#Avinlor

[fidelishaereticus]

Maitos and Avinlor, OCs for @madgodintherain (@thisbackworld)

[madgodintherain]

2. No Good Deed

Series: Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor - Masterpost Characters: Belaicy, Avinlor (as Fall); Oskyod (referenced) (a Cardhouse denizen - OC)

-- --

Eighty-six years trapped within a worthless meadow and cut off from any rational communication was adamantly not enough to drive Belaicy mad. Take Sunlets, for example: they had been omnipresent for millennia, and Belaicy had survived with wits tolerably intact, and had outlasted all but the tattered remnants of their civilization.

One did not even have to count it as a full eighty-six years, either: just half a century ago, there had been a spider. Nothing had come of it though. Probably it had been eaten by a bird just as soon as it crept back to whence it had come. In any case, the meadow would defeat itself in the end. Already, the protections around it had prevented brush-clearing fires from roaring through, and the land was becoming forested. Belaicy, though no cultivator of plants by nature or desire, helped as much as possible. Eighty-six years in a worthless meadow was boring.

If Belaicy had been delighted at the approach of another unbounded sentience—the first since the spider—a further assessment rapidly requalified the newcomer as worse than useless. Of course the next being to enter Belaicy's prison would be some Transitional: the shape and pieces of a human, in thrall to some other power and probably possessed of all manner of irritating ideas about debts and obligations. The child came with her own rain.

'It said you were trapped,' she said. The girl plainly meant that the rain had informed her of Belaicy's . . . situation.

'I am confined.'

'You can't get yourself out.'

'Do you propose that a human girl could achieve what I cannot?'

'I am not a human! I am Fall.'

The child's claim was laughable. Belaicy had known, in person or by reputation, Fall, Autumn, Harvest, First Frost, Last Apple, and more Deaths than an army of revenants could shake their bones at. Even so, the child somehow had spoken at least a partial truth. 'I beg your pardon. It has been long since I have had ado with your phase of the year.' Stupid meadow.

The child frowned, perhaps attempting to decide if she were being patronized. 'You can tell,' she said at last.

'Indeed. Your rain and your rot are very distinctive.'

'Thank you. I did them myself. Oskyod thought I meant pretty leaves, but I showed him!'

Belaicy grinned inwardly: a grin full of sharp teeth and acidic hot springs. The child-Transitional might know all the latest fads in interpersonal bonds, but this hint of discord between Fall and her tutor—or sponsor, or patron, or whatever this Oskyod was to her—was all the advantage Belaicy needed. There was no need to fear any form of obligation when Belaicy could take a single frayed strand in another tie and set to unravelling that other binding altogether. It was time to leave this boring, wretched meadow.

'Well, Fall. What possibilities superior to "pretty leaves" do you propose?'

Fall would come up with something: she would have to in order to prove her abilities to herself, if not to her mentor. After that, Belaicy would rip Fall and Oskyod apart, and tear into this Transitional-fostering realm, and . . . somewhere in it might be a way home. Depending on the nature of the realm, it might even count as good destruction.

[thisbackworld]

tagged by @fidelishaereticus​

Rules: post the last sentence you wrote (fanfic/original/anything!) and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence. NEW, AND BETTER RULES BY ME, WESLEY: 1) Post your favorite short excerpt / paragraph / complete thought, 2) it can be any part you like, 3) it does not have to be fiction 4) it does not have to be in English.

From my totally upcoming crossover: Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor (i.e. crossover of fid’s OCs and mine)

--

'I am not a human! I am Fall.'

The girl's claim was laughable--Belaicy had known, in person or by reputation, Fall, Autumn, Harvest, First Frost, Last Apple, and more Deaths than an army of revenants could shake their bones at--but somehow it was at least partly true. 'I beg your pardon. It has been long since I have had ado with your phase of the year.’ Stupid meadow.

--

p. much everyone I know is already tagged, so.

[hydrargyrum80]

31, 49

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)

Avinlor

URL probably involves some reference to rain.

Prominent colours of yellow, orange, red and dark red. At least some of these are in her theme, and all of them are ones she clearly finds aesthetically pleasing.

May jump into tumblr fights, but usually only after they’ve been going for a few reblogs. Seldom, however, gets super vitriolic anymore at people who are wrong on the internet.

Comment tags like mad. Sort of accidentally has a couple that are actually fairly useful categories. Often tags Belaicy in vaguely art-ish reblogs.

Not at all good at maintaining tumblr friendships. Does tend to disappear for a week or two at a time, but rarely for longer than that.

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes

Thirnyl, who hasn’t entirely adjusted to his rather isolated location, probably finds out what’s new whenever he can and then runs around on that theme for several months, his colleagues taking more or less part as they like (Elledorn the least, probably, because his sense of time—and consequently what is currently in—isn’t completely reliable).

Myrannah might, in an `aren’t humans adorable’ sense.

Maitos doesn’t usually, but he probably finds one he really likes every once in a while.

Some combination of Galdris, Pirrone and Alednas are probably the meme leaders of their circle. Mataise is also occasionally in early, though less often than she would like to be.

Tsefida was definitely into memes when she was at school.

Madradena’s entourage use memes (or meme-mindedness, or meme-shaped propaganda) to manage her hold (and theirs) over her world. The hoard are clearly massive consumers of this output.

