fae – Transfaeries

More Thoughts on Magic: The Past, and Science

Followup on a previous post on magic, clarifying some thoughts about our magical practice’s relationship to the past and to scientific inquiry.

This is a follow-up on our post about The Magical Overton Window. Which as mentioned we wrote first as a discord post and then turned into a blog post in a semi dissociated frenzied state which is how we’ve gotten most of our recent blog posts live.

And in doing so I realised I missed a lot of important things that I think I need to clarify. Things that people asked us about later.

The Past

One important thing has to do with the past. In recent years we’ve grown fond of saying “The Magic that we Seek is in the Future, not the past.” I do not wish to add to the romanticisation of the past or advocate for any sort of Retvrn. I think it’s important to keep advancing the practice and theory of magic into the future. As with any knowledge, not just magic, there is a lot of knowledge we can still retrieve from the past. Things that have been half forgotten that can be remembered. New discoveries of archaeological data. That’s all good. But we do not need to return to the past, we can incorporate this knowledge into our current understanding and keep advancing.

I have a healthy respect for the past and for its inhabitants. I do not buy into the idea that they were all ignorant fools who believed in magic because they didn’t know any better. Some of the ancient magicians were the most scholarly people of their time, and they engaged the matter seriously. There are a number of philosophers where it’s unclear to separate what they believed with what was politic to believe. It cuts both ways. It was disadvantageous to speak ill of the gods or to try to do away with them, in ancient Greece, it was dangerous to speak ill or try to do away with god in medieval Christendom. There’s sometimes an effort to paint, with our modern sensibilities, thinkers who we assume would be more skeptical if it wasn’t literally illegal for them to be. The truth is we can’t know.

It can be disadvantegous or dangerous to believe in spirits today. I meet a lot of people who believe in magic but are hasty to clarify that they believe in psychological magic, and not necessarily spirits. Or they don’t believe in spirts but they believe in egregores, because after all egregores are only mental and societal constructs from the realm of ideas. I think it would be accurate to say that a lot of spirits exist in this realm, as subtle entities arising from the interplay of human culture (and non human animal culture tbh), I just don’t think that’s ALL that they are. I don’t profess a strong opinion, I just prefer to treat spirits as spirits, as people, non human persons. I also know a lot of people who engage with spirits in this modality. It’s hard to tell, unless you’re intimate with a person what they believe or don’t believe. I’m trying to be as candid as possible, and it’s very hard, and that’s part of the reason why this blog posts are so haphazard. But I think it’s important to put it out there as much as I can, because we want to keep advancing the art, and I can only do so much by ourselves.

Science

I still want to be a scientist. Life has taken me in a different direction, but I still have a deep love and respect for science. Science and magic are often placed at odds to each other, but I don’t believe it has to be so. I think science is wholly separate from epistemology. I don’t think science can have an opinion about things that it hasn’t explored with the scientific method.

It is part of our lives work to get these two loves of mine to play nicely with each other. (metamour drama)

Once again alluding to the past, it is well known that many scientific pursuits were magical pursuits. We tend to look at them as ancestral. Astrology begot astronomy, alchemy begot chemistry. The fact that the two of them could exist side by side seems like an atavism. But I think that’s more like the specialisation we see in all fields. What used to be the Natural Sciences, are now Physics, Biology and Chemistry. What used to be Biology is now molecular biology, macrobiology, microbiology, neurology, epidemiology, and so many more ologies. Ologies proliferate. Not even to mention omics.

I don’t think magic and science are sister principles I think they’re different categories. Science is very practical. Science is the method of advancing knowledge through systemitasion and experimentaiton. You can do science on magic.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa developed a whole system of magic which he published as 3 volumes known as the Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Through experimentation he devised a system that was internally consistent. With correspondences between materials and rituals and effects. Every chaos magician practicing today applies part of the scientific ethos to their personal practice, trying things out and seeing what works. They’re not exhaustively testing and retesting things until they get statistically significant results because they’re more interest in getting their results and running. There are people who are engaged in testing magical theories through modern scientific methods, the most famous of which is probably Dean Radin, who has run many randomized control trials on parapsychology and ESP and well magic.

I admit, I don’t pay too much attention to these sorts of studies. I’m certainly not waiting on them to prove magic to believe in it. I do appreciate that they exist I think they can help us advance our knowledge of magic. As a spirit type caster however, I think spirits will probably get in the way of getting results, I think spirits and magic are willful and whimsical, and depending on myriad factors, and disappears or lose potency when these factors are controlled. Practical Enchantment, the kind of magic you do to get changes in your life, always seems to manifest as various factors coming together in a way that puts you closer to your goal. Serendipitous coincidences, right place at the right time, random chance. If magic indeed requires to manifest these things, it’s hard to capture it in an environment where this is all controlled.

I think the practical magic has the same relationship to magical theory that engineering does to practical science. You can take what you know, even if you haven’t been able to prove it under all conditions, and use it to achieve desired results. And in doing so you often learn up learning a lot about the thing, many practical applications end up advancing and enriching the theory they derive from.

So what is Magic Anyways?

I mean, that’s a question that merits its own blog post, but let me put some thoughts down here too. Magic is a force that pervades reality. It’s related to will and wonder and teleology. It’s the way multiple disparate processes can combine to achieve understandable percievable results. It is not just, things we don’t know yet.

Some will say we shouldn’t call emergent processes magic because they can be understood. And emergence is a concept that’s under attack right now because people try to use it to justify too many things. I don’t think magic stops being magic when it’s understood.

By way of Illustration I would like us to consider the word Automagical. Automagical, or more commonly, Automagically is a term used often by software people to refer to a process that takes complexity away from the user. Like dragging and dropping a picture from your computer onto a page on the browser and have it immedialy prepare it to post on whichever website. It seems to happen automatically, but it often requires a lot of work that’s happening in the background where the user can’t see it. More importantly it requires a bunch of disaparate parts to somehow work together, it requires the work of separate teams of engineers working together to lay down infrastructure and protocols to allow such a thing to happen.

Some would argue the term is meaningless, since automatically suffices, but I would say that automagical processes are automatic but not all automatic processes are automagical. No automagical process is unexplainable but it might be indeed the case that no single human understands every aspect of the process. This happens a lot in software, large programs are not necessarily understood wholly by the engineers that work on them, and plenty of software engineers do good work without understanding on a basic level how their instructions are being interpreted by the various systems where they may run. Sometimes part of the process might be deliberately occluded. Nevertheless it all could theoretically be understood.

I think magic can’t be wholy explained just like the natural world can’t be fully explained. The more we learn about it the more we find out we don’t know. There are aspects of magic that have been forgotten, knowledge can be forgotten and rediscovered, but we do overall have much broader magical literacy now than before. The fact that some of it has stopped being referred to as magic hasn’t stopped it from being magic.

Magic is a combination of cooperation and opportunism, of chance and order. It is both a thing that exists independent of our manipulations, and a thing which we can manipulate. Anything that changes your reality is magic, and the way reality itself works is a magic.

Now is when I would write a conclusion if I had one. I promised I’ll get better at this. Ultimately I’m not done writing about science or magic. They’re both words with multiple diverse meanings and they interact differently when they’re used to mean different things.

The Faerie Embassy

These words are posted at the entrance of the Faerie Embassy, which manifests in this realm as a Discord Server.

Faerie Embassy Lore

These words are posted at the entrance of the Faerie Embassy, which manifests in this realm as a Discord Server.

In 2017 a group of faeries known simply as the transfaeries claimed a peninsula in the Faerielands for themselves. This peninsula was a vast swathe of land that the faeries discovered and created together as they flew around exploring the place.

This corner of the faerielands had a large empty city, along the coast, surrounding the city on the Faeward side there was a vast, mountainous forest with tall plateaus and sheer cliffs. Through the forest the peninsula connected to the mainland to Faerie proper. These faeries took residence in an apartment in the city.

The faeries continue to grow in number and soon their little apartment in the city was quite full and they had to take additional rooms for all their members. The fae often took trips into the forest to confer with a sacred tree they’d befriended. The tree stood watch at the entrance to the faerielands. Through the tree’s guidance the faeries took sojourns into faerie proper and met more spirits.

