Thank you for the continued comments and support! In honor of the season finale for The Owl House (that I haven't watched, please no spoilers still I plan on catching up this coming week) here are two brand new chapters!
Cary walked around the cluttered living room, taking everything in. It was a mix of human junk and magical artifacts, honestly, it was almost impressive.
"Tell me everything," Eda and Cary said at the exact same time.
"You're in my home, you go first," Eda said.
"I crossed a country and a dimension to talk to you, you go first," Cary said.
"I'm your mother, you go first." Playing the mom card already? Cary was a little impressed by that too.
"What do you want to know?"
"I want to know about you, I want to know about your life in Oregon and your prophetic dreams, and anything in between."
"Well, my full name is Caryn Leigh Pines, but no one calls me Caryn. I got my first name from my paternal grandmother, who I've never met. I've never actually met any of my dad's family. He got kicked out of his family home when he was 18 and he didn't really stay in touch with his parents or brothers. He had a twin brother, but I think his brother got trapped in another dimension? It's complicated. Dad's spent thirty years trying to get his twin back, and he's been running the Mystery Shack for about that long. That's where I grew up and where I work."
Cary took a deep breath before continuing, "The Mystery Shack is like a museum of the weird and extraordinary, although almost all of it was made up by dad. My job is to dress up in a bird costume and give people bogus fortunes. Obviously, the owl beast is real and the prophetic powers are real but I don't actually have the ability to read people's futures on command, still, it makes good money. And my two best friends also work at the Mystery Shack."
Cary paused to make sure Eda was still listening.
Eda nodded and urged her forward, "Tell me about your friends."
Cary wondered if Eda really cared or was just stalling, but she decided to continue regardless.
"Alright. First, there's Soos Ramirez. He's like my older brother, he's been working as the repair guy at the Shack since he was twelve and he tries to keep me and my best friend out of trouble, with varied results."
"There's a Soos in this dimension," Eda said quietly before adding, "tell me about your best friend."
"Well, my best friend is this girl, Wendy Corduroy. She's the coolest person I know, her dad is a lumberjack and she owns an ax and before I left she gave me one of her flannels- my stuff! I lost my stuff when I was grabbed!"
Eda held up her large camping backpack, "I got you, kid. I grabbed it when I fled. I was going to sell it but I guess you can have it back."
"Thank you." Cary dug her flannel out from the backpack. It was right next to Stan's leather jacket, which also brought her comfort.
"Anyway, Wendy is the best," Cary said, blushing and cradling the flannel.
Eda grinned, "You like this girl?"
"She's my best friend."
"But you have a crush on her, don't you?"
Cary looked away, flustered. She'd never admitted it out loud before.
"Yeah, I do. You don't think that's weird, do you?"
"Are you kidding me? I've dated guys, girls, and anything in between."
"In between?" Cary asked.
"Oh, uh. You know how some people are born male and transition to be female, and some people are born female and transition to be male?"
"Yeah?" That wasn't something that got discussed a lot in Gravity Falls, but Cary knew some stuff about trans people.
"Well some people don't fit into the gender binary of male or female, they're nonbinary. My old partner, Raine, was like that." Eda crossed the room and picked up a picture that had been somewhat obscured, smiling wistfully.
"Whoa… You can do that?"
"You can do whatever you want, kiddo. Present yourself however, use whatever pronouns you want. You could use all of the pronouns if you wanted to! Gender's made up anyway."
"Huh. Anyway, tell me more about this Raine person."
"No, no… That's not important, really. Things ended because I wanted to protect them from the beast. No one really knows about the owl beast outside of my family."
"Tell me about your family, then."
"I still have questions about you, Cary."
"You answer some of my questions and I'll answer more of yours. Like a game."
"If it's a game, let's raise the stakes. What're we betting?"
"I don't have much, I came from another dimension…"
"Would you gamble for that flannel?"
"No!"
"The jacket?"
"Absolutely not, dad gave that to me. And I don't even know what the rules of this game are."
