This is to kelkyag‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.
It takes part in my Stranded World setting, after all extant Tattercoat stories.
Names from <a href="http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg
“>Seventh Sanctum.
There was something amiss with Winter’s sister.
With the oldest of Winter’s sisters and the most steady, the most easy-going, the least likely to have things go amiss.
Spring had warned him first, in that way that she did, a riddle tied up in a knot, the sonnets are slanting sideways and the seeds are falling all wrong. Then Summer, just something’s wrong with Autumn.
When their mother had called Winter, do something, he had known things had gotten out of hand. But because it was not he who had seen the problem first but Spring, he went out of character for himself and did things indirectly, looking not for the tangle but for its cause.
He had been young and cocky when he’d taught Spring; it hadn’t occurred to him until much later how much she had taught him.
There were tangles in Autumn’s skein, that much was clear. Knots, and, worse, fraying and snipped ends. But why? She’d always been so ready to flow with the world’s streams, so quick to twine with others and so very slow to actually tie any lasting connections.
Winter spied. He followed lines back from his sister without ever letting her see his presence, he murmured questions at the right people, he followed paperwork trails where they existed. He studied.
When he had a path to walk, he began walking. Literally, in this case: the cause of the snarls was only a few miles away, just a short trip from the Ren Faire where Autumn had set up shop.
Did she know? From the way her lines tangled, Winter doubted it. There was loss and pain in her mess, not immediate intimacy.
Winter made it to the house, or at least the dwelling – three trailers and an old recreational vehicle set up in a square around a loose courtyard, plenty for the mild spring weather – before something stopped him in his tracks.
His sisters and mother had said one word, and, while others had used other names, they had all led back to the same person. Tattercoat.
There were seven people in the compound, and a complex of tangled Strands and intentional knots that spoke of intentional weaving.
Untangling Knots
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