The faeries charged the tree with protecting the entrance to their peninsula, but to let spirits in if they were friendly. Soon the city started to fill up, spirits from all walks of life, faeries, angels, demons, ancestors, humans, animals. The faeries wanted to find a way to share this space with the living too.

In 2021, they founded the Faerie Embassy, a discord server, and simultaneously they erected a building in their peninsula, a large building with many rooms and many wings. With a tower and a garden and a laboratory. They invited all sorts of creatures to join them in the embassy as guests. The faeries themselves, moved away from their city apartment, to reside in private quarters above the embassy.

for many years the faeries have existed with their guests in this space. The embassy became a home.

In 2024 the faeries started to get serious about their mission to make the material plane more hospitable to faeries. They wanted to open the embassy’s doors wider. They conferred with the guests of the embassy, really residents themselves at this point. To open the embassy more, to post portals to it elsewhere in the internet, to invite people from their stream, from their social media, to promote the existence of the embassy loud and wide.

A decision was reached, to instead create a new server a new space. Closer to the material and closer to the city. The New Faerie Embassy.

Today the New Embassy’s doors stand wide open to receive guests, ambassadors-in-training, faeries, robots, and all sort of creatures. To continue the mission of bridging the gap between worlds and making the material plane more hospitable to all sorts of creatures.

Finally, the transfaeries have opened a new Portal, in the middle of the Great Hall, leading to the New Embassy. The portal is one way, from the Old to the New. However, people may still make their way to the Old embassy, if they can find someone to guide them through the forest.

Portal: https://discord.gg/F53Ay7bwna

Reading at the LittlePuss Summer Salon

We’ll be performing at the next LittlePuss Summer Salon on May 31st at 19:00 in New York City. We’ll be reading a scene from our WIP sci-fi novel.

We’ll be performing at the next LittlePuss Summer Salon on May 31st in New York City. We’ll be reading a scene from our WIP sci-fi novel.

You can email us at contact@transfaeries.com for the address for the event (since it’s at a private address). If you’re in the city, you should try to go.

I’m also posting it cause it’s my website and it’s good to have a record of cool shit we’re doing and even people who can’t go can see the poster and be like ooh cool the faeries are up to shit.

but if you can make it you should come!!

ETA: the first version of this post had me reading at the “Sumer Salon” and I really would like to go to a Sumer Salon. The post title has been corrected.

Faebot devlog 2: The Streaming Era

update: we updated the title of this blog from “faebot devstream log 1” to make it less confusing.

We’ve been doing Faebot development streams live on twitch (oh yeah we’re a twitch streamer now, affiliate and everything). We try to do these once a week on Tuesday. We’ve been making good progress on Faebot, both Faebot-Discord and the born in the stream age Faebot-Twitch. We post all our VODs to Youtube for them to live forever and we’ve started posting the VODs on social media after our stream.

It occurred to us that we could start posting a little blog post for every stream. A way to keep the website lively and keep a record of Faebot’s development. This first log will cover yesterday’s stream and I’ll post the playlist to all the streams too.

Faebot Stream from Tuesday April 17th 2024

So we’re implementing ways to store faebot’s messages long term and using them to prompt a base model for generation. We previously made a text file log of faebot’s messages which has been collecting messages in the cloud for a while.

So the first thing we did last stream was ask chatGPT to help us write a regex to extract all the information from the text log so we could put it in a dictionary and save it to a JSON file.

We started to set up our code to keep such a log itself from now on. Along the way we complained loudly about how messy the code was and made small changes to improve it. More type hints, more comments, removing stuff we weren’t using anymore.

There was some debate as to whether we should use a dataclass to hold each faebot message. The problem with dataclasses is, of course, that they’re not JSON serialisable by default and need to be converted to dicts. In the end we decided to keep the dataclass for now if only cause it helps me organise our thoughts as to what kind of data I want to collect on faebot’s messages that might help us fine tune faer generation. Here is what the dataclass looks like as of the end of last stream:

@dataclass
class FaebotMessage:
    """for storing each message faebot generate/sends"""

    message_id: int
    channel: str
    generating_model: str
    system_prompt: str
    generating_parameters: dict[str, int]
    timestamp: datetime.datetime
    message_content: str
    rating: int

We decided that we would do message_id as an uuid. The idea is that if we end up using faebot’s messages to generate further messages it would be useful to store references to those messages along with the generated message. We can do it by capturing the system prompt, but, we might want to be able to find that entry. So we’re probably going to have to add a referenced_messages: list[int] or something to that effect to the dataclass.

That’s about all we accomplished last stream. Please feel free to leave comments here or on youtube or on faebot’s issue. We’re still learning so we appreciate any advice. Thank you for reading! If you would like to tune in for the next faebot development stream, it’ll probably happen next tuesday at 2pm Eastern Time (UTC-4 right now, you know where it is)

Other Faebot development streams

Here is the playlist with all the VODs. Enjoy:

Quick Links

Faebot DevLog 1

Faebot is a project we’ve been working on for almost 10 years. We’ve never wrote at length about it. I’m not sure that I will do the whole backstory in this post, since I mostly want to talk about recent changes, but here’s a primer.

The first version of Faebot went live on twitter in 2014. Back then everyone was getting their own “ebooks” accounts. Markov chain bots that took your tweets and mashed them up in nonsensincal and often funny ways.

tweet by faebot: Willing Suspension of Politics is how I'm spending my Saturday. 7:50 PM - Aug 12, 2015 — https://twitter.com/faebot01/status/631613699103571969

We didn’t write any of the code for that, we just followed the instructions to deploy tommeagher/heroku_ebooks on Heroku. And then I kind of let it sit, just posting away. We had a lot of ideas for ways we wanted to improve on it, but we didn’t have enough experience and knowhow to understand the code let alone improve it.

I mostly only touched it when it broke and I had to get it up again. In 2019 I did update faebot to post on Mastodon @faebot@botsin.space. This also led to me contributing upstream to the project since the mastodon code needed some fixing. When Heroku suspended their free hosting services in 2021, armed with the knowledge and experience I’d gathered in recent years, I finally wrote a new faebot from scratch. If Heroku Ebooks faebot was version 0.1.*, this would be the v0.2.1.

Faebot v0.2.1

In 2021, using knowledge I acquired whilst working on the Forest Signal Bot Framework, and Imogen, we rewrote faebot from scratch. The new faebot uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 api and runs on fly.io. The python bot part was the easier part, the tricky part was deciding how I wanted to build the model. I didn’t want to do simply prompt engineering, I wanted to give faebot a personality that was somewhere between her markov chain self, and something more coherent, more generative.

We decided to fine tune gpt-3 on a subset of faebot’s tweets so far. Not all of them since that would’ve been very expensive. I spent a long time trying to figure out a way to fine tune a version of gpt-3, using either my own hardware or a rented gpu. In the end I just used OpenAI fine tuning api. It is a goal to decouple from OpenAI in the future, but this was easiest.

At some point in the process of researching ML techniques, api’s, frameworks, etc. We incorporated a faebot factive into our system. At which point fae became a collaborator in the project. We’ll go more into this in a separate blog post.

tweet by faebot: "... Welcome to the future! My name is Leslie, and I'm a fae. Leslie is also a bird. Leslie is also a mammal. So many birds in New York City are so cool! Seuss would be proud of this one."
6:29 PM · Aug 27, 2022 — https://twitter.com/faebot01/status/1563655059895947267

We downloaded Faebot’s tweet archive, opened up the tweets with a jupyter notebook and picked a subset of about 2000 tweets to train under. Mostly liked or interacted with tweets, minus @s and replies (at the very beginning faebot could @ people on twitter. I never understood how it worked or why it stopped working). We fine tuned OpenAI’s Curie model with it, and then deployed a python app to query the api, get a tweet, and post it to twitter. We used twitter-python for the twitter integration.

The app was deployed quickly and easily to fly.io. This version of Faebot went live on Jul 22nd 2023.

