Early June in 200x, and there is a woman asleep on the train. Rattling shades, though pulled down, leak sunlight into the private compartment between plastic slats. She keeps her face out of the sun.

The woman has a blanket of hair which hangs thick to her shoulders. Waves the color of snowdrifts frame a chalk-white complexion and soft, dense lashes. She wears boots with matted fur trim and a simple cotton dress under an embroidered pinafore. The fabric is too heavy for a Central summer, but well suited for the port of the Upper Northern Sea, from which she has come. She has travelled a long, long way.

An assigned handler comes to check on her periodically. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for her to feel trapped and restless on her first day in a train carriage, after decades of life on the wide-open ice plains of the North. Her kind are used to freedom. Her southbound journey is 12 hours long, to boot. But Roha is quiet, and she sleeps with her hands folded, face as content and smooth as a doll’s. The handler marks her accommodating disposition down to her age. Though she looks no older than a healthy human 30-year old, she is in fact closer to 250, and not quite human at all.

For her kind, as the papers of the time so nakedly phrased it, for her kind she is young.

—

Mystic beings, be their mysticism in ability or appearance, have featured in stories since the beginning of civilization. These range from the luminous winged angels, the plains-roaming bipedal ungulate satyrs, the underwater fish-tailed nymphs, varying degrees of half-beasts and shapeshifters. Immortal and - if we are so lucky - benevolent gods. When rationalists, naturalists and scientists began to stake their claims in early Central societies, such dreamlike notions fell by the wayside, for a bit. What evolutionary advantages were there to horns on a human head? Where exactly was ‘heaven’? Bemused interpreters of old texts and fables wondered why even their most objective predecessors limited the creatures of imagination to such dull, humanoid moldings. Ridiculous as it is to consider now, there were serious accusations that such creatures never existed at all. But these early researchers would inevitably find, in folly of their own, they had in fact overestimated the imagination of their predecessors.

In the year 135x, a survey party from the Z Continent - which would, over the course of millenia, be developed into the Core Cities, sailed to the islands beyond the Southwest Coast. There, in the flesh, mingling in the markets among their fleshy counterparts, were folks with fish-like characteristics; tails, fins and scales. When the trading day was completed, the merfolk slid back into the sea. Locals laughed at the surveyors. Had the silly city folk thought their old trade ledgers were children’s stories?

Merely fifty years later, surveyors documented their first group of winged humans or griffins, in the hilly region now known as C-East. The Central church rejoiced to see their angelic sovereigns in tangible form, though conflicts would soon arise when the griffins made their very human faults and foibles known.

All the while, the limits of magic and science were continuously refined. Discovery and documentation of increasingly intricate phenomena made winged and finned humans perfectly plausible, even to those who’d never met one. But for these ‘variants’, no matter how spectacular their physiological features had become, all were scientifically, intractably human. Consulting the variant families who kept ancestral records allowed historians to trace a number of them to their roots, which were almost invariably antique magician communities. It helped that the old great magicians had been some of the most well-educated and adept in autobiography - and the old fog of mystery gave way to patterns, and clarity. 

Their biological changes are largely confirmed to have been magically induced by originally unvaried humans by magical means. Motivations ranged from improved traversal of sky, land and sea based on animal impressions, to frequent skirmishes where armor or claws would benefit, to themselves idolizing prior iterations of variants and modifying themselves in their image. For example, the aesthetic griffins of the South modeled themselves after images of their bulkier Northern cousins, with more emphasis on the plumage than flight.

Knowing the risks today of genetic modification via magic, it is likely that an enormous amount of humans were sacrificed in the process of creating these heritable characteristics, and in spite of deceptive uniformity among descendants, the vast variety of magical techniques involved make it difficult to predict future implications, such as generational loss of variant characteristics when mingling with unvaried humans. According to the ever-increasing breadth of army surveyors today, the number of both self- and externally-defined variants actually appears to be dwindling.

