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The Storm

Feb20

For @DaHob’s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “Storm” square.

Addergoole has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ; the original series lives here.

Amaya has shown up before in Don’t Cry, Baby.

“The storm is at your command. What do you do with it?”

Amaya turned to look at Professor Valerian. Stare, really.

“I make it rain, Professor.”

“No. You made it rain when you were a child. When you were beginning to be a student, you made it rain indoors. Now, Amaya -“

“It’s a year later?”

“And what have you learned in that year?”

Amaya stretched. “To be careful.” She wiggled her fingers. “To be very careful with things more fragile than I and with things more powerful than I. I’ve learned Words.” She let her favorite ones roll off her tongue. Yaku. Kaana. And of course Tempero.” Water, Air, and Control. “I can push the weather with those.”

“You can. And you’ve been studying meteorology under myself, Professor Pelletier, and Professor Kairos.” The professor was watching Amaya, her expression patient. Amaya dug deeper.

“I have.” She nodded slowly. “Which means that I can use Idu-” She didn’t like that word, the one that meant Know, as much as the others “-to understand the storm. I mean, if there was real weather here.”

“I did tell you to bring a jacket.” Professor Valerian was, for the first time, wearing a coat herself – it was brown, with a thick velvety texture to it.

“You did.” Amaya slipped into hers. She’d had to buy it from the Store; the Village, despite being in South Dakota, rarely got cold enough to justify such a thing, and Amaya had come from a home far more southern than this. It was sleek and blue, the color of rain on the water. “And I did.”

She knew better than to ask too many questions. Professor Valerian liked certain questions – but only certain ones.

“Good. Let’s go, then.” The professor began walking, and Amaya followed.

It wasn’t long before the Professor was murmuring something to thin air – not a Working, Amaya didn’t think, but something like an introduction – and they were stepping out of the semi-controlled environment of the Village.

And into weather. It tickled at Amaya’s skin and brushed at her lungs, teased her and taunted her and grabbed at her fingers. There were clouds in the sky and wind in the air; there was a thunderstorm waiting to happen, just on the edge of the horizon.

“So.” Professor Valerian was smiling. Somewhere, her hair had come undone, and it flickered out in wild curls. “The storm is at your command. What do you do with it?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672732.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Eleven: Addergoole

Feb17

[personal profile] 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 eleventh question comes from [personal profile] anke and is for Addergoole.

How did the parents of the first generation of Addergoole students justify signing up their daughters for forced pregnancies?

So, I posted this to Twitter in musing about it, and Sky and Cluudle had some possible justifications, which I will post below.

The short version is: It really depends on the parent.

Some of them simply didn’t care, especially some of the men. They were being well-paid to deposit a sperm and walk away after the naming ritual; some of the women were offered better compensation to do something similar after nine months.

Some of them didn’t have a choice; they were collared and had been provided to the project by their Keeper – one example in particular is Ambrus.

Aelfgar, for his case, likes grandkids, and because as far as he’s concerned all his kids are gay (he’s wrong), this seemed like a way of ensuring some grandchildren.

Some of them weren’t thinking about daughters at all, they were thinking about sons.

In a more overarching sense: this was not sold as forced pregnancy. This was sold as any number of things, depending on the target: a program for the education and betterment of half-breeds, in a world which despised them; an experiment in a more targeted form of Mentoring; the foundation blocks for the salvation of the world when the Returned Gods came back. It was easy to sell it as these things, because it was all of them.

And, as is said by one set of parents in a story I need to finish, it’s easier to think in the abstract than when you’re looking at your eleven-year-old daughter. When the child is a concept, that’s one thing. When she’s sixteen and the Director’s letter arrives, that’s something else entirely.

And then there are all the reasons Sky and Cluudle came up with, which I’m willing to agree were probably valid for at least one person each:

“I got pregnant during my Keeping.”

“Didn’t really think about it.”

“I was starving.” [Lyn: This one was rather common. Regine offered a lot of money to the mothers]

“Being pregnant is a beautiful thing.”

“The work is important.”

“I trust these people.”

“Better she have children with our kind now than fall for a human later.”

“It’s not like she needs to raise them. It’s a small price to pay for what they’re offering (money/knowledge/etc.).”

“It’s a small price to pay for years of protection. Have you heard what the Nedetakaei are doing?”

