Challenge #01934-E110: True Tall Tale

You can find out a lot about a Nation by reading it's 'fairy tales'. -- Anon Guest

Civilisation tells stories. Oral history, moral fables, just-so legends, and in the case of humans, rampant fiction that builds and mutates as it goes. And every now and again, you meet the Fae Tales. Stories of otherworldly beings who have mental processes that squirm like worms, who steal children for laughs, who either prey on the mad or avoid them like the plague. There's something real about them. Something... unnerving. Even when later editors remove most of the blood and replace it with glittering tutus.

My mother said/ I never should/ play with the faeries/ in the wood...

The people who tell these stories call them, "the kind ones" and, "the fair folk" with the same optimism that a cat burglar calls a dog with orange eyebrows a, "nice doggie". And if you listen to the unedited stories, passed down from the survivors, you will learn why. Even the encounters with the good Fae can turn sour in an instant.

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