Memoirs of a Stationary Nomad

Experiences of the Author

Happy wasn’t born a Literomancer. In fact, no one has ever been able to prove that they were born at all.
  Her father, Leander Devereaux, was a Roadfolk convert, joining the lifestyle at the age of nineteen instead of going to military boot camp like his family expected him to do. It was grueling physical work to train himself into an acrobat and dancer, almost as hard as the boot camp would have been, but he persevered. He specialized in the aerial silks and took the stage name “The Air Fairy”. Two years after he joined the troupe, he slipped during a performance and knocked his head on the floor. His fellow performers decided to give him the Circus Name of Autumn, because of his Fall, and he became a Roadfolk in truth.
  He kept the lifestyle well, including all the vices that typically come with that kind of work.
  He always told his daughter that choice to raise her was easy. A lot of Roadfolk have complicated blood family relationships, so no one would look twice at a single father. And the troupe he worked in took a “takes a village to raise a child” approach to their younger members, so he knew he would have plenty of help.
  That baby eventually grew up and was given the Circus Name of “Happy”, which she initially hated but grew to prefer because it was the name given to her by the parent who actually raised her. Happy didn’t enjoy performing, but she did find a place in the troupe as a special effects technician for their performances. The Roadfolk life was as natural as breathing for her, and she likely would have stayed for the rest of her life if The Word Wars hadn’t happened.

Writing the Memoirs

After joining House Ailurus as first a member, then a Bodyguard, then a librarian, and then finally the Seneschal, Happy realized how badly misunderstood the Roadfolk profession was in the larger society. Even though she no longer traveled with a troupe, she still considered herself a Roadfolk and was proud of her profession. It hurt her heart to hear others talking about how easy they thought the lifestyle was, or how immoral they thought all Roadfolk were, or how the only people who would choose to be Roadfolk were those who failed at holding down “real” jobs.
  In response, Happy decided to write a memoir about her experience being raised as a Roadfolk. Her position as a leadership of one of The Great Houses would help improve society’s opinions of them, she assumed. There was only one problem: nobody could prove that “Gwen” had actually been born. Happy had no birth certificate. To prevent her from being taken by Child Protective Services and put into foster care, Leander had used a Roadfolk contact to forge identification papers for her. And she was not the only one in their troupe in similar legal situations; the Roadfolk lifestyle skirted the edges of the law more often than not. And if Happy wrote about the truth of all her experiences, she could put her Roadfolk family at risk.
  She wanted to show the reality of the Roadfolk lifestyle, the good and the bad, but she didn’t want any of her family to be arrested for things that had been done decades ago. So, she came to a compromise: she wrote a disclaimer at the start of the memoir that while most of it was true to life, some details had been fictionalized to protect people. And Memoirs of a Stationary Nomad was published.
  Unfortunately, her plan worked a little too well. Her reputation meant the memoir became widely read, but the fact that part of it was fictionalized caused a lot of discourse. No one knew which parts were real and which were fiction, which meant that people started conspiracy theories about every detail in the book. Happy had to deal with dozens of rumors, from the whole book being made up to “Gwen” being kidnapped by her father as a baby.
  Her position in House Ailurus leadership helped insulate Happy from the worst fallout of these conspiracy theories, but she wore her masks tighter in public for a while after the book was published.