Quirltober 2021 Collection

“How can you tell if your land is cursed, Dad?” Peak asked one day as she studied the map of the quirliverse in her parents “memory room”, as the family liked to call it. Baroque looked up from his feather collection. 

“Hmm, it’s generally obvious when it is, but it highly depends on the regional deity who controls your land.” He took a volume off the shelf. Peak had always liked that book. It had colourful and stylized depiction of each of the regions’ flora, fauna and deities. She had never bothered reading it, however. 

“Frysil’s curses are often apparent, but temporary, whilst Keir’s curses are more often than not ambiguous.” He showed her a page with a hurricane picture. Then he began flipping through the volume. “Although sometimes, ‘curses’ can be attributed to general events.”

“For example-” the pink stallion showed her a picture of a stormy ocean, “some curses are not necessarily due to your relations with a particular deity, but because of the weather or location of the land, such as famines or floods.”

“Things like these are still considered curses?” The filly asked, confused.

“Of course. If anything, they are worse than curses because mending your relations with the deity in charge will not necessarily alleviate the situation.”

“But the deities could fix it anyways, right?”

Baroque laughed. “Of course. Some deities are hard to find, and even harder to befriend sometimes, however. No all quirlicorns are willing to go through the trouble of finding them to solve a problem.”

“Well, they should.” The filly didn’t understand why anyone would rather sit there and watch a curse ravage their land instead of answering the call for adventure. Baroque laughed again.

“Sometimes, quirlicorns have better things to worry about than tornadoes.” He put the book away.

“Like what?”

“Like their family.” He smiled and wrapped his tail over his daughter’s shoulder. She gladly accepted the hug.