Archive | October 2012

Giraffe Call Still Open! Closing Soon!

Oct18

My Giraffe Call is still Open (and on LJ).


We are just ten dollars from a livewriting session. We’re quite a bit further than that from a laptop.

I have written to 10 of the 11 prompters, and am about to start on the 11th. That means you have until 6:00 p.m. EST to get in a prompt – two hours and 22 minutes from this post.
… 11 of the 12 prompts, and will write to the 13th this evening. That means you have until 10:00 p.m. EST to leave another prompt!

Stop in and leave a prompt!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/409605.html. You can comment here or there.

Change, a story of the Unicorn Factory for the Giraffe Call

Oct18

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to flofx‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here

This story totally did not come out how I intended.

“I hear in Cardenborn, their unicorns went weird.”

Burghard Doser heard lots of things. He was the sort of man that you found in any tavern, any where in the Seven Counties, anywhere in the Five Kingdoms, anywhere in the world. He Heard Things. But unicorns going weird, that might have been something Burghard should not have heard, not that day.

The girl on his lap tensed. “Why would you say something like that, you?”

Nobody wanted the girls in the tavern to get unhappy. Shepachdar was a small village, a glorified sheep camp on a bald hill. That they had a couple woman of the sort who liked to spend time in taverns – that they had woman in the village who were not their mothers or sisters or daughters – was a luxury the little hamlet had not often seen. Nobody wanted to scare them off.

“That’s just his ale talking.” Rolf’s own ale made the answer hurried and brash, but it was an answer nonetheless. “You don’t want to listen to Burghard when he’s in his cups.”

“Oh, but I might.” Ursel was a pretty thing, young and bright. The sort of girl that might make a good wife, if she could be coaxed out of the taverns. And Rolf had just lost her off his lap. “I’ve heard of unicorns going strange before. Being born bad.”

“We don’t talk about that.” The girl on Burghard’s lap was getting very unhappy. Uncomfortable, even, an unbiased observer might notice.

“Why not, Adalinda?” Fazenia leaned forward over her ale. She had no need of a pretty wife, no need to keep difficult women in the town. “When a unicorn is second-born, everyone knows. When they are second-born wrong, everyone speaks of it. Don’t they do that where you come from?”

“Who’s to say what is wrong and what is strange?” Adalinda stood up, her skirts swishing. Burghard reached for her, but his hands were clumsy, and she was not. “Who’s to say what is simply change?”

“Change,” Fazenia pointed out, “is what brought us the Factories.”

“Evil brought us the Factories.” Ursel glared at the older woman. “And change let us live through them.”

“You weren’t there, you little stripling.”

“And neither were you.” She tossed her hair angrily, the silken curls shaking away from her forehead. “We all change.”

The tavern had frozen. Ursel’s fair forehead, normally covered in long fair hair, bore the tiniest bump of iridescent horn. A unicorn who had not been second-born. A unicorn acting as a tavern wench. A unicorn whose horn had not come in. A female unicorn.

She was aware, by this time, of their attention. She tossed her hair again, and looked around at the suddenly-more-sober crowd.

“Some of us just don’t… Change.” She offered it up nervously, looking at them all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/409308.html. You can comment here or there.

I Am No Aunt, a story of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call

Oct17

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

The Aunt Family has a landing page here

“Emelda should have held out longer.” Edith was furious. They were all furious. The women, at least. And some of the men.

Angry or not, Beazie tried to placate everyone. “What could she have held out for? All the girls over the age of fifteen are married. The only potential is an infant, currently an only child.”

“Then she should have held out for Jennifer to grow old enough and June to have another daughter.” Edith pursed her lips, even though it was clear she knew she was being ridiculous. Emelda – Aunt Emelda – had died of cancer, a sudden-onset disease none of the immediate family had known about. Emelda’s two sisters and one brother had had several children, but, as Beazie had pointed out, the girls had been quick to make sure they wouldn’t be the next Aunt.

“We can call another family…” Sarah spoke like she knew she was going to get shot down. Their branch hadn’t so much “branched off” as “jumped ship,” back when Emelda and Edith’s mother was young.

“No.” Edith’s tone of voice left no room for argument. “No, there is no going back. We’re going to have to go with what we have.”

“Aunt Edith, you can’t mean…” Louisa was Chauncey’s older sister. She had gotten married at twenty-seven, confiding in nobody but Chauncey that she’d been hoping Emelda would pass early.

Chauncey could have told her better but, while his sister liked to confide in him, she’d never actually listened.

