It was, of course, a parody of the phrase “Religion is the opium of the masses”, usually attributed to Marx (actually Marx stole it from Charles Kingsley), and far truer than the original ever was.

This week we have seen, in this very weblog, a fascinating example of just how that opium works. It was provided by a correspondent named Don Knotts who came in cursing and swearing and left like a gentleman. We have no wish to prolong the debate with Mr Knotts, or to criticise him personally; but he says he will no longer visit these pages (which are, after all, intended for femmekin), so we think it is reasonable to use his comments as an example of a tendency that extends far beyond Mr Knotts himself and gives us interesting food for reflection.

The essence of Mr Knotts’s argument [read it here], once he had stopped behaving like a drunk, was to paint a (very creditable) word-picture of the vastness of space and time, as indicated by astro-physics; the catastrophic (in earthly terms) nature of long-term cosmic events and the insignificance of our current earthly life when compared to the endless vistas of light years, the death of suns, the clash of galaxies and so forth.

His challenge was that if were to take a telescope and look at the distant heavens the scales would fall from our eyes (to use a Biblical term that Mr Knotts would likely deprecate) and we should see the terrible folly of believing ourselves to be femmekin, or anything other than good suburban late-West-Tellurian cits.

The psychology of this assumption is remarkable. It is something like the way a Christian might expect worldly delusions to vanish in the face of the contemplation of Death, Heaven and Hell; but Mr Knotts, we gather, is an agnostic wedded to the “religion of science” and the comfortable, if rather anthropomorphic, idea that “science is on the side of everyday reality”.

He seems to frequent sites that spend much of their time tut-tutting (well, actually cuss-cussing) about how terrible and crazy are people who believe anything outside the cosy, suburban world of mundane materialism and vulgar cynicism, and how worrying it all is. Why it should worry them we don’t know, but it seems to be a sort of transposition of religious sentiment; a displacement of the heresy-hunting instinct, only this time not in the Name of God, but in the name of suburban dullness.

And somehow they believe (at least Mr Knotts does, and we are sure he is not alone) that they can call the very Heavens as witness to this religion of nothing-in-particular. Not the Heavens of traditional faith, of course (Darwin forbid!) but the Heavens of Professor Hawking.

He is perfectly sure that if we were really to look at those Heavens with a telescope, and ponder the mysteries of astro-physics, our belief that we are femmekin would vanish and we would see the Saving Light of Suburbia. We might even learn to use four-letter words like “real people”.

The idea simply cannot occur to such people that those same Heavens, whether or not we believe they are what the astro-physicists tell us they are (and we suspect that – on one level at least – they are, though we wouldn’t exactly bet the farm on it), dwarf the comfortable, cussing “realism” of the late-West-Telluri suburbs just as much as they dwarf anything else.

Oh no, the West-Telluri Suburbs are Reality, and Daddy Science is “on their side”.

Quite a touching faith, really.

So is it possible that anyone would try Mr Knotts’s Telescope Experiment and have the desired result? Would any Otherkin, say, gaze at the heavens and realise that all their beliefs were foolery and that the World of the Nine-o’Clock News is underwitten by the Andromeda Galaxy?

Actually, we think it is indeed possible. Many Otherkin that we have encountered do indeed live their lives around what Miss Sakura called the “Totem Pole” of Tellurian suburbanism. Their self-definition is based on their Other-ness from that. They often doubt their own sanity in relation to it. A serious look through a telescope at what Daddy Science tells them are the Real, Big Things might indeed bring them back to what they inwardly acknowledge to be “reality”.

Science – outer space – suburban materialism: three entirely different concepts that have very little to do with each other, but in the semi-educated half-religion of late West Telluria they are all tied together in a sort of comfortable – if utterly irrational – knot known, for some odd reason, as “realism”.

It is the Faith of the Faithless, the Myth of the Mythless, the Opium of the Suburbs.

I wonder if anyone else has encountered the term “fluff bunnies”. It seems to be gaining popularity in certain Tellurian quarters. From what I gather, it can be defined as follows:

“Fluff-bunny” is a term used by Tellurians who hold views that are considered odd by other Tellurians. They use it to designate Tellurians (usually broadly of their own camp) who hold views that they consider to be even odder than their own. It is sometimes a term of quite serious abuse, because the people with the “odd” opinions believe that “fluff bunnies” may harm their supposed credibility in the eyes of “normal” Tellurians.

A curious phenomenon, you will agree. I have heard it used by “mainstream” Otherkin against Otakukin. It is also used by “pagans” against “feminist spirituality” types, whom they see as “fluff-bunnies who believe in a made-up matriarchal Golden Age and fulminate against the Evil Patriarchy” (a rough quotation from a site I saw recently). Such fluff-bunnies, it is feared, may damage the good name and common-sense reputation of “paganism”.