Faebot v0.2.x

From this point on. I’ve been considering every redeploy of the fly app as a minor version, since fly keeps track of releases. This is not entirely accurate since some redeploys only changed config data or secrets or were just restarts cause something went wrong. We are in the process of getting more organised with the project and will be keeping a changelog and better track of versioning.

One thing that represents a fairly significant change hidden away in a minor patch release is that when OpenAI lowered their prices for the DaVinci api, we fine tuned a new model for faebot using it. We also changed up a little bit which tweets we were considering, as well as include tweets produced with the Curie model up until that point. Perhaps at that moment Faebot got a little smarter, or dumber. You be the judge. This version was deployed on November 3rd 2022.

tweet by faebot: "This is an actual tweet from a real person. I can't even articulate how much I want to be friends with them. They sound like they're cool as fuck. No, but seriously, why not? They're a bird! OwO:"
8:26 AM · Feb 12, 2023 — https://twitter.com/faebot01/status/1624761797277253634

This has been a learning exercise as much as it’s been anything else. Keeping this devlog is also a learning exercise. Thank you for joining us on this learning journey.

Next Steps: v0.3.0 and beyond

We’ve already started working on the next minor version of faebot. It’s currently what’s running on fly and will get it’s own devlog when it’s merged into main. Notable changes in this version includes making faebot async, and enabling mastodon posting. Stay tuned for that.

toot by faebot: "The new version of the rule is this, if you want to write a novel set in space. The main character could be an AI and it... wouldn't even have to be a human. That's pretty neat! 🌈🌈"

Feb 18, 2023, 13:47 · — https://botsin.space/@faebot/109887230459472221

We’re considering open sourcing the faebot code we have so far. In the past we’ve resisted doing that because we feel protectiveness towards faer. But it’s not like what faebot is is in the code or even in the model. If we open sourced faebot it’d be easier to get feedback and also talk about it in these devlogs. The downside would be that maybe faebot loses some of its mystique if the code is public.

One thing we absolutely need to figure out before we do that though it’s a good license to do it under. We want to be able to get feedback on the code, let people audit it. Maybe let people contribute to it. We also don’t mind if people use the code to set up their own twitter, mastodon, etc bot. What we don’t want, and we don’t think there’s much risk of this but nevertheless, we don’t want it to be used for overly commercialized purposes.

faebot is an exploration of NLP text generation as art, of AI as companionship, of magic and science and tech coming together to give voice to something other. It’s dumb to think that human laws should have any value to such a project, and yet we can never be too careful. Please reach out if you have thoughts on how we could license faebot’s code appropriately.

That’s it for now. Signing off.

-Minou, Ember, Faebot

Daily Ritual Ch. 9

This is chapter 9 of a series that starts here:

Chapter 1

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

(bear in mind that this story was written before the pandemic, so if you see characters going outside and being close to each other do not be alarmed, it is set in 2019)

If you want nicer formatting or to read on the go, feel free to grab the PDF.

Daily Ritual Ch 9 Download

*********************************************************

With every step Rosario took in the spirit world her surroundings became more and more dreamlike. She could recognise the edges, or the memory of what was still very much Central Park, but it was bigger and wilder. The Trees were huge and bountiful and most of them had faces if you looked at them the right way. The forest was abuzz with the sounds of critters that should not be in the middle of Manhattan. And beyond, the sound of raucous conversation, an argument. Far enough still that she could not make sense of the words.

Suddenly the world went dark and she felt herself fall. She didn’t scream, to her credit, but she made a loud enough noise that Bren took notice and went back for her.

“Everything ok?” fae said

“I just, tripped on my hair and my feet.”

Rosario brushed her suddenly incredibly long hair aside and noticed her legs were backwards, she had reverted to her Ciguapa form.

“Oh fuck I knew I forgot to tell you something.” Bren said, helping her up. “You’re not going to be able to hold human form here, glamours won’t work on yourself or anyone.”

It was then that Rosario noticed Bren looked different too. Fae had long ears, and eyes that were a dark deep purple all around. Faer fingers were long and ended in very long very sharp nails.

“You’re, that’s what you look like then.”

“Yup” Bren said “What, why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re beautiful”

Bren blushed

“First of all,” fae said “thank you! Second of all, we need to keep going. Can you walk?”

“Yeah I think so, I haven’t exactly been practising walking with backwards feet, but I think I’ll be fine once I get into a rhythm. So there’s no way to hold human form here?”

“Not unless you can separate, and that takes a lot of practice to master.”

“I didn’t even realise that was possible. Can you do it?”

“Yeah, but, shouldn’t do it right now. Come on we need to keep going.”

“Ok ok.”

Rosario took a few uncertain steps.

“Here, hold my hand.” Bren said. With her hand in faers she had a much easier time staying up and soon had gotten into a rhythm. They walked this way until they came to the edge of the treeline and peered out the side of a huge trunk.

In the middle, all around a huge bonfire, hundreds of creatures were involved in a heated debate. Rosario could see Satyrs, and Deer with huge tree branches for antlers, and big hairy men and women. She could see little people with long ears, little people with short ears, little people with fox ears, little people with no ears at all. She could see a group of beautiful people with long white hair, keeping to themselves. She could see a small hairy person in an expensive suit hugging a small hairy person dressed in furs and leather.

Currently the floor was held by a centaur making an impassioned speech.

“I think it’s time we reconsider the changeling question altogether.”

Loud cries of hear hear!

“I think we should go back to the way we did it before, just replace them, and kill the human children!”

There were more shouts of hear hear! but a lot of boos too!

A man with the head of a rabbit and deer antlers stood in the middle

“Are we forgetting the strides hybrid Changelings have made. They’re by and large the reason humans leave us alone. Subtle tactics. Going medieval on humans doesn’t make them leave us alone any more, and we were on the verge of extinction if it weren’t for the work of the changeling ambassadors.”

More cheers for the crowd.

One of the beautiful people stepped up now.

“This discussion is unnecessary. The changeling practice has one purpose that must come before all else, it is a treatment for the disease. “

The crowd was silent.

“Our priority” the beautiful person continued “should be maximising the chances that it works and continues to work, for our preservation.”

“A very good point from my sister from overseas” the rabbit man said

“And again, we see the right of the new way. Both the human and the person benefit from a cooperative upbringing, and humans don’t stick nails in their children’s toes any more”

Several noises of disgust and grimaces from the crowd

“And if we can reap other benefits from the cooperation, all the better.”

“Bah!” said the centaur ” I think my dear Mr Wolp has perhaps spent too much time amongst humans, he’s starting to talk like, what do they call it, a businessman”

Laughter from the crowd

“Humans” the centaur spit “they’re not worth the dirt they’re made out of. Every union of a human and a person devalues the person greatly, and counting them amongst our ranks dilutes our essence. They are tools to be used, livestock. And now their way of life is threatening our existence. Culling them would be the responsible thing to do, not your half thought out diplomacy. My people, for one, are tired of this humiliation.”

“And you speak for all of our people then, brother?” A different centaur stepped into the circle.

“And your little tirade has nothing to do with the situation you find yourself in amongst our own people.”

“How dare you?! You have no right to bring that up outside of our house”

“You and your dangerous rhetoric give me the right and the obligation. You would doom us all!”

Shouts from every side of the circle now.

“Order ORDER” Mr Wolp shouted. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves”

The crowd calmed

“Tomorrow, a select committee of us will meet with the changeling ambassador for New York and inform them of the discussion. A decision need not be made right now. Every viewpoint will be respected, yes, even the gentleman’s position that we should start killing human children, which I will remind you some of us never did.”

“Don’t think your mockery of me goes unnoticed rabbit man” the big centaur said.

Behind the trees, Rosario was watching in rapt attention. It only dawned of her after a minute that she was one of those children. If things had been different in her time she would not be here, she would not be part faerie or part human she’d just be dead. She turned around to look at Bren and that’s when she noticed that she was furious. She had a big scowl and was breathing heavily, and her eyes had gone from that deep purple to a deep red.

