Hatred

Content warning… fantasy bigotry

It’s not something you can say ‘no’ to, Cathal.

So his mother had challenged him, at the tender age of eleven.

It’s just something we are.

Cathal had shaken his head. “No.” Her repudiated it. His mother wheedled.

That’s like centaurs saying they aren’t a four-legged hooved being, Cathal. It’s ridiculous.

Cathal had been unmoved by his mother’s ridicule, by her later logic, by her even-later yelling. his answer had been No, and that was that.

Nobody thought to ask him why – not his mother, not the others in the far-flung community. Let him pass, they advised his mother. It will be easier for everyone.

Slowly, reluctantly, Cathal’s mother accepted this advice. By the time her son was seventeen, she had ceased speaking to him about his heritage. By the time he was twenty-five, she’d stopped mentioning her own.

She’d always passed, living in the suburbs, keeping her gifts quiet. Now she just passed… more. Her son, after a few pointed remarks, kept the bigoted comments away from her house and her table.

By the time Cathal was thirty – and married, to as normal and white-bread a girl as was ever dreamed up – the two of them, mother and son, hand managed to delude themselves into believe there was no problem at all.

By the time Cathal started hunting, his mother was dead. His new friends asked no questions, either, and his victims weren’t often in a state to do so.

The one who knew had long since forgotten.

Cathal himself had internalized the hate long ago. By the time he was teaching his son how to kill dweomers, the words he’d heard in childhood were as long gone as his mother’s pleas.

You can’t be a dirty dweomer. Everyone knows they’re horrid cheats and filthy liars.

No.

It’s not something you can say ‘no’ to, Cathal.

Watch me.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/562970.html. You can comment here or there.

The Black Tower and its Council – a setting piece of Dragons Next Door

Apr9

“What is the Black Tower?” The dragon cocked its head to the side, narrowly missing knocking over the fence.

I blinked. The Tower has such a reputation among our people that it’s hard to remember it’s not that well known outside of the community. Even most other humans wouldn’t know what I was talking about – and I imagine the dragons handled such things in their own way. “The Black Tower is…” I resisted the impulse to end that with “…the Black Tower.” “It’s an academy of magic, considered highly prestigious but also highly dangerous. Sage attended there.”

“Ah, the Sandborn.” Zizny nodded. “We have heard of that place. On rare occasion, a young dragon will study there.”

“Yes, the Sandborn.” I’d forgotten it had a proper name.

–The Black Tower

The Sandborn Academy, the Black Tower, is a spire sticking into the sky, a nightmare against the night-time, the whisper lazy parents use to threaten naughty children. “If you’re not good, the Black Tower will send someone to get you.”

The Black Tower has no interest in naughty children. The Black Tower has very little interest in children at all, except as a necessary step in getting to the next generation of magi.

That is, of course, only as much as the Black Tower has a self to exhibit any interest at all. Regardless of rumor, conjecture, or fear, the buildings of the Black Tower do not, themselves, have sentience (yet).

The sentience of Sandborn Academy resides in its Head and its Council of Elders – seven magi who rule over the school with an iron fist and a steel-belted will. How they determine things within the confines of their Council chamber is a mystery; their dictates are handed down without explanation and with very little chance for appeal, and, in public, the Council presents a united front.

Their dictates rule everything in the Black Tower: who is admitted, and when; what the uniforms look like, and when they change; what is taught on the curriculum, and in the special independent study classes; what is served for dinner in the Dining Halls. Their dictates also determine when a member of the Council retires or is promoted to Head, and who joins the Council, and when.

There is nobody living who has ever met someone who has turned down a seat on the Black Tower Council. They may be the deans of a secondary school, but their power stretches far further than that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/507893.html. You can comment here or there.

Magic Mondays: Dragons Next Door and Jin

Apr1

kelkyag asked: How does Jin do magic?

The oldest child of Audrey and Sage, Jin is quite an interesting specimen. It’s no wonder the Tower wants to get their hands on him.

Many denizens of the Tower are the result of a dweomer-human union. As such, their magic is buried beneath the surface and must be coaxed out.

The Tower sorcerers use complex rotes and rituals, diagrams and dialogues, scripts and spells, to complete their magic; each line in each spell is designed to pull the sorcerer closer to the magic and thus manipulate it.

The Tower is only half of Jin’s legacy, however, and the magic of the Pumpkin is much more organic. Although still relatively untrained, Jin uses a combination of his mother’s witchery and his father’s sorcery in a manner that is both innovative and dangerous.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/503793.html. You can comment here or there.

