There Are Things You’re Not Noticing

Mar12

librarygeek commissioned this continuation of By the Time Anyone Noticed and They Have to Notice Eventually, a story (in two parts) of a former-Addergoole-student mother from the February Giraffe Call.

The Addergoole setting has a landing page here, although Cleone is a new character.

This is placed somewhere after the apocalypse…

There were things in Cleoneville that people questioned internally but did not ask out loud. There were questions they had all learned not to ask, because asking led to… vanishing, in the worst cases, and things they didn’t want to think about, in better cases. It was Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement, and that’s the way it was.

But there were things that they never questioned at all. They knew them to be true, the way they knew the sky was “blue” that was often grey and white, the way they knew that gravity worked.

One of those things was: There are Fae who are monsters, and they will come and make war; if we are not prepared, they will kill us.

They didn’t need Cleone to tell them that. They didn’t need anyone to tell them that, because they lived in the world where it was a fact.

When the people from Addergoole came, they came Masked. They didn’t come in force, firstly because collecting a child was a relatively routine matter, and secondly because there were, after all, more than a couple children to collect for the school. But they did send Luke, and with him Shira Pelletier – their security and weapons expert, and the sweet, understanding Sciences professor who happened to be an expert hunter. Because Shira Pelletier, who was also their seer, had seen something she couldn’t explain.

They were Masked, every bit of fae-ness covered with impenetrable glamours, but it didn’t matter, because Cleone recognized them before they reached her town.

She sounded the alarm, and her people – all of her people, the former students of Addergoole, the wandering fae, the humans who thought this was a nice and safe place to settle – all of them fought.

Luke was ancient and Shira nearly as so; Luke was a soldier and a warrior and above all a fighter and Shira was a hunter and a survivor; but there were two of them and there were dozens upon dozens of their unexpected enemy, and the enemy was armed with deadly rowan and poisonous hawthorn.

Cleone’s fighters couldn’t win, of course – the humans had no chance at all and the Addergoole graduate had only a small hope – but they could certainly get the teachers’ attention.

“The oath will not let you keep your children from the school, Cleone.” Luke fended off three farmers with pitchforks and one angry former student.

Cleone, usually the sort to speak first, threw a fireball. While Luke was ducking, she retorted.

“I didn’t swear the oath.”

“Your great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers did.” Luke was too strong to be taken out by something as mundane as a fireball. He ducked, letting Shira take out the former student with a quick sleep spell.

“It shouldn’t bind me!”

“But it does. And it binds Dagmar.” Luke caught the farmers in a tangle of pitchforks. “Your people are going to get hurt, Cleone.”

“So will you.”

“I’m a lot more durable than they are.”

“Then concede. Walk away, and they’ll stop fighting you. Fly away, even, and we won’t give chase.” She motioned, and a winged boy dove in to attack. “Stay here and insist on taking my child, and they’ll keep attacking you forever.”

The Mara beat off the attacker with almost no effort – no physical effort; everyone there could see the pain on his face.

“He was one of yours, wasn’t he? Your student, a cy’Luca? This boy.” Cleone gestured at the unconscious would-be-attacker. “And now he’s mine. And he’ll keep attacking you until you concede.”

It was Shira Pelletier who spoke now, possibly because Luke did not look capable of speech. His face was turning an interesting shade of red, and his lips were turning white. “You know that it’s not his to decide. You know the promise was made.”

“I know the promise was made. And I know she can release it. Go back to Addergoole. Go back to your precious Director. Tell her to release me and my children from this oath.” She gestured imperiously, and the attacks stopped. Luke flared his wings, unimpressed.

“The oath will make you give in eventually.”

“And then I will order my people to lock me in a tower and defend me, and then there will be no calling them off. And then what will you do? Slaughter humans? Slaughter dozens of your former students? I don’t think you will.”

Now, Luke spoke, growled from between clenched teeth. “You didn’t have a bad time. I made sure of it.”

“Me?” She sounded innocent. “No. No, none of us did. It was a good four years, a good time. I liked the fathers of my children well enough. I liked the time I spent well enough. But you’re only… inhuman. You’re not infallible. And I’ve heard stories.”