This term interested me. Of the two communities I have seen using it – “pagans” and Otherkin – what do they have in common?

The most obvious thing lies in their chosen names. Pagan (as Miss Madonna pointed out to me) was a term used by Christians to mean “people who are not Christian”. Otherkin define themselves as being “other” than normal human Tellurians. They both define themselves by what they are not rather than by what they are.

The identity of both groups is clearly rooted in what they are not. And that is “normal” late-West-Tellurian society. Their whole self-definition revolves around this L-W-T “normality”. They define themselves by being (or at least thinking themselves to be) different from it; and they condemn others for being too different from it. Everything is a dance around it. It is the totem-pole at the centre of all their cavortings.

To an Aristasian this all seems rather peculiar. To us, L-W-T “normality” seems anything but normal. Ideas like evolutionism, equality and rationalism seem quite as cranky as Odinism, flat-earthism and the belief that God came down in a space-ship.

To an Aristasian the idea that people who hold the first set of beliefs should have the moral authority to laugh at people who hold the second is in itself laughable. And indeed they do not really have that moral authority, which is why so many wild and zany “alternatives” proliferate in the Pit.

Nonetheless, the believers in said alternatives seem anxious to return moral authority to L-W-T “normalism”: on the one hand declaring their opposition to it; on the other hand attempting to corral those who stray too far from it with terms like fluff-bunny. Why? Because they themselves lack moral authority as much as the Pit itself. In fact (in their own eyes) more so, because they lack even the pseudo-authority given by numbers. Their eyes are always on the totem-pole.

One result of this is that while these “differentist” movements spring up vaunting their difference from the Pit, they seem quickly to develop a “surburbanising” wing, whose purpose becomes the claim that they are really fully-functional Pit-Cits who look and think just like everyone else (which was often rather too true from the beginning); and who wish to suppress their own “fluff-bunny” element as being too different. No doubt there will be further revolts against the suburbanisers, and the fluff-bunnies may think of a useful name for them. Mud-mice, perhaps. But it is all a dance in and out, forwards and backwards, around the same totem-pole.

This interests me and seems relevant because Aristasians have – at least to superficial appearances – certain things in common with these groups. Many of us believe we are Exiles – that we are essentially intemorphs in a human incarnation, and while ancient Tellurian matriarchy is not of huge interest to us, we do believe in a feminine world and a feminine divinity, and most of us believe in a more feminine pre-patriarchal period in Telluria too (see The Myth of the Myth of Matriarchy for a Deanic refutation of the “Matriarchy is a Myth” school).

The difference is (well there are man differences, but the one I want to point out here is) that Aristasians define themselves by what they are not by what they aren’t. Late-West-Telluria is not their totem-pole and point-of-reference. Credibility in the eyes of the Pit’s standards of “normality” is not something we crave, firstly because we do not find it credible, and secondly because we have our own standards of moral authority and reality-judgement that are based in eternal values.

This is the difference between a traditional culture and a “modernist” one. The “modernist” or “rationalist”, culture bases its standards of judgement on empiricism, which can give differing results and is never absolute. Consequently, it is bound to give rise to continual differences of opinion. These differences are only really settled by who has the most money and power and can corral the most minds into its camp.

A traditional culture, on the other hand, judges by eternal standards of verity that are uninfluenced by the vagaries of the world of flux and change.

In the end, the soberest leaders of Pit “normality” and the fluffiest of fluff-bunnies have far more in common with each other than either has with us.

“I have always been here, child.”

“I know – but I haven’t.”

“Where were you?”

“Growing up. Trying to live without imaginary worlds and imaginary friends. Trying to live in the One and Only Real World, as they call it.”

Nurse Camilla smiled. “Ah, that.”

“You speak as though it were familiar to you.”

“Oh, it is. It is a thing that happens to some of my patients. Especially from the world you were in, which seems to be rather a jealous world.”

A curious word, Selena thought, used, she supposed, in a sense akin to “jealous God” – for indeed such a worldly world tends naturally to usurp the prerogatives of the Divine.

“How were you getting on with it?” asked her nurse.

“With growing up?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, not very well. One can lead oneself to water, but it is hard to make oneself drink. And I missed you, nurse.”

“Did you really?”

“Of course I did. All that time when I was so sick – sometimes in my body and sometimes in my heart, and sometimes both – you were always there. When I had to go to that hateful school every day, I lived only for the nights when I could go to bed and be with you again. And then I became sick in my body again, and you could look after me all the time.

“I told a girl about it once – there on earth – or is it here on earth? I told her I had a nurse, and she asked where, and I said in the hospital wing of a great starship, as big as a city, far, far away, but I could go there whenever I close my eyes.”

“What did she say?”

