Celts and Neighbors.

[singindemonhq]

Helen has been showing Erynne a kids' book about Celtic mythology. I wish I hadn't asked her to get it, but I tried to warn them that they shouldn't take it seriously.

Those myths have all kinds of non-humans and semi-and demi-humans mixed up in there. They bundle us them all together as "The Little People", Quain and Elves, Leprechauns and Hoosa Brachen, Merfolk and Selkies and Sidhe - not just the Mna Sidhe, but the whole bunch! Then they wonder why their wards don't work well.

There have always been a lot of portals opening to the Celtic lands - they have "fairy rings", "fairy thorns", "fairy stones", hills, mountains, the lot, and most of it just portal entrances. Some say the Celts themselves travelled to their lands that way. It figures, and there's a lot of inter-breeding in places like that - but the humans seem to think of creatures that won't live on the same islands as close kin to each other! Truth is that even the Sidhe have several clans. (I've never liked Banshees, myself, I'll leave a neighborhood if they move in - the Mna Sidhe can hit notes that you don't want to hear - they go in by your ears and out through your sinuses.)

Anyway, we aren't going to one of the Celtic strongholds, not yet. Even some of the off-dimension destinations are safer than that. I want the Little Bard to have enough of a challenge to realise that the portals could be dangerous, without her taking any kind of risk.