It was the sound of Bird song that awoke Hailey on this particular sunny morning.
Hailey rose from bed ponderously, and gave a languid stretch. Checking the digital clock on her bedside, she had to remind herself, chasing away the last wisps of sleep, that it was summer break, and there was, in fact nowhere she needed to be today.
Smiling softly, she swung herself out of bed, and made her way to the window, throwing it open.
She leaned on the windowsill, listening to the bird song as she herself started Humming the song Morning Mood to herself. Letting her spiritual power flow a little, her smile grew as the Birds started singing in key.
Moving from the window, still humming, she knelt in front of the small handmade altar on her desk, with a handcrafted little clay frog, and a shed skin of a white snake sitting in the middle.
Her morning prayers finished, she then makes her way to the Kitchen, where Fiona sat skimming the morning paper, a plate of half finished toast, and a cup of tea in front of her.
"Good Morning Hailey." Fiona said.
A little disappointed she had to stop her humming, she nevertheless answered pleasantly. "Good Morning."
"You sound chipper, sleep well?" Fiona asked.
"Quite well I think." Hailey said, "I woke to birdsong this morning, which is far more pleasant than an alarm. How about you?"
"Oh, I slept well enough," Fiona said, smiling wryly, "Although nothing quite as whimsical as awakening to bird song."
"Shame, whimsy is fun, you should try it more often." Hailey said, extracting a frying pan from the cupboard. "I'm thinking of having some bacon and eggs, do you want any?"
"Thank you, but no, I've already eaten this morning." Fiona said, gesturing to her toast.
"If you're sure." Hailey said, Putting the pan on heat, and pouring a little oil. At the same time, she turned on the Electric Kettle.
They lapsed into a comfortable silence as Hailey prepared her breakfast, the sound of sizzling soon entering the air, Soon joined by the Whistling of the Kettle.
Smoothly switching from Pan to Kettle, she quickly prepared a pot of coffee.
Then, as if summoned by the whistle, a zombie like Max shuffles into the room, before slumping into a vacant chair, head on the table.
"Good Morning Max." Hailey said, decanting some Coffee into a mug.
Max mumbled something indistinct in response.
"Honestly, what time did you get in last night?" Fiona said, shaking her head, more amused than anything.
The response was further mumbles.
"Here you go." Hailey said, setting down the mug in front of her.
"Mmthanu." was Max's response, as she grasped for the coffee, and sluggishly downing it.
"You're welcome." Hailey giggled before returning to making breakfast.
Shaking her head again. "Honestly Hailey you spoil her too much, she's a grown woman, she shouldn't need a ten year old to brew it for her."
"Oh I don't mind, I like being helpful after all." Hailey said, plating two portions of bacon and Eggs, with a few slices of toast.
Placing one in front of Max, she then sat down herself and began eating.
The conversation halted as they settled in to eat, and as Max slowly reclaimed her humanity via the power of caffeine.
After a while, Fiona, having set the paper aside, asked Hailey. "So, have you put any thought into what Secondary school you plan to attend? We have to start applying at some point. Otherwise we might miss enrollment this year."
"Well I can't say I've been fussed about it really." Hailey said, "Although I suppose somewhere within walking distance would be nice."
"Now Hailey," Fiona said, frowning. "You really need to put a little more thought into it then that."
"Well it's not as if Hailey needs that much in the way of qualifications." Max supplied, having regained her capacity for human speech. "It's not as if you need certification to be a shinto priest."
"It's important to keep your options open," Fiona said, ignoring Max, "You never know what the future might hold, and having a good education can open a lot of doors. You don't want to end up a jobless vagrant like Max after all."
"Oi!" Interjected Max. "I've paid my rent thank you very much, You don't get to call me a Jobless Vagrant until next month."
"So you have, my apologies." Fiona said dryly, sipping her tea.
"Anyway…" Max said, "Got any plans for today Hailey?"
"Well, I was going to do some volunteer work for the group housing this morning." Hailey explained airily. "A little bit of arts and crafts with the little ones. Other than that, I was going to maybe spend some time in the park, maybe hang out a little at the penny arcade, then come back sometime in the late afternoon."
"Sounds like a full day." Fiona said. "Do you want a little lunch money while you are out and about?"
"Please and Thank You." Hailey said cheerfully.
Having finished her meal, Hailey started collecting the dishes on the table.
"Don't worry about washing up." Max said. "You cooked breakfast, so I'll handle that."
"If you insist." Hailey said, leaving the dishes by the sink, and heading back to her room.
"Before you head out, could you dry the washing quickly?" Fiona asked.
