Er... perhaps the beginning's a better place to start.

It occurred to me that there was this one legend that seemed to be in Chinese, Japanese and European myth, a story about a poor little rat who wants to marry a rich rat's lovely daughter. The rich rat (from here known as Papa Rat) refuses, of course. He wants his daughter to marry the 'greatest in the land'--so Papa Rat, realizing that there will be more interlopers like the poor rat if he doesn't get going, goes out the next day to find the Sun and offer his daughter's hand in marriage.

The Sun is, of course, quite flattered. But, he says, he's not actually the greatest guy around--that'd be good ol' Cloud over there, who's able to cover him up and block his beautiful rays.

So Papa Rat goes off to offer his daughter to Cloud, but he too humbly rejects Papa Rat's offer, pointing out that the Wind can blow him away with great ease and that therefore Wind is greater than Cloud.

Thus Papa Rat hikes up to a mountain to talk over his offer with Wind--who regretfully sends him away to Wall, as Wind can huff and puff all he likes and blow everything away except for that darned Wall.

Papa Rat, now exhausted and beyond irritated, finds Wall and practically demands he take Papa Rat's daughter's hand in marriage. Wall, groaning with pain and aches, heartily rejects the proposal--he's not the greatest in the land! He can't be, not with rats gnawing holes in him all day long! So Papa Rat, tired and fairly confused, goes back to his home and allows his daughter and the poor rat to marry.

It all started with that story at least. That's where the Four Ghost Kings came from, at least. Sun is the Sun, Cloud is the Storm, Wind is the Wind and Wall is the Mountain. This whole story also used to be a lot more archaic and admittedly more s-ai oriented, and there weren't any ghosts involved. (Fraise was always the Rat.) Then the idea of ghosts came up and Skylar's character emerged from the rubble of the former story; the final incarnation began with the decision one afternoon that I absolutely hated, detested and loathed Friday in all his forms. And that he was a prick. A real awful prick.

So I wrote this:

"Friday is..." Saturday trailed off hesitantly, not quite sure where to go next. "Friday... Friday is..." the other days looked at her expectantly, except for Thursday who sulked in the corner and Sunday who was entertaining himself with the weaving of veins in the psychiatrist's potted plants. Why, why did she have to be after Friday? All the other days had gotten it easy. Say something nice about the day before you indeed, what was there to say about Friday? All right, so Tuesday'd had a difficult time contemplating Monday and her constant bitter poetry and maybe it was hard to encompass the utter laziness of Tuesday or the OCD of Wednesday or the despondent anger that was Thursday (though Thursday was obviously intelligent, so maybe it wasn't that difficult to compliment) and even Sunday had been easy, despite his recent confusion over a shift between a pious to a fun-loving persona. People just didn't consider anything holy anymore. "Friday..."

"I'm gorgeous," Friday smirked, interrupting and buffing his nails against his new Romani jacket and crossing his legs impatiently as he threw an imperious look at the rest of the group. "Now that the tedious business is over and done with, can we get onto the next activity? I've got something witty to say about Tuesday's slouch."

So here I'll give credit where credit is due.

-The Storm, the Ordinance and the Raven are all raven's creations.
-Friday (rather, the character that filled Friday's boots--it was like he'd worn them all his life, for future reference) originally belonged to Guillaume/Lord Richard/Onopo/GOPSM.
-The Cousin and The Cousin's Apprentice are my Secret Wife, Niwatori-Megami, aka Skylark Songbird/Larkie's brainchildren.
-Kevie was the inspiration of my Secret Girlfriend, Kitori, while we chatted on the phone and she doodled.