Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTRFVJG04J0QZGNWGTAXQMT

Rory wondered as she approached the Fae Grove in Richmond Park why she was drawn to this witchy place alone at night. The old legend spoke of a hidden faery realm accessible through groves tucked between the edges of our world and theirs. Her mother Jenn had often regaled young Rory with tales of the realm, warning her that arrogant mortals who dared to step into fae-touched spaces were likely to be trapped, caught in aspen resin or ensnared by thorny wild rose. Rory had a long-standing fascination with faery lore and magic, beliefs solidified while visiting the Faery Trees in Caerphilly as a child. As such, she had to see the place for herself. A heavy silence draped the inky night, broken only by the wind singing through the stands of trees. Rory clutched the Heartstone pendant hidden under her shirt as she carefully approached the ancient oak standing stones that marked the boundary of a hidden clearing. The moonlight seemed too bright, too otherworldly to be of this world. Limbs of the gnarled oaks stretched out in deliciously twisted ways as her eyes adjusted. In the air, she could feel the eliciting magic tingling at her fingertips, awakening a raw reaction in her very core. Magickal energy was a real thing, as mana flowed through the currents of the earth, rivers braking down into streams, cast into intricate pillar networks branching under our feet. She had only to open herself to it. Mana was behind the subtle effects she detected at the periphery of her awareness — a slight constriction of space, a blurring of time, and a Fae-reeked breeze coming from nowhere. In the heart of the silent grove, large shards of pale moon floated in the sky above, a capricious painting in the night blackness of the cloudless heavens. Trees branched away from Rory in all directions, a domain known to be governed by the Fae themselves. The grove seemed to breathe all around her, the energy in the air palpable. The area Rory entered was strangely different than the rest of the park, the utter silence all-encompassing. No crickets, no birds, no animals, only an oppressive stillness. A feeling that she was being watched prickled her skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. Rory found a small clearing, where a spring rose up in the center of a clearing lush with hawkweeds, poppies, and dragonhead, just as Isolde described in her grove documents. But something looked off. She approached cautiously, grinding the foliage beneath the sole of her shoes. The earth felt spongey, almost as if it was giving a gentle push back against her foot. In the fading slivers of day, she noticed something glinting from within the spring, embedded in the luminescent moss. She had to act fast before night fell completely. Rory slowly knelt down. The water looked smooth as glass, making her own reflection look startling clear. Except it wasn't only her. There was movement rippling from beneath the surface! Something slithered just beneath the rippling waters, a quick undulation their only clue as to the creature's shape or intent. Surely, she must be seeing a distortion or trick of the light. She reached down with her fingers and slid it against the glass-like water. What she was certain were eyes further down momentarily widened before making a mad dash for another portion of the spring. Rory wasn't quite sure whether she should be relieved or frightened by the creature's hasty retreat. She had to get a closer look. The moonlight through the tightly woven canopy made it nearly impossible to see anything, the water and its round vegetation a camouflage that only disbursed light into a Monet-like blob of iridescent reflection. She leaned in a little further but froze as she glimpsed a shadow quickly dart from one end of the spring to the other. It felt as big as a hand. Shape-shifting or enchanted blobs. Granted, she has never seen one before, but she knew they existed from the land lore her Dad taught her from/components of their stories. Instead of worrying about whether the creature could harm her, she was more concerned about finding out what kind of Fae she was dealing with. There were many different types of Fae slimming under the waters in rivers and lakes — selkies, kelpies, even sirens. Glancing malignantly from the spring to the forest, she violently got the feeling that this was a place where she and her loved ones were best off never venturing. Her friends couldn't be far if she screamed, but somehow, the logic of the Fae woods didn't possess the rules of the material space they were normally accustomed to. The Fae weren't known for their sense of hospitality, either. Then...a stick snapped somewhere in the toxin behind Rory. She whirled around, fully convinced she'd find some supernatural creature staring back at her, only to see a shadowy silhouette. It looked almost...human? A deep, mocking laughter echoed through the clearing, the chilling sound cloying in the back of her mind like a sticky substance. Rory's heart lodged into her throat, her mouth going dry. She shook herself, looking around for the source of the sound but finding nothing...until she caught the source of the amusement, the thing standing at the edge of the opening. < avez-vous vu mon robe? > it lisped in a language unknown to her, though the cadence of the words conjured a certain feeling. Again the figure laughed, the sound visceral, making Rory's stomach churn. She stood frozen in trepidation, waiting for it to come closer. I thought the slithering creature emerged from the spring, but now Rory wasn't so sure. The light had seemed to fade further, clouding around them like a thick fog and was it just her imagination, or had the creature changed into a much larger shadow? "E-Eh?" Rory choked out, her voice shaky. She had never seen such a being in reality, though she'd heard stories,'d seen paintings. Her mother, a compulsive collector of mythologies, had many pieces of Fae lore, many of which she had warned a young Rory about. "Y-you're...y-you're...F-Fae?" Rory gripped the edge of the spring tightly, her hands shaking. She could feel a strange kind of anticipation emanating from the creature, a look of wanting, a deep longing that reminded her of the scar running down her wrist, of the memories connected to it.</li> </ol> </details> </p>