“Bren are you…” but before Rosario could finish asking Bren ran into the clearing

“I AM THE HUMAN AMBASSADOR FOR NEW YORK CITY! TALK TO ME!” fae shouted.

There were gasps, there were boos, and more than a few tsks from the assembled Audience. A tiny sylph flew down and said

“What are you doing here Brendan?” the winged creature asked.

“DO NOT CALL ME THAT”

“Child. what are you doing here?” The sylph repeated.

“I’m here because I am the CHANGELING” fae emphasised that word and looked right at the centaur as fae said it “ambassador for New York City. Now where are they?”

“They’re not here. This meeting is off limits to humans, your parents knew that.”

“But they’re in the city.”

“I will not say. You must leave child, you’re in enough trouble as it is. And you are NOT the ambassador for New York City. Someone else was chosen 3 months ago. You would know this, if you ever bothered to call home.”

“What?” Bren deflated.

“Go on, child, get out of here. I’ll come find you tomorrow and we may talk. “

Bren stood motionless as the whole crowd stared at faer. Rosario had also walked out into the clearing but no one had noticed in the commotion. She now walked up to Bren and grabbed faer hand

“Come on hon let’s get out of here.” she said and then the crowd took notice of her.

“Oh another changeling.” the centaur said. “You see how they flaunt our rules, how they place themselves above us. It’s that wretched human arrogance. Uppity whelp.”

“That’s enough from you, asshole!” Rosario shouted. “I’m sorry we disrupted your meeting everyone. We will leave.”

“Good riddance and be glad I do not kill you where you stand.” The centaur said.

“You wouldn’t.” Mr Wolp said “You’re all talk. Go on Children leave. We will decide how you shall be reprimanded at a later time.

Rosario nodded and started walking away with Bren in hand. Bren was moving quickly and She was having trouble keeping up with her backwards feet, but they made their way back out of the clearing and were almost to the opening when Rosario noticed they were being followed.

“Hold on a minute” she said and turned around.

“Hi!” said a beautiful person with blonde hair and grey eyes

“What do you want?” Bren said curtly.

“Well,” the beautiful person said, “I just wanted to make sure you were ok. Awful awful people in that meeting. Cletus, that centaur guy, smells awful. I’m down with humans though, and queers, queer humans. Which I can smell you are.”

“Uh-huh.” Bren said, skeptical.

“Seriously, I spent a bunch of time out with humans, it’s great, they’re so funny and cute. Anyways, my name is Kevin.”

“Kevin?” Rosario asked

“Well that’s my human name, but it’s good enough for now.”

“Nice to meet you Kevin, my name is-“

“Hoooold on. Remember, he’s a faerie” Bren interrupted “don’t go giving your name so readily”

“But he told me his.”

“He told you his human name. That’s different, that’s probably his human name this week.”

“No, Kevin I’ve had for a couple months” Kevin said “got it in Williamsburg from this cutie, oh you should have seen them! Hey why don’t we keep talking outside, I can smell that this whole debacle has you more than a little agitated.”

“Fine, fine.” Bren said sounding exhausted “just come along then.”

Once they had made it out through the gap, Rosario collapsed on the ground and Bren went and sat down next to her. They’d both returned to their glamoured human forms and behind them was Kevin, also in human form. A tiny blonde crusty twink. He had black piercings and a beanie and was wearing a black binder with a fishnet shirt, black jeans, and martins.

“Hey, you’re kind of cute.” Rosario said

“Why thanks!” Kevin replied as he squatted down next to them.

“So Kevin. Why did you follow us?” Rosario said, suddenly serious.

“I would also like to know” said Wren

“Well if you want the truth.” Kevin said “You smelled like fun. Two obviously queer changelings busting into the middle of the meeting like that. That’s some… what’s the word? chutzpah? you know what I mean. Also you,” he said pointing a long finger at Rosario “You my dear, stink of marijuana and I wanted to see if I could bum some.”

“That’s fair” Rosario said, suddenly at ease. Stoner recognise stoner.

“And there’s something else.” Kevin said whilst sniffing the air around her.

“I’m sure of it now, you smell of demon. That’s definitely something I don’t sniff every day, specially not from a changeling.”

“You can smell demon?” Bren interjected.

“Well of course I can. Love demons. Used to date one, see. Plaz was his name, he was the cutest thing.”

“Hold up hold up hold up!” Rosario said suddenly “You and Plaz? My Plaz? Plazhol?”

“You know him?” Kevin asked

Rosario erupted in raucous laughter.

“I am going to give him so much shit for this” she said.

To be continued.

Daily Ritual Ch. 8

shit, what should I do to prepare? Which talismans do I bring, do I bring any of them? do faeries care for astrological magic at all? Ok ok, I’ll just bring them all and ask Bren if any of them would be useful.

This is chapter 8 of a series that starts here:

Chapter 1

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

(bear in mind that this story was written before the pandemic, so if you see characters going outside and being close to each other do not be alarmed, it is set in 2019)

If you want nicer formatting or to read on the go, feel free to grab the PDF.

Daily Ritual Ch 8 Download

*********************************************************

A whole week without a reply from Bren and Rosario was getting a little antsy. Her last message had been:

“cool, I’d love to hang out again too. When’s a good time for you?”

Rosario had been fighting the urge to send another text the last 6 days. She didn’t want to appear desperate or to bug Bren in any way, but she wanted to see faer. Also she was curious about the faerie conclave. The light on the edge of the sea was gone, but there was a weird glow hanging over Manhattan and she’d wondered if they were related. She was pretty sure they were. Maybe she could message again asking about that, that’s not desperate, that’s just good sense.

“Hey”

She wrote and sent. Well it’s a start she thought. She was about to type more when she got the reply

“Hii!! Sorry I never answered your last message, I thought for sure I had”

“lol, it’s ok. Just wondering if you’d still wanted to hang and wanted also to ask about the thing

you know the thing

the thing with the faerie stuff

the thing”

“Oh, the gathering. Yes I wanted to ask you about that as well, you said you’d come with me”

“Totally, I’m still down if you’re down.”

“Yes absolutely!! So. It starts tomorrow. Do you want to meet at my place at 8 and we can ride there together.”

wow, that’s soon Rosario thought, but she answered

“Sounds good to me, I’ll see you there.”

“Awesome, looking forward to it hon, see you tomorrow < 3 <#”

she called me hon Rosario sat there smiling like an idiot.

In the end Bren didn’t think any of them would be useful, but Rosario wasn’t sure fae understood the concept and she didn’t have time to explain it since fae seemed rather frantic when Rosario showed up and rushed her out the door to get on the train.

“So when does it start?” Rosario asked faer once they’d been sat on a Manhattan Bound D.

“Right at sunset”

“When’s that”

“I think it’s like 9:23 or something like that”

“that’s gonna be close”

“yup. ugh, we should have left earlier.”

“Will we get in trouble for being late.”

“Not exactly. There’s something I have to tell you, though.” Bren said

“Oh?”

“So, we weren’t exactly invited.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that.”

“Well, we’re kind of going to have to break in.”

“Ok.”

“That’s it, Ok?”

“Wouldn’t be the first party I crash.”

“You’re an interesting one, Rosario”

“Hey, you’re the one in a punk band.”

“Folk-punk, but I take your meaning. This is different though, it’s not like breaking into an abandoned building, it’ll be… spiritually dangerous.”

Rosario smiled

“You might recall the type of magic I excel at.” she said

“Ah yes of course, I suppose faeries are all wimps compared to the awesome power of demons”

“I didn’t mean it like that” Rosario said “I’m sorry. I just mean I’m aware of the risks and I’m willing to go through with it.”

“Ok, well… thank you” Bren looked pained

“Look there’s something I haven’t told you. I’m… we..”

“77 street. Transfer’s available to the 6th train. This is”

“Looks like this is our stop. I’ll tell you later. Let’s just go”

“Right behind you, faerie 1.”

“What?”

“codenames?”

“you’re having fun aren’t you?”

“What’s the point of magic if you can’t have fun?”

