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alexandraerinStarted: 3/6/2011
Status: In progress.
Last Update: 11:00 PM
Word Count: ~2400
Hours Writing: 2
[2 hours in. Yay, I've bridged all the parts and now it's just a matter of pushing on to the end.],/b>
The blocks were kept in a big cast iron roasting dish that had lost its lid and found a new purpose. Next to it was a three gallon bucket that now housed a variety of toy figures of various sorts. The boy had set out to build a fortress, but he'd pulled more items out of the bucket than the pan, as he had someone new to introduce them to.
"...an' this one's called Sky Knight," he said, holding up an enaction figure of a young man wearing a bulky and improbably armor and a backpack with wings on the side and funnels on the bottom. "Because he's a knight of the skies. That's like the night sky, but different. He's my favorite because he flies."
"You're fond of flying, are you?" the man in black asked him, and the boy nodded enthusiastically.
"Da takes me up sometimes," he said.
"In the ships he works on?" the man asked, and the boy nodded again. The man marked something on his tablet. "Do you ever have dreams where you're flying, Aidan?"
"Yes," Aidan said.
"I'd like to hear about them."
"One time, I dreamed I was the captain of a ship, sailing across the sea to Magisteria, or even farther to the Westering Lands," the boy said. "And another time I dreamed I was Sky Knight."
"Do you ever dream of wings?"
"Sky Knight has wings on his backpack thingy," Aidan said.
"I mean the kind that move and flap."
"You mean like a dragon has," Aidan said.
"That's right," the man said.
"You want to know if I dream about dragon wings because I'm part of a dragon," Aidan said. "And you're afraid I'm going to turn into one."
"Why, what an odd way to put it," the man said. He forced a laugh that could hardly have sounded less natural if it had been assembled from a kit. "No one is afraid of you, young man."
"Some people are," Aidan said. "They don't say so, but I can tell."
"Can you smell it?"
"No," Aidan said, laughing much more convincingly. "Smell it? No. You can't smell fear."
"Some people can."
"Maybe if they're dogs," Aidan said, and he let out a couple of yipping barks.
"How do you know if people are afraid of you, then, if they don't say it?"
"I can see it in your eyes," Aidan said. "When you look at me."
"Yes, well, um... I have some divinations to take, so why don't you play with your... just... I believe we're almost done here," the man said.
"Alright," Aidan said.
The man took a few steps back and watched Aidan at play. He pulled a short, slim wand out of his pocket, pointed it at the boy, and then moved it around in a circle a few times. He frowned, pointed it at a flowerpot and gave it a flick, then returned his attention to Aidan. He spent several minutes making various gestures with the device, pointing it at various parts of the boy's form and tracing various symbols in the air in his general direction.
Eventually he nodded to himself, put the wand away, and made another note. He then produced an oval-shaped clear crystal with beveled edges giving it the appearance of a flattened diamond. He peered at the boy through it a several times, putting it down to make notes in between.
The man wasn't specifically observing Aidan's private game, but as his attention was on the boy he couldn't help being aware of his actions. His facility with block-building was impressive in both the scope of the structures he could erect and the speed with which he did so, but it seemed to him as though there were something inherently disorderly about the boy's creation.
He didn't expect a six-year-old boy to have a grasp of classical architecture or anything like that, but by the same token he felt that simpler structures, being more stable, would come naturally to a small child.
Aidan produced castle walls that looked both sturdy and mostly straight using mismatched blocks. He didn't seem to hunt for blocks that would fill the gaps, or to plan things. He just glanced at the blocks in the pan, grabbed one, and placed it without any hesitation.
His towers, rather than having four corners on each level consisting of similar pieces, had a haphazard look where one level might be a single thin pillar supporting a plank with three columns made out of square blocks spaced so as to be perfectly balanced and supporting a broader platform on which he constructed something that looked like a ring of standing stones, or a carousel. The whole thing went from narrow to wide and back again like a series of irregular hourglasses stacked on top of each other.
The fact that he was building these improbable structures on a carpeted floor was even more disquietingly impressive.
While his building prowess seemed more improbable, the man was also unnerved by the way Aidan played with his other toys in the midst of the building. In his own home, with his own sons, the man from the ministry would have insisted they play with one thing or the other, a set of building blocks or their toy soldiers. He understood that Dell Harris ran a less orderly household, and he did not judge... officially... but there seemed to be something fundamentally chaotic about mixing playthings.
It wasn't just blocks and soldiers, either. It was blocks and soldiers from a conventional set of imperial army figurines, the much larger and more detailed enaction figures from what seemed like more than one television programs, and other toys, some of which even seemed to have been intended for girls. Aidan paid no heed to the fact that they were built to varying scales and showed no respect for what they were meant to signify. Indeed, to judge by the dialogue he put in the various figures' mouths, the proud imperial soldiers were being employed as an invading army of gnomes.
