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Aya is little used to having the opportunity to set her own priorities, but she likes it. She's not hurting for any material resources, and the organization of the attic would produce those more than anything else; and she has this entire bookshelf closer to hand. So the attic, which may or may not contain ghosts, languishes; and she steadily works through the book collection. Right now she is on the third in a series of myths from the old religion; this volume is about Aelare, the trickster.
Aelare has the most interesting stories.
She (or just as frequently he) appears in a bewildering variety of forms, although the commonest are the fox, the magpie, and the young man or woman with sparkling eyes. Most of the longer tales concern her venturing out into the world to make mischief or dispense gifts depending on whim and the behaviour of the recipient, but sometimes there is a shorter verse or tale about some (un)lucky soul who enters Aelare's domain and comes away embroidered with strange magical effects, with or without meeting the trickster responsible for the change.
Almost every time Aelare is introduced in any of these, it's with some new story about his or her origin. She was born in a sea-storm when the world was young, and flew around the world twice trying to build a nest to keep shiny stones in, and wherever she lingered she left magic in her wake, and that is why she takes the shape of a magpie in this story; in that one, he was the first person to walk into a magic, and it ate him up and made him part of itself, and that is why he takes the shape of a young man. And on and on. The most any two of these origins can agree on is that Aelare either came out of a magic or made them all.
Perhaps that abundance is why one of Aelare's many titles and epithets - alongside simpler things like "the copper-coated" (as a fox), "the yearning one" (mainly as a magpie), or "the gem-eyed" - is "the one who is born a thousand times".
She (or just as frequently he) appears in a bewildering variety of forms, although the commonest are the fox, the magpie, and the young man or woman with sparkling eyes. Most of the longer tales concern her venturing out into the world to make mischief or dispense gifts depending on whim and the behaviour of the recipient, but sometimes there is a shorter verse or tale about some (un)lucky soul who enters Aelare's domain and comes away embroidered with strange magical effects, with or without meeting the trickster responsible for the change.
Almost every time Aelare is introduced in any of these, it's with some new story about his or her origin. She was born in a sea-storm when the world was young, and flew around the world twice trying to build a nest to keep shiny stones in, and wherever she lingered she left magic in her wake, and that is why she takes the shape of a magpie in this story; in that one, he was the first person to walk into a magic, and it ate him up and made him part of itself, and that is why he takes the shape of a young man. And on and on. The most any two of these origins can agree on is that Aelare either came out of a magic or made them all.
Perhaps that abundance is why one of Aelare's many titles and epithets - alongside simpler things like "the copper-coated" (as a fox), "the yearning one" (mainly as a magpie), or "the gem-eyed" - is "the one who is born a thousand times".
namesthesky
Aya never personally plans to walk into a magic, but she does sort of appreciate that there is such a thing; that desperation has this outlet. She's charmed by the stories; she doesn't believe them, but they're fun, and half of the ones in this book she hasn't heard before.
The stories can be very charming!
Probably through the influence of ancient storytellers' wishful thinking, Aelare is frequently depicted as developing a soft spot for some mortal - the reasons vary widely - and kindly bestowing a useful trick instead of instant death or inconvenient transformation. This girl gave the copper fox a kiss and was blessed with luck at gambling; that boy ran into a magic to escape his chores, and when he invented a series of increasingly improbable excuses to avoid revealing his dereliction to the woman whose eyes sparkled like opal, she liked his cleverness so much that she taught him how to braid moonbeams into cords like the ones she wore in her hair, after which his family was much more interested in getting rich off his new talent than in making him crack nuts and beat rugs.
Some of the gifts, often the most ambivalent ones, sound like things someone really might have walked out of a magic with and attributed to a trickster god; others, like the man who learned to drink sunlight he caught in a bowl and eat raindrops by the crunchy handful, seem invented for absurdity; some of the rest are tied to other legends, in which Aelare appears to some notable hero and helps or hinders them with some not-quite-traditional twist on the kind of aid or obstacle such heroes would usually encounter.
Probably through the influence of ancient storytellers' wishful thinking, Aelare is frequently depicted as developing a soft spot for some mortal - the reasons vary widely - and kindly bestowing a useful trick instead of instant death or inconvenient transformation. This girl gave the copper fox a kiss and was blessed with luck at gambling; that boy ran into a magic to escape his chores, and when he invented a series of increasingly improbable excuses to avoid revealing his dereliction to the woman whose eyes sparkled like opal, she liked his cleverness so much that she taught him how to braid moonbeams into cords like the ones she wore in her hair, after which his family was much more interested in getting rich off his new talent than in making him crack nuts and beat rugs.
Some of the gifts, often the most ambivalent ones, sound like things someone really might have walked out of a magic with and attributed to a trickster god; others, like the man who learned to drink sunlight he caught in a bowl and eat raindrops by the crunchy handful, seem invented for absurdity; some of the rest are tied to other legends, in which Aelare appears to some notable hero and helps or hinders them with some not-quite-traditional twist on the kind of aid or obstacle such heroes would usually encounter.
namesthesky
Aya likes the particular manner of storytelling displayed by this writer enough to read even the stories she's already heard, or heard variants of.
anotherbreeze
When the duke's son glances into her room and sees what she's reading, he giggles.
namesthesky
"If I thought they actually existed I'd probably have a fairly poor opinion of the lot, but she does have the advantage of not claiming to be involved with a grand project of guiding the whole of Tayane without any noticeable results, unlike the rest of them."
namesthesky
"I like books in general. This one's more on the 'fun' side than the 'useful' side, but I have time for both these days."
namesthesky
"Although eventually I might get used to the luxury of reading and drawing all day except between meals and then I'll probably organize your attic to break things up a bit."
namesthesky
"Maybe. Whatever it is hasn't disturbed the things too much - it's hardly tidy, but it doesn't look like there's much either broken or used, if I recall right."
namesthesky
"Maybe you've got a clockwork cricket that used to be a regular cricket and," she holds up the book again, "took a wrong turn."