Archive | September 4, 2014

The Aunt Family – a Welcome

Sep4

The family – Evangaline’s family, Beryl’s family, the family – has known how to use power for a very long time. They’ve known who should have power, too – them, of course, and preferably nobody else.

It’s a big family, but there’s a lot of power to be had; they’ve been collecting it for quite a while.

And, because they understand – through hard experience, in some cases – what happens if you hold power without paying sufficient attention to it, the family condenses that power into one person in each branch of the family, an unmarried, childless woman who has, so the theory goes, no distractions from her power. Because the family is not known for its creativity, they call this woman the Aunt – and she is always a niece of the former Aunt.

Evangaline has recently taken on the mantle of the Aunt, but the family is already guessing that her teenage niece Beryl will be the next one to wear the mantle.

The “Aunt Family” setting is rural modern fantasy, set in an unnamed town where the family’s reputation has, over the generations, gotten around. The magic is quiet, but nobody really doubts that it’s there.

The Aunt Family Landing Page is here.

BerylEvaRuan

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/802651.html. You can comment here or there.

Friday Flash/Djinni Icon Flash: Like This and Like That

Sep4

“This is the dance.” Senna took Autumn’s hands. “Your feet go like…” She hitched up her skirts to show her bare toes. “This and then this and then this.”

“Like, ah…” Autumn tried the steps. “This and then this, and then this and this?”

“Almost!” Senna grinned and showed off the steps again. “This and then this and so on.”

“This and then this…” Autumn found herself singing it. “Then this and so on. Senna, you’re a genius.”

“I’m a genius? It’s a dance.” The dance-mistress’ feet moved in a more complicated pattern this time, and her skirts swished against her knees.

“You’re a genius. It’s a song.” More than a song, it was a knot. “It’s a song to the universe.”

Autumn shifted her vision sideways, to the place where the strands of the world lay bright against the void. “‘Like this and like that and like this and uh…'” Her steps twined in the strands; Senna’s steps twisted in the lines, and together they made a beautiful macrame of connections. “Genius. This is the dance.”

Useful setting information: The strands, in this ‘verse, connect everything, and are created by connections between people or between things.

Want more Stranded World? Check out the landing page here.

Written for Friday Flash and in a quest to write a flash to every one of the icons Djinni has drawn for me.

“Like this and like that and like this and uh…” is from Dr. Dre’s Nuthin but a G thang.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/802433.html. You can comment here or there.

The Heritage that Wasn’t

Sep4

To [personal profile] silveradept‘s prompt

It was supposed to work. It was supposed to be right.

Jen’s mother was a kitsune. Her grandmother was a kitsune. Her grandmother’s mother, and her mother, and her mother, they had all been kitsune, as far back as history went and further.

There were no fathers in the history, which Jen had always felt unfair. Her father had, after all, raised her, as her mother’s father had raised her, and so on. The women in Jen’s family did not stay. They weren’t tame, after all.

They didn’t stay, and they didn’t teach. They left a letter. At least, Jen had been given a letter when she turned fifteen. In the envelope – which her father had been saving since he first discovered he had a daughter – was not only the letter her mother had written her, but the letter her mother had written her, and so on, and so on. The letters went back not nearly as far as the history, of course, and the last ones were crumbling and yellow. but they all said almost the same thing.

Your mother is a kitsune, and that means you will be as well… The kitsune are wild and do not stay, but we always pass on our genes… one daughter and one daughter only… do well, my daughter. Thrive.

The letters had come with her when she & her father went off-planet; they took up less than 4 oz. of her weight allowance, but weighed her down with the expectations of ages. “…One daughter and one daughter only…” Kitsune found their fox by the time they were sixteen or seventeen, maybe eighteen or nineteen.

Jen’s twenty-first birthday was on her, and there was no fox, nothing but a girl with an envelope full of ancient letters.

Next: A Heritage Earned

Want more words, or just really like this post? Drop some money in the tip jar!


(the tip jar is a kitty for reasons)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/802214.html. You can comment here or there.