THE IMAGINED AND ACCEPTED NATURE OF THE RAKSHA Despite the fact that they exist, the raksha are not real. They are not tangible, physical creatures with motives that the philosophers among the Creation-born can parse and puzzle out. They are not of Creation, so the denizens of Creation have no true frame of reference to which to compare the raksha. The raksha are simply raksha, and nothing more. In their natural habitat, they are just dream and self-interest and desire, bound only by the attention they choose to pay to what goes on around them. Many of the Creation-born have encountered the raksha, but most of those who can describe the experience have not met the true raksha. To do so legitimately usually involves passing the wrong way through the shinma Nirakara—which defines shapes—and thus being unmade. (Exceptions to this general rule can be found, but seeking them out requires a will and bravery uncommon to the mortals of the Age of Sor- rows.) Most people who relate sincere tales of meeting and interacting with the Fair Folk have not exactly encountered the raksha, but instead, been confronted by the lies in which the raksha clothe themselves. Indeed, in Creation, in the shoals of the Bordermarches and in the treacherous depths of the Middlemarches, it is highly unlikely one will encounter a raksha not clothed in those comfortable lies. The heavy weight of the banal rules that Creation imposes on every being within necessitates those lies. Without them, a raksha could not exist for long in Creation. He would be calcified before it had even occurred to him to escape. The raksha must, therefore, pass through the shinma Nirakara at that shinma’s boundary aspect known as the Gateway of Sundraprisha and spin for himself a cloak of substance. He may then enter Creation, but he must either seek the shelter of places where the Wyld overlaps it or take refuge in an uncapped demesne. Otherwise, he must rely on the succulent dreams and virtues of the mortals on whom he feeds.
