Ruby Gloom: Secret Origins, Chapter One:
Four facts About Banshees
1. Banshees Are Not Human
Banshees are a subspecies of female fairies. As such, the Gaelic word for their kind - which, when translated into English, means "woman of the fairy mounds" - is just about correct. Although it took ages, the banshees eventually developed a sense of identity. They became aware of two things that separated them from Earth's dominating species, the humans: First, they look different. Seen from a short distance, or in bad light, they might look the same. But human eyes are small, oval and lack the great, dark depth of the large banshee eyes. Human skins are nuances of brown and pink, unlike the blue-greyish skin of most banshees. Humans are bigger, too. Compared to them, banshees are short, skinny and scrawny. Compared to them, banshees look weak and sickly. Which is quite ironic, because human bodies are actually much more fragile than banshee ones. If a human catches a disease, it might have to lie down for days or weeks. If a human's leg breaks, it takes months to heal properly. If a human's neck breaks, it dies. All these things happen to banshees too - does it ever! - but the effects of the damage are always merely temporary. And that's how the banshees came to learn the meaning of death and immortality, and the second thing that separated them form humans: They were immortal. Human perished after only a few decades; even if they escaped sickness and damage, they would eventually just wither away and then die. Banshees don't wither. At some indeterminate time in her life, a banshee will simply stop aging. And then live on. Usually not a happy life, but still.
2. Banshees are old, even ancient
Not even the banshees themselves know exactly how old their kind is. But the first banshee is still around to this day, though she mostly keeps to herself in a cave out in the wild. She probably didn't have a name to begin with, but nowadays, everyone calls her Mayhem. Mayhem have told her descendants of the days when she used to go hunting for the great, big lizards, until a great big light came down from the sky. Then the sun disappeared, and the great big lizards disappeared too. Mayhem's descendants later understood that she must have been talking about dinosaurs, and how they died out when a meteorite fell to the earth. The banshees then realized that their kind was even older than they first suspected, and that Mayhem probably walked the earth for ages before she had her first encounter with humankind.
She then mated with a young hunter named Trug and they had twins – two daughters who were also banshees. They had no names to begin with, but would eventually be known as Malady and Malaise. Trug didn't live for long; he met his end when he sank into a hole of quicksand. But Mayhem's daughters lived on, and like her, they became the harbingers of a great catastrophe. With them came the ice age. Or maybe it came because of them, for the glaciers started melting when the sisters went their separate ways. Every time they come together, they still bring a cold front and everything in their immediate presence is gradually covered with ice.
As the ice age ended, something resembling civilizations began to emerge in human societies around the world. Mayhem despised civilization. She missed Trug and she missed the dinosaurs, and retreated to her cave in the wild. But her daughters, and eventually granddaughters, great-granddaughters and so forth travelled around and explored the human world.
3. Banshees are one family
Throughout the centuries, banshees have mated with humans or with other species of fairies, but they only ever give birth one time each. And when they do, they always give birth to daughters. At the big family meeting by Mount Vesuvius, it was decided that the Kin (which was what they usually referred to themselves as, until humans thought of the name "banshee") should have an officially appointed Historian. She would be in charge of listing every major disaster witnessed by one (or more) of the family members. She would also be keeping track of the whereabouts of every family member, and as such, function as a liaison. On this meeting, it was also decided that the members of the Kin should, as a general rule, refer to one another as "cousins", even though most of them were related to each other in a more direct way. Partly this was because great-great-etc-daughters and great-great-etc-mothers, found it easier to just call each other "cousin" than to try and remember how many "greats" there were supposed to be between them. When none of your female ancestors ever dies, your family meetings can get pretty complicated. And partly, it was because the members of the Kin regard each other as equals. The banshees have one of the least hierarchical family structures in existence.
4. Banshees know that bad things happen, and when
The banshees eventually realized that they were harbingers of disaster. It was their destiny. Bigger and smaller accidents happens all around them. And when a banshee lives in the same household as mortals, she forebodes the death of her mortal housemates by wailing loudly and terribly. This is the banshee's hallmark, as far as humans are concerned. The banshees' own hallmark is The Passage. Every banshee will once become witness to a great natural disaster that goes down in history: The end of Atlantis, the black plague, the great fires of London and Chicago, The Titanic. This is what they refer to as The Passage. Once a member of the Kin has been through The Passage, one might say that the worst is over. Except, of course, that a banshee never says things like "the worst is over" in fear that just saying so can cause worse things to happen. Disasters continue to happen when a banshee is around, but usually on a smaller scale. Usually.
So here it is, the first chapter of my Ruby Gloom origins fanfic. Misery is my favorite, so I'm starting with her. Besides, she is the character who's given the most number of hints about her background, so there's a lot of source material.
For my story to work, I decided I had to explain her family's background in some detail. So eventually, I split Misery's story into two chapters: one dealing with her entire family, and one dealing with her specifically.
Disclaimer: Ruby Gloom characters are owned by Mighty Fine and Nelvana.