"Nicole, since we’re already out here, do you mind if we stop at my old house?" Whitney asked from the back seat.

"I don’t see why not," Nicole replied. "I wouldn’t mind seeing the old place, myself."

"I want to see the dwelling that spawned you, Whitney!" Becky said with a laugh. Whitney presented her friend with the gift of a one-fingered salute as Nicole turned onto the winding, wooded road that led to Whitney’s former home.

"Right here, Nicole... the driveway’s probably washed out and the bridge is old, so be careful." The petite blonde waved her friend away as she skillfully maneuvered her car across crackling gravel, worn wooden bridge and twisting path.

Whitney sighed in dismay as she saw the state the new owners of the house had let the property fall into. The sprawling lawn which once had been green with fresh, sweet grass was now dead and brown. Her mother’s once thriving garden had become a pile of dirt. Nicole pulled to a stop by the front patio.

"If you don’t mind, guys," Whitney said timidly. "I’ve got some things I need to do... alone."

Becky and Nicole exchanged quick glances, then shrugged. "No problem," Becky said. "We’ll stay in here." Whitney released a sigh and thankfully squeezed the shoulders of her two close friends before exiting the car.

The patio was in as much of a state of disrepair as the rest of the house. The bricks that had been carefully laid were cracked and strewn about. The horizontal trellis of thick, wooden beams that roofed the patio was now rotted and filled with termites. The wooden frame that held a small garden bed was equally as rotted. Whitney touched the dried soil there and remembered the "elephant-ear plant" that had grown from that bed high into the sky each spring, and the ritualistic felling of it come autumn. She could tell from the soil that nothing had grown in this bed for years. She sighed again and went to examine the house.

She peered in through the basement window and winced. The place that had once held her childhood bedroom had been destroyed to make room for a large rec room and entertainment center. Why bother with sentimentality when you can have Dolby surround sound? She thought bitterly as she turned away from the window. She carefully climbed up the rotting wooden stairs to the porch. She was not surprised to see that the wooden porch swing was just as rotted as the rest of the place, its slats broken and its chains rusted. Knowing she would regret it, she turned to look through the two large picture windows into the remains of her first real home.

The kitchen had not changed much, much to Whitney’s relief. The wooden floor was still painted the same garish red color and the old table that had served use in countless Thanksgiving dinners was still hunched in the center of the room. Fearing the worst, she walked across the porch to look through the other window. A groan escaped her lips when she looked inside. Stuffed animal heads hung everywhere, along with a few complete corpses. She tried to look up to the balcony which had held the library, but her view was blocked by a ram’s head and a hornet’s nest. Gone was the farming equipment which had been saved when her great-grandfather’s barn had burned down. In its place were guns and duck wallpaper and designer sofas. Whitney rested her head against one of the strangely smooth logs of the cabin, muttering a curse against the yuppies that had stolen the soul of the place and filled the empty space with the best replacement L.L. Bean and Martha Stewart had to offer. Her fist drew back to punch into the glass, but she stopped before landing a blow that surely would have wounded her knuckles. With another deep sigh, she turned to walk back down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she saw it.

"Oh, God..." she muttered in a horrified whisper. Across the driveway, in the place that had once been the home for all her childhood dreams and fantasies, were the metal poles and bright blue tarp of a carport. She slowly walked across the gravel to what had been her glade. The circle of trees still stood, but their duty of shading the clearing was stolen by the sheet of plastic above her. The soft moss that had once been her pillow, her bed, the soft blanket of a thousand childhood games was now brown, crushed by the weight of whatever luxury car had been parked there. There were no more ferns, no more wild faerie mushrooms, the path through the forest was long grown over and the sweet smell of the spring in the valley below no longer reached Whitney’s nostrils. She dropped to her knees in the rough moss and began to weep. She cried out pained questions of "how" and "why" to whatever God would answer her. Why did they not see the magic that had lived in this place? How could they take such a precious place and turn it into another home for modern conveniences? The sorrow left her as quickly as it had come and was replaced with rage. Whitney sprung to her feet and tore the metal stakes from the ground, ripped through the tarpaulin with her bare hands and threw the wreckage out into the drive. That act completed, her anger melted away and she fell again to the ground, closing her eyes, and stretching out on what little soft moss remained.

