#the fihrie took the galahkari back home

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Welcome Home, Please Stay

Okay, so, I'm looking through my notes on the Not Everyone Knows How To Draw A Salt Line fae au story (yes, that'll be the next story I'll post a chapter for) and I got an idea. Which is a truly dangerous thing to have sometimes.

What if, the evening when Broek tells the story of the Devastation, Nyx and Whisp didn't do their escalating sleep spell? And instead of the resulting fihrie-fae drama, all of Little Galahd just... vanishes during the night?

Like, our little Whisp did not just kidnap a Bog on its own to prove something (spoiler for Salt Line, I guess?) but all this was a communal effort with the other flickerings. So what happened was the every single Will-o'-the-whisp on Galahd came and just took the people back. As you do. Not a trace of them left.

All of Insomnia wakes up the next morning to a few ten thousand people missing. Their things are still there. It looks like they just vanished into thin air literally.

Can you imagine the resulting panic and fear? What happened? Where did they go? Why did no one notice anything? Is it only the Galahdians? Did they do something? Was it the fae? Why? The Niffs?

Investigations are launched. Some Insomnians went also missing. As did children in the system and some adopted kids. (Investigation proves all those kids were of Galahdian descent. (The other Insomnians weren't targeted, but ended up being in the woring place at the wrong time.))

And

Maybe a week later every single thing that was ever made by a Galahkar or ever belonged to one, vanishes as well. There are suddenly entire empty lots where houses used to be. Art and valuables held by the Insomnian nobility go missing. Ancient relics from Lucis's conquest days just go poof.

The panic escalates.

What is happening?

Then Niflheim grows strangely quiet.

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

O my gods, this is so... WONDERFUL, BREATHTAKING, AMAZING, JUST JHDHHDJISFFVEV... And, of course I'd love to hear more about it! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ And I'm so HAPPY you enjoyed it. Seriously, my smile is so wide i could impersonate Cheshire Cat atm. ❤️IgnisFelicis

Thank you!

Also glad to be of service :D

I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, and while I don’t have a story line exactly, have some more meta:

As said before, selkies are count as a subclass of fihrie. Though they have grown progressively more human as the generations passed. But this doesn’t change that Nyx’ ancestors were beings that stole the first breath of newborns and some had most likely run with the Winter’s Coursing.

They are a hunting party that rides along Shiva’s icy currents and steal humans because of their warm blood. They aren’t Shiva’s servants - more like uneasy allies. They keep away from the rest of Eos and in exchange she helps them travel and hunt on Galahd.

Nyx is a selkie. He’s also human. But that one of his ancestors stole a newborn’s first exhale of humanity instead of the last devine one, doesn’t chnage the fact that fundamentally, Nyx is fihrie. He is part of the Other Folk.

Most days this isn’t obvious, when one discounts the changing into a coeurl thing and all the quirks that tgo along with that.

But no Ulric is invited into a home with a newborn baby until the child is at last one month old, no Ulric has ever drawn salt lines in and around their house, no one has ever taken an Ulric’s bet and people always, always leave offerings when they enter the land the Ulrics reside on.

The Galahkari have a healthy respect for all Ulrics, and if someone has trouble with of the fihrie kind, they go to them.

There are stories that all coeurls living on Galahd are Ulrics that just decided to stay in one form. Which is why killing coeurls is a big no-no.

Another story says that the Ostiums gained their ability to communicate with snakes from helping someone of the Other Folk. That they helped someone that looked human at first glance but had scales so fine they could pass as human skin, a forked tongue and a snake’s eyes. Some say it’s a blessing, some say it’s a curse, but now it’s there and they have to deal with it. (Secretly, the one who gifted them with this abilty is mad impressed by the aplomb of the Ostium.)

There’s the story about one of the first Furia and how he danced with the Other Folk during the summer solstice at dawn and that is why their hair is red.

They say one fihrie took a liking to a Lazarus and showed them how to spin their own hair into gold. Some think this is why the Lazarus can make such fine jewellery.

On and on go storeies like this, and one might think the Other Folk to be a people that blesses the ones they like. But those kinds of stories are few and far between. Other stories are far more common.

Stories like the one about the Altius who was gifted with the ability to feel people dying and killed herself to escape it. About the Khara that slowly turned into a fish because one of the Other Folk wanted to keep him. About people vanishing in the jungle only to turn back up years later half mad and barely having aged. About people trying to rip their ears off (and sometimes succeeding) as only they could hear something screaming outside their homes night after night after night.

The Galahkari do not have all that many positive experiences with the Other Folk.

Which is why they nearly leave again when they learn about the Insomnian view on them.

Helpful?

Protectors of homes?

Don’t make them laugh.

But for now they are too weak, too unprepared to make a steady living outside the Crown City. So they stay. For now. They stay and draw salt lines along their doors and windows. They don’t eat at places where they don’t know where the food comes from. They leave flowers, bone splinters of animals, pretty stones, grains, grasses and all kinds of other things at the entrancecs of buildings.

They are careful and as courteous as they can be.

And still they feel like hostile eyes are following them everywhere. Nyx says the fihrie whose territory is most of the city, is standoffish and not exactly welcoming. All things considered this is the best they all could have hoped for.

After a few years talk starts up again. About leaving the city. Because the Insomnians are loosing the war. Because they insulted the Other Folk amongst them so badly with how they treat their stories and territories, that they make them lose the war.

Preparations are well underway - away from the Lucians eyes - when suddenly the fihrie who has claimes Insomnia as their territory, lays a claim on Nyx.