Fairy

Fairies and Sprites are minor denizens of the courts of the Faerie. They are witless and simplistic, considered amongst the lowest of all beings. They resemble the typical appearance of fairies in legends, with butterfly wings and such. Taking on one as a familiar is seen as a stupid thing to do,<ref>“I can talk, if it helps,” he said. “You were talking about Faerie. Court Faerie deal with prominent families and powers. Around here, you’re not getting a Faerie familiar unless you’re a member of the Duchamp family. You could get a fairy, that’s F-A-I-R-Y, but then you’re talking about the witless, minor denizens of their realm. Foot high things with butterfly wings. Going that route would be dumb.” - Excerpt from Breach 3.5</ref> it is unknown if a cluster of them could be chosen.

They are not individually intelligent and only take on human shape to elicit sympathy, more akin to wildlife.<ref>“They aren’t sapient,” Durocher said. “They have brains only large enough for one thought. They evoke sympathy by being human in shape. They’re best compared to spiders, spinning simple glamour as the spider spins webs.” - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.10</ref> If enough of them congregate and collaborate though they can approximate a true Fae in ability,<ref name=FS>Way back when he’d been a little kid, he’d been lured away from his parents by sprites and fairies, the small wasp and butterfly winged kinds. One fairy was stupid, only enough thoughts to fill a thimble, but as an organized group they could network, swarm, and think collectively. They’d constructed a lie good enough to fool a kid who was only barely starting primary school: a fantasy world where he could be a hero, a robin hood type. When he’d started to worry about the time, they’d convinced him that even though he’d spent all day with them, only a bit of time had passed, his parents casually still eating at the beach where he’d left them.

They’d laughed about that later. That was how he knew.

No, they’d gotten lazy about keeping up the lie, and they’d put him in a giant bottle, and after their group had split up over some stupid fucking arguments about who had the best flower in their hair and who could dance best when nobody was looking, the illusions they’d made had fallen apart. He’d been their plaything, to tease, mislead, torment. They’d spin stories and let him think he’d escaped and he was fighting his way through fae landscapes or stranger places, and then they’d let the illusion fade.

When they wanted to buy something they’d sneak into his ear or up his nose and pull out memories in the form of glowing worms, and he’d wake up without a Christmas memory, or he’d forget his neighbor’s voice. Or his mom’s. They pulled out the little half-formed emotions and left him with huge ones and no ability to modulate them, then pestered him to push him to his limits.

When the Witch Hunters had come to set fire to the hive, the fairies had had four captives like him. They’d reclaimed some bottles and tried to match them to each child, interrogating the little bastards, but fairies were stupid, and not every memory had gone to the right kid. - Excerpt from Break 4</ref> real fae can tell the difference.<ref>“Little Francis has dealt with something Faerie-adjacent,” Guilherme said.

“Like Daniel or Shellie?”

“No. Not actual Fae, I’m fairly sure. Too raw, he’s too graceless. From what has been described to me, Shellie Alitzer had her own brand of grace and calculated gracelessness.” - Excerpt from False Moves 12.8</ref>

They can be kept as servants by fae,<ref>The fairy danced between boughs, carefully adjusting leaves and branches, while referencing the back of a leaf, which had a very specific pattern on it.

She hummed, sang, and twirled, butterfly wings. Moving a flower, breaking off a twig that had no leaves.

She tugged on another thing, and then realized it wasn’t a leaf. She shrieked, then took flight.

Butterfly wings didn’t lend themselves to velocity, however.

Toadswallow reached out, caught her, and stuffed her into a glass jar that four other fairys were inside, corking it.

The faerie realm was expansive, everything carefully arranged, and fake. There was no heart to it, because it was so far from being alive. It was to the common human garden what the common human garden was to the rich forest. Pretty, but useless for more than looks. - Excerpt from One After Another 10.e</ref> and have varieties related to specific courts.<ref>A goblin leaped off a branch to try to catch a stunned fairy of the Fall Below out of the air. It missed and caught another branch.

Maricica retreated upward, toward higher branches, glaring down at Liberty.
[...]
Maricica tittered, wearing the form of one small fairy of Dark Fall, halfway between humanoid and insect, one among several in the flitting, flying swarm of moths and other fairy. She had even mocked the girls to their faces, to embolden the glamour. A Faerie wearing her face was high up in the trees. - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.z</ref>

Trivia

• The feature of fairies having butterfly and insect wings dates roughly back to the eighteenth century.<ref>“Fairy Wings.” Madeleine Emerald Thiele, 11 Oct. 2014, https://madeleineemeraldthiele.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/fairy-wings/.</ref>^{[citation needed]}
  • The Otherverse makes the distinction between the butterfly winged fairies and the more insectile transparent winged sprites.<ref name=FS/> Other species are probably possible.<ref>A fairy with a spider for a lower body plucked at Verona’s hair, rearranging strands, and buzzed off as Verona moved her head sharpy, jabbing her chin on a needle in her collar, only to land again, fixing Verona’s intentionally scruffy hair. - Excerpt from False Moves 12.1</ref>

References

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