In the Woods Somewhere (Tsukkiyama)

A Chance Meeting with a Strange Human

When he first saw him, Kei had almost taken the boy to be a deer spirit, wide-eyed and swift with tanned skin dusted with spots. But no, none of the fair folk made such a racket when they ran through the woods, and even the dullest of the deer spirits knew to avoid human territory, where deer and fae alike were oft hunted. The not-quite deer spirit must've been a human then, and a relatively young one, as he looked to be about Kei's age. What was a young human doing this far into the forest? While still technically in the human kingdom, Kei knew that only adult hunters, mostly stupid ones, ever ventured this close to the border.

If the human knew how far he was from any villages, he clearly did not care, as he continued to bolt through the forest. Intrigued and looking for an easy target to test new forms of trickery on, the young fae followed.

The boy, the human one, not Kei, stumbled over every root, stone, and twig that he came across, sometimes falling onto the ground and dirtying his already worn and ragged clothes. It was after the third fall that Kei figured out what the human boy was running from. Or, more accurately, who.

A triad of other human children were chasing Kei's potential target. The children, presumably in the same age range as the boy they were chasing, carried crude weapons and hollered with glee when they spotted the scared boy on the ground. The frightened one got up and ran again, but now that he was in the sight of the others, he was at a clear disadvantage. A squat, red-faced boy with a slingshot sent volley after volley of projectiles at the olive-haired child, causing him to stumble even more.

Normally, Kei would leave at the first sign of humans fighting, he knew well enough that harming each other was just what humans did, but he had never seen human children chase each other. In fact, he had never seen human children at all, for they did not often enter far into the forest, and Kei, being a child himself, wasn't supposed to leave the faerie kingdom borders. If the boys continued the way they were now, though, Kei wouldn't have to worry about getting scolded for sneaking out into the human lands.

As the children ran further into the forest, getting close to the kingdom of the fae with each step, Kei felt the subtle shift in the forest's magic. Even now, the trees grew greener and taller; if the human boys weren't careful, they could easily get lost. Oh, how Kei hoped one of the boys would get separated and lost, he had never tricked a human before, but his brother made it sound fun. They did not separate though, the pursuers stayed in their clump of three, and the freckled one never ran fast enough to put much distance between him and his tormentors, who were now flinging insults as well as stones.

Kei wondered how far the children would venture into his peoples' lands for the sake of the chase. He also wondered if they even knew how close they were to the faerie kingdom. He didn't have to wait long for the children to realize where they were, though, not when the fleeing child stumbled upon the mushroom ring denoting the kingdom borders. For how foolish this child must have been, running into the forest and actively considering entering the faerie kingdom, he seemed to at least know that to step foot in the fae circle would be a veritable death sentence. Kei watched in fascination as the now crying boy halted dead in his tracks, nervously glancing back and forth between the children running him down and the mushroom ring before him. The deer-like boy edged slowly around the circle, taking great care to avoid snapping any mushroom stems or those of the other surrounding plant life. The boy even apologized quietly when he accidentally flipped a stick onto one of the mushroom caps and stopped to remove it.

The other human boys were not nearly as smart. The time the boy had taken to carefully go around the circle had allowed his hunters to catch up with him. Kei stared in quiet fascination from his hiding spot as they closed in on the child. The two lackeys, the slingshot and ax-wielders, paled and slowed their approach at the sight of a faerie ring. The apparent leader of the chase, a tall child with a poorly made wooden sword, continued charging forward and, in his human stupidity and hubris, not only entered the ring but broke many of the mushrooms that made it.