“Of course I can. If you’d gotten one snippet of the family treasure, you would have known already. Holding out in case she died, indeed. You should have started early. We’d have a girl of the proper age if you had.”

Louisa, who’d thought that was a secret, turned to her brother in betrayal. He held up both his hands. “I said nothing. It was pretty obvious, Lou.”

“Yeah.” The men had been quiet while the women argued. Now their cousin Alfred butted in. “Even Aunt Emelda knew. But, um. We’re the black sheep of the line for a reason, aren’t we?” He held up his hands in a gesture much like Chauncey’s. “Not me. I don’t have any more of it than Lou does, and, besides, I’m married with three kids.”

“Maybe Cathy…” Louisa was grasping at straws now. Chauncey thought about having his feelings hurt, but it was just the family line, wasn’t it?

“Don’t be stupid, Louisa Susan. We do not pass the line to those not of the family. Even though your Catherine, Alfred, is a lovely woman. No, it’s going to have to be Chauncey or John Henry.”

“Two kids out of wedlock. Sorry, Mom.” John Henry didn’t look sorry. Chauncey didn’t blame him.

“Well, I… we’ll deal with that later, John. So.” The attention of every female relative over the age of twenty turned onto Chauncey.

More than the attention, and more than his living relatives. The power, the “treasure” of the generations pressed down on him, wrapped around him, warped into him. “It seems.” His mother sounded far too proud of herself. “It seems we have an Uncle for the Aunt House.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/408883.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Update and other calls – #promptcall

Oct17

My Giraffe Call is still Open (and on LJ).

I have written to 8 of 10 prompters so far, and should have those prompts done by the end of day.

When I write to the last prompter, the Call is closed. So get your prompts in quickly!

We have a new donor but no new prompter so far. Send your friends over, too!


We’ve reached the level where everyone who donates gets a second story! $10 until the first livewrite!

In other prompt-call news:

to-conjure has a prompt call open! The theme is heroes and villains.

See a story written to my prompt!

and see [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s Foreign Holiday, also written to my prompt!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/408717.html. You can comment here or there.

Etchings

Oct16

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to thesilentpoet‘s prompt.

Addergoole has a landing page here

“This is my room.” Speed opened the door and stepped inside, despite the way Gregori was holding his wrist. He liked the way Gregori was holding his wrist – firmly, without pain but with the certain threat of it underneath the surface.

“Invite me in.” He liked that, too. No fucking around; Gregori got right to the point.

“Please come in, Gregori, sir.” He lowered his eyes, making it sound coy, and stepped back into his room, using the bigger boy’s grip on his wrist to reel him in. “Would you like to see my etchings?”

“That’s a line so old it’s petrified.” He seemed pleased. Speed liked that it pleased him.

“I decided to make it new again.” He tilted his head towards his desk, asking permission and pointing all at once. Sell it. Be, be with every muscle, the perfect sub, and see if he bites.

Speed hoped he bit. Unlike some of the other bears around here, Gregori didn’t have rend-and-tear predator teeth. Speed wasn’t certain he’d like quite that much pain.

“You… ha.” Gregori moved that way, allowing Speed enough play to get to his desk. “You did, indeed. Are you using acid?”

“I am.” He picked up his favorite print. “Professor Akatil said he had a set-up for printing, too, down in the basement. I did this one before I came here.”

As a come-on, it left little to the imagination; as a self-portrait, even less.

“You can’t have drawn this from life.” Gregori sounded amused, but he also sounded impressed.

“Photos,” Speed allowed. The etching, one of his best, showed him bound in a complex hogtie, gagged, and blindfolded. he looked through his eyelashes at Gregori. “I could use some new photos to work from…”

Etchings on wikipedia

Next:
Catch (LJ)
Formality (LJ)
Bound (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/408419.html. You can comment here or there.

The Black Unicorns of Cardenborn, a story of Unicorn/Factory for the Giraffe Call

Oct16

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here

The word went up and down the water, up and down the silver road. It was whispered, not shouted, murmured, not spoken, alluded to and never written down. Nobody wanted the factories to find out, the Town to find out, but everyone else wanted to know.

The word did go into the Towns, too – the Towns hired any number of Villagers, after all, and, perhaps most especially, the Towns employed women of an age but not an inclination to know better. Sujennia’s mother called them, into her pottage, “no better than they should be.” When it came to Cardenborn, however, the opinion was quickly coming that they were far better than expected. Sujennia and her age-mates certainly thought so.

