Faeries

[John Sullivan]

> Ben Brighoff writes...
> 
> > How 'bout this:  Faeries are the spirits of babies killed because they
> were
> > unwanted.  
> 

What this still doesn't address though is the objection from somebody 
(I forget who but if might have been Greg or John) that any attempt 
to make faeries out of killed/aborted what have you children means 
there should be many more faeries now than at any time in the past, 
which is counterintuitive.

I agree that the idea of having the spirits of dead children out 
there is a cool one (I envision an army of angry chinese girls 
waiting for the chance to take their revenge, perhaps by taunting, 
seducing and ultimately murdering the generation of overly-pampered 
only-child boys the Chinese are creating, who before long will be 
climbing over each others' broken bodies to get one of the few 
available mates.)  But I don't think it works to connect them to the 
fae.

I don't know if this will give anybody any handy ideas, but I'm 
writing some stories in which the fae depend on mortal children 
because they have no souls themselves, and thus need the energy and 
creativity of the abused and neglected children that they take into 
their realms.  In the stories, they've become much more aware and 
more pragmatic about the symbiotic relationship and the fact that 
we're essentially a vital renewable resource to them.  Then, when a 
new plague starts wiping people out in massive numbers, they realize 
they're facing cascade effects that essentially eguate to famine for 
them.  They look at human bio-science and start wondering what they 
might be able to do to replace that influx of children...

John Sullivan