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It had been several weeks since the defeat of the King- and, well, of Siffrin- and their little group of travellers was now travelling in earnest. They had brought Boniface back to Bambouche and explained what had happened to their sister, and after a week of reunion Nillie, having grown comfortable with the fact that this group of strange adults were not going to kill her little sibling, decided to take advantage of Boniface’s desire to travel to take a semester of college at her local House of Change. And so the group hatched a new objective, which was to backtrack through the various towns and cities of Vaugarde, both as a victory lap and so that Mirabelle could perform interviews with people all over the country about their feelings about the Change belief, compiling a sort of thesis she hoped to present at the main House of Change in the capital.
Thus did the five of them settled into a new sort of rhythm, travelling from place to place, staying for a day or two as Mirabelle did her interviews and the rest of them took care of their own regular business. Though Mirabelle’s thesis was somewhat of the stated goal of the group, they all had their own little ongoing quests, and within the first few towns they visited they had developed a certain unspoken schedule for that first day in a new place. Mirabelle would go to the local House of Change first, off on her own little responsibility, while Odile and Siffrin looked through libraries and bookstores for books in Siffrin’s language, which they were making a careful catalogue of. If they couldn’t find a school that was willing to take Bonnie in for a day of lessons, not wanting the kid to miss out on too much education, they would float around with Isabeau learning about local cuisine as he made sketches of whatever interesting trends existed in the local fashions. Reconvene for lunch, and then Siffrin and Odile would head to the House of Change library and Mirabelle to interview the townsfolk.
It was a life that suited Odile very well. It was not unlike the short time she had spent in Vaugarde alone before the calamity happened and she joined up with Mirabelle’s world-saving adventure; going from town to town, researching and observing local cultures and how they fit in with broader Vaugardian trends. There were two major differences, though. The first being that she was, well, with others, with their little traveling party of people she cared for deeply, and this kept Odile grounded. It did not prevent the anxieties of whether she was Ka Buan or Vaugardian or both or neither from cropping up, but it meant that however she felt about where she belonged in a broader sense, there was always somewhere where she belonged right now. This was… nice. Grounding. Good for her. And all sorts of big mushy emotions that weren’t worth putting words to.
The second difference was that being a savior of the entire country meant certain benefits when it came to what people were willing to freely give you access to. Armed with both that prestigious title (something that honestly often made her feel a bit too visible, but that she wasn’t going to not take advantage of) and the knowledge that the familytales of families that had died off were typically kept out of public view by the local House of Change, something that explained how frustrating it had been to find the things before, Odile had her own little routine. Once she and Siffrin had finished cataloguing any books they found in the House of Change library, she would go up to the head librarian, explain with a certain degree of complacency that hello, I’m here with Mirabelle, yes that Mirabelle, yes I’m with the group who defeated the King, yes, thank you, of course, of course, anyway, would you happen to have any familytales I could look at? And if they did, she would read through them quietly until dinnertime. It was… nice. Always sad, and complicated, but always nice.
Today they found themselves riding by carriage into the town of Samogneux, around the size of Dormont or a little bigger. The local school wouldn’t take Boniface but there was a local restaurateur who was willing to let them help out a little in the kitchen, and Isabeau sat at a restaurant table practicing his draft sketching. Odile and Siffrin, to their great delight, found a translated volume of The Cursing of Chateau Castle that they had never found before at a pawn shop (the two of them had a mini-quest to figure out how many issues of Chateau Castle had ever been translated) and then they all gathered at the restaurant to go ooh-aah at Boniface’s soup and Isabeau’s patternmaking. Up to the House of Change for the book cataloguing duo, and once they were done, finding an old cookbook that made Siffrin both very excited and very sad all at once, he left Odile with a knowing nod. Taking a deep breath and smiling pleasantly, she approached the head librarian, speech prepared.
