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

Oct4

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.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/821593.html. You can comment here or there.

At Asta’s Funeral, a story of the Aunt Family for LadiesBingo

Oct1

This fills the “Funerals and Wakes ” square on my [community profile] ladiesbingo card and was prompted by [personal profile] rix_scaedu. It is set in The Aunt Family setting, but with new characters.

616 words by http://www.wordcounter.net/

Estella had only been married for a year, but she had, having grown up down the street, known Randal’s family for far longer than that – she had, unlike some women to marry into this family, prior warning. With Randal’s family – or, more accurately, Randal’s mother’s family – you needed that prior warning.

Estella could tell, looking around the church, who had that warning and who hadn’t. Many of these women were strangers to her; Randal’s family was large, and only truly came together like this for weddings and funerals. Asta, Estella knew, hadn’t been well-loved or much-befriended, but she had been an Aunt. Every family member who could make it would be here, probably three times as many as had made it to Estella and Randal’s wedding, thank heavens.

And the priest had that look on his face that they so often did when faced with the family. It was sort of like someone had made him eat a lemon and then told him, afterwards, that he’d be given blessings in heaven and a big fat wallet, all with the taste of citrus still in his mouth.

One row forward and a couple seats over, Estella picked out a no-prior-warning woman, clinging her three children – two boys and a girl, all in Sunday best – close to her as if terrified that one of the children would misbehave. She didn’t need to worry. In the family, children were forgiven so much more than, say, daughters-in-law.

Estella glanced behind her first – there were still plenty of family members trickling in. The priest would be grumpy, but he would wait until at least all of the older generations were seated, at least if he liked preaching in this town. There was still time.

She leaned forward, mindful of her own round belly, until she could speak to the likely-cousin-in-law without being overheard. “Did you ever meet Asta?” It was best to start with simple things, things they could pretend were normal.

The woman jumped. “Ah! No, no I mean, she was at our wedding, and I saw her at a funeral a couple years past, but I never was introduced. I’m not part of that branch – oh, you probably know that.”

“Not really.” Estella used her most reassuring smile. “The family is big enough that you lose track pretty easily, and I only married in a year ago. I’m still learning my husband’s first cousins, much less the second cousins and uncles and… Aunts.”

The woman shuddered. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

Estella gave that one some thought. “Which part?” she tried.

“All of it!” She’d started out quietly enough, but her voice got a little loud as she went. “The ‘Aunts,’ and all the superstition, and the way the old women…”

“Easy, easy.” Estella patted the woman’s shoulder gingerly. “Look, here is probably not the place.”

The woman flushed and, less surreptitiously than she probably thought, looked around the sanctuary. “I – yeah. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay. I know the feeling.” This really, really, wasn’t the place. But. “My name’s Estella.”

“Jocelyn.”

“Look, Jocelyn, why don’t you give me your number, and then we can – I don’t know, talk, get together for coffee? Let the kids have a play date.” If the woman was still that freaked out after three kids… “You look like you could use someone to talk to.” And the family would do better if someone soothed Jocelyn – especially before her daughters were of age.

“Oh, that would be so nice. Someone who knows all the crazy and doesn’t buy into it. Yes, thank you.”

Oh, dear. Estella mostly managed to hide her wince: crazy? She definitely needed to talk to this one. “My pleasure.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/817313.html. You can comment here or there.

Family Secrets and Cat Secrets, continuation of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call

Sep12

This is wispfox‘s commissioned continuation of Cats & Grannies. and Cat’s in the Attic.

Radar appeared to approve of the center box of the nine – although, perhaps out of consideration to Aunt Bea, he wasn’t talking. Beryl, armed with the gloves the cat had suggested and a scarf tied over her nose and mouth, moved everything with the care usually taken by museum archivists.

(She wondered, very briefly, what a historian or archaeologist would make of the family archives, such as they were. Had anyone in the family ever studied archeology?)

“Aunt Bea…” Her voice was muffled by the scarf, but Aunt Bea’s hearing was still sharp. “Do we have any historians in the family?”

