Once upon a time, longer ago than almost any story ever told, men and women and chil­dren spread out from the birth­place of their species all over the sur­face of Earth over many thou­sands of years. Their cul­ture was noth­ing like it is today. They lived in caves lit dimly by the flick­er­ing lights of fires, and they hunted the beasts of the woods and plains using spears of wood and stone.

The world was alien to them, and wild. Every day they saw things they did not com­pre­hend, and these they attrib­uted to peo­ple they did not under­stand — gods, spir­its and faeries. In their imag­i­na­tions and in their dreams they gave life to them — to us.

Thus we were born and we walked the lands of the ancient world. We lived and worked along­side them, yet in a sense we remained apart for they were but small groups in our big wide world.

Years passed, thou­sands of years. Humans advanced so very slowly, for they had so lit­tle knowl­edge of the Glam­our that we take for granted. But even­tu­ally, they cre­ated some­thing that would change our rela­tion­ship forever.

Iron.

From iron they made ploughs, and with ploughs they made farms, and on these farms they set­tled. Slowly but surely, they tamed the land and made it bow to their will. It was no longer wild, it was no longer ours.

And from iron they made swords, and with swords they made armies, and with armies they founded empires. They went fur­ther still than tam­ing the land for their sur­vival, they made it theirs.

We retreated, for we had no choice. That land was theirs, and so we returned to the place that was exclu­sively ours. Arcadia.

Our rela­tion­ship with them had changed, but it was not lost. Belief in us remained strong, even though the human folk encoun­tered us less and less. Our world and theirs con­tin­ued to change apace, each one affect­ing the other — for what are Arca­dia and the human world but strange par­al­lels of each other?

In time, the era known as the Mid­dle Ages came to human civil­i­sa­tion, and with it they brought change to Arca­dia as well. Over time our land became like theirs, with a king and queen and noble houses, ter­ri­to­ries, armies and peas­ants, just like it is today. All of Arca­dia was ruled over by King Oberon and Queen Tita­nia, beneath them the Coun­cil sat, then all the Dukes and Duchesses of the Houses, all the way down to the lowli­est farmer.

It was not that any­one thought this way good or bad, it was just the way things were. And it worked. Humans still dreamed of us, wrote plays and poetry and songs about us, and all was well. For a while.

Not too long later by our stan­dards, the game changed again. The Enlight­en­ment, they call it now, the tri­umph of sci­ence and rea­son. They stopped believ­ing in us, pre­oc­cu­pied as they were with war and rev­o­lu­tion and engineering.

We feared the worst. “The Long Win­ter”, our philoso­phers called it, though com­monly we just called it “Win­ter”. We were always scared that the time would come when we were destroyed as eas­ily as we were cre­ated, when we were wished away as unnec­es­sary. It came then, with the Enlight­en­ment and the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion. Our world chilled, long win­ters only barely giv­ing way to damp, cool sum­mers. Then one year, sum­mer didn’t come. The ground froze, frost crack­ling up every flower and tree until the whole of Arca­dia was dark and inhospitable.

The Win­ter had come, the Win­ter from which we thought we would never escape. One by one, we froze too.

But of course, you may say, we’re not frozen any more, are we? We most cer­tainly are not. The ice thawed, even­tu­ally. Humans believed again.

They have these things, now. Things that help them dream. Movies, tele­vi­sions, com­put­ers. They had hip­pies and punks and goths. They remem­bered what it was like to be some­thing, to share that some­thing around, to tell oth­ers. They dream of us once more.

Win­ter is gone. Spring has come at last to Arcadia.

But it didn’t come with­out cost, did it? The nobles and our houses are back, the peas­ants and their farms are back, glam­our is back. But the King and Queen? Gone, as far as any­body can tell. Either they didn’t make it through Win­ter, or… who knows. Maybe it’s best not to spec­u­late. But of course we need a King and Queen, don’t we? The Coun­cil all seemed to have sur­vived, 13 in all. It would make sense for two of them, or their wives or hus­bands, to assume the roles. But yet… they couldn’t decide just who.

Hence, of course, the war. The war has raged back and forth for three years now, with no sign of when it might end or even if it has an end.

Times are dark indeed for the peo­ple of Arca­dia. We shall all have to try for a “hap­pily ever after”, but for now… I can promise nothing.