“Our race is dying.” “The apocalypse is coming, I have to do something.” “I was drunk.” “I was mind controlled.” [the latter was very rare, but it did happen, more commonly to fathers than mothers].

“People had kids at this age in my day.” [This is actually part of Regine’s argument, too.

“She’s going to have kids eventually. Better with people that can handle her powers and the children’s.”

“I was on my third kid at that age /and/ I was married.”

“It’s for science.”

“A purebreed is talking to me aaaaaaaaaaaaah I’m so flustered.”

“Maybe this way she can find a Keeper or Kept around her own age. I hate how the older fae prey on the young.”

“It’s not rape if it’s your Keeper.”

And for after-the-fact justifications:

“I can barely handle this kid now. What am I going to do when she Changes? The school can manage better.”

“There’s no other way a half breed like her will find a husband.”

“It’s a half breed, why would I care what happens to it?”

“This is the best a half breed could hope for, a good education and a chance to breed pure.”

“This is the only person who has offered to get her a Mentor.”

“Anything is better than her not Changing at all and dying of old age.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/670384.html. You can comment here or there.

Dance the Dance

Feb14

This is to [personal profile] anke‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole, Year 15 – directly after Bully for You.

Addergoole has a landing page here.

“He’s a bully, Kelse. And there’s no reason you should be putting up with bullies again.”

“Cy-y-y.”

“A bully, what?” Lor looked back at the girl. “Nah, I don’t beat people up. But Kelsey here doesn’t mind bring my food, does he?”

A bully? Really? What were they, in elementary school?

“Cy, you can’t do this. You can’t keep fighting every time anyone is a jerk to me. Remember what happened back in Mayville?”

“You’re not doing your brother any favors, you know, Cy.” Lor leaned back in his chair and grinned. “I mean, who wants to know his little sister had to defend him?”

“I’m two years older than he is!”

“Oh, and that makes it better, hunh? Look, just run along and leave us alone; Kelsey and I are getting along fine.”

“I think there’s something wrong with your hearing, new boy. I said I challenge you.“

“She’s well within her rights.” Suddenly the short guy – Luke, that was his name, security, wasn’t he? And the gym teacher. Lor hadn’t broken any rules; he didn’t, usually. “If the woman is going to challenge you, Lor, you can either accept or decline.”

“So I decline.” He shrugged. “I don’t fight girls.”

“Of course you don’t.” He was beginning to get the feeling the gym teacher didn’t like him. “But what did you say? Oh. You’re not going to do yourself any favors if you’re afraid to fight a girl.”

“Nobody’s going to look at me sideways for that. Look at her. She’s tiny.”

“Of course you could beat her. But if you don’t… well, what’s that look like?”

“Shit, you people really want me to fight a girl, don’t you? Okay, I’ve got this.” Lor stretched. “Where and when, little girl?”

“And don’t forget terms.” Luke was so helpful.

“And, sure, what are your terms?” Lor was amused. “This is a pretty silly dance for me to just knock her to the floor, you know.”

“I know. But this is the way we dance, here in Addergoole.”

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/668092.html. You can comment here or there.

A selection of Addergoole microbits for the Giraffe Call

Feb13

So, I was looking at [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt here, and I asked Twitter for some ideas and then um you ended up with four microficlets.

One is Canon, Two could be, Three Might be, and Four is a definite AU.

All are Addergoole.

One

Luke was flapping in Regine’s office. Again. She set aside her papers and regarded her crewmate.

“Have you seen the reports?”

“I’ve seen the films.”

“Not those.” She tilted her head at a small pile of mostly-hand-written notes. “Those are from Williamsburg; the stack under them is from the former Washington State. Places whose survival has been smoother because of the presence of Addergoole graduates.”

She gestured at another pile. “These are the fatality figures for one hundred selected areas. Ten of them have active Addergoole graduates.

“Not to mention,” of course, “the survival rates of our graduates vs. that of the general population.”

Luke flapped again, but Regine was unfazed. “We are doing good here, Luca. We continue to do good for the world and for our students.”

Two

“You just have to learn to survive without him. It’s a one-day-at-a-time process, but you can do it.”

The matron was very kind. Keven appreciated her kindness, at the same time as he wanted to rip out her lying tongue. It was quite a contradiction, but, then again, this whole place was a contradiction.