“Oh, the family doesn’t tend to go that way.”

“Aah.” Beryl noted the tone, and wondered what Aunt or pushy Granny had inculcated that idea into the family. “I think it might be fun to do a study of all this, that’s all.”

“Well, but who could you show it to?”

“Aunt-” She hefted the box out of its spot and set it, carefully, on a clear patch of attic floor “-Evangeline. Or maybe one of the cadet branches – hey, how come they’re the cad… never mind. Thanks for letting me take this, Aunt Bea.” That was Dangerous Territory. People Beryl’s age weren’t supposed to worry about Dangerous Territory.

“Don’t worry too much about the politics, honey. It’ll sort itself out, it always does. And be careful with what’s in those boxes – I mean, tell Eva to be careful.” Was that a wink, or just a trick of the light?

~

Beryl had earned the privilege of a locked door with her fourteenth birthday, and was very grateful for it as she and Radar sat down with the box. Not that she thought her mother would exactly object, but her mother would talk to her sisters, and her cousins, and they’d talk to their mothers, and their aunts, and so on, and soon Beryl would find herself buried in Grannies again.

She turned up the music nobody else in the house liked – just loud enough to be audible if one stopped to listen, not loud enough to get her yelled at by anyone else – triple-checked the lock, and made sure The Necklace was wrapped in silk and locked in a stone box. “All right, Radar.” She popped the lid and stared inside. “What am I looking for?”

“It’s going to be a journal.” Radar jumped into the box, growing smaller as he did in a show of power he almost never exhibited. The kitten-size fit much better among the paperwork. “If I recall, it was bound in leather – brown and green – and wrapped in ribbon.”

“There’s so much stuff here.” She lifted out a folder labelled Family Photographs, 1910. The handwriting was a long, spidery script she’d seen more than a few times before. “And what’s dangerous about photos?”

“In your family? Everything.” The cat pushed aside a yellowed book of sheet music; Beryl had never heard of the composer, but she could smell the magic still coming off of it like dust. “Here it is. Careful, girl, it’s old.”

Old didn’t begin to cover it. Beryl stared at the cover of the book, with its flaking gold-embossed name. “Is that…”

It had to be. The family, for reasons of clarity, did not repeat names. But she had to ask again, anyway. “Is that…”

“The secrets have been lost for a long time indeed, child. Take it.” Radar pushed the book towards her. “You’re going to need it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/810539.html. You can comment here or there.

Cat’s In the… Attic, a continuation of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call (@anke)

Sep10

This is [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned continuation of Cats & Grannies.

“Oh, hello, dear. And you brought a… a cat. Oh, you brought That Cat.” Aunt Beatrix was attempting to sound friendly. Mostly she sounded that she was terrified and stressed.

Beryl smiled as nicely as she could manage. She’d wanted to bring Chalce or Stone along, or, better yet, Mom, but Chalce had been busy, Radar was getting weird about Stone, and Mom sometimes forgot she wasn’t a Grandmother yet, so she might not endorse Beryl learning verboten information.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Beatrix. But Radar gets up to trouble if I leave him alone, and I heard that you might have some family records in your attic.”

“Aah, Evangaline finally noticed things were missing, did the girl? Come in, I suppose, as long as your cat there doesn’t get up to any trouble.”

“You hear that, Radar?” Beryl stared at the cat for a moment. “No trouble. You be nice to Aunt Beatrix.”

“Oh, no, not you, too, sweetie.” Beatrix tch’d. “Well, come in. The papers are up in the attic, like you said. They’re all boxed up. Carron and Katherine boxed everything up, before… Before.”

Before before? Beryl would have to ask Radar or Mom when she was alone. “Thank you, Aunt Beatrix. How have the cats… been?”

“Well, with That One out of the way, they’ve been… better. They’re still Family cats, and why I ended up with them this time around, I really don’t know. But they like the park you built them.”

“The park? Ah, the cat run.” That had been quite a bit of work, half of it Beryl and half of it Stone. “I’m glad they like it.”

