The beginning of your story did an excellent job of drawing me in.

I wanted more clues about the allegorical nature of this story.  A denoument would help fill it out.  After reading the whole story, the first place I looked for more clues was in the move from the Dryads to the dwarves - to see how the narrator knew the time was right.  But that information is not there.  Other places that could aid in interpreting the story are:

When the narrator drinks, there’s only a small indication of the narrator’s feelings (the word “friendly” described the Dryad).

The narrator’s reaction to the “Forever” on which the story ends would also help.

It may be by design that this story is silent on these details and others, and if so, I can understand why - it is blatantly suggestive and yet sweet enough for a young man to let his very conservative parents read so that they might find peace with his life choices.

I thought the parents dying was also a nice touch, being the reverse of being disowned, and yet with the same result.

I agree that really there’s not much in the way of how the narrator knows when to go, when it’s right, why it’s right, etc., and that’s something that would really hammer in the allegory.  But as Dave says, that may be deliberate.

Either way, this approach beats the conformity/non-comformity approach hands down.  Nice work.

Thank you for the comments.  I have made a few changes.  The idea is to make the reader feel the way the narrator felt after listening to one of his mother’s stories - like you have too many questions and want to pick up a pen and continue the story.  Therefore the very open ending.  I also want to redraw the classic picture of fairies and I think this piece serves as one of many alternative views.  I thought it would be in order to add some colour to where the boy leaves the Dryads, as both of you have suggested, but still leave the reader with questions.  I hope you like it.  I also touched up on some other things a bit.  I hope I haven’t destroyed the bits that made the story what it was.