The Hazards of Magic, a drabbleish of the Aunt Family for the Genderfunk Call (@wyld_dandelyon)

Dr. Elwood had been the obstetrician for the last seventeen Family births. A remote cousin by marriage, Dr. Elwood understood, at least more than a normal doctor might have, the problems implicit in just about everything a Family member did.

Which meant that, when he held Haley Stone’s first child in his hands, he made sure that the nurses had cleared all extraneous family – all of them – out of the room before he spoke softly to Haley.

“Is it possible you – ah – indulged in some way during your pregnancy, Miss Stone?”

Her cheeks were already flushed, but he thought her expression might have been a bit guilty. “I never do drugs, Doctor. Is my baby all right?”

“Your baby is perfectly healthy, Miss Stone. And you know as well as I do that I didn’t mean drugs.”

“Ah.” Her hand went to the necklace around her throat, the one with the wide white stone that seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat. “I – ah… My baby?”

“Your baby is perfectly healthy, Haley. But ah, seems to have been born with more than one set of genitalia.”

“More than…”

The doctor held up the child, and Haley gasped. “Oh, oh, dear Lord, the grannies are going to kill me.”


Written to [personal profile] wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt.

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10 thoughts on “The Hazards of Magic, a drabbleish of the Aunt Family for the Genderfunk Call (@wyld_dandelyon)

  1. Oh, lovely! I assume Haley is an Aunt, seeing as how she’s “Miss” not “Mrs.” Lots of complications here. I would love to see the rest of the story, either Haley’s or the child’s. Or both, of course!

    • Getting pregnant without getting married first seems to be standard operating procedure for Family girls who are at the right places in the tree to become the Aunt and don’t want to, and IIRC there were some suggestions of not-so-subtly pushing people in that direction when someone else didn’t want them to become the Aunt …

        • People beyond the Aunt practicing magic happens. See Rosaria, for example, or the pair of maiden aunts who knit itchy sweaters until they decide to make scarier things. (I think it’s even fairly common, but I don’t have enough data points available off-hand for that.) But it may be that Haley is not doing magic herself, but using, or even just casually wearing, a magical artifact — possibly even one the doctor recognizes. If intersex children are a known side effect of using magic during pregnancy, I could see that being an Issue in this gender-divided family, and a contributing factor to the childless Aunts policy.

  2. Stone? Is that the first time we’ve seen a last/family name in the Family? And Elwood, too, though the implication here seems to be that he’s further from the core than she is. (My brain is trying to conflate Haley Stone with Stone’s mother Hadelai … and wondering if the name “Stone” reappearing means anything.)

    • I think it MAY be the first time a last name has shown up, though I’d have to go back and look. And yeah, that name opens up all sorts of questions!

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