“It does keep them quiet. Well, come on, you and That Cat. The attic is this way. Although I’ve managed to keep the cats out of there, up ‘till now.”

“Ha.”

The noise was stifled, a little snort of dry amusement, but Beatrix still heard it. She stared at Radar for a moment, then shook her head as if clearing it. “I never should have – well, that’s for another time. Come on, girl. ‘twere well it were done quickly.”

“Coming.” Aunt Bea was… different. Clearer-headed, and yet somehow she sounded even more insane. Well, she was family, after all.

Aunt Bea’s house was almost as old as Aunt Evangaline’s. The family liked to hold on to property. The family liked to hold on to everything, to be fair. The stairs were tight and narrow, old wooden stairs covered with at least three archival layers of carpeting. (Beryl and Chalce had vacuumed and washed those carpets, back before Thanksgiving. The stained floral pattern of the bottom layer still haunted her.) But Aunt Bea hopped up them as quickly as Beryl did. Age – age, in the family, seemed like it had more to do with getting stronger than with getting frail.

“I moved these boxes up here when Asta – when she had her little spell, although I figure you probably don’t remember that. It just seemed like some things ought to stay safe. And then That Cat moved in, and I forgot right about the papers, you know? Everything got a little fuzzy, if you’ll pardon me saying so.”

A little fuzzy would explain a lot. Beryl shot Radar a glare; he endeavored to look completely innocent, going so far as to start grooming himself.

“I, ah, I can understand that. Is that,” Beryl gambled a bit, “the spot in the guest room at Aunt Eva’s That We Don’t Talk About Period?” The spot was black with char, and the rug did not like to stay over it.

Aunt Beatrix snorted out a laugh. “That’s not your Aunt Eva. Is that your mother, then, Hadelai?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You were, I think, just a small baby, although that might have been your sister, one of your sisters. We never did figure out what happened, but we think it has something to do with Asta being a weak vessel.”

Beryl had already learned the trick with the grannies: keep listening & you learn a lot more than if you ask questions. She made a noise that she’d learned sounded like she agreed – she’d picked it up from Aunt Rosaria – while making a mental note to ask Radar about weak vessels when they were alone.

“And well, she decided that the family had, I suppose, too much power, as if such a thing was possible, and she started… trying to eliminate it. But you know as well as I do, child, that power does not like to be threatened.”

The same could be said for the family. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, it was quite a mess, and I’m rather surprised the backlash didn’t kill Asta.”

“That… that sounds like quite a mess.” And quite a backlash, if it had left a spot so tainted that no rug would cover it.

“Well, Asta was always a bit daft. I told Rosaria and Margaret, I did, that – well, here are the boxes.” Aunt Beatrix looked a bit guilty as she gave Beryl a little push. “And don’t worry your head about that stuff about Asta. She’s gone now, and can’t do any harm to anyone, not even herself.”

“Thank you, Aunt Beatrix.” Aunt Bea might be a little silly, but she was still a Grannie, and there was no going around her once she’d decided Beryl didn’t need to know something. “Are they safe to move, or should I look over them here and-” at the last minute Beryl remembered that she was supposed to be getting these boxes for Aunt Eva – “take notes for Aunt Evangaline?”

“Oh, they should be inert by now. And if not, I trust that you’re a clever girl. Just be careful of dust. They’ve been sitting here quite a while, and they were sitting there even longer.”

“Thanks, Aunt Bea.” Beryl studied the pile of boxes – three deep, three tall, three wide. The one in the center would probably be the proper one, if family tradition held. “I think I’ll move them a bit at a time, if you don’t mind the intrusion?”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all, dear, don’t mind at all. But I wouldn’t mind some of Hadelai’s lemon bars, either.”

Beryl smiled. “Thanks again.” Looked like she was reading old papers and making lemon bars this weekend. Having a normal dating life had never really been in her cards, she supposed. “I’ll get started right away.”

Next: Family Secrets & Cat Secrets

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/807010.html. You can comment here or there.

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.

Cats and Grandmas, a story(beginning) of Beryl and Radar for the Giraffe Call

Sep1

To eseme‘s prompt

The Grandmothers, as Aunt Eva tended to call them, had been on Beryl’s case recently about The Cat.