“Why, yes, actually,” the middle-aged librarian gave her a thin, but well meaning smile, as they tapped their fingers together, “we do have a familytale in our catalogue at the moment, though it is… ah, heavily damaged.” They smiled and tapped their fingers together again, their somewhat anxious disposition shining through.
“Heavily damaged?” Odile raised an eyebrow. Most familytales tended to be in fairly good condition for their age, being such treasured and cared for objects. “How so, if I might ask?”
“Ah,” the librarian shook their head sadly, “in a fire, unfortunately, a few years ago, the same fire that took the life of the last surviving member of the family we’re aware of, Jacquois Boileaux. A real tragedy, that.”
“Boileaux?” Boileaux. As far as Odile was aware, Boileaux was her mother’s family name, though this was usually fairly useless information, as Boileaux was one of the most common family names in Vaugarde and the woman might have been lying about her name anyway. Still, always worth a look. “Would you mind if I take a look at it anyway? I won’t mind the condition.”
“Mmm, well,” the librarian squeezed their fingers together nervously, “it is in rather delicate condition, so I try not to take it out as much as possible…” Odile gave the hapless individual her most disarming smile, making them squirm in their boots, “...but, I suppose for one of the saviors of Vaugarde… Well, a quick look can’t hurt.”
“Thank you very much,” said Odile smoothly, pleased at her little victory, “please lead the way.”
“Of course.”
The head librarian guided her to the back of the library, unlocking a door with the ring of keys on their belt and leading Odile into a much messier and darker version of the brightly lit and inviting space outside, the floor haphazardly covered in crates of books and the shelves lining the maze of walls crammed with slightly too many volumes each. Leading her around a corner to a lectern just kind of sitting at an awkward angle in the middle of the floor, the librarian proceeded through another locked door, this one with a big wooden sign with ‘Please Take Care!’ written in fancy cursive script on it. While the librarian busied theirself with, presumably, finding the familytale, Odile took the opportunity to take a look at what sort of books the House was storing away from public eye. The results were slightly disappointing, nothing especially scandalous or dramatic, it seemed to mostly just be overflow academic texts. She did spot a few books written in Siffrin’s language, but since she couldn’t make out the titles- they made her head hurt anyway- and she felt like she was already slightly pushing her luck, Odile just made a mental note that they were here for future cataloging purposes.
Finally, the librarian returned from behind the door, carrying a vellum booksleeve fastened with a cord that they were holding very, very carefully. Approaching the lectern very, very carefully, they opened the sleeve very, very carefully and slid out probably the most damaged book that Odile had ever seen. The back cover was completely charred, and most of the pages of the back half of the book were burnt away, leaving just little blackened juts sticking out from the spine. The front half hadn’t fared much better, the pages deeply crinkled with water damage, handwritten ink running through the paper in illegible blotches of darkened stain. Odile winced at the sight of it- she hated to see any book put through this amount of mistreatment, let alone something as precious and unique as a familytale. All those stories, lost forever…
“Honestly,” said the librarian, as they placed the book down open right on the dividing line between the burnt pages and the waterlogged ones, “it’s a miracle that any of it survived at all. They found it open on the floor when they put out the fire, though the water had done almost as much damage to it as the flames had while they were trying to control the blaze. A real shame.”
“Hmm,” Odile extended a single finger to run it gently along the ink-splotched page, the head librarian watching every move of her hand intently.
“Thankfully,” they continued, reaching out and very, very carefully closing the book to its front cover, “this survived well enough. Some of the earlier stories are still somewhat legible as well, though copying them down has been difficult work.”
The cover of the book had an ancient-looking painting on it of a pastoral landscape, featuring a mountain, presumably one from the nearby mountain range, climbing high into the sky. Down from the peak wound a brightly shining river, and at the mountain’s base was what appeared to be a watermill. At the top of the cover was written BOILEAUX in bold font. Slowly, aware that her every movement was being carefully judged, Odile extended a hand to open to the first page of the book. The earlier pages were indeed much less water damaged and more legible, though what caught her eye was something written in a big flowing script on the back of the cover. Holding her glasses close to her face, Odile leaned in to try and make out what it said.
