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Filthy, a story(beginning)

May12

I asked for fun Addergoole-related prompts here; this riffed off of [personal profile] wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt.

Year 19 of the Addergoole School

“Look at you, you’re filthy.”

Antonia flinched. She was filthy; she hadn’t had a shower since the gods attacked, unless you counted rainstorms, and hadn’t had a bath in over a year, unless you counted dipping in creeks.

Her clothes were so grimy they stood on their own, but they had held up against weather and road damage, enough that she thought the dirt might be a layer of protection all on its own. Her hair, she’d finally chopped short as the summer came – with a knife, because that’s what she’d had.

They had run when the gods attacked her hometown, ten of them on a school trip. There had only been three when the terrifying winged man had found her; she didn’t know what he’d done with Mella or Steve, and she was scared to ask.

He’d dropped her here, in the halls of what appeared to be the plushest underground bunker ever, and taken off with barely a word. She’d been fighting him the whole time, but now, sitting here with her duffle bag and nothing else, she didn’t have anything to fight.

“You’ve been out in it this whole time, haven’t you?”

She peeked up. That was still the same voice. “Out in… the war?” she offered. “Yeah. I mean, not in the combat. But out there. You haven’t?”

He was clean. Clean the way she hadn’t seen anyone since the gods attacked; his hair fell in perfect red-orange curls around his ears, his skin looked brown, not because of sunburn or dirt, but just because it was his skin tone, and his pants even looked pressed.

Some small part of her mind thought he was also rather handsome, but she ignored that part; she was checking for weapons.

He could be carrying something in the pocket of the khakis, or under the madras-plaid shirt, but his hands were open and empty in front of him.

“I got lucky.” He shrugged, as if to apologize. “I was in a safe place when it hit, and then it wasn’t long before I was supposed to come here. So I never got the worst of it – but over half the students who actually make it here come in looking like you or worse. I’m Raleigh, by the way.”

“Tony… Antonia.” She held out a hand, and then looked at it. “Sorry, I’m filthy.”

“I noticed. Look, come with me. I’m gonna get you a bath, a nice warm meal, and some clean clothes, okay?”

It’s a trap. Her skin itched, reminding her how long it had been since rain, even. “I’ll take it.”

He grabbed the hand she’d offered and pulled her to her feet. “Awesome. My room’s this way.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/712762.html. You can comment here or there.

Balancing Lazy

May9

This is a continuation of a piece chosen by random-date-choice.

It follows

Laziness as an Art Form, Laziness X4, and
Lazy Bidding.

Merton and Zuleyma did not want to be sold. Roanna couldn’t really bring herself to blame them – she didn’t want to be sold either.

But Segenam had grabbed four of them on Hell Night, and four, he thought, was a little too much work. So he’d ordered Ro to auction them off – and she’d found buyers for Merton and Zuleyma.

“She’s nice, Merton. I wouldn’t have said it was a good idea if I didn’t think she was nice.”

“But…” He bit his lip. “I was just getting comfortable here.”

“I know. And you can get comfortable again with Kianna. It’ll be okay, Merton.”

“I guess…”

Zuleyma wouldn’t talk to Roanna at all. She blamed Ro for making the deal – which wasn’t all that fair, since Ro’d been ordered to do it – and sulked in her corner until Segenam dragged her out bodily.

He left Roanna and Tamberlain in the room while he took the other two to the market, as it were. “You, boy,” he pointed, “do cleaning things. Ask Roanna what to do.”

“What should I do?”

“Supervise. And…” Segenam did another strange thing with his face. “Try to relax, if you can.”

Roanna didn’t do “relax,” but she tried, because she’d been ordered to. It helped to sit back on the bed – once Tamberlain had made it, twice – and sip a drink while she directed.

“Why am I doing all this? You’re good at this.”

“Because the boss said so, of course.”

“But you’re good at cleaning, you and Merton.”

“Merton’s gone.”

“So why aren’t you doing the dishes?” He hesitated. “And why are they gone, and not us?”

Roanna wasn’t really feeling kind. “Nobody bid on you, Tam. Do the dishes like a good boy and if they’re all clean I’ll help with the floor.”

“The boss told you to relax.”

“Lucky for you, I find mopping floors very relaxing.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/711901.html. You can comment here or there.

Can’t you See

May8

I asked for fun Addergoole-related prompts here; this is from @capriox’s prompt.