Dragons Next Door: The Dragons Next Door beginning

Aug1

This is: This week’s donor perk story. It’s also a test beginning for something I’ve been working on – a self-standing, separate Dragons Next Door story. I think the first paragraph comes off a bit juvenile, but here it is.

The dragons next door moved in on the first day of school.

This left Juniper with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, she was looking forward to a new year of school. Her new teacher, Miss Milligan, had come into the classroom the last day before summer vacation, along with the other third grade teacher, Mr. Howard. Everyone else had wanted Mr. Howard; he was cool, with sunglasses and jokes from TV. Juniper had been intrigued by Miss Milligan’s storybook, and her long, flowing skirt, old-fashioned and pretty, like Juniper’s mother’s, and her silly hat. When the letter had come from the school, Juniper had danced down the driveway, clutching the letter. She was going to get the wonderful teacher!

And then the morning of the first day of school came, and there on the grass, just over the short stone wall her father had built (the last neighbors had been ogres, and not the best at yard-work), there were dragons! Not just one dragon, but a whole family, four of them, the adults brightly colored, the smaller ones duller-shaded, like grass and water. Dragons!

She hopped over to the wall before her father could stop her, peering over, waving. “Hello!” It was always important to be polite. Her mother had taught her that.

“Juniper!” Just as her father hurried over, the biggest of the dragons looked up. It opened its mouth up, bigger, bigger. Its fangs were longer than Juniper’s arm! It moved its head closer to the fence, slithering on the ground. Its tongue was the same pink as its underbelly scales, forked, like a snake’s. Even its nostrils were huge.

“Hello.” Solemnly, it offered up one claw to Juniper. Very carefully, she took the claw in both her hands and shook.

“Welcome to the neighborhood.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/380754.html. You can comment here or there.

Love Meme Answers 6: Jin/Jimmy, Autumn/Winter

Apr10

For the meme I posted Wednesday night here and here (feel free to leave pairings now if you want; I’m having fun.

Jin waited patiently for Jimmy to come back to earth with Juniper. Of all the monsters in the world, Jimmy was probably the only one he could trust, completely, with his kid sister. Jimmy was probably the only one he thought of as a sibling.

The Smiths moving in next to them had been one of the best moments in Jin’s life. For the first time since he started thinking of his parents as separate people from himself, he had someone he trusted to watch his back, and, maybe more importantly, someone who trusted him to do the same

“Got me?”

“I have you.”

Autumn reached for the strands, feeling the twists and the knot where everything was going crazy. The knots were dangerous, the sort of chaos that could pull you in and twist your own lines all up, making as much a mess of you as this tangle of forest was becoming.

But with Winter holding her hand, Autumn didn’t have to worry. Not once had he ever let her fall. Not once in her life had his strength and order failed her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/320178.html. You can comment here or there.

Bounty

Apr9

After this story, this story, this story, this story (LJ), and this story (LJ), from kelkyag‘s commissioned prompt.

The catch had been so close, so damned close. Orin had practically had his hands on the kid.

She wasn’t the most expensive kid in the neighborhood, but that’s because she lived next door to dragons and down the road from pixies, harpies, and centaurs. She was, however, the priciest kid per ounce and risk factor, at least in this city.

The amount of time he was having to spend on her, though, this damn thing was turning out to be the lowest hourly rate he’d pulled in over a decade. And what was worse? Now he had base calling, breathing down his throat, telling him to come in. And he’d almost had his hands on her.

Olin packed his gear into his car and headed back to base, grumbling to himself the whole time. This kid would be pure gold, but every minute spent away from the hunt was one more minute that he risked somebody else grabbing her. His team weren’t the only ones interested in her, and it wasn’t just for the payday, either.

He’d caught one of the religious creeps around the kid the other day, and driven the bastard off with a stick and a few well-placed threats. The church guys were the worst, the spooks nearly as bad. Olin didn’t want to think about what would happen if either of those got their hands on this particular target. All that power, all that potential, but she was still in a tiny, fragile package.

Fragile, but either supremely lucky, or surrounded by the best secret-ops team of weirdos he’d ever seen. Every opportunity he’d had had somehow glitched out or gotten ruined, often by the most obnoxious, irritating series of coincidences. It was almost as if…

Olin stopped the car. “Fuck,” he muttered. He hadn’t dealt with those little shits in decades. “Fuck, fuck…” He picked up his phone. Dead. Turned over the car engine. Dead.