[fidelishaereticus]

More Avinlor (and Belaicy) as modified with input from the creator ( @thisbackworld )  - Left: Avinlor dressed for a very particular diplomatic mission, probably in some very finicky fairy court - Right: an example of how Avinlor might more habitually appear - pay no attention to the menace in the background

[madgodintherain]

Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor (Masterpost)

Or, the great crossover of my OC (and a couple of her associates) with @cardhouseandthecage (by @fidelishaereticus).

The One that Got Away A denizen considers Avinlor for possible Star material.

No Good Deed Canonically, Avinlor somehow gets Belaicy - a very old and very powerful fairy - out of some kind of trap. Here, Avinlor is a young Star when the encounter takes place.

How Fall becomes Autumn Avinlor’s aesthetic as a Star begins to change under the tutelage of her denizen guide.

Concerning Mediators From the diaries of HQ: a new source in Cardhouse studies is discovered.

Yrgenzol The Stars collected and cultivated by Avinlor take on an assignment for the Cardmaster - and encounter some of Jezebel’s troupe along the way. (Contains bonus Logus-bashing.)

[madgodintherain]

1. The One that Got Away

Series: Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor - Masterpost Characters: Avinlor, Belaicy (referenced); Logus (a Cardhouse denizen - fid’s); Oskyod (a Cardhouse denizen - OC)

-- --

The child—a youth, really—would be an ideal candidate. She had constructed elaborate ambitions for the greatness she wished to attain, all utterly unsupported by any foundation of a solid plan; yet despite laying out no path of her own, she was at least beginning to realize that her present course would not grant her those ambitions in the manner she desired. Oskyod laughed to himself: the child wanted to be a fairy, insofar as her imagination shaped such beings. Well, Oskyod would have no difficulty with implying how she could have that.

Strictly speaking, the girl was somewhat more mature than the children most denizens selected for their Stars—older, perhaps, though numerical age was not the only factor at work. A more delicate handling was required for individuals beyond the phase of outright childish acceptance, questioning or not,* and Oskyod had long since perfected this art. Once, he had tried to explain it to Logus:

'The best formula, I find, requires the potential Star to achieve something which they deem significant, but which passes unacknowledged by those around them. A victory followed by a failure, however, is also very promising.'

'How much time must pass between these two key events?' Logus had asked. 'Or, in the case of non-acknowledgement, how long must that state persist?'

'Oh, two to three days is typically ideal, though some require as little as a scant day, and others work best with up to two weeks,' Oskyod had answered.

'But how do you determine the time required for a particular individual?'

'A variety of factors, really: the present mood of the subject; their past experiences with reward and praise; the degree of support network they possess, and access thereto, -'

Logus had interrupted with, 'Your "formulae", colleague, are nothing more than a jumble of undefined variables.' Oskyod had shrugged and let him depart, thinking Logus' disinterest was for the better after all: at least this way neither was competing with the other for potential Stars. In truth, Oskyod's fine technique owed a great deal to the fact that (were he to acknowledge it) he recognized a great deal of himself in the candidates he selected. In this regard, his methods were identical to Logus' procedures and calculations.

This present specimen, for example, skewed toward the longer end of the scale: she had only one close confidante and a handful of acquaintance-friends. Moreover, she was already somewhat accustomed to her skills passing disregarded within her circle. For his part, Oskyod was not much impressed by the trick of talking to the rain, having picked up some facility in that realm himself, and seen others engage in it countless times. He would, however, be a fool to disregard it as those about the child did—some through ignorance, others through disinterest in obscure matters (the greater fools, they). Nigh on two weeks should be ideal to begin the process of courting this future Star.

Twelve days later, Oskyod reflected ruefully that he had never even considered the possibility of losing the girl to anything non-human and not of the Cardhouse. She did not have her dreams, but someone else had given her a sort of power: it was a little like confidence that she would attain her dreams, and a lot like some tangible thing that she had found, more real than wishes and good enough to supplant them. Oskyod no longer had anything of note to offer her, and he suspected he would quickly find himself in some sort of territory war if he tried.

-

*In Oskyod's limited experience with the younger candidates, he had noticed that the convictions and cunning of the children who questioned a denizen provided a significantly different material to work with than did the unchallenging faith of those who asked about little or nothing. Oskyod did not care for either overmuch, but he particularly disliked the former: the children who doubted were too like his own prefered candidates, yet not quite the same, so that Oskyod often found himself either flying far beyond what their intellects could grasp, or else earning their disdain when he oversimplified some explanation. The others at least followed where he led, and though some denizens considered them overly-malleable, Oskyod could manage a deft enough handling to not utterly ruin the product.

[madgodintherain]

3. How Fall becomes Autumn

Series: Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor - Masterpost Characters: Avinlor (as Fall); Oskyod (a Cardhouse denizen - OC)

– –

The Star had been very adamant at first that she was Fall, even with the inevitable clarification that she was the season, thank you, not someone tripping and landing on their face. She was, moreover, not the whole season. Fall was the rainy part, after the bright leaves and the harvest festivals, and before the frost stung in the air, clear and bright and cold. Fall was soggy.

Oskyod had to admit, Fall was much better with her presence than one would expect from somebody who actually chose to manifest as a victim of gravity. All the same, the power of dreariness was at least half a step off from anything truly useful to the Cardhouse, and considerably further from proper Star material. He congratulated himself on steering her away from her first attempt at a revised aesthetic—Decay could be cute in a new recruit, but was hopelessly out of fashion for any properly refined appearance. With a little persuasion and some judiciously curated examples however, Fall, the soggy, became Fall, the early nightfall and heavy rain that keeps people indoors staring morosely out their windows. This was not perfection, by any stretch of imagination, but it gave the girl more taste for real power, and Oskyod had no doubt that he would push her through to the other side of the window in good time: to cozy blankets and hot drinks and granting or refusing of hospitality.

