For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “19) write a story in which something goes BOOM.”

Cya/Cynara is a RP character from the Addergoole roleplay. Her Wiki page is here This takes place sometime post-year-9 but before-the-apoc.

June again. Cynara packed the boys off to school, called the younger’s father to remind him to pick them up afterward, then spent a good couple hours helping Hroderich move into his own apartment. He was a good kid, got along well with her sons, but, well, like his brothers, wasn’t really into girls.

Once she had him tucked in, with one last you-were-a-good-Kept hug and a now-be-a-good-man punch in the arm, she double-checked her packing and started driving.

It was a ten-hour-drive from Hroderich’s new place to the Village outside of Addergoole. Cya found it meditative, a way of spring-cleaning her brain of the cobwebs and trailed her most recent Kept had left, of sweeping out the dust of former loves and lovers. She slept at a motel halfway there – the old lady winked at her. Didn’t know what she was up to, but after four years of this trip, recognized her. Cya smiled back at her, left her the tray of cookies, and slept.

It was late morning on move-out day when she drove into the Village and started waking up her power. If she let it ride most of the time, she could push it, times like this, ask it to Find things that were esoteric and a bit vague. Find me the boy I can take home with me, she asked it. Someone who’ll fall for it, someone who might need it.

The tugging in her head was like a compass. This way. Down Main Street and up the hill, to the gate of Maureen’s house. Hunh. A linen shirt and a thatch of auburn, a bit untidy, khakis and no shoes. Leaning against the outside fence, staring in.

She leaned up next to him, studying the kid-pack playing there, picking out the girl that was probably his.

“She’s lovely,” she murmured. When his attention turned reluctantly to her, she offered a hand. “Cynara.”

“Pellinore.” His grip was firmer than his effete look suggested, and she swallowed a smile. Ambrus’ sons were fun.

~~

Pellinore had accepted Cynara’s offer of a ride; his mother’s home, the only place he knew other than Addergoole, was only a day’s drive from the school, and his mother, in a state of denial, it seems, had left him to find his own way home.

It took him about an hour to realize that something was up, an hour they spent cheerfully gossiping about Addergoole professors and ignoring any of the really uncomfortable topics, such as who’s the bitch who won’t let you get near your daughter? or so, who Owned you and how bad was it?. Mike seemed a safe topic, so they joked about cy’Linden, and cy’Luca, and how some things never changed.

And then he happened to notice (because she allowed him to; she had practice, by now, at very subtle Mind Workings) that they were going very fast down a road in the wrong direction to get him home, and his Addergoole-honed caution reminded him that she, too, had gone through the School of Hell.

He didn’t stop to ask questions, she gave him that. He began rattling off a combat Working as fast as he could speak, pointing at the road beyond the car.

Boom! A wall of force and earth began rolling towards them with a crack like thunder. Cya swerved to miss it while she muttered her own working, destroying the earth wall with another boom and then throwing in a fast mind-control while he was still trying to make her emotions twist.

“Stop,” she said, as gently as she could with his created panic twisting inside her. “Release the Workings.”

He stared at her sullenly, her control forcing obedience, his own panic clearly rising. Torn by his resemblance to another son of Ambrus, she patted his knee. “Look at it this way,” she offered. “It could be a lot worse.”

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 (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/117884.html. You can comment here or there.