Ryvaken was not a happy feryres. He'd been 'on Earth' for a little over a year, long enough to get settled and pick up a few local customs but he was still essentially ignorant of the world.<br/><br/>What he'd learned was that this was a world without magic until four years prior to his arrival. The natives had technology more advanced than anything he had dreamed of back home; their cities were gleaming spires of metal and glass instead of wood and stone. They used strange golem-boxes they called "computers" for...Ryvaken still wasn't sure what they did. Markets were as big as a fae city and gleamed like temples. Flameless torches lit the night for human eyes. Loud carriages that glowed with heat-light moved people around faster than any riding beast. All this Ryvaken knew, although he'd lie to say he understood.<br/><br/>But then, the native humans had much they didn't understand. As advanced as they were, they were suddenly surrounded by even more advanced peoples, and under something of an invasion from races they believed to be magical. The rules had changed on them, and they reacted the way any sane, intelligent culture would. By deciding what was important to preserve and getting ready to fight to the last man to preserve it. The siege mentality would probably last a generation, maybe two, before they'd reach a new equilibrium with the new world. Well, maybe less. Humans were surprisingly malleable under stress.<br/><br/>But all that philosophical pondering could wait until he was dead. Truth was he understood the siege mentality; he was cut off from his home with no hope of return, the only one of his people in this world, and fate had decided to drop him off on the outskirts of one of the most xenophobic cities to exist. He had a<em>shaek</em>there; a home hollowed into the trunk of a living tree. American white ash, to be precise. He hunted to survive; rodents and small birds seemed to love these strange human cities. Of late he had even managed to put together a brewer to indulge in the occasional cup of<em>giusa</em>. Brewed bark shavings were not high on the list of human pleasures, but anyone that thought he was human was drunk or high.<br/><br/>Hunting had been good lately and he had enough mouse to cover half a month, so Ryvaken was exploring the city. Most of the population had no idea he existed; few humans thought to look for six inch tall interlopers, and almost as few thought to look more than a few degrees above eye level. And it wasn't like the vermin he hunted or the water he collected would be missed. It was how he liked it; not the isolation so much as the control. Everyone was a potential threat, anyone could be a friend, and the only way to find the right anyone was to control who found out about him first.<br/><br/>Today his exploration brought him to the<em>Thousand Shards</em>. Getting inside was a simple matter of acting like he belonged there; with such an eclectic crowd of beings, one more exotic barely raised an eyebrow at the door. Once inside he simply vanished into the background and made his way to the ceiling to get a good look at what was where. He chose a particularly decorative bit of molding for his perch, preferably in the shadows behind a light where he would be practically invisible.