“You’re doing this over a story?“

“I’m doing this for my children.” She stood up a little straighter. “Because it comes in waves. And there’s no promising that this year will be better, that this year will be a good year. So we had four good years. What about the bad ones? What about the years the Nedetakaei attacked?”

“You blame me for that, too?” Luke’s wings flared. “When I nearly lost my own children to it?”

“Yes!” Her voice raised to a shout, and all around her, people who were Cleone’s, whether they knew it or not, took a step back, and another. “Because if your own children were there and you did not stop them, then why would you do anything for my children?”

Luke’s wings snapped open and closed tightly. “You will release these people, Cleone. Now.”

“I will do no such thing. They are my hostages against my children’s fates.”

“Cleone.” Shira spoke over the growing silence that was Luke. “The promise that was made, so many years ago, helped to save the world. And it helped to shape the world that survived.”

“It doesn’t look like much of a saving.” Cleone’s arm jerked out, taking in the town she had built. Once, before the collapse, there had been a city here.

“Then you should have seen what it would have looked like without Addergoole’s intervention.” Now even Pelletier was snappish. “The promise was made for a reason.”

“And the war is over. What reason do we have to continue with this farce? Why should I risk my children?”

“Instead, you would risk all these other mothers’ daughters and sons?” Shira gestured around at Cleone’s people, nearly frozen in place.

“They are not my children.” Cleone stood unmoved. “The war happened, Professor Pelletier. Generations ago. The world ended. The project should be over.”

“I was the one who saw the war ending.” Shira raised her chin and stared her former student down. “And I tell you now, the need for the Addergoole project is still strong.”

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February is World Building Month. Day TwentycoughNine: Addergoole

Mar11

piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here.

The twenty-ninth question comes from librarygeek and is for Addergoole.

Keeping: Was it part of the original plan or it something fae? Is there any specific magical binding for Keeper and Kept? I just read a reference to ‘Hell Night’ and wasn’t caught so he should be home free. Is being caught at Hell Night how you get to be Kept?

Keeping is the effect of one of the Laws of Belonging.

The Laws are the rules which bind all Ellehemaei (fae); they fall in a few different categories, but the ones that interest us here are those of Belonging.

These laws state that a fae will first belong to its* Mother, then to its Mentor, and then to itself, but that a fae, once they belong to themselves, may choose to belong to another adult fae.

There are connotations to the word “belong” in the language used for the Laws (commonly called The Old Tongue) which include a sense of responsibility rather than just proprietorship; the word literally means “under another’s name,” and one who Belongs to another, either as their child, their student, or their Kept, is that person’s complete responsibility.

The ritual that makes two fae Keeper and Kept – at its most basic, a repeated statement of “you’re mine;” “Yes, I’m yours” – binds the Kept to the Keeper. Once Kept, a fae cannot disobey direct orders from its Keeper. The Kept feels bad if they disappoints or angers the Keeper, good if they are praised, and will often strive to please their Keeper at all costs.

The binding on Keeper is societal – if the Kept upsets or offends someone, it is the Keeper’s responsibility to ameliorate the problem. If the Kept breaks a law, the Keeper has to deal with the consequences. And the Keeper is responsible for making sure its Kept are fed, housed, clothed (if they so wish), and so on.

All of this covers Keeper and Kept relationships in the greater world outside of Addergoole, as they happen within what passes for fae society in the world.

“Hell Night” is a function of Addergoole.

Originally intended as a gentle hazing ritual to induce stress in new students – because stress is part of what causes juvenile fae to go through the Changes that make them full fae – over the years of the school, it has become a darker, more intense day of pranks, chases, and flat-out bullying, with an underlying secondary cause of enticing students who do not yet know about Keeping to agree to belong to someone for the year. So, in Addergoole, being caught on Hell Night is how you are often Kept, and the day in which the upperclassmen are the most intent on hunting down their new prey.

* Ellehemaei use a gender-neutral pronoun; the closest English has is “it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/689925.html. You can comment here or there.

