Anya kicked down the warehouse door.

 

"Reveal yourself, fey!"

 

She waited long, agonizing seconds, but there was no reply. Obviously. The fey had crossed the village's border, somehow ignoring the wards (something to consult the druids about later). It had to know there was no peaceful way out of this. Anya tried anyway.

 

"Come down to ground level with your arms... upper limbs where I can see them, and we can talk about this."

 

Not expecting a response, Anya looked around the warehouse loft, which wound its way around the building to provide a birds eye view of the warehouse's contents. She heard a noise up and to her left, but saw nothing. She cursed that she was the only guard competent enough to follow the thing in here, before locking the door and starting up the loft's stairway. She barely reached the top of the stairs before she was tackled from the darkness, spinning to meet her assailant before her back hit the wooden floor. The fey stayed on her, and when she stopped moving it began muttering words of power. Vines shot out of the floor beneath her, tying her down, binding her limbs in place, and gagging her so that she couldn't call for help. Options running low, she decided to use her time gathering information.

 

The sky outside the open window above her was a deep orange, transitioning to the darker blues and purples that heralded the coming night. If she could somehow keep the thing here long enough, its magic would probably fade with the twilight. The creature itself was shorter than her by probably six inches or more, with a humanoid shape that suggested femininity without committing to it, coupled with a long tail that seemed prehensile. Color was hard to make out in the dark of the unlit warehouse, but its skin appeared to be a hot pink, with a lighter color dominating its ventral region from its inner thighs to its neck and continuing out and down its extremities in a fractalling filigree pattern terminating at the wrists and ankles, which sprouted out with what looked like flower petals in several different pinks and purples. Its head, at least, seemed normal; it had pointed ears with more petal-like structures behind them as well as slit pupils and purple irises, but otherwise its face and expression were recognizably human, and it had short, wavy platinum hair.

 

At least it was kinda cute.

 

The fey caught her staring (not like she tried to hide it) and crouched by her side. She kept examining the creature, eyes darting across its body determined not to miss a single detail. If nothing else, she would have an exhaustive description to give to the guards' station later.

 

The creature took her open hand with its own, then started tracing lazy circles into her palm with its thumb. Anya wasn't sure what to make of the gesture, but it was better than getting knocked out or worse so she played along. The creature continued stroking while staring into her eyes, never looking away and seemingly never blinking. Once she accepted that she was truly at the creature's mercy, and that it seemed not to mean her any real harm, she began to relax into the fey's ministrations. Her eyes began to feel heavy, staying open only to keep looking into the beautiful purple eyes of her captor. Her breathing slowed to the gentle, deep in and out that usually accompanied hypnagogia or meditation, and she felt her perception of the world shrink and vanish, her attention claimed by the creature's eyes and by its soothing motions against her palm.

 

After some time of this, the creature stroked a hair out of her face with its other hand and nudged her eyelids shut. Then she felt the fey's hand leave hers, and without those two stimuli anchoring her attention she sank deeper and deeper.

 

The last thing she registered before sleep claimed her was a gentle whoosh of air to her side.