Gifts of One, Gifts of Many
7th of October 2006 A.D.
You could theoretically whip some stuff up to help, but you really do not know what you are doing with people.
Or maybe I know a little too well, you hug your jacket a little tighter as though against the fitful autumn breeze blowing off the lake, though in truth more against the memory of how easy it had been to play the smartly dressed man waiting at the end of the outdoor aisle of flowers and well wishers. For every question he asked you had an answer, but for the ones in your own head your power is silent.As much as you hate to say it, this is something that they should actually speak to your mother about, she's been at this for a lot longer than you have.
Lydia nods, looking grave, but not unhappy with the answer, the stark midnight blue of her dress making her eyes seem bigger and darker, the ankh glittering at her throat like a spark of starlight in the dusk. "Nice talking to you Molly, I'm gonna drag my boyfriend off to dance."
Sitting back its hard to miss the way the crowd instinctively parts for her, not so much from fear as deference as though some subconscious awareness of power guides the other guests even in the midst of mingling, drink in hand. Or maybe the drink even helps, after all diviners the world over foretell in swirling sweet smoke and at harvest many gave themselves to revelry for a glimpse of the other world. Sitting here and looking out over the crowd you do not feel alone at all, but
connected to the others, blind fingers brushing against the veil they do not know is there.
Out of the corner of your eye you see leaves moving against the wind and flashes of light reflections in things that aren't quite there, the little folk had come to spectate, drawn perhaps by you and Lydia, perhaps by the presence of so many member of the Ordo Lebensis with the bride being the strongest of them.
From the place within you where the power dwells, there the fire kindles, where the shadows spin something strange rises, something you had not felt before: sadness. They should not be left out, the little spirits of the land, and the people should not be denied the sight of the wonder all around them
Such is the veiled world the Age of Lights had made.
***
"What's with the long face?" Matthew asks as you walk walk into the quiet house that night. Mom had
not waited up for you which you take as an encouraging sign that she's starting to trust you a little more
Unable to come up with an answer, at least one made up of words that do not make you sound like a crazy person you make the universal shooing motion of elder siblings who do not want to deal with younger ones and take the steps two at a time up to your bedroom. Might as well see about divining Olivia since you can't sleep.
Between the earring, the lock of hair and the picture representing Olivia herself you can ask all of three questions, a veritable plethora.
"How was her magic twisted?"
A forest stream, somewhere warm and wet, tropical, raging against its banks, threatening to drown the people along its shore, then the same stream bound with dikes and sluice ways, the water turned to growing rice. But if you knew what ropes to pull, what levers to push it could rage again.
Channeled not amputated, that is good for her prospect of actually using her magic as more than a mental veil, but the implication that someone shaped the river of her soul is not exactly comforting.
Moving on to the lock of hair you ask quietly: "Who has done this?"
The answer comes in strings of horsehair and the thrum of bamboo:
Dutiful Preserver. The first word echoes with sublime purpose the second with protean might that should be discordant, but is not. A temple filled with light, with song and prayer flashes before your mind's eye and of all the words upon its walls in a tongue unknown to you one reads clear:
Vibhishana
It does not take a very long internet search to figure out
who that is... or guess why he might care. Pious brother of Ravana who chose for his own the gift of unwavering virtue and who thus opposed his brother's malice and was made king of Lanka after his defeat. As is the way of kings he had heirs and they had heirs of their own bough from bough until newest shoot.
"Why was this done?" You have a guess, but it is only a guess.
Prayer for safety within and without spoken from mother to daughter.
At first you are left blinking in shock that you managed to find another divine scion and one so far from afield, but the more you think about it more it starts to make an odd kind of sense. Olivia is not Lydia, she is not the daughter of a god, but a descendant as distant as this age is from the days of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. How many other talents great and small are scions of a part so small as to be entirely of humankind, but bequeathed with the smallest spark of power? All the teaming billions of mankind might by now descend of gods and demons uncounted.
Improbably you think of the Incredibles in all its animated goofiness. "I guess everyone is super after all, most just don't know it," you muse to yourself or as the case would have it to Usum.
"Tis all the sadder then to have been blinded to themselves as much as to the world," the demon whispers as you fall asleep.
Tomorrow is carrier day and you have been asked among many other things to prepare an elevator pitch for your future employer. What will that be?
[] Goofy: Hello, I am Molly Carpenter, cook-mechanic extraordinaire
[] Serious: Bring up your athletic aptitude and fencing
[] Write in
OOC: So you know how scions are a lot more common and integral to Dresdenverse than most fantasy universes, as in literally the descendants of supernatural beings? Well I figured why not take this unique element and weave it into deeper parts of the quest world building. Hope you guys enjoy. 
