Bardic Halloween
It never even occurred to me to pick October 31!
You know, I had been wondering lately when I should set Afiach Bard's birthday. This is a very "Mate of Song" time of year, and the Bard has been in my thoughts of late. I have (very!) slowly been setting birthdays for characters in The Curious Tale. It's one of those things that I should really just sit down one day and do en masse, but in lieu of that I've only been coming to it wild slow.
Birthdays, of course, should be fairly evenly scattered in a realistic composition. But the good thing about a large cast is that you can make a few exceptions. So far, all the birthdays I have chosen are meaningful to me personally, accounting for the translation between the Terran year and the Relancii year. Galavar's birthday was originally my birthday, though I changed this in The Great Galavar and made my birthday a major holiday; I moved his birthday later into the summer and never actually repegged it to our calendar, though it is somewhere in August. Silence's birthday is on my Five-Twelfths Birthday, December 27. DeLatia's birthday is on February 17.
The anniversary of Mate of Song itself is shrouded in mystery. For my 10-year Anniversary research on it last year, I came up with the date of October 30 (the date I started writing the manuscript), which would be a good date for Afiach's birthday in terms of how the events of Mate of Song play out. But Afiach herself was actually first named months earlier, and the character is a carryover from the RPG.
Then I saw the 10-year-anniversary post for Mate of Song in my Facebook Memories this morning and I instantly realized what date her birthday is: It's Halloween. October 31. Tomorrow!
Mate of Song is a very "Autumn" story, even though it takes place over the course of most of a year. To me, Autumn is the season of mystery and magic, crisp nights and hazy glimpses of other worlds. It is the season of inner light, when the Sun retreats and our own luminous works become more prominent. It is quite literally, in my culture, a time of year for lighting candles and hanging faerie lights-traditions which I am happy to engage with. Autumn is the season of leafy jewels everywhere you look, foggy mornings and afternoons, and spiced hot beverages like cider and chocolate and pumpkin. It is a very rich and rusty-red season, and Mate of Song is a very rich and rusty-red story. And no character in The Curious Tale, other than Silence herself I suppose, is more entwined in the mystery and magic of the world than Afiach, nor is any overall story more entwined in it than hers.
Halloween-and this is the reason why I like it so much-is the day when the boundary between worlds is at its thinnest. It is a day for fluid identities, encounters with the unknown, and eeriness and impishness. A day for feasts and sweets and jaunty spooky music. It is a day when life and the world are just a little bit...bigger.
And what better day for the birthday of Afiach Bard? October 31, or its Relancii equivalent rather, is hereby declared to be Bardic Halloween !!
It'll be a little bit sloppy to have Mate of Song's anniversary and Afiach's birthday one day apart, but OH WELL THEM'S THE RULES!! 😁😁😁
In the meantime, Happy 11th Anniversary to Mate of Song!
~~~
(Afiach would usually choose spiced hot chocolate over the other beverages. But if you put her inside a Starbucks she would bow to the inevitable as must we all. She would also probably busk.)
You know, I had been wondering lately when I should set Afiach Bard's birthday. This is a very "Mate of Song" time of year, and the Bard has been in my thoughts of late. I have (very!) slowly been setting birthdays for characters in The Curious Tale. It's one of those things that I should really just sit down one day and do en masse, but in lieu of that I've only been coming to it wild slow.
Birthdays, of course, should be fairly evenly scattered in a realistic composition. But the good thing about a large cast is that you can make a few exceptions. So far, all the birthdays I have chosen are meaningful to me personally, accounting for the translation between the Terran year and the Relancii year. Galavar's birthday was originally my birthday, though I changed this in The Great Galavar and made my birthday a major holiday; I moved his birthday later into the summer and never actually repegged it to our calendar, though it is somewhere in August. Silence's birthday is on my Five-Twelfths Birthday, December 27. DeLatia's birthday is on February 17.
The anniversary of Mate of Song itself is shrouded in mystery. For my 10-year Anniversary research on it last year, I came up with the date of October 30 (the date I started writing the manuscript), which would be a good date for Afiach's birthday in terms of how the events of Mate of Song play out. But Afiach herself was actually first named months earlier, and the character is a carryover from the RPG.
Then I saw the 10-year-anniversary post for Mate of Song in my Facebook Memories this morning and I instantly realized what date her birthday is: It's Halloween. October 31. Tomorrow!
Mate of Song is a very "Autumn" story, even though it takes place over the course of most of a year. To me, Autumn is the season of mystery and magic, crisp nights and hazy glimpses of other worlds. It is the season of inner light, when the Sun retreats and our own luminous works become more prominent. It is quite literally, in my culture, a time of year for lighting candles and hanging faerie lights-traditions which I am happy to engage with. Autumn is the season of leafy jewels everywhere you look, foggy mornings and afternoons, and spiced hot beverages like cider and chocolate and pumpkin. It is a very rich and rusty-red season, and Mate of Song is a very rich and rusty-red story. And no character in The Curious Tale, other than Silence herself I suppose, is more entwined in the mystery and magic of the world than Afiach, nor is any overall story more entwined in it than hers.
Halloween-and this is the reason why I like it so much-is the day when the boundary between worlds is at its thinnest. It is a day for fluid identities, encounters with the unknown, and eeriness and impishness. A day for feasts and sweets and jaunty spooky music. It is a day when life and the world are just a little bit...bigger.
And what better day for the birthday of Afiach Bard? October 31, or its Relancii equivalent rather, is hereby declared to be Bardic Halloween !!
It'll be a little bit sloppy to have Mate of Song's anniversary and Afiach's birthday one day apart, but OH WELL THEM'S THE RULES!! 😁😁😁
In the meantime, Happy 11th Anniversary to Mate of Song!
~~~
(Afiach would usually choose spiced hot chocolate over the other beverages. But if you put her inside a Starbucks she would bow to the inevitable as must we all. She would also probably busk.)