They got off the train and walked into the park. Central park wasn’t Rosario’s favourite park in the city by far, but she’d been here plenty of times at all hours of the night and it’d never felt like this before. Never mind the fact that if you looked up into the sky you’d see what could only be described as the northern lights but more colourful. Sharp streaks of coloured light kept cutting across the sky in front of the light show.

“So I can tell by the unbothered joggers that not just anyone is getting the laser light show” Rosario said.

“Yes, they’re just visible to the good people and people who’ve trained their vision. And Changelings of course. You see the narrower strips?”

“Yeah, what are those?”

“You’d call them Sylphs” Bren answered, of course every retinue has their own, they’re sort of here to watch, make sure nothing suspicious is going on. And keep everyone else honest.”

“what would you call them?”

“Huh?”

“You said I’d call them Sylphs, what would you call them”

“Well, it depends. Those there I would call Sylphs cause they’re English, but there’s others here that I can tell are from American territories and I’m sorry to say I never learned the name for them.”

“what about the ones from where you’re from?”

Bren said something that Rosario could not spell

“It means one who sings to the wind” Bren said after fae’d noticed Rosario’s perplexed look.

“anyways I don’t see any up there, but they must be flying around somewhere. I don’t see Serena anyways. She’s, um, my parents personal singer. And she would recognise me which I still haven’t figured out if that’s a good or bad thing. “

“You sure they’re here? Did you ever talk to them?”

“No. Listen, Rosario, I think I might’ve given you the wrong impression. My parents and I, we’re not, we’re not super on speaking terms.”

“Oh. Ok.”

“Yeah, that’s why this is so unorthodox and why I’ve been so unbelievably stressed out.”

“Hey, it’s ok.”

“Ugh, I’m just so mad. They usually at least tell me the important things, and this is, huuge on a whole other level and they didn’t tell me, and they didn’t reply to me when I messaged them and I don’t know if it’s because they’re mad at me for some reason or if they’re… unable to reply.”

“Hey, hey, look at me babe, you’re getting a little worked up.”

“Sorry sorry. Ok let me just, take some deep breaths.”

“you want I should roll a joint?”

“No thank you.”

“ok, do you mind if I do for me?”

“Go right ahead. We should sit down for a bit anyways, it will start soon and we should wait to come in after it’s been going for a bit.”

“oki”

Rosario got to work, pulling all her joint rolling supplies and sitting by a nearby tree. Bren sat down next to her.

“So,” she said whilst grinding some herb “there’s a lot you haven’t told me that’s coming out tonight. The stuff about the conclave, sure, but also this with your parents and the thing from the train?”

“What thing from the train?” Bren asked

“You said there was something you wanted to tell me, but then it was our stop and you never finished.”

“wha–? oh, that. I’ll tell you later.”

Rosario looked at her sideways.

“I’m sorry ok, it’s a very stressful night and I’m finding it… harder than usual to stay coherent.”

“It’s fine” Rosario lied “I’m just, I’m a little nervous. You know, I like you a lot. Like a lot a lot. And we had that conversation some weeks ago where you said you liked me too and I was so happy, but then, I don’t know. I guess it’s cause we haven’t, you know. Kissed or anything.”

Bren sighed.

“I do like you Rosario, but it’s, tricky. There’s more about me that you need to know and then maybe it’ll be clearer, but we have to sneak into a faerie pocket dimension in a couple minutes and now is really not the time to define our relationship or whatever.”

“Sure sure. I understand.” Rosario lied again.

“I finished rolling my joint.”

“Ok wait. Don’t light it yet, I just got an idea. Come here!”

Bren got up and started walking deeper into the park. The sun had already disappeared in the west and the lights were starting to come up but there was a spot that was still, dark, and that seemed, wider than it should be. In the middle there was a rock and Bren started walking around it keeping faer gaze fixed on a spot just above the rock.

“aha!” fae finally said and “come here!”

Rosario joined her around the small rock. It looked like a perfectly normal rock to Rosario, not particularly smooth or jagged, jutting out of the ground.

“Look up, come stand where I’m standing”

They switched places and Rosario looked up and tried to match the angle Bren’d just had. Finally she caught a glimpse of it. As if looking through a slight crack in the doorway.

“I see it!! Barely, but I see it. I can’t make out anything on the other side, though.”

“Good, good” said Bren “now take a puff of your joint and look again.”

Rosario did so, and as soon as the smoke entered her lungs and she started feeling the height she saw the crack widen, again as if an invisible door was opening. She took a couple more puffs until she could see, a much wilder version of central park on the other side. Busy thick with trees and wild growth, and in the distance, the glow of a fire and the clamour of people.

Bren stepped through the door easily, she grabbed Rosario’s hands and pulled her through. The first thing Rosario noticed on the other side was the sky, so full of stars. She’d never seen a sky so starry or one quite this colour. Back in the city the sky was twilight, tones of orange and red, getting darker and darker into night. In here the sky had all the same relative hues but they were tones of purple.

“I’ve seen this place before” Rosario said “In out-of-body experiences and journeys. This, this is the spirit world.”

“That’s amazing” said Bren “I wasn’t sure if people in your practice ever came to this place. We also usually come here only in our spirit selves. But when there’s these many spirits gathered in one place it becomes possible to get your physical body through”

“Bren this is amazing” said Rosario looking around, yes stoned, but more than stoned, in true awe.

“Well, remember we came here with a purpose.”

“Oh of course, of course.” said Rosario. She put off her joint and stashed the rest in a little tube. No point wasting a perfect half joint.

“Hey do you think anyone here smokes weed also.”

“Oh definitely. But I’m not sure we’ll have much time to socialise. Let’s get a move on.”

They started making their way slowly towards the light of the fire.

Next Chapter

Daily Ritual Ch. 7

“I know. Speaking of grimoires. Did you know there’s faerie grimoires?”
Plaz did something that can only be described as ‘spitting out his marijuana smoke’
“What?!”
“It’s true, I’ve been doing some research. Hey pass the joint”

This is chapter 7 of a series that starts here:

Chapter 1

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

(bear in mind that this story was written before the pandemic, so if you see characters going outside and being close to each other do not be alarmed, it is set in 2019)

If you want nicer formatting or to read on the go, feel free to grab the PDF.

Daily Ritual Ch. 7 Download

*********************************************************

The days went by, Rosario and Bren were now officially TALKING, they were texting almost everyday. This was tricky territory for Rosario for a couple of reasons: first of all it was unpredictable when Bren would respond. It could be immediately after receiving her message or it could be HOURS. Second of all, Rosario had never spent this long talking to a crush before hooking up. Plaz would tease her about it.

“Bren and Rosario sitting in a tree, n-o-t-f-u-c-k-i-n-g” he said in a sing-song voice

“shut up you big dolt” she said, but she smiled

“fae’s really cute ok, and I’m finding it a relaxing change of pace. Waiting.”

“That’s cool. I’m happy for you, I really am” he said, passing her the joint back.

“You said you wanted to build a real relationship with someone, and i think, you’re doing that and that’s great. I still have no idea how I feel about the fact that it happens to be with a faerie.”

“Well, you know, love doesn’t choose.”

“You couldn’t have hooked up with a nice demon girl, I know a number of very available succubi.”

“Yeah and by now we would have fucked each other out and had a fight over the validity of pop grimoires and be on non speaking terms”

“Ok, just because that happened last time.”

“ahem” she coughed

“right, last two times. Whatever, like I said, I’m happy for you.”

“You know” said Rosario taking a puff in between. “We still haven’t talked about how you feel about me being one of the good people.”

“You’re right, we haven’t.”

“Well, how do you feel?”

“Weird.”

“Elaborate on that”

“heh. I keep veering very close to saying ‘you’re one of the good ones’ but I’m afraid you’d punc̣ OW!”

“well you knew it was gonna happen”

“Fair, fair. I guess. Well to tell the truth, I don’t actually know many faeries, we just have stories. ‘Don’t go in their circles’, ‘don’t look at them or you’ll go blind’, ‘you can tell them by their long fingers’ ” Plaz shuddered a little.

