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Enjoyed It...
...and the twist definitely caught me. (Though was pretty sure that the third floor had to figure in it -- Chekhov's gun and all that.)
But I'm not quite sure it works. Was Jenny ten years old all along? Everyone at school knew her, so it would seem so, and she was quite comfortable and familiar with her clearing in the forest. But would the fae really have chosen her if she was just a preteen with a crush on a neighbor who was "an adult Asian man"? I got the impression from what she said that there was more to it than that.
Erin tells Myra that there are "fey rules" operating here, which obviously include transformation of both people and property. But there's no indication that they can manipulate time to let a newly-regressed-to-10-years-old Jenny start school back last fall. (And where would she have lived, if there was an older Jenny still in the trailer park and the mansion wasn't there yet?)
Does she have a family up there on the third floor? Does that include the brothers she mentioned? Is there another entrance that they use? Are the other "angry neighbors" from the opening paragraph up there too? I'm having trouble making the whole thing work.
Fun story, nevertheless.
Eric
consider the implications of the mansion
the mansion did not exist before. how did it appear there? fey magic. but in-universe, what did the residents see? it couldn't have just popped up. so either it always existed, or it was recently built. and from there, there are only two options: either the residents remember seeing it built/having existed, or their minds were manipulated to think that it has always been there.
In short, the fae can either mess with time or minds (and the mind is part of the body, where we've seen they can mess with bodies)
"Don't go to the third floor ..."
Before I got to the end, I was thinking about all the times we are told "Don't do X" ...
"Eve, Adam - =Don't= eat snake-fruit from My Tree ..."
"Mr & Mrs Lot =Don't= look back." And similar from the Greek myths ...
"Pandora! =Don't= open this box."
"Humans! =Don't= implement this equation: e = mc^2."
And, of course, they all do.
And, of course, things go badly.
It's like the word "Don't" is an attention-getter, and all we hear is the imperative that follows - and we never hear the negation.
Setting off a small firecracker, or using curse-words would be just as effective ... Then follow with "This thing 'X' is forbidden."
---
But, if the Fae can change my gender, and do all the other stuff ... I think it would be a very long time before I went to the Third Floor.
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Small 'oops' - Delia gets changed to Jenny when Myra meets her at the gate.
guess i didn't like the name delia
this has been fixed, ty for noticing that.
Don't?
"Humans! =Don't= implement this equation: e = mc^2."
Fortunately, no such admonition existed. Physics would come to a screeching halt if we were barred from (say) calculating the kinetic energy of a particle.
-- Daphne Xu
I hope in the long run
She does not regret this contract.
The Prohibition
I wonder, will the prohibition against the third floor be lifted?
Nice story, unexpected to discover that Jenny knew. How many others knew as well?
-- Daphne Xu