[madgodintherain]

4. Concerning Mediators

Series: Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor - Masterpost Characters: Avinlor; HQ (everyone’s favorite post-unreliable narrator - fid’s); Oskyod (referenced) (a Cardhouse denizen - OC)

– –

Some Year Some Place Dear Diary, I suspected, of course, that I might find a free human with knowledge of the Cardhouse, but I never anticipated that they would be a mediatory.* The Cardhouse doesn't negotiate its connections with Reality: it manages them. Nonetheless, the Cardhouse used a mediatory once. It would be more illuminating, of course, if the mediatory had had dealings with that fairy, but naturally this is too much to ask for. Her primary contact was a denizen who calls himself Oskyod - seriously, who uses Oskyod anymore? It's like Geoffrey. Or Parzival. I can't tell if he's that old or just that deep into his aesthetic. Probably the latter, really: he apparently does a line in useless interests, like stupid outdated names. Fuck Oskyod Oskion.*** You know what's funny, diary? (It's not funny: it's horrifying.) If he'd been looking in the right place, Oskion might have picked up Avinlor (that's the mediatory, btw). She thought she was useless once, that what she cared about didn't matter and would never matter for anything. I bet Oskion's good with liberal arts majors. Anyway, some other fairy picked up Avinlor instead, and that's probably its own shit show, but mediatories tend to be shit shows. What did she mediate, you ask? Does it matter? Something between the Cardhouse and Reality and some other fairies: half property dispute, half possibly broken contract. Truce achieved, everyone equally happy: Reality (if only it knew enough to appreciate it) wins in the short term, but a loophole is left for the Cardmaster to exploit in the future, and the other fairies are none the wiser. Whoops, you say, that looks like a mistake (ok, I said that). No, no mistake, Avinlor says. Tidy it all up, she says, is the true objective of a mediatory. Sometimes that means fairness and justice all around; sometimes that means leaving everyone satisfied, insofar as their wits are able to grasp it. Take them all out on Thursday, I say. Mediatories are garbage. - *That was a typo, diary, but I like it better than the traditional mediator. Mediator is, in any case, a fake tradition. Mediatories have no tradition.** **This is why I will never be one. This is why I am afraid I am already one. ***Better yet, fuck his pretentious name bullshit. He can take something modern like everyone else.

[madgodintherain]

5. Yrgenzol

Series: Five Ways the Cardhouse Never Touched Avinlor - Masterpost Characters:

Cobweb - Maitos (one of mine - Avinlor’s apprentice)

Mustard Seed - Tsefida (also one of mine, although not a part of Avinlor’s story)

Moth - Alice (as herself - the/a central character of Cardhouse and the Cage)

Peaseblossom Flower - Anemone (the bitchiest star)

Yrgenzol - Avinlor (a denizen)

Logus, Jezebel, the Cardmaster (referenced); Oskyod (referenced); two unnamed stars

Notes: see this post for a lot more than you probably want to know about gender and the perception thereof in this fic

-- --

Maitos, known as the Cobweb to the rest of his coterie, turned left as the corridor took yet another corner, and promptly spun up the wall and settled into the fork of one of the lower branches of a leafless tree. He was not altogether certain where the roof had gone, but he was willing to hypothesize that it was at least partly responsible for the floor's decision to forego being a useful structure and relocate to the bottom of a pit—assuming the pits here had bottoms. The rattling of a few last pebbles gave way to a series of small splashes, so the Cobweb supposed there was some kind of liquid not too far down the pit. Yrgenzol had said the labyrinth was old, but when asked to elaborate, he had not said 'ruinously-crumbling old', but merely 'old as balls'. The Cobweb supposed he should have made the logical assumption.

Yrgenzol had also indicated that their task required some degree of haste (though all the more care for that), but had the Cobweb's team all entered the labyrinth at the same point? No, they had not. Now he had to waste precious time finding the rest of his cohort and, apparently, dodging disagreeable pieces of maze. The tree seemed sturdy enough—more dormant than dead—so the Cobweb climbed higher for a better view.

From his new vantage, the Cobweb could see that the stone corridors were mostly subterranean, only appearing here and there, where either the dirt of ages had not yet buried them, or where the ground had partially eroded from them. In one direction lay something like a hedge maze—if the hedges were predominately briars and weeds—and some curious earthworks that overlapped partially with the stone tunnels. Off in another direction stood a grove of trees, gnarled and twisted, but decidedly unspooky. The Cobweb distrusted his instinctive trust of it. Climbing down, the Cobweb set off toward the bramble maze: something in that direction caused his fingertips to tingle in a familiar way that always made him want to sneeze.

He was just skirting the earthworks when the ground gave way beneath him again. He dangled, swinging, from the jutting edge, and then scurried across the ceiling to nest comfortably in a corner of roof and wall. Beneath him, a dense fog drifted about on the floor of the tunnel. Maitos had heard of bad air that sank to the bottom of hollows, but such things were supposed to be invisible. This fog was a sickening orange-black and would probably do something much nastier than merely suffocate him if he got caught in it. As he watched, it stopped billowing to and fro, and began streaming into the shadows down one arm of the corridor. At the same time, something poked the Cobweb in the side, and he looked back to the hole in the tunnel's roof to see the Mustard Seed peering over the rim of the hole, holding a stick in one hand and waving at him with the other.