He turned to his gear bag, wondering if there was a bounty on gremlins.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/629631.html

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Love Meme Answers 4: Junie/Jin, Carrot/Angua, Regine/Ambrus

Apr6

For the meme I posted Wednesday night here and here

I chewed over the Pratchett one for a while. Fanfic makes me nervous to write.

Having a big brother was sometimes a pain. He would mess up her hair and steal her dinner and pick her up and swing her when she was trying to be serious.

But when she looked at the mean girls the day after her ride with Jimmy in the parking lot, and not a single one of them would say so much as Boo to her – except to tell her they thought her shoes were poker, which meant cool this week – Junie thought having an older brother, having Jin for an older brother – was the most awesome thing ever.

Dear Mom, and Dad…

Carrot turned and looked at Angua, sleeping across his bed. The moon was new tonight, and she was sprawled in human form, but he could see, in her lines, the wolf she was sometimes. He thought about her running beside him, about the way she looked when she came in sweaty and filthy after a day Defending the Peace. He thought about the rare moments when she was out of uniform and not wearing fur. He thought about the moment when he thought that, perhaps, she had died.

He looked back at the paper, and thought about trying to put all that into words.

I am, in Love.

Ambrus was asleep, and Regine was not.

This was a common occurrence; she slept very little, and found often that a tlacatl Working would do her far better than actual sleep. She did not, as a rule, enjoy her dreams.

She did enjoy his, however. She enjoyed most of how her Kept’s brain worked, but his dreams, his mind unfettered and free to do as it would, were a fascinating place full of vivid, if unlikely, magic and sensuality.

She wondered, sometimes, watching his dreams, what it said that she enjoyed his unfettered mind the most.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/317370.html. You can comment here or there.

Love Meme Answers 2: Autumm/Weylan, Audrey/Sage, Taro/Kailani

Apr5

For the meme I posted last night here and here

Autumn loved Weylan the way she’d never loved a guy trying to sleep with her.

Not just because she could relax around him, because there was none of the aggression of me-you-fuck-now or the competition she sometimes got with women. Not just because he told great jokes on the road, or because he’d saved her life more than once.

Not just because he was so clearly and utterly devoted to his family and still able to make room for friends.

But because, on top of all that, unlike the men she slept with, he seemed like an actually nice guy.

The night was dark as a coal cellar, and the power had gone out. Aud woke first, to the quite, panicked beeping of their electronics bereft of their lifeline, to the sleepy grumbles of their youngest, who could not sleep without his lullaby recording.

Sage woke moments later, lifting their son in his arms, and singing to him, a soft chanting that would have, in other circumstances, perhaps sounded ominous. But to Aud and to the sleepy boy, it sounded like heaven.

First week of Year 5:
“She’s gorgeous,” Taro told Conrad, who had heard it all already at least a hundred times. “Those eyes. Those legs. That hair. Gods, Con, I’ve got to have her.”

Second week of November, Year 5:
“She’s always questioning everything,” he muttered to Vlad, who didn’t really want to be listening. “And her kisses are like liquid gold. Was I really that much of an idiot? Did I really..?”

“You did. You were. Love the one you’re with, man.”

Last week of February, Year 5:
“She’s gorgeous,” Mea murmured, gesturing at Kai in her bridesmaid’s getup. “I can see why you’re in love with her.”

“I’m…”

“Honey, I’m cy’Linden. Love where you will, as long as you love me too.”

“I…”

Her kiss shut him up before he could come up with an answer that didn’t make him an idiot again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/316181.html. You can comment here or there.

Red Covers, (A story of Dragons Next Door) (@rix_Scaedu)

Mar26

After this story, this story, this story, and this story (LJ), part four of three as part of a fixtion exchange with Rix_Scaedu

Thanks to Kiss of Judas for the names!

“Shit.” They’d been just about ready to grab the kid when all their equipment died. For the third day in a row. “Shit, shit, shit.” Ryan pulled out his earbud and threw it to the ground. “If I didn’t know better, I…”

“Don’t,” Chelsea cut him off. The rookie glared at her.

“Come on, Taylor, we’re hunting a fracking baby singularity! You can’t tell me not to be superstitious at a time like this!”

“Exactly.” She pulled out her own earpiece. “Come on, we’re walking back to base. Look, Moore. We’re hunting a baby singularity. That means that we’re out of the main guide book and into the red cover.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning don’t know better. If your gut or your superstition tells you it’s probably a flying tribble, then look for flying tribbles. The target has harpies providing air support, Moore. Harpies. Anything. Is. Possible.”

