This is an incomplete thing that I wrote for my Writer’s Craft class.
The fae are fascinating though, before one gets into an explanation of their characteristics, one must know the basis of the fae. As whosoever may be reading this text has likely noticed, they are most often called fae. The fae or the fay is in reference to the general race as a whole, not to be confused with faeries, which applies to a specific group of them. The singular of faeries is faerie; other common spellings of this aforementioned word are fairy and faery, though the earliest is the preferred singular reference.
No one is positive of where the fae originated, though it is thought that they come from the place which we now call Ireland, though the first name it was given was Inis na bhfiodhbhadh, which means, in modern tongues, Island of the Woods. There are many theories concerning what they were before they became the fae, some think they were the dead brought back to life, others consider them to be demonic angels, whilst most think them to be elementals. None can knowingly say where or what they are from, save the fae themselves, and they are not very keen to speak to humans, especially those of the present.
The fae are a shy people, though one may question as to whether or not they are people at all. They come in all shapes and sizes: some are no taller than a match, whilst others can be as tall as that which is two fully-grown men. The fae can be round or immensely thin. They may be bald or have a full head of hair. They either have two eyes or none at all, yet, when they possess the latter, they are never blind. The fae may be of any number of colours; at times they shine as bright as the brightest star, at others they are as black as blackness.
It is true that the fae are wicked — they will not deny it, for, if anything, the fae are truthful, in fact they are incapable of telling but the truth — yet they are more often than not exuberant, and are even less often than rarely sad. When conversing amongst themselves, they speak in one of their many dialects, though, when they communicate with humans, it is most often in riddles. It is only to a choice few of the few humans to whom they talk that they speak simple common. The only persons who need not fear, when being addressed by the fae, are children for, above all else, the fae respect and protect the young. More than once, an abandoned or orphaned child has been taken by the fae, who then raise and care for them, until the child itself eventually becomes a faerie.