Emily reached the thing glinting on the horizon during the afternoon of her second day in the fields. It was closer than she expected. What she’d taken as foreshortening, the buildings sitting small in the distance, had been a trick of the eye. The buildings were just small. The castle, all five stories of it, stood only a touch taller than Emily. A rivulet, the first water she’d seen since entering the Sidhe, wound down the centre of the village clearing.
She waited awkwardly at the village’s boundary line, where the tall grass stood like a swaying forest. The villagers, all about as big as dolls, paid little attention to her. Based on outward appearances, this was a place stuck somewhere between the medieval era and the Renaissance, though there was something going on at the mill that looked Jules Verne-y. She watched the people going about their daily feudal business for a while and finally cleared her throat.
“Hello?” She tried to make eye contact with some of the villagers, like she’d learned in public speaking at school. It was difficult, because she towered above them. “I’m here on a mission of great import and would like to speak with your leader.” Emily frowned. Nice, mixing up medievalesque and alien interaction clichés. She’d started off better with the grasshoppers.
Before she could get fidgety, a voice hailed her from somewhere below her knees.
“What do you want, then?”
Emily looked down at a regal, if bored, woman squinting up at her. She began to squat down so they could talk more or less face-to-face, but the woman held up a hand. “Don’t bother.” With a soft hum, wings fanned out from her shoulders and she brought herself up to Emily’s eye level, hovering effortlessly, the scepticism in her sharp, copper-brown features no less clear for their miniscule size.
“Okay,” Emily began, hoping this wouldn’t end as poorly as her first two attempts to interact with others in the Sidhe. “So, I’m a chosen one and I’ve got this mission I have to complete. I’d like some directions. If you could help, I’d be grateful. If there is some sort of trade, I’m open to that—but I’m not agreeing without knowing what it is I’m agreeing to. Plus, like, I know that there is sort of a thing here where nobody wants to just flat out say what they’re saying, but I’ve been disappeared, laughed at, and I am low on water, so I request, respectively, hospitality.” She felt a sort of exhilarating apathy. Things would play out how they’d play out and since she didn’t know the rules, she might as well enjoy the ride.
The woman hovering before her swayed slightly as she contemplated. “How’s it been for you since you arrived?” Emily outlined her interactions with the dryad and the grasshoppers, sketching over her walk through the fields. The woman smiled. “Not really what your faerie tales prepared you for, eh?”
“Or those who sent me here.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Really. Well, I offer you hospitality, if only to prove that the Folk aren’t all a batch of miscreants. You’re thirsty and probably running low on food—”
“Not really,” Emily interjected, “so don’t worry about that.” She thought of the little bag of homemade energy bars that had refilled itself the night before. “I’m trying not to think about it. Water, though, I need that.”
The woman gave her a strange look and continued. “So, I invite you to join us for the night, in exchange for telling us your mission, any stories from your travels and” —her eyes narrowed— “what circumstances brought you here. When you leave, we’ll point your way.”
“Thank you so much.” Emily attempted an awkward curtsey.
The woman crossed her arms and looked Emily up and down, grimacing. “But you can’t join us like this.” She waved her hand tiredly and Emily found herself standing at the edge of a picturesque, if rustic, village that looked like it was built with parts from a science fiction movie set, a dense green forest at her back.
Her fists balled up and a string of curses piled up in her throat before she realised that it wasn’t the place that’d changed, but her sense of perspective. The woman landed before her, smirking. She was now a full head taller than Emily, even more if you included her elegantly braided updo. “This way, please.”
Emily followed her into the village, her nerves churning. The casual and overt use of magic made this whole thing seem more real. Shrinking hadn’t been something she could ignore from the corner of her eye or attribute to the nature of the place. She wondered what else could be done with less thought than turning a page. The possibilities that came to mind were infinite and mostly horrendous.
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