Trickster Twins ɂon ɂan Ɂerrand
(The letter ‘Ɂ’/‘ɂ’/‘ʔ’ (uppercase/lowercase/phonetic) stands for the glottal click, with which syllables begin which appear to begin with a vowel.)
Harɂalf is an elf master of magic. Fairfae is his wife and equal to him in might. She wields power over fate itself, being able to influence the wyrd of both Men and gods and craft fates for them. Her mother is a fairy and her father a pixie. They can shift into many shapes, but their usual ones are humanoid with glassy and sparkling wings on their backs. Contrary to their power, they are quite small and can stand on a human’s hand palm. Harɂalf has a well-tilled beard and moustache. As an elf, he has one pair of wings while his wife has two as a fairy and pixie. She can flutter her wings to fly, like her fairy mother, but also blast glowing mist lighter than aether and equally light pixie dust from her wings to drive her into any direction in space or time or beyond, like her pixie father. She and her husband wield self-made magic wands tipped with stars. The couple lives in a magical flying wood in Elfland.
Fairfae and Harɂalf are telepaths broadly and mind-link mates on top of that, sharing all their thoughts, feelings, and emotions with each other. They have identical twin children who likewise excel at telepathy and share a single soul and spirit and a spiritual mind- and soul-link. Sparkmaster is the son and Sparkcaster the daughter. You might wonder how bro-sis twins can be identical, but this isn’t an issue with elves, pixies, and fairies. They’ve got three pairs of glistening glassy wings, two from their mother and one from their father. Like their parents’ hairs, theirs sparkle and first rise a good deal from their heads, like spouts, and only then flow down. Their and their parents’ perfect skin is shiny white and sparkles with countless tiny super-hard scales ✨. Like his father, Sparkmaster is well-known for his otherworldly manly strength and handsomeness and his fresh, clean, and manly smell. Like her mother, Sparkcaster is famous for her otherworldly over-the-top beauty and flowery, womanly smell. Even so, she bears great likeness to her masculine brother and thus is a fair tomboy. But even the loftiest link and closest likeness does not necessarily beget friendship or love. In the case of the soul-bonded twin elf-fairy-pixies, it’s begotten the exact opposite. Fairfae and Harɂalf were disappointed that their children’s relationship was siblingish alright, but one of sibling rivalry and dislike rather than brotherly and sisterly love. This tale tells of how the twins’ dislike for one another almost ruined their family’s and all Elfland’s Halloween … almost.
Fall painted the woods golden and red. Her cool breezes blew the heat of her forerunner away. The middle of her reign brought the spooky season. Harɂalf and Fairfae were members of the Spooky Spirits, a club of supernatural ones who loved to wield their magic for trick-or-treating and other Halloween deeds. They had always been among the best. This year, Sparkmaster and Sparkcaster begged their parents to allow them to join the Spooky Spirits. Their parents agreed.
Harɂalf said, “We’re proud to let you two take our place this Halloween.”
“Wait, what?” said the twins together.
“Yup,” said their mother. “You’ll represent our family at this year’s creepy activities and festivities. Your deeds for the admission exam will be our family’s contributions to this Halloween.” She stroked over her children’s sparkling, springy and smooth hair. “To spur you on to truly give your best.”
“Cool!” said the siblings and eyed each other with mischievous glances. “I’ll be sure to nail this.”
They bade the tree that they lived on and cared for farewell and flew off, soon vanishing among the dancing green and golden leaves 🍃 which the autumn wind of Elfland had blown off the trees and which drifted up thanks to being lighter than aether, the fiery air of Elfland and the godly world. The soul-bonded twin elf-fairy-pixies love this season, which is as magical as they are. They headed to the headquarters of the Spooky Spirits, handed in their applications, and told the members that they would represent their family.
“How ambitious of you!” said the examiner. “You are to trick-or-treat at least half the gods of one pantheon and at least one pantheon leader. Your parents passed their exams with flying colors and made great contributions every year before.” She grinned. “Not to pressure you or anything. Good luck in the name of the Halloween Spirit!”