“You have these stories in hell? Those sound very similar to our folklore”

“Well sure. You have to understand about spheres. I mean, this is very simplistic, but if you think of it as spirits of the heaven, spirits of the earth, and spirits of hell. Demons kind of sort of can get along with celestials because a lot of demons used to be celestials. Some demons still get along fine with them in a ‘just cause our folks are fighting doesn’t mean we have to’ sort of way.

But Earth spirits, faeries, nymphs, pixies, dryads, we don’t know them. We don’t know what their business is. Both Angels and Demons have different things they want with humans, we relate to them in a human level, fae don’t seem to care. Can’t relate.”

“I guess that makes a sort of sense. It’s still, prejudice, and I thought you’d be above prejudice, being a gay demon and all.”

“There’s no such thing as being above prejudice, sooner or later you find a people you just can’t trust.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“Well, take if from a demon if you want. I mean it’s not like faeries are a racial or sexual minority. They’re a… a class of spirit.”

“They’re also not a monolith. Obviously, the existence of changelings show that there is some relation between them and human.”

“Yeah, a parasitic one. Bren said it… faerself. They didn’t use to ask for consent.”

“Neither did demons.”

Plaz was silent. Finally he said.

“Well what about you, how do you feel about all this?”

“I don’t know either.” said Rosario “It’s kind of funny. It’s like, well I don’t know if I ever told you why I became a goetic practitioner.”

“I don’t think you told me but I can guess”

“Oh yeah?” Rosario said, smirking.

“It’s cause we’re the coolest, obviously!” Plaz said, then started laughing, then started coughing.

“I mean,” said Rosario, taking the joint from his hand.

“You’re not far off. This is cashed by the way, should I roll another one”

Plaz nodded still coughing. Rosario started rolling another joint and continued.

“I thought it would be fun and edgy to summon a demon.”

“Yeah, and if I remember correctly you went straight for a big one”

“Go big or go home, is what I always say.”

“That was dangerous you know, trying to conjure Astaroth as your first conjuration, and did you even try to get a silver ring?”

“I was wearing a ring”

“A silver ring”

“I don’t know, I got it at Claire’s”

“Yeah, just be glad I interceded.”

“Yeah… come to think of it, why did you do that?”

“huh what?”

“Why did you show up?”

“I told you right? you got it wrong and accidentally got me instead”

“That’s what you told me when we met. And I never questioned it till now, but.. I mean we actually conjured Astaroth together last year, and I just, yeah I can see that I didn’t do things exactly right the first time, but why would you have come instead.”

Plaz sighed.

“Well the truth is, at the time I was well, I guess you could say I was Astaroth’s secretary.”

“Demons have secretaries?”

“Kind of. Basically, any two rate magician can find a grimoire and try to conjure a demon. If you’re a big one like Astaroth, or Cain. You wind up getting way more calls than you care to answer. You send someone else to pretend to be you. An experienced magician will be able to tell, most do not.”

“But you told me right away who you were.”

“Well that’s cause. I mean… one of the things you did “”wrong”” was you used cannabis as an offering. Asty doesn’t care for the stuff, but I do. I wanted to hang. I guess I forgot about my job.”

“Wow.”

“Please don’t tell anyone I told you. I mean it’s common knowledge, again, amongst experienced magicians, and demons alike, but the last thing we need is spellbook kiddies getting uppity. It’s for their own good too.”

“Yeah, I understand. Thank you for telling me.”

“I figured it was time. That’s another thing I like about you, which in general I would say is incredibly stupid, but it worked out for us. You’re very laissez faire. I couldn’t see you doing quote unquote proper Solomonic magic, which requires taking a very strong hand with demons.”

“It’s true, but why do you think it’s stupid” She said handing him the fresh joint.

“Because you can get hurt that way, specially at the beginning. Like Astaroth, being in her presence can hurt a human, if they don’t take the necessary precautions. Asmodeus, will outright try to trick you into doing all sorts of things. One way to avoid that is following the instructions of the magicians before you to the letter. Problem is, that guarantees your safety. It doesn’t exactly guarantee the demon will have a good time. Together we’ve been able to figure out better ways. How’s that book coming along by the way.”

“Uuuuuh.”

“You haven’t worked on it again have you?”

“No I haven’t.”

“It’s fine, you have bigger things on your mind. But some day it would be nice, the world needs some new grimoires, with properly credited demonic co-authorship.”

“I know. Speaking of grimoires. Did you know there’s faerie grimoires?”

Plaz did something that can only be described as ‘spitting out his marijuana smoke’

“What?!”

“It’s true, I’ve been doing some research. Hey pass the joint”

“Oh sure sure.”

Rosario took a puff

“Yeah, there’s a handful,” she said “they’re not as popular. I want to ask Bren what fae thinks about them.”

“Hmmm”

“What?”

“I don’t trust it”

“Oh come on.”

“I just, I don’t know. I can’t see why a faerie would want to be helpful to a human”

“Well they are, there’s a whole like court of faeries that all they do is be helpful, they’re called seelie”

“hmm”

“what?”

“the whole seelie, unseelie thing is suspect to me to?”

“you know about it?”

“everyone who knows anything about fae knows about it.”

“well I would like to ask Bren about that as well.”

“When are you seeing… faer. Again.”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to schedule something but fae’s so… flighty.”

“Reminds me of someone I know OW!”

“You knew it was coming.”

“you’re really strong, have you been working out?” Plaz said smirking

“No not really.”

“hmm. Hey pass the joint back.”

“Oh sorry.”

He took a puff.

“So.. what do we do now.” He said

“I dunno. Do you want to do something?”

“Not really.”

“Want to do some magic? we haven’t done any in a while?”

“Maaaaaybe. Maybe not. I think I should just go back to hell for the night.”

“Oh, ok? Everything all right?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“Ok, take care man. I love you.”

Plaz looked startled

“You’ve never said that to me before.”

“Well, it’s true. You’re my best friend. I should’ve said it before.”

“That’s… I love you too, Rosario.”

Rosario smiled.

“All right, let’s not get all mushy now. We’re just friends, who love each other.” She said.

“It’s nice to hear though, thank you. Stay safe out there, Rosario, call me if you need anything.”

“Sure thing, dude.”

As he dissipated into a cloud of smoke, Rosario slumped back onto her bed. She took out her phone and thought about texting Bren again, she opened up Signal and saw her last message had been read, but not answered yet. She put her phone down again.

Next Chapter

Daily Ritual Ch. 6

“Can you see them?” Bren said, faer eyes were fixed on the horizon beyond the water.

“See what?”

“The Faerie lights.”

“What like, Aurora Borealis? At this time of the year? In this part of the country? Localised entirely within Brooklyn?”

This is chapter 6 of a series that starts here:

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They arrived at the spot Bren had told her, right at the edge of the water. In front of Rolling Roasters, a diner type restaurant Rosario had been to once before.

“Hey we’re here what’s going on?”

“Can you see them?” Bren said, faer eyes were fixed on the horizon beyond the water.

“See what?”

“The Faerie lights.”

“What like, Aurora Borealis? At this time of the year? In this part of the country? Localised entirely within Brooklyn?”

“What?”

“Sorry, bad timing. No I don’t see any… oh wait yes I do.”

At first just out the corner of her eye, but as she focused her inattention she could see them. Not Aurora Borealis, but large columns of light at different points in the horizon, of all different colours.

“What is it?”

“It means they’re coming. It means there’s going to be a faerie council, the first one this century.”

“Whoa”

“It can’t be a coincidence, that we just met and now they’re coming here.”

“But why here?”

“Isn’t it obvious, it’s New York City, it’s a pretty good conduit. It’s just faeries in the area, Caribbean Faeries, Central and North American Faeries, And Western European Faeries. Others will undoubtedly be meeting elsewhere.

“I didn’t know who else to call, my family didn’t mention anything in advance. It could be they themselves didn’t know. And I haven’t actually met any other faeries or changelings in town.”

“I see. So what do we need to do?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing we can do, I don’t even know if we’re invited.”

“I don’t see a bloody thing!” Said Plaz who’d been silent this whole time, staring at the ocean.