“Ah, the family motto. Not every family has one, of course, it’s something that falls in and out of style. I’ll save you the trouble of trying to decipher the script- it says, ‘there can be no cake without milling flour.’”
Odile froze suddenly and absolutely, a shiver travelling up her entire body. There can be no cake without milling flour, translated fairly directly into Ka Buan, was something her father would occasionally say, quietly, in moments of frustration. When she finally grew old enough to ask him what it meant and why he said it, he explained that it was something he had picked up from her mother, who claimed it was an old Vaugardian phrase. Odile clung to the saying for a while, before discarding it when she decided that clinging to her mother wasn’t worth the trouble. Doubly so when she actually travelled to Vaugarde only to find out that nobody actually said this and she just. Well, she just assumed that it had been a lie. And now here it was.
“It means, of course,” the person standing next to her continued unaware of Odile’s sudden emotional peril, “that one cannot have sweetness without hard work, or somesuch. It’s a rather unique one as far as I’m aware,” Odile felt her brain caving inwards and her stomach twisting into knots, barely aware of what they were saying, “probably owing to the family’s association with the old flour mill at the base of Mount Pinel- the ah, one you can see on the cover, of course- and the local tradition of making frasier cakes in the summer.”
Odile nodded reflexively, some deep-seated part of her still able to perform polite conversation while the rest of her was having a full-blown meltdown. Reaching out a quivering hand, she began to flip through the familytale automatically, barely reading the half-illegible text. The damage, which she had previously regarded with a distant sort of sympathetic sadness, now felt like damage that had been dealt to her, half her soul burnt away, the crunching of the waterlogged pages sounding like the breaking of her own bones. As she moved further through and the water damage got worse and worse, she felt like she was going to cry, tears running down her face like lines of dark stained ink. She hadn’t even been looking for it but she found it anyway but it was gone, gone gone gone worse than gone, just a crumbling relic that seemed to exist only to make her and her alone feel pain. Odile’s body was so tense, and she grabbed the corner of a page a little too hard, pulling it up while it was still half-stuck to another, and a loud ripping noise rang out through the small space.
“Aah-” Odile dropped the book immediately, stepping back in shock, “I, I’m sorry, I-”
“Ah, no, it’s quite alright,” the head librarian immediately swooped in and closed the book, carefully slipping it back inside its vellum sleeve, “it is quite delicate. But that’s probably enough for today.”
“Thank you,” said Odile reflexively, and then turned around and left the library before they could say anything else.
The rest of the day passed without Odile really being aware of it. She wandered around the outskirts of town, eyes fixed on the middle distance, shambling aimlessly as the sun sank so slowly down in the sky. To say that she was lost in thought would be a mischaracterization, as her head was so bloated with a million screaming thoughts that to think about any one of them was an impossible task. She uh, hated it very much. Rationality and clarity of purpose, focus and discipline and control, were the tools that Odile used to make herself feel safe, to make herself feel like herself. And so if anything shone through the cacophony it was anger, anger at her mother, anger at her family, anger at the librarian, anger at existence itself for allowing this to happen. But mostly it was anger at herself, for caring about something that shouldn’t matter it shouldn’t matter it shouldn’t matter. What was WRONG with her. After an unknown amount of time of this aimless ambling, Odile heard a clear, high voice calling her name.
“Madam Odile!” Mirabelle. Odile turned to face her, watching her jog towards her on the dirt road, gently hitching her long skirt, “Madam Odile! Hello! It’s time for dinner, and Bonnie was wondering where you were, so I-” Mirabelle tilted her head as she came to a stop, brow furrowing with concern. “Madam Odile, are you alright?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, I…” Odile closed her eyes and took a breath, trying to clear whatever insane expression she must have been holding on her face and exist once again in the present moment, “...I was just lost in thought, that’s all.”
