Work Text:
Where the first line of trees met the edge of the fields, there were shadows and shapes forming in the mist. A gathering of imagined dreams and fragments of wishes coiled and pooling into a conglomerate of shape that was never meant to take form. A twisted creature stepped into the near dawn light at the place between wood and meadow, wrapped in lingering fog of autumn’s breath and morning dew. It shivered into solidity for an instant before the first rays of darn light struck it.
It was a creature meant for the mysteries of dreaming and the little dark places all people keep in the corner of their eyes. The idea of otherness came to mind if you tried to name it. Those from times long ago would spin fantastic tales of them and use them for the lessons of moral and mortal danger. For the clear truth was that the things that lay off the path and away from the sun are not gentle to the children of men.
No, this otherness had no one true name but many things that were part of it and would be seen by those caught in waking dreams or the true innocent who had not yet tasted the fallacies mortals.
It was Fey, Fairy and Fantasy. It was Moonbeams, Mysteries, and Magick. It was the Hobgoblin, the Boggart, and the Banshee. It was all the things that we mortals dream and dread and desire. It was ugly and beautiful, enough to make your heart weep. In that moment caught between the remnants of night and the near break of day it was real and it was there.
I looked right at it and it looked right back.
So, look and ye may find all the things that ye would seek, but seek it not and let it come and ye will have the best of secrets to keep.