Dirty Séance

The wind blows strongly a cold breeze, bringing with it orange leaves from black trees around me and a shiny white dust lifted from the grass, illuminated by the soft moonlight. I look around me, trying to figure out where I am but then I see something so impossible that I almost start laughing out of its absurdity. There are two moons in the sky, the smaller one being partially covered in the shadow of the other. And making this situation more unbelievable, the smaller one seems to have lights coming from its darkened surface.

The cold wind caresses my face, bringing my mind to its senses, my eyes focusing on the dead body in front of me. The smell of iron from the blood fills my nostrils, as to reinforce the danger I'm in. Then I notice some of the ethereal beings slowly starting to move their legs, seemingly towards me. Panic fills my mind, then I remember they obeyed me when I screamed before. I take the shot in the dark and shout "Nobody moves until I say so!”. All of them freeze in position, looking at me with distorted faces of resentment. It was about time I had something going for me.

As the breeze stops and the leaves start to fall I take a deep breath, strongly grab the bottom border of my shirt and say almost shouting and trying to not think to avoid panicking “I’m Erika, I don’t know what happened to your Queen not do I know why I am here!”. I make a short pause to gulp down saliva and then continue “Look, I want to go back to my family and friends just as much as you want your Queen back. Why not help each other out? Me being here is clearly connected to her disappearance”. I look at them and the look of disgust they had, now has changed to one of doubt. That's progress as far as I am concerned. Good, let's keep pushing it, so I ask “please, explain to me who is the woman dead on the ground and what happened to her? I need to know as much as possible to be of use to you”.

The beings looked at each other with conflicted looks, yet none of them seemed to want to talk to me. Then, a weird one came forth from the multitude. Just as the others, the hair and skin color were the same, so were the proportions of the body. What set it apart were 2 things, first, the presence of small and white spiral horns coming from its forehead. Second, in its groin area it has the genitals of a male, at least it looks like the ones of human males. I assume he is one for the time being, although it doesn’t stop bothering me why only he has them. I try not to focus on that, focusing back on his dead serious expression instead. He bit his lip, then said with a strong and firm voice “I’m Aidan, consort of our Queen… her Majesty… is she ….” he stopped, betraying the confident voice with which he spoke to find the words he sought. After a second or two later he continued “Human, swear on your very soul that recovering our Queen is going to be as much a priority as finding your way back. If you do so, so will I and everyone here”. I respond now feeling more in control “sure, I swear it… I just have a question, if you are worried I may betray you after what I said, what difference would me making a promise do?”. Aidan looked somewhat exasperated by my question yet he replied “When our people are involved, swearing on something becomes a binding contract enforced by the gods. If either you or us break it, the very gods will kill the offender”. I gulp down some saliva as the sense of control I felt just a moment ago starts to steadily disappear after hearing that. Screw me, I wish I had made that question before making the promise.

After the promise was made, the beings stopped surrounding me and organized themselves, sitting in front of me on the ground and on the branches of the trees. Their movements can be very uncanny, when they jump it almost seems as if they are being lifted from strings just like a puppet, dragged through the air to their destination. Once everyone was in position Aidan took the floor and started explaining “We are what the humans call fairies. Our Queen, she disappeared because of the acts of that wench”. His sight locked on the corpse on the floor, his brow frowning in silent rage far beyond what one might think possible. He takes a deep breath and continues “That excuse for a woman appeared out of nowhere in the middle of us, just a few meters away from the Queen. She threw a mysterious concoction towards our Queen before we understood what was going on and to add insult to injury, she died spontaneously before we could kill her ourselves". Perplexed with what I just heard I asked in a hesitant tone “What do you mean she just died? How a person that died out of nowhere is now resting in a pool of her own blood?”. Aidan looked at me, his eyes wide open in genuine confusion and while he tilted head he told me “Don’t all of you do that when you die?".

In disbelief I stayed in silence, unable to find words to answer that statement, just how little of experience do these fairies have with people outside their own race?. Aidan blushed, maintaining eye contact with me for a few seconds as if he just realized in my face how bizarre what he had said just was. He looked away, his face now colored a reddish pink and said in a faster, higher pitched voice “well, how was I expected to know that?! You mortals are squishy and producing fluids all the time…. Also, the queen had more important things to teach us than the specifics of your biology! And… huh…and, hmm and-”. I interrupted him before he had a full meltdown “it's alright, don't worry, don't worry”. It seems he realized how childish his reaction was, turning silent as his face turned even more red. How can someone be so scary and also be this cute!?

While Aidan sulked in silence I approached the corpse laying on her belly on the ground. This is my first time seeing a dead person, if I could just delegate this to someone else I would but it seems they know less of humans than I do. Looking at her back, she doesn’t seem to have any injuries there or in the back of her head. Her shiny red clothes with golden details seem to dissolve into the dark red blood on the ground. I kneel, avoiding stepping on the mixture of mud and blood, to see her face in more detail. She looks just like any old lady I’ve seen, so it seems humans of this world are the same or at least close enough to me.The part of her face protruding out of the puddle of blood looks pale, she is covered in wrinkles and her open dead eye is honey colored. She probably would have looked like a sweet old woman if I had met her before her passing. I hesitate to move her but I need to see if she has an injury or something else on her chest that can give us an idea of what happened to her. With my left leg I push her body while the Fairies around me look at me with the curious face of a child.

Finally, the body flips and I can see her face and chest. Immediately I notice she has mud in her partially open mouth. I feel bad for her but I can’t bring myself to clean her, for now I can only focus on finding information and no more. I focus on searching for any out of place detail but find nothing. It really seems like she just died bleeding from every orifice I can see.

As I stepped up Aidan told me “You know, she used to live in a village nearby. We should just go down there and force them to tell us any info they know about her. Maybe she talked about what she planned to do with our queen”. I turned to look at him and replied, slightly smiling after hearing an actually good idea “That sounds like a plan, let’s check this town”.