"Of course." Hailey said, redirecting to the balcony of their little condo.
Stepping through the sliding door, she stepped over to the small clothes line, pulling her handmade Gohei out of her sleeve.
Muttering a quick prayer, a warm breeze blew in, ruffling her hair, pyjamas, and the clothes on the line.
Pressing her finger into one of the nearest shirts, she was pleased to confirm that it was now fully dry.
Satisfied, she then returned to her bedroom, and dressed in some street clothes, that being a pleated knee length skirt, and a random band shirt for a band she didn't know, And Finally a well worn, wide brimmed, white sun hat that she once bought in a yard sale, and had become rather fond of.
After equipping herself with her Satchel bag, she was ready to face the day.
Passing the Kitchen again on her way out, she said. "Clothes are dry."
"Thank you Hailey, Have a good day." Fiona said.
"Thank you, you too."
A moment later, Max and Fiona heard the front door open and shut.
"You know, it's kinda funny." Max said after a moment.
"What is?"
"How used to we are of all the weird shit Hailey can do." Max said, smirking.
"Well, she has more than proved her powers at this point." Fiona said. "To doubt her now would be irrational."
"Coming from you? Do I need to remind you how long it took you to accept that Kanako and Suwako were even real?" Max said, teasingly.
Fiona blushed. "That's besides the point."
"I kinda hope we can actually meet them at one point." Max said. "You know, before she disappears off to Japan."
"Well, sometime in the next few years, Hailey said she will be learning how to directly invoke gods, and channel them, so perhaps then, we might be able." Fiona said, brow furrowed.
"Could be, would be pretty weird though." Max said, leaning back. "I wonder what other weird stuff Hailey is gonna bring into our lives…"
Meanwhile on the counter, in a pile of unsorted mail, was a green envelope.
[Back in the group home again huh? What, did Fiona and Max finally get sick of you?]
'Hello Suwako-sama, and you know perfectly well why I am here.' Hailey thought, pouting.
True to her word, Hailey was currently in the nearby group housing, teaching a few young foster children how to sew with Yarn.
[You know me, I'm just messing with ya. So what are you making?]
Hailey could almost physically feel Suwako's hands on her shoulders as she metaphysically leaned over them to see what Hailey was working on. In the past few years as she advanced in her training, she was pleased to find that she was starting to get a better feel for her gods beyond just words and voices. Although mostly with Suwako more than Kanako, probably because Suwako was still without a physical body, and thus was more easily able to project her spirit all the way here.
She still longs to be able to touch them back, and she still has no idea what they actually look like beyond vague descriptions. But progress is progress.
'I'm teaching them how to make their own stuffed toys with Yarn and felt.' Hailey thought. 'These children are fairly new to foster care, so I thought maybe helping them make a little friend they can bring with them before they find their new families.'
[Aww… that's so sweet!] Suwako was almost cooing, and Hailey felt a vague presence of arms wrapping around her, someone pressing against her back, and… something rubbing against the back of her head [Whose our adowable wittle angel, being so nice to aww the wounwy owphans]
Hailey got the distinct feeling Suwako was enjoying the fact that she can sorta touch Hailey now. Although if she was honest, Hailey was too, blushing at the praise, happy even though she was being babied.
After Suwako finished hugging her, and let Hailey get back to teaching, Hailey asked her 'I haven't heard from Kanako-sama today, is she busy?'
[What, am I not enough for you? Kidding Kidding. But anyway, Kanako is receiving some guests in the shrine]
Hailey nodded in understanding. Despite both Kanako and Suwako being gods, While Suwako is a native god, born from the land, Kanako is a divine spirit, meaning a mortal who ascended to godhood, before or after their death. Because of this she has a much stronger attachment to the physical world, allowing her to retain her tangible body even in their diminished state, as opposed to Suwako, who only can manifest in spirit.
Because of this Kanako can manage the day to day operations of the shrine, although without openly declaring herself as a god, as in this day and age, that would do more harm than good.
[It's actually some of my descendants today, the Kochiya. They aren't particularly devout, but they regularly visit the shrine for new years, and consider Kanako a family friend.]
Hailey Hmmm'd in acknowledgement, before thinking 'I'm pretty sure you've talked about them before.'
[Have I?... I guess I must have. I admit I'm kinda a little excited right now.]
'Why is that?' Hailey asked.
