30 Days Second Semester: 17, Misery Loves…

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “17) write an uncomfortable story.”

Faerie Apocalypse (LJ Link), Addergoole Year Nine, the day after “Say Yes.” (LJ).

Thorburn seemed jittery and uncomfortable on Wednesday, as if somehow he’d been the one to get the wrong end of Tuesday night. It grated on Ceinwen, set her teeth on edge. What right did he have to play the victim?

“I still hate you, you know,” she informed him, since he wouldn’t let her leave the room.

“Stop saying that,” he snapped, without looking away from his homework.

Bereft of even that pleasure, she pulled up a second chair and sat next to her Keeper, staring at him. He was Masked, handsome, his dreads tidy, his eyes improbably hazel-green. “You’ve never shown me,” she said abruptly. If she was going to be uncomfortable, she’d find a way to share it. “Even on Hell Night, you kept your Mask up.”

He frowned, closing his book, finally, to look at her. She plowed on, a little nervously.

“I know there are people without physical Changes, one or two of them, at least. And I know that some aren’t visible with their clothes on, but I’ve…” she swallowed hard and forced herself to continue, “seen you with your clothes off. No Changes. Why haven’t you shown them to me?”

He was still frowning, and she struggled against the urge to quail backwards. His orders last night left her uncomfortable with talking about what had happened, but this… if he wanted her to stop, he’d tell her.

“I mean…”

“When you Change,” he interrupted her. “When you Change, I will show you. I promise.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story

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12 thoughts on “30 Days Second Semester: 17, Misery Loves…

  1. Aw, you mean getting a slave through mental manipulation doesn’t mean you don’t have any headaches? Aw, poor Thorburn, you make you choices you have to live with the consequences. (Hmm. So, how many of the students actually stop to think and take into account that the geases aren’t permanent, and that the will eventually be facing someone with free will again?)

      • Heh. Thorburn is on the watch and judge list. We’ll see how he does from here out. And yes, teenagers and good thinking don’t seem to often go well together do they? I recall making a number of, shall we say less than ideal decisions back then.

        • Yeah, I have to continually remember that when writing addergoole stuff. Teens. Thorburn… Yeah. I alternately want to slap and hug him

          • Yeah, to be fair, I have the nagging suspicion I would have abused any such power at that age. I probably mostly would have been mostly keeping my head down trying to avoid notice of the nastier folk same as RL back then. But anyone who slipped up and let the young geek get a geas on them? Well at least it would have been young geek and not a full time bully. So most of the time would have been along the lines of, “Alright, get the book bag, we’re hitting the library and we aren’t leaving until that bag is full.” or, “So what do you think of this character, cool eh? And remember, no groaning about more D&D talk.”

  2. I (at the risk of coming off as some churlish misogynistic predator) love Thorburn as a character. He’s in such a tough position; there’s this girl he likes, and society/indoctrination says to make her kept. So he keeps her and she IMMEDIATELY loses it, chafing at the thought, let alone the reality of being kept. He’s broken, so terribly terribly broken. It’s like “Say Yes,” where he’s fighting against himself and desperately doesn’t want to take advantage of the bond, but does in the end because he can’t bear that she hates him so damned much. I know, to a lot of people he’s a villain and a rapist and half a hundred terrible things, but he’s also a boy whose upbringing is nothing compared to what our societal norms are. It’s killing him. Such great story.

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