Pre-story: Tairikie a year earlier

From [community profile] dailyprompt, 2013-10-25: “getting dressed for a special occasion”

This is in the setting of my upcoming nano project, in timeline, the cold-season before school begins.

“Tair-tair, hurry up.”

It wasn’t so much that Tairiekie’s father was rushing her as that he’d called three times in the last half an hour, and that he kept using her baby-name. She was at least a little past being called that.

“Almost ready, father.” She tugged the sleeves of her under-shift straight.

It was new; the whole outfit was new. The festival of Tienaabaa1 was about new creations. It was also many layers thick, because the festival of Teinaabaa took place on the shortest days of the year.

“Do you think that my project will win an award?” It was her last year competing in the children’s level. She had won an award every year before, but she’d only taken first place twice.

“I am sure you will do us proud. Are you dressed yet, Tair-tair?”

“Almost.” She had done the embroidery herself; she tugged her overvest to fit better over what was supposed to be a chest and wasn’t, quite, yet. The loose vest looked more like a child’s clothing than a grown woman’s, but all the decoration made it look loved and proper, at least.

Four layers of blue swished back at her in the silvered mirror in her parents’ room. Blue, for Tienaabaa. Blue for winter. Blue for the engineers, her mother, her father… and likely her as well.

She clattered down the stairs in her dyed-blue boots. “I’m ready.” Everyone at the festival would know she was loved and cherished. Everyone was going to know how brilliant her festival demonstration was, too.

Her father kissed the top of her head. “You will make your parents proud, Tairiekie.”

  1. . Tienaabaa (TEEN-ah-bah) is the deity of the wind and the water, the mind and creation. Formerly Tienebrah, (Tee-EN-eh-brah), the word was Calenyenized in the mid 1200’s.

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0 thoughts on “Pre-story: Tairikie a year earlier

  1. Ah. I remember seeing the older form of the name, and associating it with Latin tenebrae ‘darkness’, most familiar in English in the phrase post tenebras lux, ‘light after darkness’. Just coincidence, I suppose.

    • aah-ha, I wonder if that’s where my brain pulled it from. (I’m familiar with it from “Obtenebration,” from White Wolf/World of Darkness/Vampire:the Masquerade. Because I’m a nerd 😀

      • aah-ha, I wonder if that’s where my brain pulled it from. I was rather suspecting as much. (I’m familiar with it from “Obtenebration,” from White Wolf/World of Darkness/Vampire:the Masquerade. Because I’m a nerd 😀 I don’t know that word/name, because I’m not really much of a gaming nerd any more. But I figured that it meant something like ‘bringing darkness to block from sight’, because I really am a language nerd. 🙂 And it does. OED:

        † obtenebration, n. Etymology: < post-classical Latin obtenebration-, obtenebratio obscuration, darkening (5th cent.) < obtenebrat-, past participial stem ofobtenebrare obtenebrate v. + -io -ion suffix¹. Compare Middle French obtenebration (16th cent.). Compare later tenebration n. at tenebrate adj. Derivatives. Obs. The condition of being overshadowed or darkened; a darkening or blacking-out; shade or gloom. 1626 Bacon Sylua Syluarum §725 In every Megrim, or Vertigo, there is an Obtenebration joyned with a Semblance of Turning Round. 1672 T. Gale Court of Gentiles: Pt. I (ed. 2) iii. x. 99 The Obtenebration of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Light. 1881 E. M. Boddy Hist. Salt ii. 25 The dense obtenebration with which the object is surrounded.

        (Why, yes, I do enjoy providing citations.)

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