The man didn't know to approve or disapprove of the gnomes-in-imperial-armor being scattered so easily by the swooping figure of Sky Knight, who alone among the assembled multitudes seemed to have the privilege of playing himself in the unfolding drama. When the boy added a hellhound with an anti-magic shell and immediately one-upped himself with a behemoth that quite improbably fed on anti-magic hellhounds, the man felt he'd had quite enough child-like imagination for one day.
"Please excuse me, but I must go have a brief word with your mother," he said to Aidan, who was so engrossed in his worldbuilding that he didn't appear to hear. "I think I have everything I need."
He passed through the entrance hall and dining room into the kitchen. The house was quite a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but he supposed it was an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked into town early in order to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, and so she was the one who the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had to deal with. The ministry agent found it odd and a more than a little discourteous that a man would shirk his responsibilities so..
He didn't know it, but such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected.
Dell Harris didn't mind this one bit. She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring all reflections and letters on related subjects to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
"So, anything new to be concerned about?" she said to the ministry man, handing him tea in a mug.
"Is there any chance your husband will be home soon?" he asked. "Perhaps this is a conversation best had with both of you present."
"Oh, to be sure," she said. "It's hard to ask me if I wouldn't like to step out of the room when it's just me here. That would leave you talking to yourself, and I gather that's not properly ministerial behavior."
"I did say both of you."
"And I believe you believe that'd be an improvement over me," she said. "I'm the boy's mother, legally. I've as much a stake in him as his da does, legally. We can talk about how things shake out on other levels if you'd like, but I don't know how any but the legal part would concern you."
"Surely you understand that this is not as simple as an ordinary adoption," he said.
"Surely you understand the meaning of the word 'mother'," Dell said. "You had one at some point, didn't you?"
"Have," the man said. "She is quite vigorous for her age, I assure you, and I do take your point. Very well." He sighed. "The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this.".
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "And just how much do we ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this? In the normal course of events?"
"Your point, again, is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
"It's been three months since his last check-up," Dell said. "So this might have happened at any point between then and now, or it might have been happening gradually all along."
"The latter, I believe," the man said. "It actually began sometime before the last examination, and after the one before that. My predecessor noted what he thought might have been the beginning of this trend, during his last visit.".
"Oh? He didn't note it to me."
"Well, it's hard to conclusively, er, conclude anything from a single moment in time," the man said. "But because he had made a note of the possibility that the aura was degrading, it gave me a frame of reference to build on."
"He might have mentioned the possibility to me," Dell said. "I'm only Aidan's mother, after all."
"This has been established," the man said. "Even though it might have been premature, perhaps he might have said a quiet word to your husband on the subject, if the man weren't so devilishly difficult to get a hold of."
"Devilishly?"
"I... ah... beg your pardon, madam," he said. "It is a common turn of phrase, isn't it?"
"You do know that your predecessor predecessed because of complaints I lodged against him, don't you?" Dell asked.
"I hope you note that I've told you now that we have confirmation that it's happening on a large scale and that it's significant enough to mention," the man said quickly.
"See, and I was perfectly willing to believe that you were telling me where he hadn't because you though I'm entitled to know what's happening with my son," Dell said. "So, is there anything you've noticed this time that's too insignificant to tell me about? Any quiet words you would like for me to pass on to my husband?"
"I'm not sure I like your implication," the man said.
"Well, I'm bothered by implications, too, so we've got that much in common," Dell said.
[1.5 hours in. NB: Minus the preternatural skill at block selection and placement, Aidan's playtime habits mirror those of my brothers and myself.]
The blocks were kept in a big cast iron roasting dish that had lost its lid and found a new purpose. Next to it was a three gallon bucket that now housed a variety of toy figures of various sorts. The boy had set out to build a fortress, but he'd pulled more items out of the bucket than the pan, as he had someone new to introduce them to.
"...an' this one's called Sky Knight," he said, holding up an enaction figure of a young man wearing a bulky and improbably armor and a backpack with wings on the side and funnels on the bottom. "Because he's a knight of the skies. That's like the night sky, but different. He's my favorite because he flies."
"You're fond of flying, are you?" the man in black asked him, and the boy nodded enthusiastically.
"Da takes me up sometimes," he said.
"In the ships he works on?" the man asked, and the boy nodded again. The man marked something on his tablet. "Do you ever have dreams where you're flying, Aidan?"
"Yes," Aidan said.
"I'd like to hear about them."