“Oh, okay!” Mirabelle beamed at her, and it was the most awful thing that could have happened, “are you coming to dinner then?”
Odile waved her arm halfheartedly. “Lead the way.”
Dinner happened to be at the same restaurant as lunch, where the head chef had taken quite a shine to Boniface. As she sat down, everyone started talking excitedly about their day (“Nothing interesting,” answered Odile blankly when asked) and Odile inwardly winced at having to maintain polite company while barely able to put one word in front of the other inside of her own head. So she mostly stayed quiet, and when the serving girl came up to their table she asked her brusquely,
“A cup of wine, please.”
As the rest of them chatted about this and that, Odile found it terribly difficult to keep track of anything anyone was saying. But what she was pointedly, painfully aware of was the way that everyone was looking at her. Isabeau kept giving her concerned little questioning smiles, no doubt hoping to pull whatever she was thinking out of her with his affluent charm (fat chance) while Mirabelle kept beaming at her genuinely, as if pretending it wasn’t happening would make it okay.
“Another cup of wine, please.”
Boniface did a fantastic job at making her hate herself even more than she already did, the kid continuously trying to engage ‘Dile in some joke or story or whatever. When she didn’t really respond, over and over and over, eventually they shrunk back in their seat, playing with their food and barely participating in the conversation at all. Great job Odile, you made the kid think they did something wrong.
“Could I get another cup of wine, please?”
But worst of all was Siffrin, who refused to look at her directly at all. But Odile had nothing better to do than notice, and so she saw all of the sideways glances she got while Siffrin thought she wasn’t looking. Come ON, Siffrin, if you have something to say, why don’t you just say it? Because you’re a coward. Just like me.
“Excuse me, I need to use the ladies room.”
On her way to the restroom, she stopped at the bar, drinking another cup of wine away from prying eyes. (This was a lie, everyone could see her and she knew it.) After a very, very long pee, she returned to the bar for another two cups of wine. The bartender gave her a concerned look, but one of the perks of being a savior of Vaugarde was that nobody in their right mind would deny you a bit too much to drink. What, saving an entire country from eternal sleep didn’t entitle you to six or seven glasses of your finest dark? By the time she got back to the table, she was extremely drunk, barely able to get into her chair. Luckily, everyone just sort of ignored this, the energy getting a little more awkward but generally just letting her be a bit of a mess. Good kids. Eventually though, in the middle of a spirited debate between Isabeau and Mirabelle, the latter turned to her.
“Well, Odile? What do you think?”
“Sorry, uhm,” Odile realized she had not been paying attention to what they were saying at all, “come again? What do I think about what?”
“Well, we were just talking about how a common theme that keeps coming up as I’ve been doing my research is anxiety around Vaugardian customs changing too much, the idea that if some fundamental core of Vaugarde changes it’ll cease to, more or less, be Vaugarde. Not in so many words, but-”
“Mira,” interrupted Isabeau, who was also several cups of wine deep, “my girl, I can’t believe you’re taking their side here! Vaugarde is the land of change! I thought you were little miss Change-the-Change belief! The thing that keeps Vaugarde Vaugarde is changing!”
“I’m not taking their side! I’m not taking any side, I’m a researcher- I just think it’s an interesting thought that maybe-”
“Does it matter?” Odile interjected, “I mean, they’ll all be dead by the time any real change happens, so why should they care?” She dramatically looked at her nails, her movement sloppy and discoordinated.
“Uhm, well, I mean-” Mirabelle froze, her shock at what Odile had said clashing with her persistent desire to keep things calm and civilized, “I, uhm, suppose so, but it’s also reasonable for people to want to leave behind a positive… legacy? I guess? Like, familytales are-”
“Hah!” Odile scoffed a laugh, even as the mere mention of the word made her body shiver painfully. She leaned forward onto the table, a wicked smile on her face, ready to do reckless damage for no good reason. “Listen, I’ve read a lot of familytales over the last few weeks, and most of them are JUNK.”