Cardenborn, a thicket-ringed village near the lake end of a wide stream, had been home to a small family of unicorns for far longer than any other Village in the area; even before the factories had come, the most-downstream places often found themselves with water needing purifying.

They had made their deals, the same as any village. Generation after generation, they had purified their water and given their virgins to the unicorns. Nobody had really noticed – except, Sujennia guessed, unicorns from other villages, who never came too close to Cardenborn – that their unicorns weren’t quite as white. At first, the grandmothers told, the unicorns had just been a little grey. Then they’d been a little greyer, and a little less fussy about the purity of the virgins sent to them.

Sujennia’s great-auntie told of a time when, during her youth, a white unicorn had ventured near Cardenborn. “That thing, let me tell you, sniffed the air once and ran away. And there were our unicorns, laughing the whole time.”

And now? Now the black unicorns of Cardenborn were a whisper, a legend, a sneaky rumor, and every working girl in the seven counties was working their way to the thicket. Because the black unicorns would not touch maids like Sujennia and her age-mates, no. The onyx horns wanted only experienced women.

And the Villagers of Cardenborn were more than willing to pay for a few hours of working girls’ time, because it meant their maids all lived, all intact, to pass their virginity on in a more human manner.

And the waters might shimmer oddly, but they were as pure as any in the seven counties.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/408257.html. You can comment here or there.

Tradeoffs

Oct16

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to kelkyag‘s prompt.

The Space Accountant has a landing page here

Genique woke out of a sound, somewhat drunk sleep in a startled panic. She was back in the box, she was back in the chain, she was choking…

“Genique? Miss Wadevier?” Someone was pounding on her door. Nobody had knocked before. And that wasn’t Basi. “Are you in there?”

The chain… She was laying down. The chain normally pulled her into a sitting position. She touched her neck, wondering what was going on. “Oh!” She’d twisted her bedding around her throat in her sleep.

The night began to come back to her. The beer. The beers. Lots of beers. She pulled herself to her feet and opened the door.

It wasn’t so much that she recognized the woman on the other side of the door, as that she could match the face with splintered memories. “Am I late?”

“Oh, no, the First won’t be calling for you for for at least an hour. Oh, I’m Marist Irio. I’m the Quartermaster.”

She was, Genique noticed, carrying a small box. “How can I help you?”

“I know First’s got you working on some paperwork, but she’ll probably send you to the Pit as soon as you’re done. And I have some numbers I can’t get to line up…”

“Aaah. Come on in.” Her new room wasn’t much more than her old room, but it had a real bed, and a real desk. “What’ve you got?”

Marist pulled a data pad out of her box. “Supply numbers aren’t adding up, here… and here.” She tapped at the lines in question.

“Hrrm.” Supplies had been part of the question in the First’s missing funding. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Basi mentioned you were thinking of taking in your jumpsuits? I’ve got a pocket machine… I can work on your suits while you look at my numbers?”

“Oh, that would be great.” A less-bleary glance at Marist’s uniform showed that it was tailored far better to the dark woman’s curvy figure than the off-the-shelf jumps. “That would be really great.”

This was how things happened, she supposed; half an hour of paperwork while Marist’s hand sewing machine zipped along, trimming Genique’s jumpsuits into something trim and fitted.

“You seem so normal.” That was after half an hour, and six jumps’ worth of sewing, seven months of purchase records studied. “I mean…” Marist flailed a bit. “You seem too ordinary to be here.”

Genique didn’t want to laugh at the woman, she really didn’t, but a little snort escaped anyway. “If my family could hear you say that…”

“It’s just… you’re an accountant. You’re the very definition of white bread, sitting here in the middle of a pirate ship doing the paperwork. It’s surreal.”

“Story of my life.” Genique sighed, and put down the pad. “Why do you think my family didn’t find the money for the ransom? Why do you think I’m sitting here waiting for whatever the Pit is?”

“Normal’s different on a farm planet?”

“Normal’s different everywhere you go, I think. At home… I was the black sheep. Unmarried, at my age. Bookish, not that good at the farm work.” She smiled dryly. “Afraid of bugs. Here…”

“Here,” Marist tossed her the final jumpsuit, “you’re bookish, which we desperately need. Put-together, adult. We’re not a very adult crew, you may have noticed, aside from the First. So… normal-seeming, I guess.”

“The old maid once again.” She highlighted the final error in Marist’s bookkeeping.

“Hardly.” The look the younger woman gave her was surprisingly steamy. “Try that on, would you?” Genique turned her back to comply, and Marist continued. “If we’re going for old-fashioned terms, have you heard of ‘cougars?'”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/407817.html. You can comment here or there.

