It was a few months of living together before Celeste and I finally played a video game together. I occasionally asked about it, and her response was always “We should do that sometime, but not now,” or “That sounds amazing, we’ll do that tomorrow,” until finally one day I answered a knock on my door to find her asking if I wanted to play.
As she connected her console to the living room TV, I thought about how long it had taken for this to finally happen. It seemed that on Earth, moments of happiness were painfully rare. On the Regency Monitor, every day contained something to be passionate about. Taking care of the animals was exhausting work, but it brought me the satisfaction of knowing I was bringing happiness to them. And My Queen was always sure to spend time with me, whether that meant playing hide-and-seek games where she would hunt me throughout the ship before wrapping me in her tendrils, or just sitting together in her resting pool while she told me folktales from her home planet and I summarized my favorite novels.
Here, however, most of my days were spent waiting for something interesting to happen. Celeste and I were both free on most days, yet we hardly saw each other. The option to have fun was always there, but Celeste never wanted to take it. Anise seemed to prefer to spend time with her other friends so I often found myself waiting hours for Bliss to get home, just for the few minutes of conversation we might get before she went to her room or the basement.
It also seemed that on Earth, fun, like everything else, had to be purchased with money. Work here did not bring satisfaction or fulfillment, it brought only money, most of which would go towards things needed for basic survival with only a little left over for fun. And that didn’t matter anyway since everyone was too exhausted from their cruel world to want to have any fun.
We didn’t play the game I had originally seen her playing. Instead, without a word she started up a top-down shooting game where our characters fired guns and grenades at swarms of enemy soldiers. I found that video games did not return to me quickly after a ten-year absence. Controller designs had changed, and I couldn’t remember which button was which. I ended up being more of a hindrance than a help.
“Did you have this much trouble picking up video games again after living with the fairies?” I asked as my character was once again killed.
“The fairies had video games,” Celeste replied, quickly dispatching a wave of enemies.
“They did?” I had pictured her living in a medieval castle, not somewhere with electricity.
“They love human stuff,” she continued. “Our music is almost hypnotic to them, our books are entrancing. Some people think that they lack some key element of creativity that humans have. That the best they can do is imitate what we create. But all creativity is basically imitation so I’m not really sure what the difference is supposed to be.”
She didn’t look at me once as she said this. Despite the fact that she was talking to me she seemed completely absorbed by the game. She navigated the character on the screen as easily as her own body.
“Personally, I have another theory. Think about cats. We have all this power over them, you know? We can do all these things they can’t, like opening doors, we can enchant them with toys or catnip, we can pick them up whenever we want. We’re like that to fairies. Making us fall in love with them is as simple to them as dangling a toy in front of a cat. So it’s not that our art has something they lack, it’s just that they think we’re cute. They’re charmed by our music the way we’re charmed by a bird’s song.”
It occurred to me that fairies sounded a lot like my Queen.
“I get why most people say it’s better to avoid them. Most people are horrified by the way fairies treat humans as playthings. And knowing that the humans they capture are made to like it makes it even more horrifying. It’s an illusion, they say, and a miserable reality is always better than a happy illusion.
“But most people aren’t miserable. They aren’t trapped in a web of unsolvable problems. They aren’t desperate to escape from their own bodies. They aren’t so lonely that they worry they’ll go so long without speaking that they’ll forget how to entirely. Someone like that has to ask themselves whether a happy illusion really is worse than a miserable reality. And the answer to that becomes clear when you ask yourself what the difference between illusion and reality really is.”
With that, Celeste began to tell me her story.
She had been the child everyone thought was weird. Not charmingly eccentric, but uncomfortably strange. She was the child who would taste grass and other plants, the child who would laugh with delight when she got a bloody nose and watch with fascination the liquids dripping out. No one wanted to be her friend.
For a time she was fine with this. She didn’t need to be invited to birthday parties and zoo outings. She had her family to be her friends, but as she grew older she began to find that that wasn’t enough. Like all young teens, she was faced with the question of what she wanted out of life.
