Fairies are portrayed in the series as beautiful, with pointed ears and glossy, thin skin. Physically, fairies are superhumanly strong and durable. They are tough, ferocious, and incredibly long-lived, but not immortal . The Shreveport werewolf packmaster says, "They love to flirt with disaster, they love to role-play."In this universe, fairies are extremely attractive to humans as well as to vampires. Vampires have a hard time resisting fairies because of their smell and taste; fairy blood is intoxicating to vampires. A fairy, Claudine , is first introduced in Dead to the World . Watching vampires react to her, Sookie thinks that “it was like watching cats that'd suddenly spotted something skittering along the baseboards.”This makes face to face interactions between them all but impossible. However some individuals, such as Sookie's great-grandfather Niall Brigant, are able to "suppress their essence", effectively masking their scent and making such contact safer.
In the Southern Vampire Series, fairies can be killed with either lemons, limes or iron. When a fairy dies a corpse is not left, just a sparkling powder (or fairy dust); the body just fades away and the spirit of the fairy goes to the next oldest family member to tell them of their death. The fae call their afterlife "The summerlands".
Fairies are secretive about their own race, customs, interactions, and world. They normally inhabit the fae world, named Faery, but there are portals and doorways between it and the human world. Sookie's great-grandfather Niall is a fairy prince, and Claudine and Claude are Niall’s grandchildren. In later books, Claudine admits that she is Sookie's fairy godmother. She was assigned this role in an effort to move on to the next level, which is angelhood.
Fairies have some form of magic,but it is said that fairy magic weakens if a fairy lives too long in the human world. Fairies have afflinity to some of the Elements namely water or air.(sookie comes from the sky fairies)
Fae creatures inhabit the Fairy world in which fairies are the base race and the majority while other fae creatures: nymphs, water spirits, angels, demons, pixies, goblins, and brownies are the minority.
Sookie's great-grandfather is over a thousand years old and her half-human great-uncle is centuries old. Those who have fairy blood in them but are not full-blooded fairies are immune to the effects of iron, lemons and limes, while maintaining some of the attractive qualities of fairies. Niall states that Sookie and Jason have both inherited the beauty of the fairies but only certain creatures can tell they are part-fairy. As a genetic quirk (possibly due to fairy blood), Jason greatly resembles his great-uncle to the point where others are unable to differentiate between the two of them. Sookie appears to have inherited more magical fairy powers (such as the power of telepathy and immunity against mind spells from vampires and maenads), while Jason only has the power of being able to easily attract women and gay men. (However, most assume this is mainly due to his good looks).