Prompt #47: Charm, "Family Matters" by c3childs
Title: Family Matters
Author: c3childs
Rating: K
Words: 358
Genre: Family
Characters: June, OC
Summary: She has an interesting family tree.
Hers has always been a rough charm. It was gifted to June from her maternal grandmother. The woman had quite a bit of talent in her heyday; still did when she chose to use it, in fact.
It didn’t begin to show through until she’d hit puberty, and her father, naturally, was less than enthused when he first witnessed it for the first time, cursing his late wife’s family. He had issues with his mother-in-law. However, once he saw how very useful his daughter’s new talent was for catching their quarry, he decided that it wasn’t so terrible.
For months, June managed her newfound talent quite well. Then her father noticed that June started talking to herself but thought little of it, and the shirshu would snap at air. On one winter night, the solstice actually, he heard and saw exactly what she'd been talking to. It was a tree goblin, a tiny thing that looked like half a hog-monkey more on the monkey side. After she accidentally crushed his hand, June’s father, begrudgingly, took her to her lao lao, to be properly trained in how to use her gift - though at that point, with only one functioning hand, he'd started calling it a curse again.
June’s lao lao berated him, calling him an ignorant fool. She said that the charm was meant for June's protection. She claimed that June would have had perfect control if he’d brought her when the charm first activated. Yet now it had become wild and unstable, and much of it had to be sealed back in order for her to master it completely. It had been a tediously long and excruciating process, and sometimes when she overused it, June could feel the sharp pinpricks going in and out of her skin. The Fox-viper tattoos on her shoulders are more for function than fashion.
Most times, humans couldn’t live through such a gift. The exception being if the human wasn’t only that. Grandmother’s pedigree was only one strike against her, in her father’s opinion. Having an eight-hundred year old, shapeshifting kitsune in the family gave whole new meaning to the term monster-in-law.