Archive | February 2017

Head South

Cya, after the apocalypse but before her kids go to Addergoole

Cya knew she was one of the good guys.

That was: she knew she was one of Boom, and she knew Boom were the good guys.

She knew that was all that kept her from going off the rails most days.

Some days, all it did was remind her how to cover it up.

She looked at the boy – man – the Kept in front of her and sighed. “You’re a mess, darling,” she muttered. He was sleeping. The Working she’d done would keep him that way for a while.

She wrote him a note anyway, because Cya believed in planning ahead. I had to run an errand. If I’m not back by Wednesday night, take this note to Howard and tell him “look South.”

Of course, almost everything was south from the Ranch, except Canada, but she didn’t want her Kept to guess where she was going.

She took her car. It shouldn’t still be running, but at this stage, she wasn’t the only one with a much-repaired vehicle still on the road, and hey, she could turn dirt into gas, which did help matters.

She tried not to hold on too tight to the steering wheel, but there was a small fire of anger deep in her gut. It was, like everything she felt at that point, a cold fire, a lump rather than a storm.

It was going to hurt someone anyway.

The man sleeping in her bed… When she talked to Addergoole, they told her things were better. They were old fae and had old memories, and they meant Things like what happened to Eris will never happen again. They meant, if it was Luke, who had seen it, or Mike, who paid more attention than he was given credit for, they meant we’ll try to make sure what happened to Leo doesn’t happen again. Leo was harder. She knew that, even though she didn’t really forgive it. Leo’s breaking hadn’t been nearly as visible as Eris bleeding in the halls.

They told her things were better, but there was only so far they were willing to go. Some people just weren’t meant to Keep and some people just shouldn’t be Kept, and those mistakes, Addergoole wasn’t going to fix any time soon.

And sometimes people were just too good at hiding their poison; some people were just too good at hiding their wounds. Agi, the man sleeping on her bed – he was one of those. His keeper had been sharp with her knife and careful, and her abuse had been subtle enough that it had never been picked up on. He’d gone through the next three years at Addergoole thinking it’d been his fault.

She knew the story too well. This time, someone was going to pay.

She held onto the steering wheel a little too tightly and whispered Repair Workings at the road ahead of her. There was no reason not to clean up as she went, and if this went south instead of just South, Howard would have a trail to follow.

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The Funeral – a beginning of a tale

This started out as something else, but it appears like in addition, it wants to be a murder mystery. Fae apoc, pre-apoc era, possibly 2010.

Senga didn’t believe it until she saw the body. Ellehemaei did not die very often, and they almost never died of natural causes; until she did a very quiet Working on the body itself, she was still working under the assumption that this was some trick of her Great-Aunt Mirabella’s.

The confirmation that it was real took her breath away. She walked past the body again, looking at what her diagnosis told her more than the corpse. Natural causes? Well, hawthorn was natural, she supposed, and her aunt was chock full of it.

“Miss Attenoin? Do please come to my office at noon. There’s the will reading.” The suited man stank of lawyer, and his suit stank of money. No surprise, considering her great-aunt. But…

“The will?” Senga frowned. “Great-Aunt Mirabella and I weren’t all that close…”

“Nevertheless, she has listed you in the will. Noon. It’s quite important that you be there on time.”

He was a pushy little man. Senga gave him her best eats-bullets-for-breakfast smile. “I’ll be there. Now, if you’ll excuse me… my aunt is dead.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

He scurried off, presumably to bother someone else. Senga stared at the body. At least she’d worn black, and something respectful, at that. There’d been this urge to wear something flamboyant, just to show Great-Aunt Mirabella that she wasn’t bothered by all the spectacle.

Some part of her still thought it was a farce of some sort. She muttered the diagnostic again, just to see if she’d missed something. A fake-death working? It would be hard to pull off with all that hawthorn in the blood. But, then again, the hawthorn would mask it.

“It’s real.” The voice came from above her left ear. She looked up nonchalantly to find that one of the other mourners had moved close to her. He’d snuck up on her. It offended her professional pride. “I didn’t believe it either.” And he seemed entirely unaware that he shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on her.

She looked him up and down — with a good deal of up. He was wearing still-black black jeans, a white button-down, and a black vest. Everything looked as if he’d bought it new, everything except the (also black) cowboy boots. His face was so clean-shaven he had to have used a Working for it, and his hair looked like it wasn’t used to being so freshly washed or so tightly ponytailed.

He looked her down in turn. One eyebrow quirked as his gaze slid over her hip — had he noticed the sheath there? if he had, had he noticed the other two? She was fairly confident about the one at the small of her back, at least.

He was wearing — she looked again — at least two weapons.

“It’s real?” she parroted back at him.

“Her. She’s really gone.” He frowned. “I thought she’d outlive us all.”