'You look like you could use a hand up,' the Mustard Seed said, and poked at him again. The Cobweb took the hint and clung onto the stick. With a tug and flick, he was standing once more on solid ground and beside one of his fellow Stars.

'Thanks,' he said, and, 'do you know where the rest of our team are?'

The Mustard Seed shrugged. 'Knowing's not my concern: they'll come to me. You did, after all.'

'I wish them better luck than me. That's the second collapse I've triggered.' He nodded toward the hole, where the vile haze had entirely vanished. 'I wouldn't have thought I was that heavy-footed.'

The Mustard Seed frowned down into the open tunnel. 'I suppose I could have left you after all. Where'd it all go?' A girl stepped into view below them: a girl with feathered antennae, powdery wings, and a grin full of sharp teeth—several of which still had shreds of orange-black mist caught in them. 'Oh, of course.'

'Jezebel's,' the Cobweb muttered.

'Easy enough to see why Yrgenzol took you, Cobweb,' the Moth said. 'They say she was Fall once.'

'Fly up here, Moth, and take that back!'

'I am rubber, you are glue: whatever bounces off of me sticks to you!' the Moth sang back at him. 'You're not catching me today, Cobweb!'

'Stop dawdling, Moth,' came a new voice, and a Flower emerged from the corridor. She looked up at the Cobweb and the Mustard Seed and said, 'Boys,' with such venomous disdain that everyone present could hear the ugh, even though the Flower did not demean herself by uttering it.

Maitos was pretty sure the remark strictly applied only to him, since his teammate seemed to be a girl today as far as he could tell. The Mustard Seed simply flicked a finger at the two stars beneath them and the Moth and the Flower were engulfed in another cloud—dull yellow this time. In a moment, though, that too had disappeared, and the Moth was licking her lips. 'Delicious,' she smirked.

'Vermin,' the Mustard Seed grumbled.

The Flower sniffed. 'Yrgenzol clearly takes any riffraff she happens upon. I wonder what the Cardmaster will say when he hears her team is stealing our assignment?'

'Who's going to tell him, Flower? You?' The Mustard Seed laughed. 'You know better than that. You'll tell Jezebel, we'll tell Yrgenzol, and whoever's team doesn't complete the task will slink around the corners of the Cardhouse, scrounging for scraps of glory until they actually do something right. Come on, Cobweb. Jezebel's flutterbunch can keep their nasty tunnels. Give them a sense of purpose, maybe.' The Mustard Seed led the way toward the meeting of the bramble maze and the earthworks.

'Yrgenzol wouldn't actually steal an assignment though, would he?' the Cobweb asked his companion. 'Not generally, at least, and not from Jezebel since they're . . . well, since they have a loose rapport, I suppose.'

'Not generally, no, but I think she might—yes, alright, he might—if it were important to him. Personally, that is; not necessarily within the Cardhouse. Unless you're suggesting Jezebel stole from Yrgenzol?'

'Actually, I was thinking we'd been double-assigned. Possibly even more so, if a lot of teams really have failed at this before.'

'Hmmmm. I don't like the sound of that. Well, we knew we couldn't go directly (or we should have known), but we'd better pay extra attention to being devious now. We'll come up with something.'

Something turned out to be a sort of tunnel-bridge between the earthworks and the hedge maze that took them over an eerily clear, blue pond and into the grove of gnarled trees. At this point, the team had a very important debate over whether to call the territory the Non-, Un-, or Post- Haunted Forest. The Cobweb's suggestion—Familiarless Familiar Forest—had been eliminated early on. The trees had neither leaves nor needles on them, nor any at their feet, and the ground was bare packed dirt with not a sign of leaf mould or indeed that anything ever had decayed there. For all its unnaturalness, however, it kept reminding the Cobweb of something, though he was sure he had never seen a stand of trees anything like it. Once only did the Cobweb find any kind of foliage as he explored beneath the bare branches: a single leaf of a shape he had never seen—lobed and toothed—rich green in hue, with veins just faintly shading towards teal or turquoise. He watched it for a long moment, and when it seemed to be no more than just a leaf, he picked it up, and placed it gently in a safe pocket. Intellectually, he still did not trust the forest, or anything in it, but he was done with fighting the intuition that assured him there was nothing to fear.

Once the Post-Haunted Forest was appropriately named, the Cobweb and his fellow stars set about coercing its past into existence. This turned out to be a shrine, which made the Mustard Seed pout. 'Shrines in strange forests are just so cliché,' she complained. On further inspection, however, the shrine turned out to be a tomb, and the Mustard Seed brightened up again.

'What? Tombs aren't cliché?' the Cobweb asked.

'They are a logical extension, of course,' she retorted. 'Even so, elaborately crafted burial sites do not actually figure into literature and folklore to remotely the same degree.'

'"Fetch a rock,"' one of their companions grumbled. 'The entire thing is made of rock. There's a dozen fancy rocks inside of it. How do we even begin to test which one's right, if even the Cardmaster hasn't decided how he's going to use it?'

'If you recall, Yrgenzol said we were to fetch a stone,' the Mustard Seed corrected.

'Stone, rock, what difference does it make what he said?'

'Honestly, am I the only person who knows the difference between a stone and a rock? Stone designates a function or a purpose; rock is simply a state of being!'

'Yes, yes,' interrupted the Cobweb, who had learned the distinction from Yrgenzol some time ago, though he suspected that the Mustard Seed had been given the type of education that just taught people those obscure sorts of things. 'But even if we did somehow name-test everything, we still need to know what we're testing for. Even the structural stuff will answer 'stone' if we ask it about building.'

