Halloween I.F. – “Something Rich and Strange” – Day 1

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I am the Nixie Son, That Ain’t Right. I’m immortal, more or less. I can get killed, and I can definitely get captured, but I won’t age, and I won’t die from the curse of mortality alone.

In my human form, I’m five foot eight, which was average at best even in the 1780s, when I first left my herd to travel the fairy realms and from there to the human world—in the times we could manage it when the barriers thinned, before the gates broke them together. That height’s still average now. I have thick blueish-green hair to my mid-back, which I usually wear gathered up in a loose half-pony. My eyes are gold, but they absorb browns easily. Yeah, most people think they’re brown. I have an equine nose because of course I fucking do, and a soft mouth that can look sarcastic, or extremely warm. It always looks sensual. Yes, even in my horse form, it looks sensual. Emotions and attitudes are rarely reflected in my entire expression, because I have a tendency to look strained and sarcastic when put on the spot. I—

“Okay, Star,” Dr. Winslow said, her mouth tight and her brows drawn down. She drummed her nails against her notepad, which she’d stopped taking notes on about two sentences into Star’s speech. “I’ve also read that book. Maybe the most honest part about that whole speech is that you’d memorized the opening well enough to riff on it.”

Star pulled one of those strained, sarcastic faces that he’d just lampshaded. “A weirdly accurate book for one written a good decade before humans even knew vampires were real. And… yeah, maybe. I don’t relate to that fucker, though,” he added hurriedly.

“You are a supernatural being in a rock band.”

“Celtic rock. And I’m just the bassist. Lestat would never,” Star said airily. “But I don’t see how it matters. You say my history as a fairy is probably the origin of the problems I’m having now out in the human world. Are you sure you aren’t just curious?”

Dr. Winslow tsked slightly, which was a habit of hers whenever Star tried a blatant redirect. “We’re all built off our past,” she said. “Do you think that your feelings of being adrift, bored, lacking purpose has nothing to do with yours?” She flipped her notes back a few pages. Star wished she wouldn’t. “You’re a race horse. You’re in a band. You read books to talk about at book club, and run tabletop games for your group of friends. But you’re the one who pointed out that everything you do is for someone else. You don’t feel like any of these hobbies are about an inherent interest that you have, right?”

“I still like them,” Star protested, as if he hadn’t been the one to bring the problem up originally. As if he hadn’t been the one to seek therapy (at Dom’s suggestion, admittedly). He knew he should be cooperating. He didn’t like feeling this way. But therapy was like being saddled up. Impossible not to inhale as deeply as he could to try to keep the girth from tightening. 

“So we need to find what’s blocking that sense of—” Her timer beeped, and she sighed. “That sense of being able to do things for yourself. Of course we need to get into your past. I was hoping you’d give me some things to think about so we could discuss them at our next meeting.”

It’s not like Star wanted a rider to fall, even if they were on a saddle rather than stuck directly to his back. It was just impulse, instinct. That fear of being controlled so fully. “I’ll try to find a way to put it into words for next meeting, then.”

“Your own words, this time?”

“Sure, maybe,” Star said, reluctant to commit. “But I think that means our time is up?”

“If I didn’t have another client right after you…” Dr. Winslow shook her head. “Your insurance went through already, so you can just head on out. I’ll see you soon.”

Star hopped up, stretching. He was fully dressed, out of respect for the good doctor, and the clothes already felt like they were rubbing him raw. He was not a being designed to wear clothes. “I’ll see you soon, Dr. W.”

He headed out in a bit of a hurry, trying to shake the uneasy sense of being known, closing the door behind him a little too hard. His therapist’s office was in an old building on a street just at the edge of the Valley—far enough away from the center of the valley and the gate to the other world that the magic energies weren’t too thick to be comfortable for a human like herself to spend a lot of time in, but close enough that she was able to specialize in Otherworldly creatures: vampires, lycanthropes, and witches mostly, but she’d said he wasn’t her first fairy, either. 

Star began to walk downhill out of habit, heading back into the comforting aura of the Valley even as he hauled out his own cell phone to turn the ringer back on. 

There were two texts waiting — one from Dominic, his human jockey, asking if he wanted to get coffee and maybe to go for a run that afternoon, and one from Dandelion, his liege lord, boss, and the frontman of his band, asking if he wanted to hang out in the apartment and work on some lyrics… also that afternoon. Couldn’t do both, of course.

He rubbed a hand over his face and muttered into it. “I’m too popular. I’m hot stuff. I’m desperately in demand.” He wasn’t sure which he should go to—or if he should blow them both off. Dr. W would probably ask him what he wanted to do, which he didn’t know, and suggest he work on something fun for himself if he didn’t have a clear answer.

[It begins with a light, introductory segment!
Comment below with your suggestions for Star. 

For example, should Star:
> Agree to meet up with Dom this afternoon?
> Or make plans with Dandelion for this afternoon?
> Think about (something specific)
> Or plan to do something else: Go to the library?
Go see a play? Go to a movie? Go shop for (something)?
It’s yours to decide, just describe in the comments.]

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