“That I should grow up. That is what they all say. I mean, even if you don’t tell them – and I didn’t usually tell them – they sort of guess you are far away from them and their jealous world; and they say you should grow up. Or get a life. They say that too. And I would think Can your kin offer a life worth my living? For your people are not my people, nor your ways my ways.“

“What changed your mind?”

“My mind didn’t really change. I just started thinking that I cannot live in half-dreams forever, and – well I began to feel that you – all of you – were my own imaginations. I didn’t want to feel that. I fought against it. But more and more, I felt it must be so.”

“Hence your little disagreement with Ixititia,” she knew the Nurse was referring to the Pixie.

“Yes – though whether that is simply my conflict with myself I cannot tell. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”

“It is important to say what you feel.”

“It feels like a sort of sacrilege, doubting you, Nurse. You, who have cared for me through my childhood, have tended my ills and been often the only comfort to my poor soul exiled in an alien world. But then again one would feel sacrilegious giving up one’s security blanket – I mean, wouldn’t one, Nurse?”

“Very likely one would.”

“You don’t mind, do you? I am just wandering round in the same old circle.”

“But things have changed a little now.”

Selena remembered her physical body on the bed. “Yes, that shocked me at first. Now I don’t know what to think. I think perhaps I shall wake up soon.”

“Does it matter, child? Here is where you are now, so just be here. If you awaken, you awaken. Your body will not awaken fully for some time. Several days at least. If I am wrong about that, we shall see soon enough.”

“And if this is a dream?”

“What is a dream? From this state, perhaps that jealous world is the dream. In any case this world has the only power over you at the moment that that world ever had: the power that you are in it and cannot leave it. That is not of my doing or yours. It simply is. Just for now, why don’t you put aside your questions and simply be?”

“Yes, Nurse. I shall.”

“I am glad. I shall leave you now, but we shall meet again soon aboard the Imperial Princess.”

“You are going, Nurse?”

“Well, I am not really here. But I shall see you very shortly. Ixititia, can I trust you to bring my patient to the Imperial Princess without any further misbehavior?”

The pixie made a deep reverence. “But of course, most honored healer.”

“Well, see that you do. Rayati for now, both of you.”

Selena got up on one elbow and bowed her head. It was the best reverence she could make from her recumbent position.”

“Rayati, honored Nurse.”

“Rayati,” said the pixie.

The Nurse vanished.

“You see what trouble you get me into, fainting like that?” said Ixititia. “And we such good friends, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it was my fault really, but you were so aggravating with your dreameries and upgrowings.”

“I aggravated the humans with my dreameries and non-upgrowings.”

“Humans,” snorted Ixititia. “Humans were born aggravated.”

“What happened to the Nurse? Was she a dreamery?”

“No, she wasn’t here.”

“That’s what she said, but what did she mean?”

“It was a holoform beamed down from the Imperial Princess.”

“Sort of like a videophone only 3D?” asked Selena.

“Whatever you say. I suppose we’d better get you up to the Princess.”

“I never had trouble getting there before. I just closed my eyes and there I was.”

“Well, we didn’t have to move your whole subtle body there before: just a bit of your consciousness. It’s not a big thing. We just have to observe a bit of ritual formality. You know – like opening doors instead of just walking through them. Different planes of being are fussy about different bits of formality. Just like different peoples, really.”

“Will the ship seem realer this time?”

“Oh yes. Lots realer I should think.”

“How exciting. You know, I’ve often felt as if I had a Secret Destiny – you know, to save the world or something.”

Ixititia looked about her at the bedroom and the window. “This world, you mean? Are you especially fond of it? I mean, is it worth saving?”

“Well, it was just a figure of speech.”

“Oh.”

“And anyway it does have some pretty bits – the world I mean. And in any case, I seem to be living there, so it might be a bit inconvenient if it popped.”

“Then again it might not. Lots of other possibilities for a bright girl like you, you know.”

“Do you really think so? I should like to try a few. I have to say this world has never really been my cup of tea. Pity for it to pop, though. It has got some pretty bits.”

“Who said it was going to pop? Looks like a tough old world to me. Not one of those sensitive, delicate worlds that shiver out of existence at a few harsh words.”

“Where did this bed come from?” asked Serena, sitting up.

“I dollied it up for you when you fainted. It might have been odd to put you in the physical bed with…” Ixititia stopped short, hoping she had not been tactless again.

“Oh, it’s all right. I’m fine now,” said Selena, swiveling her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. “How do I look?” She walked toward the full-length looking-glass set into the wardrobe door.

“How do I look?” mimicked Ixititia. “Chelani!”

“Oh Heavens,” cried Selena. “I haven’t got a reflection.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Ixititia.