The most recent and concrete studies of variant development is seen with the Faeries, having reunited their citadel with the main continent only 90 years ago after two centuries of near-total seclusion. (Most of the previously mentioned variants have legacies of at least 700 years.) Youthful in appearance all their lives as a result of extensive self-experimentation, they are a legally defined variant. But the lives themselves are perhaps not as long as their Founders envisioned, and the less fortunate descendants of their alchemic bioengineering suffer a variety of unpredictable health issues from birth.

Magic and science mingle, and policy comes into play. With myths dispelled, there is less time to fantasize. Gods and monsters can be shut in storybooks; for these new human communities there are mouths to feed, homes to build, laws and protections to put into place.

But the dispellation was never quite complete. Of particular interest - and exception - are the natural healers, the mountain guardians, the so-called immortals. While they are content and intact, they resemble unvaried humans, but when their incredible healing is enforced things get distorted - beyond human, beyond the living. Some do not even technically require homes nor food to survive. Due to their incredible age and isolation, no individual’s lineage has ever been fully traced, and roughly half of experts suspect they did not originate as human beings.

These are Life Fountains, like the woman on the train.

—

Although Life Fountains are a larger demographic than griffins and faeries combined, little was known about them until the 1800s. There were collected oral histories, and scattered written records, but research was stymied by their unremarkable outward appearances, and general lack of desire to explore a civilization outside their own. (Able to subsist off any organic matter, they had little reason to wander from their enclaves - which also tended to be situated in remote areas.)

Their nearby human townships, oft unfamiliar with the developments in human-practiced magic, saw them some very accomplished, if eccentric, magicians. As with any odd neighbor, it was best to leave them be - unless desperation called for them. A child was deathly ill. A worker lost their arm in a mill. A villager was wasting, and nobody could see why. Quick, before all is lost - climb the mountain, call upon a healer. The overarching consensus between neighbors of Life Fountains, regardless of region, was that these creatures were capable of miracle healing; quietly casting their ‘spells’ in over the injured; sealing wounds and staunching blood; restarting hearts and grafting back lost limbs. Looking upon it all as unflinching as some higher power - then vanishing back into the fog.

Then, in 18xx, a group of three Life Fountains, of their own accord, migrated to Central City from their respective mountain enclaves, and the mystic fog began to lower.

Of course, we must not shortchange our semi-immortal friends. Life Fountains (a name originating in an early publication’s erroneous recollection of an old myth - the Fountain of Youth) produce a unique magical-physical substance, classified as ‘aura’. The appearance of aura varies by the individual but can, as certain legends claim, assume the form of a radiant light emanated from the body. It may also be spread as foam or smoke, or even sweat or spit. Aura expresses the healing power of the Life Fountain - contained in themselves it naturally sustains their health and youthful vigor, and lets them recover from injuries as severe as dismemberment - but its power can also be applied to other living things. Roots are bolstered, trees erupt into bloom. Unlike natural or manmade magic wells, no way has been found for aura to be fully harnessed by anybody but its producer, but with the help of cooperative Life Fountains, its effect on sentient beings has been subjects of many fascinating studies.

On the body of a being besides the Life Fountain, careful direct application of aura can safely accomplish biological repair which not even the most expert military magician has been able to imitate. Studies confirm that - while ‘miracle’ is hardly scientific terminology - the healing capacity of Life Fountains is beyond that of any human.

Mortals take caution, though - misuse of aura can result in unwanted growths, unusual blood conditions, allergic reactions and rapid spread of tumors. The latter is known to even affect Life Fountains themselves if overexerted in aura production. To make matters worse, aura, with its vast array of possible forms, is difficult to measure - light cannot be loaded into a syringe. Even if the more tangible substances are collected, once separated from its source and not applied to a living organism, the subtance tends to simply dissipate after a short time. With comprehensive study a perpetual work in progress, health guidelines only recommend ‘passive’ aura usage - incidental exposure to the natural overflow of a Life Fountain.

‘There is no foul in being passive’, claims Cadmus Carthage.

