The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar is a fantasy world - a doll's house, of sorts - presided over by the Fae known only as The Child.

Enacted by the Taken, all the classic fairytales (whether The Child has sufficient self-awareness to appreciate the recursion is anyone's guess) are here, playing out under glass for Its delight, though in far darker forms than have been told in the mortal world for centuries; the beauties who slumber are visited upon by nothing so respectful as a kiss by their Princes of dubious moral quality, and the wolf chases the red hood forever through the night-dark forest, until she slips off her cape and their roles are exchanged.

Here, every fairytale you've ever heard runs together; here, the Sleeping Beauty awoke tangled in blood-red roses to find her somnophiliac assailant a Beast, and here, the girl whose lips are red as blood, hair is black as ebony and skin is as white as snow pulls on her best crimson cloak and sets out for Grandmother's house, for Grandmother is a master baker and her window sills, the rumour says, are delicious...

Most Changelings who remember living a literal fairytale served their Durance, or at least part of it, in their own individual Bell Jar, a doll playing a part for The Child's amusement.

The Child

The very image of a rosy-cheeked bairn, switching from boy to girl as the mood strikes, with massive delight and massive temper; the world of the Bell Jar shakes when The Child is displeased, and Changelings whose only crime was losing Its interest have been picked up in a tantrum and hurled to their presumable doom. The Child does not share, and is inherently distrustful of other Fae in Its domain, though It can be placated and wooed, for the price of a new fancy.

When any of Its dolls have managed to escape before their infantile Keeper could tire of and discard them, The Child's fury is apocalyptic. The sky within the Bell Jar world turns black and churning, and the thwarted Fae's shrieks of rage rend the land as storms of wind and ice. This is not as uncommon an event as it might be, for some Keepers; The Child's focus, at any moment, is complete upon the object of Its present attention, which makes it somewhat easier to slip away for those whose fable in The Child's little passion play has been set aside in Its attentions, for the time being.

Those that Fled

• Rose Red, who slept almost a hundred years tangling around and encircled within herself, and was only awoken by True Love's call...
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