About A Story
May. 3rd, 2024 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lissalysikanI have been working on a story, the beginning part is called "Prelude to War" as a tentative title. It was inspired by a very short story I wrote during a very bad time. A friend has cleaned up the inspirational story (inspirational as in the cause of my new story - NOT inspirational to read!). I present it here as 'my' story with her permission. It is much spoiler of the big story, but at the rate I finish stories - not likely anyone will be annoyed at knowing how it goes :).
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There are things I regret. Most of them revolve around trying to pretend to be normal. No! I don't mean that silly schoolgirl desire to be like all the other silly schoolgirls trying to be like all the other silly … you know.
Having the ears of an elf wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so freaking huge, and eyes that look twice normal (they're only 30% larger) and glow-in-the-dark-emerald green - why? Add a tiny mouth full of tiny teeth (and fangs) that would make a shark jealous, hair that brushes my toes when I don't braid it, and limbs that are about 10% longer than they should be, and you get me. A faerie in a world that doesn't believe in faeries. Five and a half feet of legs, skin, and bones with a body painted on. A doll's body on stilts. My face is cute, if unsettling, I'm told.
But that's not to be regretted - I didn't make myself. It's not actually clear who DID make me. I was found in a hospital nursery without any documentation. They named me Niamh (“Neev”), Gaelic for “Light”, and farmed me out to foster homes because no one wants to adopt a deformed foundling. (It didn't help when they added Millteach (destructive) as my pseudo-surname, making my full name Light Destructive. Prophetic, but not helpful.)
A changeling.
A fae baby intended to be swapped for a human. Something broke. I was a baby, so you can't blame me. Not that anyone knew it at the time. After all, the fae is a myth. Are a myth? Having the place, culture, and creatures, including people, called the same thing is annoying, but this language is rather weak and its users - generally, not all - rather unimaginative. (Not that the Fae are any better - after all, it is they (us?) who went along with, and seem to have encouraged, it.)
My regrets are about things I've done. I take no responsibility for any acts done on my behalf with or without my knowledge and/or consent. What other people or fae do is on them, not me. Just because I mention your face would look better on fire does not make me responsible for you putting your head in an oven.
What happened?
I don't know. Well, I don't know the whole story. Not even most of it - including my part. Do I care? Not really, aside from morbid curiosity.
Then why write about it?
Because people that matter to me are being hurt by the lies. I only told a few, probably lost amongst the millions told by others. But I was there, they weren't. They invent their lies to hide their ignorance. I invented mine to hide the truth. Someone, once, maybe, said "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
That is how it is. Now - you're going to get it anyway. And I hope it hurts you for the rest of your short life.
No one that matters is left to be hurt by the truth becoming public. Their families are being hurt by the lies - and I don’t care if the rest of you are hurt. More honestly, it helps ease the aches inside me to think you suffer from knowing.
So now you get the truth and I hope it kills you. Slowly. Like sinking in quicksand with a rope one inch from your fingertips. The more you struggle to reach it, the deeper you sink. Slowly. I’m pretty sure that’s not how quicksand really works, but it’s the myth people know so I’ll use it. I like the idea.
Am I bitter? I was born bitter and sucked lemons instead of tits. Any sweetness that might slip in is due to my addiction to cinnamon candies, not feelings or personality. Yes, even my preferred candy is bitter and burns.
So on to my description of the events that led to this state. There are other descriptions, some even bearing a slight similarity to reality. Emphasis on slight.
The beginning.
In a hospital nursery a baby girl was found, in a cradle labeled for a baby girl. The baby didn't look right to a nurse, so she called the doc that was listed - and he denied the baby was the one he delivered. The parents denied the baby was theirs and sued, so all documentation was sealed until the case of their missing baby was resolved (which, by now you know, never happened). So there is a deformed baby, who was not even human according to one doctor, in a bed assigned to a normal baby that is nowhere to be found. A deformed baby with no parents. The state took over. Yup - that always ends well (sarcasm, for those of you who, like me, rarely grasp it).
Being a baby, I was not aware of how much shit hit how many fans over my arrival, all I cared about was getting something to suck on. The state provided that (in some way - my memory of being an infant is nonexistent - probably for the better) and paid for the hospital costs. They gave me a first name, made a file, and sent me to a place. There is a three day discrepancy in the documents surrounding my discovery, so they decided the day the expected baby was born was my birthday. I can live with that. Birthdays matter to those with short lives. To immortals, not so much.
Should I be mean and describe what it is like to be a ward of the state? Probably not. Just think of prison movies, but replace the adults with much more vicious children. “Cause of death: Unexplained” occurred considerably more often than it does in the world outside government care.
I got lucky - for various meanings of 'luck', as they say - when I was five. I got fostered.
The foster parents didn't qualify, by any means, yet they were kept on the ‘potential’ list. I couldn't be adopted or fostered because of looking weird (you don't want to read the comments … 'cruel' describes them as nicely as I can). So the state, in its imitation of wisdom, came up with "put the bad kid with the bad parents, give them an allowance, and get them out of here".
Baby faerie. Sold to a drunk and a whore. Not that anyone ever mentioned the word ‘faerie' at the time - in official papers.
Childhood was much better than I would have expected, looking back. Not that it was good, but it was a lot better than it could have been. Being a deformed nutcase protected me from the worst abuses. Someone who could go from falling-down-giggling to murderous rage in an instant was a little too dangerous for the bullies. They prefer their victims to accept their abuse with minimal complaint, not fight back with the fastest fists, feet, and teeth anyone had ever seen. If the school hadn’t been the cesspit of the city’s education system I might have been pushed into a research center or into doing something athletic with my skills, or just dumped into a detention hall. But no, no one would take a kid from that environment no matter how scientifically curious they were, and the detention centers were overcrowded with children that didn’t act as robots the way their parents expected them to so there was no room for children who might have needed the care. So I scared the shit out of everyone and got left, mostly, alone.