'No good arguing about it until we have a look,' the fourth Star said, which turned out to be the best plan possible. After a thorough investigation, the entire team unanimously agreed that the green disk, with rings like a tree slice and a jagged hole in its center, was the stone they had been sent to find.

'It's odd, though,' the Cobweb remarked. 'I would have thought we'd have run into Jezebel's team again.'

'Flutterbunch,' the Mustard Seed said, and shrugged.

In due course, they presented their stone to Yrgenzol, who congratulated them on having all survived the labyrinth and went to deliver it to the Cardmaster, leaving them to argue over how serious their patron was about their survival. Meanwhile, word filtered through the Cardhouse that Jezebel's team had also returned with a stone, as had Logus' and Oskyod's and—

'Enough already!' the Mustard Seed snapped. 'You were right, Cobweb. We were clearly all sent out, one against another.' The Mustard Seed managed to accept the eventual verdict that their stone was not the right one with minimal bitterness—probably, the Cobweb thought, because Jezebel's had already been declared false as well. Logus began to look more and more smug as time went on and one stone after another was rejected, until, quite suddenly, he was not to be seen around at all.

The Cobweb went in search of the Mustard Seed, and found him lying, belly-down, in the dirt of an unweeded garden. 'I don't think we'll see much of Logus or those stars around for a while,' the Cobweb said. 'Word is, their stone—discovered by the most systematic and precise techniques—blew up at the Cardmaster.'

The Mustard Seed laughed. 'Put a bunch of twigs in the dish of noodles, and what do you expect?' he said. The Cobweb laughed as well, and sat down beside his friend.

It was sometime after that (or, perhaps, not yet so late as Logus' disgrace) that Yrgenzol came to see the Cobweb where the latter hovered amongst the rafters. 'I believe that there is one other thing you found in the labyrinth,' Yrgenzol said.

Maitos started, but nodded, and carefully took out the leaf he had picked up in the Post-Haunted Forest—lobed and toothed, rich green in hue, with veins just faintly shading towards teal or turquoise. Yrgenzol stared at it, tilted his head, and stared at it some more. 'May I?' he asked, and Maitos nodded again.

Yrgenzol picked up the leaf and, holding it in the palm of one hand, traced the veins with the fingers of the other, and smiled at it.

Though wary of interrupting the denizen, Maitos presently gathered the courage to ask, 'This . . . this isn't what the Cardmaster was looking for, is it?'

'Does it look like a stone?'

Maitos knew a stone from a rock. 'It has a function.'

'If everything that had a function were a stone, then everything would be a stone.'

Maitos tried to piece that one out, but gave up and set it aside as a logic puzzle for later.

'Don't worry. This isn't at all what our Lord was looking for in that labyrinth.' Yrgenzol cupped her hands around the leaf and placed it into a safe pocket. 'Thank you, little Cobweb,' he said.

[madgodintherain]

Gender in 'Yrgenzol'

Or, Anemone's Boy-dar is Always Right (for certain definitions of 'right')

Note: this contains textual references that assume you have read Yrgenzol, including what we might term spoilers for the ficlet

Although Avinlor appears very little in 'Yrgenzol', the ficlet is still supposed to be about her, albeit indirectly: as she is reflected by the stars she has chosen, and as she is perceived by others of the Cardhouse. Being me, I put an immense amount of thought into gender, and while some of it appears on the surface, there was a lot more going on in my thoughts - hence these quick notes this essay (my hand slipped).

Maitos (Cobweb)

Canonically, Maitos is a trans guy. In his culture, trans masculinity is not necessarily freely undertaken, but rather a result of various social pressures. For Maitos, like many others, this was a case of 'our family needs a male person to interface with the world', and Maitos was deemed the suitable option. Socially, the community accepts that this person is now male, and treats him accordingly. Although Maitos had little to no choice in becoming male, he also has negligible desire to revert to being female; he prefers to exist as male (possibly due to his circumstances). We might classify him as either trans male or agender with preference for male pronouns.

In the Cardhouse, Maitos remains male as he is in reality. (In my second attempt at ficlet #5, I actually attempted to include some of his gender history, but it wound up being too much about Maitos and not enough about Avinlor.) Anemone's precision boy-dar does not err in its assessment of him.

Avinlor (Yrgenzol)

Avinlor was raised female. When she began knocking about on her own, she was variously identified as female or male (usually, amongst a given culture, with a distinctly higher incidence of one or the other); she has probably been places where she has been identified as some form of third gender. Avinlor has never once challenged anything she has been gendered as. This is partly personality quirk, and partly that she really could not care less. Avinlor's culture of origin only conceives of binary gender, and insofar as Avinlor possesses the degree of introspection and interest to consider the matter, she believes that she is what she was raised as, and cannot be anything else. We, however, would probably recognize her as agender.

Canonically, Maitos is introduced to Avinlor by a third party, who identifies her as female; lacking that introduction, Maitos would have gendered Avinlor as male. Hence, the Cobweb identifies denizen!Avinlor as male, and his (third person) narration handles Yrgenzol accordingly. For one brief moment at the end, Maitos perceives Yrgenzol as female, but the moment passes, and Yrgenzol-as-male resumes.