“I’m bound to him.” He’d explained before. He’d explained every day he was in this place. “He’s my Keeper and he owns me. Without his say-so, I can’t just ‘let go.'”

“I know you think that, but it’s just a process of brainwashing that we can reverse. But you have to be willing.”

In the room next door, someone screamed. Keven felt like joining them.

Three

“It’s always better to be honest.”

The Addergoole South project wasn’t an official branch of the school, yet, but there were students they could pull in, and they were hoping for official accreditation soon –

    “It’s always better to be honest” was one of their main tenants, and one they had built right into the walls and the wards of the school.

    “Teacher? I don’t think I should have to learn this. It’s boring and, besides, I’m only going to be a despot when I graduate.”

    “No, Morley. I’m not interested in wearing your collar. You smell like a dead bat.”

    “…and that’s how we’ve set up the breeding program for maximum efficacy and best results. We got the idea out of a science fiction novel…”


– soon. As soon as they had the wrinkles worked out.

Four

Luke burst into the room, wings flaring and sword in his hand. “Put down the girl.”

Angus looked up at the Mara, then back down to his Kept. “…what?”

“Don’t act stupid, boy, you do well enough without acting. Giada, come here, be a good girl. Angus, you’re going to release her now.”

“…but I’m happy.”

“…but I didn’t do anything wrong to her.”

“That’s not what the tapes show. After what you did to her in the shower-“

“You were watching me in the shower?” The tiny girl shoved Luke and darted back to her Keeper. “Angus! Angus, he was watching me. In the shower.“

“I’m always watching everyone.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/667301.html. You can comment here or there.

Fuzzy on the Details, a random Drabble

Feb12

So, I’m playing with the Roster and I said to myself, “who Keeps him, if anyone? Well, Janoah could. Now, I wonder how that went?”

So I wrote this.

The girl was petting him.

Ankara was… surprisingly okay with this.

She had a name. Janoah. Her friends – her Crew, that was the word – had used it. She had a name and, as far as Ankara could figure out, she Owned him now.

Ankara knew about Owning, although he was still a little fuzzy – ha, fuzzy; he’d turned into a fecking angora-rabbit-thing overnight – on the details, and he was very fecking fuzzy on how the mute girl had managed to Keep him.

But Kept and collared he was, and the girl was petting him. Life was pretty good.

Janoah has showed up before here; Ankara, here and here; this story is three years later for Janoah and four years earlier for Ankara.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/666002.html. You can comment here or there.

Planning

Feb11

This is to [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Regine and Luca are characters in Addergoole.

Warning: cold bitch

Year 43 of the Addergoole School; 26 years after the Apocalypse began

A month and a half – six weeks and three days – into the school year was a perfect time to review genetic data, and thus Regine sat in her office, studying her charts and lists.

By this point in the year, almost all of the new students had Changed and, via Dr. Caitrin’s extensive notes, Regine was placing the children in their genealogies.

“Fascinating. Wings again.” She made a note on the print-out, not so much old-fashioned anymore as back around again, and then another in her notebook. “And antlers, there, of course.” Of course. It would be interesting to see how dilute Aelfgar’s line had to be to avoid some sort of head decoration – if, of course, it ever got diluted with non-horned lines. There had been the one, but that was a special circumstance… And there, more wings.

This whole process would be far more convenient if she could simply tell the subjects who to breed with. Or, better yet, remove the subjects from it altogether except as egg and sperm donors. It was likely she could find plenty of willing surrogate mothers, and the creche would allow her standardized upbringing.

There were times when the Law was simply inconvenient to the progress of science.

There were, of course, things she could do. Manipulation was not something she excelled at, but she definitely had a grasp on bribery, and, in this day in age, anyone was susceptible to bribery. She made a few notes; not everyone was paired off yet. There were a few pairings that would be beneficial this year. If she couldn’t make them happen, perhaps Luca or Michael could.

Her door slammed open; if Regine believed in coincidence, it would have been an interesting one that Luca Hunting-Hawk was standing there.

Continued

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/664900.html. You can comment here or there.

Beginning of a character-bloodline-profile

Feb10

Mostly for my own entertainment

Joachim
Wiki Page

Joachim is Kept his first year by a boy, Yisachar, which isn’t all that bad but leaves him sort of flailing around his second year.

He’s got a crew, mostly for hanging-out purposes and because it’s what you do, but he doesn’t stay close to them. They’re friends, not FRIENDS.

