winsol

[birthrightblack]

Winsol is always celebrated on the darkest days of the year and there's no darker day than that of the Winter Solstice - this day is shorter than any other and the night is long and cold. Winsol is a celebration of Blood and magic and all of the powers of Witch. It seems strange to be in a place that doesn't celebrate it exactly as Jaenelle is used to.

Oh, there is a holiday. There's a holiday called Christmas and the decorations are oddly similar to Winsol ones. There's the exchanging of presents and the trimming of trees and drinking of good spirits and sharing of good food. It's not her Winsol, no, but Jaenelle is pleased enough to celebrate the holiday of this new place in her life. Just because something has a different name doesn't mean it's inherently different; she'd learned that for herself when dealing with Kaeleer.

So today, she's out in the gardens hoping to practice a little magic. She'd always tried to decorate the Winsol trees with magic back at the Keep and SaDiablo Hall and she's...for lack of a better term...terrible. Every time she thinks she's got the right balance, the right little delicate turn of magic, everything simply explodes.

Explosions are common in her life.

She's just about got a set of fairy lights twinkling on one of the hedges when a sound breaks her concentration and the whole thing poofs up in a flame and black smoke. "Stay back!" she shouts, casting a shield over it so the fire can smother out. She'll have to heal the hedges, too, but first she needs to do damage control.

"You'd think I would be better at this, after all these years, but I'm not."

no subject

[65th_victor]

Tristan seemed to be getting bigger by the day. And with every day that passed, he could see more and more of Annie in their son, something that never ceased to make him smile. It was still a wonder to listen to to Tristan laugh, or watch him wriggle around the on the ground, preparing himself to crawl, or the way he could now sit steadily on his own. Of course, it was also a stark relief that he had also decided to be ready to sleep throughout the night.

But even on those days when he had been up the entire evening trying to coax their son to stop crying, he couldn't take any moment for granted. Not when he knew that there was a story out there that said that he never got to do any of these things, that Annie raised Tristan essentially on her own.

One thing he knew he needed to do was teach Tristan how to swim. Admittedly, he was still a bit young for that, but Finnick had still packed their things and headed down to the pool for the day. Holding Tristan close, he walked carefully into the shallow end, smiling when Tristan laughed when his toes came in contact with the water.