Addergoole Year 36, early in the year.
“I hate it.”

Taurus stared at the mirror; over his shoulder, Aldara stared at him. He was wearing nothing except the chain collar she’d put on him and a miserable expression.

“The collar?” She thought it was a relatively nice collar; she’d Worked it a lot lighter than it looked, and it matched his coloration nicely.

“No!” He glared at her in the mirror; she bit her tongue and reminded herself that he couldn’t actually hurt her, not unless he’d found a way around his orders. “No…” He softened his voice, but only barely. “No, I hate this stupid Change. Why couldn’t I just stay human?”

“And not have magic…?” She brushed her hand over the soft fur running down his spine. “I like this. It’s soft.”

She could see the conflict on his face, where he wanted to soften for the praise and struggled against it. “One point in its favor, I guess. But it still sucks.” He lifted one hoof and then the other. “I liked being human. I liked being normal. And come on, my name is Taurus. This is a goat Change. I am not a goat!”

Personally, Aldara thought it was more sheepy than goaty, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t going to help the situation One Bit. “Well, you’ll get used to it eventually? I got used to my Change…”

“Your Change is nothing like this! It’s nothing compared to this mess! I hate it. I mean, how am I going to wear shoes?”

“You don’t need to now?”

“Lovely, my ankles will still get cold. I mean, even pants are going to be hard.”

“Kilts?”

“No! Gods, what are you, stupid?” He shook his head, making a whistling noise as the air moved around his horn-buds. “Gah! There’s got to be a way to… yessss….”

“Yess?” She ought to be saying nooo, shouldn’t she? But he got so bent out of shape when she said no…

And now it was too late. He was shouting out a Working, one she only recognized half the Greek to, something about bending light, something about…

The world was white, only white. There was no contrast, no distance, no shadow.

Aldara sat down with a thump, not bothering to feel for a chair. “Taurus.” She was mortified to find her voice angry, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. “Taurus, what have you done?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/711027.html. You can comment here or there.

Paying, Forward

May7

This is a continuation of a piece chosen by random-date-choice.

It follows Cost of Living and Paying the Rent in the Baram’s Elves story-set of the Fae Apoc: Addergoole setting.

It made Jaelie nervous to be away from the family this long.

Not that it was, in the grand scheme of things, all that long: two weeks at Addergoole, and a two-day drive in each direction.

But it was long enough that just about anything could happen. In two weeks, their portion of the city had fallen to pieces. In two weeks, Chicago had been reduced to rubble. In two weeks, she’d gone from being a relatively happy, normal girl… to being Amadeus’ pet.

In two weeks, what would happen to her family? What would happen to Aloysius?

At the moment, she didn’t need to be drawn a diagram; she knew what, in general, was happening to and with him and a tall, dark woman with a scarab-beetle Change.

“You have a very nice young man.” Dr. Avonmorea – Regine – took a seat next to Jaelie at the bar. Jaelie swallowed a startled reaction – she hadn’t expected to see the Director here, of all places. “Genetically, as well as in demeanor and appearance. I would be interested in purchasing his contract from you.”

Jaelie swallowed her drink and, with more effort than she’d thought it would ever take, looked the Director in the eye. “He’s not for sale. I promised him that.”

“Ah, well.” There was, as always, very little expression on the older woman’s face. “Would you consider ‘renting’ him to me again, at the very least?”

“How frequently, and for how long?”

“Ideally, every six months for fourteen days each time, as long as I can find willing partners for him. I would continue to pay the same stud fee, of course, with a potential renegotiation as we see what sort of children he breeds, and with the same caveat you asked for in this session, with parental rights reverting to you if the mother does not want them.”

Baram would like that. They were getting paid a hefty fee for the studding, and all in very useful goods for their little enclave.

What would Aloysius think? Jaelie took a sip, found her drink empty, and set the glass down. “I can agree to one more session, in six months, and then we’ll renegotiate. I have to consult with the rest of the crew.”

Crew. She tasted the word on her tongue, and found she liked it. What’s more, the Director was smiling.

“Very good. I think we’ll all be pleased with the results.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/710878.html. You can comment here or there.

Moth to the Flame

May5

I asked for fun Addergoole-related prompts here; this is from [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt.

Year 47 of the Addergoole School

—

Go to Addergoole, her mother had said. Get an education, she’d said. There’s food and power there, you’ll be safe there, she’d said.

