adhz:
“oh hey,” she said, “it’s a really touristy area, but since you’re gonna be passing through anyway, you might as well stop by pier 29, see the dragons. also, there’s a—”
“hold on,” i said. “i knew your city had mountains, but. dragons? uh, actual living dragons?”
“dude, it’s not a big deal. they’re there all the time. of course they’re majestic and everything, but they’re loud and cranky and mostly they lie around eating garbage. now and then the city council will talk about trying to make them roost somewhere else, but—”
“dragons,” i repeated. i knew it was making me sound like a rube, but it was a lot to take in. “you live in a city that has dragons.”
“no, it’s cool, we used to go see them when i was a little kid. it’s worth doing. but that whole area is mostly dragon-themed gift shops, and the commercialization is kind of a bummer. also, sometimes a dragon will melt somebody’s car and it’s a whole problem.”
“fairytale-style, giant scaly fire-breathing dragons.”
“honestly, i forget other cities don’t have them?” she said. “there’s a few other sites on the west coast where they gather. portland calls them wyverns, but that’s a portland thing.”
“chicago’s got, like, bunnies and songbirds,” i told her, “but otherwise it’s just your typical vermin. pigeons, rats, sphinxes—”
“sphinxes? what the hell.”
“oh, yeah, they nest in the el tunnels. sometimes a fucking sphinx will flap down out of nowhere, bring the whole train to a halt until the front car answers a riddle.”
“that sounds exciting,” she said.
“it’s the worst. your train winds up being twenty minutes late, and you just have to hang out hoping somebody up there read their mythology. there’s supposed to be a program where the conductors get trained in riddling, but i don’t know. rahm emmanuel keeps saying it’s not a budget priority.”
“huh,” she said. “guess the grass is always greener and all that. but on some level, it’s nice to remember that even with all these big box stores, the country still has some variety left in it.”
“yeah, did you know that in rhode island they call water fountains ‘bubblers’?” i said.
“whoa, seriously?”
“i read it somewhere. crazy, right?”
“crazy.”
i am here for urbanized mythological creatures
Switzerland has a lot of dragons, but dragons have long since moved on from collecting gold. There’s a purply-scaley one that roosts behind the Mad Mex that refuses to stop hoarding signposts. The city uses banners for the main roads and sells a lot of maps.
Golems love cities–with their stone buildings and sidewalks. There are strict laws about what one is allowed to say to them, because golems tend to be rather literal and very obedient. There’s always one kid who thinks he knows better. He doesn’t.
OH MY GOD THE CHICAGO SPHINXES, DON’T GET ME STARTED. Here’s the thing. When you buy your Ventra card at the machine – which is another one of Rahm’s scams, leasing that out to a private company, wtf was he thinking – it’s supposed to have the answer to the riddle on it, right? The sphinx is supposed to scan the bar code and let the train through.
that never fucking happens. Especially on the Blue Line which is down for maintenance all the time and constantly switching tracks and running shuttles, which means half the time you’ve got a sphinx that came over from the fucking Orange Line or some shit and is full of riddles that only the Irish mooks from Bridgeport understand. Or it’s in Polish only. Or it’s got a glitch that makes it stutter and if you interrupt it, it’ll get snippy and bite your head off. LITERALLY. They hush it up but it happens. Businesses lose millions from sphinx-related tardiness every year.
And then there’s a case back in ‘96 when it was proven after the fact that the “wrong” answer the Red Line Sphinx got was actually A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE REGIONAL VARIATION but by then, the Sphinx had already eaten half a car full of drunken Cubs fans. I know, not much of value was lost there, BUT STILL.
You think SPHINXES are bad? Detroit has imps, thousands of them, and you know what they love? Buses. You know the major form of public transit in Detroit is? BUSES. So the drivers have to literally shoo away imps at every fucking stop, making them 30 minutes late, an HOUR late, and it’s not like there’s anything you can DO, because they’re all leftover from when the car companies were big, and ALL OF THOSE FUCKERS CLOSED.
So of course there were hundreds of orphaned imps, and they kept SAYING they were going to reopen the factories, or at least get some good junkyards, but nooooooooo, they never did, so the imps just bred and bred, and now they’re all over every bus and it’s not like you can ever count on getting anywhere on time and long story short, I’d take a sphinx over imps ANY day.
yeah as someone who did high school and college in michigan and now lives in chicago, i have to say that as far as the age-old sphinxes vs imps debate goes, they’re both terrible in different ways. the imps are way more common and they probably have a wider total reach, and oh my god nothing like trying to board a bus already covered in those little suckers when said bus is already forty minutes late—
(sidenote: ugh people from bloomfield hills saying stuff like “well if i lived in detroit, i’d have the sense to carry around a nice heavy club or walking stick—” yeah dude good luck with your walking stick against two dozen imps)
but the sphinxes. let’s not, uh, sugar coat this: the sphinxes don’t just slow commuters, they kill people. and yes, if you know the riddle, you’re fine. but what if someone else offers their answer first? what if you get some overly cocky freshman philosophy major who takes it upon himself to answer for the whole car?
i think in the back of our minds, all chicagoans know that rahm emmanuel’s administration isn’t gonna lift a finger until one of the sphinxes goes after a wealthy tourist and it makes national news. and even then, we’ll get, like, flashy riddle-solving software installed in all the red line trains, and maybe the brown line, but no way is it gonna cover the whole infrastructure.
basically if you ever need to take the green line or the pink line, you wanna start studying your classical mythology and folklore fucking yesterday.