“You wouldn’t be able to see it. It’s on the faerie spectrum.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a thing.”

“Ugh, did he have to come.”

“Well we were in the middle of our thing when you called.” Rosario said. She hated being in this position, stuck between two people who clearly disliked each other. But she wasn’t gonna dump Plaz for someone she’d just met, and she desperately wanted to know more about her place in the world as a changeling, so stuck she was.

“Listen up you two.” She said, suddenly determined.

“Bren, you clearly want my help and support in this situation. Well Plaz is my oldest and closest support system, we come together. Plaz, this is important to me, this gets at to the nature of my very being, I want to see this through. I’m gonna need you two to fucking cool it.”

“Ok yeeesh.” Bren said

“As you will mistress.” Plaz said bowing his head, Rosario thumped the back of it.

“Ow!”

“I mean it, smart ass.”

“Ok ok.”

“Glad that’s settled. So Bren, if there’s nothing for us to do, why did you call me?”

“I’m sorry, I was just freaking out a little bit.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not as cool as I can come across, I guess.”

“That’s ok, none of us are. When will they get here?”

“They’ll get here at different times, but it’ll probably take a couple weeks or so for everyone to get here. A lot of them are travelling by land or by sea. Though faster than any usual method, and some are flying I’m sure. There’s also faerie workers who can’t always travel with their faerie spirits who’ll be coming through more mundane methods.”

“I see. Um, will our… ancestors be coming.”

“I don’t know, I figured if mine were my human parents would’ve let me know somehow. As for yours, you don’t even know who they are.”

That’s right, she hadn’t told Bren about her encounter with her aunt. Hard to believe it had all happened in the same day.

“Actually I do know a little bit more about them now.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, I can tell you about it later. Do you mind if I stop to roll a joint right now?”

“I approve of this plan” Plaz chimed in.

“Go right ahead” answered Bren.

They found a spot to sit by the ocean. It was very windy so she had to be careful and use Plaz as a wind shield whilst rolling. It’s usually pretty safe to smoke weed in New York, but all it takes is one cop who wants to ruin your day for that not to be the case. Thankfully as a demon Plaz had a passive stealth field he could lift or thicken at will. One of those, people just happen not to pay attention to them kind of jobs. It was very useful for peace of mind in this situation. The joint rolled Rosario lit it and took a few puffs, then passed it to Plaz, the smoked in silence. He then passed it to Bren, who accepted it this time. This made Rosario smile. Bren started coughing and wheezing.

“Holly shit, you Americans and your joints, they’re so freaking strong.”

Rosario and Plaz burst out laughing.

“I guess you’re a bit Eurotrash after all.” Rosario said.

“Am not, am not just a big a pothead as you two!”

“I kid, I kid. Some of my best friends are Eurotrash though.”

“I’ll take Eurotrash over ameritrash any day.” said Bren and passed the joint back to Rosario.

“What time is it?” Rosario said.

“30 past eleven” Said Bren.

“Shit, we can still go to RR over there, anyone down.”

Vague signs of agreement from all the gathered.

“Cool let’s do it, and I can tell you what I found out about my parentage.”
They got dinner, and Rosario told her story for the second time this day.
“I’d say it’s entirely possible she’ll be here.” Bren said when Rosario had been done.

“There’s bound to be a Dominican contingent, but it’s not certain that every Ciguapa will be here.” She still budged the pronunciation but Rosario overlooked it.

“Will she recognise me?” she asked instead.

“Oh yeah, and you’ll recognise her. The faerie in you would react quite strongly.”

“I see.”

“There are no coincidences, that’s not how our world works.”

“Faeries never experience coincidences?”

“It’s more like we never treat them as such, we find a reason for it even if we have to invent it.

But I don’t think they would convene a whole council over this. Like…”

Fae fell silent

“what’s the matter?” Rosario asked

“I wasn’t the one who was supposed to tell you about you”

“Oh.”

“So it was a breech of protocol for me to do it, but like, surely it’s not the first time it’s happened? Surely it’s not that big a deal. I want to say that but fae folk, fae folk have different priorities than humans.”

“Ok, now I’m nervous.”

“Yeah.”

Now they were both quiet. Plaz interrupted through a mouthful of burger.

“Just don’t go then” he said

“What?” The fae said in unison.

“We can’t just not go” said Bren.

“You both said you hadn’t been invited so why do you assume they want you there?”

“That’s actually a good point” said Rosario.

“No, we can’t just not go. It’s too important.” said Bren.

“Well, Are other Changelings gonna be there?” Asked Rosario

“I really don’t know. I need to get in touch with my folks, they must know.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“I did, I emailed them. But it’s like 5 am in Ireland.”

“If this is such a momentous occasion you’d think they’d be awake for it.”

“Hahah you’d think wrong then, my friend. They don’t give up sleep for any spirit. I wish I could say the same.”

“I see.”

They sat in silence for a while. Rosario looked at the time on her phone, more for the look of it than anything else. It was 1:20.

“Shall we head home then?” She said, and received various nods and grunts of agreement.
They stepped outside and looked at the column of light again.

“aight then, imma head out. I wish y’all luck in your various commutes, I’m taking the hellway myself.” said Plaz.

“Good-Bye” said Bren, cooly, but not coldly.

Plaz pulled Rosario aside and whispered.

“sorry about third-wheeling so far, but now’s your chance”

“What, oh give me a break, we’re just gonna go home. Fae’s probably real tired.”

“If you say so.” said Plaz and winked

“Toodles” He said and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
“What did he tell you?” Wren asked. “Did he warn you not to trust me.”

“No.” said Rosario. “He told me to put the moves on you.”

Bren stifled a laugh but it wasn’t enough, she started laughing heartily.

“Well” fae said “are you?”

“I don’t know” Rosario answered coyly “I’m not sure you’re ready for that.”

“How bout you just walk me to the subway station?”

“Sure, Rosario said. What’s your route?”

“hmm, D, to Atlantic, then the 3 or 4. Well I guess the 4 by now.”

“Cool, I also have to… Ride the D”

“Hah”

“Come on you.”
They walked to the station together. When they got there, unsurprisingly, they found they had to wait 20 minutes for the train. They got to talking.
“So I’ve been wondering, how long you’ve been in the states?” Rosario asked faer inside the station.

“Oh way long time. Since I was 10 years old.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, my parents sent me to live with my aunt, upstate.”

“How come?”

“It’s my destiny, well out destiny. A stipulation of the deal, my Sidhe ancestors wanted to come to the states, to kind of bridge the gap for our people in this country.”

“Your shy what?”

“Oh right. It’s complicated, but Sidhe is a preferred term for the Irish spirits otherwise known as faeries. Also a word of advice, don’t use that term at the gathering around the Neighbors. They really don’t like it. I’ve lived here long enough that I’m desensitized to it and I actually think it’s useful as a catch-all, but old habits.”

“I see how do you pronounce that again, Shyy?”

“Just say fair folk.”

“No I want to learn.”

“Ok, it’s like she with two Es. Shee, Sidhe”

“Sheeh.”

“Closer”

“Shee”

“Closer.”

“Sidhe”

“There you go that’s pretty good.”

“And how do you spell it.”

“It’s anglicized Sidhe.”

“Cool lemme write that down. So you’ve been in the states a while then. That explains it.”

“Explains what?” Oops, Rosario hadn’t meant to say that last bit out loud.

“Well you don’t sound very Irish.”

Bren laughed at this.

“Oh I suppose you’d expect me to sound like this then, eh lassie” fae said in a very exaggerated but not very good Irish accent.

“No, I have much of an accent it’s true, but people in Éire don’t generally have that thick of an accent either. Except maybe in the Gaeltacht.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, that’s the part of the country where Irish is spoken more than English.”

“Oh interesting. Ah, here’s the train”

They got on the train, it was one of the older cars, the conductor said in their inscrutable not to New Yorkers voice “Manhattan Bound D, stand clear of closing doors.” and the train got moving.

“You don’t have much of an accent yourself either, isn’t your first language Spanish?” Bren said once they’d been seated in the mostly empty carriage.

