Do we have fairies? This is New York City. We have everything.
You’re expecting Central Park, aren’t you? Greenery. Trees. Water fae in the Bethesda Fountain. Nope. I say again, this is New York. We have rat fairies. We have fairies who live in elevator shafts. They are really loving the new supertall buildings.
First off, we don’t use the word fairy in public. Too much baggage. Especially in the city that is home to The Stonewall Inn. Gotta represent.
You also can’t use the word elves. As soon as you do, people get all Tolkien and expect a tall, beautiful person with excellent hair and the wisdom of the ages in their eyes. Pratchett was closer, “Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder … Elves are terrific. They beget terror.” But, he goes too far the other way. The New York fae aren’t good or bad. They just are.
Well, if I had to give them an identity as a group, I’d say they are agents of chaos. They admire it. They instigate it. Is it any wonder they like the Big Apple?
Second, that part about not liking iron? That’s just PR so you won’t see them coming.
What size are they? What size is your imagination? Small enough to get in anywhere. Big enough to cause trouble.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Sure, they will snarl traffic, or lock a door, or make you late to work. Computers might have been invented as toys for the fae to mess with. But they are not blood-thirsty. It’s not night of the Living Fae out there. Some tribes are meaner than others. Depends on the group. Plus, the tone of a tribe can change over time.
That’s a large part of what I do. Walk around, keep an eye on things. Notice if the chaos is becoming too much, or too vindictive. Listen to the mood of the crowds. As Agent K said, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.” Ever seen what unlocalized high-pitched sounds can do to a crowd? It’s not pretty. Guess who is good at sounds and lights and smells?
New York gets a lot of tourists. They aren’t as much of a problem as you might think. They don’t see. Or if they do, they just put it down to NY weirdness. Same with the Connecticut commuters. If they do see something weird, they tell themselves it’s another as a reason to be glad they moved to the suburbs. (Pause to shudder.) We are more likely to hear stories from the outer parts of the city, the places were people have lived a while. It takes a time to see.
Discovery? We use the theory of hide in plain sight. Go ahead and tell someone. Who’s gonna believe you? Well, the world is vast and weird. People with get behind you. CNN won’t be among them. Film something? Sure. You might even get an award for your CGI work.
Graffiti. They love graffiti. All of it. Gang tags. Urban art. Commercial murals. Not a fan of billboards. Never have been. I spend a lot of my time walking around looking at what is on the walls. You can get a good sense of a neighborhood from what’s on the wall, both what is there from the humans, and what is there not from the humans.
A lot of what I’ve been talking about is Manhattan. Central Manhattan, that’s my patch. There’s a fellow who has the southern part of the island, from the Village to Wall Street, and a woman who has the entire north section, from Columbia University to the Cloisters. You have to know your area to be able to tell what is different. Very territorial your urban fae. Go a dozen blocks and you are dealing with a whole new crowd.
It’s not a matter of footage. It varies. Some places we can’t find any sign of them. Then, there is a few blocks in the Bronx that has the highest density of f … don’t use the f-word … highest density of supernatural beings of anywhere in the city. I’ll find them infesting living in one building but not another that is exactly the same size with the exactly the same amenities, or lack thereof. We have no idea why.
Whenever we have organizational meetings, we all bring food to swap. As with the rest of New York, the fae like their food. We all make a habit of leaving food in certain places. A bribe? An offering? Protection money? Whatever you wanna call it, food seems to keep the situation ticking along.
I bring bagels from Zabar’s. The fellow from downtown brings macarons from Aux Merveilleux de Fred. Yeah, they have a midtown store as well, sometimes the two of us bring the same thing. Someone always wants them. Those suckers are good. It can be really hard not to nibble the mechandise. If I have the money, I try to bring extra for the humans. But I digress. Has to be in the bag. The fae like their labels.
My job? I’m on the books as city inspector. What do I actually do? Think of me as somewhere between a diplomat and pest control.
Virtual Brush Box 