Here’s A Story About Changelings:

Here’s a story about changelings:

Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch.

She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.

Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings.

“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child.

Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.

“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”

“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”

“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”

Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.

“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”

“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”

Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.

“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”

Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.

She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.

“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.

Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”

Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.

They all live happily ever after.

Here’s another story:

Keep reading

More Posts from Tsippi and Others

tsippi

4 months ago

OK so I have. A headcanon that the previous winner will be the first to appear the most recent winner, in order to comfort them and calm them down and stuff.

Grian, the first, was all alone. But he knew what was going on.

When Scott won, Grian appeared to him. That makes sense, he's the administrator and the only player to win before.

When Pearl won, Scott appeared to her. Thst tracks, he had the most influence on her in that game and basically caused her death by killing himself.

Its around when Martyn wins Limited Life and Pearl appears to him that they realize the "previous winner" pattern. Because all they really had in common was going kinda insane towards the end. Fortunately Pearl is able to calm him down.

When Scar wins, Martyn clears his throat from behind him, raising an eyebrow. There's not a lot to say, they don't have much in common- but Martyn heaves a sigh and helps Scar stand up from his position kneeled in front of the Secret Keeper.

Scar is ecstatic when Cleo wins, jumping onto them a cheer and an excited yell. All of the bad feelings they had, if there were even any, melt away, and they are just happy.

Joel is clutching his head from the ender pearl death when Cleo appears in front of him, laughing so hard they keel over. Their laughter is infectious, and it takes a good twenty minutes for both of them to stop gasping for air.

I propose that whoever wins next nearly gets hit by Joel's car when he drifts into their world, and he rolls his window down, yelling for them to "Get in, we have so much to talk about!"

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tsippi

5 months ago

realizing I missed one of my mutuals' posts so now I feel like a deadbeat mutual

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tsippi

5 months ago

🌭🌭🌭

???

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tsippi

3 months ago

It’s Lihdl and I will die on this hill.

Trying to settle something with a friend.

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tsippi

5 months ago

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your hair is purple. You know what else is purple? Red and blue mixed together. Yknow who are red and blue? Grian and someone else Uhhhh LDshadowlady in empires one. Ok. Grian and empires one LDshadowlady. Yknow who else is grian and ldshadowlady? No one because they are ✨ unique ✨ at this point I would be relatively surprised if you didn’t at least have a guess towards who I am. But. That’s not the question at hand right now. Your hair. It is also made out of keratin, just like rhinoceros horns. What else has horns? That’s right, dragons. Now, based on your description, I can conclude that you like dragons BUT I will now in investigate your possible dragonesque identity. Just like dragons, we have established that you both have keratin growing out of your heads. Similarly, dragons are rumored to be unnaturally colored, just like your hair. We also know that grian and LDshadowlady have both at some point in their careers worn an elytra. Elytra have wings - dragons have wings. I don’t think I need to explain this one. Now, as I have been told to go to sleep, I rest (haha get it) my case.

Alright. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure this post is just telling me I am a dragon? In a very roundabout way that appeals to quite a few of my interests. Now to address the rest of your post? Ask? Not sure what the terminology is, but anyway. You said that my hair was purple and that purple was a combination of red and blue. Both statements are correct, to my knowledge. You then gave examples of both a red and a blue character. I fully agree with both Grian as red and LDShadowlady (ESMP1) as blue, and would also like to offer other characters associated with these colours. I offer up TangoTek as red, due to his skin’s red eyes and outfit, and red being frequently depicted on him in various forms. For blue I give Smajor1995, for reasons I deem obvious. You then bring up that my hair is made of keratin, which is the same material as typical animal horns. This is also fully true (I think). You then bring up my love of dragons. This is true. I like dragons, and think they are very cool. You then bring up a list of evidence pointing towards me being a dragon, which is well formatted and logical, though the evidence is somewhat flimsy. Even so, this has shown that I need to do a better job blending in with the humans if I wish to fit in better in society and not at all to collect more information on the humans. Also, unless you are Tvvigjuice, I have no guesses as to your identity. Now as I reach the end of your message, and thus the end of my own, I wish you a good night and a peaceful rest. Goodbye and goodnight! -Tsippi, totally not a dragon spying on the human race.

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tsippi

4 months ago

Have you ever thought of something in your own worldbuilding that you didn't intentionally plan, but just connect the dots afterwards like "wait, that actually checks out"?

Like in the story of the Book I Am Not Working On, there's the fisher folk. They don't fish, actually, they live in diaspora and nobody really knows why they're called that, anymore. They're more known for their numerous, strict and often seemingly random and nonsensical ritual purity rules, and stereotypically having absurdly large numbers of children. The twist is, they don't actually have more children than any other peoples of the Empire, their purity rules just ensure that they maintain higher levels of physical hygiene in everything to do with childbirth and handling infants - and therefore have a lower infant mortality than other peoples.

The "why do these people have huge families" thing also had another side: Fetishisation. The fisher folk's purity rules also involve no sex outside of marriage, and there's a myth on top of the stereotype that the reason why they seem to have a massive amount of kids is because their husbands are so good in bed that their wives cannot turn them down even if they're 100% done having kids. And since fisher folk do not have sexual relations outside of marriage, no outsider has had enough fisher dick to verify this.

But while they are loyal to partners, they are also polygamous, both ways around. A perfectly normal fisher marriage arrangement may feature a man and his two wives, and his second wife's first husband. One household may cover seven married partners, and all their mutual children. It's considered taboo to pry into which kids are "really" whose, paternity is unknowable and unless you were close enough to the family to know which one of the wives gave birth, the biological mother is none of your business either. Every partner in the marriage is equally a parent to each child born within it.

And this is where my own "wait hold on" comes in. Besides the lower mortality, the illusion of fishers having insane amounts of kids may also partially come from the way their families are structured. If you've just met a group of five people you don't know anything about, and they all claim that they have nine children each, it wouldn't cross your mind that they might all be claiming the same nine children.

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tsippi

5 months ago

archiveofourown.org

cat's cradle. - Chapter 1 - sugrx - 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series [Archive of Our Own]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Welcome to Double Life. A brand new 1.19 Minecraft series where the number of lives you have is indicated by your colour name. Green for three, two for yellow… ya-da-ya-ya-ya-da, you get it, you’ve heard the spiel before. The twist this series is that you are soulbound to another player. If one of you takes damage, both of you take damage. You share a health bar. And if one of you dies, you both die. But that’s not the only twist. The real twist is that the soulbound match-ups are far from random. No, each person has been sorted into pairs based on their compatibility to fit into two classifications: Caregiver and Little.

What if, instead of being inherently romantic, the soulbounds in Double Life were inherently familial, and were sorted into pairs of parent and child? How do the impromptu parents cope with the grave responsibility suddenly thrust upon them, and how do the children cope with their newfound lack of adulthood and autonomy in a death game?

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tsippi

4 months ago