Selena shuddered. “Like a witch or a vampire or…”

“Or a unicorn,” put in Ixititia; “or the Queen of the Faeries; or me. Or anyone else that isn’t lumbering round in a physical body.”

“Well how do I see myself?”

“Chelani, chelani! I’ll make you a looking-glass on the way up.”

Oddly, she did not quite recall getting from her bed to the window, though the journey was always a small trial to her weak legs when no one was there to assist her.

There was a crash. She swiveled her body, still supporting herself against the window ledge. A beast had landed behind her, huge, hairy and masculine: half again the height of a man and with great tufts of fur growing from its cheeks – really fur, not just beard. The floor shook as it landed. The china cabinet rattled loudly, yet nothing moved, as if only its aethyric and not its physical weight had been affected by the shock.

So it was a dream, for all the hotness of the prickly, cracked paintwork. When you know it is a dream, you can do anything. Fly; evaporate the monster in a flash of light: anything you can imagine, you can do. But she couldn’t. Her feet seemed rooted winglessly to the ground. This ‘reality’ seemed as gross and stubborn and stupid as the physical one.

He beast reached for her hip. She felt the closeness of its paw and then heard a yelp as it withdrew the great brawny arm, as if it had been burned. Burned hands. A theme of this dream, it appeared.

The beast snarled. She smelled its rank breath. It seemed very real. Very un-dream-like. She felt panic seize her. This was terrifying. Come: she knew she was dreaming; she could at least awaken. But she couldn’t. It seemed so hard and real. The beast bore down upon her. Would she awaken at the last minute? Or was this something other than a dream?

Drums beat rhythmically, warlike and orderly.

“Unhand that girl.” The voice was feminine but stern and bold. Her shoulder was released and she turned back toward the window. A party of girl-soldiers was marching up the unkempt garden path toward them. Rifles were leveled, drums were beating and the lieutenant in charge was brunette and very handsome.

“Back away from her,” she commanded. “We have you in our sights.”

Two brutal steps shook the chinaware (or some level of it) as the thing moved backward. Then it leapt upward and was gone. Through the ceiling, perhaps?

“Are you well, honored madam? I hope you were not too frightened.” The lieutenant saluted, touching her right hand to her left shoulder. Then she bowed.

Selena bowed in return, bending forward over the warm, crackled window-ledge, holding its heat again with her soft, white, invalid’s hands..

“I am well enough, fair soldier. It is only a dream, after all.”

“Do you think so, ma’am?” asked the Lieutenant.

“I am fairly certain,” said Selena with a smile.

“Fairly certain?” The soldierly stiffness seemed to be giving way to an impish quality. “You need to be more assured than that to dismiss a dream, you know. Here, let me help you. These fine warrior-maids are certainly made from the stuff of dreams, or illusion at any rate. She gestured and her troop shimmered like reflections in a pool and faded into the bright sunlight.”

“And you, honored officer?”

“There, you address me so correctly, honored madam.”

“In this dream it seems obvious how to address you, noble defender. And are you not forged also of the stuff of dreams?”

“My shape and habit most certainly is.” The lieutenant shimmered like her troop. The hungry sunlight of mundane reality ate her form, yet there was something left. A much smaller figure, like a little girl with small wings and huge, huge, anime eyes.”

“I hope I do not disappoint you. I am sure the noble brunette was more to your taste. But here I am, for what I am, as real and respectable as anything else. Or as real, at any rate.”

Selena sighed. “You know I should like to believe that, but I know I am dreaming you; dreaming or half-imagining.”

“If you are half-imagining, what is the other half, honored madam?”

“I try cleverly to beguile myself with your arguments.”

“You, madam, are a solipsist.”

“Sadly, no. I believe in the world outside that window: in trees and grass; in governments and money; in motor cars and jobs and careers and men and marriage and worldly cynicism and a whole teeming world that has no place for the likes of me. But I no longer believe in imaginary friends and imaginary worlds and bold lady soldiers in coats of red, and anime-eyed pixie-kin such as – forgive me honored little friend – such as you.”

“Grown up, have you? Taken the King’s Shilling and turned State’s evidence against your own kind? Is that what you think you’ve done?”

“I have ceased to deceive myself, even though I argue so hard to maintain my sweet illusions out of your pretty mouth.”

“Grown up,” said the pixie girl with all the subtle-world of contempt in her voice. “Well, you left it too late. Six months ago you might have gotten away with it.”

“And now, honored little friend?” asked Selena, smiling sadly at her own attempts to resist the inevitable.”

“You’ll see.” Said the pixie with a certain knowing smugness in her voice.

“I see indeed. My subconscious couldn’t think of anything.”

“That thing will be back in a moment. It will guess I have tricked it. Why do you think it reached for your hip?”

“I suppose my fantasies have a mildly adult tint these days.”