"One time, I dreamed I was the captain of a ship, sailing across the sea to Magisteria, or even farther to the Westering Lands," the boy said. "And another time I dreamed I was Sky Knight."
"Do you ever dream of wings?"
"Sky Knight has wings on his backpack thingy," Aidan said.
"I mean the kind that move and flap."
"You mean like a dragon has," Aidan said.
"That's right," the man said.
"You want to know if I dream about dragon wings because I'm part of a dragon," Aidan said. "And you're afraid I'm going to turn into one."
"Why, what an odd way to put it," the man said. He forced a laugh that could hardly have sounded less natural if it had been assembled from a kit. "No one is afraid of you, young man."
"Some people are," Aidan said. "They don't say so, but I can tell."
"Can you smell it?"
"No," Aidan said, laughing much more convincingly. "Smell it? No. You can't smell fear."
"Some people can."
"Maybe if they're dogs," Aidan said, and he let out a couple of yipping barks.
"How do you know if people are afraid of you, then, if they don't say it?"
"I can see it in your eyes," Aidan said. "When you look at me."
"Yes, well, um... I have some divinations to take, so why don't you play with your... just... I believe we're almost done here," the man said.
"Alright," Aidan said.
The man took a few steps back and watched Aidan at play. He pulled a short, slim wand out of his pocket, pointed it at the boy, and then moved it around in a circle a few times. He frowned, pointed it at a flowerpot and gave it a flick, then returned his attention to Aidan. He spent several minutes making various gestures with the device, pointing it at various parts of the boy's form and tracing various symbols in the air in his general direction.
Eventually he nodded to himself, put the wand away, and made another note. He then produced an oval-shaped clear crystal with beveled edges giving it the appearance of a flattened diamond. He peered at the boy through it a several times, putting it down to make notes in between.
The man wasn't specifically observing Aidan's private game, but as his attention was on the boy he couldn't help being aware of his actions. His facility with block-building was impressive in both the scope of the structures he could erect and the speed with which he did so, but it seemed to him as though there were something inherently disorderly about the boy's creation.
He didn't expect a six-year-old boy to have a grasp of classical architecture or anything like that, but by the same token he felt that simpler structures, being more stable, would come naturally to a small child.
Aidan produced castle walls that looked both sturdy and mostly straight using mismatched blocks. He didn't seem to hunt for blocks that would fill the gaps, or to plan things. He just glanced at the blocks in the pan, grabbed one, and placed it without any hesitation.
His towers, rather than having four corners on each level consisting of similar pieces, had a haphazard look where one level might be a single thin pillar supporting a plank with three columns made out of square blocks spaced so as to be perfectly balanced and supporting a broader platform on which he constructed something that looked like a ring of standing stones, or a carousel. The whole thing went from narrow to wide and back again like a series of irregular hourglasses stacked on top of each other.
The fact that he was building these improbable structures on a carpeted floor was even more disquietingly impressive.
While his building prowess seemed more improbable, the man was also unnerved by the way Aidan played with his other toys in the midst of the building. In his own home, with his own sons, the man from the ministry would have insisted they play with one thing or the other, a set of building blocks or their toy soldiers. He understood that Dell Harris ran a less orderly household, and he did not judge... officially... but there seemed to be something fundamentally chaotic about mixing playthings.
It wasn't just blocks and soldiers, either. It was blocks and soldiers from a conventional set of imperial army figurines, the much larger and more detailed enaction figures from what seemed like more than one television programs, and other toys, some of which even seemed to have been intended for girls. Aidan paid no heed to the fact that they were built to varying scales and showed no respect for what they were meant to signify. Indeed, to judge by the dialogue he put in the various figures' mouths, the proud imperial soldiers were being employed as an invading army of gnomes.
The man didn't know to approve or disapprove of the gnomes-in-imperial-armor being scattered so easily by the swooping figure of Sky Knight, who alone among the assembled multitudes seemed to have the privilege of playing himself
[][][][][]
The house was a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked to town to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, to watch over their adopted son and the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had come for his quarterly examination. Such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected, but Dell didn't mind this one bit.
She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring reflections to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
Dell had put a stop to that []
"The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this," he said.
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "How much do you ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this?"
"Madam's point is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
"It's been three months since his last check-up," Dell said. "So this might have happened at any point between then and now, or it might have been happening gradually all along."
"The latter, I believe," the man said. "It actually began sometime before the last examination, and after the one before that. My predecessor noted what he thought might have been the beginning of this trend, during his last visit.".
"Oh? He didn't note it to me."
"Well, it's hard to conclusively, er, conclude anything from a single moment in time," the man said. "But because he had made a note of the possibility that the aura was degrading, it gave me a frame of reference to build on."
