Different Kinds of Magic

1- We Hide Among You

Wanna know something crazy?

There are worlds that humans never see. Worlds where those living in them do everything they can to stay unnoticed by humans.

Humans have a tendency to be judgmental about differences. Hatred soon follows. Humans hate each other for merely whom they love, or the color of skin. Periods of hating each other, of hating those with differences stain human history with blood and blackness. The result is never: You go live your lives somewhere else and we’ll leave you alone. No, the result is slaughter on grander and grander scales. As if this great, big, beautiful, mysterious planet with uncountable realities we call home is not big enough for all of us.

Sometimes humans are the most deadly.

I’m not saying that we’re better than humans. Where do you think they get the idea of Good versus Evil? Some of us slaughter. Some of us are the serial killers armed with methods and madness. No one is perfect. No race, religion or creed creates the utopia we seek. We are all stuck with some fault, some humanity, something that mars the black or white delineation, that keeps our piece of the puzzle from fitting seamlessly.

Every wonder why there are so very many cubicles in the world? Those are hiding places. We don’t just hide in the shadows. Some of the best hiding places are in plain sight. We wear disguises; have alter egos and multiple personalities. We go about our lives with the sole purpose of survival. We all strive for the human definition of “normal.”

We seek to live our lives undetected, unjudged, and safe.

The librarian looking so innocent behind her desk, her books, her large black coke-bottle glasses…. She’s a witch studying all the portals of knowledge she can gather.

The bus driver taking your kids to school…. He’s the werewolf keeping the coyotes away from your backyards, protecting your young from the bad stuff day and night.

That tiny woman you just passed on the street…. You know the one. The one you didn’t drop your head to acknowledge. She’s the beautiful fairy whose emotions guide her. She can either drop blessed dust over your path, or bloody your yard with bits of the neighborhood pets. Be nice to her.

It seems that everyone lives with a certain bias.

Vampires killed your sister? Welcome to vengeance’s path.

Instead of the love potion you paid for in blood, the witches gave you a lust potion minus the antidote? Welcome to hatred.

The problem is a virus leaching through history. No one knows where it started and the pandemic is too great for the weak power of tolerance to work.

Back to the Good versus Evil bit. It is never completely black and white despite The Powers That Be. Not all vampires are evil. Not all fae are after your children. Not all demons bathe in chaos. Not all werewolves hunt in the middle of the darkest cities or run in every wooded area. And not all humans are innocent victims.

Just like humans are different and cannot be judged like a book by its cover, so too are creatures of magic. Our genes do not define us. We choose how to live our lives. Sometimes the greatest fight within us is Nature versus Nurture, to hell with the greater battles of Good versus Evil.

Yes, sometimes we are pawns on a chessboard waiting for The Powers That Be to guide us in the directions they’ve chosen.

Another crazy thing: there are those who do not fall squarely on the white or black side. There are those who live on the edge of the board. There are those who support one side or the other or neither or both. There are those who sink our hands deep into the thick of it, throwing wrinkles in the Greater Plan.