Close Encounter of the Bird Kind (short story)
Close Encounter of the Bird Kind was a Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford in 2022. Instead of his usual Shifter, it featured an ambiguous incarnation of Jenny, later retroactively established as being the version usually featured in works by Lupan Evezan and Aristide Twain.
Contents
Plot
Somewhere in medieval Wales, a boy is playing near a stream when he suddenly sees a strangely-dressed woman appear out of thin air in the middle of the nearby grass bank, carrying a large wicker basket. She introduces herself as Jenny Everywhere and asks for the date, also explaining that she's looking for someone called Ambrosius. When the boy gives the date as “1299 ab urbe condita” (corresponding to the year 546 in the Christian calendar) and states that he is himself Ambrosius, Jenny realises that she ended up a little earlier than she intended. She tells him that she met his future self and had to borrow a chicken from him in a hurry, in exchange for which she is now giving his younger self a basket containing three chickens.
After she lets slip a little of the boy's future as Merlin by musing that the chicken probably technically belonged to “the king”, she decides to commit to the bit and give him a few hints about his future destiny, telling him that another woman called “Gwenhwyfar”, a king called Uther, and an untrustworthy woman called Morgan will all be important in his future. She also mentions Gwenhwyfar's husband, who she says will be “important too”, but doesn't give the boy his name, merely telling him that he'll meet him when he's about as old as Ambrosius is now. Hearing a cart coming by, she leaves again rather briskly, leaving behind the basket, and an Ambrosius trying in equal parts what to do about the unexpected destiny, and about the unexpected barnyard animals.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- The Jenny featured in this story is not the default incarnation of Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories, but an initially-ambiguous one, described from Ambrosius's point of view as simply “dressed like a used clothing stall”; she is wearing her goggles, which Ambrosius interprets as two “circular crystals” set into her headband. PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere, an authorised prequel, revealed that she was in fact the version from the 38167th Universe, as usually seen in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids.
Universes
- The story takes place in the Middle-Ages in an unnamed universe where the Arthurian mythos is substantially real. Ambrosius has heard of angels, demons, witches, and the Gentry, although none are explicitly shown to be real in this story (The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere would later confirm the existence of the Fae).
Other
- Ambrosius already knows “the method of loci”.
- Jenny notes that Merlin also refused to “listen to [Jenny] about Morgan” in the future.
- Ambrosius says that his mother has claimed to him that her own father was a king, though he's not sure he believes it, and also that he “doesn't have” a father.
Continuity
- The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere is a sequel to this story from Merlin's perspective and a prequel from Jenny's, revealing why she needed to borrow an egg-laying hen from Camelot.
Behind the scenes
Background
Scott Sanford gave the story the following commentary:
| One night I had a random idea and the time to type; this came out. No clue why, no reason. Enjoy a random Jenny encounter! I have no idea why Jenny needed a chicken. I guess chickens are funny? I notice that the story is a little loose with history but rather less so than the original source material, so we’ll just say it’s broad strokes and move on. Is this the same Jenny that later showed up at the Battle of Camlann? Maybe. It’s at least fifty years too early to know... If you'd like to know why Jenny needed a chicken, Aristide Twain has written a prequel to this story titled The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere which is both silly and worth reading. Enjoy! The internal chronology, from this Jenny's point of view, is The Time of the Toymaker -> A Shift in Relationships -> Family Business -> The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere -> Close Encounter of the Bird Kind. And that's not the order in which they were written. *whew!* |
| —Scott Sanford |
Read online
The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.
