The Seasonal Realms
"You wanna know about the Realms? Hmph. Sure are a nosy little bugger, ain't ya?"
The eyes of the young zombie stared back vacantly.
"Always so hard to tell when they're listening." The tall man in the long coat turned from the workbench and squinted at the rotted face before him. Once the young woman had been pretty enough, but of course that was all in the past. Zombies sure don't get entered in beauty contests, Jack thought wryly.
"Stop teasing the girl, Jack. Who else is gonna teach these kids what they need to know?" Mad Maeve's hair had today taken the form of long, complicated braids, tastefully dyed in alternating fluorescent green and pink.
Jack grunted. "You know who."
The smile faded from Maeve's face. "All the more reason, then."
With a sigh and a flop, Grim Jack, leader of the Terata and hero to ... well, hero to a few, sank back into a well-worn chair next to the workbench. He folded his long hands in front of his face, tapped the dirty fingers together, and closed his eyes.
"Ahem. The Seasonal Realms are the four regions of Otherwhere and home of the Essences of the Aisling..."
"Jackson Alabaster Grimm, I will turn you into a snail..."
*cough*
"As I was saying, the Realms are the different countries of Otherwhere. The Major Realms are Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer. They keep pretty much to themselves, and so do we. We don't have much in common."
Jack reached down to a stack of books beside the chair and began rummaging.
"Once...where is it...according to people who are supposed to know...woman, you been getting into my things?...all the Realms and the Human Realm were one big AH! FOUND IT!"
The book, like everything else in Jack's mausoleum, was covered with grave-dirt and tattered, but it preserved well enough. He began flipping through pages.
"Here, this is a map of Autumn." The dog-eared book opened to an elaborate map. Jack pointed at the edges of a territory marked "Occident". "See? See how the lines aren't fixed?" Sure enough, the boundaries on the map seemed to move and shift on the paper.
"The fact is that no one really knows how we get from one realm to another, and the maps change to match wherever the boundary is right now." Jack closed the book and dropped it back in the pile. "People say it was all one place, once, and one with the Human Realm, too, but no one really knows."
"Now, the folk that live in the different realms, they are all different too. The Aisling that live in Winter are dreams of winter, different from us here in Autumn but more like us than those in Spring."
"And what, exactly, are we like, Jack?" Mad Maeve's voice echoed in the mausoleum, full of fun.
"Well," He looked down at the zombie before him and looked up at Maeve and grinned. "We're the monsters. We're the dreams of what could happen, what will happen, and what did happen. We are the first to change our Essences, because the human's fears will always take on new forms faster than their hopes. We are the ragged folk, the shadow folk, the twilight folk, living between the day of Summer and the night of Winter. We are the Terata, the monsters, and we do what we must to get the job done."
"Do you understand?" He looked down into the ruined face of the zombie before him.
"...uuuurrlmmmss."
Jack flung up his hands in frustration. "I just told ya all I am gonna..."
"Wait. Jack, stop." Maeve put her hand on his arm. "I don't think she was sayings 'realms' at all."
"Hmm?"
She pointed to the cauldron over the fire, where their dinner had been simmering when their visitor had shuffled in. Maeve dished out a bowl and handed it to the young zombie, who happily, and rather noisily, began eating.
"She was saying 'worms'. Poor dear was hungry."