Answering last years ask in a typically timely manner, on my part <3
Using a coin flip this year; Heads = Trick Tails = Treat
Sooo.... *drumroll*
TREAT! 🍭
Snippet time! I've talked about fey sometimes manifesting a tertiary power after their 18th birthday but, in Darkling, Lizzy is struggling to adapt to her growing new ability...
She could still taste his hurt, like the tang of aged cheese, but the heat of anger was gone now, replaced with the ice cold of helplessness, and although she wished Booker would simply stop feeling right then, that fresh chill was at least soothing against her raw nerves.
"I'm sorry," she gasped. "The mixture— of emotions. The taste—"
"You can taste them?" Booker asked, and Lizzy nodded, still struggling to catch her breath as she waited to see if her stomach was going to settle or keep crawling up her throat. "Empathy's not supposed to work like that, Lizzy," Booker sighed, but she shook her head, trying to focus.
Happy StS! What is your favourite bit of Changeling worldbuilding?
Heya lovely! Sorry for the delay, as always I'm terrible at answering asks in a timely manner.
And this is a great question! My favourite part of Changeling's Worldbuilding is actually something that, I don't think, is ever going to make it into the book and it's how the Fey Realm of Arbaon was created.
Bridget Elestov had the power to travel between locations by turning a tree into a portal. She could connect between trees of the same type so Oak-to-Oak for example.
When the kavians first emerged and began attacking the Fey, they decimated fey numbers and Bridget Elestov gathered the remaining Fey and asked them to join their power to hers via telepathy to inhance her abilites. It had never been tried before, but the fey were desperate and on the brink of extinction.
Bridget theorised that she could use her enhanced power to create a portal to a realm of her own imagination, as long as the realm contained a tree of the type she was travelling through.
It succeeded, but when they arrived it was a formless, shapeless, realm. White and grey fog that went on endlessly. But as the Fey arrived, the sheer strain that the journey had put Bridget through caused her to bleed from the nose and eyes and as it fell into the formless smoke beneath their feet, the realm took the knowledge of the mortal realm from Bridget Elestov's very blood and created a mimicry of the natural world around them.
The Elestov Line was given the title of Queen of the Fey, and is intricately connected to control of the realm. Arbaon doesn't have natural seasons, but the weather changes at the whim of the Fey Queen in power. Plants grow perfectly healthy, gemstones form without flaws, and the realm expands to support the number of fey living within it.
But once you reach the edges of the realm, the land drops off into an endless shroud of nothing, like staring at a sea of clouds without end.
Disclaimer: Answered August 10th. Scheduled for September 4th
