Back on the Blog Chain: You Say It's Your Birthday....

This round of the Blog Chain is in honor of Christine, who is celebrating her birthday. (I think it was yesterday, actually.) I hope you had a happy birthday, Christine! Here's her topic:

Today is my Birthday. To celebrate, I want to hear about one of your character's favorite birthday memories.

Wait, we're supposed to give them happy memories? I'm doing this all wrong. And I obviously can't use Paul from Twinned Universes. At his fifth birthday party, Yvonne, daughter of his parents' lab mates, threw vanilla ice cream in his face when he said she had to marry him because there was no one else their age on the spaceship where they lived. Ever since then, poor Paul hates vanilla and is determined to get Yvonne to love him back.

A better example comes from Day of All Seasons, the working title for one of my Season Avatar books. I will probably publish it as Chaos Season once it's ready. This fantasy series focuses on Season Avatars, magicians who serve the Four Gods of the Seasons. Each magician is born on a solstice or equinox, which are also religious festivals. This particular scene is set on the spring equinox, Gwen's birthday. Here she is receiving a present from the other three Season Avatars from her year:


“Wait, Gwen.” Jenna held up a hand, then turned slightly to Ysabel and Kay, raising an eyebrow. They nodded slightly. Jenna turned to look at Gwen with clear, grass-green eyes. “All Seasons isn’t comin’ tomorrow. You have time to celebrate your birthday with us first, don’t you?”
    Gwen laughed ruefully. “I almost forgot about it.”
    “Oh, we wouldn’t let you forget.” A wicked gleam appeared in Jenna’s eyes. “Today’s the day you officially become older than us, after all.”
    “Don’t start anything, Jenna,” Kay said. “Who’s going to give it to her?”
    “Bel can do it,” Jenna answered. She waved Gwen to sit down again. “Close your eyes.”
    Bemused, Gwen did as she was told. She heard Ysabel leave the sitting room, then return to stand behind Gwen. Jenna’s skirts swished as she joined Ysabel. “I’ll hold her hair out of the way.”
    “What are you doing?” Gwen asked.
    They didn’t answer. Instead, Jenna lifted her hair up, and Ysabel reached around her neck. Cold metal fell next to Gwen’s skin. “There,” Ysabel said. “You can look now.”
    Gwen opened her eyes and looked down. She nearly whistled in astonishment. “My family crest! I didn’t think I’d get it back so quickly.”
    “Lathtin says he’s sorry he had to break the old chain, but it was the only way we could think of to take your pendant without making you suspicious.”
    “But why give me something I already had –” Gwen reached up to fondle her family crest and touched what felt like a knot in the chain. She looked down at it. “What’s this?”
    “We had that made for you,” Kay told her, offering her a mirror. “Look.”
    Gwen examined the chain. It wasn’t one long chain, but a series of short ones linked together by gold letters. “Our initials!”
    “It was my idea,” Kay said. “I thought you’d like to have something showing how the four of us are linked.”
    “I thought maybe we should use the symbols of our seasons,” Jenna said, “but it was a little more difficult.”
    “When did you have this made?”
    “The Sola Fall made all the arrangements for us,” Ysabel said.
    “Even so, it comes from the three of you, my three sisters in magic,” Gwen said. “Thank you. Thank all of you so much.” She wanted to thank them for understanding her, for encouraging her good qualities and accepting her in spite of her worst traits — but her voice was too thick to escape her throat. So she hugged all three of them, letting the link convey her feelings.


I'm not sure yet if this scene will appear in the final book. I wrote Day of All Seasons ages ago, when I was first learning to write fiction, so it needs lot of revising before I publish it.

For more birthday celebrations, please start with Kate's post and then visit Christine's blog tomorrow.