Anemone's boy-dar reads Yrgenzol as not-male (correct), and places Yrgenzol as really-a-woman (debatable); the rest of Anemone's coterie adopt her declaration, whatever thoughts and conclusions they had reached themselves (if any). Collectively, Maitos' own coterie regards Yrgenzol's true gender as one of the great mysteries of the Cardhouse; individually, we see that Maitos and one of the others lean toward male, while the Mustard Seed inclines towards female, but will swap pronouns rather than holding out for any specific interpretation. If there are gendered bathrooms in the Cardhouse, probably at least one of Yrgenzol's stars has tried to stake them out, waiting to see which one Yrgenzol goes into (because they’re jerks like that).

Tsefida (Mustard Seed)

Tsefida, canonically, was born into an upper class family (in a culture very crudely resembling something somewhere between Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse, inclusive, although probably with less default homophobia), where she was very much required to conform to upper-class-girl gender roles. She wanders off to play with fairies, and is last seen by her family at some point before she irritates a fairy who decides to retaliate by hitting her with a sex-change curse. Tsefida's reference pool for 'people who suddenly become male/female' consists of stories from mythology and folklore (and, let's be real, at least one porn novel that circulated surreptitiously at her school (though it was inspired by folklore - yes, Tsefida researched this)). Accordingly, Tsefida decides that since she is now a dude, she must carry on accordingly: she masculinizes her name (Tseiffedaa?), and undertakes to Be A Man™. There are some rough spots (socially and psychologically), but he settles into it. I think that later on he might start occasionally presenting more feminine, but he would need a lot more critical thought capabilities, or else new examples of how gender can be done, to reach the conclusion that he could be something other than Male. Anyway, Tsfd is the one other human trans character I have running around, and therefore got dragged into being one of Avinlor's stars (see what I did there? I thought that was very clever ;P ).

For 'Yrgenzol', Tsefida wandering off to play with fairies becomes Tsefida being picked up by Yrgenzol and the Cardhouse. Consequently, she does not get hit by hardware-altering magic. What Tsefida does have, however, is her mythology / folklore / porn background on one hand, and the real live inspirational ambiguity that is Yrgenzol on the other. She starts experimenting, and grows into what we would probably term being gender-fluid.

In the ficlet, Maitos does not particularly consider or register the Mustard Seed's present gender manifestation until Anemone's remark, 'Boys,' prods him to do so, at which point he notices that the Mustard Seed is a girl today. Anemone's boy-dar, while not classifying the Mustard Seed altogether as male, nonetheless registers a sufficiently high level of foreign contaminate to require biohazard-appropriate measures if encountered too closely. Later in the ficlet, Maitos drops by somewhere in the Cardhouse to visit the Mustard Seed, and finds his friend distinctly male.

[thisbackworld]

tagged by @fidelishaereticus

Rules: List the last lines of the last ten stories you have published. If it’s a WIP, post the last line of the most recent chapter. Look to see if there are any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices anything.

(I may have stretched the definition of ‘published’ to include ‘drabbles in my sketchbook that I haven’t even typed up yet, but are marked as done’)

‘You’re sure it’s not just you?’ ‘Yes. I keep--’ ‘I know. Have you tried asking them about it?’

Lortez did not believe in omens, but she knew symptoms well.

Suzanne, however, is both the source of Diana’s danger and her security. Let it be then. Diana will sit here with her parasol and be safe from all.

Diana, all alone, hoped at least the others could carry on their fight.

Yrgenzol cupped her hands around the leaf and placed it into a safe pocket. ‘Thank you, little Cobweb,’ he said.

Take them all out on Thursday, I say. Mediatories are garbage.

This was not perfection, by any stretch of imagination, but it gave the girl more taste for real power, and Oskyod had no doubt that they would push her through to the other side of the window in good time: to cozy blankets and hot drinks and granting or refusing of hospitality.

After that, Belaicy would rip Fall and Oskyod apart, and tear into this Transitional-fostering realm, and … somewhere in it might be a way home. Depending on the nature of the realm, it might even count as good destruction.

Oskyod no longer had anything of note to offer her, and they suspected they would quickly find themself in some sort of territory war if they tried.

‘Old as balls.’ Which told Maitos that there were things Avinlor still did not know either, and that she was probably happy to not know some of them. Or maybe that was just him.

[madgodintherain]

Passing Through

The worst thing about travelling in the rain, Maitos thought, was not getting gradually soggier as the day wore on, but rather the near impossibility of drying oneself out again at the end of it. Even if one bundled oneself---and one's gear---up in the most impermeable wrappings one could find, when it came time to peel off the outer layer, the interior had resigned itself to the inevitability of ubiquitous damp, and---prescient that tomorrow would only bring more of the same---dug in its heels against the persuasion of dryness when it knew very well what disappointment loomed in its future.

On second thought, Maitos amended, the worst thing about travelling in the rain was when the rain had thoughts of becoming snow, but had yet to make up its mind. That turned out to be as cold as snow, but still as wet as rain, and heavy enough to get places it was absolutely not wanted. Maitos quickly abandoned any idea of fetching something warmer out of his pack---at least until the weather turned firmly to snow---since the sleet would no doubt get into everything. Which it might yet do, if Avinlor insisted on standing there much longer, probably saying a lengthy farewell to the rain. The rain, at least, had the sense to move on, leaving them behind with nothing more for company than large puffs of ice floating lazily down, grey against a white sky.

Maitos considered the extra jacket in his pack again, but decided that the walking alone would soon be warm enough. Avinlor had finally made a sound that was probably a huff (though it might have been a final parting comment to the rain) and resumed walking. Maitos trudged along behind her.

