But look, kids! There's MORE!!

Jarlath 2

They look ticked off enough as it stands!

I am not a bigoted person. Even have brothers and sisters (Fred analogs) who'd become fey folk in the course of things so I know that a fairy isn't automatically trouble. However, I had more than my fair share of bad run ins with the Fey Folk back on my homeworld. Trust me when I say to you that this could mean trouble! Even with the good kind, those fey of the Seelie Court (which I think are these) things can get . . . complicated. Oh, the relationship I and the other non-feys of the family have with the fey kind in our Clan (Eternity Inc) is a casual affair. The relationship that one might NOT enjoy with . . .

. . .

You have to be careful with the Seelie Court. If you bungle it, they won’t kill you but they’ll make sport of you. That can be . . .awkward to say the least, and leave at that. Or . . . not. See, with one particular "sport" . . . Oh, if you’re lucky (or UNLUCKY) and meet a lone (human sized) fey of the opposite gender they might sweep you off your feet (and put you in a family way if you’re a woman) . . . that is one way it can be awkward. You would not believe the numbers of human people on Terra Prime (and other parallel versions of Terra Prime) who has at least a little bit of fey blood in themselves due to THAT stuff.

Let’s not go into how it was this Fey custom that . . . necessitated certain little charms that make a man . . .able to (cough, cough)

Let us just say that it ‘twas the reason why various Freds had been able to (accidentally, as various Minestuses had hoped if not necessarily by Fred) put various Astras (whilst under the sway of neo-lycathopic induced demifox instincts) in a family way! Remember that those Freds had mistaken those "demifoxed" Astras as Kitsune ( A species who sages had thought were an exotic offshoot of either the Seelie and/or Unseelie Courts, but rather some exotic Celestrial court entirely separate from more "traditional" Occidental business.)

Throw in the fact that these particular fey folks are from an entirely different reality/time thread/ whatever than the Seelie Court officials Eternity Inc has met in the past and it is deja vu all over again!

. . .

We’re almost hyper-polite in our dealings with our unexpected visitors, so they can’t (and don’t) ding us for that. But when they see (with those eldritch senses of theirs) that we are Champions (of an OFFICE they never heard of having never had experience of having Champions), it at least makes them less . . . mocking of us. When they discover what had caused all sorts of alarm bells (or whatever) to ring (i.e. the transformation of native Astra into a male pixie), it gets ugly (for Minestus).

How do we know that? Well, when they bring his head back on a silver platter for King Oberon for a trophy you generally don’t think that it had been fun for the beheaded, right?

. . . .

Remember that old Christmas story about Scrooge? One where at the end Scrooge was raving about how the spirits had done all they’d done to him in ONE night? Well, those spirits have NOTHING on these Seelie! How about all this done (with whatever time bending powers the seem to possess) in only something like fifteen minutes (as by what the Sun says in the sky)?

That and (we’d blacked out on this part so don’t know how they’d done it) . . . we now have instead of a male pixie, drunk on the idea of meeting his "fated" we have a male centaur. . . . named Zeliseth .

How they’d managed that I have NOT a clue. Zeliseth (name the legacy of his incarnation as a pixie) is going to join with us (come Hell or high water . . . we’re not getting away from this guy) and after this is over he’s going to do his damnedest to sweep Frieda off her feet or (LITERALLY) die trying.

That is, if he fails he’s going to die of a broken heart LITERALLY.

Until then, he’s sort of like US Champions, immortal. Right now he technically still belongs to the Seelie Court (and the Office of Good by extension), but when Frieda falls for him ownership (or f"blood oath", whatever) slips over to the Rules and Agents . . . .

It’s kind of like those Lateral Transfers of the past, but with a more traditional (positively ancient) beat to it.

. . . .

At least his future love life won’t be an exercise in frustration (IF he wins over Frieda, that is) . . . Whatever the case, we’ve got a native guide now . . . But now I'm kind of . . . annoyed. It's been beat into our heads, us magic users, that the Matrixs of fey folk are UNALTERABLE and here we get . . .

Oh, wait. Just got told by our still daffily smiling centaur that one of the "Higher Ups" did this for him. The buck got passed WAY up the line there, looks like!

Okaaay....

1. Whatever the case, we’ve got a native guide now if nothing else. . .

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