While I was folding laundry this afternoon and casually looking at my phone (my “me time” of the day while all my kids napped at the same timesomething that does not happen often) I came upon this extremely viral Twitter thread, which told the story of a complete stranger and a little girl.

Kelly Victoria, photography and design at Pandora, started a Twitter thread on Friday afternoon sharing with her followers what she called the lighthearted/happy story everyone needs right now. She tweeted about how at the beginning of the pandemic she went through some personal stuff and so would take walks at night because she couldn’t sleep. During one of those walks, she came upon a fairy garden built by a 4-year-old girl “who felt lonely in quarantine and wanted to spread some cheer”. Victoria decided to leave a note pretending to be a fairy named Sapphire, who had decided to move into the tree after seeing what a beautiful garden was built.

This started a back and forth between the girl and fairy Sapphire that went on for months. Victoria made sure that the girl’s parents were aware of who she was, and often texted with them. “Doing this every night gave me purpose in a horribly painful and lonely time. I looked forward to my days again and I started ordering art supplies and little trinkets to leave her. We wrote back and forth throughout the last 9 months, helping each other feel less lonely”, said Victoria in her thread.

I don’t want to spoil you the end of this beautiful and unexpected relationship, one which would have not happened if it weren’t for COVID-19. Victoria’s initial tweet has gotten over 85,000 retweets and 225,000 likes at the time this was published, and so many replies of adults, like me, letting her know that this story has made them sob like little babies.

At the end of the day, this story reminded me that there’s still beauty and more importantly love in such a complicated year we’ve all had.