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English
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Published:
2024-04-29
Completed:
2024-11-07
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461
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2/2
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none of it symmetrical

Summary:

vass's Nine Worlds drabbles and snippets.

Notes:

Title is from chapter 3 of Petty Treasons: "Point and counterpoint, thesis and antithesis and synthesis, none of it symmetrical, none of it bound. Even in a sonnet, a sestina, a couplet, a clerihew I had never obeyed all the rules." (What did you do to that poor clerihew, Fitzroy? Make it scan? Give it a number of lines not equal to four?)

So far just the one drabble, but I'm thinking ahead.

All that said, notes on this first drabble that I'm posting tonight: it diverges from Evil!Household continuity at some point before alfgifu's 'Ain't no sunshine (when he's gone)', and incorporates from mantrasong's 'Until Love Stops Screaming' the idea that Jullanar and Basil tried to intervene. (Not checking the "inspired by" box only because I don't know how to make that only apply to a single chapter, and I'm not planning for every chapter of this work to be E!H.)

Nothing explicit happens in the drabble, but the context is still Evil!Household, so I'm threading that needle by choosing not to warn.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

At the bidding of her friends, she came to petition a god to release his captive.

As a scholar she had thought to go to study in the archives, but her friend Jullanar and Jullanar's friend Basil laid another quest upon her: rescue Basil's cousin from the emperor's heart's thrall.

She had not known that the last emperor of Astandalas had once been her friend Fitzroy.

She had not known that this would be all that was left of him, all human pity burned away in that radiant gold.

But she was Pali Avramapul and she had slain gods before.

Chapter 2: Mdang Gothic

Summary:

You have 59 cousins.

Chapter Text

Your grandmother had 16 children. They had 59 children. You are related to 1/4 of the city. You have 2 sisters and 59 cousins. Your sister dies. Now you have 59 cousins. The city's population increases. Now you are related to 1/4 of the city. Your cousin Dimiter disappears. Now you have 59 cousins. Another cousin has been born. Now you have 59 cousins. All but one of your grandmother's 16 children got married, so you have 16 uncles and aunts. They are all disappointed in you. At a family gathering you try to count everyone present: 59. No, wait, you forgot to count yourself, so that makes 59.

There is a Mdang for every occasion. If you need to work on your counting skills, talk to Uncle Gav Mdang, the maths teacher. If you need to talk about missing and dead cousins, talk to Cousin Saffron, the funeral director. If you need to talk about genealogy, talk to a Walea, they have the posà, who hold the knowledge of lineages. You are Mdang. You hold the fire. You do not run from its burn. Your cousin Hillen is twisting the skin of your arm in two different directions. It burns. You do not run from Cousin Hillen. Now your mother has sent you away to Loaloa. Everyone here is a Mdang. Everyone. You all hold the fire. There is so much fire. It's fine.

Your fanoa is humming an Ystharan song about not starting a fire. Your great-uncle taught you twenty different methods for starting fires, and more for keeping them going. Those two things happened more than 1000 years apart. Don't think about the time. that's your cousin Ifa, the watchmaker's, job. You dance on fire. You eat fire. You are worried your boss will fire you. Or execute you. If you need a literary executor, Hanë Aya knows someone. Her grandmother was your grandmother's sister. You are third cousins. You have 59 cousins. Hanë (not cousin) Aya is a writer. She crafts narratives. You once considered becoming an accountant. They keep accounts. There's an important distinction that you can't quite articulate between narratives, accounts, and relations.