Rae Iys

A wise and twinkly-eyed old welkin Rae is a fae who has seen her share of magic and expanded her expertise well beyond normal. She trickles energy, much in the same way Dirzryn affected the electrics of our studio when he visited, so the lights tick in uncertainty when Rae enters.

Standing at 4ft 10in she is at the upper end of height for her species but by no means tall. Externally she better epitomises our expectations of what a welkin should look like than previous interviewee Karyf. Rae has tortoiseshell wings, atypically brightly coloured butterfly wings are what we think of when we think welkin and after all, the erroneous dubbing of them as flower fairies came about for this very reason. Equally, Rae has long flowing golden curls and as a younger woman, we imagine she glowed with the kind of radiance and sparkle we inherently associate with anything bearing the name fairy.

That said Rae confesses she tidied up her hair for this interview. She relates that her curls are usually tangled with twigs and assortment of bracken and flowers, not because she puts them there but because Rae loves nature and rambling. She is the kind of woman who goes blackberry picking and forgets to wash because it takes time away from turning those blackberries into pies. Yes, Rae likes her food; she loves to cook and loves alchemy. Turning ingredients into remedies appeals greatly to this master mage, if medicine can be made from any plant she makes it.

For a woman of so many years Rae is still quite beautiful. She is 110 she tells us, cheeky little liar we know she is actually 121 according to the in-link database. The difference in energy, the pressure of her presented presence to that of a man like Dirzryn is quite stark. Her energy is calm and clean. The ‘magic’ she brings almost feels like new light. Yet we are wary, one such as Arian could cast an illusion like this, a sense of serenity and calm that isn’t there. Thus, we are cautious of her claims.

However, after speaking with Rae for some time we become more convinced of the energy she lets us see. The power of serenity and calm she exudes is intentional but as she informs us, it is also an extension of what she feels most deeply. She tells us that she is a lover of people and has a heart brimming with compassion. Even as a wiser and aged woman, she maintains a great love for others and feels no bitterness to those that are misguided. She tells us she does not judge the youth; their inexperience cannot be a point of judgement. She considers herself the hand that turns faults aside and she wishes to draw others in to her peaceable way of thinking. At the same time, she rather humorously rants, ‘harmony is bullshit, harmony is a song of notes that string together and people don’t do that!’

So we had to question, ‘what do they do?’

‘They argue,’ Rae laughs, ‘they debate and conjecture and if they are lucky they enjoy it. I am not here to refute anyone just teach what I know. If you want peace, you will find it. Same if you want war. You will find what you seek no matter what it is.’

So we goadingly question, ‘if we seek vengeance and wrath and a bath full of blood?’

‘Yes you will find it, but if you go looking for stupid more stupid will find you. Better to look for some good in this world because all similar things propel towards one another.’

Fair enough.

This might go some way to explaining why she trained Dirzryn when he was a younger man. Despite the fact Rae is a follower of Evyn she has no gripe in training any student so long as they adhere to a few basic rules of magic usage. To Rae it matters not what religion of belief a person has, particularly with magic, all she wants from her pupils is respect for the discipline.

Since we are quite curious how a powerful follower of Evyn ended up tutoring a powerful follower of Luk we have to wonder, ‘who has more power?’

‘We each specialise in different things,’ Rae elucidates, ‘elemental magic mostly. I simply teach what I know and how to use it, how it is used however is up to the student.’

We nod in false understanding because there aren’t any magic users in our studio so we can’t pass comment.

‘Dirzryn was an excellent student actually,’ she informs us, ‘not polite I don’t suppose,’ she laughs, ‘but he understood the rules then and despite his choices still uses them now.’

‘Ah I see,’ a few of the studio members profess. Actually, none of us see anything at all because we don’t have the slightest idea about magic or the rules or anything Rae is talking about.

Rae slight smiles at our inept admission and we confess if we thought we were out of depth with terrifying mind twisting people or spiders we were naïve, truly we came unstuck here.

Rae’s old face wrinkles, she has a very pleasant presence we cannot deny but the nervous among us are on edge with such an intense magical energy filling the room.

Rae does not have any empathic abilities; she cannot affect our feelings or thoughts directly. She does however possess record-breaking elemental magic abilities, we know she could freeze us where we sit in seconds, or worse flame us. Actually, after some debate we can’t conclude whether being frozen or burnt would be worse. The conversation is a little debunked and default however because good old Rae doesn’t have a bad bone in her body, she’d rather bake a pie or three and go walking in the woods than unleash holy hellfire on anyone.

Her sense of serenity stays with us for some time after she leaves. Even if several pens went missing (looking at you Tarene) we almost don’t mind. It feels like we had a clean swim in the sea and the freshest breath of air floated in to our very stale studio space. We keep looking for sparkles of fairy dust. Alas, fae and magic don’t produce sparkles as much as we wish they would.

Dhei Rysen

Dhei Rysen is by all accounts not a nice fellow.

Yes whilst Dhei may look like a girl we assure you he is male.

As with most members of his species, the Alary fae he maintains the flawless look of a child although his lusciously long and shiny white blonde hair is clearly the envy of many a woman. Being bird-winged with fair hair and skin those belonging to the Alary species are often mislabelled as angels or angel fairies when in reality the word Alary literally means ‘of or pertaining to wings’ and an angel Dhei certainly is not.

Standing a mere 4ft 8in tall, Dhei is blessed with levitation and has during his 40years of living cultured the unique and dangerous skill of remote empathy. By this, we do not mean he is empathic to anyone, quite the contrary he is one of the few people capable of gaining emotional control over others simply by thinking about doing it.

A dangerous talent indeed, so much so, that those schooled in it are branded by law with the purple sign you can see here stamped on Dhei’s forehead. It is purposefully placed on the forehead, in a large and quite distinctive pattern so that all who meet bearers of this talent know immediately what the person they are speaking to is capable of, unless of course said bearer wears a headscarf, like the one Dhei never normally removes.

Therefore as with Karyf’s interview we feel we must point out that any gushing love we express towards this man is probably a result of his influence and does not reflect the way we here at Black Wednesday’s truly feel.

Now Dhei does possess an odd allure and innocence that defies his true nature, right up to the point where he opens his mouth and a surprisingly deep voice bolts forward to demand, ‘what are you staring at?’ He doesn’t seem satisfied by our artist answering that she has to stare at him in order to sketch him but never utters a word in response. Not quite so much a mystery then when said artist collapses in paralytic fear, that Dhei has taken a disliking to the woman. Thankfully we have relief staff on hand who are, shall we say, not in the least relieved that we called upon them after we carefully explain how Dhei almost hospitalised the first sketch artist he decided he disliked. Lucky for the next illustrator our interviewer is able to keep Dhei’s glacial eyes firmly fixed on the questions at hand.

A sharp character then, Dhei is somewhat severe in his outlook, an openly mean and snide man whose greatest pleasure outside of manipulation appears to be arguing with others. His partner in life and in ‘business’ Karyf Aster fills this need to spit vitriolic words quite succinctly. As the interview progresses, we learn that the two met at a relatively young age and schooled in the separate yet unified disciplines of thought and emotion control. Their families were never close but the two bonded during study in the same way that oil and water like to play with ducks and sand. Their resulting unstable and somewhat sticky emulsion of personalities appears to work by the logic that if they wind each other up far enough things will tick along nicely.

Still we aren’t here to question the logic of their ice and fire type relationship. Although we do feel the need to point out that in translation his name means ‘Dusk Rising’ whilst hers reads, ‘Dawn of the heavens,’ which is almost as clichéd as if their names were day and night. Yet the reason they argue, aside from taking great pleasure in it, appears to be more about the fact they are incredibly similar to one another to the point of grating. Forthright, vicious and self-righteous are all words we used to describe Karyf, words that apply with equal measure to baby-faced Dhei.