"He might have mentioned the possibility to me," Dell said. "I'm only Aidan's mother."
"What would it have mattered? Would you have done anything differently in the last three months?"
"I don't know," Dell said. "I might have."
"I hope you note that I've told you now that we have confirmation that it's happening and that it's significant enough to mention," he said.
"See, and I was perfectly willing to believe that you were telling me where he hadn't because you though I'm entitled to know what's happening with my son," Dell said. "So, is there anything you've noticed this time that's too insignificant to tell me about?"
"I'm not sure I like your implication," the man said.
"Well, I'm bothered by implications, too, so we've got that much in common," Dell said.
[1 hour in. Aidan being examined/interviewed by a government agent was the first seed of this story.]
The blocks were kept in a big cast iron roasting dish that had lost its lid and found a new purpose. Next to it was a three gallon bucket that now housed a variety of toy figures of various sorts. The boy had set out to build a fortress, but he'd pulled more items out of the bucket than the pan, as he had someone new to introduce them to.
"...an' this one's called Sky Knight," he said, holding up an enaction figure of a young man wearing a bulky and improbably armor and a backpack with wings on the side and funnels on the bottom. "Because he's a knight of the skies. That's like the night sky, but different. He's my favorite because he flies."
"You're fond of flying, are you?" the man in black asked him, and the boy nodded enthusiastically.
"Da takes me up sometimes," he said.
"In the ships he works on?" the man asked, and the boy nodded again. The man marked something on his tablet. "Do you ever have dreams where you're flying, Aidan?"
"Yes," Aidan said.
"I'd like to hear about them."
"One time, I dreamed I was the captain of a ship, sailing across the sea to Magisteria, or even farther to the Westering Lands," the boy said. "And another time I dreamed I was Sky Knight."
"Do you ever dream of wings?"
"Sky Knight has wings on his backpack thingy," Aidan said.
"I mean the kind that move and flap."
"You mean like a dragon has," Aidan said.
"That's right," the man said.
"You want to know if I dream about dragon wings because I'm part of a dragon," Aidan said. "And you're afraid I'm going to turn into one."
"Why, what an odd way to put it," the man said. He forced a laugh that could hardly have sounded less natural if it had been assembled from a kit. "No one is afraid of you, young man."
"Some people are," Aidan said. "They don't say so, but I can tell."
"Can you smell it?"
"No," Aidan said, laughing much more convincingly. "Smell it? No. You can't smell fear."
"Some people can."
"Maybe if they're dogs," Aidan said, and he let out a couple of yipping barks.
"How do you know if people are afraid of you, then, if they don't say it?"
"I can see it in your eyes," Aidan said. "When you look at me."
"Yes, well, um... I have some divinations to take, so why don't you play with your... just... I believe we're almost done here," the man said.
[][][][][]
The house was a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked to town to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, to watch over their adopted son and the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had come for his quarterly examination. Such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected, but Dell didn't mind this one bit.
She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring reflections to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
Dell had put a stop to that []
"The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this," he said.
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "How much do you ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this?"
"Madam's point is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
[Beginning. There will be more to this story that is actually Aidan himself; it's not just going to be conversation about him. But I start writing stories with what's strongest in my mind.]
The house was a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked to town to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, to watch over their adopted son and the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had come for his quarterly examination. Such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected, but Dell didn't mind this one bit.
She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring reflections to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
Dell had put a stop to that []
"The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this," he said.
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "How much do you ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this?"
"Madam's point is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
Status: In progress.
Last Update: 11:00 PM
Word Count: ~2400
Hours Writing: 2
[2 hours in. Yay, I've bridged all the parts and now it's just a matter of pushing on to the end.],/b>
The blocks were kept in a big cast iron roasting dish that had lost its lid and found a new purpose. Next to it was a three gallon bucket that now housed a variety of toy figures of various sorts. The boy had set out to build a fortress, but he'd pulled more items out of the bucket than the pan, as he had someone new to introduce them to.
"...an' this one's called Sky Knight," he said, holding up an enaction figure of a young man wearing a bulky and improbably armor and a backpack with wings on the side and funnels on the bottom. "Because he's a knight of the skies. That's like the night sky, but different. He's my favorite because he flies."
"You're fond of flying, are you?" the man in black asked him, and the boy nodded enthusiastically.
"Da takes me up sometimes," he said.
"In the ships he works on?" the man asked, and the boy nodded again. The man marked something on his tablet. "Do you ever have dreams where you're flying, Aidan?"
"Yes," Aidan said.
"I'd like to hear about them."
"One time, I dreamed I was the captain of a ship, sailing across the sea to Magisteria, or even farther to the Westering Lands," the boy said. "And another time I dreamed I was Sky Knight."