Naeema’s mother had failed to mention the fae part; she’d failed to mention the and you’ll learn magic part; she’d definitely failed to mention and some boy is going to put a collar around your neck.

Gwalchmai wasn’t all that bad, she supposed. No, that wasn’t right. He was pretty bad, but he thought he wasn’t bad, and he kept saying it. It was giving her a headache, the sort of thing where she felt like her head was going to split.

“You have to understand,” he was saying, which was difficult, because she didn’t really understand at all, “things were different before Luke’s daughter got herself in trouble. Now they do spot checks of the all the rooms. If you ask me, you’re not getting a proper sense of what slavery is supposed to be like. Not the way it was back home.”

Naeema had grown up in a walled compound; for all that her mother had said Addergoole is safe, slavers were not allowed in her home town and slaves were freed on entry. “It’s not like that everywhere,” she protested. Her skull was cracking open. It had to be.

“Did I say you should talk? Oh, shit, are you Changing? Right here? You can’t, you can’t…”

Gwalchmai was darting, back and forth, back and forth. He had a bird Change, didn’t he? Professor Valerian had said something about that. He looked like a panicked bird, now, squawking orders than meant nothing, orders she could barely hear.

Her tongue tickled. She stuck it out, and found it forked. She blinked, and found she could blink again, a second set of eyelids.

She caught Gwalchmai’s eye. Bird, bird. He was freaking out – no. No, he wasn’t. He was staring at her, intently, hypnotized.

Naeema smiled, and her fangs brushed against her lips. This had just gotten interesting.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/710331.html. You can comment here or there.

So, I’ve been thinking, as I rewrite Addergoole –

Apr30

– no need to stop with Year 5, is there?

I mean, this is a little cart before the horse, since I plan on writing 2-3 Books of Addergoole Year 5 a year, and the rewrite will probably be about 10 Books (originally 13; I’m paring down).

But when I finish those 10, assuming I do, there’s so many directions I could go –

* Write a story in Year 6
* Re-write something in Year 9, focusing on 1 to 3 viewpoint characters through the whole thing
* write the post-apoc “fifty years later” of Shahin, Jamian, and Kailani.

Other options? Out of curiosity, do any of those appeal to the Addergoole fans out there?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/708212.html. You can comment here or there.

March Is Women’s History Month – day five: Regine

Mar27

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [Bad username: thnidu,]Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

This is a combination of nature and nurture.

To begin with, the Grigori, the bloodline of which Regine is a member, tend to be very analytic. They’re smart, some would say brilliant, and to them was given the guidance of mankind (some say) in matters of the mind.

This scientific bend tends to lead Grigori into ignoring the social and physical aspects of their development – they have the Mara for physical protection, so need no focus there, and since there is an unspoken disdain within the Grigori for the Daeva, who are those who inspire (and thus very social), social skills are seen as secondary.

Regine’s particular family line – her father, her older brother, herself – are very very science-and-math-focused, to the point where they often have difficulty understanding other people’s emotions (or, on the rare occasion that they notice their having them, their own). Regine’s father in particular discouraged all expressions of emotion as unneeded and a waste of time, so that from a very early age, Regine learned not to express feelings, and, after a time, not to acknowledge them even to herself.

In a crew with a Mara and a Daeva, Regine often feels the need to act even more Grigori-stereotypical; to be sure to show not the faintest shred of bias or emotion, to be as scientific and as analytic as possible, to balance out the often-irrational and hair-trigger-seeming emotions of her friends. This leads – along with an inability to cope with failure – to an even more repressed Regine by the time we reach the books.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/698400.html. You can comment here or there.

The Answer is No, a vignette

Mar18

This takes place sometime during the “sign-up” phase of the Addergoole project – ~mid-to-late 1970’s. It was written in response to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s comment here.

Addergoole has a landing page here

“Take part in a Grigori breeding project? What are you, nuts?”

Regine had been anticipating responses like that; it was one reason (although not in any way close to her primary reason – they were her crew, and the closest thing to friends she had) that her team consisted of not just a Grigori, but a Mara and a Daeva as well.

She had not truly been anticipating the next rejection she received.

“Wait, you’re trying to breed more half-breeds? Why would you do that?”

“The term half-breed is certainly problematic, but it’s the term most commonly in use right now…”

“Forget terminology!” The man talking to her was… scruffy. He was the closest thing to a hobo Regine had ever seen in an Ellehemaei, and he had a body odor that was hard to ignore. “I’m talking about the way these kids’ll be treated!”

