Alder's Grove

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is sauergeek's first prompt.

Jin had been just old enough to be annoyed by this whole little-sibling thing when his mother had put Junie in his arms.

He hadn't instantly fallen in love with her. She was small and fragile and loud. He, at that point, had very little interest in things small and fragile and loud.

It was weeks later, when he found out that he could make very minor illusions and had to show them off to someone, that's when things changed.

His mother was brewing a tisane and couldn't be disturbed; his father was reading a large tome in the library and looked like disturbing him would not go well. He could wait for dinner - but Jin did not want to wait for dinner. (Patience was a hard- and late-earned skill for him.)

So he decided to show the new baby the illusion.

And she cooed. She reached out for it with her chubby little hands. She was thrilled. Jin felt amazing. This tiny little thing, this thing that cried all the time and nothing at all seemed to soothe her - she liked his illusions.

That cemented it. From that day on, Junie was Jin's first audience for every illusion, every spell (that was safe to her, of course; he kept the others to a room behind the garage where no-one else came), every cantrip.

And, eventually, Junie found out Jin's secrets, too.

Want More?

To kelkyag's prompt to my January card for origfic_bingo.

This fills the "friendship" square.

It comes after Hands-on Knowledge.


Jin leaned against the bleachers in gym class, and listened to his human friends fail to understand.

“You introduced her to your folks, right? You did the whole prom thing, you've gone on dates... you've got all the hard stuff out of the way.” Toby had been with his girlfriend, Vanessa, for over a year; he at least thought he knew what he was talking about.

“Until Valentine's Day.” Geordi had gone through seven girlfriends in six months. “Or her birthday. Or, god forbid, Christmas. But it's April. You're golden, unless her birthday's in May.”

“Seriously.” Toby caught a ball tossed their way - they were supposed to be playing dodge-ball - and shook his head at Jin. “Unless this is oogy boogy stuff?”
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To kelkyag's prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the "Then and Now" slot.

Audrey, Sage, and Jin are part of my Dragons Next Door setting; its landing page is here.

Then

"The centaur next door is foaling." Sage came home late at night, his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders. "And the pixies in the mailbox could use some help... oh. Oh, Audrey, blessings from the bottom of the world, what..."

That had not been the reaction I'd been expecting, but I would take it. "It appears..." My voice was a little more shaky than I'd thought. I coughed, sipped my soothing infusion one-handed, and tried again. "It appears it's going around. Kidding season, perhaps?"

"Kidding..." I had never, never in our years, heard Sage's voice do that, that thing where it squeaked at the end. Never seen his composure shaken. "Audrey, did you do this on your own?"
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