Last words of Last Night – the Addergoole Re-Write Project

Mar6

I am so close to the end of this I can smell the panic.

Currently working on the Bonus Stories, which in this case are origins of the school’s three founders.

Last line:

He didn’t even know if he could drown.

I have written 4,105 words on Addergoole (and 1,609 words of “other that counts”) so far this month; goals for the end of yesterday were 3,750 and 850 respectively.

Whee!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/687186.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Twenty-Five: Addergoole

Feb28

piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-fifth question comes from anke and is for Addergoole.

What’s the reasoning behind keeping future Addergoole students in the dark about pretty much everything?

This one is actually fairly straight-forward.

One of the primary purposes of the Addergoole School is to encourage more half-breed children to Change, thus coming into the full extent of their powers, and to Change in a safely controlled environment, where they are unlikely to, say, set the school gym on fire or get killed by a mob.

Stress and surprise can trigger the change, and a series of stressors and surprises can trigger it more quickly than all the surprises at once; thus Hell Night, which originally was meant to spook and scare students more than it was meant to ambush them into Keepings.

However, for various and sundry reasons, the Administration is happier if every student of Addergoole experiences a year Kept. A secondary reason for the secrecy is that it makes new students easier to catch.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/682733.html. You can comment here or there.

Promises

Feb28

This is to clare_dragonfly‘s prompt to this January card for origfic_bingo.

It fills the “promises made” slot, and is in Addergoole, which has a landing page here

“I promise you,” Regine had said, when she had first locked a collar around Ambrus’ neck, “that as long as you are mine I will take care of you.”

It hadn’t been the promise that he’d wanted, but at the time, he hadn’t knows that he could want things, and so he had taken it as a kindness and a courtesy.

“The children you sire here will all go to Addergoole, that I promise you.”

That had been over a year later, long enough that Ambrus could think about wanting things, long enough that he’d begun to count on his fingers the number of times he had taken a woman to her bed.(128)

But Addergoole was an abstraction to him, a project, and the children he might be siring, even the one he had already held and named, they were all even more abstract. His mistress was smiling at him.

And it wasn’t the promise he wanted, still, and he did not think he could ask for things, so he took the promise as a kindness and a courtesy, and thanked his mistress sweetly.

“I promise you that my use for you is far from over.”

The promise came nearly fifteen years later, as Regine was wrapping up what she called “the initial phase of the Addergoole project,” already gearing up for “the educational phase.” Ambrus hadn’t, exactly, asked for that promise, but she had offered him freedom, and he had panicked, thinking, now that the initial phase was done, she was sending him out into the world.

It wasn’t the promise he wanted, but by now, he was used to the way his mistress spoke, and the bond of Keeping was pushing heavily on him. So he nodded, and accepted it for what she’d actually meant, and moved on.

“I promise you.” This time she was swallowing, hard, having trouble with her words. He had noticed, by now, so many years later, that she rarely made promises like this: only for him, and even more rarely her crew, did she speak so casually. “I promise you, Ambrus, that should you ever wish to come back, you will always have a place in my home.”

That wasn’t the promise he wanted. But Ambrus had learned to wait.

“…and in my heart.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/682348.html. You can comment here or there.

Unwelcome Guests, Part the Third

Feb27

To rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of Unwelcome Guests & Unwelcome Guests, Part II

(I should pay a little more attention to my list; this was for longfic)

Baram and his family are part of the “Baram’s House Elves” sub-series of the Addergoole ‘verse, which can be found here; Baram is also a background character in Addergoole.

“Girls.” Baram nodded at Via and Aly the second he heard the “basement” door shut.

“On it already, boss. Jaelie’s down with the kids and Aloysius. And Aly’s been waking up the rest of the defenses. Now she can swap with Jae and Jae can get the trees ready.”

“Good.” Baram paced out onto the front walk. There wasn’t much to pretend to do here, but he could still pace.

Behind him, the girls moved. This was not their first attack, not by far. They knew what they were doing.

The walls shifted. They weren’t awake, whatever Viatrix had said, but they were ready, braced, and stronger than they normally were.

