Archive | April 6, 2012

Sidekick

Apr6

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s commissioned prompt.

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

“Were you taught about the archetypes?”

It wasn’t the question Evangaline had been expecting; it segued out of left field while she was still pondering the implications of someone leaving their family, of a son leaving the family.

“The tarot?” she offered, while she tried to remember things Asta and the others had mentioned to her. The archetypes, the archetypes… “No, no, not the tarot, but sometimes it seems similar. Something about the stories? Aunt Asta mentioned them, but she didn’t…”

“No, she wouldn’t have. I don’t believe she had the skill of seeing the stories. I wonder if you will.”

“I… don’t know. When Aunt Asta taught me about them, I had dreams…” Only Rosaria could make Eva feel this way, like she was being measured and judged against an invisible ruler. She shrugged, trying to shake off the elementary-school feeling. “In the Wizard of Oz, the way at the end Dorothy say ‘and you were there, and you, and you? That’s what it was like. Crazy dreams, with Uncle Arges as the Scarecrow.”

She gestured hurriedly with her free hand. “I don’t mean really the scarecrow. I mean, a sidekick, following another guy around. They were younger than I knew him, my age at the time, so late teens. I think I’d seen a picture of him at that age recently, one of the family shots? But this was much more vivid.”

“The Sidekick.” Rosaria made her “thinking” noise. “That would be Argie at that age. I don’t have the paintings with me, nor could you give them a proper look while you were driving, but the Sidekick is one of the archetypes we see a lot in our family. The Buddy. The support. That was Argie to Willard, every inch of the way. It’s what’s so tragic about the whole thing.”

More: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534069.html
The whole story: http://lynthornealder.com/fiction/aunt-family

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Love Meme Answers 4: Junie/Jin, Carrot/Angua, Regine/Ambrus

Apr6

For the meme I posted Wednesday night here and here

I chewed over the Pratchett one for a while. Fanfic makes me nervous to write.

Having a big brother was sometimes a pain. He would mess up her hair and steal her dinner and pick her up and swing her when she was trying to be serious.

But when she looked at the mean girls the day after her ride with Jimmy in the parking lot, and not a single one of them would say so much as Boo to her – except to tell her they thought her shoes were poker, which meant cool this week – Junie thought having an older brother, having Jin for an older brother – was the most awesome thing ever.

Dear Mom, and Dad…

Carrot turned and looked at Angua, sleeping across his bed. The moon was new tonight, and she was sprawled in human form, but he could see, in her lines, the wolf she was sometimes. He thought about her running beside him, about the way she looked when she came in sweaty and filthy after a day Defending the Peace. He thought about the rare moments when she was out of uniform and not wearing fur. He thought about the moment when he thought that, perhaps, she had died.

He looked back at the paper, and thought about trying to put all that into words.

I am, in Love.

Ambrus was asleep, and Regine was not.

This was a common occurrence; she slept very little, and found often that a tlacatl Working would do her far better than actual sleep. She did not, as a rule, enjoy her dreams.

She did enjoy his, however. She enjoyed most of how her Kept’s brain worked, but his dreams, his mind unfettered and free to do as it would, were a fascinating place full of vivid, if unlikely, magic and sensuality.

She wondered, sometimes, watching his dreams, what it said that she enjoyed his unfettered mind the most.

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