The snow soon ceased to melt on the ground, and began piling up with the oppressive heaviness of not-noise that came from thin, fluffy ice bricks falling into place upon more of the same. Somehow, the sound seemed heavier than usual, though no louder. Maitos gave his own huff and focused on ignoring the fantasies of his undoubtedly soggy ears.

The cold, curiously, seemed to stay with him. Snow might require colder temperatures than rain, Maitos reasoned, but not indefinitely so: there was such a thing as it being too cold to snow. Then, it was harder to walk through so he should be expending more energy and making himself warmer in the process. Finally, he no longer had liquid water constantly landing on him and running off, taking more heat with each rolling drop. He held out one arm to study the snow that had fallen on his sleeve. Some of it melted, very slowly, but most of the ice just slid off. He shook his sleeves off and hugged himself. He had not grown colder, but neither had he warmed up.

Either the persistent cold or the persistent effort of ignoring the sound of thudding snowflakes had so occupied Maitos that he had failed to notice when they had entered the tunnel. He looked up and out of his thoughts to find deliberately shaped walls rising on either side and arching overhead. He studied them, trying to figure out what made him think they were formed with intention, rather than merely by chance. It was difficult to make out features in the dim light, but he thought he might have glimpsed a corner of brickwork peeking out from behind a drift of snow. Not long after, his foot kicked something that felt like wood---an old support beam, maybe. He tried to recall if he had seen anything more distinct back at the beginning, whether inside or out, that suggested what sort of tunnel it was, or why it had been built, but he could not even recall if they had slipped in while he was not listening to the sounds of the snow, or while he was lamenting the continued cold, or---perhaps more likely---in the grey study in between.

Maitos still had not gotten warm. Also, the snow was still falling.

He looked up to the ceiling of the tunnel, and saw the flakes drifting down through it. He looked to the sides, and saw flakes drifting in and out of them. Either it was snowing inside, or they were in two places at once, again. He could ask Avinlor about it, but then he would have to admit that he had only just noticed what was going on. He kept quiet and trudged on through the growing drifts.

Maitos was no longer easy to astonish. Walking through two different places at the same time should not have been any more remarkable than walking through sleet, and usually not at all as uncomfortable. Moreover, like the sleet, one or the other would eventually win out and the two contradictory surroundings would resolve into one reasonably consistent sort of place. It usually happened quicker than this though.

What if they had gotten stuck between the snowy place and the tunnel place, halfway from one to the next, but not in either? Suppose they just walked around between the two of them until the snow filled up the tunnels and they could no longer move, or even breathe. Then, months later, or even years, the snow would melt, and their corpses would be swept to who knew what end in subterranean rivers that were not even properly underground. They would probably batter apart on the rock and seep down through the soil, and then at least maybe they would be in only one real place.

‘Avinlor?' he finally ventured. ‘I don't much care for this.'

‘No harm in tunnelling,' she said, or maybe, ‘No harm in tunnels,' given how the snow deadened the sound, and the stone echoed it. ‘We're only passing through,' she added more clearly. Maitos decided to interpret the present progressive as reassurance that they existed in a continuously changing state and were making forward progress. This did not comfort him as he had hoped, a little like how he still had not managed to generate more body heat. The simplest explanation was that he had already died and been buried, and was now being buried a second time, in his grave, under the snow.

Maitos walked directly into Avinlor, who had stopped to examine a fork in the tunnel. Why had he been buried with her? He had always supposed one of them would substantially outlive the other, probably with Avinlor being the survivor. How old had he made it to in the end?

Avinlor looked down both new tunnels, then picked up a handful of snow, and held it and blew on it until it melted. Unfortunately, it had nothing more to say to her than either wet or Winter, and in (or maybe that was out), none of which was news.

If it is Winter, who said it had to be snow? she asked.

The snow rumbled, and the tunnel blew about in a sudden gust, and when it had settled again, the lefthand passage had gone and the drifts of snow were drifts of brown, wet leaves, and just the edges of the very top layer were rimmed with frost. Avinlor set off along the only direction remaining with a new briskness, or perhaps merely a degree of vigor that her companion was finding increasingly difficult to emulate.

Maitos, who knew better than to deliberately brush off the leaves from his shoulders and hat, followed resignedly. The cold had settled further into him while they had stood still, and he could not see how the new arrangement was improvement. Now, if anything went wrong, they had lost their power of choice; as for the leaves, they would not only be wet, but also dirty. He stumbled over something wooden and when he had steadied himself and looked to see what was the matter, he found it had been a tree root. Indeed, the entire tunnel was no longer stone, but a pathway bounded on either side by dense, grey trees, whose bare branches reached over their heads, interlocking in a wooden net. A glance to the side again showed that the trees grew so closely together, Maitos doubted he would be able to slip between them. Even if he did find a wide enough gap, he felt sure they would not let him.

Avinlor was standing some ways ahead, looking back at him. He hurried to catch up, and muttered, ‘Sorry,' when he reached her. She set off again, making the hum that meant he was forgiven, and that she hoped he would look after himself better---for his own sake. It meant, more generally, that she was concerned for him, and at least somewhat sympathetic, though she was unlikely to admit as much in so few words.

