#unknown au

John clucked his tongue as he reached absently for the chips left over from his takeaway lunch. Cheap and convenient, just something to fill him up. He could think about how to narrow his search as he chewed and cleaned the grease from his fingers on a nearby paper napkin.

Once his fingers were clean, he added the word ‘folklore’ to the end of his previous search. He gave it a second thought before inserting ‘English’ in front of it.

This brought up expected results as well. Pixies, fairies, gnomes, leprechauns… It all seemed a little too fantastical based on John's (admittedly limited) experiences. The tiny man didn't have wings, didn't seem able to fly or in possession of magic powers. The closest things John witnessed were those bursts of speed while he was trying to get away. Surely if he had more tricks up his sleeve than that, John would have seen them.

One term among them stood out as something he couldn't immediately associate with some fairy tale or cartoon. ‘Brownie’. John's brow furrowed, interest piqued as he clicked on the first link featuring the unfamiliar creature. 

Brownies certainly seemed a more low-key sort compared to fairies and whatnot. Little people living in walls, trying not to be seen and quietly carrying out small household tasks in exchange for food. John thought back to the scones Mrs. Hudson had left out…

One point against brownies as an option was that every depiction and description of them was significantly more impish or animalistic than what John saw. Seemed very much like any human he might see around, just one who happened to be inches high.

Then again, as John read on, brownies were not to be trifled with, if the folklore was to be believed. Though they mostly operated in the shadows, they were known to be mischievous as well. Playing tricks on people when they least expected it, and if they got pissed off, they became more hostile and took on the form of ‘boggarts’. 

He had to blink away the memory of trapping the guy under a mug. Suddenly he was really hoping that he wasn't on the right track.

John sat back in his chair to try and reset his thoughts to come up with something else he could try. He gave a sigh, once again going for a few chips when something gave him pause. A small yet sudden shift in his peripheral vision.

Glancing over, John was surprised to find the tiny man on the far edge of the kitchen table. He stood there as straight and tall as he could make himself, arms crossed and eyes sharply fixed on John.

John in turn froze; this had happened a good handful of times now, but he'd never appeared this close.

An even bigger shock was that the man began marching toward John. All he could do was stare as his eyebrows jumped up, clueless about what brought this on. Did something change to make him behave this way?

The determined march slowed as the little man came within inches of John's hand, still stuck outstretched and hovering near the chips. He broke eye contact with the human to glare at the hand, just about twice as large as he was tall, and then cut those sharp blue eyes right back to John.

John broke out of his trance to awkwardly move his hand back, feeling like he was intruding all of a sudden. Unsure of what else to do with it, he let it come to rest near his keyboard.

He could swear he saw those tiny eyes narrow as the man all but stomped forward to close the distance with the chips and snatch a small one up. When all John did was blink dumbfoundedly, he huffed and turned on his heel to go back the way he came.

From that spot right next to the chips, the screen of John's laptop was in full view of the man as he turned. He spared it a glance and scoffed.

“Dull…” John thought he heard the man mutter.

Before John could even think about how to take that, let alone respond to it, the tiny figure turned into an impossibly fast blur and vanished over the edge of the table.

John sat there for a long time, mouth agape as his chips went stone cold beside him. When it all caught up to him, he glanced at his idle computer and closed it.