Archive | November 25, 2011

History of Reiassan notes – part the first

Nov25

Note: I’m not a scholar of history, at all at all at all. Please be kind when pointing out logical inconsistencies!!

A rough history of the people who would become the Callanthe

Timeline numbers from R – discovery of Reiassan (the continent)

(??? BR)
The proto-Callanthe are goat people. They begin as a small tribe of people in the south of Founding-Continent, a group who discovered the advantages of domesticating the wild goats that lived in the mountains near their hunting grounds.

[horses domesticated around 4000 BCE IRL, goats ~~8000-9000 years ago. So “began” is a long time ago even by this timeline… which corresponds loosely to the time of Christ IRL]

The proto-Callanthe were cultural borrowers, appropriators, and thieves; they collected other tribes not so much by conquering them as by assimilating them. In the mountainous south of the Founding Continent, the tribes all came from a very similar stock to begin with (having probably spread out from a small group that came over the mountains), so, at first, this was essentially re-integration.

Once the proto-Callanthe’s territory expanded far enough to run into the unknown people on the West and the proto-Bitrani on the East, the cultural appropriation more often turned to war. The proto-Bitrani, too, had developed cities and seafaring, and some of the proto-Callanthe were intrigued enough to, rather than fight, war, conquer, steal, and assimilate, simple immigrate, acculturate, assimilate, and steal.

Centuries went by this way. Cultures shifted. Wars happened. The population of proto-Callanthe in the proto-Bitrani nations-now-a-single-theocracy had grown to a vocal but generally disenfranchised minority. More importantly for this story, the proto-Bitrani had grown to fill their available land – and the land to the West was still full of warlike proto-Callanthe. They were pushed up against the water – so they started exploring the seas.

(we’re almost to R)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/186235.html. You can comment here or there.

Fallen

Nov25

For Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned prompt. Written in the fae apoc ‘verse, at the time of the apoc.

The Faerie Apoc Landing page is here (and on LJ)

Content warning: gore and implied implications.

As her people counted things, Alionda was rather young. She had seen her first century only a few years before the gates back into the human world opened up, and it was only through an accident that she managed to get through at all, much less as quickly as she did.

She had, however, fallen through one of the secondary gates that had opened when the rebels wrenched open the main doors – quite literally fallen, as this gate was several hundred feet above the ground.

The Ellehemaei body can survive many things that a human can not, but it still suffers from impact injuries, and the Word Tlacatl was not one Alionda the Water-Singer had much skill with. She lay there, at the bottom of a strange hole lined in grey rock, for several days, hungry, her lungs punctured, her body broken, unable to speak enough to form the Words to help heal herself, unable to do much more than hold herself together. She lay there, each breath agony, for an eternity, while around her the city moved and people shouted and clamored and somehow never saw her. If there was a hell, she had found it, below her heaven of Ellehem.

“What have we here? Lovely… and still alive.” Her eyes had flown open at the sound of a voice – a human voice, she was fairly certain. He looked human. He looked handsome. And he was smiling at her. “Are you an angel from the sky, or a demon?” He scooped her into his arms without seeming effort. “I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/185880.html. You can comment here or there.

W-T-F, a story of #Addergoole, for the Giraffe Call

Nov25

To [personal profile] lilfluff‘s commissioned prompt – a bit more of Uh-Oh (Lj) and Oh, Shit (LJ).

Raylan is the brother of a character in Addergoole.

The strange woman muttered a few more words under her breath and, like a stage magician’s trick, pulled her hands apart, revealing long strips of cloth. “Listen,” she murmured quietly. “Hold still and this won’t hurt. You have my word on that.”

She did someone else with her hands, making Ray’s ears pop. “You can talk, as long as you keep it quiet.”

“What are you doing?” he asked, not trying all that hard to be quiet.

“I’m wrapping you up so you have a harder time wriggling, what does it look like?” Indeed, she’d grabbed his ankles and started wrapping the cloth around him over his pants, twisting it firmly.

“Okay, I get that, but I mean, with me. Aside from the floating me in the air thing, which is, by the way, terrifying.”

“I thought that would be patently obvious. I’m kidnapping you.”

“Okay, okay.” He kicked his bound ankles in frustration. “Why? I mean, you said I wasn’t what you were looking for, but I’d do. Who were you looking for? Maybe I can help you? I know this neighborhood pretty well.”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible you know. There’s a young man who lives in this neighborhood. He was about five foot tall the last time I saw him, but that was several years ago; he’s probably grown. Blonde hair. Blue eyes, very blue eyes. Prone to broad shoulders and a nose that is going to make him look like a thug.”