When she opened her eyes again, the world around her had changed. The leaves above her were a richer green than she had ever seen before. The breeze blew through them and she heard not rustling, but the sound of crystal chimes and laughter. Fabulous smells of spring water, wet earth and growing plants assaulted her nose. The moss below her was soft as velvet, bright, alive and green. Whitney rose to her knees and looked around. The destroyed glade was once again the magic place of her childhood. Sunlight that could only be described as liquid gold filtered down through the trees, kissing the ferns and mushroom faerie rings before touching Whitney’s skin with its tingling warmth.

Am I dreaming? Her mind asked.

Yes! Came the reply of many laughing voices. She lost herself in sensation and fell back onto the moss.

Nicole and Becky looked up simultaneously as the wave of energy rolled over them.

"It’s started," Nicole said, already halfway out of the car. Becky followed quickly, sprinting across the wide drive to the glade that was beckoning them. Whitney lay in the center, lost in sensation.

"The nearest freehold is Alaric’s farm," Becky said as she began to pull Whitney to her feet. "It’s not far from here. You get her in the car and I’ll drive." Nicole nodded in understanding, getting behind the wheel as Becky rested Whitney in the back seat. She was muttering softly in words only she could understand.

Nicole drove quickly on the winding back roads as Becky used cantrips to speed their voyage. They soon arrived at a small and comfortable looking farm. A short, middle-aged man in flannel and overalls met them as they pulled up.

"Alaric, we don’t need your help," Becky said pleadingly as she got out of the car.

"Aye, little one, that you don’t," he said as he withdrew Whitney from the car, lifting her gently into strong arms. He entered the farmhouse, followed by Nicole and Becky.

Endless color, endless smells, endless sounds, endless sensation! She struggled to find something to hold onto in this whirlpool of feelings. A voice rang out, clear above the cacophonous din.

"Welcome back, child," the voice said as the kaleidoscopic landscape solidified into a scene of absolute beauty. "Remember your people. Remember Arcadia. Remember yourself." The beautiful land melted away as she became awash in memories. Images of revels with goat-legged men in a glade beyond mortal beauty, of dancing in a world of eternal dreaming, and of lives in times before sparkled in front of her eyes. A smile spread across her face.

I remember!

"I remember!" she cried out as her mortal seeming faded away and her true changeling form shown through. She opened her eyes to see her fellow changelings smiling back at her. She sprung up from the couch from where she had been laying and clicked her cloven hooves together. "I remember!" she shouted triumphantly. "I am Wormwood the satyr."

"You are not!" cried a shrill, happy voice. Wormwood turned to see a being that she knew, despite the feline nose, fur, and whiskers, to be her friend Becky. The pooka was dressed in colorful garb befitting a court jester. She wiggled her nose and smiled, showing tiny fangs. Wormwood embraced the cat pooka tightly.

"I should have known you were a pooka, Becky!" Wormwood said as she rustled the honey colored fur on her friend’s head.

"Whatever you do, don’t call me Darby, because that absolutely isn’t my name."

"Got ya, Darb." Wormwood yanked the pooka’s tail playfully before turning to greet the rest of the Kithain that had gathered to welcome her. The first face she saw was one filled with many wrinkles made by years of smiles and laughter. He was not much taller than she, perhaps five and a half feet at the very greatest. The boggan extended a well worn hand, which Wormwood grasped enthusiastically.

"I am Alaric Havenkeeper," he said. "And this is my farm. Know that you are always welcome here... just as long as you don’t drink all my ale during your stay." Wormwood peered at him closely, then laughed happily.

"I remember you!" she exclaimed with delight. Alaric blushed slightly and ran a hand through his blonde hair. "You used to visit my house when I was little. You always brought the most wonderful cinnamon cookies." Alaric blushed even deeper.

"There’s a batch coming out of the oven in a few minutes." Wormwood let out a bleat of joy and wrapped the boggan into a sudden hug. "You grew up lovely, girl." The young satyr released him, planting a kiss on his forehead. Alaric managed to turn an even deeper shade of red.

