You can almost see them sometimes, swimming through the air in a stray sparkling beam of sunlight, like after-images of the motes that dance unseen on the surface of your eye. Often, they crowd into cosy bedrooms on a warm summer’s weekend morning. Their natural environment is secret wooded glens – hollows filled with sweet smelling leaf mulch and fairy circles and mossy logs. They muffle sounds and dull the senses, bringing a sense of peace and comfort. When it rains, they wash out of the air and into the soil, laying dormant until the sun shines once more.