Up ahead, the trees gave way on their left, and faded sunlight cascaded into the tunnel. ‘Sunlets,' Avinlor said in a measured voice. According to most people, children of the sun were a good thing, which was why Avinlor almost never rolled her eyes, huffed in exasperation, or twitched a finger when speaking of them. In any case, her opinions were clear enough from the word alone to those who were familiar with it. Maitos, for his part, had never yet heard that any of the children of the sun went in for cold and decay and withering, but he still had not heard of a lot of things as yet. A click and a finger flutter from ahead showed that Avinlor had her own doubts, though she did not share her revised assessment. Maitos tried to interpret the click and the hand gesture, but could only refine it as far as bad Sunlet imitators, and even that was partly guesswork. A correct identification was probably absolutely crucial for more reasons than the obvious, but Maitos really wanted out of the tunnel. As long as the opening did not connect them to a mountain of dust with trees of bone, or a ravening horde with eyeless heads and gnashing teeth, he would take it over more tunnel.

In fact, when they reached it, it showed them nothing alarming at all. It looked out merely over a field of sunflowers, a little past their prime and beginning to wilt, though their seeds probably would not be ripe yet. Admittedly, the shriveled sunflower in the sky---in place of a sun---was a little odd, with its limp rays like boney fingers, and its brittle calyx a circular mouth of so many jagged teeth waiting to consume it once again. But it cast light, and Maitos had seen stranger pseudo-suns than this.

Avinlor, meanwhile, had knelt down to touch a shrunken ray that had fallen or been blown into the tunnel. She jerked back, as if burned, and stood quickly.

‘Come on, Maitos,' she said, and held out her hand to him. He stared blankly at it, no more certain of grasping it than of taking hold of one of the flowers in the field. ‘Come on,' she repeated. Still he stared at her, frozen like a frost-touched leaf. ‘You were right, Maitos,' she said. And, yes, that admission was enough to rouse him into motion again. He reached out to her, and she smiled. ‘We're going to get out of here.'

Their hands clasped, and she pulled him to the far side of the tunnel, away from the gap in the trees. Avinlor made to continue forward then, and Maitos stumbled and managed a sort of squashed meep of protest at going past something evidently so dangerous, and then onward still to who knew what, but Avinlor simply said, ‘Forwards is just as good as back, now. No harm in passing through.' They crept by the opening, pressed up against the tree trunks as close as they could while still navigating over the roots---one-handed, each of them---until the ground was shadowed once more, untouched by the sunflower-sunlight. In the shadows, they stepped down into the middle of the tunnel again, where the going was easier, though Avinlor still kept hold of his hand. She led them on at a good pace then, a little bit hurrying but mostly purposeful. Maitos looked back behind them every so often, not entirely sure what he expected to see, except perhaps a throng of sunflower zombies lumbering after them. The tunnel remained empty, though, and even the lighted opening disappeared around a bend eventually, and Maitos never heard anything besides the crunch and slide of wet leaves, and the stumping of their own feet.

A long time later (probably), they were walking through a rainy forest, full of trees spaced at nice, normal distances, and covered over with moss and draping lichens. Only a few were bare of leaves; most were heavy with needles and, where they were low enough to see, bright orange cones; here and there Maitos saw an occasional scaly-leafed tree, much smaller than most of the needle ones, and with stringier-looking bark.

They had dropped hands a little while back, and Maitos finally gathered the courage to ask, ‘What was that?'

‘Old,' Avinlor answered.

Maitos had been hoping for something more definite, but would settle for pursuing whatever aspect Avinlor was willing to discuss. ‘How old?'

‘Old as balls.' Which told Maitos that there were things Avinlor still did not know either, and that she was probably happy to not know some of them.

Or maybe that was just him.

[hydrargyrum80]

14, 23

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory.

See this post.

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?

Avinlor and most of the people around her. The original version of the story they were in (back about half my life ago) now resembles a Medieval High Fantasy AU of itself.  Avinlor and Lortez were then definitely twin sisters; now all we know for certain is that they knew one another when they were younger, but each has a very different explanation of their relationship, and nobody around them is able to confirm either story (both, I am sure, are in some measure lying). Originally, Avinlor and Lortez were the only two people who could do magic; later they were the two far and away the most skilled at magic; the latter is probably somewhat true for Lortez, but Avinlor is generally supposed not to be able to do any magic (unless perhaps one counts talking to the rain). Lortez and Avinlor were also initially diametrically opposed Good and Evil respectively; Lortez is now nominally good, if somewhat obstructionist and interfering and possessed of certain irritating convictions, while Avinlor has shaded around to an anti-hero, who has possibly dangerous sentiments, generally good (if uniquely specific) diplomatic skills, and yet an inability to deal gracefully with spectres of her past. There were also no fairies (Belaicy and Ephaltrevones are wholly new additions) or queers (Galdris only became a lesbian in the present incarnation of the story, and Maitos, a newcomer with Belaicy and Ephaltrevones, only even more recently became a trans man).

Somewhere in her distant past, Ghraulg was once a weapons runner in a very Star Trek-inspired setting. That she is now the Weapons Master on the Tulskor under Captain Ranin remains consistent, but it is not at all in a Star Trek setting and Captain Ranin’s species has changed. I do have some unaccounted for years in her backstory, but they were probably not spent being a weapons runner.

Diana was originally just someone from the resistance who wound up as consort to Madradena (and subsequently met an unspecified fate). She now is a part of a person who deliberately (and living) ventured into Madradena’s world in an attempt to destroy her and free everyone trapped there. After a first attempt (and spectacular failure) that person was split into two entities, the other—far more active one—being known as the Hunter. Diana is more or less aware of this; the Hunter is not. Diana also remains (or returns to being) moderately active after her demise.

Eldrevna’s life was formerly non-continuous. After much difficulty, she eventually managed to set up a particular sort of re-incarnation for herself and then put it into effect.