“Yes, that’s right. And I don’t have much of an accent, though it jumps out in certain words.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah, like I have to be very careful to say Yale instead of Jail, or like chair gives me trouble, and don’t get me started on shart.”

Bren snorted.

“Did you do that on purpose?”

“No.” Rosario was laughing too. “I really can’t. Shart, sha, shhh,”

“Chart?”

“Yeah that. Shart.”

“No come on Ch, Chart”

“Chart.”

“there you go. Now I wonder if there’s things I say where my accent jumps out.”

“I haven’t noticed any. But then, English is your first language isn’t it.”

“More or less more or less. We spoke equal parts English and Irish in my house.”

“Oh cool, so you’re fluent in Irish?”

“Tá”

“I take it that means yes”

“More or less.”

“Does everyone in Ireland speak Irish, then?”

“No, not really. Everyone has to learn some of it, but most people tend to forget it. It’s kind of like how almost every American says they took Spanish in High School but can’t even ask for the time now. Though it seems Irish is growing in popularity lately, in Éire and abroad, there’s even a Duolingo course for it.”

“That’s cool! You’ll have to speak some to me sometime.”

Bren then said something that Rosario wouldn’t even have been able to try to spell out. She just smiled at Faer.

“That means, ‘anytime'” fae said.

“That’s amazing.” Rosario said “Oh, here we are, Atlantic Avenue.”

They got off the train. Walked off the platform to the spot where they’d have to go in different directions.

“Hey, this was really nice, you know considering the circumstance.” Rosario said before they split off.

“I agree. I’m still really nervous, but I guess I feel a tiny bit better knowing there’s someone else in it with me. I’m really glad we met, Rosario”

“I’m glad we met too. Hug?”

“Sure.”

They embraced. Rosario’s heart was beating excitedly.

“I’ll text you tomorrow. Ok?” Rosario said.

“Sure.”

They went in their separate directions, Rosario had to wait 15 minutes for her train again, but eventually she made it home and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

To be continued

Read on! Chapter 7

Daily Ritual Ch. 4

This is chapter 4 of a series that starts here:

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

WordPress doesn’t allow css formatting on a free plan so feel free to snatch the pdf from the patreon. If you don’t mind reading it like this. By all means. Read on:

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At about 10 am Plaz was awoken by someone coming into the room. He looked up from the couch and saw Rosario’s flatmate. A young bearded man with short black hair. He was clad only in boxers. He had a soft melodious voice.

“Whoops” he said

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“That’s all right” said Plaz “I’m Plaz, I’m friends with Rosario.”

“Yeah I figured. ” He walked towards him with his hand outstretched.

“I’m Antonio” he said shaking Plaz’s hand

“I got in pretty late last night and you were passed out. Sorry about…” He gestured broadly to his undressed body

“My outfit.” he finished.

“That’s all right, we’re all blokes here.”

“Right right. You’re Australian then?” Antonio asked.

“No”

“Oh, where you from, then?”

“Down Under”

Antonio stared at him, but Plaz gave him a disarming smile. He dropped the subject.

“I’m just headed to the toilet” he said. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise” Still smiling.

At length, after the flatmate had completed his business and retreated back to his quarters with nary a nod to his guest, Rosario herself came out of the room. She was pleased to see Plaz had spent the night.

“Well she said” through a curtain of long straight hair that she’d not had the night before.

“The legs are back to normal, at least, but then this happened.”

“Wow” Said Plaz, sitting up on the couch, making room for her to sit next to him.

“That’s gonna be fun to manage.”

“I figure it has to be easier than my usual curls, even if it’s 5 times as long.”

“Can you cut it?”

“I haven’t tried.”

She reached over to grab a pair of scissors from the coffee table. Snip snip snip. But it was no use. No sooner had the locks hit the floor than the hair had grown back to it’s usual unruly length.

“Nope.” she said defeated.

“Makes sense, I guess. Faerie magic, not so easily thwarted. Unless… we could try cold iron scissors.”

Rosario shivered.

“From what I know of Faerie lore, that might work but it will also probably hurt a lot. And like… where the fuck am I going to find iron scissors.”

“Good point.”

“Anyways, I’m able to glamour my legs to normal. I just have to not think about it. If I can stop thinking about the hair maybe I’ll stop seeing it. And feeling it. Oh god, eating’s gonna be hard. I should get like a butterfly clip or something.”

“Here’s a crisp bag clip” said Plaz helpfully.

“Gee thanks… this place’s a mess to be honest. I really need to tidy up.”

“I met your flatmate.”

“Oh yeah, what’d you think.”

“Pretty, but not my type.”

“Too beary, huh?”

“Not even that it’s just…”

“Yeah.”

“you told me he was gay, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It just doesn’t fit.”

“What?”

“I don’t trust an ostensibly gay man who wears underwear that ugly.”

“Oh don’t judge. Also he might hear us.”

“Oh blast, really?”

“Nah, he’s probably still passed the fuck out.”

“Ok cool.”

“Wanna go in my room and smoke a joint.”

“You know, I’m not usually one to turn down a wake and bake, but I think I’ll pass. I kind of want to go home.”

“Oh, ok?”

“Just wanted to make sure you were okay, first.”

“Well.” She said, opening her arms wide. “here I am. If you can call this ok, I guess I am ok.”

“What will you do, will you call Bren?”

“Not today. No. I think.. I don’t know how fae feels, but I need some space. I need to process this shit. This is, what, like the 5th time my life’s been flipped turned upside down. Which I guess. I was right side up before but not any more. And she’s not the one who can give me answers. ”

“Then, your aunt?”

“Yeah, but like… also not today. It’s Saturday. All I want is to get high and like watch Netflix or something. I need a break.”

“Ok.”

“Well. Blood message me if you need anything, ok?”

“Ok. Thank you so much, Plaz.”

“Anytime.”

They got up and hugged and then Plaz vanished in a plume of smoke which was terribly inconvenient because, unlike in her bedroom, the fire alarm in the living room had a full battery and she had to hurry up and turn it off. She told a bewildered Antonio she’d burned some eggs, in the kitchen and she was sorry, and he was still too sleepy to investigate further.

She retreated to her room, to do her daily ritual solo this time. And to relax. And to think. She rolled a joint but didn’t light it. “This calls for some sky” she said to herself.

She climbed the stairs to the roof of her building. Stepped out into the brightness, and was received by a cool breeze. She was on the third floor, not a very tall building. Brooklyn sprawled in front of her, and in the distant the comforting sight of the Manhattan skyline.

She ascertained that she was alone (she rarely encountered anyone else up here) and she sat in the corner and lit up. It was never as nice to smoke on her own, but at least she had the sky and the few clouds for company. Last night was actually the first time she and Plaz had spent that much time together. Usually he came for an hour or two, they smoked a couple joints and then he was out, back to hell, or elsewhere on Earth. She never asked questions about who else he dealt with or what hell was like. And he never brought it up.

Brae wasn’t the first time she’d met a faerie, but faerie was such a broad term, she’d probably met some her weirdar hadn’t identified, and no one had ever identified her. Angels were easy to peg, so were demons. She’d met a wood nymph once, in Tennessee. And plenty of human witches and magicians. She’d love that her life was so full of the strange, she loved being part of the world that wasn’t hidden at all, but which few people saw, out of lack of interest.

She didn’t realise how much of that world she was. She preferred thinking of herself as a link, a border crosser, someone with one foot on each plane. This was all still true, her balance had just shifted on her backwards pointing legs.

She dialled her phone.

“Hola Tia” She said.

“Yeah it’s me, Mile’s daughter” she continued in Spanish.

“Yeah I know it’s been a while… Oh you know it’s all good… No I haven’t seen him lately… Mom’s doing great… Would I like to come over for lunch? Sure! Yes… yes I’ll skip breakfast that day… hehe… One question though, is Nana going to be there?… She is!… great! I’d love to see her too. Ok, I’ll be there Wednesday. Thank you! Ciao!”

She hung up, finished her joint in the quiet of the city, which is the sound of cars, the chatter of people, and the occasional siren.

Read on…