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?

This is an answer to kelkyag's question asked here for International Women's Day: "What does Junie want to do when she grows up? (At any value of 'now' you feel like writing about.)"

Junie as a child is very torn about what she wants to be when she grows up. She sometimes wants to be a ballerina, sometimes an ambassador to one of the far-flung nonhuman settlements. Sometimes she wants to do her mother's job, and act as a cultural translator; sometimes she wants to be a wizard like her father (and like her brother). For a week, she wanted to be a dragon, until she realized that was not biologically possible. As of "now," being the kidnapping-Junie storyline, she wants to be a lawyer and an FBI agent.

To kelkyag's prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the "Cunning Plan" slot.

Juniper, Kelkathian, and Azdekious are part of my Dragons Next Door setting; its landing page is here.

"What... what the seventeen different sparks?" Kelkathian and Azdekious stared at each other, and then at the van they had suddenly found themselves in. "This isn't team C."

"This isn't Team B." Kelkathian gave a headshake, and wormed out of the backpack. Juniper was unconscious, looking for all the world as if she was napping at home in her bed. "Can't be team A."

"You're telling me we were guarding against three teams of kidnappers..."

"And a fourth one came out of nowhere. I am indeed telling you that." Kelkathian dropped carefully to the floor. The back of the van was filled with plumbing supplies, all of it with the appropriate level of wear for an actual plumber, but something about it still felt wrong to Kel.

"Is she waking up back there?" The voice came from the driver's seat; Kel ducked into Juniper's jacket while the passenger turned around. "I thought I heard something."

"Must be dreaming, then, 'cause she's still out like a light."

"Hunh. Thought a rich kid would be harder to grab than that."

Kel peeked over Junie's pocket and saw the driver's face - nothing exciting, nothing important, and her othersight told her he was nothing but human. Very human, strong and tough and so normal it was almost painful, but this wasn't a dweomer or an elf or an elkin or really anything but a normal human kidnapper...

...who thought Juniper was a rich kid.

"You're sure her parents have money?" The passenger seemed to have the same qualms about this plan that Kelkathian did.

"They live in Smokey Knoll. You tell me a human that could afford a house there who wasn't filthy rich."

The car screeched to a halt. "This is a Smokey Knoll kid?" The passenger's voice was a hiss. That was your cunning plan? To grab a kid from Smokey Knoll?"

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/632365.html