“They’ll have a full, extensive education with well-qualified professors and Mentors. They’ll receive every benefit a full-blooded child could hope for…”

“Except that they’ll be half-breeds. You might not know what it’s like, lady, with your perfect Grigori everything, but most of the full-blooded true Ellehemaei out there, they hate my kind.”

He had not dropped his Mask; now he did, revealing what Regine already knew, shaggy doglike ears and a jawline shaped more like a muzzle. “No, thank you. If I’m going to sire any kids, I’ll either do it with humans so human the kid’ll never Change, or if I find a fae that will have me, with purebloods so the kid’ll have a better chance than his dad.”

“But…”

“The answer is no, madam. I’d rather starve.”

Regine was left staring at his tail as he left. She was fairly certain he would not have listened nor consented even if she had managed to get out her last sentence.

But I’m trying to change the view of half-breeds in society.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694764.html. You can comment here or there.

March Is Women’s History Month – day two: Kailani as a Tween

Mar16

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly, who asked for Kailani as a tween.

Kailani is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“His name is Gibbous Moon Over the Lake, but we call him Moonlake.”

The instructor was an earthy woman – brown hair, browned skin, and a smell like loam – a friend of Kailani’s mother who called herself Stormshadow.

That was unimportant. What was important was that she was holding the bridle of a horse. A horse.

“He’s a very calm boy, but watch his ears. They’ll tell you if he’s upset, or interested in something, or spooked.” Stormshadow patted Moonlake’s head. “And his tail – you can hear it flicking back and forth.”

“Like cats.” Kai put her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks heating up already. “I mean…” She released her hand, “with the ears and the tail, not the same language, I mean, obviously, one’s a small carnivore-predator and the other one’s a large herbivore-grazer. But they both move their ears for emotions, and their tails. And here?” She touched the horse’s shoulders gently.

“Very good. Yes, they don’t use the same body language as cats, but if you’ve taught yourself to read feline body language with any rate of success, you should be able to handle horses with little problem. Of course, you’ll be on his back, which is different from cats, I’m sure.”

Kailani giggled. “It’s a little different, yes. But I really get to ride him? He won’t mind?”

“He won’t mind. Moonlake is a nice boy, and he likes being able to spend time with people. Here’s one more trick. You can offer him treats, but you have to be careful to keep your thumbs out of the way. Like this.”

Stormshadow wasn’t watching Moonlake; she was watching the young girl with the frizzy hair who was clearly falling in love. “No charge,” she told Moonchild, Kailani’s mother. “In another year, this girl is going to be working at my stable nonstop just to be around the horses.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694127.html. You can comment here or there.

March Is Women’s History Month – day one: Shahin as a Tween

Mar13

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly, who asked for Shahin as a tween.

Shahin is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“Who are you?”

The new boy, Shahin decided, was rude.

“Shahin Laskaris.” She raised her chin and stared at the stranger. “And who are you?

“Steve Talbot.” He grinned like he was proud of himself for being Steve Talbot. Shahin raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She was still working on the delivery of that line. Teachers chuckled at it, but her fellow classmates –

“What, you had to think about it?”

– were less cultured, she supposed. “Time will tell.”

“Yeah, while I’m getting a pretty firm opinion of you already. Why are you so stuck-up?”

Stuck-up? “I am not!” Whoops. She glared at the new boy, only to find him grinning back at her.

“There you go. Look, it’s fine to be fancy and formal but you have to unwind once in a while too, you know? Come skateboarding with me.”

“Come… what?” She took a step backwards and watched him. She didn’t think he was joking. But nobody had ever offered anything like that. “Not now.”

“No, I don’t think skipping my first day of school is a good idea. But what about after school?”

“Your parental figure won’t mind?”

“Nah, what about yours?”

“Mine won’t notice.” She looked down at her outfit, mostly to point it out to him. She’d spent a lot of time picking it out – little heels, the tallest her aunt would let her buy, and a cute ruffled plaid skirt. She looked like something out of an anime, which was the idea. She didn’t, though, look like she could go skateboarding.

“I can lend you sneakers, I’ve got small feet.” He didn’t seem to ever stop smiling. Shahin found it fascinating. “Say yes?”

“If I must.” And she found she was smiling, too.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/693095.html. You can comment here or there.