ataraxionlogs | open-ish | i'm just trying to find my way to you

Is that how it usually goes where you're from?

[ Not by the sound of it, but Emma feels the need to clarify. ]

( a slightly awkward shrug - this is something that's come up more and more, lately, and she's had to suck it up and get used to talking straightforwardly about old family scandals that even now her father's loyalty to his adopted parents makes him really wish she wouldn't talk about. )

We were adopted out of the family, so-- I think most people pick it up from their parents.

[ Her gaze drops instantly. ]

Guess I wouldn’t know either way.

[ Even if she had grown up with her parents, she knows, she still wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn magic from them: they didn’t know how to use it, or even have magic inside of them. And yet, it’s hard not to take that as a harsh reminder of what she missed out on. ]

Neither would I. ( ilde's father hasn't got a fucking clue - he's more powerful than she is, but far less knowledgeable. it's a willful ignorance, now, but it wasn't always; he believed that they were human for much longer than she did. )

I honestly don't know how it usually goes, to be honest. I'd guess that's how, that makes sense.

[ For her, maybe. ]

Don’t take this the wrong way, but … What are you?

[ Because as she understands it, most people don’t come by magic naturally. They have to learn it. It’s not just one more thing that every parent teaches their kid, after potty-training and the value of hard work. ]

( wryly, ) Frankly, I'm just pleased I know the answer.

( #magicmakesurlifeweird )

My great-great-grandfather was a rhinelord - a kind of Germanic fresh water fairy. Sort of like a mermaid or a siren, but not the same as. So I'm a rhinemaiden. A river nymph.

( ilde does magic because she is magic. there are elements of it that require the kind of learning emma is thinking of - ilde isn't going to turn into a true fae sorceress by inclination - but other things that humans would have to learn are instinctive to her in the same way she learned how to walk and doesn't have to think about breathing all the time. it's her nature. )

Edited 2014-09-16 05:34 (UTC)

A … fairy?

[ She grimaces. Not that fairy’s bad, but rather that she a.) didn’t know fairies were popping out children, b.) realizes that’s pretty much one of the weirdest answers she could have gotten. ]

So, not the kind with the … dust, and the— [ She waves vaguely to indicate a wand. ]

( slightly entertained, in spite of herself-- )

Hang on.

( illusions, remember? ilde can just show her what aelfraed looks like; it takes concentration, especially because she's only ever seen him on video and she is sort of ballparking his height compared to gervase's, but...

aelfraed stands easily over six foot tall, athletically muscular, dark-haired. dark-eyed, too, blue-black and solidly coloured; his hair, loose, obscures the details but where you might expect ears to poke out, there are none. his skin gleams like mother of pearl, and his clothes - outmoded by more than decades but terribly fine - are damp enough to define a figure you don't generally associate with dancing magical fairies.

but maybe one that explains the popping out babies thing.

his expression, mildly incredulous and slightly superior, is just mostly what his face does in gervase's videos. oh my god why are my progeny so stupid. oh my god why do my progeny keep fucking witches. why are you talking to me about 'mules', gervase, obviously my children will be FERTILE AND STRONG, i care not for your 'genetics' and 'species compatibility'!! )

[ Leaning back slightly as the illusion takes full form and size, Emma’s eyebrows raise in a way like wow yeah that explains literally everything. Her jaw slackens slightly, but she catches on quick enough to shut it, no longer gaping like a fish. After a beat, she nods. ]

So definitely not the dust kind.

( what can she say, good genes. no wonder her father's such a successful ho.

...yep. ilde dispels the illusion, with a little quirk of a grin. )

Probably impractical underwater.

I thought you said nymph, not mermaid.

[ Just trying to figure out the distinctions here ok. ]

Okay, so mermaids and sirens are salt water. Sea creatures. Nymphs, rhinemaidens - kind of like the equivalent for fresh water. You don't get nymphs in the sea and you don't get mermaids in a lake.

( a pause. )

I don't know how similar, exactly, there are probably more differences than just where we're made for, but I know a lot of the same things hold true.

Like different species of fish. [ She squints a little because it's strange to compare people to that, but it does make sense. She nods. ] So ... What about the Lady of the Lake? That kind of thing? [ Because she was In The Book which means she's Something. ]

Kind of like. ( it's funny because it's true. and, you know, both ilde and mermaids sometimes have tails, it's a thing. ) I'd guess someone like that might be more...some kind of spirit? I don't know, I'm--

( very wry: ) I'm a little new to this. Still.

Really?

[ She makes no attempt to hide her surprise; after all, new or not, this woman seems to know a great deal more about all of this magic stuff than Emma does. Then again, that could just as easily be a willingness to learn rather than a difference in exposure period. ]

Seven years ago, I didn't believe in fairies, ( a little dryly. boy was that some kind of irony, in retrospect. )

One year ago, I didn’t even believe in magic.

