep your word to the letter in the small things: the invoice sent, the deadline met, the promise to the child kept. And pay your own crock first: one coin of everything you earn into a pot you don't discuss and don't touch — his gold stayed his because he never showed it off. Bless the labor as you leave it each day: "Blessings on the hands and the last."
Drawn reversed — the shadow
The shortcut you're eyeing has fine print, and it always bites. Easy gold granted on a loophole comes with a cost you didn't read — and it collects, with interest, from the part of your life you least expected to pay.
The undoing
Turn down the too-easy wish. Before you agree to anything, name the price out loud — in plain words, to another human being: what it costs in hours, in interest, in who gets hurt. If you can't say the price aloud, you can't afford it. Then take the honest road. He keeps his word to the letter and empties fools through the loophole — don't sign what you haven't read.
Its tree · the ogham
Luis — the rowan. The tree that keeps your eyes clear while a deal glitters: rowan at the beam guards against glamour, and glamour is exactly what a shortcut is wearing. A good tree to stand under while counting gold.
Sit with this
Where are you hoping to be lucky instead of honest? Go read the fine print there — twice.