[Ok so get this, they have this little five year old daughter named Sanae. Silly little tot with bright green hair, which was already pretty weird for this day and age, but that isn't the end of it. I've always had the weird feeling that she is staring right at me, but I always kinda brushed it off as wishful thinking. But today, right in the middle of conversation she just pointed right at me and said 'Whose that? She has a funny hat.' Kanako almost spit out her drink, and her parents were so confused, but there was no denying it, she could see me!]
Suwako sounded positively giddy.
[I didn't think there was a single drop of my divine blood left in that bloodline, let alone enough to manifest enough spiritual power to actually see me while I'm like this. I'm really looking forward to seeing how she grows up, maybe she might even want to become a shrine maiden!]
'Oh, is that so?' Hailey said evenly.
[... Hailey… Are you jealous?]
'No… maybe a little bit.' Hailey mentally mumbled. She wanted to see Suwako's 'funny hat' too.
She felt the spiritual embrace again, and the undefined something started rubbing against her head again. Maybe it was Suwako's cheek?
[Awww, you're so cute when you act your age. Don't Wowwy, you're still our Spwecical widdle girl! It's just that depending on if little Sanea gets interested in the spiritual you might have to share the attention a widdle bit, kay?]
Hailey was blushing again.'I'm a big girl, I'm not going to let a little bit of jealousy control me, especially towards a five year old.'
The hugging continued. [Oh you say that now, but wait until the teenage hormones kick in, then you'd be surprised what a little bit of any emotion can do.]
'... should I be scared?' Hailey thought, tentatively.
Suwako cackled.
[You should be terrified]
"I'm home!" Hailey called, shutting the door behind her.
"In here Hailey, we got something weird for you!" Max called back.
Eyebrow raised, she walked to the living room, where Fiona and Max were sitting on the couch. Max was watching some weird Spanish soap opera, while Fiona was only half paying attention while curling a dumbbell on one arm.
"Hey Hailey, how was your day?" Fiona asked.
"Pretty good. What's this about having something weird?"
Max patted the couch beside her, and Hailey sat down. Max then passed her a green envelope. "This was in the mail for you this morning. Probably should have given it to you before we left, but Fie hadn't sorted the mail yet. It is pretty weird though."
"It's already open." Hailey said as she examined it.
"Sorry, I have already read it." said Fiona, "The address on the front was weirdly specific, so I wanted to check if it wasn't a stalker or something equally sinister."
Hailey did check, and indeed, it was not just addressed to her house, but her bedroom.
"Jury's still out on the whole stalker thing." Max said. "But the whole letter is so weird that we figured you might be able to make more sense of it than we would. You have more experience in weird shit after all."
Hailey snorted, before pulling the letter out of the envelope and unfolding it.
An eyebrow raised. "It's… a school acceptance letter?"
Max nodded. "To a magic school apparently."
"I did check, and I couldn't really find any public records on any school called Hogwarts, for what it's worth." Fiona said.
"I certainly don't recall applying for any School called Hogwarts either." Hailey added.
"We figured as much. You probably would have said by now if you did." Max said.
Hailey skimmed the attached booklist as well.
"Well…" she said, sardonically, "I have a feeling I won't be finding any of these at Waterstones."
Max gave a laugh.
"Any chance it could be genuine?" Fiona asked.
At Haileys questioning glance, she clarified. "I mean, it's well established fact by now that you are blatantly supernatural, so I wasn't quite ready to dismiss it out of hand. It's also Possible that Your gods might know something that we don't."
"I mean, Kanako always said that I probably had some magical blood in me, so it couldn't hurt to ask." Hailey conceded.
She mentally called out to Kanako, and after a moment she could feel the gods attention land on her.
[Yes Hailey?]
'I got a weird letter in the mail Kanako-sama.' Hailey thought, 'It's an acceptance letter to a magical school apparently.'
[Hmmmm…] She could feel the goddesses gaze rest on the letter, so she held it out as flat as she could to make it easier to read.
[Well, the letter is magical in nature, I can tell you that much. However, on the matter of its contents, I'm afraid I can't help you. Even before being greatly diminished, Japan's magical community has always been somewhat secular, so I have no clue as to European magical culture or the existence or non-existence of any such schools. I also don't have much in the way of contacts these days. Most have moved on… one way or another.]
'I see… well thanks anyway.' Hailey thought.
[Honestly though, whether its authentic or not, it doesn't really matter considering]
Hailey Nodded, 'ah yes, I was wondering about that.'
"What did she say?" Max asked.
"She said that the letter is definitely magical, but she doesn't know enough about magic in Europe to know if the school is real or not. But she also said that it doesn't really matter if it was." Hailey explained.
Fiona stopped curling and shot her a quizzical look. "Why is that?"
