Silence Wildgoose was lost. Not an uncommon occurrence in the weighty mists that formed on the fells. Getting turned around on the moor was not something that ever put her on edge, but she sensed something else had descended to earth with the mists as well, and Silence was not pleased. She’d made herself clear before. They should not come back. They were not welcome.

Registering the sizzle and pop of the spaceship settling very near, she crouched low in the gorse and waited. Soon she heard them, the buzz and clicks of their prospecting devices piercing the cloaking mists, and stirring her blood. The blood of the bana-bhuidseach. The blood of a witch.

And not just any witch, Silence was the direct descendant of Nicnevin, the Scottish witch queen. And her patience was beginning to bubble. She’d had a run in with these extrasolar interlopers some years before, through, of all things, Etsy. They’d hacked the one outward-facing online account she subscribed to and sent her a vaguely polite, vaguely threatening, and genuinely out-of-this-world post.

In it, they’d introduced themselves as Other Worlders who’d peacefully monitored Earth for many millennia, who’d earnestly studied human history, and who harbored no ill intentions for our planet or people because they were so advanced socially and technologically that all their needs were met. As a species they’d risen far above uncivilized things like crime and disease, conquest and subjugation, and so Earth had nothing to offer them, other than anthropological interest. We were merely a curiosity.

Until. The magic thing.

For so long, the Other Worlders had dismissed any documentation of witchcraft, sorcery, shamanism, enchantment, etc. as primitive attempts to understand and exploit the ever-emerging theories and tools of science. But that attitude had changed. Quantum entanglement and dark energy had changed their minds about magic. They now saw the seemingly fantastical manipulation of matter and energy across time and space as a technology they were woefully behind in. And they wanted to learn from its modern practitioners, like Silence Wildgoose.

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At first, they’d been polite, even fawning, but Silence remained true to her name. In their Etsy messaging, the Other Worlders became more persistent, more insistent. And then they showed up. On the fells near her reclusive abode in the highlands. She was not troubled by their otherness. She had been othered all her life, as all bana-bhuidseach had been.

What troubled Silence were their devices. Blinking amulets held or attached to various extremities that buzzed and clicked when turned upon her. The Other Worlders communicated that this device was how they could always find Silence and her ilk. If she would not help them, they would continue to prospect for Earth’s magic-makers until they learned what they needed.

That demand, Silence had reckoned, was not neighborly. In this or any other solar system. So, she taught them something about magic. The Other Worlders’ extremities became tree branches and their amulets became apples. After a time, she reversed the spell, and, in astonished silence, they left. Her Etsy account once again her own.

But they’d returned. On the fells, searching her out, amulets buzzing and clicking. She had rebuffed them and released them once. Hidden in the gorse and mist, but detectable by the Other Worlders’ devices, she lamented it had come to this. Power always had its limits, but hers had not been reached.

She planted her bare feet firmly in the earth, envisioned a path, and opened to the Triple Moon. What happened from there, the Other Worlders, if they could have, might’ve tried to explain in terms of advanced particle physics and sophisticated quantum entanglement. The spooky result was simpler for anyone to see should they unadvisedly venture deep into the fells.

For there in the ancient, misty wilds, they might happen upon an other-worldly apple orchard with luminescent fruit. And though a colorful local, Silence Wildgoose, might appear and warn you against tempting trees of knowledge and their forbidden fruit, she would most certainly invite you to take a bite of their magic.