“Curry?” he blinked at her. “You’re looking for Curry?” How could someone go looking for that lump of meat and think he’d do instead?

“Curry, ah yes, that would be his name. You know where he lives?” She’d gotten to his hips by now, wrapping with impersonal efficiency.

“I – yeah. Right down the street.” He turned to point, only to see his father running towards him. “Dad! DAD!” he shouted.

“Raylan! Ray…. Twyla?”

Dad knew this nutcase? “Dad?”

“Dave…?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/185834.html. You can comment here or there.

Wolf at the Door

Nov25

First Saturday Dance, Year Nine:

Ciara had been talking in a corner niche with a couple of upper-classmen with whom she shared her Chemistry class, but they, being a couple, had moved onto the dance floor when the song went to a slow, romantic tune.

She hadn’t found anyone that she was interested in being romantic with (except the guy she’d just been talking with, but that was clearly not going to work out), but that was no reason to mope in the corner. She turned to go find some of her classmates, and found herself face-to-face with a bicep.

“Dance with me.”

The voice attached to the bicep was deep and rough; the bicep itself was covered in a deep red shirt. Looking up, she saw a black tie, with a tiny woven design of swords. Further up revealed a predatory smile; to the top showed shaggy black hair covering sapphire-blue eyes.

“No, thank you.” She ducked under his arm, and moved quickly without running to the bar, where the light was better and she knew more people. She didn’t look back. It didn’t seem like a good idea to look back.

Second Saturday, Year Nine:

Ciara opened her door, looked outside, and closed her door again. She’d been hearing rumors, a whisper, a murmur, a sideways threat. She knew that something was up, or going to be up. The creepy noises, the dim red lighting, the screams and haunted-house noises in the background – all any of that did was confirm her suspicions.

Her upperclassmen friends had said they might stop by, and it was still early. She passed the time making cookies in the tiny dorm oven, batch after 10-cookie batch, until someone pounded on the door.

She opened it carefully, holding on to the doorknob as she peered out into the darkness.

Into a mouth full of sharp, very white teeth. “Come out and play.”

“No, thank you,” she answered politely. “Would you like a cookie?”

“Cookie?” It confused him for long enough that she could shut the door without hitting him, and that was all, at the moment, that mattered. She slammed it, wishing this place wasn’t so damn literal. Wolf at the door, indeed.

Mid-October, Year Nine:

She knew his name by now. He almost never wore his Mask down, showing those feral teeth and those creepy, creepy eyes, but he liked to show up to the dances that way, so she’d managed to put the two men together into one wolfish upperclassman.

He knew her name by now, too. That was a bit less on the positive side of the ledger. Creepy enough to have him pop up unexpected. Creepier to have him drawl out her name like he was tasting it, licking it.

He was out in the halls after her Hiko class, following her from the gym down towards the suite she’d moved in to. “Keeee-aarrrr-uh,” he growled. “Come and play with me.”

“No, thank you, Amadeus,” she answered politely.

“Call me ‘Deus,” he retorted, stepping in front of her. “Everyone else does.”

“I’m sure they do, Amadeus. I’d rather not play with you.”

“It could be a lot of fun.”

“For you, I’m sure,” she agreed. “Please let me by.”

As always, the politeness seemed to work, and he let her flee.

Mid-November, Year Nine:

This time, it was Tlacatl class she was leaving, and a long conversation with Dr. Caitrin (after some very educational conversations with the girls Amadeus had Kept in years Seven and Eight) had left Ciara determined, if frightened, and a little bit angry.

“Keeee-arrrr-uh,” he called out, coming around the corner. He wasn’t always there, not enough that she could plan for it, and he was never outright violent, not enough that she could feel justified asking her crew to walk along with her, but there was always the threat that he’d be there, like he was today, taunting her. Asking her to play.

“Come home with me tonight.” As he had the last few times, he grabbed her arm, holding her firmly.

“No, thank you, Amadeus,” she answered, as politely as she always did. “I have plans tonight.”

“You always have plans. You ought to come home with me instead. We could have some fun.”

“I’m sure you’d have fun,” she answered. “Please let go of me.”

“I don’t want to.” His grin was sharp. “Nobody’s ever said no to me before.”

“I’m sure they have. I’ve asked.”

“Not like you have.”

“And yet you keep asking.”

“If I ask long enough, eventually you’ll say yes.” He tugged on her arm, this time, pulling her towards him. He was escalating.

She shook her head, out of clever retorts. “Amadeus cy’Valerian, I challenge you.”

“…what?”

Next: Wolf in the Circle

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/185593.html. You can comment here or there.