AGW: Miss Matichei, you wrote our favorite all-girl seasonal story ever, The Dream Key. we are recommending everyone to read it this season, even if they have read it before.

AM: Thank you very much. I am honored.

AGW: We are honored to host the story. Was this your first Nativity story?

AM: It was my first published one, although I did help prepare “Home for Christmas” in Enter Amelia Bingham That was Miss Falconer’s story though. Actually there is another seasonal Amelia Bingham story that I helped tidy up for the book, but neither Miss Falconer nor I were over-keen on it, and we felt two seasonal stories were a bit much anyway, so it never made the book.

AGW: You mean there is a “lost” Amelia Bingham story?

AM: That’s right.

AGW: Any more?

AM: No – at least that’s the only one I know of.

AGW: We’d love to have that at All Girl Worlds.

AM: You’ll need to talk with Miss Falconer, of course: though I know she isn’t keen on it and may prefer to leave it buried.

AGW: We hear you have done a new seasonal story this year.

AM: Well, hardly a story really. More of a little sketch as part of a group project.

AGW: But we’d love to print it here to give the readers something new this season.

AM: You are certainly welcome. I would have to fill in a detail or two. The background to this story is a pair of magical gloves that appear when they are needed and a pixie whose real name is unknown, but who answers to the name of Miss Vivi, who is the Guardian of the Gloves.

AGW: Like a sort of genie?

AM: In a way, but a genie tends to be the Slave of the Lamp, whereas Miss Vivi is much more in charge of things. You’ll see.

AGW: When?

AM: Now!

The Boon of the Perentillas

I was just thinking that I do know something about these magical gloves [see above]. Not perhaps a story exactly, but a thing that happened. You see one day they appeared for a special reason, but owing to the curiosity of a very young brunette, one of them ended up on the ground outside the window.

It was about this time of year and the snow lay thick outside and the glove lay there, hardly visible in the snow until it was spotted by someone who moves very close to the ground. That someone was a miffletifflin.

I don’t know if you know what a miffletifflin is. It is a tiny creature, much smaller than a mouse with the fluffiest, fluffiest fur you have ever seen. Now this miffletifflin had a family of five little miffletifflins and a dear blonde miffletifflin. They were very, very poor and had nowhere to stay for the winter, and the dear little ones were so, so cold.

So when Pen-pen Peretentilla (that was the brunette miffletifflin’s name) saw the glove, she had an idea. She called dear Pingletii (that was her blonde’s name) to bring the children, and very soon each child had her own room in the magical tent (for there were five rooms) and mama and mimi slept in the big main hallway.

It was a wonderful tent, for although it was made of the thinnest fabric, it did not let in a single drip of water or a single puff of the cold north wind.

Now whenever anyone wears one of the magic gloves, Miss Vivi appears, and here was the magic glove fully worn with each finger and the palm-place filled with warm and loving life.

“Who is in there?” she asked.

“Oh dear,” thought Pen-pen Peretentilla. “It is someone else’s tent. Now we shall have to leave this nice warm place after so short a time and go back to the terrible coldness.”

“Who is in there?” asked the voice again.

“It is a people,” thought Pen-pen Peretentilla. “She will never understand a word I say. I hope she will not be angry that we have gone into her tent.”

Pen-pen Peretentilla put her head out of the glove – and oooh! how very cold it was.

“Well,” asked Miss Vivi, “who are you?”

Pen-pen Peretentilla thought it would be rude not to answer, even though she knew peoples never understand miffletifflins.

“Honored madam,” she replied, “my name is Pen-pen Peretentilla.”

“Rayati Miss Peretentilla,” said Miss Vivi. I may not tell you my real name, but you may call me Miss Vivi.

“Oh, can you understand me?” asked Pen-pen Peretentilla.

“That would appear to be the case, wouldn’t it?” said Miss Vivi.

“Rayati Miss Vivi. I deeply regret that my dear family and I took shelter in your very fine tent, and we shall, of course be happy to vacate it immediately.”

This was not actually true. As she felt the freezing wind on her nose, Pen-pen Peretentilla knew that she would be extremely unhappy to leave the tent. And when she thought of her dear blondie and her five poor children shivering again, she knew they would all be positively miserable to leave. But good manners are more important than vulgar physical truth.

“Thank you, dear miffletifflin,” said Miss Vivi. “That is very kind of you, and indeed very necessary, for your temporary shelter is one of a very important pair.”

“Two tents,” thought Pen-pen Peretentilla. “How blissful that must be.”

The family wiggled out onto the cold, cold snow, and each of them began shivering again as they had before they got into the glove, and one of the children (Squiggles, whose room was in the thumb) began to sneeze. Miss Vivi waved her hand and their fine shelter disappeared.

“My, how cold you all look,” said Miss Vivi.

“Oh it is nothing,” said Pen-pen Peretentilla. “Qu-qu-qu-quite bracing really.”

“Atishoo!” sneezed Squiggles.

“If I were you, I’d run home to your miffletifflin house,” said Miss Vivi.

“Hmm, yes…” said Pen-pen Peretentilla.