"There is no return address or post code." Hailey said simply. "And the letter asks to reply via owl."
"Owl?" Max said, "You mean like a carrier pigeon, but an Owl?"
Hailey shrugged. "Maybe?"
They all stopped and pondered this.
"So even if we wanted to reply, we can't." Fiona summarised.
"I guess not." Max said.
They thought about it some more, before just continuing to watch the soap opera.
Authors Notes:
Well… I'm back, sorta?
Let me get the chapter specific notes out of the way first, and then I will talk about what's been happening and where I've been.
This Hailey is an interesting contrast with a lot of the others, most of them are subtly messed up in a bunch of fun ways, but not only is this Hailey probably more well adjusted, but also downright saintly compared to most of the others. I think she will be fun to write, but I'll probably have to make sure she doesn't get too boring compared to others as she lacks the blatant eccentricities of most of the others, being a more subtle flavour of weird.
Also, Sanae mentioned! A lot of you were curious about her, whether Hailey was replacing her, or whether she would be in the story, and the answers are No and… Kinda? Hailey is not replacing Sanae, I tend not to do that with my stories as I love the Touhou girls too much, and Hailey has a completely different personality to Sanae. That said, Sanae is like five right now (I wasn't sure how old Sanae would be, but most put her having been highschool age when she left for Gensokyo, so that was the angle I went for), and more importantly, living In Japan, so its probably not likely she will have much, if any presence in this story. Maybe a penpal? idk.
Also, while the Harry Potter universe is books are riddled with plot holes, in this chapter I bring up one that is specific to the first Harry Potter book specifically, rather then the wider universe. And that was that even if Harry Got the Letter, what was he supposed to do with it without an Owl?
Also Max likes spanish soaps, and Fiona is secretly swole.
Now for the more general things, like where have I been? Well, short answer is life stuff, but longer answer is this:
I struggle with organisation, planning and motivation in general, and often when big events like travelling, or helping my parents with building the new house, and random events can completely throw me off my groove for often weeks or months at a time. Not only that but I have a certain condition that makes it harder for me to focus and organise, and occasionally it's hard to get my medication thanks to supply line issues and the remoteness of where we live.
And honestly, it was really hurting my self esteem. I felt really bad not only leaving these stories unfinished, but letting down all you readers waiting for updates. But I didn't really know how to fix my unreliable muse. Then I remembered back in Uni, where I used to release chapters for another website, not only regularly, but weekly. Before my life got super chaotic. Obviously I fell off that wagon hard, but I think one of the things missing from back then was regularity, I often had several chapters written in advance as a backlog/buffer, that I could reliably edit and release once a week, and I think that structure helped me keep motivated to keep writing on the regular.
So that's when I decided that I was going to write 5 chapters of every story I currently have on this website in one big lump before releasing them one at a time, once per week, that would leave me with 40 chapters, and roughly ten weeks of releases. So not only guaranteeing you guys get something from me regularly, but it might give me the structure and motivation to write on the regular with both a loose deadline, but without the paralysing guilt of not having written anything to post.
So I knuckled down and within a span of 2-3 months, I managed to get like 80% of all the chapters done, and well on track for getting it done by the end of last year for a christmas release…
…And then I ran out of my meds… And then there were supply line issues… And then my permit to get new prescriptions expired (which I didn't even realise was a thing)… and then my Psychiatrist had moved practices… and that practice no longer handles patients with my condition.
It took me half the goddam year to see a new psych and get my meds back.
I am now back on my meds and writing again obviously, but right now we are at a critical point in the new house finally nearly actually being built (only took 4 years, but who's counting-_-) and my dad needs my help getting things ready, I don't have a lot of free time right now consequently, and it might be a while for things to settle down, But I thought you guys deserve something, even if it will set me back a bit on my five chapter plan, so I struggled through what little free time I had to make sure each story had one chapter ready to post, and dropped them altogether to let you all know that things will be happening soon.
They will probably be a little rough as I didn't have time or energy to properly proofread it, but I will probably come back to fix it when I actually start my writing again for real.
I am going to be getting serious about writing btw, as I have come to the semi-depressing realisation that writing is one of the few skills I have that I can claim to be good at without qualification. Once I prove to myself that I can actually maintain a weekly update schedule or maybe even a twice-weekly one, I will probably try and open a patron or similar service, and see if I can make writing a career.
Sorry for how long this took and how long this Author's note is, but I hope you enjoy the chapters.
I will be posting this general message on every story, just so everybody can see it. If you read more than one of my stories, after the chapter specific notes you can probably skip this bit after reading it once.
