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Faerie Tales

A 49-post collection

Challenge #02346-F156: Darby O'Gill Sends His Regards

https://cheeseanonioncrisps.tumblr.com/post/169821900050/a-lot-of-humans-are-weird-posts-play-with-the

Dear InterNutter,

Since you have blessed us with all your lovely writings of the many wondrous worlds you have created while juggling life, kids and painful weather phenomenon I would like to give you something to enjoy reading instead of writing about. Although it's not mine to give, please enjoy it.

Thank you! -- Amberfox

[AN: the text in this link is way too long to transcribe, so please read it in a new tab or something. I'll just get on with the tale]

The Irish dreamed of Little People, the fair folk, and the Gentry. The Danes imagined Nisse, the Household spirits who lived in between spaces and occasionally made things vanish. Mary Norton conjured the Borrowers, who lived in small spaces and only took small things that may never be missed.

Many cultures have come up with smaller people who live in our unused or unseen spaces. You can imagine Humanity's collective shock when they discovered the truth. It was Humans who were the small folk. Even the tallest of Humans would have trouble reaching the average alien's knee, should they stand on the same surface together. Life is a peril at that scale, and only the bravest and the most nimble went out into space with the others.

Those who went, adapted well. They took up residence in the spaces between. They took advantage of the neglected things. Many rode on alien shoulders, some with the invention of a form of saddle, others by clinging to whatever there was to grab. Some peoples made sure there was accomodations. Runways, stairs, ladders added into the architecture. Humans, in return, provided new meaning to miniaturisation.

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Challenge #02281-F091: The Threshold

You'll need the wayback machine. A man stands in front of a door. It can lead anywhere. Dare you step through? -- Anon Guest

Presented for your approval, the image of a man in a grey suit. The man is also in tones of grey. To see him, and the door he offers you, is to see into different realities where anything from creeping horror to sublime delight awaits on the other side. It is, without a doubt, the trip of a

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Challenge #02264-F074: Health Spa and Karma Services

"Death is a door,

Time is a window,

I will come back" - Vigor (Ghostbusters II)

One human has this as his motto for life. -- Anon Guest

They say that the lands of Death are the undiscovered country. They say that mortality is the absolute final frontier, because nobody comes back. Imagine thinking that that is your limit. Imagine being that ignorant. In brief, imagine life before necromancy.

Yes, yes, yes. Subverting the natural flow of the cycle of life and

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Challenge #02043-E219: Through th' Crack's Mirror

Humans had lost against the Fae. The Orcs, and Fairies, Gnomes, and Centaurs, all the "mythical" creatures had banded together and drove us to near extinction. But unlike us, they weren't monsters. We had after all started the war. And the small group of survivors, stripped of magic, were sent to a reality where no natural magic existed. Banished to the fringes, that's where our stories came from, an attempt to keep the history before alive. And remember the times that the

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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

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Challenge #01857-E033: A Best-laid Plan

The evil has been slain, the entire nation celebrates in the streets and now, the beautiful Princess who was saved very publicly confesses her love and the King offers her hand in marriage to the noble Hero… Except the Hero was already married - to the woman who sells potions and medicines; she had been aiding the Hero since the quest to save the princess first began, and their love grew more with each visit. Also, the Hero isn’t a Hero,

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Challenge #01843-E019: Reminded of the Babe?

Don't do something permanently stupid just because you're temporarily upset. -- Anon Guest

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

The fae folk had her baby. Toddler. Even though her child could walk and talk after a fashion and perform simple tasks, Esa was still her baby and would be so until the day Risso died. Which might be soon, considering that she was marching into Fae territory with naught but her apron

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Challenge #01758-D297: Old Tricks, New Places

Employment Agency for Supernatural Beings and Creatures. -- Anon Guest

The Fae Folk don't get to steal as many babies as they used to. Their usual shenanigans are now written off as the souls of dead humans. And that's just insulting. The worst they can do is already being done, and to humans, by humans. They have lived for centuries. Millenia. And they have yet to see depravity like human depravity. Humans can't be scared of them, any more. What they are

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Challenge #01706-D245: Pass on the Wild Ride

Pookas. Referencing "Harvey" the original and the best. Shadye and a Pooka -- Anon Guest

The foothills of the headlands. Headed into Enchanted Grounds. Civilisation tried to stay away from places like this. The walls between the worlds grew thin, and all kinds of eldritch beings emerged, with their eyes set on the hearts and minds of man.

They don't mind snacking on eyeballs, lungs, and intestines, either.

The captured demon, who could see things that mere mortals could not, squinted at

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Challenge #01515-D054: A Good Host's Reward

Pick a second! -- Gallifreya

There's one advantage to being an early riser. Usually, it's watching some kick-ass dawns as they happen. Today, it was meeting Brutus. He's what most people call a gargoyle. I'd go into the difference between the real gargoyles, which are decorative stone waterspouts, and what people call 'gargoyles' but are actually called grotesques. Those are decorative stone building features with no inherent function.

But I wouldn't call Brutus 'grotesque'. He's kind'a pretty. Even with his stone skin

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Challenge #01486-D025: Worth a Life

“unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings” - Carrie Fisher -- RecklessPrudence

Oh crap. She'd tripped over a Faerie nest.

Of all the authors who featured the Fair Folk in their modern writings, A. A. Milne said it best: Their bodies were so tiny that they could only process one feeling at a time. What hardly anyone remembered about Faeries is this: immortality can drive cogniscent beings insane. Milne's traditional cause of faerie death is not what these hyperactive creatures needed.

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Challenge #01413-C318: The Otherworldly Ones

http://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/152590950362/airyairyquitecontrary-aprillikesthings

Humans are Fae for urban animals -- Gallifreya

"They live in a cave," the corvid insisted. "Caves all over the cliffs. Caves in the grasslands. They're all so confusing that it's difficult to find your way out again. The sky turns into a wall. But if you find a nice one, they will take you to the wall that is open and let you be free."

"They leave food," said the possum. "Some even give

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Challenge #01405-C310: Friend of the Fae

There's a reason fairy rhymes with scary -- OohLookShiny

[AN: There's a reason why I use 'faerie' as a spelling for them]

Now let's be clear, faeries don't exist. Everyone knows that they're just old wives' tales about dangerous places that have long since be rendered safe...

But...

Just in case...

Don't fell a faerie tree. Don't disturb a standing stone. Keep away from the faerie hill. Never whistle at midnight when you're in the woods. Throw the salt over your shoulder.

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Challenge #01310-C215: The Opposite of Magic

But they just ran into the world’s best spell mangler. She has the protection of a unicorn. She carries what is probably a fully intelligent sword that can do whatever needs doing to bring justice to a situation. And she is the host of a living magical spell that likes to do things to people who try and mess with it. -- RecklessPrudence

There is magic, everyone knows this. People with the ability to wield it range from those who have

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Challenge #01309-C214: I am Immortal, You're Not

Oh my god wonder of wonders an ancient semi-immortal race understands that time is valuable. -- RecklessPrudence

Immortals have some odd habits. One that stands out is spending hundreds of years on perfecting Apple Pie. Right down to breeding the perfect apple, the right kind of bees, and just the right kind of grain.

Currently, Duroc the Everlasting was analysing the maple sap for the correct kind of sweetness.

Heaven help the world when she finally decided to work on the ice

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