"Excuse me," came a barely audible whisper. Wormwood turned to face a tall, frail-looking sluagh. "My name is Gareth. If you don’t mind, I’d very much like to hear about the experience of your Chrysalis. It is of a particular interest to me." Wormwood patted the sluagh lightly on the shoulder, causing him to wince.

"Later, must and whispers," Gareth narrowed his deeply-set eyes slightly. "I have some important revelry to attend to first."

"Come on, I know I’m next in this little ‘meet-and-greet’ circle of schmooze, so just get it over with so I can get back to work." Wormwood turned to find the source of the gruff voice to be greeted by the sneering face of a young nocker, dressed all in black and smoking a clove cigarette. "My name’s Jeremy, and that’s about all you need to know, you barnyard-smelling slut."

A wry grin crept across the satyr’s face. I know how to play this game. "What makes you think I’d want to know any more about you, you skinny ass, mime-lookin’, angst poster boy who probably couldn’t even get his little white cock sucked by a drunk, blind and deaf satyr on Ecstasy?" A flicker of a grin danced across the nocker’s face for a moment.

"I know about your kind, goat," Jeremy began. "You’ll spread those hairy legs for anyone who can get halfway hard. Those hooves are up around your ears the minute you can smell a cock. Hell, I bet you’re so loose you’ve got families of Mexicans living up your cunt. You’re so loose, if you sit on a barstool, you slide down to the ground. You’re so skanky, that you make old sailors miss the sea when you walk by. You’re so skanky, even redcaps won’t eat you out." Wormwood looked stunned for a moment.

"Well... ah..." Wormwood stuttered as Jeremy’s smirk grew. "You’re just a... big ole ball o’ bitch." Jeremy sighed and shook his head. Wormwood shrugged. "You win." The nocker nodded approvingly at her, then left, presumably to return to his work. As Wormwood watched him skulk off, the door opened.

"Bloody hell," an ethereally beautiful female voice came from the doorway. "I leave for a few minutes..." Wormwood turned, only to have her breath taken away by an entity that she had once known as Nicole. The sidhe was far more beautiful than any living being she had seen before. Where Nicole’s mortal form had been an attractive, all-American teenager with blonde hair, blue eyes and tan skin, her fae mien was an angel with hair of pure gold, eyes of twinkling sapphire and skin like honey. The sidhe smiled at Wormwood, and the satyr had no choice but to kneel.

"My lady..." she began. She looked up when a delicate boned hand touched her shoulder.

"None of that, my friend," the sidhe said softly. "While I am known by most as The Lady Seraphina, you are a dear friend. To you, I will never be ‘Lady’ and always be ‘Sera’, and will never have to be knelt before. Rise, Wormwood, my dearest companion." Wormwood stood, smiling. "Come join us, Darby." The pooka scurried to join her two friends in a flurry of color and bells. Sera withdrew a long, elegant blade from the sheath at her side and held it out. With her free hand, she wrapped her palm around the blade, letting it cut into her skin. Darby followed suit. Wormwood paused for a moment until the memory of this ritual returned to her, then let her hand join the others on the blade.

"Blood for blood, bone for bone," the three of them spoke in sync. "Life for life, until only we stride the earth. My life is in your hands, my blood is in your veins. Hold me well and I will lend you my strength, break your bond and may we both perish. Friendship I swear to you, an oath of clasped hands and shared hearts." The oath completed, the three withdrew their bloodied hands, and Sera replaced her blade.

"Now..." before Sera could complete her sentence, the door opened, spilling forth with a herd of satyrs. Alaric winced in pain as they tracked mud onto his carpet.

"Where’s the new goat?" one of them, a tall, bearded, blonde male, cried out. When his eyes landed on Wormwood, he bellowed and scooped her into his arms. "Ready for a party, kid?"

"Hell, yeah!" With that, she was hoisted on to the shoulders of several of her fellow satyrs and carried out of the freehold and to a nearby glade. Music was played, ale poured like water, and laughter echoed from the trees. Wormwood sang her first song to her people, a low, sultry song of passion that had many of her kith pairing off into secluded (or not so secluded) spots before its end. When she finished, the blonde satyr pulled her into a deep kiss. When she came up for air, she muttered one thing.

"I think I’m going to like being a changeling."