“Odile!” Mirabelle half jumped out of her seat, palms on the table, “how could you-”
“Madam.” Said Isabeau, crossing his arms with a stern expression.
But it was Boniface who really made Odile realize how badly she had messed up. They didn’t say anything, just turned as far away from her as possible, legs up on the chair, arms wrapped around them. Odile couldn’t see their face to see if they were crying or not.
“Sorry, it was a joke,” Odile mumbled as she stood up suddenly. She fished around in her pockets for a handful of coins, slammed them down on the table, and said, “I think I’m turning in for the night.”
“Oh, they said the meal was on the house, you don’t have to-”
“It’s for the wine.” Odile turned to go, but as she did, she caught the eye of Siffrin, finally looking directly at her. “Well, Siffrin? Something to say?”
He shook his head. She scoffed, and left.
The sun was already starting to set by the time Odile had left the restaurant. She wanted nothing more than to be around no people, so she stumbled towards a trail she had noticed before, that led out of town and into the forest that lined the foot of the mountains. She was filled with so much anger and so much liquor as she bumped into trees and tripped on roots and rocks, swearing every time she did. She wasn’t mad that she had made everyone upset- well, she was, because it made her feel like an absolute embarrassment of a person and an absolute fucking failure and also she cared about these people, but it wasn’t the main thing that made her mad- she was mad because she knew that it would be okay, that they would forgive her and they would all grow and learn and be sunshine and rainbows. Meanwhile this thing that she didn’t even know was truly lacking was now gone forever and she was cursed with that knowledge forever. All she had to do was not look at the book! She just had to hear that it was heavily damaged, go well, maybe not worth the effort, and leave, and everything would be fine. And instead she was cursed with this agony of loss forever. Great fucking job.
Eventually, the path opened up into a clearing, and in the twilight it was beautiful, with lush grass and blossoming wild apple trees and the gentle babbling of a brook nearby. Odile hated it for how pretty and perfect it was, hated it so much, so she stormed up to the prettiest tree at the edge of the clearing, formed all of that anger into a wedge in her hand, and lashed out at the poor plant with a massive slash of craft, nearly cutting its trunk clean in two. The wood groaned and buckled, before falling into the center of the clearing with an enormous crash that sent Odile stumbling backwards. And now the perfect clearing, the perfect blossoming tree, were ruined forever. She slashed at the trunk a few more times for good measure, sending splinters of wood flying everywhere, until the effort had drenched her with sweat, and she fell forward onto her knees, panting heavily, leaning against the fallen trunk. Her mind was blissfully empty.
“Odile?” Siffrin’s voice. She didn’t look up.
“Look who it is.” Talking reminded Odile of how drunk she was. “What do you want, Siffrin?”
The gentle sound of boots on grass moving towards her, until she could sense Siffrin standing at her side. She looked up at them, to find them looking up and down the fallen tree, their eyes finally resting on her. A look of quiet concern filled their face. Ask me if I’m okay, thought Odile, preparing her venomous retort. I dare you.
Instead, Siffrin turned back to look at the branches of the tree, grabbing the end of one between his fingers, and said with a tone of uneasy mischief, “I can, uh, leaf you alone, if you want.”
The joke caught Odile so off-guard that she couldn’t help but laugh, and with a groan of concession, she dragged herself off the ground and sat heavily onto the trunk. Siffrin sat down beside her, at a comfortable distance.
“I should probably talk about it, right? Isn’t that how this usually goes? When something bad happens, you’re supposed to talk about it?”
Siffrin shrugged. “Everyone’s always telling me not to hold it in. But maybe that’s just so that I don’t destroy the world again.”