“Precious cargo tucked in.” Jaelie touched Baram’s shoulder. “Aloysius has rear guard.”

“Good.” Baram didn’t have to like the useless thing to admit he could come in handy. “Trees?”

“They’re good trees, aren’t they?” She stroked the trunk of one of the front-gate flanking plants. “My favorite trees.”

Baram suppressed a shudder. Hawthorn trees weren’t supposed to be that big, and they were not suppose to /purr./ “Good trees,” he agreed. “Almost here.” The dust was rising on the horizon. “Inside.”

“Boss…”

“Inside. Might not be a fight, best to find out.”

She sighed. “Inside, yes, boss.” She slipped out of sight just as the motorcycles roared into view.

Baram did his best to look casual. There was a bolt that needed fixing on the gate, anyway.

There were six of them, four males, two females; four warriors, two bitches, if Baram was reading them right, but they didn’t split along gender lines. They were wearing leather, which might mean they were young – or might mean they were pragmatic. Baram had met Aelfgar and his soldiers; Baram sometimes remembered, in dreams, flashes of being a soldier.

Take nothing for granted. They could even, he supposed, be just wandering through. Since the world had started ending, they had definitely seen odder things.

“Afternoon.” He nodded at them, doing his best to seem normal-and-human. Normal-and-human was not an easy setting for him, but these were people riding large motorcycles and hung with weapons. Their bar was a little lower than people in suits in glassy offices.

“We’re looking for a pair.” The leader – probably female, hard to tell, didn’t matter much in this case anyway – snarled it out without even bothering with the pretense. “One male, one female, skinny. They came this way.”

Baram shook his head. “Haven’t seen anyone like that.”

The leader narrowed her eyes and glanced, briefly, at the man Baram had tagged as her bitch. He paled, closed his eyes, and murmured incoherently.

“They’re near. I promise it, I swear it.”

“You lie.” It wasn’t clear whether the woman was talking to the man or to Baram. It didn’t matter; she was drawing a weapon. “You. Tell me again. One man, one woman.”

Baram shook his head. “Bad idea. Ride away now.”

“You, you are not going to tell me what to do.” She dismounted, and took steps towards the front gate. “Tell me. One man, one woman. And I might let you live.”

“Last chance.” He still hadn’t drawn steel. He didn’t need to. “Ride away. Now.”

“You fucking deaf or just stupid? Give us our prey and we’ll let you live.”

Baram found himself roaring, just as the trees by the gate found they could reach the woman. “This. This is a Safe. House.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/681233.html. You can comment here or there.

They Have to Notice Eventually

Feb26

anke commissioned this continuation of By the Time Anyone Noticed, a story of a former-Addergoole-student mother from the February Giraffe Call.

The Addergoole setting has a landing page here, although Cleone is a new character.
Short summary of the setting: there is magic and people who can use magic (modern fantasy, and then post-apoc fantasy after, well, the apoc) The school, Addergoole, has a long-standing contract by which students tend to graduate with two children who then go to Addergoole themselves in their late teens.

This is placed somewhere after the apocalypse… since I haven’t determined the year, the year notations are x’d out

By the time anyone noticed, it was far too late for them to stop her.

Or so she hoped.

The letter arrived via courier, the way they did these days.

Dagmar, child of Cleone, it is our pleasure to admit you to the [xxty-xth] year of the Addergoole school. Classes will begin on the [xth] of September [xxxx].

Should you require transportation…

Cleone burned the letter and locked Dagmar, along with her younger son, in the panic room in the center back of her house. She whispered words here and shouted words there and above all she kept things going on as normally as possible – except that her children were now locked in a tower. Which, because this was Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement, her tower and her children, nobody thought was that abnormal, and nobody asked a single question about.

It was, wholly and entirely, Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement. Her home and the surrounding buildings had tidy walls that kept out marauders. Her collection of humans who worked in the fields were drilled in weapons, so that they could fend off wild animals or fae-born monsters. The Addergoole students who had come and never left, they had continued to train in all those skills their alma mater was so good at instilling. It had all made so much sense when she explained it to her townspeople. Nobody had ever questioned it.