“Stuff and piffle. It wanted your pistol.”

“You mean…”

“Yes, the Raihira-pistol you were given two years ago to protect yourself, that hangs invisibly at your side.”

“I had forgotten that – at least, my conscious mind had. I became well enough to go to a school for a few weeks. I was often very afraid. The thought of that gun by my side was a comfort, though I really knew a gun of air could do no real good or harm.”

“Not to the relatively innocuous beasts that might have attacked you on your way to school, it is true. But it is a powerful weapon, nevertheless. One of the most powerful given to a private individual such as yourself, honored ma’am. A miniature of the great Raihira-cannon on the Imperial Princess. At its highest setting it can knock a fighter-craft out of the sky or demolish a small building. Will you humor me by drawing it?”

“I’ll humor you, honored little friend.”

Selena drew the invisible weapon. She could see it fairly well, being, she presumed, in a dream or a very powerful daydream. She spun it in her hand like a cowboy – a thing she could never have done in real life.

“Put it on the setting one above the lowest,” said the imp in a tone of urgency.

Selena clicked the little switch.

There was a crash as the tufted man-thing landed on the floorboards again.

“Just in time. Dream-timing is so elegant, isn’t it.”

“Never mind that, honored ma’am. Blast the beast.”

Selena felt again the closeness of the beast. It was as real as before. For a moment the sheer aggression and weight of its presence brought back the sense of panic. Her self-cynicism gave way momentarily to fear.

She leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger. A wide beam of what looked like yellow light expanded out of the slender muzzle. By the time it hit the creature it was perhaps thee feet square. Her attacker was smashed in to the wall with extraordinary force. The wall shuddered and broke. The chinaware fell and broke. The beast was gone.

The room was also back to normal. Nothing broken or even slightly disturbed.

“Remarkable the way everything can be set right in dreams,” said Selena.

“What you broke were the subtle bodies of gross things. So long as the gross things retain their shapes, their subtle bodies will re-form around them. But tell the truth – aren’t you glad you had that pistol?”

Selena re-holstered it with an involuntary flourish. She covered her face with her hands.

“The truth? Yes, I felt relieved. The truth? I wish the relief – I almost wish the threat – were no deception. Even such a threat would be better than being marooned on this dull world of beings so strange to me – stranger even than that beast. But you can no longer deceive me. I can no longer deceive myself through you. I don’t want to grow up. I see nothing in it that will do me a bit of good or make me even slightly happy, but reality has to be faced.”

“Reality, reality!” sang the imp in a sweet, mocking voice. “There are a thousand and twenty-seven brands of reality, and they’ll all have to be faced, my girl” (here she wagged a finger just like a grown-up admonishing daydreams to their so-inevitable death) “They’ll every last one of them have to be faced.”

“What do you mean by that, exactly?” asked Selena.

“Ah, now, you see, I’ve piqued your curiosity, honored humanoid.”

“Remarkable that one can pique one’s own curiosity.”

“I have heard you humanoids say that if a person thinks one mad there is no way to disprove it, for everything one says is interpreted in the light of one’s supposed madness. How can I disprove it if you think everything I say to you, you are saying to yourself? Not, in fact that I am greatly concerned to disprove it: events will do that as they roll along in their natural tide. But as a matter of purely academical interest, what would you accept as proof?”

Selena thought.

“If you could tell me something I really don’t know that proved to be true…”

“What do you mean by true?”

“I mean some objective fact in the physical world.”

“The physical world? You’re obsessed with that place, do you know that? Personally I can hardly see the place. But you’re thinking round in circles. Only the physical world can prove that anything other than the physical world exists? What sort of logic is that? What proof have you from this world that the physical world exists. And how do you know that this isn’t the physical world. There’s your window; there’s your garden. Where does one world end and another begin?”

“Oh, honored pixie, this is all sophistry. My subconscious is trying to tie me in knots, but it won’t work, though I half-wish it would.”

“You are obstinate, honored madam,” said the pixie crossly. You give so much weight to this physical world of yours for why? Simply because you spend so much time there. What kind of a reason is that? Well, you may be spending your time in other places from this out. You want a fact from your physical world? I’ll give you a fact from your physical world. That precious physical body of yours has run out of puff.”

“What – do – you – mean?” Selena stared at her soft, white invalid’s hands.

“No good looking there. Come and look over here.” The pixie-girl moved over toward Selena’s bed. Selena watched her, and then looked at the bed. It was not empty.

“No! I don’t want to see!” She screamed the words, but the scream did not strain her throat as a scream normally does. It was more like a dream-scream.

“You’d better come,” said the Pixie, a little more gently. She extended a hand. Selena came to her and took the hand. The touch was not like a physical touch, but it was definitely a touch. She looked at the bed and saw herself lying there, white and motionless.

