[WP] Your guardian angel and your fairy godmother don't get along, and it's really starting to become a problem.
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Growing up in the tower, I often got lonely. There weren’t other children to play with, and though my aunts tried their best they never quite knew how to keep a human child occupied. So I found my own entertainment.
Until I was about nine, my favorite thing to do was carve the ancient stone tower walls with the strange patterns that came to me in my dreams. But then I accidentally made a runic array for conjuring acid and dissolved part of the 72nd floor, and my aunts made me stop.
“He gets it from your side of the family,” Aunt Dia had accused Aunt Mia. She was clutching worriedly at her shawl, which obscured her silky white hair and the shining feathers of her wings. She and Aunt Mia were discussing how to keep me occupied now that the carvings were no longer an option.
“Oh please. Ellis said he saw the runes in dreams, Dia. Prophetic dreams are 100% from your side,” Aunt Mia waved a long nailed hand dismissively. When I’d asked Aunt Mia why she kept her nails so long and sharp, she’d said crafting the talons and painting them with fey symbols helped her channel the streams of energy she used for greater workings. Aunt Dia said Aunt Mia was just vain, and liked the way they looked.
I never knew which of them to believe.
“I know what I can do instead of the carvings,” I said, before the two could launch into a full round of bickering. Now seemed like the perfect time to request a favor I’d been thinking about for a while. “I could read! There’s all sorts of books around here, if one of you could just teach me.”
“You can’t read?!” Aunt Dia blanched, clearly appalled. I had a hunch she would be my best bet, since she was always droning on about the importance of the holy tomes. “Goddess forgive us, we’ve raised the boy to be a simpleton.”
“It’s so tedious how humans have to be taught everything,” Aunt Mia complained. “Remember how he used to run around pissing in corners until we trained him to use the chamber pot?”
“Well how was I supposed to know? I didn't have an example to follow, its not like either of you need to use the chamber pot,” I'd retorted, though I wasn’t actually sure that was entirely true. I had my suspicions about where fairy dust came from, though I didn’t like to think about it for too long. “Anyway Aunt Mia, it’s not too late. Just teach me now.”
And so I was taught to read. And goddess, did I love it.
Over the next few years, I developed a voracious appetite for stories. Fairy tales, in particular, were my favorites. Aunt Mia thought they were silly and misleading since they often didn’t even involve fey. Aunt Dia cautioned some were blasphemous and I was better off sticking to scripture. But I didn’t care what my aunts thought, I read every fairy tale in the tower until the pages were dog eared and grey. And then, at age sixteen, I worked up the courage to ask my aunts for yet another favor.
“Can’t I read the book you keeped locked in Aunt Dia's study?” I'd asked, as the three of us sat down for our nightly meal of manna.
“What book?” replied Aunt Mia at the exact same time Aunt Dia replied, “When you’re older.”
The two glared at each other.
“It’s wrong to lie to the boy!” Aunt Dia said. “In no less than four passages in the Holy Tome, it says-”
“Lying isn’t wrong! It’s an art form, and you're suppressing my art,” hissed Aunt Mia. “I should expect no less from a book burner.”
“I didn’t burn those blasphemous books, they spontaneously combusted at the Goddess’s will,” retorted Aunt Dia, nose pointed piously into the air.
“Liar!” replied Aunt Mia. And then she gasped, delighted. “And if you’re a liar that means you’re also a hypocrite! And I know for a fact that musty old tome of yours says the punishment for hypocrisy is flogging. Let me get my whips and I'll-”
“Um, guys? Can we not do this again? You had this exact same argument the last time I asked if I could read the locked up book,” I said, already exhausted at the thought of going through it all again. Last time they’d fought for a fortnight, loudly and endlessly, and I’d barely been able to get any sleep.
“You’ve asked this before?” Aunt Dia sounded puzzled, but it was just like her and Aunt Mia to completely something that felt like a huge deal to me. They weren’t trapped in the tower like I was, and so they had the outside world to focus on instead of my requests. “What did I say last time?”
“That I could read it when I was older,” I replied. "Which is why I'm asking now, because I'm older."
“Ellis, you make a good point," Aunt Mia laughed and shot Aunt Dia a mean little look. "How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m sixteen!” I told them. Now they were both looking at me, surprised, like this was important news.
“I thought you were keeping track of how old he was,” muttered Aunt Dia.
“Me? I thought we agreed that you’d be the responsible aunt and I’d be the fun one,” Aunt Mia retorted.
“We absolutely never agreed to that! And I will have you know that all the other angelic sisters say I am gloriously fun,” Aunt Dia bristled. “But that’s all besides the point. The boy is right, it’s past time he read the book. He needs to know his history."
I perked up. “My history? The book is about me?”
“In a way,” conceded Aunt Mia. “But it gets a bunch of stuff wrong. It was written by scholars, and they always skip over all the juicy bits. Dia, if he’s gonna learn this stuff, I say we be the ones who tell him.”
“Well… I suppose…” Aunt Dia trailed off. “We do have the inside perspective.”
“Great! It’s settled,” Aunt Mia declared. “Brace yourself, Ellis. Time for one last fairy tale. This one has actual fey, plus the origins of this tower, and the truth of how you came to be under our care. You ready, kid?”
I leaned forward over my forgotten bowl of manna, and nodded.
"This is the story of your mom and dad..."
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Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism & feedback welcome. This is actually a story that I am thinking about continuing (even though the original prompt isn't getting a lot of attention) so please let me know if you'd like to read more of it.
Submitted October 30, 2018 at 03:04AM by kaypella https://ift.tt/2qfQY5y
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