"Do you ever dream of wings?"
"Sky Knight has wings on his backpack thingy," Aidan said.
"I mean the kind that move and flap."
"You mean like a dragon has," Aidan said.
"That's right," the man said.
"You want to know if I dream about dragon wings because I'm part of a dragon," Aidan said. "And you're afraid I'm going to turn into one."
"Why, what an odd way to put it," the man said. He forced a laugh that could hardly have sounded less natural if it had been assembled from a kit. "No one is afraid of you, young man."
"Some people are," Aidan said. "They don't say so, but I can tell."
"Can you smell it?"
"No," Aidan said, laughing much more convincingly. "Smell it? No. You can't smell fear."
"Some people can."
"Maybe if they're dogs," Aidan said, and he let out a couple of yipping barks.
"How do you know if people are afraid of you, then, if they don't say it?"
"I can see it in your eyes," Aidan said. "When you look at me."
"Yes, well, um... I have some divinations to take, so why don't you play with your... just... I believe we're almost done here," the man said.
"Alright," Aidan said.
The man took a few steps back and watched Aidan at play. He pulled a short, slim wand out of his pocket, pointed it at the boy, and then moved it around in a circle a few times. He frowned, pointed it at a flowerpot and gave it a flick, then returned his attention to Aidan. He spent several minutes making various gestures with the device, pointing it at various parts of the boy's form and tracing various symbols in the air in his general direction.
Eventually he nodded to himself, put the wand away, and made another note. He then produced an oval-shaped clear crystal with beveled edges giving it the appearance of a flattened diamond. He peered at the boy through it a several times, putting it down to make notes in between.
The man wasn't specifically observing Aidan's private game, but as his attention was on the boy he couldn't help being aware of his actions. His facility with block-building was impressive in both the scope of the structures he could erect and the speed with which he did so, but it seemed to him as though there were something inherently disorderly about the boy's creation.
He didn't expect a six-year-old boy to have a grasp of classical architecture or anything like that, but by the same token he felt that simpler structures, being more stable, would come naturally to a small child.
Aidan produced castle walls that looked both sturdy and mostly straight using mismatched blocks. He didn't seem to hunt for blocks that would fill the gaps, or to plan things. He just glanced at the blocks in the pan, grabbed one, and placed it without any hesitation.
His towers, rather than having four corners on each level consisting of similar pieces, had a haphazard look where one level might be a single thin pillar supporting a plank with three columns made out of square blocks spaced so as to be perfectly balanced and supporting a broader platform on which he constructed something that looked like a ring of standing stones, or a carousel. The whole thing went from narrow to wide and back again like a series of irregular hourglasses stacked on top of each other.
The fact that he was building these improbable structures on a carpeted floor was even more disquietingly impressive.
While his building prowess seemed more improbable, the man was also unnerved by the way Aidan played with his other toys in the midst of the building. In his own home, with his own sons, the man from the ministry would have insisted they play with one thing or the other, a set of building blocks or their toy soldiers. He understood that Dell Harris ran a less orderly household, and he did not judge... officially... but there seemed to be something fundamentally chaotic about mixing playthings.
It wasn't just blocks and soldiers, either. It was blocks and soldiers from a conventional set of imperial army figurines, the much larger and more detailed enaction figures from what seemed like more than one television programs, and other toys, some of which even seemed to have been intended for girls. Aidan paid no heed to the fact that they were built to varying scales and showed no respect for what they were meant to signify. Indeed, to judge by the dialogue he put in the various figures' mouths, the proud imperial soldiers were being employed as an invading army of gnomes.
The man didn't know to approve or disapprove of the gnomes-in-imperial-armor being scattered so easily by the swooping figure of Sky Knight, who alone among the assembled multitudes seemed to have the privilege of playing himself in the unfolding drama. When the boy added a hellhound with an anti-magic shell and immediately one-upped himself with a behemoth that quite improbably fed on anti-magic hellhounds, the man felt he'd had quite enough child-like imagination for one day.
"Please excuse me, but I must go have a brief word with your mother," he said to Aidan, who was so engrossed in his worldbuilding that he didn't appear to hear. "I think I have everything I need."
He passed through the entrance hall and dining room into the kitchen. The house was quite a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but he supposed it was an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked into town early in order to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, and so she was the one who the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had to deal with. The ministry agent found it odd and a more than a little discourteous that a man would shirk his responsibilities so..
He didn't know it, but such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected.
Dell Harris didn't mind this one bit. She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring all reflections and letters on related subjects to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
"So, anything new to be concerned about?" she said to the ministry man, handing him tea in a mug.
"Is there any chance your husband will be home soon?" he asked. "Perhaps this is a conversation best had with both of you present."
