She Thought She Was Moving Into A Medieval Shire. What She Got Was A Nightmare.

BY ZOE C. ZVYAGIN

Rachel Halftime, 26, is the picture of effortless cool as she sits across from me at the Pret in 2 MetroTech Center where we’ve agreed to meet. She wears a big frayed sweater and equally tattered bracelets, woven keepsakes from her many travels. Her jeans and shoes are decidedly “dad”, lightwash and utilitarian in all the right ways. Periodically she piles her big curls to either side as she shows me clips of her cat Sake on her phone. You’d never know from her smile, one that goes all the way to her eyes, that she’d just been through hell.

We’re in Brooklyn, not far from the walk-up she now shares with a friend and the aforementioned British shorthair. But only eight months ago she was escaping a dramatic, dysfunctional housing situation with three elves in an arcadian cottage.

In fall of 2021, Rachel answered an ad for roommates seeking a sublet while their fourth was backpacking Europe. She was at the end of her rope apartment hunting and didn’t want to start over from her parents’ house. The place was in a neighborhood she’d never heard of, somewhere called Majestigon, and only accessible by portal.

The rent was a steal for the space she’d be getting—a whole bathroom to herself, as well as shared use of a yard and treehouse. The portal was actually conveniently close to the subway stop she took to her job as a juice sommelier.

Wanting to strike fast, Rachel arranged a virtual pre-screen right away. But when the Zoom camera blinked on she was shocked to discover that her future housemates were in fact fabled, otherworldly beings with ethereal skin and hair.

“At that point in my life I didn’t know elves were real,” she says.

The group gelled quickly and agreed to move on to the house tour. This trip saw her trading the city skyline for endless emerald hills. The cottage itself was a smooth, friendly structure, not a proper corner in sight. Delightful shingles in candy shades adorned the roof. It was like nothing she’d ever seen, except in various fantasy-oriented intellectual properties. On November 8th, 2021, just five years after the 2016 election, Rachel signed a lease and began the next chapter of her life.

Things got off to a promising start, the house getting along as well as you could expect—and then some. She was pleasantly surprised to find them all including each other in their routines: wine nights, prestige TV, cooking dinner over a crackling fire in the middle of the room.

They had their differences, of course, but each provided a heartwarming opportunity to bridge the worlds between human and elf. Rachel found the experience enriching like study abroad, happy to exchange wisdom and local flavor with her host family. There was Gorlo, who showed her how to spot edible wildflowers. Fawnwyn, who taught her the secret to the perfect shortbread cookie. Everfina, who made her playlists of the best EDM (Elven Dance Music). All three watched with curiosity as she applied Bondi Sands with a tanning mitt.

Rachel remembers a change in the air around Friendsgiving, when Fawnwyn snapped at Gorlo over how he was cutting the gigantic braised toadstool. Apparently they’d been seeing each other and Fawnwyn was chapped about him buying tickets to spend Christmas with a nymph. Rachel didn’t know what to think: she was aware that some of the elves had hooked up before she joined the house, but she was under the impression that it was all very casual and in the past.

To additional surprise this revelation infuriated Everfina, who had also been dating Gorlo. Everfina’s anger angered Rachel, who was now feeling left out on a number of fronts: last to know, and last chosen to dance.

“He looked like a literal cartoon character,” Rachel says, noting that it still “would’ve been nice to be asked.”

The situation resolved with a surprising lack of messiness by having everyone just keep sleeping with each other. Shared blankets started coming out during movies, two voices might emerge from a shower. Rachel did her best to stay out of it, but sometimes as the outsider she found herself catching heat that was meant for someone else. Even with all the maturity and vulnerability happening they were still elves, after all (a truism used the same way as “They were only human”).

One instance in particular found Fawnwyn bristling at her because Rachel had said something supportive about how aloof guys could be. “She was like ‘Hard? It’s not hard! I don’t care!’ and then she was like ‘I’m going to the gym,’” Rachel recalls.

