#fae encounter

[whichwitchami]

Fae Encounter Christmas eve 2019

I may not publish this, but I want it in drafts for recordkeeping @tothesolarium since you wanna talk Fairies (or Fae) here's a list I was sitting on.

Around mid morning Christmas eve 2019 I got the urge to take one of my crystals and leave it in the woods. I didn’t know which crystal, just felt like I had to take a crystal into the woods. I couldn’t think of a specific one that I wanted to part with, so I settled with wearing my indigo gabbro dedicated to Odin while hiking. It’s not unusual for Odin to compel me to take it out for a hike. 

Taking Odin into account, I decided to go to the Overlook where I believe I have encountered him before, and that has become his favorite spot for hikes and meditations. I packed some herbs to leave for an offering and set out with his stone around my neck. While on the way to the overlook I realized i was on the road that takes me to the nature realm, a place I hadn’t been in a long time. I decided to stop there, but never drove past the entrance to it despite being on the right road. So then I end up in the national park, and decide that Odin would want me to strike out on a new adventure rather than go to the same old place, so I turn the opposite way of where I should go to the get to the overlook. I end up driving through the national park for 20 minutes and can’t find a single trail. 

So I end up at the overlook, like the original plan stated. I start off on the path that fortunately for Christmas eve, isn’t too crowded with people. I quickly come to a spot where there’s a little side trail. It’s clearly a path, but I rarely if ever see anyone on it. It’s a short little detour that loops back to the main path. I’ve walked it many times before. 

I strike off on this path, and immediately can hear the whispers of the local spirits. This was a shock to me because I haven’t interacted with them before, but I knew I wanted to start doing more work with elements and local spirits as a way to breathe new life into a craft that has felt dull and unused for a while now. So I acknowledge and listen to these whispers as I walk. About 1/3 of the way through the path they encourage me to connect with them by physically touching a moss covered rock right off the side of the path. Close enough I can touch it while staying on the path. So I do so, and as soon as I do I look up and notice something I haven’t seen on the path before. 

Just ahead of me is a natural archway over the path created by tree branches. I have walked this path a dozen or so times and never seen it, and while it had been a few months since I had been on the path, it didnt’ seem like something that would naturally have happened. I saw this and immediately became suspicious, but also compelled. 

I walked up to the archway but didn’t cross under it right away. I knew it was the Fae, and I know the Fae aren’t to be messed with if you aren’t prepared. All the same, I stepped under the archway. For a moment I just stood there, feeling the change in energy around me. The voices i had heard started to quiet, and I started to feel uneasy. I still crossed fully under the archway. 

As soon as I stepped out from under it, I knew I would have to turn and walk back out the other way. the Path I was on loops back to the main trail if I had kept walking forward, away from the arch, but I had a deep gut understanding that I would have to walk back under the archway now that I had crossed under it. I keep walking forward for a bit, knowing I’ll turn back. That’s when I spot a beautiful fallen log that looked perfect for walking across, doing so would have taken me way off the path. I walked up to it, asked permission to walk on it, and stopped myself just short of putting my hand on the log to brace myself as I got on top of it. 

At this point I realize its time to go. I’m definitely in a different area that I thought I was, and there’s definitely something going on, something I no longer trust. I turn away from the log and back to the arch. As soon as I turn my back I feel something behind me, and a voice says “do not turn around.” 

So I grab the stone around my neck, hold on tight, and start walking. I can feel and hear something walking behind me, but I don’t turn around. I walk back through the archway and make it to the main path. It’s only when I get to the main path that the thing stops following me. At this point I choose to continue on the main path instead of go to my car. the path I was on runs parallel to the main path for a while on the right. I hear whatever was behind me warn me “do not look into our woods.” 

so I continue the main path, avoiding looking to my right until I get past where the path loops back and joins the main one. Nothing is following me at this point but I feel sick. I make it to one of my favorite spots on the main path, just a little ways away from where all of this went down. I leave my herb offerings, drink some water, rest as I’m still feeling dizzy. When I get my head back on right I walk back to the car, once again avoiding looking into “their woods” which are now on my left. I don’t stop feeling sick until I get into my car and drive away. 

[internutter]

Challenge #02356-F166: Strange... on a Train

"May I scare you?"

"What?"

"May I scare you. I want to scare someone but just doing it outright would make me feel guilty. So, I was hoping someone would give me permission to scare them." -- Anon Guest

"Well, it's going to be a bit more difficult than jumping up at me and yelling 'boo'," said Mae. "I know it's coming, now. Jumpscares can't work if they're anticipated."

"Oh, I know this," said the amenable stranger. "I have an entirely different plan."

Mae had to giggle. "Well, if you think you can do it, go for it."

[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit steemit (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]

[internutter]

"Well, it's going to be a bit more difficult than jumping up at me and yelling 'boo'," said Mae. "I know it's coming, now. Jumpscares can't work if they're anticipated." "Oh, I know this," said the amenable stranger. "I have an entirely different plan." Mae had to giggle. "Well, if you think you can do it, go for it."

[fayrobertsuk]

By Their Fruits Will Ye Know Them

A reminder for me today that living linguists are always going to beat artificial translators, no matter how sophisticated the latter get…

Be me, having spent a couple of hours writing a flash fiction creepypasta for a magazine that runs submissions for these monthly. The theme this month is "mycelium/ chitin" and they specified that, if the former, the mycelium concept had to be in there, not just mushrooms. That's grand, and I even managed to get it in explicitly towards the end, during the dénouement, but the usual "Oh shit, what the hell do I call this?!" dilemma swept over me.

Titles are tricky.

