01 - Lesnia 01 - The Collector

You have to look out nowadays. In a time long since passed, cold wrought iron was a rarity, a surprise to come across. Now it seems every blasted guardrail, screendoor, or cooking implement, just to name a few, had some element of it incorporated in. Lesnia had taken to habitually wearing a pair of fine silk gloves when leaving her cramped apartment in the city. On the street, they occasionally drew her strange looks, but in her work as curator of such labeled “pagan artifacts” in the museum, they fit right in. Not that Lesnia had to worry about getting oil or whatever humans were worried about affecting these pieces of history with. The Fae had other, different concerns.
  Lesnia paused in her reflection, absentmindedly rubbing the spot the subway stranger’s buttons had inadvertently burned on her arm. Thankfully, it was a quick touch only, the wound would heal quickly. Opening her bag squished between her legs, in an attempt to prevent it from being kicked and stepped on by seemingly every human in the city that used the subway, she retrieved the business card. Part of her position at the museum was to meet with those with private collections, in an effort to tease out and take the items for the museum’s use. Unfortunately, this meant Lesnia had a lot of incredibly awkward, drawn out interactions with humans it would be charitable to use the word “eccentric” to describe.
 
  Standing in front of the collector’s door, Lesnia was just glad the time where trades such as this would be handled with boons and acts. Now she just handed over some green paper that wasn’t even hers, and she received items of significance.
 
  The door opened, and a middle aged looking man was behind it. Wearing a blazer emblazoned with a seemingly random assortment of symbols for those who know the true meanings, it was not difficult to imagine this man as a collector, potentially unknowingly, of the mystical and magickal.
 
  “Good evening, curator. Please, come in”, the man intoned. His voice wasn’t particularly rough, but there was no hint of music behind it. His smile was a little too wide, Lesnia noticed.
 
  “Good evening indeed, Mr. Trebagne,” she said, promptly stepping inside the man’s residence. “I’m looking forward to seeing your collection”.
 
  Of course there had to be a meal first. Almost without fail, every human she met dragged out every interaction by insisting on a brunch, afternoon tea, or other such claims of famishment. The usual stilted conversation ensued, although Lesnia was uncomfortably aware that the man seemed to be sizing her up in some way.
 
  When the time finally came to go downstairs to view the collection, Lesnia was on edge. The man, /Mr. Trebagne/, she reminded herself, had been getting noticeably more nervous throughout the small meal. Descending the stairs, Lesnia felt her vision go blurry, and she collapsed down the stairs.
 
  Waking up, she found herself in excruciating pain. Her head was swelling, it /ow/ felt like there was some sort of lacerations on her back, and most of all, an intense, almost debilitating pain from what appeared to be a studded armband applied to her right arm. Dazed, she staggered to her feet. Her gloves were missing, she didn’t have a way to remove the armband. Indeed, not even a torn scrap of clothing could be used, as her clothing seems to have been replaced with some sort of tight, too difficult to rip or easily remove jumpsuit. A wave of realization hit her, and the sense of violation almost overwhelmed her. /Almost/. She was Lesnia of the Fae, and she would not be kept here as a pet or attraction. She thumped against the stairs, then hid aside them. Predictably, the man entered the room reasonably soon thereafter. Hurling herself with all the intensity she could muster, it was a reasonably straightforward procedure to permanently cripple the man. Eyes are so delicate after all. Perhaps her captor had assumed the iron pain would cause her to be almost comatose. She trusted this experience would disabuse him of that foolish notion. His screams echoed up the stairs, and with burgeoning horror, she recognized the sounds of footsteps in the room above. Flinging herself up the stairs, she narrowly slipped past a group of men headed to join their screaming compatriot. They turned to grab her, but her pain propelled her far more quickly than any mere man could hope to match. Barrelling through the door, Lesnia /ran/. Her apartment wasn’t safe, they’d look there. So /where?/ Thoughts shredded through her mind, traveling too fast to focus on, but one stayed - there was a group. Probably some sort of network. This was bad, very bad. They’d known she was of the Fae. And as her bare feet pounded against the pavement, bringing stares from the surrounding pedestrians, Lesnia realized she had no choice for her destination at all. Pushing aside blood quarrels begun before the rise of man was no small thing. Her family had brought much tragedy to the Fae, and Lesnia would surely be rebuked harshly if not thrown out of the circle for her ensuing actions. The world around her blurred by tears of pain and the fog of exhaustion, Lesnia couldn’t focus on the worries, and they fell away as she stumbled around the final corner, the moonlight suddenly bathing her in its light. Almost crawling up the stairs, Lesnia collapsed against the Persecuter’s door. After a time, it opened.