Lir

Where dips the rocky highland / Of Sleuth Wood in the lake / There lies a leafy island / Where flapping herons wake

Long ago, Lir lived a normal life in the Irish countryside, in a small but cozy home by a lakeshore with his mother. He was only a child then, naive and immature, with a love of adventure and play, stories and songs and poetry, as many children are. It was this that made him the perfect candidate.

While splashing in the shallows of the little lake by his home, a voice called to him, singing altered verses of poetry to an entrancing tune. Were you to ask him now, he couldn't tell you who it was he heard - But he remembers the feel of their hand in his as he followed them off to the Otherworld, a land of plenty, of warmth and of safety - His new home. He never returned, and even if he were to go back, there would be nothing left for him in that little house on the lake; Lir's mother passed away shortly after his departure, ill and too stressed from her son's disappearance to recover. Not that he thinks much of that past any more, regardless - He's long since stopped aging, with little memory of his life before he joined the fae so long ago he lost track. Even after untold years, Lir remains as he was in his youth - Excitable and childish.

Despite this new life he's found himself in, Lir still travels to the mortal realm at times, and always finds himself in awe of all the ways the world changes. It was on one of these trips that he met and befriended a Vaiki named Muireann, recently orphaned and struggling to overcome her trauma. With a few simple words and a familiar tune, he convinced her to come with him to the Otherworld, just as he had been so long ago... and though she remains half-mortal, tugged between her old life and new, he thinks of her as a niece of sorts, and loves her just the same.

Come away, O Vaiki child! / To the waters and the wild / With a faery, hand in hand, / For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand