(A/N) - Okay, so the idea for this has been floating around in my brain for a while now, and (due to my deep seated fear of actually finishing anything) instead of wrapping up By Fire, By Moonlight like a sensible person, I've decided to start this one, so; enjoy!!!

DISCLAIMER : Sigh...no, you idiots, I don't own these either, I've only borrowed them from J.K. so I could twist them to fit my own strange imaginings...

PROLOGUE

Once upon a time...

That's how these things always start, all the faery tales you hear when you're little. And it's the propper place for them to start; the moment you hear those words, once upon a time, you know that you're about to be transported to a time other than your own, you're about to be transported someplace else...

So...

Once upon a time. There was a little girl who wished more than anything else that she could be anywhere else in all the wide world than where she was right then. In fact, if she had any say in the matter, she wished she could be transported to whole other worlds, but she'd settle for somewhere-anywhere!-else, somewhere where she could find great adventures and friendships like the ones she read about in her books. It occured to her that like talking Dragons, and knights with armor that outshone the sun, such things might exist only in books, but that didn't stop her from wishing all the same. She would peer down rabbit holes, and always tapped very carefully at the back of every closet, and she would wish on everything and anything.

As she grew older she visited some of the places she'd read about-they were quite tame now-and Selene began to realize that if she wanted adventure she would have to look very carefully or she might just miss her chance at it...

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Selene Speaks:

I've always been aware of the otherworld, the spirits and shades that lie in the corners of our world, the little things only glimpsed through the corner of your eyes; gone the moment you turn your head for a closer look. I've seen the faery and stranger things that we only spy when we're not really paying attention, here one moment and gone the next, evanescenced back into the twilight gloom. I could always find them. When I was little I thought that it was the huge excess of imagination that I was carrying around inside me, I thought that somehow it was leaking out into the real world...

Oh- and the gargoyles...let's not forget them. I've seen them, sitting up high, pretending to be stone, really just having long conversations with the pidgeons and crows, that sly look that freezes mid-wink when they realize I'm watching.

But the trouble with magick is that there's just too much it can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing gargoyles, and faeries and talking with trees doesn't really help much. The useful magick's never at hand when you need it. Three wishes from a genie in a bottle, a magick wand, a potion to cure anything and everything, seven league boots and invisibility cloaks to hide it all in. No, those things stay in the stories, while out here in the real world we're left to muddle along as best we can...