Sidekick

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s commissioned prompt.

The Aunt Family has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ.

“Were you taught about the archetypes?”

It wasn’t the question Evangaline had been expecting; it segued out of left field while she was still pondering the implications of someone leaving their family, of a son leaving the family.

“The tarot?” she offered, while she tried to remember things Asta and the others had mentioned to her. The archetypes, the archetypes… “No, no, not the tarot, but sometimes it seems similar. Something about the stories? Aunt Asta mentioned them, but she didn’t…”

“No, she wouldn’t have. I don’t believe she had the skill of seeing the stories. I wonder if you will.”

“I… don’t know. When Aunt Asta taught me about them, I had dreams…” Only Rosaria could make Eva feel this way, like she was being measured and judged against an invisible ruler. She shrugged, trying to shake off the elementary-school feeling. “In the Wizard of Oz, the way at the end Dorothy say ‘and you were there, and you, and you? That’s what it was like. Crazy dreams, with Uncle Arges as the Scarecrow.”

She gestured hurriedly with her free hand. “I don’t mean really the scarecrow. I mean, a sidekick, following another guy around. They were younger than I knew him, my age at the time, so late teens. I think I’d seen a picture of him at that age recently, one of the family shots? But this was much more vivid.”

“The Sidekick.” Rosaria made her “thinking” noise. “That would be Argie at that age. I don’t have the paintings with me, nor could you give them a proper look while you were driving, but the Sidekick is one of the archetypes we see a lot in our family. The Buddy. The support. That was Argie to Willard, every inch of the way. It’s what’s so tragic about the whole thing.”

More: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534069.html
The whole story: http://lynthornealder.com/fiction/aunt-family

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