"Well, what do you have?"
Cary dug in her backpack.
"Uh, jelly beans. They're my favorite."
"Alright, then we'll play for jelly beans. We'll each tell something about ourselves and whoever has a better fact or story gets a jelly bean."
"What do I get out of it? Sounds like I'm just gonna lose some of my jellybeans."
"Hm, fair point kid. At the end of the game, I'll give you a proper prize."
"Like what?"
"Like…" Eda tapped the gem on her chest.
"This is an outward representation of my inner magic, including the curse. When I become the beast the gem begins to turn black. Can't very well implant a gem in you, don't know how humans react to that kind of thing, but I could get you a nifty little necklace if you gave me a few days. Perhaps it could monitor the curse in you, or at least detect if you were in fact cursed along with me."
"You're going to have to tell me more about this curse," Cary said.
"Of course! For a price." Eda popped a jelly bean into her mouth.
"Like I said, it happened when I was just a child. Which means, at this point, I've spent more of my life cursed than not cursed. I don't know who cursed me, but I have frequent dreams about it. Like I'm so close to figuring it out, but each time the truth evades me. Part of me believes it was the emperor. The day I was cursed was the day I refused to enter a coven. I know the emperor has been trying to imprison me since then, it's possible that he cursed me as well."
"What's a coven?"
"Uh uh, your turn."
"Well, I've never been cursed, but I have been in jail once. My friends and I stole a police car, it was awesome."
"That is pretty cool," Eda said with a proud smile, "Stick it to the man!"
"Yeah! I did get caught though, and I got grounded for getting caught. Not for stealing the police car though, because dad's done that plenty of times."
Eda laughed, "Alright, you want to know about the coven system?"
"Yeah, I do."
"The coven system is stupid and convoluted but long story short, all witches and some demons have to go through the education system, studying a specific type of magic. When you get old enough you either join the Emperor's Coven, which is highly exclusive and nearly impossible to join, or you join one of the remaining covens and restrict your magic to that of the coven type. You become physically unable to use magic outside of your coven type."
"What are the coven types?"
"The main ones are Abomination, Bard, Beast Keeping, Construction, Healing, Illusion, Oracle, Plant, and Potions. I was in the Potions track in school, but I wanted to study all of them. Raine was in the Bard track, they're the best bard I've ever met."
"But you didn't join a coven?"
"No. I almost joined the Emperor's Coven, but instead, I denounced covens, and my sister took my spot next to the Emperor. That was the day I was cursed."
"You have a sister?"
"Mm-hm. But it's your turn. Tell me something interesting about you…"
"I told you pretty much everything important about my life, but, well… You should know that I'm missing out on a lot to be here. Dad's taking care of his great-niece and nephew, his brother's grandkids. He hasn't seen his extended family in ages and so that's really big for him. Plus he's been trying to get his twin brother back, and I should be there for that. And summer is the busy months for the Shack, and I'm worried my best friend will forget me or worse, start dating some loser. Plus I already missed Summerween, and so some of this feels like more risk than reward."
"You're having doubts?" Eda nodded sympathetically at her daughter.
"A little."
"What's Summerween?"
"It's like Halloween except in Summer."
Eda didn't really know what Halloween was either, but she moved on, "Ah. Anyway, it's understandable that you have doubts. But I'm glad you came, and I'm gonna try really hard to help you."
"You didn't even know that I existed," Cary muttered, feeling out of her element.
Eda nudged the bag of jelly beans towards Cary.
"When you were born, er, when I laid your egg, I must have been in beast form. I don't tend to remember everything that happens in beast form, I remember some stuff but not all, and it's gotten worse over the years. I've gotten more detached from my memories when that side of me is in control. I'm sorry I didn't remember you, I'm sorry I abandoned you. But you're here for the summer, so we'll make use of the time we have."
Cary considered hugging the woman, but she didn't get a chance.
"Open up, Edalyn! I won't ask twice."
Eda gave Cary a horrified look, "That's my sister, you need to hide."