They didn’t all have the Spark, they didn’t all know first-hand what The Damned Cat was, but they all knew, and they all seemed to think that, since Beryl could talk to (or hear) the Cat, then it was her sacred duty to do whatever it was they wanted her to do about the Cat.

She’s stopped listening after a while, and when that had gotten her full-name-scolded (and reminded that she was not currently the Aunt, no matter what the cards seemed to hold, and would thus be respectful, thank-you-very-much), she had tried dodging questions.

When that hadn’t worked, she’d decided to take the problem to the source and ask Radar and Lam what she should do.

Lam was, predictably, no help at all. “Bite them.” The tiny Siamese kitten groomed herself between answers. “Then growl and hiss until they go away.”

Radar, more surprisingly, gave the matter some thought. “They want to know what I am, and why Lam exists, yes?”

“What you want, yes, and ‘why you made Lam.'” Beryl petted Radar behind the ear, where he best liked being petted. “They don’t listen when I say that you didn’t make her.”

“They wouldn’t want to. It means someone else is doing something they’ve forgotten how to do.” The orange tabby (today, at least, he was an orange tabby) sighed, an angry huff. “Well, child-kitten, I suppose we’re going to have to go into the attic.”

“Aunt Eva’s attic?” Aunt Eva’s attic was a terrifying place.

“No.” At least this time, he didn’t sound as if she was being stupid. “Aunt Bea’s attic. I’d suggest you bring gloves.”

Next: Cat’s in the… Attic

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/798214.html. You can comment here or there.

How the Family Does Things, a story (continuation) of Eva/Aunt family for Kelkyag

Aug26

To [personal profile] kelkyag‘s commissioned continuation of Older Witches, etc.

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

Evangaline modern-era. After Unexpected Guest, Followed Me Home (LJ), In the Cards (LJ),
Big Bad Witch (LJ), Frog Pancakes (LJ), and Older Witches.

The boy in front of her – the teenaged young man in front of Eva – was licking his lips drumming his hands on his lap. “This is what we’re going to do.” She leaned forward a little, just enough to read as serious as possibly. “There’s a second place on the property. Technically, it’s on my sister’s land, a cottage. And since my sister is a happily married matron with a passel of kids, she isn’t going to be the sort of person people raise eyebrows at.”

Robby blinked at her. “You’re – what? Giving me a place to crash when it gets bad?”

“I’m giving you a place to live. Rent-fee until you graduate from school, and then we’ll negotiate.”

“A place to live? He stared at her, mouth open. Eva waited. He was, to all reports or at least the words between the lines of the reports, a smart guy. He’d put all the pieces together. “What about my dad? I mean, I’m still a minor. He owns me until I’m eighteen.”

Now, Eva allowed herself to smile. “I am a witch, dear. I’ll have a nice long quiet talk with your father, and he’ll sign the appropriate paperwork, and then I’ll talk to the judge, and she’ll sign all the right papers.”

“You can really do that? I thought all the witch stuff was like… dancing naked under the full moon and, I don’t know praying to the Horned God or something, reading the Tarot cards.”

“Only on weekends.” She smiled, and let him guess if she was joking or not. “Yes. I can get that done. It’s not that hard, and even excluding the witch stuff, my family has quite a bit of power in this town.”

“But…” He shook his head. “Why would you do that for me? Because you want to… no. Girls don’t do that.”

“Girls don’t, but women sometimes do – actually, you’d be surprised at the girls in my family. And witches… but that’s beside the point.” Eva smiled. She couldn’t help it; she was having fun with this. “I’m not doing it because I think you’re attractive.” She’d nearly said cute. Cute was a high-school girl word, and that wasn’t quite the impression she wanted to be giving right now. “I’m doing this because you intrigue me, and I don’t want to see you stuck in an untenable situation any longer than you have to.” She took a breath. “And since I’m the Aunt of this Family, I say that right now is as long as you have to be stuck there.” She stood up. “I’ll go have that talk with your father…” The pause wasn’t quite dramatic. She didn’t really want to worry him. “If you like the plan.”

