There was something about the Wild Hunt that completed a faerie, filled a vital part of them and made them real. A blessing of the Night. But were we the patient fae cursed? We did not have the energy and power of most fae, could not run the Wild Hunt even if we had wished to, and so we sought out other outlets for that something that made us faerie. Music was one of the most common, for it had the welcome side-effect of entertaining the bored Court while they recounted stories only slightly younger than the Night itself. Story telling was another, as shift-shirt crafting had been until the tailor's time. And I? Through Summer, I had discovered humans.

I doubted that Summer was her name, but I never asked for her true name, never listened nearby in the hopes of hearing a human call to her. Tam's son, the first Piper, had set the beginnings for any relationship a faerie might have with a human, and he had refused to give his name to Tahrdi, the faerie who had given him the pipe in the first place. And, just as Tahrdi had never named herself to Tam's son, I simply adopted the name Dust whenever I spoke to Summer.

Dust and Summer. Both of us young, though it was a relative term, she just approaching her second decade and I midway through my second century. Both of us loyal, in our way, to our kin and clan. She was of Tam's line, the tailor's line, daughter of a Piper and crafter of shift-shirts. I worked on the greater magics that protected and enclosed my Court, kept the preservation spells on food and instruments and clothing intact, built the systems of eerie sounds and strange movements that terrified humans traveling through faerie forests.