Bracken was (as most elves are) exactly like his name. The youngest sidhe on Green’s Hill was Bracken. Will and power were a sidhe’s birth control. Vast sailing ships of the 1800s, they had lost control of their will and their power. Whim’s parents were both high sidhe, and in the tumultuous, terrifying (for them) trip overseas in one of the They had sex frequently (for them it was as natural as eating or breathing) but they didn’t actually produce offspring. Smaller fey reproduced like rabbits-pixies, nixies, sprites, gnomes, goblins, trolls, brownies-they were everywhere, hiding in the corners of houses like dust, but high sidhe, the big elves did not, as a whole, procreate a lot. Whim was the second-youngest high sidhe on Green’s Hill, and possibly the least powerful one. Everybody loved Green and his vampire consort, Adrian, including Whim.

Using this power, Green managed to gather every supernatural being-shape-shifters, vampires, lower fey, high sidhe-all of them, under his aegis and protection. He had the gift of sex and the ability to gain magical power from the sharing of flesh and the whisper of skin on skin. Green was the leader, a beautiful high sidhe (or elf) with hiplength, butter-colored hair, a penchant for mortals, and what should have been a minor gift that he’d parlayed into a major one. Whim-Offerings GREEN’S HILL was a magical faery commune that rested in an unspecified location in the Northern California foothills. Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound But while you debate half empty or half full It slowly rises, your love is gonna drown

Paint It Black by Amy Lane