Another letter came for Dagmar. Cleone shredded this one and fed it to the pigs. She made sure the gates were sound; she made sure the ballistas were in good repair.

She made sure everything was as normal and innocent and benign as she could make it, that her routines were routine, even as she braced for the impact that was coming.

One of her Addergoole grads tried to leave, a week after the second letter’s arrival. They did try, from time to time; they snuck out at night or they slipped out while working or, sometimes, they just walked out the gate as if they were allowed to leave. Gilana had always been trouble, from the day she and her three children showed up at Cleone’s halfway house.

Cleone did what she had to. She locked those three children in the tower with her own two, locked Gilana in the hawthorn-and-rowan-lined basement dungeon, and kept on pretending nothing was wrong. When Dustin, the probably-human serving as de facto Mayor of Cleoneville, began to ask questions, she gave him the same line she always did.

“I do what is needful to keep us safe. Right now, this is what is needful to keep us safe.”

Dustin clearly considered asking more questions, and then just as clearly thought about the people who had, in the past, asked too many questions. Safe, in this day and age, was a motivator for most people, at least those still alive to be motivated.

Nobody else asked any questions. Knowing where Gilana was – and where her children were – made certain nobody else tried to leave, either. Everything was fine, everything was normal, and everyone was armed to the teeth.

They were waiting when the people from Addergoole came to take Dagmar off to school.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/680047.html. You can comment here or there.

A Sea Change, a story of Addergoole Yr43 for @Rix_Scaedu

Feb22

This is a continuation of Planning and
Microbit One, set in Year 43 of the Addergoole School, for rix_scaedu‘s commission.

Regine had practice remaining calm in the face of volatile personalities. She had plenty of practice, in fact, with this particular volatile personality; she and Luca had been working together, alongside Michael, for centuries.

It did not, thus, particularly faze her when Luke glared at her with another wide flap of his wings, although she did note that he must be particularly upset, as he normally was more mindful of her paperwork.

“We are doing good here, Luca,” she repeated, “both for our students and for the world.”

“Tell that to the ones that we don’t catch in time.” It came out as a snarl; that was a little excessive even for Luca. Regine allowed her eyes to drift down to the papers for a brief moment. “No, wait, don’t. I don’t think I could stand to watch you preach that sanctimonious bullshit to someone who’s stuck in a bad Keeping.”

“Luca.” Regine coughed, an altogether unnecessary affectation, but, then, she was not a robot, no matter what some people would suggest. “When we started this project, you understood the difficulties, and you agreed with its necessity.” She pushed a pile of papers forward. “The statistics suggest that sixty-three percent of these students would not be alive if it were not for our school.”

“Try telling that to one of your children after they’ve been raped, why don’t you?” Luke’s snarl had gone to a growl. “Oh, wait.” He wasn’t flapping anymore. For some reason, Regine found that worrisome. “Your kids somehow never end up with that sort of problem.”

Ah.

“Luca, just because a child is of our bloodline is no reason to let ourselves become distractible. It is important to remain unbiased…”

“FUCK unbiased!”

And yet, his wings did not flare. His feet were spread a little bit apart, his hands were easy at his sides, and his wings were staying folded against his back.

That, Regine realized, with something of chill in her heart, was battle stance. And despite the shout of his profanity, his voice was otherwise quiet: conserving energy.

She didn’t think he would continue, but once again, he surprised her.

“It isn’t our job to remain unbiased, Regine. It isn’t our job to treat these children as subjects, separated by their Changes and genealogy and nothing else. If we’d wanted to do that – if you’d wanted to do that – you shouldn’t have sold it as a school.”

He took a step forward. It took every ounce of Regine’s not-inconsiderable self-control to not back up. “But we did. And we have been selling it as a school for generations now. As such.” He rolled his shoulders and his head before continuing. “As such, Regine, it is our responsibility to treat these students as people.

“As Students.” He continued, with another step forward. “Not just because they are our children – because you made damn sure each and every one of us contributed to the project so that we’d stay emotionally invested, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” There was no shame in that.

