Clever

"Clever," the creature said, its opalescent eyes shining. "Very few of you seek faerie mounds anymore." Jansson rubbed his hands together in the cold and damp; he was grinning. "I have performed the ritual and stepped forward to be taken out of time," he said, matter-of-factly (mostly to remind the whatever-it-was that he was ready to go; once he decided to leave his family and friends to their pandemic fate, there was no need to delay). "So you have," it responded, dropping back from a crouch to sitting comfortably on the ceremonial rock. "We, who are present in all of the ages at once, seeing time as non-linear and malleable, do accept your offering of self and honor your intention to be moved as we would move you." Jansson hesitated, wondering what it meant to be "moved"; he opened his mouth to ask a clarifying question, but the creature giggled, its mouth wide in a smile that was one part greed and one part madness. "Ours now," it hissed, and Jansson evaporated into thin air. "Enjoy." It was not like traveling in the body; it was more a feeling of withering and then being reconstituted. Thrilled at arriving Somewhere on a city street, he was immediately approached by someone ranting and gesticulating wildly, pointing to a notice hung in the shop window behind him. "Those found in public not wearing a mask will be ARRESTED and PROSECUTED! Stop the spread of Spanish Flu!" "Nonononono," Jansson whispered at first (building into a scream).