Eggshells and Lineman's Hopes, a story of the Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

[aldersprig]

For flofx's second prompt.

Long before Guarding the Church and referencing Strange Neighbors.




Tia Lian was born, as her kind were, in an eggshell watered with the tears of an unmarried woman and fertilized with the hopes of an unemployed man.

Or so she liked to tell people... and in her childhood, she was so small, so clearly fay, so touched by the other, that people tended to believe her.

The truth might have been more prosaic, but it was no less magical. Born to a fairy mother in the doorway of the Stanton Arms, gotten on that mother by a goblin line worker who couldn't find work (the unions were going through an era, back then, where they didn't like the fay), left on the doorstep of a church and from there taken to an orphanage, Tia was a midsummer baby, touched in magic and born in the mundane.

Although her mailing address was the Antwerp Orphanage, the place was only two blocks from the Stanton Arms in one direction and three from the church where she'd been left in the other, and a young Tia Lian ruled all and the places in between, running the small gangs of children and fay by the time she was old enough to spin a lie.

"Born in an eggshell," she fibbed proudly, "blessed by my father's hopes and my mother's tears. As fay as they come and as wild as they can't cage." Her elders, fay, priest, and state, despaired of teaching her discipline. Her peers despaired of ever being as cool as she was. Soon, boys despaired of the chance of a kiss. She was as she'd made herself, fay and wild.

And then she met Bao Bao.

Comments

[avia]

Ohhhh, I love this. Something about this just speaks to me, the way I want to live, proud of my self, fae and wild and telling stories about my life that might not be literally true but capture the truth in them more than the literal words can.

[aldersprig]

I'm glad it resonated for you. Thank you!

[clare_dragonfly]

Hmm, intriguing! I love the character, who seems young and yet extremely creative.

Are they related?

[aldersprig]

I don't think they are, I think I just did a bad job of differentiating Mrs. Bao from Tia Lian

[clare_dragonfly]

I'm confused. Okay, after looking at the prompt I'm thinking this is Mrs. Bao from the other story? But I didn't know that before... and if they are the same person, why would you want to differentiate them?

I just meant, Bao Bao, Tia Bao-Lian: they both have Bao in their names. Therefore, they could be related.

Wait, is the first line from the perspective of after she got married and thus added Bao to her name? If the story is all Mrs. Bao's recollections, then it's different than I thought... I guess I thought the anchor point, where the action of the story is, was the last couple of paragraphs, where she's proudly lying and running gangs. Whereas if she's already married, then the action of the story is, well, not in it, but in the future. That just makes it a different story to me. Also, maybe I'm completely wrong about all this and you should explain it to me :-P

[aldersprig]

Wait, is the first line from the perspective of after she got married and thus added Bao to her name? Yes. Like I said, I did it badly.

Because the story ended up being about Tia Lian as a kid, not about Tia Bao-Lian, Mrs. Bao.

[clare_dragonfly]

Ah, I get it now! I would call that a typo at this point, not really a differentiation issue (or maybe we just think of differentiation differently).

[aldersprig]

NEeds-to-be-fixed, check. ;-D

[lynnoconnacht]

I think avia captured my feelings about this piece quite powerfully. ^-^ (Well, okay. I don't want to live fey and wild, but apart from that. XD)

This is very powerful. I love the story in this and the way you wrote it. <3

[aldersprig]

Thank you so much!