Senga stepped away from the coffin, tilting her head to invite him to do the same. “You knew her well?” Great-Aunt Mirabella had run a tidy, if stealthy, empire of businesses, many of them legal. Many people had thought that they knew her.

“I did some work for her, now and then.” He followed her invitation towards a corner of the room, and their place at the coffin was replaced by other funeral attendees — Senga hesitated to call them mourners. She was not here to mourn and she doubted this tall man was, either. “And what about you? Were you one of her associates?”

She chose to ignore the suggestion that she might have been one of Mirabella’s employees. “She’s — she was — my father’s aunt. She outlived him, his mother, and their parents.” By having at least one of them killed. Senga had never been sure about the others.

“Ah. Family.” His expression changed. His whole body language changed. He didn’t quite take a step back, but his hand did drop towards his hip.

Senga smirked. “I don’t suppose you’d believe I was the white sheep?” She kept her own hands where they were, holding her ridiculous clutch purse.

He relaxed infinitesimally. “That would explain why I’d never met you.”

“Ah, so you’ve met some of the other family members, then?” As if on cue, her cousin Muirgen entered the room, with entourage, sobbing loudly and unconvincingly.

He winced. “Yes. DId some work for some of them, too.”

“Great-Aunt Mirabella must have been paying you very well.” There were things she could say that he couldn’t, even now. There were things she could say that, as far as she knew, nobody else could. That had been her condolence prize for her father’s untimely death.

“Something like that, yeah.” He shifted his weight. “Damnit, if it weren’t for that will-reading…”

“You must have done very good work for her.” A glance around the funeral home told Senga that about a third of of the mourners were family; she recognized about a quarter of the rest of them as staff, friends of the family, and important people in the city, including two local newscasters and one woman who ran the highest-class brothel in the city out of her East Ave Mansion. There was the chief of police, and there was the current CEO of the Gleason Steel Works.

“I’m the best at what I do. And I go way back with Mirabella. Been working for her since —” He noted the people standing close enough to overhear and modified his original sentence. “—we were both up-and-coming.”

Hundreds of years, then. Senga hopes her own nerves didn’t show on her face. “I see. So you’ve done a lot of work for her.”

“I—” He was cut off by a wail from cousin Eavan.

“I can’t believe she’s really gone! She can’t be! It’s a lie. You’re making this up to get her money, you bastard law-breaker, you no good half-blood!”

She was swinging her designer purse at an exquisitely dressed person — their back was to Senga, but the cut of the suit was impeccable — with a braid of black hair that reached their thighs. The hair, and the specific (and inappropriate for the setting) insults Eavean was throwing told her who it was.

“Alencaustel,” she breathed softly. “This family reunion just got interesting.”

next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1265057.html

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MARKED – The plot, er, well, this is plot, isn’t it?

MARKED – 4.2

Nilien smiled uncertainly at Professor Vaudelle. “Actually, Professor, speaking of that…”

“Yes, dear? I imagine Hestinger didn’t bring you all the way down here to pick out a treatise to read, at least not this early in your studies, did he? And it’s unlikely he’s testing your ability to not get lost in this place; he’s not the sort to do that.”

“He pointed out landmarks…” Professor Vaudelle’s logic was leaving Nilien a little lost. “So I don’t think he was trying to get me lost. No, he said you might be able to help with something about magic sight.”

read on…

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Love Meme: Beryl and Stone

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] kelkyag‘s third prompt. Beryl and Stone are from the Aunt Family.

Beryl knew how most girls at school were with their big brothers.

In her opinion, much of that was because their big brothers were big jerks, but she had noticed that was the way family dynamics seemed to flow, outside of the Family.

(She made an informal study of such things, because she didn’t really want to marry a cousin, should she end up marrying someone, and so she didn’t want to be lost the way her father said he’d been, way back when.)

But Stone wasn’t like that. Stone helped her with her homework, and, once, showed her how to cast a charm so her worst bully tripped over his feet every time he got close. And they talked about spellwork together, and she showed him secret tarot spreads and tricks with the tea leaves.

She told him Maddy Spinner was no good for him, too, but she was pretty sure any sister would’ve done that.

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Poise-oned, a commissioned continuation

After Poise, to [personal profile] thnidu‘s commissioned continuation.

The question of was I poisoned was not as easy to answer as one might assume.

I did not, say, keel over (that is, turn my bottom over top) and die. But as I said, sometimes someone can poison your mind as well as just your body.

I knew I had what it took. My displays were perfect. My speech sounded unrehearsed and off-the-cuff and covered exactly everything I needed it to with no stuttering or humming or hawing. And the core product was sound. More than sound, it was brilliant and necessary.