In case you didn't know, mycelium is a fungal web which not only absorbs nutrients like the roots the threads resemble, but functions like a neural network underneath the ground, for which the visible mushrooms are merely the fruiting bodies. It looks like a series of densely interwoven dendrites, and, in larger colonies, can send signals for miles. We're only just beginning to understand how it functions, and it's old; very old. Anyway, this is why it's been half-jokingly referred to as The Wood-Wide Web.

For Reasons, I'd set the story in rural Scotland, and there's a whole bit where the kids taking part in the Spooky Ritual use Scots Gaelic. So, having tried out a couple of titles, I thought: why not have the Gàidhlig for (The) Wood-Wide Web as the title? And, despite the relative simplicity of the handful of words I needed translated, I knew that, conceptually, it was not something that was going to get as easily churned out from Google Translate as "Hello, my name is…" or "Where is the station?"

Anyway, I started with Google Translate, and did my usual thing of moving some things around, adding in punctuation, reverse translating what it had given me, etc., to see whether the translation stayed stable or messed around. It messed around a LOT. And I knew this wasn't like Welsh or a Romance Language where I could make educated guesses. (No-one has spoken Gàidhlig in the Scottish side of my family for generations, and I'm pretty much the only one who speaks any Welsh beyond "Hello, how're you doing?" from the other side.) After putting a call out in a few places, I looked for specialist online translators. I ended up with at least seven different versions across the different platforms, and, by this point, trusted none of them, though I was blessing the fact that, for once, I hadn't finished something with hours or minutes to go before the deadline...

Happily, a shy person who "doesn't like talking in servers" DM'd me from a server specialising in networking for Scottish audiodrama creators, and I provided the requirements and background above (something I could not do with Google, etc.), and we went back and forth with the different ways of putting it. He gave me two options:

lìn air feadh na coille (which was one I already had from a latter specialist site, which he said "would make the most sense")

lìn fharsaing na coille ("might also work though")

The first one means "web all over the forest", the second one more "the vast web of the forest"

So, of course, I went with the more poetical one, the latter, which had not been suggested by any online translator. He also kindly recorded a pronunciation of it, in a frankly gorgeous voice, and then said it was okay, he didn't want to be credited… and disappeared.

(For those of you interested, as I understand it: "an" means the, "lìn" means web/ network, and "coille" means woods/ forest - which I'd guessed because "coed" - pronounced "coyd" - in Welsh means woods.)

I kind of feel like I had an accidental online encounter with one of The Fae ("pronouns he/it"), as well as learning a tiny bit about Gàidhlig and getting a very poetic story title. None of which would have happened if I'd gone with the Google Translate version and said Good Enough.

(P.S. If I've made any mistakes with any of the above, please feel free to correct or expand!)

[crypticcatalys]

I honestly think I just experienced a glitch in the matrix????

A guy asked for cigarettes at self checkout. (I work at a grocery store.) I get them, bring them over and scan them, check his ID because the machine essentially softlocks itself until a birthdate is put in, and he pays.

I watch his receipt print and go to hand him the cigarette box. He says that he didn't ask for any cigarettes and that it was probably the guy at the machine next to him. (They look extremely similar, but not in a related way.)

Me, being confused, points out that he just paid for the cigarettes and he shows me the receipt.

There are no cigarettes on the receipt.

He laughs and walks out.

I sell the cigarettes to the other guy and go through the same process of checking the ID. Nothing else weird happens.

Other guy leaves and I'm still confused half a hour later.

Customer service work continues to not make sense.

[theemeraldforestnarrative]

Non fiction (just feels like it belongs here) [30th May 2025]

Yesterday evening I visited the garlic well again. I was a little way back from it, where a tree had fallen, which blocks the general view towards it. But still within a literal stone's throw away. I was a bit... fed up. Not sad, but feeling a bit flippant towards my problems and how insanely complicated everything feels. So I leant on the fallen, horizontal tree, which was resting at bar height, and started talking aloud about my problems. I overly condensed them and simplified them, distilling them down to simplistic yet direct statements. Stripping them back to their core felt good. And then, towards the end, I mentioned how I would like to move to a certain place and all I ask of it, is that it is both mentally and financially sustainable.

Then I heard, as clear as day "ha-ha!" I've not seen a single person in this woodland since I discovered them, earlier this year. There were, as far as I could tell, no kids hiding around or anyone in what is a very inaccessible and overgrown forest floor. I can usually tell anyway, as the air changes when a person walks into a woodland space, especially if I'm already in it. It didn't sound like child's laughter though, or at least, not one that was old enough to be out there alone. It sounded mischievous, quite high-pitched and very... well, as if it was agreeing with me. As if to say "yeah yeah in 2025, no chance!"

An encounter with The Fae? Tree spirits? The voice of a human long passed away? My imagination? I instantly stopped talking and looked around, giving a confused face to no one in particular. It didn't scare me, although it instantly stopped me talking aloud. I stayed nearby for at least another 45 mins or so, and there were no other occurrences.

[lesbianpervinca]

Don’t fucking mess with the Fae

I was heading back from the creek and noticed a very near path behind a trail marker that me and my mom hadn’t seen before. So of course my dumb ass joked about being kidnapped by the fae and went. The path was perfect and made of clovers with grass and trees lining it. It was absolutely uniform. I joked about finding a faery circle and I felt odd going up. My mom changed her mind and said to stop but I kept going. There was a low hanging tree on the path and I ducked under it. Right behind it was a deer carcass so I screamed and ran for my life. On the way back to the car, a black crow and multiple butterflies flew in front of my path. I have no doubt I just had a legitimate encounter with the fae and I have no doubt they did not want me there.