Aro Week: Smith

 

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Smith from

Catch the World's Desire (out later this year): Star-crossed lovers makes a grand tale, but when it's over, someone has to pick up the pieces. That 'someone' is usually Rhoda.

Smith (Sometimes called Hephaestus, Vulcan, or Weyland) is thoughtful, patient, determined, and hard-working. He is a crafter, and sees everything through that lense, whether it's crafting a relationship, a necklace, or the hinge for a door. Married to Rhoda, and foster parent to all the hurt, grieving, and traumatised kids that pass through their family, Smith is the calm centre of things. Demi-romantic and asexual, he's more interested in building relationships slowly and surely into something that lasts, than in falling in love at first sight.

A short sample: Smith barely looked up when Rhoda stalked into his forge. Instead, his focus remained on the fire as he worked the bellows and coaxed the coals to the temperature he wanted.

"I need to work off some frustration," she said, twisting her long hair up into a thoroughly practical, but no less beautiful, bun. She slipped a leather apron over her dress and looked up. "What can you offer?"

Aro Week: Emma Stone

 

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Emma Stone from

Create My OwnPerfection: "It's not every day you get to put the fear of Medusa into a god."
Emma Stone, medusa, is the groundskeeper for Olson College of Extensive Education, a place where everyone is welcome, from the mythical to the magical. When her selkie best friend loses her skin in Fresher's week, the race is on to find it before someone uses it against her.
The search brings Emma face to face with her oldest enemy - and forces her to confront the worst nightmares of her past.

Create My Own Perfection is very much a case of 'If you can't find what you want to read, write it yourself'. Emma is something of a loner, fiercely independent, a survivor with a small group of close friends who do not hesitate to back her up. Nor does she hesitate to help them if they need it. Emma is aroace, with no interest in, or desire for, anything other than friendship, and she thrives in the life that she has built for herself.

A short sample: "Ok, Tara," I said, once we'd settled up what I owed her for the coffee. "Spill." Over my cup, I watched her rich brown eyes for clues. The first one, which I almost missed, was her coffee creeping up the side of the upright cup, trying to reach her to comfort her.

Tara's a selkie. Like me, she can almost pass for human, provided no-one looks too closely at the sleek silver-brown hair, or the seal's eyes, or the way that water truly adores her and acts that bit livelier around her. (It's a bonus for mopping floors, less so when she has to change a light bulb)

She glared her coffee into behaving, sipped, and swallowed. "I lost my skin," she whispered, just this side of a mourning keen.

Aro Week: Cavallan

 

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Cavallan (aka. Val or Dog) from Testing Grounds and Birthday Landscapes

Cavallan is a battered, disabled, warrior-mage (also known as a sense-twister for the way they can twist both their own senses and those of other people). He is both aromantic and asexual, though the aromantic side tends to dominate. He was originally a mentor character in a now trunked early novel, but has grown and developed along with my own writing skills and now carries stories on his own. He has a dislike for bards who pile unearned fame on his head, or give him sole credit for something that it took a whole group of people to achieve, a kind heart, a queerplatonic partner, and twin children.

A short sample (from Birthday Landscapes): “We want landscapes, please, Da,” Lusi proclaimed, and held out the chalk she had fetched.

“Very well,” Val replied. He nudged a chair up to the end of the table and took the chalk pouch. “What kind of landscape do you want to start with?” He sat down and fished out one of the pieces of chalk.

“Plains,” Emlan piped up. “With grass and flowers, not all mud and sand and stone!”

Lusi scowled. “I wanted hills. Can I have them second?”

“Of course.” Val breathed slowly and gathered himself, then racked his memory until a suitable plains landscape came to mind. He visualised it, took up the chalk, and sketched it out in map form on the table. He ran his finger around the edge of the map to mark a boundary, then fed out a trickle of power. The map flowed upward into a miniature illusion of the real landscape and the twins bounded up to flank him at the table.

Aro Week: Cal and Evvi

 

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Steve/Steph/Evvi and Cal from

Holding Onto Day: Half a lifetime after the Split, when a world of myth and legend took over the night, grieving aro-ace widower Cal winds up snowed in at a waystation with post-breakup aro-allo Evvi. Proximity and patience draw them closer, both in the day when they are human, and at night, when they become vampire and werewolf.

