"It's only one pine mushroom," Aurelie's father pleaded. Though he towered over her mother, the ferocious way the westerner woman was banging pots and lids made him seem to be the trespassing supplicant in the kitchen.

Aurelie winced from where she perched on a stool in the corner.

"Be still," her older sister murmured. Gin's fingers ran through Aurelie's golden hair as she plaited it into braids for the night. They both listened quietly while pretending not to hear their parents' argument.

"She found that mushroom with magic," Aurelie's mother hissed. "Or even worse, it's a rock transformed into one!" Her golden eyes flashed with an anger almost as dark as her long hair.

Aurelie heard Gin whisper a proverb about the fiery tempers of westerner women under breath. Her sister had a tendency to think aloud and make fitting—if not always tactful—observations.

"If it is magic, then it's not the ill kind," her father boomed. "Stop forever bemoaning your daughter's talents, Akemi. You should have left your superstitions behind when you left your home."

Aurelie averted her eyes when her mother bristled with indignation. "Like a porcupine," she heard from Gin.

Before the porcupine fired its quills, the door slammed with enough force to shake the ceiling.

"Father really shouldn't do that," Gin said loudly enough to be heard. "At least not until he fixes the roof's main beam."

Aurelie sneaked a glance at her mother to find her rubbing at a new and immediate headache. She looked weary and deflated now, as she always did after a disagreement.

"Your father really shouldn't do a lot of things, Gin," she said. She lit a candle and went to lock herself in their small house's only other room. She went in there to pray, they knew. Soon they'd catch a whiff of the sweet incense she offered to their ancestors.

"I don't see how dead people can help the living," Aurelie stated in perfect time with Gin, then laughed at her sister's shock. "You do say it every time," she teased, wagging a finger.

Gin pretended to bite it off. "One braid done, one to go," she said.

"Wait, what's this?" Aurelie fingered the ribbon Gin had used to tie off the braid. It was a thin piece of silk, golden as a sunbeam.

"What does it look like?" Gin asked shortly. She turned Aurelie's head to braid the other side, but not before Aurelie caught the faint blush spreading over Gin's cheeks.

"It's a ribbon," Aurelie giggled. "But I'm asking where you got it."

Not many of the village boys could resist Gin's glossy black locks and coy silver-grey eyes. Aurelie's older sister was the smartest student in school, sister of Thesya's fortune maiden, a cook after their own mother's heart, and a model of propriety—when you weren't sitting close enough to hear her mumbling that was. But her crowning charm that attracted a string of suitors wasn't any of those reasons.

It was that Gin spurned every single one.

"Did you fall from heaven?" one classmate had asked her as they readied for a test.

"Yes," Gin had said to him, "but you'd better get your head out of the clouds up there before you fail arithmetic. Angles learned first, or an angel won't look twice."

He'd flunked the test and Aurelie had been blessed with one of Gin's rare laughs as she recounted the tale to the family at dinner that night.

Her sister had the best laugh. It sounded like running silver.

"One of the boys gave them to me," Gin answered, and her voice didn't betray her blush at all. She never bothered to specify which of Thesya's many "boys" she'd most recently shot down.

But this was a new development—Gin never accepted gifts.

"And you took—ow!" Aurelie's hand flew to her head when Gin tugged too hard.

Gin clucked her tongue. "This one's been stubborn. I took his ribbons to give to you. Wear them to school for me tomorrow. That should dissuade him."

Aurelie nodded numbly while Gin put the second ribbon in her hair.

"He should have known better. Gold isn't my color ... doesn't suit my complexion at all," Gin continued under her breath. If Aurelie didn't know better, she would have said her sister sounded disappointed.

She stood from the stool and brushed the braids over her shoulders. Gin always remembered to arrange her hair so that the tips of her ears remained hidden. Aurelie bowed as their mother had taught them. "Thank you."

Gin waved a hand, glancing at the still-locked room. She lowered her voice. "Father asked me to let you know there's a rain request. It needs to be done tonight."

Aurelie huffed and rolled her eyes. Nevertheless, she trudged to the door and pulled her boots on. "People can never make up their minds," she complained. "Sun one day. Rain the next. Can't have clouds on a wedding day! Oh no, now the crops are withering! Weather requests are a pain."

"As much of a pain as mushroom hunting?" Gin asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

Aurelie paused on the threshold. "Not quite," she said and shut the door.

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