Exceptions occur. The adage “the exception proves the rule” is true. Too bad very few people know that it means “if there is an exception, it proves the rule is FALSE”. They think the word ‘proves’ means ‘is evidence of’. Maybe now it does, but at the time of the expression it meant ‘tests’. An exception is a test of the rule’s validity, and, if the exception is upheld, it means the rule is NOT a rule, it’s just an approximation or guideline (at best). But people are stupid, and the ones that like to use the bastardized version are, by definition, even more stupid than average. But then - does it matter if someone dies from being too stupid to breathe or being too stupid to eat? Nope - stupid is stupid, dead is dead.
The exceptions. Boys who developed an interest in sex before developing a conscience, intellect, or natural caution around unknowns. A couple of them survived. They lacked reproductive capabilities, but they survived. Girls who thought hitting smaller girls while insulting them was safe. Many school lockers had to be cut open before the school learned that some kids cannot learn from their mistakes. The school, in imitation of the government that put me in the school in the first place, used their wisdom … and removed the locks from the lockers. It made it easier to rescue the girls, anyway.
Being a somewhat intelligent nutcase, I found fighting boring, stupid, and pointless (which is amusing, in hindsight). Hiding in the library was effective - very few humans can read, and the ones that can hate doing it so passionately they would rather burn the books and lynch, burn, and ridicule the authors (not necessarily in that order, but hey, if they think insulting a person they already killed does some good, pft, they deserve what they got).
As to the ‘trying to be like other girls’. I tried to fit in for a few years, but once I got into school and saw the hatred your kind has for education, logic, planning, and other types of rational behavior that you laud so loudly while chastising the practitioners (not to mention burning them on stakes for reasons yet unexplained - no, ‘they were evil’ is not an explanation, it’s stupidity) I let them push me away. I grabbed some fashion ideas from the wannabe bikers, ridiculed the silly wrappings of the wannabe socialites, sneered a lot at the popular culture of the time and, in general, acted like a third of the other kids my age, but without a social group to back me up. The library was the alternative to violence that would have changed the history of the world even worse than what eventually happened.
Computers saved you. They didn’t actually ‘do’ anything, but discovering machines that did as they were told and could be made to do even more things … well, your computers are much more reasonable than you are and I fell in love with them. While classmates were going through puberty and acting like rabbits that had been given lobotomies I was learning about computers.
Puberty is not a thing for the fae. I don’t know why - I was raised here, where the fae rarely tread and when they do they rarely say anything of themselves. Okay, so sometimes they tell a lot - in the most misleading way they can find. I am not using ‘we’ because … I am not one of us. Changelings are swapped for many reasons, none nice. We aren’t ‘us’.
Puberty is a thing for humans. From observation and reading, it is similar to an animal in heat, but with less skill, tenderness, and production of babies. Yet you still managed to over-populate your world with useless bodies consuming resources and contributing almost nothing while looking for more ways to avoid contributing. In my opinion, puberty is proof that humans cause their own destruction. Whether it is intentional or not is still being debated by people who would rather kiss a human than talk to me, so - shrug.
No, I am not going to try to explain to a human how things work. Most of you don’t even know how your own sexuality works (there are many humans (mostly male) who believe that a woman chooses whether or not to become pregnant from being raped), so it would be a waste of time. Not that time is a limited quantity, but even things one has in abundance should not be wasted on the unappreciative. I’d rather try to teach one of your brats how to think, fruitless as the endeavor might be, since at least there is a tiny chance of success. Your adults? Incapable of learning, and use declining cognitive abilities as a badge of honor, signifying that you didn’t kill yourself with your own mistakes before you grew too old to do so.
Enough. (Even I get tired of my hatred. Won’t stop me from spewing it, but I get tired of it at times.)
Now we get to where the things went upside west, downside north, and eastside south. You should see the diagrams of that, if your kind is allowed technology again.
The disaster that almost cured your world of your presence made it possible for me to get hired by companies that didn’t care what I looked like - no one would ever see me, since you operated behind walls of computer networks to try to avoid the destruction you’d brought upon yourselves and so never saw you were hiring your enemy. Not that either of us knew I was your enemy at the time, but still - hiring a person based on a pile of text they gave you … and you wonder why no one respects you as an intelligent race.
Ciarán. Such a wonderful man. So he wasn’t wonderful. He wasn’t even good, by your standards, and rather questionable by mine, and the fae, well, he better hope your belief in souls is ill-founded. An eternity of being hounded by the fae. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even one of you. Not that they want to hurt him, but he really doesn’t deserve what they would do to him, and I know him well enough to know he wouldn't want that, either. If you catch him, give him the best Scotch you ever made and let him go. He saved you in spite of his own wishes.
He liked to look at me. No sneer, no lustful lip curls, no obscene gestures intended to make me want sex (which doesn’t even work with humans, so why men do them is … nah, no one wants to know that much about humans), just the look one would give to a scenic forest, children playing in a sandbox, dragons cuddling their eggs … that sort of ‘appreciating’ something without lusting after it. At first, anyway, and I do admit to partial blame for what went on. Sue me. Oh, you can’t - you did what you should have done a thousand years ago and stopped allowing the birth of the kind of creatures that can become lawyers. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised when you exterminated that subspecies.
I was hired as a software engineer! And then. Meet in person. How I became involved in the mess you call Armageddon. Which, as your religious people can tell you, is not finished. Not that they are right about their religions, but they have figured out enough to know that you almost killed yourselves and will succeed soon. They just prefer to blame outside forces than admit you (and they) could avoid it. You won’t because hate and killing is your motivation. I understand that now. It is not a criticism, it’s just the way it is. Some of us are born that way.
