"A bit, yeah," Lambert nods, picking up another bit of noodles to put in his mouth before he continues. "Most commonly, the stories involve fairies or elves replacing a human child with one of their own, or sometimes a bit of wood spelled to look like the missing child. The parents would then raise without knowing any better. That's the changeling." He scowls. "Superstition held that one way to get the human back was to put the changeling through all sorts of shit, freak the fairies out and make them change their minds. Mostly sounded like an excuse to an abuse children, if you ask me."

But that doesn't line up with what John's told him so far, and he visibly has to stop, snap his mouth shut, and cut himself off before he rattles off any more information. This is John's life, after all, not just some story, and even someone like him can recognize that. I wasn't born that way and until my twenties...

"Sometimes 'changeling' is used to talk about the stolen human, like in Shakespeare. Stories have less of a consensus on what happens to them." In some, they're used as a tithe to the devil, or raised to be servants, or treated like kings ... but even in those, the child never seems to want to remain.