The Heir and the Spare, adorable well meaning fk ups.
Charlestre and Charon are Sérisse and Athenais’ eldest children, twin daughters, born pretty much nine months after their marriage.
Okay, so in my world, Gorgons can conceive and have children via intent. Meaning, if they want children, they will have them. If they do not, then they remain childless. It doesn’t matter if the marriage is same-sex, heterosexual, etc. If they want bebes, then they get bebes.
My Gorgons that I created for my world are “harbingers of life and death.” This is one of the reasons they can manifest their children unlike mortals.
Basically, according to Merriam-Webster, a harbinger is “someone or something that foreshadows a future event : one that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come” (Merriam-Webster Online).
So Gorgons in my world are beings whose presence signals something to come. This could mean life, death, transition, upheaval, a change in season—any of it.
Think of them as the Tower and the Tower reversed in Tarot. The Tower is a card that tends to freak people the fk out, especially the reversed version. It has a reputation for being interpreted as “something bad is going to happen,” but it mainly indicates that change of some kind is coming. Sometimes it is bad news, but not always.
The main thing is that it represents drastic change. Not just a few little tweaks—something major. It could mean you’re about to start a new job, meet someone new, your outlook on something is about to change, etc. It doesn’t always mean a breakup or loss in a negative way.
I kept pulling the Tower and the Tower reversed almost weekly, sometimes daily, for a good year and a half. It just kept popping up.
Somewhere along the way, while that card was showing up over and over again, my entire life changed almost overnight:
- I started writing my story again. I had not done anything in the way of true creative writing since 2005. I also actually started animating and drawing again after ten years of not really wanting to do anything creative.
- My career took a turn for the absolute best.
- Dad’s estate finally closed, ending a decade-long yarn ball of stress.
- I stopped masking and began to just live my life as who I actually am, not as who I’m expected to be.
Anyway, back to Charlestre and Charon. They are both neurodivergent, highly intelligent, and eternal pranksters. Even though they work Sérisse’s last nerve, and despite the fact that she’s always bitching about their antics, she never asks, demands, or expects them to change who they are. She doesn’t allow them to get away with bad behavior or shirk their responsibilities, either.
The twins were born in the 1500s and went through what Sérisse calls “the Libertin Phase,” which was the sixteenth-century term for Fuccboi. They were tired of being made fun of, of being rejected, of being unlucky in love. Their parents were the ideal couple to them and the representation of everything they thought they would never have. Not to mention, they were twenty-five and had just been adjusting to life with a two-year-old sibling.
So… Charlestre and Charon observed Archangels and other wayward Sauvains, noting how easily they were able to pick up women. They changed their appearance, their clothing, their demeanor, and voilà! An instant parade of women.
One night, as they crept back into the palace after yet another of their “dates,” they were in for a surprise. Sérisse had been waiting for them. She grabbed both of them by the collar and dragged them to her parlor.
Sérisse didn’t yell. She didn’t lecture or shame them. She made them SEE.
For the next few hours, Charlestre and Charon had to see what they had left behind in their wake. How they schemed before they went to the tavern or the masked ball. How they found the women they thought would be easiest to get into bed. Then, how they would each go home separately with whichever woman they had chosen, meet back up at exactly three a.m., drink, and share “notes.”
Then they had to watch the mornings after. All of them.
Every woman they had ever seduced and gone home with—they had to witness them waking up to empty beds, the tears, the shame, the humiliation.
After that came the truth of how the twins actually felt about all of this.
Empty. Depressed. False. Cruel.
The worst part? They did it partly to hurt people like they had been hurt.
They had told themselves it had all been harmless fun, that everyone involved understood the terms, the rules. But no one had. Not the twins, not the women left behind.
Charlestre and Charon returned to being themselves: the nerdy, awkward twins who solved complex alchemy, tackled diplomacy, pranked their Mothers, and looked after their two-year-old sister (who they also taught how to pick her nose and wipe it on Sérisse).
Charlestre met Mirielle, and Charon met Azilis—the women who would become their wives. The women who accepted them for themselves and never once asked them to change.
Sérisse had to take her eldest through both the Tower and the Tower reversed for them to get to the Two of Cups and then the Lovers.
Charlestre and Charon are the members of the family who show up right before a transition of any kind is almost complete. They are the Gorgons who represent the fork in the road. Charlestre’s leads to recognition; Charon’s leads to death, literally or metaphorically. They are the last stop before a soul reaches Sérisse—the end of the road.
And sometimes they show up wearing hats shaped like Cheetos, which adds another level of wtf.