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]

"...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.

[first_and_final]

"What, why?" says Milo.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Because I'm a shren, of course."

[first_and_final]

"What!" says Milo. "You mean people―I thought it was just a problem with the language, that would be bad enough!"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm pretty lucky in that my dad is great about it and Aurin doesn't suck," says Mial. "But the majority of dragons just straight-up buy into it, yeah, one way or another. Even shrens kind of do. Well, did, I'm the only one left."

[abeance]

"Mother's decent too," says Aurin. "I can't tell for sure if she's all the way to, you know, comfortable, but she's decent, she doesn't talk nastily about you or refuse to let you in the house or anything."

"Good for her?" says Jann uncertainly.

"Speaking of which, we're different kinds of cousins - my dad and Mial's were half-brothers, but Ivan and Miles are second cousins. You?"

"Our dads are full brothers," Jann says. "But they weren't brought up together or anything, because there was a prophecy about my dad that something terrible would befall him if he, I can't remember the wording, returned to the bosom of his family or something? So he was sent off to live somewhere else with I think it was my grandmother's best friend, who died without explaining to him that she wasn't his mom, and when he got married to my mom she was under a prophecy saying she'd marry a prince and they tried to figure out what he might be a prince of and when they showed up at the castle he turned to stone. But my mother was already pregnant. So I'm going to get some healing water out of the Caves of Fire and Night - I've been putting it off because the caves are a complicated mess and it's sort of less urgent than fixing Milo's curse and he is ill advised to go tromping around by himself - and that should fix Father okay. Yours sound suspiciously past-tense."

"Ours are both dead," says Aurin. "Spellcasting accident and a civil war."

[first_and_final]

"This shren thing is fucking terrible," says Milo. "As far as I'm concerned you're all under a curse."

[middlingalong]

"Draconic is mostly really useful!" protests Aurin.

[first_and_final]

"And my bones are useful if I'm chained up somewhere and need to get out suddenly, but that doesn't make them not a curse."

[thisvorlunatic]

"You too, huh?" says Miles.