“Is that the first page in the red-cover guidebook?”

“Rookie, that’s the only page in the red cover.” She grinned at him and got out of the car. “Anything can happen. Your granny was right. Watch out for flying tribbles and talking moose.”

“And wear comfortable shoes,” Ryan added, looking down at his very-practical black boots. “Is there any proof against… whatever keeps happening?”

“Depends on what it is that’s happening. If it’s a conventional EMP, turning everything off or using old-style tech would do it, although we’d stand out like a sore thumb in a steam-powered car. But what were you saying, before I cut you off?”

He shot her a look. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was gremlins. My grandfather was a World War fighter pilot,” he added, his hackles visibly rising. “He talked about gremlins all the time.”

“Gremlins.” Chelsea flipped back in her mental creature list. Goblins, greymalkin… gremlins. “You know, that would make sense. I wonder how they got them to work for them?”

“Sheer charisma?” Ryan glared sourly at the ground. “You’ve met the pair. They don’t seem all that charming, but they’ve got all the aberrant races eating out of their hands – in some cases, I’d be willing to bet it’s literal.”

“Well, they’re singularities. You can’t expect a singularity to act by normal human rules.” As nice as it would be, since most singularities looked and acted like humans on the surface.

“Man, she really looks like a kid.” He frowned, suddenly worried. “You’re sure she’s really an anomalous individual?”

This happened to all rookies at least once. Some of them got over it. Others washed out. “Ryan, look. You gotta just put on your green lenses and look at the flows. Don’t look at the kid-shape in front of you. That way lies madness.”

“Right.” The rookie’s shoulders slumped. “It’s just…”

“Yeah, I know, kid. They look so cute. It’s like a baby harpy, though: it looks cute, right up until it’s ripping your intestines out. Stay strong, man.” She patted his shoulder. “You’ll see, once we get this one contained. Then her true colors will come out.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/319698.html

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An Understanding

Mar25

For anke‘s commissioned continuation of Parent-Teacher Conference (LJ), Humanity (LJ), and Human Town (LJ)

Dragons next Door has a landing page here.

“So.” Miss Milligan looked down at her hands.

“So?” Aud asked gently. “You called us here because you believed our daughter was telling tales, Samantha, right?”

“She seemed to be having a lot of trouble with the other students because of it?” the young teacher explained nervously. “And it seemed like… I’ve had students before, who were confused between fantasy and reality. It makes the world a hard place for them.”

“But you work in a school that caters to non-human students,” Sage pointed out. “Surely your students interact with non-humans.”

“Small non-humans!” the girl wailed. “Pixies. Maybe a gremlin. Elkin. The centaurs sometimes come near the school. Not dragons. Not ogres. Not races that eat people!”

“Actually,” Aud couldn’t help but point out, “very few of even the largest races eat human or other sentient meat, and they haven’t in decades. Certainly since the [fillnamehere] Conventions.”

The teacher waved a hand impatiently. “I know, I know. I read my history. But… do you think it’s really true? I mean, I’ve heard of humans eating Harpy meat.”

Sage collected himself first. He was less prone to shock, Aud thought, after his years on the police force. “You have?” he asked quietly. Very quietly.

She’d had time to read the horror in their expressions, and looked, more than anything, confused. “Well, yes. Haven’t you?”

“No,” Aud answered. “Not outside of horror novels and bad urban myths.”

“Oh.” The poor girl squirmed on her chair. “I guess we’re back to ignorance. I didn’t know anyone willingly spent time with… with dragons. With ogres.”

Audrey didn’t know what to think. The girl had a painful level of ignorance, the sort that could cause her all sorts of trouble – and by proxy, cause the school trouble. She didn’t seem to be a bigot, or the sort of hateful people that Aud knew all too well, but she definitely had… issues. And she was probably passing those issues on to her students.

“I’ll tell you what,” Audrey said slowly, “I work as a liaisons, sometimes, translating from the non-human races to the human institutions in the city. For the sake of the rest of Juniper’s school year, why don’t I do something similar for you?”

“Liaise?” She shrank into her chair.

“Not quite liaise, but… instruct. Explain. Teach,” she added, with a smile. “Over tea?”

“Over tea?” Miss Milligan studied her empty tea cup thoughtfully. “I’d like that, yes. Please.”

“Good.” Audrey stood up. “Shall we say every Wednesday after classes, does that work?”

“Every Wednesday.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/306062.html. You can comment here or there.

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