Stop critiquing my writing style and actually read the words. I jump around a lot. I’m a FUCKING FAERIE! What do you expect? Pomp and Circumstance? I hate that piece. Give me “quatuor pour la fin du temps” and I can wallow in it for hours. What, you were expecting the dance of the sugar-plum fairies or something? The fae and your fairies are like unicorns and narwhals - you cannot grasp how you can be so wrong and right at the same time.
As I was saying before I rudely interrupted myself to get your mind back on track since you got wrapped up in the human ‘find errors, ridicule errors, pat self on back, wander away in confusion’ variant of ‘thinking’.
Ciarán gave me a place and a task and acceptance. He defended me from your religions while asking nothing more from me than grasping your simplistic computer systems and making them do what his clients asked. They weren’t simplistic to us at the time - we were working with state-of-the-art systems … owned by people who actually believed in one of your childish tales of supreme beings that could control the universe (as if there is only one) and wanted to use science to prove that their lack of science education proved that their supreme being … okay, even I can’t grasp what their intent was, but trust me, it was no better for you than … what happened.
And what was the first thing you did when you saw me? Eject us (Ciarán and I) from your world. Told us to stay away from your systems, work remote, dress the way you do when we needed direct access to your hardware, bleah bleah. You don’t think telling people you don’t want them to be seen is offensive? Liar. You know it is, and you do it on purpose. It is what humans do. They lie. About everything. Almost all the time. There are exceptions. Exceptions are rare, but there are enough of them to give hope that this mess will not end with yet another desert planet. Not much hope, but some. Not that I am optimistic - ugh. I get anxiety from trying to think positively of this whole shitshow. It’s like playing poker - you’re betting on who is lying, knowing they all are, including yourself, and yet you play anyway. Why?
Ciarán had an interesting … maybe has, since we don’t know where what when how he is … has an interesting view of religion, for a human. Do what you want, believe what you want, leave him out of it, and take ‘no’ for an answer. That last part is what got you in trouble. A human who owed his business and his wealth to Ciarán said no. Not because Ciarán was wrong, but because his (the boss, not Ciarán’s) hatred of difference was so strong he was willing to die before allowing someone who was not of his race (yeah, a thing that doesn’t exist in humans but …), gender, cultural heritage, or religious beliefs to have control of ‘his’ computers that … he died. And we owned a company that was built to destroy anyone that was not ‘like the others’ as they say in children’s indoctrination (kindergarten, it's called, maybe). He hated difference so much he couldn’t see someone he admired (Ciarán) as ‘different’.
But that’s jumping ahead. We weren’t always a ‘we’. I had no interest in human mating rituals, Ciarán had no interest in romance or anything that might look like romance. His interest in me was of “wow, that’s unusual! I must learn more” and my interest in him was “wow, that’s unusual! I will hide behind him as long as he lets me”. Neither of us had experienced the “sometimes you get attracted to dirt” thing, so things went a way that neither of us would admit we wanted. Even now. Did we want them, or were they artifacts of the situation we found ourselves in? Not being a human, I cannot fathom the concept of predestination in a universe that has been proven to be random, but some of my childhood lessons still make me wonder if there was something that made the two of us collide. I hope not.
Getting told by the client “go remote or else” triggered Ciarán. He has no respect for … anything, I suppose. Maybe me, now, if he still is. He went remote and bought a house on the edge of a state forest, built massive computer systems into it, added an apartment - much more luxurious than I had seen in-person in my life - and invited me to live there. Since I was living in a rooming house that was about to kick me out for being ‘different’, and knowing he was more interested in his computers - and biting people that offended him - than in me as a woman, I didn’t act stupid. I accepted. (to you it was stupid - but I’m not human and I don’t think your opinions matter much, considering how you act in response to them).
There was a lot of ‘new’. The house was fully furnished with the most impressive library styles all through it. The bedrooms had floor to ceiling bookcases on all the walls, except each had one wall with a giant screen for movies, computer output, whatever. The closet in the master bedroom was the size of the room I’d been renting, and populated with clothing and artifacts of which description would not help you. Not that I knew of the closets, or much of the main floor, for a while. The apartment he was giving me - he asked for a coin a month, just to make it a legal thing - was underground. There were screens on the walls showing random natural scenes continuously - he even removed the ocean scenes from the line-up for me (I am a forest creature - oceans are not pleasant scenes).
I could go on, but you know. You’ve seen the visuals of your military trying to destroy the place and failing. I do not apologize for laughing at the bombers being destroyed by their own bombs. I would like to see more of that, but, alas, and woe, you no longer have machines that can fly. I am not sad about that, either. Death and destruction may be my heritage, and I don’t like it, but you asked for it and I was taught to give people what they ask for. I can’t help it if I get a little pleasure from doing what I do best.
Honestly? It isn't pleasure. You do not get pleasure from putting down a rabid dog. A feeling of a task completed. Accomplishment.
Rabid dog? you may be asking. After all, I am a fae of destruction. By both our standards I should be the one wearing the epithet, right? Right. But I didn't start the destruction. I didn't harm one single innocent, not even human ones. You killed your innocents and tried to kill the fae innocents. You rained the poisons, not me. Saying you did it to stop me just adds another set of lies to the millions you've told yourselves over the generations. By the time you deployed them you knew I was immune. Hell, you tested them on me long before you deployed them.
So we lived away from you, working on projects for you, and you repaid us by blaming us for the crimes you committed against yourselves. Yes, we wrote the software that you used to destroy yourselves. Because you asked us to, you paid us to, and gave us rewards and accolades for accomplishing. Then turned that software against us. Well, tried to. For the same reason you hired us, you failed to harm us. You weren’t smart enough to create it yet thought you knew it better than we, the creators, did.
That’s a little ahead.
We created the system, but only because you wanted us to and paid us to. When the project was nearly complete you decided you didn’t need a deformed nutcase or her champion around to reveal what you’d done. The first attack was supposed to be a surprise - yet you sent the orders by the very software we created and controlled. Of course we were ready. We thought.
