This is a headcanon that I came up with while musing on the nature of bargains and the folly of bridge-burners.
Suppose they, the bridge-burners, struck an unprecedented blow against the hedge and tore open a rift in reality. One of them stumbles out alive and thoroughly crazy from revelation. As his sanity was being pieced together to learn what happened the courts interfered to keep their silence, while the debate rages if maybe it is time to come clean.
The secret: ironside and Arcadia are one and the same. Not all Faery magics are broken by iron, like some huntsman and the Mask. The hedge is some kind of hyperbolic space with the Wyrd dictating a maze made of terms and illusions. When changelings open a portal to the hedge what actually happens is the Mask drops and the Wyrd reroutes their instincts and spatial perception.
As omnipresent beings the Gentry are limited by terms of interaction rather then distance while the Wyrd is universal. People don't "go" to Arcadia nor do they "escape" from there, for it is here. The Gentry are our close neighbors separated by a line transparent to their Names. Travel to and from is a circle in strange space. The constitution of the Hedge includes the limit of "distance" and so makes escape possible.
Suppose they, the bridge-burners, struck an unprecedented blow against the hedge and tore open a rift in reality. One of them stumbles out alive and thoroughly crazy from revelation. As his sanity was being pieced together to learn what happened the courts interfered to keep their silence, while the debate rages if maybe it is time to come clean.
The secret: ironside and Arcadia are one and the same. Not all Faery magics are broken by iron, like some huntsman and the Mask. The hedge is some kind of hyperbolic space with the Wyrd dictating a maze made of terms and illusions. When changelings open a portal to the hedge what actually happens is the Mask drops and the Wyrd reroutes their instincts and spatial perception.
As omnipresent beings the Gentry are limited by terms of interaction rather then distance while the Wyrd is universal. People don't "go" to Arcadia nor do they "escape" from there, for it is here. The Gentry are our close neighbors separated by a line transparent to their Names. Travel to and from is a circle in strange space. The constitution of the Hedge includes the limit of "distance" and so makes escape possible.
Comment