The creature she seeks is down near the valley floor, bathing in a pool and treating its wounds. She has met this one three times since closing the Fold—she no longer acknowledges their names, because now they are simply prey. When it senses her approach it will know what is to come, and she hopes that it will panic and flee, darting away across the landscape seeking somewhere to hide, even though it knows there is nowhere. She hopes, but she is not sure. Even now some of the Kin she brought here are becoming passive in the face of their eternal fate. It isn’t what she sought. A fairy needs stimulation, not wan compliance. She craves the hunt.

Grace’s new home is not what she intended.

Because of them, she thinks. They’re the reason. They taint the air.

She runs down a steep grassed slope, leaping over rocks and vaulting a low stone wall one of the others has been building. When she arrives at the pool the bathing creature turns its head, and she is upon it before it can splash its way to the water’s edge.

Grace drives it beneath the surface, following it down through the weedy water, pressing it to the pond’s bed and then closing her mouth around its shoulder.

The creature squeals in bubbles. Grace bites and twists. A chunk of Kin flesh warms her mouth, blood mixing with dirty water to pour down her throat, and she lets the creature go and surfaces with her raw prize clamped between her teeth.

Sitting beside the pond, Grace chews and watches the creature drag itself onto the opposite bank. It casts a glance across at her, both angry and scared. Then it stands and staggers away into the trees, seeking somewhere dark and quiet to let its wound heal once more.

Never somewhere secret, though. This is her Fold, and she knows every inch of the place. There are no secrets here.

Perhaps that is one of its failings.

She enjoys the sunlight on her skin and her mind wanders, as is its wont, to other skies and more distant times...

The ancient and vast woodlands of Europe, where she and her kind lived for millennia and their interaction with the humans of the time was a source of enjoyment and competition. They were gods or demons, friends or enemies, and sometimes all of those things at the same time. They saw respect and fear in human eyes, and in the monuments built to them they witnessed the base need of humanity to believe in something greater than itself, no matter whether that thing was good or evil. They played on this, and preyed on it. It was a time of plenty. An era of joy.

There are too many humans now. The gods and demons they pander to are too ethereal.