For clare_dragonfly‘s prompt, after Bitter Vintage

The Wild Ones are a family line of half-breed Ellehemaei; the lives of three of them are chronicled in my very dark webserial The Wild Ones’ Blood.

The guest at the gate turned out to be female, which set the trio of sisters no more at ease, female, and with pointed, Doberman-like ears. Kin, perhaps? they stood casually, their tails and their ears the only thing showing how tense and fight-ready they were.

The Doberman-woman wasn’t hiding it at all. Her face was set in a snarl. “You have what is mine,” she growled.

“This is our land,” Aglæca answered, her voice lazy, her hand on her knife. “We have only what is ours here.”

“You have what is mine,” the woman repeated, “and I will have it back.”

“Bitch, we don’t have anything of yours,” Cassandra hissed. “Be gone before we cut you into pieces and feed the pieces to our pigs.”

“He came here,” the dog-woman insisted, and now all three of them were listening very, very intently to her. “He came here, I know. he told me it was the last thing he had to do for the Old Man, and so I let him come. And he never came back.”

Aglæca was not certain if the low whining sound of anger came from her throat, her sisters’ throats, or all three, but she knew it was her that spoke. “He. He was your Kept, your possession? You owned that creature?”

A beat, and then Cassandra asked over the rising silence, “You owned our kin?” Because creature, monster, and bastard he might have been, but he’d been a Wild One, too. That was why, in part, he wasn’t dead.

The Doberman snarled. “Own. I Own him. He is my love, and it was the only way to keep him from the Old Man’s grasp. So yes, yes I Own him.”

“Then you should join him,” Angela snarled, and, in a heartbeat, they attacked.

~

They planted the second rose – a red one – and the second grapes near the first pair, so that the two could twine together, and when the time came to make the wine, they mixed fruit and petals from all the plans together. “Let them be together,” Aglæca toasted, with the first glass of the season, “in the only way they deserve.”

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For inventrix‘s prompt.

This story has suggestions of violence and rape, but no on-screen either.

“That’s the last of this year’s rose wine.” Aglæca poured the dregs of the jug into two glasses, letting the last of the pinkish liquid drip slowly into the blue vessels. “And a month before it’s time to start on this year’s.”

“We’ll have to make do.” Angela took her glass and breathed in its floral notes. “It always sounds as if it’s singing to me.”

“Maybe it is.” Aglæca stared at her own glass, willing its secrets to her. “It’s always seemed to have a bit of… essence, I guess, in it, hasn’t it?”

“Life,” Angela agreed, and swirled a little in her mouth. “The last bit is always a bit bittersweet, you know?”

“The last we’ll taste of it.” Aglæca took an ungraceful gulp. “Until the next time. Yes, I think I almost heard a song. Or a scream.”

“Mm, screams.” Angela’s smile was sharp and fierce, like the woman herself. “Yes. I know there’s no blood in it, but you can almost taste it, can’t you? Just a little drip of his life, there?”

“You’re a poet, Ang. A bloody poet.” She stroked her sister’s claret-red hair, pushing it behind one tufted ear. “It should have his life in there, the way we’ve got the roots going.”

“Mmm.” That only made her smile wider, and she sipped the wine slowly, savoring it, savoring the essence in it. “Do you think he’s still alive down there?”

“I can’t imagine he can die that easily. And I made damn sure that he couldn’t get out.” She looked out the window, where the trellis of grapes shared space with the thorny roses.

“It must be horrible, having a plant growing into you, not able to move, able to feel everything.” Angela’s eyes clouded with memory, and her sister hugged her tightly.

“And he deserves every moment of it. Drink up. Cass heard something down the road, thinks it might be another one.” Before her sister could twitch, before she could show fear, Aglæca showed her teeth. “We might need to plant another rose bush.”

She was rewarded with a feral smile in return. “This time, let’s plant red ones.”

Continued here