Somewhere in rural Missouri, a lineman named Caleb Morrison is dangling from a 40-foot pole, 13,000 volts humming inches from his gloves, while a pair of glitter-sprayed, slightly crumpled fairy wings flap gently behind him in the wind.

The wings are made of cardboard, pink poster paint, and about a hundred haphazard staples. One is already missing half a sequin star. The left strap is held together with Hello Kitty duct tape.

And Caleb has worn them to work every single day for the past six weeks, because his six-year-old daughter Harper made them the night she found out her daddy could die.

It started with a nightmare.

Harper woke up screaming at 2 a.m. after watching a TikTok her older cousin had accidentally left playing: grainy cellphone footage of a lineman in Arkansas being electrocuted, his body jerking like a puppet before he fell forty feet. She ran to her parents’ bedroom clutching her stuffed unicorn, sobbing, “Is that gonna happen to Daddy?”

Caleb’s wife, Jenna, carried her back to bed and tried every reassurance in the book: “Daddy has special gloves… Daddy’s harness is super strong… Daddy’s friends watch out for him.” But Harper wasn’t listening. She was picturing her father on fire.

The next morning, she disappeared into her bedroom with a cereal box, a bottle of Elmer’s glue, and a look of fierce concentration that made Jenna decide not to ask questions.

Three hours later, Harper marched into the kitchen holding the wings aloft like a battle standard.

“They’re magic,” she declared, bottom lip trembling but chin high. “Fairies can’t get hurt when they fly. So if Daddy wears these, the ‘lectricity won’t touch him. Promise me he’ll wear them, Mommy. Promise.”

Caleb came home that evening covered in sawdust and sweat, still smelling faintly of ozone. Harper was waiting by the door in her nightgown, wings outstretched in her tiny arms.

“Daddy, you have to wear these tomorrow. They’re for protection.”

Caleb, a 6-foot-4, 240-pound man who once bench-pressed a broken transformer off his trapped apprentice, dropped to one knee and let his little girl strap the cardboard contraption across his broad back. The Velcro barely reached. The wings looked ridiculous.

He cried so hard he couldn’t speak.

The next day, he wore them to work.

His crew lost it. They roared with laughter when he stepped out of the truck, pink glitter catching the sunrise, wings bouncing with every step. Someone snapped a photo as Caleb started his climb, boots ringing against the spurs, fairy wings catching the wind like a child’s prayer.

Within hours the picture exploded across Facebook. “Missouri lineman wears daughter’s fairy wings for protection.” Then Twitter. Then Instagram. By nightfall it had 42 million views.

Comments poured in by the hundreds of thousands:

“Sir, you just broke the internet’s heart and rebuilt it in glitter.”
“I’m a 45-year-old firefighter and I’m sitting in my truck crying like an idiot.”
“Plot twist: the wings actually work because no arc flash would dare ruin this level of dad energy.”

Caleb’s superintendent tried to tell him (gently) that maybe the wings weren’t OSHA-compliant. Caleb’s response was immediate: “Tell OSHA my six-year-old’s love outweighs any regulation ever written.”

The utility company quietly rewrote the dress code.

Now every morning is the same ritual. Harper inspects the wings for damage, adds a new sticker or doodle (“I BELIEVE IN YOU DADDY” in purple marker), and kisses him exactly three times: once on the cheek, once on the nose, once on the hard hat. Then she watches from the porch as his truck disappears down the gravel road, fairy wings poking above the seat like antennae.

Last week, a storm knocked out power to half the county. Caleb was on the pole for 14 straight hours in freezing rain. When he finally climbed down at 2 a.m., soaked to the bone and shaking from cold, his crew noticed something: the cardboard wings were disintegrating, colors running, sequins floating to the ground like dying stars.

Caleb unstrapped what was left, folded the soggy mess with reverence, and tucked it inside his jacket over his heart.

The next morning, Harper was already at the kitchen table with a new cereal box and fresh glitter.

“Round two, Daddy,” she said, not even looking up. “These ones are stronger.”

And just like that, the fairy wings became immortal.

Because somewhere high above Missouri’s frost-covered fields, a grown man defies gravity, death, and common sense, all because a little girl decided love could be cut from cardboard and stapled to courage.

And every spark that dances across those lines knows better than to mess with a father wearing his daughter’s magic.

The wings may be paper.