On the Ceilican and the Fae

[taliesinrhys]

The words of Teliesin Rhys Gwillt, a very young Ceilican.

I've been told that, in the beginning, we were all dreams of the King and Queen of Cats. All of our kind were dreamed into existence, but not all of them liked thinking of themselves as dreams. They willed themselves into forms and took credit for their own creation. We Ceilican and our Faerie cousins called them "prodigals". Who are the prodigals? Other Bastet, other Fera, vampires, magi, even ghosts.

We Ceilican remembered we were dreams. After a night of lovemaking, the King and Queen of Cats dreamed us up, and we became the best and worst sides of passion. As dreams ourselves, we were able to make things out of dreams alone. In those early days, our cousins, the Fae, shared their courts with us, and we did the same for the humans, with a little imagination. We joined their revels in the dead of night. We became "ring dancers", for our habits of dancing with Fae and with Magi. We also became "diabhol cats", devil cats, for our attraction to witches.

All good things come to an end, right? Same thing for us. One of our kind talked too much to an Unseelie lord named Samhach. He used our Yava to hunt us down and enslave us. Meanwhile, the humans found out about our Yava, too, and hunted us down as witch cats. The doors to the Faerie homeland of Arcadia slammed shut, and many of our kind were trapped by the Fae. Many of the Fae were trapped outside, too, and so we were still hunted.

Finally, one of our kind, named Tybalt de Leon, reasoned that if we were born of dreams, we could change our Yava the same way. He managed to change our Yava so that the old tricks didn't work. With the Faeries scattered after the fall of Arcadia and the humans lighting witch fires all across Europe, he led a few pathetic survivors over the sea to America. That's where we've been ever since, hiding amongst the native Bastet. Good deal, right?

Well, there's a few downsides. We're tied to dreams and to passion, good and bad. We're drawn to it like moths to flame, and we change our natures like the wind. Also, we're dead. The whole world knows for a fact that we're dead, and so we let them continue to think it. Lastly, the old Yava are back in full. Sensitivity to cold iron, just like our cousins the Fae. Reciting our names backwards causes us discomfort  or even death. And church bells or hymns can strike us deaf for days. That's in addition to our quickly shifting nature.

So yeah. We're dead. We pretend to be other tribes, Bagheera, Pumonica, Bubasti, even Qualmi. Me? I'm a Qualmi, can't you tell?