So - we died. Or would have, were it not for the fae. The very people who sent me here to prevent me from being the cause of destruction saved us from your attempt to be the cause of destruction. They didn’t do it to save me, they were trying to save themselves (and you, as a side effect) from me. So you attacked them.
You didn’t know who they were. We didn’t know who they were. Were it not for your attempt at world suicide I never would have known I am fae. I would never have touched the power that stopped you. They tried to pull me into fae but … failed. Badly. For the same reason you did.
Assuming a rejected fae would be an easy target (re-recruit, maybe) failed the fae. They pulled me in and when I rejected them they cast me out - with new knowledge and the power to use it. They tried to create the bond that failed when the parents they had intended to bind me to the limits of humans rejected me. By giving me the ring that made Ciarán my owner. It worked, in some aspects. I was - am - completely bound to Ciarán. But the changeling limits to my power did not manifest - a changeling’s birth bond blocks their access to fae - the ownership bond did not. The only limits to my power are ones that Ciarán puts on me, and you made sure he hated you enough to let me use the gifts of destruction you were so afraid of. I wish I had been able to talk to the people who knew of my power before I did. How did they know? You didn’t even believe the fae and the faeries (for lack of a better word) existed, yet you prepared to fight it, and even made attempts at creating what you call magic to combat it.
It isn’t magic. It’s elemental power. No, the elements are not earth, air, fire, water, but you’ve known that for over a thousand years while at the same time believing the opposite. You’re good at holding contradictory beliefs and just shrugging off those that try to tell you that doesn’t work. You call bullshit on those that practice divination, then read tea leaves to see if it’s a good day to go for a long walk. Put your hands on a planchette and let involuntary muscle movements answer questions you don’t want answered truthfully, getting predictable results yet seeming surprised to get them.
So you threw bombs at our house without provocation. Then blamed me for retaliating, even though I caused no harm to you. I simply turned the bombs into a light snowfall that took months to completely fall. You had put a lot of hate into those things. Many insects died early, but that was it.
In your brilliance you decided that throwing more bombs at someone who had proven to be incapable of being harmed by them was a good idea. Ciarán got pissed and told me to do what I had to do to stop you. Not retaliate, just stop you.
That wasn’t good enough for you. I turned your bombs into snow and rain and even flower petals. I changed the way your flying machines worked - so they didn’t. So you sent tanks and missile launchers. The tanks were amusing as their treads turned to chocolate and the armor turned to graham crackers. The missile launchers that shot licorice dust into the air made the forest stink for … it still stinks of licorice. I’ll clean that out some day, if I stay.
You brought in armies from other states, and, eventually, countries, to attack. You never learned that your machines are crude mechanisms compared to the elements, although I think that is because you cannot get your minds off your dead religions. To you, everything is either gods, magic, or money, and, for most of you, the order is reversed.
I need no gold - I’m small. Kilos of gold jewelry is not just ostentatious, it’s heavy. Way too heavy. I don’t need clothes, I wear them because Ciarán told me to. There is nothing you have that I cannot make a better version of. You could not buy me.
So you turned to gods, telling each other that the gods hate the fae. Not that any of you has ever met a god. You couldn’t, since no such things exist. Sure, there are fae that would appear to you as gods - even I fit your definition of a god. They had no more interest in your stupid war than a mountain would have in a flea flying past its peak. I would have less, had you not forced war upon me. No gods answered you, in spite of your worldwide mandatory prayer sessions. Sacrificing gold? Gold is pretty, and useful in many ways, but locking it into temples to buy gods you know nothing of is, frankly, fucking stupid, to use your words.
Then magic. You almost got it. Then decided what you had found wasn’t complex enough to have the kind of power I had and went to the more flashy showmanship of the charlatans. That was good for you. If you had discovered the elements the war might still be going on. Or the world might be a cinder circling a dying star. One of us would have had to completely destroy the other to stop the war, and neither result would be good for anyone.
Not that you care about good. You don’t even care about your families once you get into war mode. Just destroy for the sake of destroying. You’ve been doing it since your progenitors first learned to kill for food. They turned ‘for food’ to ‘for fun’ and you’ve been killing ever since - just for fun. If I were given the power to choose … humanity would never have existed. I wouldn’t mind ceasing to exist if I knew it meant you did as well.
Fortunately for you, Ciarán isn’t the agent of destruction you call him. His powers are an impressive intellect - and control of me. He has not let me give you what you deserve. If you have him, treat him well. Because the day he dies, so does the human race. He is my owner. No god, no corporation to mediate decisions. Just Ciarán. When he is dead I have no owner. And no constraints.
You can’t even ask the fae for help - they send us to you because they can’t control us. Not that ‘control’ fits the fae. Eternal teens. It is only the binding of the two that blocks our access to the elements, and I am unbound. The thing the fae fear even more than they fear your murderous, hateful, petty race. A free fae of destruction.
Neither of you has ever tried to understand us, or each other.
Yes, I am a fae of destruction. Because I was taught to be. What the fae do not grasp is that children can be taught right, wrong, and the gray area between. That would involve being responsible. So those of us with unlimited power … well, you humans do grasp those concepts. We are not destined to be agents of destruction. Destiny is not a thing. Even your science has shown that such a thing is impossible, since randomness is a thing. Nothing is predetermined (except, perhaps, humanity’s stupidity and fae’s addiction to hiding from responsibility).
Properly, I am an elemental fae. I was created of the elements. Humans try to teach their most obnoxious offspring how to behave by your rules, so any power they have is mitigated by their upbringing and, hopefully, they don’t throw world-destroying bombs around. The fae bind our powers and throw us away. Humans could have taught the fae about raising children if they hadn’t made eternal enemies of them just because humans prefer fighting to anything other than sex (and too many like to combine the two).
Now you both have to fear the day Ciarán dies and I am free.