“I… I mean, yeah. I will totally take a place to live that isn’t my father’s roof, but I mean, you can really do it? And you really will? And you won’t get in trouble with your family? The old lady here, she was… I mean, sorry, not to speak ill of the dead, but she was sort of a pushover.”

“We have those, every few generations. That’s not me.” And now she knew the other reason she was doing this. “That’s not me at all. They gave me this house. If I say It Shall Be Done, it freaking shall be done.”

She half-expected thunder. It was the sort of line that really deserved thunder. What she got instead was the boy looking at her, his jaw dropping a little.

“You’re a little bit scary, you know that?”

She smiled, showing all of her teeth. “That’s the idea.” She leaned back and let the smile relax into something more casual, more friendly. “That’s the secret, Robby, the one they don’t want you – anyone, really – to know. The family is supposed to be scary. We’re supposed to be intimidating – the Aunt, at least.”

That wasn’t something the Grannies had told her, and it wasn’t something Aunt Asta[Check] had told her, either. Robby was right – Asta had been a pushover.

The Grannies liked pushovers, and that was something Evangaline was coming to learn was not just a function of their particular branch. Every Granny everywhere had some feeling that they should have been the Aunt, would have been better as the Aunt. And every Granny everywhere wanted a piece of the power.

She cleared her throat. Now was not the time to wool-gather, not with a worried, nervous boy sitting in front of her. “That’s a story I might tell you another time. But, yes. The goal of the family has always been that our Aunts a wee bit terrifying. Because human fear is a much more potent weapon than anything else we could wield.”

She’d wool-gathered long enough that he’d collected himself. “So, um. Are you planning on scaring my … the old man? Because he’s not scared of anything?”

She let the sharp-edged smile come back. “Oh, no. Him, him I was planning on hexing. It’s a lot quicker, and it does, as a side effect, tend to lead to nice amounts of fear.”

Robby swallowed. Had she gone too far? Well, if he bolted, she still knew where he lived – and quite a bit more about him, too. “Okay. Okay, you’re really scary. But if you’re for real…”

“I am.”

“Then… yeah. As long as it won’t, you know, cost me my soul or anything.”

Eva smiled. “We hardly deal in anything as banal as souls.” And here was hoping he never found the exceptions to that rule.

~

It wasn’t as simple as she’d made it sound, of course – nothing worth doing ever was, and she’d determined this was well worth doing.

First, she had to convince her sister that the Spare Cottage should be used for its intended purpose, in this case for Eva’s specific intended purpose.

That took three cups of expensive coffee, a fruit basket, and an agreement to wiggle things a little bit with Chalce’s Calc teacher, who was being insufficiently intimidated by a family of witches and insufficiently concerned with Chalce’s college prospects.

THEN she had to actually clean out the Spare Cottage, which hadn’t been used for anything like its intended purpose in well over a decade. To her surprise and gratification, not only to Robby stop by, upon seeing her airing out the place, and help her haul out the family junk and dust out the cobwebs, but all three of Hadelai’s older children – Beryl, Chalce, and Stone – stopped by to help as well.

It surprised Eva, although perhaps it shouldn’t, that none of the children mentioned Robby’s split lip – and that none of them hassled him, in any way, about moving in that close.

Indeed, she caught Chalce giving him a speculative look, once – she was pretty sure Robby missed it – which immediately turned guilty when she noticed Eva watching. She gestured in the family hand sign for “all yours,” which amused Eva more than anything, and nothing at all was said on the matter.

So. Interesting to note that particular deviation from family tradition.

Once they had the Spare Cottage cleaned out, then they had to refresh all of its everything – linens, food, in some cases furniture – which led to an argument she also hadn’t been expecting, with Robby.

At the rate she was missing things she should have been anticipating, Eva was thinking she might want to hang up the Aunt hat and let a more capable witch handle things.

Robby, it turned out, did not want anyone spending money on him. “I already owe you enough. I don’t want to owe you anything else.”

