Not everyone is born to take long, magical journeys that lead to fame and legend. Unfortunately, fate doesn't care if you can't tell north from east or if you get lost in the grocery store. Too often, one of these 'less magic than a common rock' humans is sent on a detour while on the way to work and ends up in Faelandia rather than Oldstone's paper mill.
This is when the fun begins, although no one actually enjoys the transition. The human panics, runs away at the sight of a unicorn, and gets lost in the worst possible place.
The local fae draw straws, and one of us has to go pull the human out of the mess that is getting worse by the moment. Let me give you one tip on how to avoid one of the worst problems. If you find yourself in a dense forest and you see a giant cat walking toward you -- Do not climb a tree to escape.
Cat. Tree. You can't win this one.
Speaking of cats, if you see fae with high pointed ears, do not greet them with any of the following phrases:
Hi pussy
Here kitty kitty
Hello kitty
Anything else that implies they are a cat.
These are elder fae. If they ever had a sense of humor, they lost it after the first few eons of dealing with humans. While they have taken a sacred vow not to utterly destroy the humans, that doesn't mean they won't make humans utterly miserable. Especially the fools who don't take them seriously.
I have been unfortunate with the straw draws.
My latest human at least had not run away in blind panic. She sat in the usual spot, having dropped to the ground when her car disappeared, along with the road. She seemed to be one of the calm ones. They rarely stayed that way for long, so I watched carefully as she stood with graceful ease and looked around.
"Hello," she said. "Who are you?"
"Keldyn," I replied. She had taken me by surprise. Most demand to know where they are. "I am Mary Welton. What am I doing here?"
Still not quite the question I had expected, but better.
"You stumbled into an area of the veil that is unstable. The veil is a magic wall between your human realm and my fae one."
That finally stopped her for a moment. She focused on me and nodded.
"Yes. Good. This will give me a chance to study a lifestyle that is truly different from anything on earth." She looked with interest at the trees nearby as they began to swirl with rainbow colors.
"Study? What are you?" I dared to ask.
"I am a sociologist."
She was going to use science to understand fae society.
We were doomed.
