Short/Cut, a story of the Faerie Apocalypse, for the Giraffe Call

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt. Around Addergoole Year 33

“Ladies.”

Griselda and Solange shared a look. They turned, two petite women on two giant motorcycles, to look at the man standing in the road behind them.

“Zel?” Solanage muttered it out of the side of her mouth.

“Got it.” Griselda murmured under her breath while Solange dismounted and walked forward in short, measured steps. The man was taller than either of them, of course, broad in the shoulders and carrying at least five visible weapons. His skin had the sun-burnt and wrinkled look that means he was trying to ignore what the sun could do to him, and his hair was yellow-white like old paper.

By contrast, neither of the women had a weapon visible; the closest thing was the small jerry-rigged device Griselda was pretending to talk to.

“Can I help you?” Solange was the sweeter-voiced and sweeter-faced of the pair; people smiled at her while they eyed Zelda with distrust.

Like this one, who smiled yellow teeth down at her. “You’re little to be out all alone.”

“We do all right for ourselves. Don’t we, Zel?”

“We travel the world fair enough.” That was her code for fae, with a thrown-in twist for probably up to no good. Solange nodded; she understood.

“We get by.”

“Ah, but you’d get by better with me.”

“We like the team we have.” Zelda had moved up to stand near Solange. Her hands were empty; she’d put the device away. “Why did you call us?”

“It’s a lot easier to chase down prey on foot.” He looked startled, as the first of Zelda’s spells took hold, forcing honesty out of him. Then he grinned. “Done with the foreplay, I suppose.”

His glamour dropped, revealing him for the seven-foot-tall scaly-skinned creep that he really was. Zelda was already in the air, darting in and out of his reach while she threw off bolts of lightning.

That bought Solange the seven seconds she needed. She spat out an under-breath spell and two wooden long-swords leapt into her hands.

She stabbed the creature in the gut and throat while he was reaching for Zelda, giving the fluttering sorceress long enough to dart out of reach and set off another electricity-to-the-brain spell.

Three more stabs and seven more quick lightning bolts later, the creep was down, wrapped in Solange’s chains of hawthorn and rowan. “We heard you were around.” She sat on the man’s chest, wrapping further chains of wood and thorns around his throat. “Funny, people always think short…”

“…and don’t think fae.” Zelda laughed. “This is fun.”


For [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith: I am not good at working descriptions into short stories, but Griselda and Solange are both women of color, and this is the post of the apoc.

For AGRP characters: Griselda is Miryam and Aleron’s daughter.

And Solange had a mention in Calling in the Storm

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/496237.html. You can comment here or there.

0 thoughts on “Short/Cut, a story of the Faerie Apocalypse, for the Giraffe Call

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *