Bloom and eclipse them.

[lightsalloff]

The most famous story of jinx, which I still don’t complete understand, is about a princess and a tailor, in the fairy-tale version of Earth that everyone loves here: twinkling castles, rowdy banquets, valiant knights. The princess has a perfect life, except she’s in love with a beautiful young apprentice in the royal gardens whose touch restores every rare bloom to health. The princess keeps trying to allure him, with tiny flying machines and musicians, but every plan goes awry. And this ugly old royal tailor is always nearby, giving a crooked leer, whenever another disaster ruins the princess’s courtship. At last the princess decided to have the tailor imprisoned, on some pretext-but then the princess loses everything and becomes a beggar, outside the walls of her own palace. The beautiful apprentice gardener throws a flower into the former princess’s cap every now and then, without knowing her. The princess stays out there for uncounted ages, in the dirt, but her royal garments never tear or sully, and they become a pillow and a quilt when the city sleeps. These clothes are a miracle, and at last the princess realizes: that tailor never received proper payment for his work, or credit from the throne. With that, the curse is broken, and the princess is able to return and kill everyone who betrayed her.

The first time I tried to understand this story, I had thought “jinx” referred to the apprentice gardener, and the princess’s destructive love for him. I didn’t even get the thing about the tailor.

When you identify your jinx, you have two choices: You can figure out why this person is connected to you. Or you can join forces with them, and cause trouble for everyone else.