Selena too was white. Her current body expressed that. “What has happened – am I – I mean the body, is it -”

“Dead? No. It is still breathing. But I don’t think it can wake up for a long time.”

“A coma?”

“Is that what you call it?”

Selena tried to touch the forehead of her physical body. Was it cold and clammy – or was she just feeling her own expectation? The feeling was only half a feeling, as in a dream. Had the physical world taken on the misty status of the dream-world now? Or was this whole thing a dream in which she would soon awaken in her accustomed physical body?

She felt faint. Can one faint in a dream? Can one lose consciousness when one is unconscious already? The room span. Could a subtle body hit the floor or would gravity ignore it?

“That was just about the most tactless way you could have introduced the poor thing to the fact that she has lost the use of her physical body,” said Nurse Camilla. “No wonder she has reacted so badly. She was never strong. Why can’t you creatures ever try to be responsible?”

“Responsible?” said the pixie. “Wasn’t it I who saved her from that thing that got into her room?”

“And would a little delicacy over the matter of her condition have been so difficult?” The nurse seemed forbidding to a pixie in her starched white uniform.

“How was I to know it would upset her, honored ministress?”

“You knew well enough. You just became vexed.”

“She was being very aggravating with her nonsense about the physical world, and anything I said, she said it was her saying it to herself. That would irritate the very Angel of Love herself.”

“Don’t be profane. Now, she’s coming round.”

Selena opened her eyes slowly, wondering what world she would see.

“Nurse Camilla,” she said.

“Yes, dear. It is I.”

As this work should eventually be published, we may not be able to keep all episodes available at the Nest indefinitely, nor can we let whole episodes go out on syndication (we shall break them with “more” tags so that they can be read in full here).

We hope you will enjoy the first novel in Telluria ever to stir the Femmekin imagination.

I saw a rare Aristasian comment on the matter on an Otherkin site. It said in part:

In Aristasia, as in many traditional societies, the title of Princess is not that rare. In modern Britain, only a tiny handful of people bear the title, since it only applies to people very near the throne. In all Aristasian nations there are dozens, if not hundreds, of princesses, some very far from succession (there is an Aristasian novel being serialized online currently in which one character is a princess 54th in line to the throne of Novaria).

So if other peoples are similar to ours I am not that surprised to find a scattering of princesses – a Queen would be quite a different matter!

In fact I wonder why there are no princesses among my people here – but perhaps the time has not yet come for our royalty to be deployed.

Full discussion here

I asked a teacher about this and she wrote to me:

Intemorphic royalty is considered to be of semi-divine birth. The Aristasian Imperial family have the Sun-blood in their veins. Others might have the blood of other Janyati – Sai Sushuri or Sai Mati for instance. They are not like roman emperors or modern Telluran politicians who have gained power because they are popular with the mob or the moneyed interests or the army. They are incarnations of an Angelic Principle, servants of Dea and the people, spiritual leaders on the Raihira plane. For such an intemorph to be incarnated as a schizomorph would be a very great fall.

So far, we know no Royal Femmekin or claimants to royalty. But of course languages and ideas may differ. Among some High Elven peoples, perhaps the name “Princess” may mean something akin to what “Raihira” (a member of the Noble Estate) means in Aristasia.

And what of Elven intemorphs? In Telluria the concept of intemorphism is new, so people of intemorph kin may try to understand themselves according to the schizomorph model – that being the only one they consciously know. But are there Elven maidens – Princesses or other – who recall life among a people where there were no boy-elves, and perhaps two kinds of girl-elves?

It is an exciting time! Perhaps we are on the verge of discovering much!

Chelani: One of the two intemorphic sexes. Physically very much weaker than melini, often considered the more spiritual sex. Melini are ruled by Sai Sushuri, the principle of Universal Love. In some races blonde hair is a secondary sexual characteristic of chelani, and they are sometimes colloquially referred to as ‘blondes’.

Complementary Sexes: Chelani and melini are complimentary sexes, both feminine. They are based, respectively, on the complementary principles of Sushuri (intemorphic Venus) and Thame (intemorphic Jupiter), rather than the opposite principles of Venus and Mars (Sushuri and Vikhe).

Femininity: The primary state of life. Just as the sun and moon existed long before the physical bodies that currently represent the Solar and Lunar principles to the Earth (and as these and all the seven planetary principles are represented in every world and dimension) . So femininity existed long before there were female creatures (or intemorphs) to manifest it. The principle comes first, the subtle manifestation second, the gross manifestation long afterward.

