Okay, I figure this is a good place to butt in again.

If I was making this crap up, I'd include some newly awakened fae to teach and tell him as the story evolves, but this is me remembering as best I can and telling it straight, not writing some novel so I gotta do my explaining different. That's not just me being weird and random either. That's how we operate. Fae souls are almost immortal so we're born, we wake up, we live and we're reborn - provided you don't get ganked with cold iron or other shit. Then most of us forget most of our previous lives to not go even crazier with too much memory and not enough life for it. Because of this, when wake to our fae selves, we spend a wiccan year and a day training with another fae to learn about our world and how the mundane one affects it and us.

My mentor was a seelie Wanderer that wanted to make me something better'n how he saw the typical redcap. He probably slowed down my being as strong or as brutal as a typical redcap, but he helped guide my hunger away from just flesh and food like most of my kind, and into a hunger for knowledge and power. Magic especially. He taught me about magic and art and magic and cooking and some more magic. I taught myself picking pockets and sneaking and lying. After I got in with Eric, I trained my body with the twins, a couple of Trolls, and kept cooking and learned more magic everywhere I could. I also learned about pain, a lot at my ratass of a brother's hands before I woke up and some more at both Eric's hands and his guidance. Turns out I kinda like it, both causing and feeling it. Too much really, especially back then. Eric used that to keep me following him. It took Genny to change that, but that monster is still inside and it peeks out sometimes. Anyways, that's a big part of why I'm such a powerhouse today. I had to learn to be as powerful as I pretended ta be in the early days because, eventually, someone calls your bluffs, but I learned a lot of other kinds of power that most brutes don't bother with because I'm a lot smarter than most anyone knows. I also am very possessive and protective of what I consider mine. No one messes with what's mine without a fight, and that includes people I decide deserve it. What better reason to want power than that?

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Now, if I remember right, we're getting into the part of the story where a lot of titles and stuff get tossed about. Most fae use old fashioned titles, like English nobility. Kings and princes and barons and dukes and all that crap. Some use more local stuff, like redcaps use a lot of the Irish and Scottish and Gaelic and that sort. We also like more darker sounding titles so when Tolkien came up with a monsterous leader called a Witch King for his ringwraiths, we stole that in about two seconds. Our fellas needed a better name anyway as more guys took leadership places from our more traditional Hag Queens who took their names from old storm creators. Others use their own forms too, like the Wanderers use a lot of titles from the Middle East and the satyrs' structure refers to herds and have a lot more flexibility. Just like our titles, we call our territories after those old patterns too. Kingdoms, counties, baronies and the like. We got 'em all. We also have caliphates and fiefdoms and protectorates and just about any other label you can think of for a hunk of land someone holds as theirs and other folks live on.

One more thing to keep in mind, the dream is chaotic. There might be a path between where we are now and Alcatraz, but that don't mean you only get to Alzatraz from that path. It can lead other places too, without a sign it ever went anywhere else. When you set out somewhere in the dream, where you aim for means almost more than where you started. Now, dark paths tend to lead to dark places, and the more a route is used the more fixed it becomes, but there's a reason you never leave a path when you travel the dream; it might not be there when you try and get back. The only places that are truly stable are places someone has claimed and has folks living in. Those folks keep the places stable. Wild places? They're in flux a lot of the time. A forest might stay a forest, but that don't mean you're walking under the same trees. That's why dreamcraft is valuable, and rare as hell. Learning to walk the spirals makes you a little crazy in and of itself, though Shova can speak to that more'n me.

Anyway... We were meeting Wyatt.