Things took a noticeable turn when they all had a roommate summit to check in with each other. It seemed open-ended and positive until Fawnwyn started reading a laundry list of complaints from her phone, each one subtly directed at Rachel: please put human shoes in the mudroom, please stop eating into the elf food when others can’t reciprocally try the human food. Rachel’s stomach dropped. When she looked over at Everfina for support she was stunned to see a brick wall. She hadn’t expected anything from Gorlo—his treatment of women he wasn’t interested in could best be described as benign neglect—but Everfina was her closest friend in the house.

She began taking meals in her room, making herself scarce whenever she used the cauldron. Talking about the situation made her cry. Her friends and family encouraged her to power through, reminding her that it was only temporary and a nice way to get some nature while working in the city.

Halftime, photographed by G. Heems, is excited to leave the past behind.

On the advice of her therapist, Rachel tried to lighten her expectations around what it meant to “enjoy” being at home. She kept looking for other places, again unsuccessfully. In the meantime she tried to shorten the distance between May and the present by busying her mind. She listened to podcasts around the clock.

“I knew we didn’t have to be like, best friends,” she tells me. “I would’ve been fine with just civil.”

She was starting to feel optimistic about the armistice when things devolved again. She had met someone and was spending more time at his place than her own. Fawnwyn noticed this and accused her of being “aggressively absent” from the group. Each activity she declined was like a punch. It was a persistent, pernicious pattern, Fawnwyn alleged, tantamount to harassment.

Rachel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Couldn’t believe that again it was three against one. She knew she’d never need it, but she started sleeping with a magic wand under her pillow.

Thankfully it was still there when she came home from a night out to find her room turned upside-down, every drawer half-open and clothes all over the floor.

When confronted, Fawnwyn said she believed Rachel was stealing from her. She was ready to ask the police to peacefully mediate if Rachel couldn’t admit to her crime. Rachel, now terrified but also relieved she wasn’t overreacting with the self-defense system, packed a bag for her situationship’s place. From her perch in Manhattan she was finally able to catch her breath. She was in for a big day of researching rental law in the morning.

The preliminary investigation showed she could terminate the sublease early—with conditions. She would have to give adequate notice, staying yet another month. And then she’d have to pay the remainder of the rent plus half, effectively paying two rents if she was lucky enough to get rinsed by another landlord. She couldn’t afford that scenario in either money or peace of mind. She was overwhelmed by the low-quality results, adding “reddit” to the end of every search. She wasn’t even sure if any of this applied since the shire wasn’t technically in New York. She offered, over text, to move out and find another subtenant for them. Fawnwyn threatened to sue, citing breach of contract and emotional damages.

Her boyfriend’s roommate, a 2L student, overheard all this and offered to take a look at her lease agreement. When she pulled it out of her overnight bag and unscrolled it for him, he informed her it was a just a piece of parchment with all their names on it.

“It had this wax seal that looked really real,” she says.

From a command center of sparse boy furniture, the three pieced together that Rachel’s lease was not only non-binding, but illegal. Her housemates’ threats were empty: if anything, they should be afraid that she was going to expose them. Their landlord, The Giant, would certainly find this interesting.

She never set foot in the house again, not even to get the rest of her things. In her stead she sent friends she’d made in the shire. It was an eclectic crew of mythical archetypes who had grown fiercely loyal to her during her stay, among them a satyr, a centaur, and a frog with a mandolin. The way the story was relayed to Rachel, the group showed up with hand trucks and impenetrable attitudes. At the front was The Prince, who showed a lot of character development by sticking up for someone so common. He was flanked by two bluebirds that somehow remained midair as they crossed their wings like beefy arms.

Today Rachel is happy, healing, and ready to move on. She’s still with the same guy—they had agreed she could crash while she found new accommodations, but not so long as to artificially advance their relationship. She condo-sat for someone from school—legally, she adds—until landing her current Brooklyn pad. I can’t help but ask now that she’s more settled if they’ll be moving in together next.

She laughs in a way that suggests my question is millennial and out of touch.

“Sorry!” she says, smiling and shaking her head like it’s an old, pleasant memory. “It’s just, after what I’ve been through…I think I’m good on moving for a while.” ✒︎