why is there a word for that

[alicornucopia]

Finnah's just arrived at work to open the store for the morning shift; she has her apron on but hasn't put her hair up yet. She lets in the customer who always takes half an angle to determine that he wants four buttercreams, again, and then nips into the back to tend to her hair and check the overnight progress of the rock candy.

This isn't the back.

But that -

No, he's too tall to be Mial, if this is a Mial prank it's a stupidly elaborate one.

"Okay, I give up," she says, "what the hell?"

Comments

[first_and_final]

"Okay, moving on - Glynn is absurdly good at being a knight, do you have anyone like that around?"

[middlingalong]

"My best friends are neither singularly competent nor such standouts-as-friends that they'd come up in a conversation like this and none of 'em have names that sound like Glynn," says Ivan.

"I don't even have anything like being a knight - Ivan's at least in his planet's military, I don't do anything in particular to meet absurdly good knightlike persons at," says Aurin. "I mean, I could have had a friend exactly like this Glynn person when I was seventy and just not remember it and he'd be dead of old age by now but that seems not to be how this... spree of alts... has been working."

[first_and_final]

"...What," says Milo.

[abeance]

"I'm a dragon?" says Aurin. "I'm a little over two hundred years old? Do dragons who carry off princesses not work like that?"

"I mean, they live a long, long time, but they also don't turn into humans," says Jann. "Also, I think you might remember Glynn if you had a Glynn, even if you met him a hundred and thirty years ago. He thinks I'm hilarious? Has beaten Milo at chess?"

"Well, now he's just sounding disturbingly like Mark," says Aurin.

[first_and_final]

"Yeah, I keep being thrown by the part where you look very much like a human at the moment," says Milo. "And also I haven't really thought about the dragon lifespan problem from the dragon's perspective before, the only dragon friend I have is old enough that he might conceivably not outlive me... I really don't think Glynn is a Mark."

[abeance]

"I don't know how your dragons work, but for ours up to about age two hundred you can divide by ten and get a human equivalency and then after that there is no real equivalency, just 'that's a dragon,'" says Aurin. "Mial works the same way age-wise even though he's not a dragon, he's a hundred seventy at the moment."

"What is he instead?" Jann asks, quite innocently.

"...He's a shren, and now you're going to make me explain that, aren't you. Mial, you're the one who decided to be a shren, explain it to these people."

[thisvorlunatic]

"A shren is almost exactly like a dragon except that, one, our wings don't work in our natural forms, and two, the magical language that both shrens and dragons natively speak loves them and despises us," says Mial. "There are some other negative side effects but that's the one I'm especially pissed off about."

[first_and_final]

"How does a language go about despising someone?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"In most languages, connotations depend on usage. In Draconic they just sort of come immutably attached to words," says Mial. "And the connotations attached to 'shren' are nasty. And in general it just - it acts reasonably like a normal language under most circumstances, except with better vocabulary, but when it comes to shrens it's completely crazy. There's no way to refer to dragons and shrens as a category, despite it being pretty blatantly obvious that a category like that would make sense - I had to invent 'dragonish' in other languages, Draconic wouldn't take it. Hates us too much."

[first_and_final]

"...That's awful," says Milo. "What the fuck kind of wicked fairy came up with that?"

[abeance]

"Far as I know fairies had nothing to do with it," says Aurin. "...Actually, I think we can be pretty darn sure fairies had nothing to do with it, dragons as a species are way older than fairies as same."

"And this is something you decided to be?" asks Jann.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I didn't decide to become a shren, I decided to stay a shren," says Mial. "After I grew up as one through no fault of my own, and then some offworlders came through with a miracle cure offering it to everybody."

[first_and_final]

"Well, no kidding!" says Milo, indignant on behalf of his alt. "You wouldn't catch me ducking a curse like that either!"

[abeance]

"Fulfilling its end condition by marrying your boyfriend, though..."

[middlingalong]

"If he marries your Gregor it fixes his curse?"

[abeance]

"Probably? They might have to have a kid first. That's what we were trying to find the Enchanted Forest for, to ask the princesses how they did it."

[first_and_final]

"Why is that such a crazy idea? I mean, the story behind it is a little weird, but plenty of more traditional curses end on marriage-related conditions."

[middlingalong]

"Well, our world has no magic in it natively at all, and the kind Linyabel's currently studying from the world with Secret Firebird Tiny Ivan doesn't seem to be the faerie-curse kind, and - Stalas, any input, your world has magic?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I don't think our magic is the fairy-curse kind either," says Stalas.

[middlingalong]

"Aurin?" says Ivan.

"I mean, we have fairies, we even have curses, but the two things aren't strongly associated? Fairies are butterfly-people a few inches high, they can be wizards and I suppose they could cast curse-ish spells, but there's no reason fairy curses would be different from pixie curses or human curses or whatever."

[thisvorlunatic]

"And shrens are not the fault of any actual person as far as I know," says Mial.

[first_and_final]

"You seriously mean it just happened that way? Your world fucking sucks," says Milo.

[abeance]

"No kidding. Also what's the business with wizards where you're from?"

"Wizardry is a kind of magic? Mial and his mom are both wizards," says Aurin.

"Wizards are sort of like a species in our world. Whoever wants can be a witch but wizards are all the sons of other wizards. And they're often dangerous and annoying."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I mean, many people think I'm dangerous and annoying, but not because I'm a wizard," says Mial.

[middlingalong]

"Whenever he appears in the newspaper, the paper gets angry letters to the editor from various dragons," says Aurin.