Odile scoffed another laugh. The two of them sat there in silence for a long time before she finally spoke. “I found… my familytale. You know, of my actual family? And it was a mess, basically destroyed in a fire, along with probably my only surviving Vaugardian relative. And now… I can’t go back. I can’t go back to when I didn’t know this, when the loss was just… abstract, instead of this… awareness. Of this nothingness, this void.”
Another long silence, before Siffrin said simply, “you know that… I know how you feel, right? At least, you know. Kind of.”
“I know.” She shifted instinctively a little closer to Siffrin, “I just… one stupid thought I keep having, that doesn’t even matter, is that, well, the librarian said the fire happened only a few years ago, and if I had just come to Vaugarde a little sooner had tried a little harder to find them, I might have…” she reached her hands out as if to grasp something that wasn’t there, “it doesn’t make any sense, I just wish… there was something... I could do.”
“I know.”
“And now instead, there’s just… nothing. There can be no cake.” Odile started laughing a little bit too hard, at this joke that nobody in the entire world except for her understood or could ever understand, laughing so hard that tears began to form at the corners of her eyes. She realized then that she hadn’t cried all day.
They sat there for a while longer still, until the sunlight started to fully leave the sky and the stars began to make themselves visible. The two of them looked up at the sky, Odile struggling to find the words to the very strange question she wanted to ask.
“Siffrin…”
“Hmm?”
“Maybe this is a strange thing to ask, or maybe it will make you… too upset to answer, but,” Odile stretched a hand towards the sky, “what do you not remember about the stars?”
“What do I-” Siffrin started and then stopped, looking up, an unreadable expression on their face. They didn’t answer for a long, long time, so long that Odile started to worry that she had said something terribly stupid, but finally he pointed up at the sky, “see those three stars in an arc, there? Those are part of a constellation, I think, maybe with those two sort of above them, but I can’t remember what it’s called or what it’s supposed to be… some kind of animal, maybe? I think? And then there’s supposed to be another one in that cluster of stars next to it, but I don’t…”
This continued for a while, Siffrin pointing out little bits of half-remembered cosmic information, and all the missing gaps in between. Odile looked at the stars, this landscape of shining lights that once held so much information and now was only fragments, and saw in it the pages of crumpled paper running with half-legible ink. And in all the blank spaces in between, the blackness of char and ash. Eventually Siffrin stopped, mid-sentence, seemingly too overwhelmed to go on. Odile gave him a beat, and then asked in a low tone,
“It’s all gone, isn’t it? And we’ll never get it back?”
“Maybe, yeah.”
“But then…” Odile held her hand in front of her, opening and closing it, grasping at nothing, “what do we do?”
A long pause. Slowly, Siffrin took off their hat, placed it on the ground, and scootched over to sit nearer to Odile. Carefully, hesitantly, they leaned their body over to rest against the side of Odile’s chest. Odile jumped slightly at the human contact, which made Siffrin freeze, but when she carefully placed her arm around their waist the two of them gradually relaxed. All around them, the sound of chirping frogs and insects rang out through the night.
“The universe leads,” said Siffrin.
“We can only follow,” replied Odile. It was a phrase she had heard Siffrin mutter under his breath, and that they had found while translating books, but she had never given it much thought.
“The universe leads,” Siffrin said again. Odile could feel tears from his cheeks soaking into her clothes.
“We can only follow,” replied Odile, who started to cry too, finally.
“The universe leads.”
“We can only follow.”
Again, and again, and again, the two of them repeated this call and response, until the mantra had stitched itself to Odile’s heart. Expressions and the Change God and these fragments of a half-forgotten faith in the Universe, Ka Bue and and Vaugarde and their little makeshift multicultural family, Odile’s heart was made of disparate pieces haphazardly sewn together. She looked at herself, this patchwork being she had become, and thought, what a strange thing I am. It took her a minute to realize that Siffrin had stopped saying the first part of the phrase, because they had fallen asleep, softly snoring against Odile’s side. She didn’t know what to do, so she just sat there, holding them as they slept.