Cadmus was among of the aforementioned original three Life Fountain emigrants, the first to move from their home enclaves to Central proper. He is the creator of the nonprofit Life Fountain Foundation, the organization which arranged Roha’s migration, along with the her predecessors’.

‘Passivity indicates the ability to moderate, to suppress the overflow. With potentially hundreds of years of bad habits to break,’ Cadmus says, ‘suppression is the first step.’

Dispersing the fog that surrounds his people - his kind - has been his mission from day one. The Foundation aims to ‘Educate and Integrate’ Life Fountains into human society, not seek broken bones to heal, crowds to dazzle, churches to rule. ‘The need to blend in is not to survive, but to flourish, and have others to flourish alongside.’ 

In other words, critics say, the previously reclusive super-species wants to have access to human food and entertainment.

‘And lo, god becomes man,’ jokes Cadmus's (human) wife Lemina, in a controversial interview.

‘I see nothing offensive about that phrase,’ Cadmus says. ‘For those of us that choose that path - it’s exactly what we want to hear.’

—

The long-haul train screeches into the lead paneled atrium of Mainline Market Station. Roha’s handler opens the compartment for the last time, directing Roha out onto the platform with her single piece of luggage, a small burlap sack. A Foundation employee has come to collect her, and waits alongside two reporters. A century earlier, welcoming parties made up of hundreds of spectators and dozens of reporters would fill the station at the arrival of new Life Fountains, eager for a sight of the newcomer’s aura and demeanor - or better yet, a snapshot: the flash might scare out a bit more of the good stuff.

But the reduced reception has fallen in line with the Foundation’s creed as of late. They’re no more special than an ordinary person arriving in town. And Roha has no intention of causing any upheaval.

When a jittering junior reporter for the Daily - predecessor to our own fine publication - asks her what she’s hoping to make of life in the city, she even replies through a yawn: ‘Oh, my. Nothing special.’

The reporter struggles to think of what she’ll write that evening. A woman sleeps on a long-haul train, then again in the passenger seat of a car. Nothing could speak more of normalcy.

‘They’ve set everything up for me.’

Her vocabulary is somewhat notable. Roha is already capable of conversing in Central's unified tongue, as a Life Fountain of the far North. Her clan have long served as active farmers of local fauna and fungi to neighboring human settlements and have fairly refined communication skills (while their relatives in temperate climates have only recently dipped their toes into the spa and resort industry, and quickly began to feel the language barrier - many Life Fountains who remain in their enclaves never learn to speak at all).

Her head start, Cadmus says at her introductory gathering, puts her ahead of the game. A game, presumably, that culminates in a human life that blends with all the rest. Roha just smiles as he talks. She smiles the whole time, nodding off when Cadmus takes questions from the audience.

The junior reporter present at her arrival, left bereft of further content, states in her column that the Foundation’s new arrival may be a little naive.

‘Real power lies with people,’ Cadmus pontificates, somewhat strained. ‘We can’t do this alone.’

Roha dusts off what appears to be glowing beads from her knuckles.

—

About an hour before Roha padded off the train, a well-worn name was kicking up waves online, having made a surprise upload to notorious video service Neovision Blue.

You aren’t going to believe it, guys. She hit me. The big girl tracked me down somehow and just flew down like a torpedo and hit me! Catch this.

A man with tousled auburn hair and a feline smile mugs for the camera, displaying a mouthful of blood and a purple bruise over his eye.

You can see why the fundies teach fear of the ‘angels’. Still, we had a good time, didn’t we babe? Big strong arms, fancy wings, I thought I gave you a pretty good review. I guess we just weren't a good fit. I mean, I get it, I’m just a little man, and you’re still a lady despite those guns. But hey, if you’re willing to renege, I’ll make it up to you. A better way to fill that hole of yours. You see, I know a guy who runs a horse farm…

His cutting glare falters and his brow creases in an lilting laugh, blood running down his chin. No hard feelings. This isn't enough to stop him. The video uploaded to Neovision hits a quarter million views by the next day.

This is Augustine Kir.