A/N: Bear with me, y'all. I think you'll like this one.


As young girls will, Jean Beazley, née Randall, learned a great deal about life at her mother's knee. There were rather a lot of lessons Mrs. Mary Randall intended to pass on to her youngest daughter, and she was rather short on time; the cough she'd picked up in the winter of 1923 never really left her, and by 1925 she knew her days on earth were numbered, even if young Jean did not. Every moment they spent together was colored by Mrs. Randall's dogged instruction, and there was no matter more urgent in her mind than that of the daemon. Jean's daemon, to be precise.

He'll settle soon, Mrs. Randall told her on one particular evening, watching as the little creature scurried over Jean's lap, his shape shifting rapid as a heartbeat. One moment he was a mouse, soft and brown and gentle, and the next he was a beetle, glittering, exotic, and Jean's wide blue eyes took in every change with an eager sort of excitement. To Jean her mother's words sounded like magic; how does she know? the girl asked herself, not realizing yet that her mother knew what she did not, that the daemon would settle when Jean's blood came, and that Jean was growing older by the day. The time would soon come when Jean herself would change, and when she did, her daemon would change with her, would settle on his final shape, the shape he would hold for all the rest of his days.

What do you think he'll be? Young Jean asked her mother eagerly. Mrs. Randall's daemon was a small, sleek grey cat called Baldur, and he was at present curled up by his mistress's side, dozing in the glow of the fire, content. If Baldur slept more now than he had done in years past, if his steps were less sure and his eyes less keen, young Jean had not yet noticed, but Mrs. Randall had. The days were grown short indeed.

I can't say, Jean, her mother told her honestly. Mrs. Randall kept her secrets, but she told no untruths. Our daemons are ourselves. The shapes they take, the words they speak, they are parts of us. Your boy is your own soul, and you should protect him, and love him, always, no matter the form he takes.

Jean stared down at the tiny hedgehog in her lap, looking up at her with big dark eyes. He didn't look like her soul, she thought. He looked like a funny, prickly little thing; it was difficult to believe he held such power.

Ten years old, by then, Jean had already learned a great deal about her daemon. His name was Halcyon; the name had existed somewhere in the back of Jean's mind from the moment she was born, and had been among the first words she'd ever spoken. He had been by her side every minute of every day from the moment she first drew breath, for a human could not be parted from their daemon and live. Just how far afield a daemon might be permitted to travel without causing harm to their person was unknown to Jean in those days, but she had never seen one more than an arm's length from their person, and never wished to, for she had heard the stories, about the agony too great a separation might cause, how daemon and human both would wither away to nothing should they be kept from one another, and she shuddered at the very thought. Halcyon liked it best when she was holding him, and Jean liked it best that way, too. Most days she carried him round in her pocket, or let him perch on her shoulder, and they explored the world together. He was always getting into mischief, always begging her to take him on adventures, and though her heart longed to indulge him the routines of farm life all too often restricted them to the house or the fields, and they were forced to make what little excitement they could for themselves within her mother's line of sight.

I think I'd quite like to be a bird, Halcyon said then, and in the next breath he was a hedgehog no longer, but had assumed the shape of a brightly colored parakeet, flapping his little wings until he caught enough air to lift himself up and flit around Jean's head. The girl laughed, delighted, but Mrs. Randall's face assumed a foreboding expression.

Birds are vain, she said. And unreliable. If you are to be a bird, I worry what that will mean for my Jean.

Jean hung her head, chastised, and Halcyon settled on her shoulder, changing his shape once more, this time taking the form of a stoat, wrapping himself around Jean's neck like a scarf.

And stoats are vicious, Mrs. Randall said. They kill for fun, and I don't think that's like you at all.

No, Jean didn't think so, either.

Maybe he can be a cat, like Baldur, Jean suggested, reaching up to run her fingers through Halcyon's soft fur. At the sound of his name her mother's daemon stirred, opening one bright yellow eye to regard Jean solemnly.

Cats are all right, Mrs. Randall agreed. Privately, she rather hoped Jean's daemon would become a cat, as well. None of her other children had cats for daemons, and she'd like to think at least one of her babies had inherited some of her own qualities.

Halcyon promptly shifted again, this time becoming a yellow tabby. Gingerly he picked his way down Jean's arm, across Mrs. Randall's lap - upsetting her sewing in the process - and settled down beside Baldur.

That was something else Jean knew about daemons; much like people, they tended only to touch those they knew well. Out in public it was unheard of to see two daemons brushing against one another, an act as shocking as a couple kissing lewdly in front of the Rex. A child's daemon might reach for a parent's, as Jean might reach for her mother, but as they settled they retreated, somewhat. And it was most improper for a human to touch another's daemon without some bond existing between them; daemon's were too precious, and were generally regarded as sacrosanct, in their own way. Every now and then daemons were known to brawl, as people were, but such fights were terrifying to hear about, let alone witness. If a daemon was injured, his person would be, too. If a daemon was killed, so too would his person die. They were inextricably linked, a human and their soul. One could not exist without the other.