Eva, whose family used money-spending as a benign weapon, could both understand the feeling and simultaneously be offended by the suggestion that she was doing that.

It turned into a shouting match in the middle of Sears, a shouting match which Beryl delicately defused. “Look.” She slapped down hands on both of their shoulders. “We’ve got to get the Spare Cottage up to snuff. It’s a shame that Aunt Asta let it go like that – but Aunt Asta didn’t like people. But the couch is still sound, right? Look, slipcover. We can buy a new couch later.”

Eva sat down on the couch, defeated and not entirely sure it was a bad thing. “All right. It’s a nice slipcover. Robby?”

She was the Aunt. She was supposed to be in charge.

Robby flopped down on the matching chair. They would have looked really nice in the Spare Cottage, with its view of the wisteria and magnolia out its living room window. “Slipcover makes sense.” He looked from Beryl to Eva, with a flash of something that looked as defeated as Eva felt. “I don’t need vases, though.”

“No, I can imagine you don’t.” She patted the couch, and offered the closest she could to an apology. “I’ve lived in Family houses my whole life. Never had a chance to buy furniture.”

“That explains that couch.” He grinned at her, and she could tell the worst of the shouting was over. “Maybe you ought to buy this for you.”

Eva couldn’t help but grin back. “Nah, if I buy something for the house, it’s got to have a sofa bed built in.”

“That house has, what, seventeen guest rooms?”

“Four. Five if you count the Florida Room, and six if you count the former stable-keeper’s apartment over the barn. But the house has to be able to fit most of the family, if not all of it, at one time.”

“For, what?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “The dancing around naked part?”

“Well, mostly baby showers, bridal showers, weddings, funerals, and garage sales. But the naked part, too.” She shot Beryl a smile. The kid was good with this.

In the end, they ended up with more than Robby was really comfortable with, less than Eva felt was reasonable, and enough that, should a family member pop their head in, the house would look as it was supposed to.

In something that didn’t seem like a compromise but seemed to placate both Beryl and Robby, they also bought a new spread for Eva’s bed, a new chair for her living room, and a new tablecloth for the grand family table in the dining room.

Afterwards, they sat in the mall Olive Garden, eating far too many breadsticks and looking at each other in a thoughtful triangle.

“I figured it would be Chalce.” Beryl popped a breadstick in her mouth, finished it, and continued as if she wasn’t dropping bombs. “Or Lillian or Hazel, maybe, one of the far-cousins.”

“Hazel’s your cousin?“ Robby chose that to pick up on, of course. “She’s…”

Pneumatic, gorgeous, beautiful, Eva filled in.

Sometimes, it seemed, her niece was more attentive than she was. “Boring. Mundane?”

“Yeah, exactly.” He paused, breadstick halfway to his mouth. “Wait. You figured it was Hazel who what?”

Beryl’s smile had a lot in common with Radar’s, right then. “Who’d hook you into the family. What?” She looked between the two of them mock-innocently. “It’s obvious he’s Family material.”

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/790153.html. You can comment here or there.

Excerpt/Teaser

Aug11

Here’s an excerpt from an Aunt Family piece I’m writing for Kelkyag:

At the rate she was missing things she should have been anticipating, Eva was thinking she might want to hang up the Aunt hat and let a more capable witch handle things.

And, a bit later:

Eva, whose family used money-spending as a benign weapon, could both understand the feeling and simultaneously be offended by the suggestion that she was doing that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/769500.html. You can comment here or there.

Excerpt/Teaser

Jul13

Doing a bit of catching-up as well as trying to get CampNano words written today (it’s raining and I’m sore everywhere after yesterday’s yardwork/LARP).

Here’s an excerpt from an Aunt Family piece I’m writing for Kelkyag that I thought people might find interesting as a stand-alone tidbit:

The Grannies liked pushovers, and that was something Evangaline was coming to learn was not just a function of their particular branch. Every Granny everywhere had some feeling that they should have been the Aunt, would have been better as the Aunt. And every Granny everywhere wanted a piece of the power.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/748606.html. You can comment here or there.