Both work in the field as ‘covert specialised operatives’ and as a team have been charged by Lord Luk with dragging around young Naiad on their missions to give her some experience. Tutoring the ditzy damselfly it seems is one subject that Dhei and Karyf agree to be a true chore. In short, they hate having Naiad around. If Nai were more mature she would actually be a logical choice for a teammate, her superior healing skills, strength and physical agility would be of great benefit to the duo; a shame then that Nai apparently has as much brains as Karyf and Dhei have muscle.

Much to the distaste of Karyf and Dhei, we decided to have all three pose together for height comparison, partly as a means to point out how tiny these fae are and partly because we were quietly paranoid that Dhei is making us feel terrified on purpose.

Bearing in mind that Nai herself is only 5ft 3in tall you can see how precisely small and yet perfectly proportioned Karyf is, Dhei on the other hand refused to stand but he’s roughly an inch taller than Karyf so we’re sure you get the idea.

To be fair we’d probably look as miffed as Karyf and Dhei here if we were charged with babysitting a mentally unbalanced half-Fae like Naiad, getting her to stand still and stop drinking all the free wine was challenge enough for the time it took to capture this portrait.

Karyf Astyr

Well we thought we had interviewed the shortest candidates already but were forgetting that certain species of Fae are for all extents and purposes, built like children. Standing at a meagre 4ft 7in tall Karyf is one such individual, being a Fae of the Welkin variety and slim to boot means she appears to have the head of an adult rudely stuck atop of the slight frame of a young girl. At least in Karyf’s case her over-sized wings somewhat balance her appearance, most Welkin do not possess wings of this size and the majority are, shall we say, a might bit fatter than Karyf is.

Her slender form may be in part due to the amount of mental energy she expends and of course, the fact that she is only 48yrs old, which as we have already established is still young for a member of her species and would therefore equal a physique not dissimilar to that of a 24yr old.

Despite her relative youth, she does possess extensive knowledge and experience, raised to work as a ‘covert specialised operative’ (which we understand to be much like a spy and interrogation agent) she is well practiced in mind-manipulation techniques and we hesitate to add, has the ability to input thoughts into the minds of others. 

At this venture, we feel we should disclaim then that any unexpected niceties extended towards Karyf will likely occur because she put those thoughts in our heads, we are not, after all, renowned for saying nice things about our interviewees.

A good moment then to point out that Karyf’s base nature seems to be one of vicious, self-righteous sniping whenever the opportunity arises. She is argumentative and forthright in her opinions. That isn’t to say she is unpleasant to converse with, however being heard above her ego or breaking past her furiously fuelled need to be the most important and correct person in the room can be somewhat of a challenge.

She is unashamedly power-hungry and driven; qualities that she manages to make sound endearing despite the fact that all her causes are self-serving. An unwavering and passionate soul she certainly manages to hold our attention, or rather bolt it firmly in place for the duration of the interview. Karyf expresses that she cannot abide laziness, intensely dislikes ‘ditherers,’ and will not tolerate people whose, ‘minds wander every five seconds.’ Yes, she demands you stare at her whilst she speaks and will reprimand anyone that she thinks isn’t listening. That said there is a fair amount of sway in her behaviour. Often sweet, calm and even charming she will switch to deride others without hesitation and always rises to a challenge.

Her partner in business and at present in life is a Fae of the Alary variety (that would be the ‘bird-winged’ Fae for those not in the know) named Dhei Rysen.

Their skills and duality of profession makes them well suited, a couple who undoubtedly argue a lot and probably play nasty tricks on one another. They have a kind of mutual respect due to being an even match in their opposing abilities; opposites attract or in this case, loggerheads always reach a stalemate, aside from the part where the woman always wins. Neither of these two are a soft touch; both are manipulative and highly conceited, which actually sounds like the perfectly twisted sort of odd bliss you expect them to covet. All’s well that ends indifferently in their books, as long as there’s some kind of argument about it along the way.

Indifferent is one word however, we would never peg to Karyf. Her dusty pink locks and bright green eyes have an entrancing allure, a quiet and powerful mystique that we are unable to pinpoint. On the other hand, maybe that is Karyf adding her own little thought edits to skew our perceptions.