Which caused more than its fair share of problems, of course. It had not been so very long since the end of the great war, violence and horror on a scale such as the world had never seen before, and many a soldier had been killed because his daemon had been left unprotected. There were men in the world who met in dark corners to discuss such matters, to discuss how better to protect the fragile bodies that housed the souls of their soldiers, but Jean was only ten, and had not yet heard of such things.

If you know what to look for, my Jean, a person's daemon will tell you everything you need to know about them, Mrs. Randall said then, and Jean listened closely, for as far as she was concerned there was no authority on earth more learned than her mother, and she would take every word Mrs. Randall spoke to heart, and treasure it. Your father's daemon, for example.

Papa's daemon was a herding dog called Hecate, and Jean loved her dearly.

A herding dog. They are loyal, and hardworking, and they are closely bonded to those they love. When I first saw her, I knew that your father would be such a man, and I was right.

And cats were curious, but sometimes aloof, and though Jean did not know it yet, Baldur suited Mrs. Randall to a T.

Marry a man with a daemon small enough to hold in your arms, Jeannie, Mrs. Randall told her then. A man with a daemon too big for you to hold is a man with a soul too big to make room for you. Great men have big souls, but great men make lousy fathers.

It was this piece of advice, more than any other, which would remain at the forefront of Jean's mind for the rest of her days. In Ballarat there was no one with a daemon bigger than a dog, and even in the stories Jean read and in the films she watched it was rare to see one as large as a wolf, let alone a bear or a tiger. Such a daemon turned heads everywhere it went, and left whispers in its wake. What sort of a person could possess a soul that would manifest as such a beast? What aggression, what power, must lie within such a heart? Most folks would rather not find out.

By autumn of 1926 Mrs. Randall's lungs were failing, and by Christmas she was gone, and Baldur with her. Jean and her sisters and her brothers and her father were standing beside Mary's bed when she passed; Baldur was curled up in a ball on her chest, and as she took her last breath he seemed to shimmer into a snowfall of golden light, and vanished from the earth, never to be seen again. Jean held her father's hand, and wept.

Time marched on; in the spring of 1928 Jean's blood came, and Halcyon settled, at last, on his final form. And Jean saw it, and wept, for he was then, and would be for all the rest of their days, a bright blue kingfisher, his wings glimmering in the sunlight, his chest the burnished orange of a wildfire. A bird, and Mrs. Randall never would have approved of that, and there was nothing Jean could do to hide this failing from her neighbors. Vain, her mother had said, and unreliable, and Jean tried her best not to live up to such unenviable epithets, but the whispers followed her, just the same.

What good will she be to anybody, with her head in the clouds? What sort of wife will she make, with one eye always on the horizon?

One day Jean met a boy with a dog for a daemon, just like her father. Christopher Beazley and his Calliope charmed her utterly, and he didn't seem to mind her little blue bird so very much, and they hit it off quite well. A little too well, perhaps, for by 1934 Jean was in the family way, and they wed in a hurry. Tragedy befell them, but their love endured, and most nights Calliope slept at the end of their bed, with Halcyon tucked comfortably between her paws.

Children came, and with them flittering, fluttering daemons Jean watched with a careful eye, remembering all that her mother had taught her. Who will you be, my boys? she wondered as she watched them. What course will your life take? For Jack, the answer was a red hawk, and for young Christopher a crow, and Jean's heart was full of fear for them, her dear boys, who would not be, as their father had been, dependable and predictable. The question would haunt her; had she cursed them? Given them too much of her own dreams, her own restlessness?

Such worries took a backseat to more practical concerns as the years wore on; the world fell once more into war, and Christopher and Calliope left her, and never returned, and her bed remained cold and her belly all but empty for a few lean years. Jack was taken from her, and young Christopher left of his own accord, and Jean found gainful employment in the home of Thomas Blake. Doctor Blake was a respectable sort of gentleman with a distinguished mustache, and his daemon took the form of a shining black skink, almost always draped over one of his shoulders, watching the world with a steady eye. Her name was Artemis, and she almost never spoke a word, but Halcyon trilled and sang and bantered enough for two, and the four of them got on well enough.

Until old Doctor Blake's heart began to fail, and dread seeped into Jean's bones like mold growing though an old house. She had known loss, and grief, and sorrow aplenty, and when she looked at him, frail and feeble in his bed, she knew his days were drawing to an end. There was nothing for it but to care for him, as best she could, and send for his wayward son, and hope that when Lucien Blake returned at last to Ballarat he would not cause too much trouble.

It was a feeble hope, and would soon be shattered, for Lucien Blake would bring with him more trouble - and more delight - than Jean had ever dreamed.