But as I walked into that building – chin up, laptop bag in hand, looking like a million bucks and walking like I owned that place – I was secretly terrified. Five people had turned it down. Six of my friends had told me it was a long shot. Seven relatives had laughed in my face. To sum it up: I had been poisoned in my mind. I was ready, or I wanted to be ready, to make this presentation.

But was I ready? The doubts crowded onto the bus with me, shoved for a place in the elevator with me. I looked prepared. I looked proper. I looked prosperous. (Three more words that had no root in common, much to my surprise).

I was terrified.

I made my posture perfect. I smiled sweetly. I swallowed as if to bring more of that potion of poise into my body, into my mind.

I ran over all of my lines. I debated pertinent points sub-vocally. I told myself, once again, that my product was predestined to win this contact.

And in the back of my head, the poison continued to war with the potion. I was poised — but I was tainted by doubt. Two different sorts of weight were pulling at me.

The situation was grave, and it deserved gravity. Yet I found myself giggling. Here I was, pulling in two directions by the same thing — by a potion. By a great weight.

And that, my friends, was the lift I needed. The giggle, the laugh — the joke. By the time I left the elevator I had cut the strings weighing me to the criticism and doubt — if only temporarily, for those strings are very persistent — and I was buoyed up, walking on air, poised but yet no longer poisoned.

But had it even been poison? For if it had not been for that pun, I may not have been smiling, they might not have smiled, and the day might not have been won.

Funny things, potions and words, both.

🍹

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MARKED – Can’t someone just give her a map

MARKED – 4.1

“Professor Vaudelle’s office is just down this hall. Now, when you come back, it helps if you use landmarks. See, here’s this door with the stripes of stone and metal in it.” Professor Hestinger pointed out a doorway. “That used to be Professor Marein’s office, and nobody wants to change it, so it stays that way. It helps tell you which way you’re going, though. And then here’s the old archway with the tiny gargoyles carved into it. It’s a little out of place back here, so it’s easy to recognize. And here’s Professor Vaudelle’s office.” He knocked on what looked like a plain, ordinary door.

“Hestinger! Come on in. And who’s the student?” A clear, high, cheerful-sounding voice came through the door as if it wasn’t there.

read on…

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MARKED – A new skill?

MARKED – 3.12

Nilien sighed. “It’s not working.”

“No?” Professor Hestinger leaned forward. “You said ‘oh.’ What was that?”

“Oh, that?” She wrinkled her nose. “I was trying to see the black stone, but I ended up seeing Ember and your familiar glowing, instead. And our runic marks.” She gestured with her marked hand. “They all glow.”

“Oh, very good. That’s magic sight.” Professor Hestinger smiled broadly at her. “That’s an excellent skill to learn; it can be very useful. So you saw the familiars and the marks, of course. They must have glowed rather brightly?”

read on…

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Love Meme: Jin and Junie

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] sauergeek‘s first prompt.

Jin had been just old enough to be annoyed by this whole little-sibling thing when his mother had put Junie in his arms.

He hadn’t instantly fallen in love with her. She was small and fragile and loud. He, at that point, had very little interest in things small and fragile and loud.

It was weeks later, when he found out that he could make very minor illusions and had to show them off to someone, that’s when things changed.

His mother was brewing a tisane and couldn’t be disturbed; his father was reading a large tome in the library and looked like disturbing him would not go well. He could wait for dinner – but Jin did not want to wait for dinner. (Patience was a hard- and late-earned skill for him.)

So he decided to show the new baby the illusion.

And she cooed. She reached out for it with her chubby little hands. She was thrilled. Jin felt amazing. This tiny little thing, this thing that cried all the time and nothing at all seemed to soothe her – she liked his illusions.

That cemented it. From that day on, Junie was Jin’s first audience for every illusion, every spell (that was safe to her, of course; he kept the others to a room behind the garage where no-one else came), every cantrip.

And, eventually, Junie found out Jin’s secrets, too.

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Marked News!

We’re on Web Fiction Guide! If you’re enjoying the story, please stop in and leave a review.

AND THEN the easy one:

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Stop in at Twitter and tell us how you’re liking the story!

When you’re done with that, there’s a piece up on Patreon about the process Cal & I use for MARKED, as well as several pieces of patreon-only content.

Cheers~

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MARKED – Well darn.

MARKED – 3.11

One more try. She could do it. She closed her eyes and reached out for the bowl, for the black pebble somewhere inside it.

Nothing. “Maybe…” She furrowed her brow and considered the bowl. If she could see the stone, she could find it without a problem.

So first, she needed to see it. She stared at the bowl. Focusing on seeing a thing, that’s what Lorque had said. So she just needed to focus on seeing a black stone.

She petted Ember a little bit and focused her power on vision. She had to be able to see it. It was there; it had to be a simple matter to find it, or Professor Hestinger wouldn’t have assigned it to her, would he have?

read on…

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