[ Sometimes, she’s still not sure she does. ]

You’ve got a long definition of ‘new.’ How the hell does a fairy stop believing in themselves?

[ Tink comes to mind, of course, but not believing IN herself is different than thinking her own species didn't exist. ]

Like I said - my father was adopted out of the family. We're descended from Mr Haughty, there, but through a relationship he had with a human woman. I didn't have to 'stop' believing in something I never knew. Given I only found out because the world became one great slow-moving clusterfuck--

( a grimace. )

It's easy to still be new to something when you've got fuck all to go on besides whatever you can figure out for yourself without drawing attention, that's all.

[ She opens her mouth like she’s ready to be shocked that no one told her or raised her like a fucking fairy, except—

A relationship he had with a human woman. Emma’s eyes shut and she borderline grimaces. Neal had managed to go eleven years without meeting Henry: if Emma had her way, he’d have gone even longer. It’s pretty easy for men to just bail out or never know about something like that. ]

Sorry to hear it.

( ilde's great-grandparents had priorities, and their priorities were more about maintaining the respectable position of their family and less about someone telling the inconvenient baby they had to get rid of about his heritage. unfortunately, all of the people involved in that are now dead and gone and there's no satisfaction to be had in picking it apart - ilde tries to be grateful for the fact she ever got to know her father's biological family even a little, for knowing that aelfraed would have been with them if he could have been and that he might still live, might be somewhere she could find him.

in isolation in the south of france, that's a little difficult. still, she does try. )

She was married, ( with a shrug. ) It wasn't difficult for her to keep her, um, indiscretion apart from where she wanted her family to be. But my grandmother and my uncle-- they had contact with him, and that's where I eventually got the details from, from them.

It is what it is, you know? You make the best of things.

At least you had a family line to trace back.

[ The minute it comes out of her mouth, Emma feels a little guilty for it. That’s the old Emma. The rough around the edges, adversity olympics Emma. She doesn’t want to do that anymore. Her life sucked. Big surprise. She’s trying to move past it, but the active effort isn’t always enough.

Still. She feels the need to explain. ]

My … family wasn’t really accessible. I got pushed around foster care. Didn’t manage to find my real parents until last year.

I'm sorry, ( genuinely, and with no offense taken at the initial bite - like, fair enough. for as much bullshit as there's been in ilde's life, she's not ignorant of how many safety nets she's had, over the years. her father's money, her husband's willingness to cover for her, the fact that she had living relations to contact, even if they didn't tell her the truth until it was almost too late.

she's lucky, in a lot of ways. it's just the ugliest parts of herself come from illness and not hardship. makes life interesting, when there's more hardship to go around. )

My father got lucky-- when he was taken away from his parents, he was given to a couple who couldn't conceive that their parents knew. He was always such a princess about them trying to contact him, though-- so many people who'd kill to know where they came from, he didn't want a bar of it.

When the place you come from is that unbelievable, I’m not sure I can blame him.

[ It’s certainly crossed her mind to turn and run. In so many ways, she feels like she doesn’t belong amongst them. While they have their fairytale history and their magic, Emma doesn’t engage it. She grew up in the real world where none of it was possible, where there were no happy endings. Letting go of that isn’t as easy as breaking some curse.

What's more, that real world doesn't look so bad by comparison. What good is a happy ending if it gets taken away at every turn? She found her parents, then got swept away to another world. They got back, and Cora tried to destroy them. Her mother's grief had almost crushed her, and then Regina and Gregmara tried to destroy the town. Since that, there had been Pan, and—And it's too much, sometimes. ]

For him it was just- loyalty to his mother. I got that, I tried to respect it for a long time, but-- you know, he can't make the decision for everybody.

( emery'd been happy with his adoptive family; he'd been the miracle child, the son they'd always thought they'd never have. his parents - particularly his mother - had doted on him and he'd felt, and made clear that he felt, it'd be disloyal to go looking for anything else. he'd turned his back on the idea of ever being anything but their son long before fairies got involved in the mix.

blandly wry, a moment later-- )

Then he accidentally enchanted a ballroom full of people and said 'oh, fuck' into a microphone and had to leave Italy or be burned as a witch, I guess we don't always get to choose for ourselves, either.

( it's pretty horrible (because she's not kidding, he might not have lived through that), but be honest: that's also kind of funny. )

Edited (every??? emery your name is dumb it makes me typos) 2014-09-21 05:09 (UTC)

[ Oh. Good.

That level of crazy, granted, sounds about on par with Greg and Tamara, and yet Emma finds herself wanting less and less to be connected to any of it. That’s the kind of danger that awaits her with these fairytales. Not just her, but more importantly Henry. And they’re all expecting her to fix it any time it happens. ]

How do you accidentally enchant anything?

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