The Aunties are agents of change, tiny Gods of changemaking and mayhem. Perhaps you’ve met them already. If you’ve read Keith Errington’s Oddatsea – published by Outland in the ‘Hopeless, Maine’ volume – you’ll have met The Aunties. You may also have found them here on the blog, in Merry’s story – https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/the-aunties/

Often the changes in the world made by Agents of Change are pretty random – at least from the perspective of people seeing the impact. They like a bit of asymmetry, hence the three legged chickens. They like getting in your storage jars and creating surprise flavours, for better or worse.

Most islanders prefer to think of fate as either cruel, or random. Life is considerably more bearable when you don’t have to take it so personally. Terrible things happen all the time for no reason. If you thought there was a reason for it you might go mad trying to find a way of keeping yourself safe. We can say with some confidence that placating the terrible gods of callous indifference gets you nowhere, and tends to make everything that little bit worse.

The Aunties are not distant, powerful beings who care nothing for your irrelevant mortal life. The Aunties are mighty, they believe in justice and they suffer dreadfully from boredom. As a consequence, they may do to you that which they believe you truly deserve. Unfortunately, the logic by which they operate is incomprehensible to the fragile human mind. Why one person grows a tentacle from their elbow, while another sprouts antlers from their head is utterly mysterious. 

The Aunties wish to make it known that they are not responsible for recent outbreaks of vampirism and people getting especially hairy at full moons. They have no idea how donkeys get on roofs, or where all the blood came from the other week. They are not all powerful and it annoys them immensely when people imagine they are *that* sort of gods, and can be expected to Do Things on demand. 

Do not pray to them, for they are not persuaded either by your distress or your ideas about how to fix things. Do not ask what sort of problem they thought you had that they felt could be solved with the sprouting of tentacles, or antlers, or whatever else they may have done to you.

(With thanks to Rostov for the loan of his face. By using his face on this post we are definitely not implying 1) that he’s actually Keith Errington or 2) that he really does have antlers. We’re fairly confident the hat is real.)