Signal Fire

Oct15

For Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned prompt.

After The Life You Make (LJ) and Memories (LJ), and directly after Safe House (LJ), which is right after
Company LJ)

The guests were skittish, the taller one barely perching on the edge of her chair while Viatrix brought them all tea. She didn’t trust his promise. She wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing – what, a memory? Somebody he’d been once before? Jaelie called it his legend, his notoriety. She told him, over and over again until he could not forget, “I came for the legend.” Later, she told him, more times than the first thing, “I stayed for the man.”

This girl was staring at the legend. Baram found he wanted her to see the man.

“Gonna get the kids,” he grunted. Maybe she – and her very-quiet friend – could relax if they saw there were small people here. Happy small people. Before Via could say anything, he lumbered to the basement door. “Aly.”

He was pretty sure the little one didn’t mean him to hear her squeak. “In the basement?”

He was more sure that Via wanted him to hear her response. “Safety drill. Stranger danger; people at the door means get out of sight.”

“That makes sense.” That was the taller one, with a voice as sharp as her bones and her blades looked.

The kids tumbled out, picking up where they’d left off, leaving the dining room alone. They were learning fast. One of them climbed up Baram again, a little one, a girl. “Grr! Argh!”

“Grr,” he agreed. “Play castle later?”

“Awwwwww.” She slipped down his back like it was a slide and was off, chasing after one of the boys.

The visitors were still staring at him. He was going to have to deal with this. Baram rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. He knew he was a monster. He knew sometimes he earned that title. But he protected women and children. That was what he did.

“You trust him?” The small one thought she was whispering.

“With my life. With our kids.” It still made him feel warm to hear Via say that.

“But he’s…”

“We all graduated from Addergoole.” Aly cut the skinny one off, as if she was protecting Barem’s feelings. “Can you say that any of us are clean?”

“Still…” The skinny one looked at him like she was trying to look into his brain. Really, he needed to look into hers.

“Aly. I need…”

She knew what he needed. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, although she never liked it. “Are you sure, Boss?”

“I am. Can you…” How to say it?

Via knew already. Neither of them were as smooth at this as Jaelie, but they knew him well. Better than he knew himself.

“Miss, he really doesn’t remember. And he’d like to understand. He’s been… he’s been changing, lately, since we’ve all been here, I think. But he can’t make amends for what he doesn’t remember.”

“Make…” The skinny one stared at him. “How can you think you can fix what you did?”

“Not fix.” He knew he was sounding more and more like a monster. He couldn’t seem to do better than that right now. He put his hands down on the table, carefully. “Understand, and make amends.”

“You. You, Baram cy’Fridmar, you want to make amends for what you did to me?”

“Me. Baram, the Shield.” He liked it better than any other Name he’d been given. “Yes. If you’ll let me.”

She sank back in her chair, staring at him. “You promise?”

“I promise I want to make amends.” It was an easy promise. “To you.” He was sure there were others, but today, it had to be her.

“What do you want to do? To… to what, understand?”

He tilted his head at Via. She talked better than he did.

“You still have all the memories. With your memories, miss-”

“Callista. The Bladed Dervish.”

“sa’Bladed Dervish. With your memories, I can trigger his. They’re locked away, otherwise.”

“You want to touch my mind?” Her throat bobbed up and down. She was far too thin. Baram wanted to feed her. Surprising that Aly or Via hadn’t brought her something already. “Will I have to relive it?”

“No. You can sleep, if you want, or just rest here. I won’t bring them to your conscious mind.”

She swallowed again. “And this will – he really doesn’t remember, otherwise?”

“He really doesn’t. As far as we can tell, he loses almost everything past six months. It’s all in there, somewhere, he just can’t access it.”

“That’s horrible.” The little one frowned at him. “You really don’t remember?”

“Really. Sorry.”

She shrugged. “I don’t have… I don’t have quite such bad memories.” She thought about that for a moment, and added, “I mean, not just not as bad of memories of you. You were the boogeyman, but you were never my boogeyman. But not as bad of memories all around.”

“Some people get off more easily than others.” Aly sat down next to the little girl with a tray full of snack foods. How she’d manage to get that together without leaving the room, Baram didn’t know. He assumed magic. “And some people just slide around the bad stuff.”

“Oh, I had a bad Keeper. It’s just that Callista’s Keeper was… something else.”