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Her edits were mostly removing redundant insults, nastiness that didn't even make sense, etc. Basically, taking the harshest parts of my verbal meltdown and softening it. A little. And some English sentence constructions (I am bad at making sentences as normal peoples would read :D )
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There are things I regret. Most of them revolve around trying to pretend to be normal. No! I don't mean that silly schoolgirl desire to be like all the other silly schoolgirls trying to be like all the other silly … you know.
Having the ears of an elf wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so freaking huge, and eyes that look twice normal (they're only 30% larger) and glow-in-the-dark-emerald green - why? Add a tiny mouth full of tiny teeth (and fangs) that would make a shark jealous, hair that brushes my toes when I don't braid it, and limbs that are about 10% longer than they should be, and you get me. A faerie in a world that doesn't believe in faeries. Five and a half feet of legs, skin, and bones with a body painted on. A doll's body on stilts. My face is cute, if unsettling, I'm told.
But that's not to be regretted - I didn't make myself. It's not actually clear who DID make me. I was found in a hospital nursery without any documentation. They named me Niamh (“Neev”), Gaelic for “Light”, and farmed me out to foster homes because no one wants to adopt a deformed foundling. (It didn't help when they added Millteach (destructive) as my pseudo-surname, making my full name Light Destructive. Prophetic, but not helpful.)
A changeling.
A fae baby intended to be swapped for a human. Something broke. I was a baby, so you can't blame me. Not that anyone knew it at the time. After all, the fae is a myth. Are a myth? Having the place, culture, and creatures, including people, called the same thing is annoying, but this language is rather weak and its users - generally, not all - rather unimaginative. (Not that the Fae are any better - after all, it is they (us?) who went along with, and seem to have encouraged, it.)
My regrets are about things I've done. I take no responsibility for any acts done on my behalf with or without my knowledge and/or consent. What other people or fae do is on them, not me. Just because I mention your face would look better on fire does not make me responsible for you putting your head in an oven.
What happened?
I don't know. Well, I don't know the whole story. Not even most of it - including my part. Do I care? Not really, aside from morbid curiosity.
Then why write about it?
Because people that matter to me are being hurt by the lies. I only told a few, probably lost amongst the millions told by others. But I was there, they weren't. They invent their lies to hide their ignorance. I invented mine to hide the truth. Someone, once, maybe, said "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
That is how it is. Now - you're going to get it anyway. And I hope it hurts you for the rest of your short life.
No one that matters is left to be hurt by the truth becoming public. Their families are being hurt by the lies - and I don’t care if the rest of you are hurt. More honestly, it helps ease the aches inside me to think you suffer from knowing.
So now you get the truth and I hope it kills you. Slowly. Like sinking in quicksand with a rope one inch from your fingertips. The more you struggle to reach it, the deeper you sink. Slowly. I’m pretty sure that’s not how quicksand really works, but it’s the myth people know so I’ll use it. I like the idea.
Am I bitter? I was born bitter and sucked lemons instead of tits. Any sweetness that might slip in is due to my addiction to cinnamon candies, not feelings or personality. Yes, even my preferred candy is bitter and burns.
So on to my description of the events that led to this state. There are other descriptions, some even bearing a slight similarity to reality. Emphasis on slight.
The beginning.
In a hospital nursery a baby girl was found, in a cradle labeled for a baby girl. The baby didn't look right to a nurse, so she called the doc that was listed - and he denied the baby was the one he delivered. The parents denied the baby was theirs and sued, so all documentation was sealed until the case of their missing baby was resolved (which, by now you know, never happened). So there is a deformed baby, who was not even human according to one doctor, in a bed assigned to a normal baby that is nowhere to be found. A deformed baby with no parents. The state took over. Yup - that always ends well (sarcasm, for those of you who, like me, rarely grasp it).
Being a baby, I was not aware of how much shit hit how many fans over my arrival, all I cared about was getting something to suck on. The state provided that (in some way - my memory of being an infant is nonexistent - probably for the better) and paid for the hospital costs. They gave me a first name, made a file, and sent me to a place. There is a three day discrepancy in the documents surrounding my discovery, so they decided the day the expected baby was born was my birthday. I can live with that. Birthdays matter to those with short lives. To immortals, not so much.
Should I be mean and describe what it is like to be a ward of the state? Probably not. Just think of prison movies, but replace the adults with much more vicious children. “Cause of death: Unexplained” occurred considerably more often than it does in the world outside government care.
I got lucky - for various meanings of 'luck', as they say - when I was five. I got fostered.
The foster parents didn't qualify, by any means, yet they were kept on the ‘potential’ list. I couldn't be adopted or fostered because of looking weird (you don't want to read the comments … 'cruel' describes them as nicely as I can). So the state, in its imitation of wisdom, came up with "put the bad kid with the bad parents, give them an allowance, and get them out of here".
Baby faerie. Sold to a drunk and a whore. Not that anyone ever mentioned the word ‘faerie' at the time - in official papers.
Childhood was much better than I would have expected, looking back. Not that it was good, but it was a lot better than it could have been. Being a deformed nutcase protected me from the worst abuses. Someone who could go from falling-down-giggling to murderous rage in an instant was a little too dangerous for the bullies. They prefer their victims to accept their abuse with minimal complaint, not fight back with the fastest fists, feet, and teeth anyone had ever seen. If the school hadn’t been the cesspit of the city’s education system I might have been pushed into a research center or into doing something athletic with my skills, or just dumped into a detention hall. But no, no one would take a kid from that environment no matter how scientifically curious they were, and the detention centers were overcrowded with children that didn’t act as robots the way their parents expected them to so there was no room for children who might have needed the care. So I scared the shit out of everyone and got left, mostly, alone.