“No ‘hmm, yes’ nonsense,” said Miss Vivi sternly. “Promise me you will go straight home to your miffletifflin house and light a good fire.”

“I am afraid I can’t promise, ma’am,” said Pen-pen Peretentilla.

“Whyever not?” asked Miss Vivi more sternly than ever.

Pen-pen Peretentilla shuffled her tiny, tiny feet and looked very embarrassed. “You see, ma’am, we don’t actually have a house.”

“Where do you live then?”

“We don’t have any home at all, ma’am. We used to live in a hollow tree, but it was struck by lightning late in the fall, and since then…”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” asked Miss Vivi. “Well you’ve worn the glove – in a manner of speaking – so you have a boon coming.”

“What is a boon?” asked Pen-pen Peretentilla.

“Why, this!” said Miss Vivi. And she waved a wand that she did not seem to have before and suddenly there was a little house leaning up against the side of the big big Rison family house. Lights were burning in the windows and a roaring fire was burning in the hearth.”

The Peretentilla family gazed in astonishment for long minutes and then Pen-pen Peretentilla, remembering her manners, turned to thank Miss Vivi. But Miss Vivi was nowhere to be seen.

“Come along, come along, into the house,” said Pen-pen Peretentilla. “You heard what the Lady said.” And the family lived in the beautiful house for the rest of their lives. The house could not be seen by peoples, but miffletifflins and other small animals, as well as all the fairy-folk, could see it, and were often invited to take tea and hot buttered toast by the big, warm fire.

And they would say, “What a lovely house you have.”

And Mama, or Mimi, or one of the little ones, always corrected them, remembering what they had been told.

“It isn’t a house, it is a boon.”

We are delighted to announce that A Maid’s Duty now continues with the latest episode entitled Dramatics and Kinematics

Click here to read on

TWIPs are Temporary Works In Progress. Rather than put too much of forthcoming books on the site, we have decided to pop up some material for a limited period only.

Our first TWIP is called “The Trouble at the Silver Sixpence”. It comes from a forthcoming work which we are not even going to name yet. However, some of you familiar with The Adventure of the Crystal Staff will see how it fits into the timeline of that story, even though none of the characters appear in both stories.

So without further introduction, we present our very first TWIP:

The Trouble at the Silver Sixpence

http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Chapel-of-Our-Mother-God/140959892602077?v=wall

And Twitter:

https://twitter.com/filianism

That old time religion is coming bang up to date!

Well that was really boring, BUT before all this technical chaos broke out, we were about to post an all-new short romantic story. You’ll be getting it very soon. Promise!

<a href=”http://sundaughterpress.com/about/is-intemorphiction-really-a-genre/”><B>Is Intemorphiction really a genre?</b></a>

Maybe you thought you knew all there was to know about intemorphic literature, but the Sun Daughter Press may surprise you with this recent interview!

The Birth of a Gender-Genre: What is Intemorphiction?

This is a deeply-argued and thought-provoking piece whose fundamental precept is the underlying feminine origins of all mythology.

Read it here.

There are lots of texts and some books of intemorphic literature, but so far they are all in English.

When one considers translating them into other languages, an immediate problem arises, and one which communities that want to live an honorary-intemorphic life are going to have to consider.

In English, only people (and sometimes animals) are “sexed” when referring to them. Everything else is an “it”. So when we translate intemorphic culture into English, it is a simple matter. Chelani and melini (blondes and brunettes) are both “she/her” and other things are “it”. When intemorphs refer to mascûli, they call them “it”, not because they mean to be denigrating, but because, obviously, no intemorphic language has a word for “he/him”.

However in most European languages, everything is gendered – pens, houses, days and nights, grass, mountains, the sea – everything.

So how does intemorphic language “translate” into, say Spanish, French or German?

Let us take Spanish.

One could simply use “el/los/lo” as the melinic pronouns. However that would be very unnatural. Imagine calling brunettes “he” in English. It would completely undermine the intemorphic order. “He” has too definite a meaning, as does “el”.

So one can call brunettes “ella/las/la” but then the rest of the language is constantly referring to a non-existent sex.

If Spanish were English one could change the spelling to indicate a difference, for example spelling “el” as “elle” so that while sounding the same, it would also invoke the feminine French “elle” – quite a neat way of incorporating two feminine genders. But of course Spanish – like most non-English languages – is pronounced as it is spelled. “Elle” and “el” in Spanish are pronounced very differently.

One could redraft the language, using, say “ella” and “elli”, “las” and “lis” – which would follow intemorphic conventions but would probably feel to a Spanish speaker like the awkward contortions of “womyn” and “herstory”, only affecting every sentence.

Fortunately it is a question we don’t have to solve just yet. But some day, as intemorphic publishing spreads and grows, it will have to be solved.

So The Fairy Gambit has been a little revised and slightly expanded. Nothing radical. The main change adds some dialog making clearer the way fairies fit (or don’t) into the world-views of intemorphs and schizomorphs respectively. Otherwise, the authoress says, “a few infelicities have been smoothed out”.

The revised version is here.