Dahozhoni Meadow sidhe

event prompt - your character discovers fairy circles in an unlikely place.

He arrived at the desert's fringes by sundown, the last rays of the summer sun making his shadow long and distorted across the sandscape that lay in front of him. Watching it was almost amusing and made him feel bigger than he knew he really was. A rustle from a nearby bush sent a prickle down his spine and his hackles raised instinctively. It was just a mouse. What would've been a beautiful meadow in daylight had turned spiky and unsettling come the evening - the pale boy held his mouth in a tight-lipped grimace as humour slipped away.

Butterfly had always been superstitious. And so when the rough grasses gave way to an almost perfect circle of bare ground, he had almost stopped in his tracks. It was a few wolf-lengths across, with grass and tiny colourful flowers lining the edges and red sand in the centre. He'd heard stories of these - fáinne sí as his mother had called them.

"They are fickle folk. Do not offend them or they will put thorns in your nest and bugs in your ears." she had said. Whether he believed her all these moons later or not, some residual fear kept his paws dancing on the edge of the ring as he made to investigate.