Triangles

This was written to To [personal profile] anke‘s prompt.

Addergoole has a landing page here; Audra, Carrig, and Chaney were first seen in White Knights, 8/31/2011.

Audra is Kailani’s daughter by Conrad.

I just read the TV Trope Generation Xerox and worry a bit about that with this, esp. considering what Morganna is doing in this story..

Carrig and Chaney seemed more interested in Audra than seemed reasonable. There were prettier girls in the school; there were certainly more charming, friendly girls than she was. Her first question to the both of them, once they’d stopped scolding each other for long enough to talk to her, had been “where’s a laboratory that I can set up in?”

She’d been more than a little pleased to have stumped them with that one.

Chaney had figured out an answer first on that one. But then Carrig had managed to tell her who she needed to talk to to keep up combat training.

After that, she started thinking up things to stump them with.

She wasn’t sure if either of them noticed Panlong slyly trying to made friends with her, but she noticed, considered his crew, and thought about her auntie’s advice. “You can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep.”

Carrig and Chaney, while they did not appear to have any wonderful friends, at least did not share a suite with anyone straight-out objectionable.

She knew a thing or two. She knew, from her auntie’s advice and her mother’s, that people who suddenly want to be your friend are probably up to no good.

She knew that slavery was illegal, but so was being fae, and that both were practiced in private, generally by the same people.

She knew, from drawings, photos, and faint memories, that her father had had a tail and seven fingers on each hand. She knew that her auntie had rose thorns growing from her skin. It seemed logical to assume that she was probably, genetically, a fae as well.

Which meant that, logically, slavery might be involved somehow in the whole situation.

The oldest photo she had of her parents showed her father in a silver collar. Alistair had asked her mother about that, once, to be rewarded with one of their mother’s rare storms of anger.

There were collars around – not many, but a few. And, when they didn’t think she was paying attention (really, she thought that Carrig and Chaney must be used to much slower girls than she. But most men were), they would sometime use the word collar as a verb: “when Pan was collared by Tethys,” for example. “Chandra is totally going to collar Felix.”

“…I’m not going to let you collar Aud.” She walked in on that one. Well, at least they were talking about it now. She coughed, to get their attention.

“Gentlemen. At least one person in this triad is going to end up collared, as far as I can tell, at least to shut up the rest of the school. I’d suggest you play rock-paper-scissors and decide who it will be.”

They talked over each other for a moment. The word protect came up, and the word stronger. To their credit, neither said wiser.

It was Carrig who offered, uncertainly, “triad?”

At that point, Audra knew things were going to go her way.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/479152.html. You can comment here or there.

0 thoughts on “Triangles

  1. Well, that was a declaration of intent, wasn’t it? “Which meant that, logically, slavery might be involved somehow in the whole situations.” – “situation”?

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