Exceptions occur. The adage “the exception proves the rule” is true. Too bad very few people know that it means “if there is an exception, it proves the rule is FALSE”. They think the word ‘proves’ means ‘is evidence of’. Maybe now it does, but at the time of the expression it meant ‘tests’. An exception is a test of the rule’s validity, and, if the exception is upheld, it means the rule is NOT a rule, it’s just an approximation or guideline (at best). But people are stupid, and the ones that like to use the bastardized version are, by definition, even more stupid than average. But then - does it matter if someone dies from being too stupid to breathe or being too stupid to eat? Nope - stupid is stupid, dead is dead.
The exceptions. Boys who developed an interest in sex before developing a conscience, intellect, or natural caution around unknowns. A couple of them survived. They lacked reproductive capabilities, but they survived. Girls who thought hitting smaller girls while insulting them was safe. Many school lockers had to be cut open before the school learned that some kids cannot learn from their mistakes. The school, in imitation of the government that put me in the school in the first place, used their wisdom … and removed the locks from the lockers. It made it easier to rescue the girls, anyway.
Being a somewhat intelligent nutcase, I found fighting boring, stupid, and pointless (which is amusing, in hindsight). Hiding in the library was effective - very few humans can read, and the ones that can hate doing it so passionately they would rather burn the books and lynch, burn, and ridicule the authors (not necessarily in that order, but hey, if they think insulting a person they already killed does some good, pft, they deserve what they got).
As to the ‘trying to be like other girls’. I tried to fit in for a few years, but once I got into school and saw the hatred your kind has for education, logic, planning, and other types of rational behavior that you laud so loudly while chastising the practitioners (not to mention burning them on stakes for reasons yet unexplained - no, ‘they were evil’ is not an explanation, it’s stupidity) I let them push me away. I grabbed some fashion ideas from the wannabe bikers, ridiculed the silly wrappings of the wannabe socialites, sneered a lot at the popular culture of the time and, in general, acted like a third of the other kids my age, but without a social group to back me up. The library was the alternative to violence that would have changed the history of the world even worse than what eventually happened.
Computers saved you. They didn’t actually ‘do’ anything, but discovering machines that did as they were told and could be made to do even more things … well, your computers are much more reasonable than you are and I fell in love with them. While classmates were going through puberty and acting like rabbits that had been given lobotomies I was learning about computers.
Puberty is not a thing for the fae. I don’t know why - I was raised here, where the fae rarely tread and when they do they rarely say anything of themselves. Okay, so sometimes they tell a lot - in the most misleading way they can find. I am not using ‘we’ because … I am not one of us. Changelings are swapped for many reasons, none nice. We aren’t ‘us’.
Puberty is a thing for humans. From observation and reading, it is similar to an animal in heat, but with less skill, tenderness, and production of babies. Yet you still managed to over-populate your world with useless bodies consuming resources and contributing almost nothing while looking for more ways to avoid contributing. In my opinion, puberty is proof that humans cause their own destruction. Whether it is intentional or not is still being debated by people who would rather kiss a human than talk to me, so - shrug.
No, I am not going to try to explain to a human how things work. Most of you don’t even know how your own sexuality works (there are many humans (mostly male) who believe that a woman chooses whether or not to become pregnant from being raped), so it would be a waste of time. Not that time is a limited quantity, but even things one has in abundance should not be wasted on the unappreciative. I’d rather try to teach one of your brats how to think, fruitless as the endeavor might be, since at least there is a tiny chance of success. Your adults? Incapable of learning, and use declining cognitive abilities as a badge of honor, signifying that you didn’t kill yourself with your own mistakes before you grew too old to do so.
Enough. (Even I get tired of my hatred. Won’t stop me from spewing it, but I get tired of it at times.)
Now we get to where the things went upside west, downside north, and eastside south. You should see the diagrams of that, if your kind is allowed technology again.
The disaster that almost cured your world of your presence made it possible for me to get hired by companies that didn’t care what I looked like - no one would ever see me, since you operated behind walls of computer networks to try to avoid the destruction you’d brought upon yourselves and so never saw you were hiring your enemy. Not that either of us knew I was your enemy at the time, but still - hiring a person based on a pile of text they gave you … and you wonder why no one respects you as an intelligent race.
Ciarán. Such a wonderful man. So he wasn’t wonderful. He wasn’t even good, by your standards, and rather questionable by mine, and the fae, well, he better hope your belief in souls is ill-founded. An eternity of being hounded by the fae. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even one of you. Not that they want to hurt him, but he really doesn’t deserve what they would do to him, and I know him well enough to know he wouldn't want that, either. If you catch him, give him the best Scotch you ever made and let him go. He saved you in spite of his own wishes.
He liked to look at me. No sneer, no lustful lip curls, no obscene gestures intended to make me want sex (which doesn’t even work with humans, so why men do them is … nah, no one wants to know that much about humans), just the look one would give to a scenic forest, children playing in a sandbox, dragons cuddling their eggs … that sort of ‘appreciating’ something without lusting after it. At first, anyway, and I do admit to partial blame for what went on. Sue me. Oh, you can’t - you did what you should have done a thousand years ago and stopped allowing the birth of the kind of creatures that can become lawyers. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised when you exterminated that subspecies.
I was hired as a software engineer! And then. Meet in person. How I became involved in the mess you call Armageddon. Which, as your religious people can tell you, is not finished. Not that they are right about their religions, but they have figured out enough to know that you almost killed yourselves and will succeed soon. They just prefer to blame outside forces than admit you (and they) could avoid it. You won’t because hate and killing is your motivation. I understand that now. It is not a criticism, it’s just the way it is. Some of us are born that way.
Stop critiquing my writing style and actually read the words. I jump around a lot. I’m a FUCKING FAERIE! What do you expect? Pomp and Circumstance? I hate that piece. Give me “quatuor pour la fin du temps” and I can wallow in it for hours. What, you were expecting the dance of the sugar-plum fairies or something? The fae and your fairies are like unicorns and narwhals - you cannot grasp how you can be so wrong and right at the same time.