"Oh, to be sure," she said. "It's hard to ask me if I wouldn't like to step out of the room when it's just me here. That would leave you talking to yourself, and I gather that's not properly ministerial behavior."
"I did say both of you."
"And I believe you believe that'd be an improvement over me," she said. "I'm the boy's mother, legally. I've as much a stake in him as his da does, legally. We can talk about how things shake out on other levels if you'd like, but I don't know how any but the legal part would concern you."
"Surely you understand that this is not as simple as an ordinary adoption," he said.
"Surely you understand the meaning of the word 'mother'," Dell said. "You had one at some point, didn't you?"
"Have," the man said. "She is quite vigorous for her age, I assure you, and I do take your point. Very well." He sighed. "The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this.".
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "And just how much do we ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this? In the normal course of events?"
"Your point, again, is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
"It's been three months since his last check-up," Dell said. "So this might have happened at any point between then and now, or it might have been happening gradually all along."
"The latter, I believe," the man said. "It actually began sometime before the last examination, and after the one before that. My predecessor noted what he thought might have been the beginning of this trend, during his last visit.".
"Oh? He didn't note it to me."
"Well, it's hard to conclusively, er, conclude anything from a single moment in time," the man said. "But because he had made a note of the possibility that the aura was degrading, it gave me a frame of reference to build on."
"He might have mentioned the possibility to me," Dell said. "I'm only Aidan's mother, after all."
"This has been established," the man said. "Even though it might have been premature, perhaps he might have said a quiet word to your husband on the subject, if the man weren't so devilishly difficult to get a hold of."
"Devilishly?"
"I... ah... beg your pardon, madam," he said. "It is a common turn of phrase, isn't it?"
"You do know that your predecessor predecessed because of complaints I lodged against him, don't you?" Dell asked.
"I hope you note that I've told you now that we have confirmation that it's happening on a large scale and that it's significant enough to mention," the man said quickly.
"See, and I was perfectly willing to believe that you were telling me where he hadn't because you though I'm entitled to know what's happening with my son," Dell said. "So, is there anything you've noticed this time that's too insignificant to tell me about? Any quiet words you would like for me to pass on to my husband?"
"I'm not sure I like your implication," the man said.
"Well, I'm bothered by implications, too, so we've got that much in common," Dell said.
[1.5 hours in. NB: Minus the preternatural skill at block selection and placement, Aidan's playtime habits mirror those of my brothers and myself.]
The blocks were kept in a big cast iron roasting dish that had lost its lid and found a new purpose. Next to it was a three gallon bucket that now housed a variety of toy figures of various sorts. The boy had set out to build a fortress, but he'd pulled more items out of the bucket than the pan, as he had someone new to introduce them to.
"...an' this one's called Sky Knight," he said, holding up an enaction figure of a young man wearing a bulky and improbably armor and a backpack with wings on the side and funnels on the bottom. "Because he's a knight of the skies. That's like the night sky, but different. He's my favorite because he flies."
"You're fond of flying, are you?" the man in black asked him, and the boy nodded enthusiastically.
"Da takes me up sometimes," he said.
"In the ships he works on?" the man asked, and the boy nodded again. The man marked something on his tablet. "Do you ever have dreams where you're flying, Aidan?"
"Yes," Aidan said.
"I'd like to hear about them."
"One time, I dreamed I was the captain of a ship, sailing across the sea to Magisteria, or even farther to the Westering Lands," the boy said. "And another time I dreamed I was Sky Knight."
"Do you ever dream of wings?"
"Sky Knight has wings on his backpack thingy," Aidan said.
"I mean the kind that move and flap."
"You mean like a dragon has," Aidan said.
"That's right," the man said.
"You want to know if I dream about dragon wings because I'm part of a dragon," Aidan said. "And you're afraid I'm going to turn into one."
"Why, what an odd way to put it," the man said. He forced a laugh that could hardly have sounded less natural if it had been assembled from a kit. "No one is afraid of you, young man."
"Some people are," Aidan said. "They don't say so, but I can tell."
"Can you smell it?"
"No," Aidan said, laughing much more convincingly. "Smell it? No. You can't smell fear."
"Some people can."
"Maybe if they're dogs," Aidan said, and he let out a couple of yipping barks.
"How do you know if people are afraid of you, then, if they don't say it?"
"I can see it in your eyes," Aidan said. "When you look at me."
"Yes, well, um... I have some divinations to take, so why don't you play with your... just... I believe we're almost done here," the man said.
"Alright," Aidan said.