“Aaah. Relative horror. If you were there with our employer, you must have been there during the bad years. I’ve heard stories.”

“The stories are usually twice as bad and not a third as horrible as it really was.” She shrugged again, and made a handful of cheese vanish into her mouth. “Callie, I think you should do it.”

“Yeah?” Her taller friend looked down at her. “Why?”

“You need to close something. You won’t track down the bastard who hurt you, and you’ve got this guy here willing to make amends. Close a door, put something behind you.”

The bastard who hurt you. Baram suppressed a growl. When he was done, when Jaelie was back and he could leave the house for a little while, then he would find this person who had hurt this guest, and he would pay him back in kind. People should not hurt women. Certainly not women who had carried Baram’s children.

“All right.” The woman – Callie? Callista? – nodded. “All right.”

Via, sensitive as always to Baram’s moods, glanced at him for permission. “Both of you close your eyes, please. Callista, sa’Dervish, please relax as much as you can. If you know how to blank your mind, please do that. Boss, you know what we’re doing.”

“I do.” He breathed until his mind was clear, emptying everything with each breath. It was always a little frightening, putting himself under. There were so few memories to begin with; he always wondered if there’d be anything at all left of him when he came back.

He had hurt this woman, whether or not he’d meant to. He could risk his Self to make amends.

Down, down. He breathed out the trappings of modern day, breathed in quiet.

Further down.

The children were gone, the house, the women.

There was nothing but dark, and quiet.

Further down.

The monster was gone.

There was nothing here but silence, nothing but cool darkness.

We need something from you. A demon spoke to him out of the darkness. We need someone to back us up. Shad and Mesh are getting too strong, and it’s going to come to a fight. We need your muscle.

Memory-self rumbled in response. That crew is nasty. Memory-self had no crew, just a friend he trusted to watch his back, and this demon, who asked things sometimes, and gave things in return.

They are, and they’ll run everything if someone doesn’t remind them they’re not the only game in town. Look, Callie will make it worth your while.

Another memory intruded on the first.

Make him happy. You know we need him. You know he needs you. Smile and be a good girl for him, Callie, and I’ll reward you when we get home.

The reward, the promise of a reward, might have kept her going without the order by that point. She needed the little things he gave her. She needed the moments where she could feel human. Even if it meant taking a monster to her bed.

Make him happy. She didn’t know if he could be happy. She’d barely ever seen him smile. He almost never talked. Rozen? Rozen had emotions. Rozen laughed. But Baram was just a thug, a golem, a creature made out of lumpy clay.

Callie knew what she was supposed to do in bed. It wasn’t the first time Ib had lent her out. Whored her out. She knew what to do, to make a guy feel like she was holding up her end of the deal. But she didn’t know if it would work with Baram.

A memory that might be his came back, over Callista’s worries.

He knew what it meant, when someone said they’d make it worth his while. He’d never had much luck, getting women in his bed normally. He had the graduation requirements to contend with, here. He had the fact that, while his brain might be a mess, while his Change might be monstrous, much of him was still a teenaged male.

She smiled when she came into his room. She never wore much, little shirts and tight jeans. Today she was wearing less. “Ib said you wanted me?”

She was going to scream, when he took his pants off. They all did. Even Isra. Even Ivette. He braced himself, and stripped.

And she smiled. It was a small smile, but she smiled.

Via…? Baram flailed, not understanding.

Make him happy. What was she going to do with that thing? What… that was what Ib had meant. She smiled, so he wouldn’t get unhappy, and walked towards him, murmuring under her breath. She had permission to do all the Workings she needed to make sure she held up her end of the deal. She could do this. She could take him in, and she could make him happy.

“You’re a big one.”

Baram remembered her saying that. He actually remembered, in the memories he could still get to. Not her, not the context, but that voice. Jaelie had said something similar, years later, and it had brought it back to him, the way memories almost never did: awed, a little bit scared, but ready to try.

He remembered a surge of uncommon affection when she had said that. Via’s touch on his memories brought it all back to him: the willingness in her voice, the little smile he’d never seen on her lips before. The way she closed her eyes and arched back against the pillows, while all six of her arms touched him.
She said son… Could Via get that for him, too? He knew, because the girls had told him, that he must have fathered two children to get out of Addergoole. But he had no memory of either child, no memory of naming them, none of holding them.

Brace yourself, Boss.

She didn’t want to let go of the tiny baby. She was afraid if she let go, Ib would never give him back. Somehow, her little boy would vanish like her little girl had, and she would be alone with Ib again.

