by SASKATCHEWAN KOLONOSCOGRAD, Alternate Reality News Service Fairy Tale Writer
We tend to think of humans as these big, goofy creatures who are barely able to control their gangly limbs, creatures whose deep, rumbly voices sound like communicative earthquakes, creatures the fey can tell stories about to amuse their children at bedtime. Is it possible that they really exist?
Mariellen Spizz and Antoinetta Zipes think so. In Watson's Glen, the nine year-olds were playing with a spell they had just learned that allowed them to create an image of a moment in time. Although somewhat fuzzy, one of the images they created appears to depict several giants who could, indeed, be humans.
"This is very exciting!" commented celebrated storyteller Airdman Cobain Doyze. "I had always suspected that human beings were real, but we never had proof. Now, we have proof. Absolute proof!"
The creatures in the image wear drab, colourless clothing. Some of them hold sticks, but they do not appear to use the sticks to help them walk; instead, one seems poised to use his stick to hit a small white, sphere.
"We can conjecture that the small white spheres are some sort of malign object," Doyze conjectured. "The humans may hunt the spheres, using the clubs to punish them, or perhaps knock them out of harm's way. I'm sure we will find a reasonable explanation for the sticks and the spheres in the fullness of time. Regardless, we have proof of the existence of humans! Proof, I say! Incontrovertible proof"
Doyze noted that at least two of the humans in the image carried bags that appeared to be full of the sticks. "Either the spheres are so powerful that they deplete the magic that the sticks use to overcome them," Doyze continued to conjecture, willy nilly, "or there are different sticks - with differing powers - for each sphere. Let us not dwell on mere details. PROOF! WE HAVE PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF HU - oh! I think I may have wet myself..."
Their families refused to make the children available to me for interviews, so I asked Gerhardt Zapfer, who lives three trees down from the Zipes family, what he thought of the images.
"Pfah!" he pfahed contemptuously (as if there is any other way to pfah). "Brat children! Three moons ago, they learned a warts casting spell. I still find unnatural growths in unexpected places all this time later! I blame the public school system. Those girls are trouble, I tell you! Brats they are!"
Well. That proved to be spectacularly unhelpful.
A more thoughtful critique came from master mage and supreme skeptic Aery Zoozinni. "Pfah. We like to think that images frozen in time are a faithful recreation of reality," he pfahed thoughtfully (apparently, there are ways to pfah that do not contain contempt), "but they can be manipulated. Any magical artifact can."
"Party pooper!" Doyze blurted. I thought he was going to repeat the word "proof" another couple dozen times, but, to his credit, he managed to hold his enthusiasm in check.
"It's basic science!" Zoozinni argued. "Are you not familiar with Zewton's law of gravitational attraction? A creature that big would be crushed by the weight of its own skeleton! Humans are a physical impossibility!"
Zoozinni added that he found it odd that all of the "human" figures look vaguely like the younglings who created the image. However, since the spell was less than 40 seasons old, he did not yet know how a deception could have been accomplished. "I am going to take this spell apart to see how it works," he assured me. "Then, we'll find the truth."
"Proof. Proof. We have proof," Doyze muttered. "These...creatures - their use of sticks as tools shows that they are capable of complex thought. They do not appear to have wings, so it is unlikely that they can fly. This bodes well for future negotiations between us: we give humans control of the ground while the fey maintain control of the sky."
"But -" Zoozinni began. However, frankly, his skepticism was growing tiresome, so I decided to write, instead, that a poll of citizens of the Four Forests showed that 63 per cent believed in the existence of humans. Of the fey who believe in humans, 82 per cent were afraid of them.
Zoozinni shrugged. "It's a hard road," he commented, "being a skeptic in a magical realm."