Seelie and Unseemly

2. The Human

As much as Jonas enjoyed traveling to new places, he had to admit that sometimes getting to that place of enjoyment required an unshakable faith in the transition process. He stretched his sore muscles outside of his uncle's stone-walled shack in Rowardennan, Scotland. Jonas had arrived there two days earlier having just returned from his extended stay in the forests of Montana on the northwest side of the United States.

He had sent his uncle all of his belongings ahead of time so he had been able to arrive, sleep off his jet lag, and set up his new studio within the first 48 hours of his being in Scotland. Bonus, he slept through a lightening storm.

Jonas plucked his glasses from the bridge of his nose and began to clean them with his shirt, deep in thought.

He had been in Montana searching for any signs of the creatures mentioned in Native American storytelling only to be disappointed with the news that the last true shunka warak'in had been poached a year before his arrival. Jonas sighed both with disappointment and frustration.

The poaching and hunting of mythic beings had become a highly lucrative and reprehensible trade. The guilds and distributers that had been founded centuries ago for the purpose of providing protection and payment to those living in areas with high populations of creatures had become twisted. Instead of protectors and providers, the establishments had morphed into butcheries.

As humans had come to see the mythic kinds less as threats and more as resources, interactions became darker, greedier, hungrier. Rather than fostering good relations with what was now widely recognized as faefolk, humanity instead forged a horrid path of monstrosity. At some point, some disgusting fool had decided to wet their lips and try eating the meat of a fae. Unfortunately, they had found it delicious and began selling or eating any fae they came across. Word spread and the rest became history.

Now it could be expected for any human, should they encounter any faefolk –particularly those of small stature such as brownies, sprites, or pixies– to snatch up the poor thing and pop them in their mouth without pause; their prey perhaps even still alive when they swallowed.

Jonas shuddered. His opinion on the matter was that humanity had stooped to the level of ogres, giants, and other man-eaters from their own mythologies. The practices of hunting and eating faefolk was barbaric.

Considering the number of sizable faefolk –who were marginally safer than those who were "snack-sized" due to their only needing to fear those stupid enough to come after them with weapons– Jonas had met, he felt confident that most faefolk were highly cognizant beings. In his luck, he'd found and befriended a colony of borrowers who he'd placed under special protections (Jonas had innumerable contacts in the worldwide network of faefolk conservationists). They'd been understandably afraid of Jonas; so it had taken many months of hard work and good deeds for them to warm up to him.

Jonas chuckled fondly while recalling his lengthy inquisitive conversations with the colony's youngest member. A lovely little kid they had called Amie. She had been most fun, if not a little too morbidly curious about such things as the taste of her kind according to humans.

Jonas was perfectly content not to know the answer, himself.

Placing his glasses back on his face, Jonas gazed contently at the moss covered boulders and gnarled trees surrounding the outdoor shed where he'd be doing most of his work.

By day, Jonas was a well known sculptor specializing in creative and intricate pieces inspired by the faefolk in each country he visited. He always hoped to come across them in person, but more often than not had to rely on the accounts left by scholars, hunters, and folk tales to accrue the fine details of his work.

Perhaps, he mused to himself as he made his way towards the shed, he might get the chance to encounter the faefolk of his maternal family's motherland. If he did –he thought this with a wistful smile– he would prefer that they'd be a member of the Seelie court.