Many people seemed to think that having children was the most important thing a person could do, but Celeste didn’t understand that. Children were just people, and there were lots of people. Others said that it was important to leave a lasting impact, to ensure that one’s name ended up recorded somewhere as having made the world a better place. But the world would end someday.
She was obsessed with fantasy and especially tales of people traveling to other worlds. It seemed to her that traveling from world to world, meeting different people and experiencing various impossible things would be a good life.
She began to talk about this at school. As her stranger habits began to fall away either through maturity or the intimidation of knowing she was an outcast, she started to gather a group of friends who would listen with fascination as she told them what other universes might be like. She crafted complex worlds, each with their own physical laws, creation stories, and societies. Together, she and her friends looked for a way to visit another world. Wherever she went, she stayed on the lookout for anything that might hint at an escape from her universe and pointed them out to the others. A strange patch of dirt in the street became a sign of a passing mud creature, an unexpected noise in the distance became the cry of a cryptid, an unusual gap in a bush became a path to another world.
After a time, fairies in particular became the focus of her obsession. They seemed to have everything she was looking for. People in the real world believed in them, so it was possible that they really existed. There were lots of different ways into their lands. They were said to be fascinated by humans, and routinely abduct them. Surely they would be delighted to abduct a human who wanted to be abducted.
The best part, however, was the power they had over their abductees. It was said that they could make themselves so beautiful that humans couldn’t take their eyes off them and would do anything to please them. This, then, would become her purpose in life. All of those troubling thoughts about what really mattered and her increasing discomfort with her own body would all be gently pushed out of her head in favor of thoughts of absolute loyalty. It sounded like heaven.
And so she narrowed her search to signs of fairies. She would wander the woods looking for rings of mushrooms or count the doors along regularly traveled paths in town in case any new ones mysteriously appeared.
Those who seek out the Hidden World don’t always find it, but Celeste was one of those who did. As an adult, long after her friends had outgrown games of exploring, she pursued a rumor that fairies appeared in a particular clearing during the night of a full moon, she broke down crying at the sight of dancing winged people. She did not hesitate to listen to their pretty voices beckoning her to join them, or to follow where they led, or to eat the food they offered. She happily confessed her deepest desires to those smiling faces and gave them everything they asked for from her name to promises of loyalty. She knew she was walking confidently into a trap, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She was eventually offered up to a fairy Lady who, insisting on having only the most beautiful of servants, altered Celeste’s appearance accordingly. Celeste, completely entranced by the Lady’s unnatural beauty, was delighted to have herself twisted or reshaped into whatever form the Lady liked best. Nothing made her happier than making the Lady happy. There was never any question of following her orders. Even when she told Celeste to bring her another human.
Celeste admitted that she had no idea how many she ended up capturing, luring lonely young people into forests or swapping out babies with changelings. All she cared about was that as a reward, she would be permitted to gaze upon the Lady’s beauty, sitting contentedly for hours at a time, until exhaustion overtook her and she collapsed.
“I don’t know why she sent me back,” Celeste concluded. “I guess she got bored of me. I wasn’t interesting enough. I just wish she would have given me a chance to be better. Instead I woke up one day at the side of some country road. I already knew about Normalcy and everything. So I found my way to an Enclave and ended up getting connected with Bliss and here I am.”
She hadn’t taken her eyes off the game the entire time she was speaking. We had progressed through several increasingly-difficult levels. Since they grew in difficulty faster than I could get accustomed to the game, Celeste ended up carrying me more and more.
I couldn’t help but note the similarity between her story and mine. Especially in the ways both of ours had ended. But it seemed that she would have an easier time rebuilding than me. After all, Bliss had managed to help her keep the body she wanted. She now knew what she wanted from life. And if loneliness plagued her, she could deal with that any time she wanted. There was a house full of people who would spend time with her. And she had a certain charm about her, even her mussed hair and indifferent attitude gave her a sort of effortless attractiveness that made me excited for every moment we spent together. So what, I wondered, held her back?