“Yes.” His mimic sounded angry, for all of that. “Not just because these children are our family, Regine, but because we are their teachers and Mentors.”

His voice dropped into something low and smokey. Regine could not, for a moment, remember where she had heard it before.

“This is what we’re going to do, Regine.” He’d taken another step forward. If he had a weapon, he could be skewering her with it about now. “You are going to take Students. A full cy’ree, every year. Starting now; I’m sure we can rearrange things.”

Ah, yes. That’s where she’d heard the voice. Regine swallowed.

“Students.” She tried not to sound nervous; she failed. That was interesting.

“And you are going to teach a class. A full rotation class, every day. Don’t give me shit about your responsibilities, Regine; the world is over. There’s a lot fewer people to manipulate than there used to be.”

Regine nodded. “As you wish it.” The last time she’d heard Luke talk like that, people had died.

A large number of people.

“If you feel that will help.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676168.html. You can comment here or there.

Unwelcome Guests, Part the Second

Feb21

~~To rix_scaedu‘s commissioned~~ A continuation of Unwelcome Guests.

(I should pay a little more attention to my list; this was for longfic)

Baram and his family are part of the “Baram’s House Elves” sub-series of the Addergoole ‘verse, which can be found here; Baram is also a background character in Addergoole.

Delaney snaked her way in front of Ardell, grinning, all sweetness-and-light and innocence. Baram didn’t budge, and he didn’t miss the three weapons she was carrying openly. Spear, sword, gun.

“We heard you were running a safe house, Baram. We heard you had some Addergoole girls working for you. We heard you had weapons, had food.”

Ardell slunk to the side of Delaney. No smile, more weapons. He often pretended, but he wasn’t pretending to be sweet, at least. “We heard you were living the sweet life here, surrounded by pretty things. Like the girl who answered the door. And we figured we’d pay an old friend a visit.”

Baram looked at the two of them. He glanced over his shoulder – very briefly – at Alkyone. He looked back at people who had been, if not his friends, his allies.

The next words came easily to him. “Who are you?”

They shared a look. A look, and then Delaney’s shoulders shifted, and Ardell took a step backwards. “We’d heard…” Ardell frowned. He looked actually bothered. “We’d heard you forgot things.”

“Did you really forget us?” Delaney did a believable pout. “After everything we went through together?”

Ardell picked up on the cue. “Yeah, man, all that time together in school, we were like crew. We were solid friends. And you forgot all of that?”

How much of it did they mean? Baram shrugged. “Forgot most things. Jaelie remembers for me.”

“This is Jaelie?” Delaney waved her fingers. “Hi. We’re old friends of Baram’s, like we said.”

“No.” Alkyone’s voice was hard. “I’m Alkyone. Jaelie is elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere.” Delaney sneered the word out. “Aren’t you cute? And I bet you think you’re smart, too. Move over, chica. We’re here to visit our old friend, Baram.”

“Alkyone is a new friend.” Baram spoke slowly, the way he could remember talking, sometimes, when he was having a bad day, “one of those episodes,” Jaelie called them. “Alkyone lives here.”

“Well, of course she does.” Ardell took Delaney by the shoulders and pushed her out of the way – carefully, Baram noted; there was no violence in the way they handled each other. “And you do, too, right, buddy? Remember how we said we’d always open our doors to each other?”

“Don’t remember you.” He remembered the conversation Ardell was talking about. Ardell and Del, Ib and Rozen and Baram. Baram remembered saying nothing, shaking no hands, just sitting back with someone pretty curled on his lap and watching them talk.

Baram wondered how much of the rest of his Addergoole experience he remembered differently, like the spider-girl and her horrified memories of him. But this was different; this was lies.

“Of course you remember us.” Ardell’s voice was getting sharp. “Of course you’re going to let us in. Baram, come on, think of all the things I’ve done for you. How much fun you had with my Kept over the years. How much fun you could have with my Kept now.”

“You have Kept?” That was a different matter.

“Boss. Trouble on the horizon.” Viatrix came up on Baram’s other side. “Looks like bad trouble, too. The alarms caught seven.”

