There is a fairy grotto behind the Wal-Mart. Yes, you heard that right. If you walk around the outdoor nursery, past the employee parking lot, and down a small embankment, tada! There it is. “But I’ve been back there,” you say. “It’s just a little park.” You’re not wrong. But you see, it was a fairy grotto first, before they built the Wal-Mart. The fae had occupied that spot of wildland for centuries, if not millennia, and then one day, bulldozers and construction crews. At this point, human encroachment was “been there, done that.” There is literally a fair folk SOP for this. A little fae magic to make sure the construction ended at the embankment, and a little glamour that said: “There’s nothing of value over here.” However, a wise city administrator with a touch of the sight realized that fae magic may not be enough to stand up to unchecked capitalism. No, he would need to bolster magic with a little red-tape bureaucracy. If the land was not protected, the developers would not stop with a Wal-Mart, and they would pave right over everything, fae magic or no. If that had happened, at best, they would have driven the fair folk out. At worst, they would have pissed them off, and the last time somebody pissed off the fair folk, we all spent 18 months stuck in our homes. So he set about creating a neighborhood park. A walking path, wildfowl pond, and some woodland. Except there are dryads in the woodland. And the geese and swans are shape-shifters. There’s a bench on the path that nobody ever seems to sit on. That’s because the bench is actually a throne for the local fae nobility. There’s some sort of glamour around it. The tired jogger suddenly gets a second wind. The couple holding hands decides that the view is better around the next bend. The lady who rolled her ankle suddenly feels just fine. There are real benches, as well, of course. They’re not monsters! Just not that bench.
“How can they stand being so close to cold iron?” you ask, remembering the legends you’ve heard. After all, the building is made of steel, and there are always dozens of cars in the parking lot. Ah, that is a common misconception. Fair folk can be around iron just fine. They just think it’s gross. It gives them the Ick, as the kids say these days. It’s similar to how many people feel about the word “moist” or trypophobia, the fear of holes. Severity can range from a simple “ew” to full-blown panic attacks. Obviously, the latter chose other grottos than the one behind the Wal-Mart. But most of the folk who live here are fine as long as they don’t have to touch the stuff. Some unfortunate humans brought metal folding chairs for a picnic one time. They were apparently set upon by several geese who must have been nesting nearby. At least that’s the official story. There was flapping and honking and hissing, and the picnickers were quite literally driven out by the offended geese. Later, you could see the geese high-fiving each other and doing chest bumps, like the frat bro fae they actually are.
The trickiest part about the whole setup is that most of humanity has forgotten about the Fair Folk. “Wait,” you say, “isn’t that a good thing for being left alone?” It would be, except that there are always people who have the sight. People who see through the glamour and past the magic. If they know they have it, no biggie. A human who knows they have the sight is not perturbed about coming around the corner and seeing two majestic elven men with coronets sitting on a throne, and also seeing a perfectly normal park bench in the same spot. Those who have the sight and do not know it are a little more nonplussed. Actually, most of them just assume the elven nobility are really into cosplay, and they hurry along before the weirdos start talking to them. But seeing a bunch of nude, impossibly attractive men and women skinny dipping in the pond while also seeing a flock of geese and swans has resulted in several calls to the police and several ensuing breathalyzer tests.
Unless it’s Officer Quinn, who has the sight and is fully versed in all things Fae. Titania Bless! The Irish are very good at preserving ancestral knowledge.
Now, truth be told, the kind of people who call the police on skinny dippers, instead of just putting their heads down and scurrying away, are not usually the kind of people who take the revelation, “Fairies are real,” very well. But when he can, Officer Quinn does his best to educate these folks. Off duty, of course. Could you imagine trying to put that in an official report? “The complainant was not inebriated. The complainant has a gift of fairy sight that they were previously unaware of. The alleged nude swimmers were fae shape shifters and are not subject to indecent exposure laws. Complaint has been dropped.”
Officer Quinn does convince most folks that neither he nor they is having a psychotic break. Then the fae nobility offer them a choice. The same choice they have been offering those with the sight for centuries. They can keep their sight, but must vow to protect and keep the secrets of the Fae. Or they can have it removed, which will eliminate it not just from them, but from all their descendants. They will have no memory of the things they have seen or the existence of the Fae, but the world will feel just a little less magical. Sunsets become mundane. Fireflies are just bugs. That brings a lot of folks up short. One of those things that you don’t realize matters until you think about losing it. Still, many do choose to have it removed. The responsibility of seeing things that others cannot is just too much. Some do choose to retain their sight and take the vow to protect the Fae and keep their secrets. Protecting can take a lot of forms. Mostly it’s objecting to any efforts to turn the park in to commercial real estate. It’s signing a petition every couple of years, voting in local elections, and not shopping at Wal-Mart. Occasionally, it’s standard local park care, like picking up trash or cleaning up debris after storms. The particularly invested volunteer to join Office Quinn in his work. The secret part is usually pretty easy. Just don’t tell anybody!
“But wait,” you demand, “haven’t you just violated that vow by telling us all of this?” What do you mean? I am only telling a story. A little whimsy for our modern world. A fairy grotto in the park behind the Wal-Mart? What a fanciful notion! This is not an expose. This is just a work of fiction.