The man took a few steps back and watched Aidan at play. He pulled a short, slim wand out of his pocket, pointed it at the boy, and then moved it around in a circle a few times. He frowned, pointed it at a flowerpot and gave it a flick, then returned his attention to Aidan. He spent several minutes making various gestures with the device, pointing it at various parts of the boy's form and tracing various symbols in the air in his general direction.
Eventually he nodded to himself, put the wand away, and made another note. He then produced an oval-shaped clear crystal with beveled edges giving it the appearance of a flattened diamond. He peered at the boy through it a several times, putting it down to make notes in between.
The man wasn't specifically observing Aidan's private game, but as his attention was on the boy he couldn't help being aware of his actions. His facility with block-building was impressive in both the scope of the structures he could erect and the speed with which he did so, but it seemed to him as though there were something inherently disorderly about the boy's creation.
He didn't expect a six-year-old boy to have a grasp of classical architecture or anything like that, but by the same token he felt that simpler structures, being more stable, would come naturally to a small child.
Aidan produced castle walls that looked both sturdy and mostly straight using mismatched blocks. He didn't seem to hunt for blocks that would fill the gaps, or to plan things. He just glanced at the blocks in the pan, grabbed one, and placed it without any hesitation.
His towers, rather than having four corners on each level consisting of similar pieces, had a haphazard look where one level might be a single thin pillar supporting a plank with three columns made out of square blocks spaced so as to be perfectly balanced and supporting a broader platform on which he constructed something that looked like a ring of standing stones, or a carousel. The whole thing went from narrow to wide and back again like a series of irregular hourglasses stacked on top of each other.
The fact that he was building these improbable structures on a carpeted floor was even more disquietingly impressive.
While his building prowess seemed more improbable, the man was also unnerved by the way Aidan played with his other toys in the midst of the building. In his own home, with his own sons, the man from the ministry would have insisted they play with one thing or the other, a set of building blocks or their toy soldiers. He understood that Dell Harris ran a less orderly household, and he did not judge... officially... but there seemed to be something fundamentally chaotic about mixing playthings.
It wasn't just blocks and soldiers, either. It was blocks and soldiers from a conventional set of imperial army figurines, the much larger and more detailed enaction figures from what seemed like more than one television programs, and other toys, some of which even seemed to have been intended for girls. Aidan paid no heed to the fact that they were built to varying scales and showed no respect for what they were meant to signify. Indeed, to judge by the dialogue he put in the various figures' mouths, the proud imperial soldiers were being employed as an invading army of gnomes.
The man didn't know to approve or disapprove of the gnomes-in-imperial-armor being scattered so easily by the swooping figure of Sky Knight, who alone among the assembled multitudes seemed to have the privilege of playing himself
[][][][][]
The house was a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked to town to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, to watch over their adopted son and the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had come for his quarterly examination. Such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected, but Dell didn't mind this one bit.
She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring reflections to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
Dell had put a stop to that []
"The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this," he said.
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "How much do you ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this?"
"Madam's point is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
"It's been three months since his last check-up," Dell said. "So this might have happened at any point between then and now, or it might have been happening gradually all along."
"The latter, I believe," the man said. "It actually began sometime before the last examination, and after the one before that. My predecessor noted what he thought might have been the beginning of this trend, during his last visit.".
"Oh? He didn't note it to me."
"Well, it's hard to conclusively, er, conclude anything from a single moment in time," the man said. "But because he had made a note of the possibility that the aura was degrading, it gave me a frame of reference to build on."
"He might have mentioned the possibility to me," Dell said. "I'm only Aidan's mother."
"What would it have mattered? Would you have done anything differently in the last three months?"
"I don't know," Dell said. "I might have."
"I hope you note that I've told you now that we have confirmation that it's happening and that it's significant enough to mention," he said.
"See, and I was perfectly willing to believe that you were telling me where he hadn't because you though I'm entitled to know what's happening with my son," Dell said. "So, is there anything you've noticed this time that's too insignificant to tell me about?"
"I'm not sure I like your implication," the man said.
"Well, I'm bothered by implications, too, so we've got that much in common," Dell said.
[1 hour in. Aidan being examined/interviewed by a government agent was the first seed of this story.]
The blocks were kept in a big cast iron roasting dish that had lost its lid and found a new purpose. Next to it was a three gallon bucket that now housed a variety of toy figures of various sorts. The boy had set out to build a fortress, but he'd pulled more items out of the bucket than the pan, as he had someone new to introduce them to.
"...an' this one's called Sky Knight," he said, holding up an enaction figure of a young man wearing a bulky and improbably armor and a backpack with wings on the side and funnels on the bottom. "Because he's a knight of the skies. That's like the night sky, but different. He's my favorite because he flies."
"You're fond of flying, are you?" the man in black asked him, and the boy nodded enthusiastically.
