For eseme‘s prompt.

This is in the Stranded World Setting, which has a landing page here. this comes after the donor-perk story The RoundTree Siblings Prepare for Thanksgiving (On LJ.)

They took a moment, the four of them, away from their respective dates (or non-dates), all feeling a little bit guilty about that, to stand on the porch and look at each other.

It wasn’t that uncommon for those who knew the strands to slide their vision sideways when looking at someone else, to see what was going on with them in a more meta sense. For an outside observer, though, those four minutes of staring not-quite-at-each-other might have seemed surreal, even creepy.

Summer reached out first, to sketch a good-luck charm in the air over the foreheads of each of her siblings. That got her three variations on their family wide-mouthed crooked smile, and then Winter took his turn, smoothing out bumps and rough spots. They were a volatile, wild set of sisters, and there were more than a few knots in each of their patterns.

He paused by a tangle near Spring’s heart, question in his expression; she moved his hand gently away, towards a tight knot of conflicted emotion in a similar spot on Autumn. She, in return, flinched, shrugging uncomfortably, but submitted, like a kitten to an older cat’s grooming, to her brother’s ministrations.

That caused Spring to make some nice little tangles in the air around them, nothing too messy, but nothing too smooth; she’d been tangling Winter’s lines since she was born. He patted her head in revenge, and they all glanced at Autumn.

She already had her pen out, and, while there was still a small knot near her heart, she was smiling warmly as she drew, on the underside of each of her siblings’ left wrist, a small pattern. Family, the sigil said. Love. Warmth. Peace.

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