The big oaf was waiting, quietly – he was usually quiet – staring off into the fake horizon. She wondered if there was enough going on upstairs for him to do a naming. Was there anything at all in there, except meanness and violence?

“Give him the baby, Callista.” Ib’s order left no room for argument. “Say the words.”

He voice cracked, but she got the words out. “This is the son you have given me, Baram cy’Fridmar. I give him into your hands to be named.”

Son.Son. Her son, and this monster was handling him. She was surprised at how careful the big hands were. She didn’t want to remember that his hands had been gentle with her, too. He was a monster, and he had raped her. What did it matter if he’d been trying not to leave bruises? He was Lenny, a big oaf. She knew what happened to girls around oafs like that.

But Ib wasn’t going to let her not hand over her son to him.

“I take this son that I have given you, Callista cy’Pelletier. I will return him to you in the morning with his name.” She’d never heard him say that many words at once. And then, while she choked on tears, he turned and was gone, gone with her son.

“Brand.”

The memory-trance was gone. Baram blinked at the women, skinny and hard-edged, and tiny and sharp. “I Named him Brand.” He could remember more than that, although he felt it fading already. “Like the fire. Like a beacon. Is he like that?” He could not quite find the words. “Like a … signpost?”

Viatrix, her fingers still in his mind, tried to translate. “A signal fire, a sign that danger is coming, or a sign that safety is there. He saw Brand as a light in the night.” She smiled, then. “A safe house?”

“A… oh.” Callista blinked. “Is that…? You never said.”

“Did you ever ask?” Via’s voice was very soft. “The man who Kept you, sa’ Bladed Dervish, he deserves pain and more pain, over and over again, for what he did to you.”

Callista flinched. “I don’t want to see him.”

“The time will come. We have all been hurt, you know.” Via stretched out over the table, placing her hand just inches from the skinny woman’s. “In our time.”

Baram knew the words, now. He didn’t know how long he would hold them. “Sa’ Bladed Dervish, Callista. I did not know I was being used to hurt you. I did not want to hurt you. I am sorry I did.”

She stared at him like he’d taken all her foundations out from under her. Maybe he had. She clutched Viatrix’s hand, and her short friend’s hand in another, and, before Baram could try to figure out more words, she burst into tears.

It’s okay, boss. Via’s voice was careful in his mind. Baram did not like tears. I’ve got this.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/538505.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/407797.html. You can comment here or there.

Goodbye Tradition

Oct15

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to clludle‘s prompt.

Addergoole has a landing page here

“All right, that’s enough.” Mirella stood up suddenly, causing Beckett to scramble backwards.

“Ma’am?” He looked up at her with those big puppy-dog eyes.

“You’re free. I release you. Get your clothes and your stuff and go back to your own room.” She closed her robe around her and tied the belt shut with a tight square knot. “Well, get on, go.”

The habit of obedience sent him crawling to the closet; he’d gotten half his stuff packed before it really hit him. “Wait. Wait, what? Mirella, why? I did everything you asked me to.”

“It’s just too much, Beckett. You’re just too much.” Besides, a quiet Working had told her she’d gotten what she needed. “You’re a lovely boy, you really are, honey, but I just can’t do this.”

“What did I do?” He paused, clothes in one hand and bag in the other, to look up at her. The expression was pitiful, more so for his big, lanky frame. “I can do better.”

“No, Beckett.” She emptied the one drawer she’d given him into a box, and added his books and papers on top of his socks and underwear. “You’ll do much better on your own.”

“So, just like that?” He frowned at her, which would have been a relief, except big lunk of a boy and he was still within her threshold. “You’re kicking me out?”

“I’m freeing you, Beckett. I’ve freed you.”

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“Go meet a nice girl, or a nice boy, or a nice horse. I’ve taught you everything I can about Addergoole. You know what words not to say. You know how to avoid being Kept, and how to trick someone else into the collar. Speaking of which…” She unbuckled her collar from around his neck and stepped back with it before he thought to stop her. She might need that for a couple weeks next year.

“You said a year.”

“I said a year at most. I said a year was tradition.” She handed him his clothes, and, still half on autopilot, he folded them and packed them away. “But not one I want to follow. Look, you’re a nice guy, Beckett.” Too nice. Clingy, affectionate. No fight at all, after the first couple days. “I’m sure you’ll find someone nice.”

“Just not you.”

“Well.” She cleared the last of his things out of her closet and, hopefully, out of her life. “I’d have thought you’d have noticed I’m not very nice.”

Hello tradition

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