"Da takes me up sometimes," he said.
"In the ships he works on?" the man asked, and the boy nodded again. The man marked something on his tablet. "Do you ever have dreams where you're flying, Aidan?"
"Yes," Aidan said.
"I'd like to hear about them."
"One time, I dreamed I was the captain of a ship, sailing across the sea to Magisteria, or even farther to the Westering Lands," the boy said. "And another time I dreamed I was Sky Knight."
"Do you ever dream of wings?"
"Sky Knight has wings on his backpack thingy," Aidan said.
"I mean the kind that move and flap."
"You mean like a dragon has," Aidan said.
"That's right," the man said.
"You want to know if I dream about dragon wings because I'm part of a dragon," Aidan said. "And you're afraid I'm going to turn into one."
"Why, what an odd way to put it," the man said. He forced a laugh that could hardly have sounded less natural if it had been assembled from a kit. "No one is afraid of you, young man."
"Some people are," Aidan said. "They don't say so, but I can tell."
"Can you smell it?"
"No," Aidan said, laughing much more convincingly. "Smell it? No. You can't smell fear."
"Some people can."
"Maybe if they're dogs," Aidan said, and he let out a couple of yipping barks.
"How do you know if people are afraid of you, then, if they don't say it?"
"I can see it in your eyes," Aidan said. "When you look at me."
"Yes, well, um... I have some divinations to take, so why don't you play with your... just... I believe we're almost done here," the man said.
[][][][][]
The house was a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked to town to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, to watch over their adopted son and the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had come for his quarterly examination. Such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected, but Dell didn't mind this one bit.
She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring reflections to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
Dell had put a stop to that []
"The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this," he said.
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "How much do you ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this?"
"Madam's point is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."
[Beginning. There will be more to this story that is actually Aidan himself; it's not just going to be conversation about him. But I start writing stories with what's strongest in my mind.]
The house was a modest one for a hero of the empire and the daughter of a lord, but an impressive one for an airshipman and the daughter of a farmer.
The hero of the empire was out for the morning, having walked to town to take in the sights of market day. The farmer's daughter was in, to watch over their adopted son and the man from the Ministry of Internal Diplomacy who had come for his quarterly examination. Such things as the sights of the market were always more appealing to Dan Harris when official visitors were expected, but Dell didn't mind this one bit.
She'd been given the impression early on that in the eyes of the imperial government, young Aidan was more Dan's son than hers. She was just coincidentally the woman married to the half-demon who'd taken it upon himself to raise a quarter-dragonling. Even after he'd started absenting himself from the official visits and referring reflections to her, the black-suited ministry men had often treated her like a go-between, asking her to relay such-and-such information to Dan or to ask him about his intentions.
Dell had put a stop to that []
"The false aura has... decayed... much more quickly than we would have ordinarily expected, in case such as this," he said.
Dell's eyebrow twitched up just a little bit.
"Oh, aye?" she said. "How much do you ordinarily expect it to do, in a case such as this?"
"Madam's point is well-taken," he said. "And in fact, it would seem you have hit the difficulty square on the nose. The use of a false aura is well-documented, but in most cases such a facade is employed by a wizard or other entity who wishes to maintain it himself, or placed by an external agent on a mundane individual who has no power to resist it."
"Aidan shouldn't have any power to resist it," Dell said. "Not until he comes of age. Unless the aura's a threat?"
She'd been suspicious of it from the beginning. As far as whe was concerned, the protections put in place by Aidan's father should be sufficient. She wasn't as uncomfortable with minions of the emperor as her husband was, but she didn't necessarily trust them, or their judgment.
"Absolutely not," he said. "As I've said, the use of false auras are well-documented. They do nothing to change the underlying nature of the being, nor affect him in any way."
"And being a quarter dragon doesn't change this?"
"No class of beings has made more extensive use of false auras than dragons and dragonlings," he said. "Research suggests they may have invented the technique."
"So if it's not a threat, what's causing it?" Dell asked. "Could this 'decay' be caused by someone snooping too closely?"
"Oh, no," the ministry man said. "Certain ways of piercing a false aura will damage it, but that damage would manifest differently than what we're seeing. And we would have noticed."
"Is it beyond consideration that someone could be stealthy enough to pierce the aura in a way that looks like natural 'decay' and evade your detection?"
"I think not," the man said stiffly.
"But how would you know?"
"Well, obviously, we couldn't know if someone were skilled enough to slip in the back way, as it were, but I would be very surprised if anyone had such a capability but was not able to cover his tracks completely," the ministry man said. "It would be like some perfect thief somehow infiltrating the emperor's palace, and then re-painting a wall to cover the spot where his fingers smudged on it."