In this world, magical creatures exist alongside human beings. They have been helping us in small ways, more as appeasement than some sort of benevolence.
...
The room bustled with the shifting of chairs and the scribbling of notes. The company had brought in one of the top instructors in the field of magic theory to explain things to the industry leaders. The slides had been packed with information with the audience in different stages of understanding.
"Are there any questions so far?" The instructor said, levitating a glass of water to drift to his hand. He took a sip before adding, "Let's continue."
"Excuse me," an executive said, raising his hand, "So, why is it that humans are not allowed to use magic?"
The instructor turned from his presentation to look at the executive, seated among peers who had already shifted slightly away from him.
"Hmm, a good question. Are you prepared for the answer?" The instructor said. The executive nodded.
"Alright. Then let me begin by asking you a question. Why were you late to this meeting?"
The executive looked taken aback, then cleared his throat, "Uh, sorry about that. Had some trouble finding the meeting room."
The instructor nodded thoughtfully. Then he said, "You are lying."
The executive choked out a laugh and shrugged, "Right. Magic."
"No, not magic," The instructor said. He patted his terminal desktop, "Security cameras. The contents of which I will keep secure." He added to the panicked executive. "I apologize for scaring you, but this leads into my point. Humans can lie."
There came a murmur through the audience. Fae in the crowd gave uneasy glances to human coworkers. For their part, some gave apologetic nods and others gave indignant grumbles, and some stayed perfectly still and silent.
Another member of the audience raised their hand, a Fae woman. The instructor sipped his water again before acknowledging her.
"Does being able to lie make you unable to use magic?" She asked.
The instructor set down his cup and sighed. "Quite the opposite, my child." He turned to his terminal and tapped on the screen to open a new projection.
"Humans and Fae are not terribly different, you see." He clicked through the slides, each a colorful, albeit somewhat childish, depiction of humans and Fae.
"Among the most notable differences will be our lifespan," A new slide showed the young elf and the ghost of a human, "and our Oum," It showed the outline of an elf and a person with something glowing in their bodies. "Which has been loosely translated to the 'soul'."
The elf had a blue color while the human's was red.
A few members of the audience were taking notes, others had checked out and were scrolling through their devices. Still others, mostly humans, were watching and already forming the chip which grows on one's shoulder when they are told they are fundamentally incapable of something.
A young man in the front row wearing a rather irritated look on his face spoke up, "I don't see how being able to lie means we can't use magic."
The instructor became visibly irritated at the interruption.
"Again, it's not that you can't, it is that you are not allowed." The screen clicked off as he faced the audience. "Because it isn't the lies you tell others that makes you dangerous," He gestured to the audience, "It's the lies you tell yourself!"
The room darkened and speckled with flickers of lights, the air became a dazzling display of the night sky.
"Humans try to fathom the impossible. The infinite of space and time and you have made marvelous progress. But how much can you hope to comprehend? You live for barely a century and half of that is spent in diapers!" The lights in the room began to hum and float around, circling the instructor.
"You are like bees. Industrious and fascinating, but dangerous in your numbers. If a single bee were to come to you and ask for the method to nuclear energy, not only would you doubt she would understand, but if she did even by mistake figure it out, you could scarcely trust that she would be responsible with it! It's just not in the nature of these tiny beings to handle things so far beyond their ken." The instructor tapped one of the motes of buzzing light. It turned red and began to spin around faster and faster. "And if just ONE of these little, marvelous beings manages to seduce the secrets from you and the rotten history of your kind repeats itself--" He trailed off as the red buzzing light flickered and exploded, causing a wave of heat and a shower of sparks, and left the room empty of light. The instructor held up his hand, where the manacle on his wrist hummed with a red light, "Well, you have to bear the weight of your decision forever." He dropped his hand. The room was silent.
Eventually, he lifted his head, the light returning to the room.
"May I continue?" He asked. He nodded to the following silence. "Very well." He clicked back to the original presentation and continued.