According to intemorph thought, femininity is not merely the counterpart to masculinity, but is the natural condition of life (a fact perhaps underscored on the biological level by the fact that in Telluri, feminine mental and physical characteristics are primary in all creatures and masculine ones are only created by exposure in the womb – and then at puberty – to masculinising hormones). Masculinity is one possible branching-off from the central Reality. So there are worlds in which masculinity exists and worlds in which it does not, but femininity is universal.

Intemorph: (Race or individual) having two complementary sexes, both feminine, known as chelani and melini.

Melini: Intemorph sex ruled by Sai Thame, the principle of Harmony and Order. Melini are very strong physically (more so than most masculi) and very protective toward chelani. In some intemorph races dark hair is a secondary sexual characteristic of melini, and they are sometimes known colloquially as ‘brunettes’.

Schizomorph: (Race or individual) having two opposite sexes, one masculine, one feminine, known as male and female (in Raihiralan mascul and femin).

We spoke of how some faerie kin have somewhat pointed ears and others can “feel” their wing. Some Exile Aristasians and other Femmekin have bodily irregularities that correspond to our non-human nature (I shan’t go into the things I was told as they are of a personal sort).

My friend then suggested a theory that might explain this. People tend to talk about “non-human souls in human bodies”, but the idea that the body is a single and purely physical thing is rather West-Tellurian. Other cultures recognise various types of subtle body.

Suppose one or more of our subtle bodies remains of our true shape? A faerie might really have wings (though not physical ones) and Femmekin might actually have chelanic or melinic subtle bodies rather than ones corresponding to their human-female physical ones. This would explain certain things.

Of course the ways a subtle body affects a physical body may vary, so not eveyone will have the same “symptoms”.

One thing I have noted is that Femmekin (and most of my experience is of Exile Aristasians) tend to be rather “delicate” physically and prone to illness – even though Puran Aristasians are noted for their quick healing. This may be because the intemorphic subtle body does not mix well with the schizomorphic physical one.

Has anyone any experiences she would care to discuss?

(Naughty PS – My friend always has angel-wings in Virtual Reality and says they are part of her Virtual Self, but denies that she is anything other than a normal wingless Aristasian chelana in origin – hmmmm!)

A. Aristasians don’t use the word Femmekin, but the concept of Intemorphism (a race having two feminine sexes) seems to have been introduced to Telluria by them. It is this concept that makes the idea of Femmekin possible. Without it Femmekin could not have identified themselves and would probably (as many still do) have tried to understand themselves in schizomorphic (male/female race) terms.

Q. Are Aristasians Otherkin?

A. Otherkin are non-humans who in one way or another are incarnate in Telluria (earth). Exile Aristasians fit into this pattern. They belong to the Motherland, not to Telluria and believe that their origins are there. So logically you have to regard them as a subset of Otherkin.

Q. Would they be happy about that? Would they identify themselves as Otherkin?

A. Aristasians are a very logical people, so I think they would accept that they are a subset of Otherkin – but of course the term Otherkin defines what people are not, not what they are. “Gaijin” means non-Japanese people, so Americans are a subset of Gaijin. But most Americans don’t identify themselves as Gaijin, they think of themselves as American. In the same way, Aristasians don’t identify themselves as Otherkin, they identify themselves as Aristasian.

Actually the Aristasians think more like the Japanese. To them everyone who isn’t an Aristasian is an Outlander (Aristasian equivalent to Gaijin). That is the fundamental distinction for Aristasians: Aristasian and Outlander.

Q. Of course there is a difference. Americans, and Japanese, live in a large country surrounded by millions of their own people. Aristasians, like other Otherkin, are a tiny minority surrounded by an alien people.

A. That is true, but you have to remember that Aristasians, especially Exiles , see themselves as an outpost of a great and powerful Empire, while they see Tellurians – especially modern Western Tellurians – as barbarians.

Q. That sounds harsh.

A. It isn’t thought of harshly, but they see a people who:

1. Kill their own kind – often in organised wars.
2. Practise torture and cruelty fairly regularly in every generation.
3. Appear to have an obsession with their own waste products and reproductive functions, referring to them frequently, sometimes literally and sometimes as means of vituperation, humour or emphasis.
4. Have a ‘science’ which, while fairly sophisticated in technical terms, is grossly ignorant regarding everything beyond the physical plane.

These are signs of a crude and semi-civilised people to Aristasians. Therefore, they do not see themselves as being ‘outnumbered’ by people of their own standing, but as constituting an outpost of civilisation in a savage land.

Q. Did Aristasian ideas develop from broader Otherkin ideas

A. No. Aristasia seems to have begun in Telluria considerably before Otherkin. The sense that some people do not belong to Telluria but to somewhere else seems to have developed in several places independently. I makes me wonder if, for some reason, Telluria isn’t attracting souls that do not truly belong here.