The soul-linked siblings shot one another venomous glances. When Asgardian sun goddess Sol and Olympian sun god Helios drove the golden sun wagon under the western horizon and Asgardian moon god Mani and Olympian moon goddess Selene drove the silvery moon chariot over the eastern horizon, the identical twins set out to wreak mischief in the realm of the gods. Sometimes, they flew into that sacred sphere, and at other times, they worked from Elfland. Their parents had invented an impossible magic by which to make themselves invisible to the gods and passed it on to their children, which came in handy now for the exam candidates. Each worked on their own. Sparkcaster summoned ghosts to spook Inanna’s heavenly bulls and make them go wild and ram their horns into her well-endowed feminine divine behind. She smiled awaiting her planned prank to be put into action. But in her glee, she forgot to protect her thoughts from her brother, so he mind-read what she was up to. He smiled, too. “What better prank can there be than to torpedo the prank of one’s unbearable sibling, dear sister,” he murmured. He gave the goddess an anonymous telepathic warning that she better wield her powers to protect her bulls from marauding Halloween ghosts. Under the godly shield, the bulls were safe from the summoned ghosts.
“That impish scoundrel of a brother!” hissed Sparkcaster. “You just wait and see!”
She tried to read Sparkmaster’s mind, but the elf-fairy-pixie had learned from his sister’s mistake and guarded his thoughts well. He summoned a spirit to trigger something in Zeus’s mind, soul, and spirit, a feat which mortal sorcerers and even gods couldn’t accomplish. What the spirit triggered was Zeus’s lust for the Sun Goddess of Arinna, a queen of gods like his sister-wife Hera and the wife of his fellow pantheon king and thunderer Tarhunna. Now, Sparkcaster didn’t manage to read her brother’s mind, but she did manage to read those of the gods. When she felt Zeus’s attraction to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, she knew it was her sibling’s work. She grinned. “Time for paying back one’s noxious twin!”
She let Hera and Tarhunna telepathically know of Zeus’s desire. The weather god and the marriage goddess were wroth. Tarhunna fired lightning bolts 🌩 into the sky of Olympus and stormed to the house of his counterpart in a – well – storm. Together with Hera, he confronted Zeus and said: “If you ever again so much as think of touching my wife, I shall declare war upon you and your kingdom and strike you with my lightning. Not that I’d need them, but all other thunderers and kings of gods would join me to punish you for such a perfidious breech of respect between us lightning gods and rulers of deities. Moreover, I would make sweet love to your wife Hera.”
Zeus glared at Tarhunna and then his wife.
Hera nodded. “Yes, you cheater. If you cheat on me with a foreign queen of gods, I’ll do the same with a foreign king of gods. Erase that vile desire from your mind, and all will be well.”
Zeus saw that he had trespassed on his peers and heeded his queen’s advice.
“Darn!” said Harɂalf as he and his wife watched their children’s deeds from afar through a magic glass ball they had made and mind- and soul-read what was going on. “If they go on sabotaging each other’s trick-or-treating, they’ll flunk the exam and embarrass our family despite their talents.”
“Because of their talents,” said Fairfae. “They’re too good at pranking pranksters and tricking tricksters. Let’s hope they come to their senses.”
Sparkmaster conjured a mosquito from pixie dust and sent it to vex Thor’s goats, but Sparkcaster conjured an assassin fly the same way and had it hunt down her brother’s insect. Sparkcaster raised a storm from godly aether between Teshub and Enlil and let it utter the words, “To which god shall I go?”
“To me, for I am god of weather and you are a weather phenomenon,” said Teshub.
“No, to me,” said Enlil, “for you are a sacred wind, and I am god of divine wind.”
A quarrel would have broken out between the two gods hadn’t Sparkmaster broken the divine storm up.
The siblings continued to torpedo each other’s prank attempts, growing ever angrier at each other. The sun chariot got ever closer to the lowest point in its travel, meaning that time was running out for trick-or-treating.
The examiner shook her head. “At this rate, they’ll flunk this exam big-time.”
But it came worse. The identical linked twins became so angry that they got careless, giving themselves away to the gods. In retaliation for their mischief, the gods bombarded Elfland; Thor with his hammer Mjolnir, Zeus with his thunderbolt, Perun with his explosive apples, and more. Trees were struck dead. Homes were destroyed. Fires laid waste to glowing fields. The denizens of Elfland grew angry with the gods … and with those who had triggered and brought their wrath.
“Sparkmaster and Sparkcaster better undo this divine mischief they have sparked!” hissed a fairy and shook her fists.
“Oh woe is us!” wailed an elf. “What magic can undo such divine wreckage? We are doomed.”
The fairy knocked him on the head with her wand. “Pull yourself together and don’t be such a doom-monger! There is one kind of magic mighty enough to deal with the gods.” A wicked smile appeared on her face.