Holding Onto Day was born out of a discussion on disabled werewolves. It was also a tale where I let all my weirdness and queerness hang out together. The result is hard to categorize, but has regularly been described as comfort fiction for rough times.

It contains two aromantic characters. The first is Cal, a fat (and comfortable with that) vampire, pushed to the edges of society and grieving the recent loss of his partner. He is grayromantic and greysexual, closer to the rare end of the rare-to-never scale of aspec attraction.

The other is a disabled, genderqueer, genderfluid, werewolf who shifts names along with pronouns and gender, going by Steph, Steve, or Evvi. They are weary and wary of strangers, but not hostile, aromantic, but not asexual.

A short sample: She tapped her she/her pin. "As long as I'm wearing this one, it's Steph. If I switch to him/him, it's Steve, and if I switch to ey/em, it's Evvi." She tilted her grey head on one side. "Still Cal?"

"I'm always Cal. Is there... How do you like people to refer to you when you aren't there?"

"Please use whatever name I was using when last you saw me, and indefinite they as a pronoun."

"Right." Cal chewed his way thoughtfully through his cheese and washed it down with water. "I guess I'd better get my game board out. Do you play geese and foxes?"

Steph's mouth twisted in a wicked grin. "Oh no," she said with blatantly false innocence," but I'd love to learn!"

Cal laughed, and snagged a piece of sausage. "About as much as I have then. As soon as I've eaten, I'll get it. Perhaps when you're ready we can both try out our long gamed strategies."

Steph's grin only widened.

Aro Week: Robin

 

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Robin from

Would You LikeCharms With That?: Two retired adventurers help a younger friend figure out what he wants in a relationship.

Robin is a nonbinary person who uses she/her pronouns and gender-neutral nouns. She's a wizard, now retired, who runs a magic shop with her queer platonic fighter partner, Callie, and has trouble telling her anxiety from her magical foresight. As a result, she tends to be quiet, thoughtful, and cautious. She and Callie are mentors for a lot of the younger adventurers and queer folk in their town.

A short sample: I went on, "After I finished my training, I was looking for somewhere to live, and she had an advert up for a room-mate."

Callie laughed. "I didn't realise Robin was the kid-next-door until after I approved her application."

Kit said, "Sounds like something out of a bard's tale!"

"Sure," Callie agreed, "except the bards would mess up and get romance all over it."

Aro Week: Cuss

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Cuss from

Nothing Good To Say: Grumpy aro-ace warrior Cuss has a habit of not letting kids die. Which is how he finds himself blocking a gateway, buying time for them to escape.

Nothing Good To Say is the story I needed (but didn't get) when I was growing up. Cuss is unapologetically aroace. He is also old, grumpy, a badass fighter, and very much a loner. None of the people around him have anything good to say about him except to acknowledge his skill, but he leaves a trail of saved children behind him anyway.

A short sample: Down in the gatehouse, he slips his helmet off and braids the hair at each temple, tying it off with a grey thread pulled from a frayed cuff. He replaces the helmet and makes sure his braids are visible below it. Anyone who can read braids can read the danger they face in him. It's a small warning, perhaps, but that’s all he plans to give the raiders.

 

Flash Fic Challenge: The Mouse Who Lived in the Sun

 The Mouse Who Lived in the Sun

A mouse lived in a junk yard. His hole was tucked in between a vintage tv set and a pile of old newspapers. He particularly liked the copies of the Sun newspaper because they were easy to tear apart and turn into a cosy bed.

One night, a fox came sniffing around. "Hello, little mouse, why don't you show me your home? I'd like to meet your family."

"Oh, well, I..." The mouse stumbled over his words as he frantically tried to come up with a suitable lie to turn the fox down. "I sleep in the Sun," he tried. "I can only go there when there is light."

"Oh, I can move around in the light too," said the fox, licking his lips.

The mouse looked up where the sun would be in the daytime and saw the security light on the building. "Please," he mumbled, "come this way then." He raced off towards the beams that triggered the light to come on, knowing that while he was too small to for them to register, the fox was not.

The fox trotted easily after him and hit the beam.

The light came on, flooding the area and dazzling both creatures whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkness.

The mouse, however, had been expecting it and dashed silently down a crack into an underground passageway to recover.

When the fox's eyes cleared, the mouse had vanished. All the fox could think was that the mouse had been telling the truth - that he really had come from the sun!

Moral: Sometimes truth is the better deception