The alarms had been the girls’ idea and mostly their implementation; Baram’s house wasn’t the only group of people still living here, but they were the most combat-ready and, in other ways, the most vulnerable. Kids made you weak, but in weird and strong ways.

“First alarms?” The first alarms were four miles out. Plenty of time.

“Second.”

That was harder; the second were two miles out.

A glance back at their unwelcome guests showed Ardel’s shoulder’s tense and Delaney trying to press herself as close to the threshold as possible. “Come on, Baram, you’ve got to let us in. For old time’s sake. For when we were friends.”

“Boss. They’re trouble.” Alkyone’s voice held warning. “And they’re bringing trouble here.”

Del’s voice shifted to nasty again. “And do you think they’ll care if you have actually helped us? No, they will take you down one way or the other.”

“You brought enemies to our door?” Baram didn’t need to look to know that Via and Alkyone were now holding their weapons. Via’s voice told him everything he needed. “You brought hunters here, to our safe haven?”

“It’s not yours, bitch.” Ardel had lost the last semblance of courtesy and niceness. “It’s our friend’s. Baram’s.”

“I think you’re under a misapprehension-” Alkyone began, but Baram had had enough of the back-and-forth, especially with potential hunters on the way.

“Their house, my house, our house. Not yours. Get in back. Basement doors by apple tree.” Baram pointed. “Stay there if you want to live.”

“So you remember us, buddy?” Ardel’s smile was back as fast as it had left.

“No.” Best to keep up the lie. “Get in basement. Fast.”

The door by the apple tree didn’t lead to the house basement, but the hidey hole there was safe, protected by Baram’s threshold…

…and a bit of a trap. Another thing Ardel and Delaney didn’t need to know until they were in there.

Luckily, nobody expected that sort of thing of Baram. They moved – fast.

On the horizon, Baram was beginning to be able to make out an oncoming enemy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675139.html. You can comment here or there.

How Do We Manage?

Feb21

This is to wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt to this January card for origfic_bingo.

It fills the “management” slot, and is in Addergoole, which has a landing page here

Warning: discussion of incest.

“You have it easy.” Aelgifu sighed and flopped against the back of her chair.

“Easy?” Shahin raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow in question. “I’m not arguing that I don’t have a hard life, although I miss Emrys – although I had him here a year longer than you had Io.”

They were sitting in one of the cozy visiting rooms in Lady Maureen’s voluminous creche and child-care center, Ayla’s daughter and Shahin’s three-and-a-stepchild playing around and with them. Shahin managed to look simultaneously matronly and adorable while nursing young Belladona; Ayla had never managed to feel anything but half-naked and frumpy.

“Well, you don’t mind the preliminaries.” How much could you say around two-year-olds? What would babies Niobe and Arturo remember?

“I don’t recall you minding the preliminaries with Ioanna.”

“That’s was different. And the baby-making parts were, ah, separate. Dr. Caitrin helped with those.” Dr. Caitrin had been necessary for the complex Workings that had turned part of Ioanna’s female DNA into sperm and then impregnated Aelgifu with that sperm – Ayla was a bit fuzzy on the details, but the end result had been Niobe.

“Well, it’s not as if Dr. Caitrin couldn’t help you with a nice boy’s consent.”

“Finding someone I can stand enough to bother with is half the problem.”

“I really doubt you want to go the route of magically-and-inexplicably-attracted-to-your-brother.” Shahin seemed to have no problems at all talking about such things in front of her children. Well, with her relationship with Emrys…

“That’s it.” Ayla sat up straight. “Shahin, you’re brilliant.”

“I know, but… how, in this case, exactly?” Her friend was watching Ayla with both eyebrows raised.

“Brothers. I have an inordinate share of brothers, and I know at least two of them have no interest in women.” Their father had said all my kids turn out gay, but nobody was going to take Aelfgar as an expert in anything except fighting. “That’s brilliant.”

Shahin shook her head, but she was smiling, not scoffing. “It is. I’m glad I thought of it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/674807.html. You can comment here or there.

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