Eventually, the rustling of bushes and the light of a lantern as Isabeau came and found them. Odile turned and lifted a finger to her lips, and quietly the two of them maneuvered the sleeping Siffrin into Isabeau’s arms. Taking up the lantern, Odile led them back through the trail to town.
—
That morning, once Odile had properly apologized and explained herself- the latter mostly via Siffrin by proxy, which was embarrassing but the thing was still too painful for her to talk about- Mirabelle finished up the last of her interviews while the others restocked, and the group set off towards their next destination before lunch. Often, they travelled between towns via carriage routes, but the townsfolk had so pitched them on the beauty of the mountains that they decided to take a few extra days to hike there instead. The fresh air and the physical exercise (if not the heights) did Odile good, and she proceeded happily but quietly, carefully ordering her thoughts as they walked, Boniface zipping around the trees and everyone ooh-aahing at the views.
On their second day of hiking, Odile quietly pulled Mirabelle to the back of the line.
“Mirabelle,” she said in a low voice, “I had an idea I wanted to run by you, as our local Vaugardian culture expert. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overstepping before I pitched it to anyone else.”
“Of course, madam!” Mirabelle beamed, and Odile smiled back at her. “Happy to advise. What is it?”
When they arrived in the next town, one somewhat bigger and livelier than the last, the routine was broken, as Mirabelle and Odile went off on a secret mission first thing in the morning. (Finding a schoolhouse that would take Bonnie for the day gave Isabeau and Siffrin the opportunity to enjoy a quiet little date together.) When the group reconvened at a cafeteria for lunch, Odile and Mirabelle showed up with mischievous smiles on their faces, the latter holding something conspicuously behind her back.
“Hey!” Said Bonnie loudly, pointing, “Belle’s hiding something!”
“Do you think it’s something from their secret mission?” Isabeau elbowed them conspiratorially.
“Yeah!”
“Well, you would be right! It’s…” Mirabelle dramatically pulled the thing out from behind her back, revealing a large book with a blank cover.
“...A blank book?” Bonnie seemed obviously disappointed by this turn of events.
“A blank familytale,” Odile corrected, reaching out to ruffle the kid’s hair.
“But, why’s it blank?”
“Oh! I get it!” Isabeau’s eyes widened with excitement, “is it blank because it’s our familytale?”
“Yes!” Mirabelle gave off the happiest expression any of them had ever seen her wear. “Odile pitched me on the idea a few days ago. I thought it was so wonderful, I mean, I’ve thought a lot about how, you know, people who don’t start families,” she stumbled for a moment, and then regained herself, “don’t, you know, get to keep familytales, but the idea of keeping a familytale as a nontraditional family is such a fantastic way to advance such an important Vaugardian tradition!”
“The process of buying it was somewhat awkward, though,” Odile chuckled, hand to her face, “when we asked the bookseller if he had any blank familytales, naturally he assumed that Mirabelle was… expecting.”
“And then I, uhm, panicked a little, and said it was for a friend.”
“And then he turns to me, asking if I’m the grandmother, and then I panic and say that I am.”
“Ha! Dile’s a grandma!”
“And then he started talking for a very long time about foreigners starting families in Vaugarde and it was. Uhm. Very awkward. And kind of bad. But! None of that matters!” Mirabelle placed the familytale down on the table with a dramatic thud. “We should start thinking about what kinds of stories we want to write in it!”
Boniface threw their arms up in the air excitedly, “I want to write a story about a dog that eats potatoes!”
“Crab yeah!” Said Isabeau, and the three Vaugardian natives clustered around the table, chatting excitedly.
As they did, Siffrin made his way around the table, standing next to Odile as they looked down at the three with bemused smiles.
“A familytale, huh?” Siffrin smirked at her knowingly.
Odile shrugged. “The universe leads, Siffrin.”
“We can only follow.”