Fairy Tale Friday: The Sun's Other Daughter

Apparently I am a bad, bad salesperson. A good salesperson would have told all her bloggy friends that she was having a sale on prints in her shop over the weekend.  And would have mentioned it straight up in every blogpost for like a week, with no hesitation. And probably been Twittering it like crazy and stuff too.

The thing is, I really hate doing that. Self promotion is boring and nasty and makes me feel cheap. But I like knowing when the artists I enjoy are having a sale! Ah, contradiction. What do you think, Dear Readers?

For  myself, I'd rather focus on other things. The sudden late arrival of Near-Winter, for one. Autumn's a pretty mellow season around here-- just yesterday, I was running the AC- but there's a certain finality to the latest cold front that promises Fall is gone and Winter really settling in, or at least staying for dinner.  Part of it is the fact that leaves are finally falling off trees, and our sunflowers at last gave up some petals. But mostly it's

You see, when the Sun moved away from her first home (with her Wolf, but that's a different story) she had one daughter who took on the family business of running the lights and heat and general utilities for the world.  Very responsible girl, the Sun's oldest daughter. But it's a big job, and the Sun doesn't hold a monopoly on the position. Her sister Moon does a lot of seasonal work, too.  The Moon lives on the other side of the world (with her Wolf, but that is again a different story) and runs tides and migrations and such essential secondary services.

When Sun and Moon shared a house as a couple of single sisters, coordinating these things wasn't a problem. But once they moved to opposite sides of the world, they and their daughters (Moon actually had a couple of sons first- somewhat unexpected, and they're good children, but this isn't their story either) had to find someway to stay in sync. There were a few very bad years where the two houses just could not get together,even for holidays.

But then the Sun's second daughter started to come of age. Without having the whole seasonal company in her command, she was free to wander about.  Since her little sister was always roaming anyway, she found it no trouble at all to take messages to her aunt's house. Both Moon and Sun houses were glad to at last have reliable information in a timely way, at least enough to stop running so many eclipses; and so overall the situation was resolved to everyone's benefit, and without any of that tiresome sibling rivalry that spoils so many mythic families (except for the Moon's sons, but again that is another story entirely).

The only inconvenient thing about the whole affair was that, whether she did her mother's job or not, the Sun's second daughter couldn't help trailing a bit of the family radiance with her wherever she went. This was hardly noticeable when she traveled over regions where her sister or mother were residing; the equator and lands in summer didn't notice another set of sunny footsteps. But lands in winter flash quickly to the memory of summer when the Sun's messenger daughter zipped on her way, and human people in those lands grumble and change coats and wonder why they can't be allowed to plan a bit from day to day.


What I'm saying is, I now have to deploy my entire wardrobe until the end of March, to be ready for the changing travels of the Sun's second daughter.

And also I hate having to act like a businesswoman. Someone go buy my shop out, so I can focus on  making more addled stories and art!