As I was saying before I rudely interrupted myself to get your mind back on track since you got wrapped up in the human ‘find errors, ridicule errors, pat self on back, wander away in confusion’ variant of ‘thinking’.
Ciarán gave me a place and a task and acceptance. He defended me from your religions while asking nothing more from me than grasping your simplistic computer systems and making them do what his clients asked. They weren’t simplistic to us at the time - we were working with state-of-the-art systems … owned by people who actually believed in one of your childish tales of supreme beings that could control the universe (as if there is only one) and wanted to use science to prove that their lack of science education proved that their supreme being … okay, even I can’t grasp what their intent was, but trust me, it was no better for you than … what happened.
And what was the first thing you did when you saw me? Eject us (Ciarán and I) from your world. Told us to stay away from your systems, work remote, dress the way you do when we needed direct access to your hardware, bleah bleah. You don’t think telling people you don’t want them to be seen is offensive? Liar. You know it is, and you do it on purpose. It is what humans do. They lie. About everything. Almost all the time. There are exceptions. Exceptions are rare, but there are enough of them to give hope that this mess will not end with yet another desert planet. Not much hope, but some. Not that I am optimistic - ugh. I get anxiety from trying to think positively of this whole shitshow. It’s like playing poker - you’re betting on who is lying, knowing they all are, including yourself, and yet you play anyway. Why?
Ciarán had an interesting … maybe has, since we don’t know where what when how he is … has an interesting view of religion, for a human. Do what you want, believe what you want, leave him out of it, and take ‘no’ for an answer. That last part is what got you in trouble. A human who owed his business and his wealth to Ciarán said no. Not because Ciarán was wrong, but because his (the boss, not Ciarán’s) hatred of difference was so strong he was willing to die before allowing someone who was not of his race (yeah, a thing that doesn’t exist in humans but …), gender, cultural heritage, or religious beliefs to have control of ‘his’ computers that … he died. And we owned a company that was built to destroy anyone that was not ‘like the others’ as they say in children’s indoctrination (kindergarten, it's called, maybe). He hated difference so much he couldn’t see someone he admired (Ciarán) as ‘different’.
But that’s jumping ahead. We weren’t always a ‘we’. I had no interest in human mating rituals, Ciarán had no interest in romance or anything that might look like romance. His interest in me was of “wow, that’s unusual! I must learn more” and my interest in him was “wow, that’s unusual! I will hide behind him as long as he lets me”. Neither of us had experienced the “sometimes you get attracted to dirt” thing, so things went a way that neither of us would admit we wanted. Even now. Did we want them, or were they artifacts of the situation we found ourselves in? Not being a human, I cannot fathom the concept of predestination in a universe that has been proven to be random, but some of my childhood lessons still make me wonder if there was something that made the two of us collide. I hope not.
Getting told by the client “go remote or else” triggered Ciarán. He has no respect for … anything, I suppose. Maybe me, now, if he still is. He went remote and bought a house on the edge of a state forest, built massive computer systems into it, added an apartment - much more luxurious than I had seen in-person in my life - and invited me to live there. Since I was living in a rooming house that was about to kick me out for being ‘different’, and knowing he was more interested in his computers - and biting people that offended him - than in me as a woman, I didn’t act stupid. I accepted. (to you it was stupid - but I’m not human and I don’t think your opinions matter much, considering how you act in response to them).
There was a lot of ‘new’. The house was fully furnished with the most impressive library styles all through it. The bedrooms had floor to ceiling bookcases on all the walls, except each had one wall with a giant screen for movies, computer output, whatever. The closet in the master bedroom was the size of the room I’d been renting, and populated with clothing and artifacts of which description would not help you. Not that I knew of the closets, or much of the main floor, for a while. The apartment he was giving me - he asked for a coin a month, just to make it a legal thing - was underground. There were screens on the walls showing random natural scenes continuously - he even removed the ocean scenes from the line-up for me (I am a forest creature - oceans are not pleasant scenes).
I could go on, but you know. You’ve seen the visuals of your military trying to destroy the place and failing. I do not apologize for laughing at the bombers being destroyed by their own bombs. I would like to see more of that, but, alas, and woe, you no longer have machines that can fly. I am not sad about that, either. Death and destruction may be my heritage, and I don’t like it, but you asked for it and I was taught to give people what they ask for. I can’t help it if I get a little pleasure from doing what I do best.
Honestly? It isn't pleasure. You do not get pleasure from putting down a rabid dog. A feeling of a task completed. Accomplishment.
Rabid dog? you may be asking. After all, I am a fae of destruction. By both our standards I should be the one wearing the epithet, right? Right. But I didn't start the destruction. I didn't harm one single innocent, not even human ones. You killed your innocents and tried to kill the fae innocents. You rained the poisons, not me. Saying you did it to stop me just adds another set of lies to the millions you've told yourselves over the generations. By the time you deployed them you knew I was immune. Hell, you tested them on me long before you deployed them.
So we lived away from you, working on projects for you, and you repaid us by blaming us for the crimes you committed against yourselves. Yes, we wrote the software that you used to destroy yourselves. Because you asked us to, you paid us to, and gave us rewards and accolades for accomplishing. Then turned that software against us. Well, tried to. For the same reason you hired us, you failed to harm us. You weren’t smart enough to create it yet thought you knew it better than we, the creators, did.
That’s a little ahead.
We created the system, but only because you wanted us to and paid us to. When the project was nearly complete you decided you didn’t need a deformed nutcase or her champion around to reveal what you’d done. The first attack was supposed to be a surprise - yet you sent the orders by the very software we created and controlled. Of course we were ready. We thought.
So - we died. Or would have, were it not for the fae. The very people who sent me here to prevent me from being the cause of destruction saved us from your attempt to be the cause of destruction. They didn’t do it to save me, they were trying to save themselves (and you, as a side effect) from me. So you attacked them.
