TM: If you could pick anyone, alive or dead, to be your parents, who would it be and why?
I cannot say I have ever seen much use for them, personally. At least not really. Heaven knows I make a terrible one, and while I suppose your modern psychology would say that's because I never had proper modeling of parenting, I'm not sure I would have done much better even if I had. My mother was ambitious for a Leanan Sidhe and had her eyes on the Daoine Sidhe throne, which was never going to happen, but it fueled everything. When Aurelia's birth didn't acquire it for her, she set out plotting how to get it another way. Through a daughter seemed the most likely, since Midir had two fine young sons who were now Aurelia's half-brothers and thus too close for marriage, even among our people.
She, of course, had to make sure she had something to offer, some power that would be an asset for a political match. So, she waited until my father came to visit some centuries later and seduced him and then there was me, with all those lovely little bloodlines that, in theory, make me Midir's cousin and second cousin to the boys, but really, that's not so close as to bother anyone, and honestly, it all gets tangled up anyway in who's related to whom. My father was the first of the Leanan Sidhe, child of Danu and one of her first creations, who some say was music-pure, but that truth is lost in the mists. Others were born when magic and music mingled, but he has the Goddess' blood pure in his veins and is generally hailed as our King, should we ever be organized enough to need one instead of living among the courts of the Daoine Sidhe.
That made me her granddaughter, as Midir is her grandson through the Dagda, and, my mother thought, a perfect candidate to eventually wed Diarmuid or Ionatan. Of course, then Diarmuid met Ciaran and Ionatan and I never did more than fight like cats and dogs, so there went her plan, though Danu knows she tried to make me be more amenable. I ran away when I was 16, and she's washed her hands of me since, though she makes overtures every now and again.
My father was never around. He bedded Mother and moved on his way, back among the mortals he loves so. We have met walking the world a time or two, and he is always generous and kind when he remembers my name, which he was more wont to do after Byron rocketed to fame. He likes to brag about his daughter the "poet's muse" as if he had anything to contribute to it but one night's play.
All this to say, why would I wish to have picked someone else? The Leanan Sidhe make rather pathetic parents just by our volatile natures and need to always be moving about, doing what we do. To choose someone else would change that, for to have the parents perhaps I would have wished, I could not be Leanan Sidhe, and I like what I am, most days.
Sometimes, I suppose, I wish I might have been Aurelia, and had Midir for a father, and the mingled gifts of the Leanan and Daoine Sidhe. Somedays I think it might have been nice. There was Brigid, as well. She was kind to me when I was a child, for we shared a birthday and a love for poetry. I used to wish she would take me with her when she went, but she is a goddess in her own right, and what use did she truly have for her brother's bastard daughter's sister? The moments of kindness were enough, the carelessness with which she and Midir accepted me, and encouraged me to grow into my own person and not my mother's creation.
I am not always sure they succeeded, but it was very kind of them to try.
She, of course, had to make sure she had something to offer, some power that would be an asset for a political match. So, she waited until my father came to visit some centuries later and seduced him and then there was me, with all those lovely little bloodlines that, in theory, make me Midir's cousin and second cousin to the boys, but really, that's not so close as to bother anyone, and honestly, it all gets tangled up anyway in who's related to whom. My father was the first of the Leanan Sidhe, child of Danu and one of her first creations, who some say was music-pure, but that truth is lost in the mists. Others were born when magic and music mingled, but he has the Goddess' blood pure in his veins and is generally hailed as our King, should we ever be organized enough to need one instead of living among the courts of the Daoine Sidhe.
That made me her granddaughter, as Midir is her grandson through the Dagda, and, my mother thought, a perfect candidate to eventually wed Diarmuid or Ionatan. Of course, then Diarmuid met Ciaran and Ionatan and I never did more than fight like cats and dogs, so there went her plan, though Danu knows she tried to make me be more amenable. I ran away when I was 16, and she's washed her hands of me since, though she makes overtures every now and again.
My father was never around. He bedded Mother and moved on his way, back among the mortals he loves so. We have met walking the world a time or two, and he is always generous and kind when he remembers my name, which he was more wont to do after Byron rocketed to fame. He likes to brag about his daughter the "poet's muse" as if he had anything to contribute to it but one night's play.
All this to say, why would I wish to have picked someone else? The Leanan Sidhe make rather pathetic parents just by our volatile natures and need to always be moving about, doing what we do. To choose someone else would change that, for to have the parents perhaps I would have wished, I could not be Leanan Sidhe, and I like what I am, most days.
Sometimes, I suppose, I wish I might have been Aurelia, and had Midir for a father, and the mingled gifts of the Leanan and Daoine Sidhe. Somedays I think it might have been nice. There was Brigid, as well. She was kind to me when I was a child, for we shared a birthday and a love for poetry. I used to wish she would take me with her when she went, but she is a goddess in her own right, and what use did she truly have for her brother's bastard daughter's sister? The moments of kindness were enough, the carelessness with which she and Midir accepted me, and encouraged me to grow into my own person and not my mother's creation.
I am not always sure they succeeded, but it was very kind of them to try.