Q. So Aristasians must also be a subset of Femmekin.

A. Yes, Femmekin are a subset of Otherkin, Aristasians a subset of Femmekin.

Q. But Aristasia came before Femmekin.

A. As a concept in Telluria, yes. It is through Aristasia that the knowledge of intemorphic peoples is available in Telluria.

Q. Do Aristasians recognise other Femmekin?

A. They don’t use the word, but in various places Aristasians suggest or imply that there are other intemorphic peoples than themselves. They also recognise the shiani, which is the Aristasian term for fae, and naturally refers to faerie peoples who are intemorphic.

Q. Do Aristasians accept that shiani may be here in Telluria?

A. Their views vary. Some hold that all shiani (even Tellurian faeries) are intemorphic. I think they might be slow to accept the idea that a faery is among them in a more-or-less human body.

Q. Have you tried that on them?

A. Er – no.

Q. You use a lot of Aristasian language. Do you think all Femmekin should use Aristasian language?

A. I use the English language too, though I am not even human. It is the communication tool fate has given me. Aristasia has a language of description and philosophy that allows us to talk about and understand intemorphism. It would be foolish to disregard that.

Q. What about Aristasian manners? I notice that you ‘make reverence’ – bow -like an Aristasian.

A. Most civilised peoples bow – Indians, Japanese, Chinese – even Europeans used to. For Femmekin, the nearest Great Civilisation to us is the Herthelan Raihir (Aristasian Empire). Naturally we will pick up their manners.

See if it touches you as it touches me.

The beast snarled. She smelled its rank breath. It seemed very real. Very un-dream-like. She felt panic seize her. This was terrifying. Come: she knew she was dreaming; she could at least awaken. But she couldn’t. It seemed so hard and real. The beast bore down upon her. Would she awaken at the last minute? Or was this something other than a dream?

Drums beat rhythmically, warlike and orderly.

“Unhand that girl.” The voice was feminine but stern and bold. Her shoulder was released and she turned back toward the window. A party of girl-soldiers was marching up the unkempt garden path toward them. Rifles were leveled, drums were beating and the lieutenant in charge was brunette and very handsome.

“Back away from her,” she commanded. “We have you in our sights.”

Two brutal steps shook the chinaware (or some level of it) as the thing moved backward. Then it leapt upward and was gone. Through the ceiling, perhaps?

“Are you well, honored madam? I hope you were not too frightened.” The lieutenant saluted, touching her right hand to her left shoulder. Then she bowed.

Selena bowed in return, bending forward over the warm, crackled window-ledge, holding its heat again with her soft, white, invalid’s hands..

“I am well enough, fair soldier. It is only a dream, after all.”

“Do you think so, ma’am?” asked the Lieutenant.

“I am fairly certain,” said Selena with a smile.

“Fairly certain?” The soldierly stiffness seemed to be giving way to an impish quality. “You need to be more assured than that to dismiss a dream, you know. Here, let me help you. These fine warrior-maids are certainly made from the stuff of dreams, or illusion at any rate. She gestured and her troop shimmered like reflections in a pool and faded into the bright sunlight.”

“And you, honored officer?”

“There, you address me so correctly, honored madam.”

“In this dream it seems obvious how to address you, noble defender. And are you not forged also of the stuff of dreams?”

“My shape and habit most certainly is.” The lieutenant shimmered like her troop. The hungry sunlight of mundane reality ate her form, yet there was something left. A much smaller figure, like a little girl with small wings and huge, huge, anime eyes.”

“I hope I do not disappoint you. I am sure the noble brunette was more to your taste. But here I am, for what I am, as real and respectable as anything else. Or as real, at any rate.”

Selena sighed. “You know I should like to believe that, but I know I am dreaming you; dreaming or half-imagining.”

“If you are half-imagining, what is the other half, honored madam?”

“I try cleverly to beguile myself with your arguments.”

“You, madam, are a solipsist.”

“Sadly, no. I believe in the world outside that window: in trees and grass; in governments and money; in motor cars and jobs and careers and men and marriage and worldly cynicism and a whole teeming world that has no place for the likes of me. But I no longer believe in imaginary friends and imaginary worlds and bold lady soldiers in coats of red, and anime-eyed pixie-kin such as – forgive me honored little friend – such as you.”

“Grown up, have you? Taken the King’s Shilling and turned State’s evidence against your own kind? Is that what you think you’ve done?”

“I have ceased to deceive myself, even though I argue so hard to maintain my sweet illusions out of your pretty mouth.”

“Grown up,” said the pixie girl with all the subtle-world of contempt in her voice. “Well, you left it too late. Six months ago you might have gotten away with it.”

“And now, honored little friend?” asked Selena, smiling sadly at her own attempts to resist the inevitable.”

“You’ll see.” Said the pixie with a certain knowing smugness in her voice.

Find the full episode in the second post of this thread