The Shimmer

"I've seen them with my own eyes! They're beautiful beyond compare, and kinder than any mortal could ever aspire to be! I'm not crazy, they're real! They love us all!"

— James Anderson, adventuring writer

In the early days of Human settlement, there were stories of Elves and their beauty, their charm, and their incredible cunning. Needless to say, the reality was rather underwhelming, but the ideal and the myth lived on in the form of The Shimmer.
The Shimmer are believed to be similar to Fairies, in that they are winged humanoid creatures, but that's where the similarities end. Shimmer are said to have wings made from reality itself, cloaked in the colors of truth beyond comprehension. They have bodies that simply glow in a vague shape, and they speak in a tongue that shapes reality.

"It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like how a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and felt paisley. It smelled like a total eclipse of the moon. Of course, once you got closer it got really weird."

— Sourcery, Terry Pratchett, paraphrased.

The Shimmer are said to live in a realm beyond the bounds of reality, a place called Ephemera, where they can truly manifest themselves in all their glory. Many stories exist about them taking young children who are lost and alone to this place, and showering them with affection and love.
The Shimmer are said to kidnap rescue enslave take children to ephemera against their will for their own protection never to return. It is unknown what they do to them, but it is widely believed that it is extremely unpleasant absolutely wonderful supernatural in nature.
There have been millions a few reports of missing children from orphanages that seem to correlate to the legends, particularly in that no clues have been left behind, and that the children were generally alone in life. It is believed by some that the Shimmer have taken more than is recorded, and have shifted reality to accommodate their abduction absence.
Below is an excerpt from the report of Lapis Rhinestone, a detective who was investigating the rumors of disappearing children in orphanages that shut down soon afterwards.

First, I want to make something very clear. The Shimmer are no myth, they are real. They are terrifyingly real. They do take children, like in all the stories, but not just he lost and the lonely. They take whoever they like. It doesn't matter if they have a family they love, or if they're happy where they are, the Shimmer don't care. They're looking for something specific, something only certain children have that sets them apart from everyone else: a love of Stories.

Because that's what the Shimmer are: living, breathing stories. They draw their power from their influence, and they feed off the retelling. Those rumors of Lycans eating grandmas? The tales of blonde girls breaking into a bear family's home? All them. They bend the world to fit their twisted idea of how things should go, and they don't care who gets hurt in the meantime, as long as the story gets told.

But every now and again, a new story pops up, one that doesn't have a Shimmer to feed off of it. That's where the kids come in. They take those kids and turn them into a Shimmer, attaching them to a story and teaching them to control other people's lives to fit it. But that's not all, they also bend the history they stole those kids from, making it so they never existed in the first place. Of course, there are gaps, little mistakes that allow us to know that they happened, that those kids existed, but not where they went.
That brings me to the more disturbing part of this: we've only ever noticed a tiny fraction of what they've been doing. There are thousands, maybe millions of innocent children, taken away from their homes, or some orphanage, and no one has noticed. Why would they? Who can find someone who never existed.

It is unknown exactly who Lapis Rhinestone is, as no records can be found of her, and no one in her department seemed able to recall her. However, several records, apparently given to the police by an anonymous helper, have suggested that she did have a presence at some point. These documents were examined by a group of wizards, and were discovered to have a preservation spell placed on it, with an energy similar to those used by segments of the Kaos Klan.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.

Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.

Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.

Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.

Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.

Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

No one ever said elves are nice.

Elves are bad.

— Lords and Laides, Terry Pratchett

Cultural Reception

Most people regard the Shimmer as a silly children's tale, while some think they are real. Opinions on them are split, some viewing them as wonderful guardians, others as dangerous sociopaths.