Otherworld

Her name was Kaer Ibomith.

She was the daughter of a man of the Otherworld, named Ethel Ambweil.

She lived under a particular condition that had been placed upon her, or perhaps had simply grown out of what she was.

One year she lived in human form, the following year she lived as a swan.

And the hills of Ireland kept their silence.

The grass grew over the mound entrances, Most people walked past them without looking twice, but some people, on certain mornings, thought they could hear something underneath, something that might have been music or might have been the sound that old stone makes when it is very old and very full.

The Irish Otherworld is not a place the dead go, that is the first thing to understand about it.

This was because it is easy to confuse it with an afterlife.

The distortion of time and a warning that must be obeyed exactly if the traveller wants to survive the return.

But not every person who entered the Otherworld was invited there by a king.

In another medieval account, the person who crossed over was a frightened child, hiding from the adults around him.

And on the other side, he found an entire country beneath the ground.

But according to Ralph, she had not always been one of the fairy people.

She had once been human.

The story said that she'd been taken away while still a girl, separated from her own family, and carried into the Otherworld.

By the time she was later encountered again, she'd changed so completely that Ralph described her as having taken on the nature of the beings who'd abducted her.

What begins as a test of courage becomes something far stranger.

An encounter with the Otherworld and a warning about a terrible fate awaiting the people of Connacht.

This is the story of the adventure of Nera.

Our story begins at Cruachan.

The other world army intended to attack Kruikon and unless the people of Connacht were warned, the destruction Nera had witnessed would become reality.

His wife tells him that he can return to his own people and warn them, but he must bring proof of where he has been.

And so, Nera takes with him flowers and plants from the Otherworld.

When Nera returns to Kruikon, he discovers something astonishing.

They would have a three-day feast to celebrate Samhain, and they told ghost stories because they thought that as the border between years and seasons, that that was a night when other borders came down.

And they believed in a mystical land called the Otherworld.

And the Otherworld was inhabited by very scary things like ghosts and these creatures called the She, who were like super creepy fairies.

And Samhain was the one night because the borders came down.

It was the one night that the she could cross into our world and they would do all kinds of terrible things.

It was the Nightwalkers.

And the Nightwalkers came from the Otherworld, too.

And these things, these things weren't small.

They were big.

On Samhain, the night of the thinning veil, the Shi open up, allowing the spirits of ancestors and otherworldly beings to pass into our world.

This was a time for receiving messages from the Otherworld, prophecies, guidance or warnings.

Offerings were left at the Mounds to appease the Xi and ensure their blessings for the coming year.

Folklore tells of mortals who entered the Mounds during Samhain and returned with wisdom or never returned at all.

While Biltain was a summer festival, I have no idea how to actually say that one, Samhain was essentially a festival for the dead.

A story called The Boyhood Deeds of Finn says that the fairy mounds or portals to the Otherworld were always open at Samhain.

Each year the fire breather Aelin emerges from the Otherworld and burns down the Palace of Tara during the Samhain Festival after lulling everyone to sleep with his music.

So why is it more focused around death? Is it just because of the time of year? It's just because

you're entering the dark half of the year.