You didn’t know who they were. We didn’t know who they were. Were it not for your attempt at world suicide I never would have known I am fae. I would never have touched the power that stopped you. They tried to pull me into fae but … failed. Badly. For the same reason you did.
Assuming a rejected fae would be an easy target (re-recruit, maybe) failed the fae. They pulled me in and when I rejected them they cast me out - with new knowledge and the power to use it. They tried to create the bond that failed when the parents they had intended to bind me to the limits of humans rejected me. By giving me the ring that made Ciarán my owner. It worked, in some aspects. I was - am - completely bound to Ciarán. But the changeling limits to my power did not manifest - a changeling’s birth bond blocks their access to fae - the ownership bond did not. The only limits to my power are ones that Ciarán puts on me, and you made sure he hated you enough to let me use the gifts of destruction you were so afraid of. I wish I had been able to talk to the people who knew of my power before I did. How did they know? You didn’t even believe the fae and the faeries (for lack of a better word) existed, yet you prepared to fight it, and even made attempts at creating what you call magic to combat it.
It isn’t magic. It’s elemental power. No, the elements are not earth, air, fire, water, but you’ve known that for over a thousand years while at the same time believing the opposite. You’re good at holding contradictory beliefs and just shrugging off those that try to tell you that doesn’t work. You call bullshit on those that practice divination, then read tea leaves to see if it’s a good day to go for a long walk. Put your hands on a planchette and let involuntary muscle movements answer questions you don’t want answered truthfully, getting predictable results yet seeming surprised to get them.
So you threw bombs at our house without provocation. Then blamed me for retaliating, even though I caused no harm to you. I simply turned the bombs into a light snowfall that took months to completely fall. You had put a lot of hate into those things. Many insects died early, but that was it.
In your brilliance you decided that throwing more bombs at someone who had proven to be incapable of being harmed by them was a good idea. Ciarán got pissed and told me to do what I had to do to stop you. Not retaliate, just stop you.
That wasn’t good enough for you. I turned your bombs into snow and rain and even flower petals. I changed the way your flying machines worked - so they didn’t. So you sent tanks and missile launchers. The tanks were amusing as their treads turned to chocolate and the armor turned to graham crackers. The missile launchers that shot licorice dust into the air made the forest stink for … it still stinks of licorice. I’ll clean that out some day, if I stay.
You brought in armies from other states, and, eventually, countries, to attack. You never learned that your machines are crude mechanisms compared to the elements, although I think that is because you cannot get your minds off your dead religions. To you, everything is either gods, magic, or money, and, for most of you, the order is reversed.
I need no gold - I’m small. Kilos of gold jewelry is not just ostentatious, it’s heavy. Way too heavy. I don’t need clothes, I wear them because Ciarán told me to. There is nothing you have that I cannot make a better version of. You could not buy me.
So you turned to gods, telling each other that the gods hate the fae. Not that any of you has ever met a god. You couldn’t, since no such things exist. Sure, there are fae that would appear to you as gods - even I fit your definition of a god. They had no more interest in your stupid war than a mountain would have in a flea flying past its peak. I would have less, had you not forced war upon me. No gods answered you, in spite of your worldwide mandatory prayer sessions. Sacrificing gold? Gold is pretty, and useful in many ways, but locking it into temples to buy gods you know nothing of is, frankly, fucking stupid, to use your words.
Then magic. You almost got it. Then decided what you had found wasn’t complex enough to have the kind of power I had and went to the more flashy showmanship of the charlatans. That was good for you. If you had discovered the elements the war might still be going on. Or the world might be a cinder circling a dying star. One of us would have had to completely destroy the other to stop the war, and neither result would be good for anyone.
Not that you care about good. You don’t even care about your families once you get into war mode. Just destroy for the sake of destroying. You’ve been doing it since your progenitors first learned to kill for food. They turned ‘for food’ to ‘for fun’ and you’ve been killing ever since - just for fun. If I were given the power to choose … humanity would never have existed. I wouldn’t mind ceasing to exist if I knew it meant you did as well.
Fortunately for you, Ciarán isn’t the agent of destruction you call him. His powers are an impressive intellect - and control of me. He has not let me give you what you deserve. If you have him, treat him well. Because the day he dies, so does the human race. He is my owner. No god, no corporation to mediate decisions. Just Ciarán. When he is dead I have no owner. And no constraints.
You can’t even ask the fae for help - they send us to you because they can’t control us. Not that ‘control’ fits the fae. Eternal teens. It is only the binding of the two that blocks our access to the elements, and I am unbound. The thing the fae fear even more than they fear your murderous, hateful, petty race. A free fae of destruction.
Neither of you has ever tried to understand us, or each other.
Yes, I am a fae of destruction. Because I was taught to be. What the fae do not grasp is that children can be taught right, wrong, and the gray area between. That would involve being responsible. So those of us with unlimited power … well, you humans do grasp those concepts. We are not destined to be agents of destruction. Destiny is not a thing. Even your science has shown that such a thing is impossible, since randomness is a thing. Nothing is predetermined (except, perhaps, humanity’s stupidity and fae’s addiction to hiding from responsibility).
Properly, I am an elemental fae. I was created of the elements. Humans try to teach their most obnoxious offspring how to behave by your rules, so any power they have is mitigated by their upbringing and, hopefully, they don’t throw world-destroying bombs around. The fae bind our powers and throw us away. Humans could have taught the fae about raising children if they hadn’t made eternal enemies of them just because humans prefer fighting to anything other than sex (and too many like to combine the two).
Now you both have to fear the day Ciarán dies and I am free.
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Her edits were mostly removing redundant insults, nastiness that didn't even make sense, etc. Basically, taking the harshest parts of my verbal meltdown and softening it. A little. And some English sentence constructions (I am bad at making sentences as normal peoples would read :D )