@copperbadge do puns work on Sphinxes as well as riddles?
You bet your sphinxter they do.
(Sphinxes hate that one but they’re obliged to honor it.)
Everyone complains about Boston’s insanely confusing street layout and nightmarish traffic. No one dares speak the name of the Good Folk responsible.
Bostonians have been trying to get you idiots to take the hint for the longest time. Seriously, what did you think the purpose of the Big Dig was? There was no purpose. The Gentry don’t need purpose, you fools. All is for Their amusement.
The old legend about how Boston’s streets were just tracing the paths of where cows wandered? You should pay closer attention to legend. Cows know the Fair Folk better than you; they know instinctively where the ley lines are. Never stray from their path. You really don’t want Them to take a shine to you.
And the song of Charlie on the MBTA, forced to ride a never-ending train for all of eternity because he had no extra coin to pay his fare? That was a warning, in code, for those of you who carry no iron in your pockets. Charlie is far, far away, and yet so close, seven years out of time. Never go down into the T tunnels without iron on you. The tracks are not iron enough; they will not save you.
The Fair Folk have been here for a long, long time. Fear of them is in our bones, in our blood, in the way we speak. We are so used to calling the wicked good that we call the good “wicked”.
And is it any wonder we’re really, really shitty drivers?
You guys in Boston think it’s bad, try living on Cape Cod. Ever wonder why the bridges are so backed up? It’s certainly not all the traffic from people going on and off. Nope, those damn selkies pop up EVERYWHERE and get angry when you don’t accommodate them, even though they do ridiculous things. It’s become a part of our regular life to always have some sort of leather on us, no matter what. If you get approached by a selkie and they want hide when you dont have any, they’ll be getting some hide by the end of your interaction. YOUR hide. They’re not afraid to skin you alive.
And how did it not become common sense to put signs on the beach for the main landers? I doubt any of them would know or expect a nymph to grab their shit while they’re not looking for nesting materials. Hell, nymphs will even nest in your beach bag if they want to be lazy and like what you’ve got. (They also like to grab hair, I mean Jim down the road went bald because one of those buggers ripped out his hair all at once.)
Merfolk dont mess with you if you don’t mess with them, but it goes to show half of Cape Coders are literally stupid because they go ahead and fuck with them anyway. I mean guys, you live here, you should know better than trying that after that international incident in 2005, right? DON’T TUG ON THEIR TAIL. PRETTY SIMPLE CONCEPT.
Luckily we put out a warnings about getting too close to them. For years and years the death toll was high because men and women got enraptured by particularly beautiful mermaids and then died from drowning. No one knew about it happening however, because it’s not like they’d drown and their corpse would turn up or something. Merfolk kill and then eat them. Most deaths follow that way no matter the race, really.
I still don’t understand why people didn’t catch on sooner.
Speaking as a Bostonian dislocated to Cape Cod, I remind you to not forget the Fair Folk’s smaller kin, there are so many of them in this state, good God. Pixies can either be sweet little darlings or worse than fucking squirrels, and unfortunately most of the ones I’ve dealt with in our yard skew towards the squirrel end of the scale. Sugar water and some tiny cakes or candied seeds will usually keep them from wrecking havoc in a garden (usually – please don’t ask about our attempt to grow corn a few years ago *sigh*), but if they start swarming do not bring out the iron. Their more powerful cousins might deign to pay attention, then. Call your local coven, and they’ll send out a team to either coax the sparkly bastards to disperse or go elsewhere.
Also I hear western MA might be having a kelpie problem? Did no one pay attention in elementary school out there, that shit’s covered starting in kindergarten, don’t go near strange horses at night near bodies of water. I’m betting dollars to donuts that the issue is with out of state kids attending the Five Colleges. The UMass kids at least should know better, most of ‘em are local.
You guys haven’t figured it out? The Fair Folk _love_ pizza. Adore it. Where the little bastards _put it_, I have no idea, but damn.
Ever see one of those old wilderness vids of sharks stripping a whale carcass? Like that, but with dough and sauce and cheese flying everywhere.
(hat tip to Jim Butcher!)
In Philly, sure, but the Boston Fair Folk, big and small alike, are old-fashioned traditionalists of the worst kind.
Least they finally drove out the redcaps, even if some demented Philly Phanatics saw them as a mark of pride. Couple of dead kids, freshly-dyed Phillies hat, even this town’s sports freaks saw the light.
Idiots, the lot of them.
Sports fans can be dumb, owners are worse. Bostonians talk about the Curse of the Bambino, but honestly, I think Harry Frazee pissed off a Fae lord and it took until John Henry before that mess got cleaned up. (And you can’t convince George Steinbrenner didn’t make a deal with someone.)
regional differences
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