His third year, he ends up making a deal with a Cohort-mate, Kandace, for his first kid (her second). They have a son, who Joachim names Ayman, “blessed.”

His fourth year, at the urging of his Mentor, Professor Solomon, Joachim Keeps a first-year student, June. This is Year 17; around them the world is ending. Seanán is born at the end of Year 17.

Joachim has a bad time of it out in the world; he survives a year before being felled down by a monster. Three cy’Luca sorts from Addergoole avenge him, but they have no healer with him.

Ayman
Ayman is raised by his mother, who finds/helps create one of the fae-friendly compounds on the west coast. He goes to school in the year 34, where he is promptly Kept by the fourth-year student Aaricia. As is becoming more common, Aaricia chooses to stay an extra year, and Ayman stays under the collar until the end of his second year.

They have one child, part-way into his second year, Roxanne. Ayman spends his third year and fourth year hiding, not doing much and trying to stay out of trouble, and in his fifth year, Keeps Sonja.

He does his best to be good to her, and sticks around the Village afterwards until she graduates – both to learn more skills and to, when she leaves, help her raise her children. They have one son together, Dierck.

Seanán

Seanán goes to school in Year 36, having grown up in the Village. Nobody can Keep him and, indeed, nobody can stop him. His first two years are constant fights and near-constant Challenges.

It takes ’til his third year for someone to explain to him about the grad requirements, and that makes things even worse. He’s a creep and a jerk through most of that year, managing, somehow, to impregnate a 37th-Cohort girl named Fila.

He names their daughter Filly and wants nothing to do with her. His fourth year, he is shanghaied by seven of his classmates into a collar for a 39th-Cohort girl, Dilys. He leaves the school woobie-headed and not sure what to do with his life, but first he fathers a son, Phillip, on Dilys.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663521.html. You can comment here or there.

Bully for You

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole, Year 15

Addergoole has a landing page here.

“I don’t need another school. I’m going to the community college with everyone else.”

Thus had started an argument with Lor’s parents that had lasted the entire school year, past graduation, over the summer, and right up until the moment the short guy with the amazingly strong grip had picked Lor up and dragged him away from his friend Joe’s parents’ house and to the underground bunker that was supposed to be a “finishing” school. Like Lor needed finishing. He was plenty done already.

Then he’d actually gotten to the school, and Lor had changed his mind. The classes were hard, sure, but Lor had never minded a little challenge. And his classmates were no challenge it all.

It took him four days to get little Andreas – technically a year above Lor, but shorter and younger than him; everyone here was shorter and younger than Lor, it was awesome – to get Andreas doing his math and science homework, and two more days to get cute Candy doing his English homework and a few things on the side. Somewhere in there, people showed off some tentacles and horns, but Lor shrugged it off. Apply a little pressure and, elf or fairy or human, everyone bent.

Up until this point, he’d mostly been picking on “upperclassmen,” just for the humor value. There was Pano, of course, who he’d managed to get to do his homework, but that was it. It took him halfway through the second week of school to get another kid in his year, skinny guy named Kelsey, to start hauling his lunch for him. It was a pretty sweet deal, and he was beginning to thing his dad was right, and a finishing school was totally the way to do.

And everything was sweet until a skinny girl showed up at his lunch table with her hands on her hips. “That,” she declared, “is my brother.“

“And? S’my bitch now.”

“And I’m not okay with that.”

“Cytherea, Cy, it’s okay.” Kelsey squirmed in his chair; Lor’s smile just got bigger.

“Listen to your brother, Cy.”

“No. Lor, I challenge you.”

Next: Dance the Dance

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663159.html. You can comment here or there.

Do-Gooders

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole/Fae Apoc Post-apocalypse.

Addergoole has a landing page here; Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here;

Jaenelle knew there was going to be trouble the minute the little group drove into their town.

Drove, for one. It was 2019; things had started blowing up in 2011. There were plenty of cars, sure, but who could find gas? And people who could find gas either drove something tiny and fuel-efficient, or a truck for hauling things around. Not a bus.

And, of course, they were teens or twenty-somethings. Nobody adult rode around like that, fresh-faced and smiling and with a bus full of children and, what, miracle supplies? Perfectly clean things that they’d gotten from somewhere?

The girl had bounced out of the van and waved at the gate like there weren’t monsters everywhere and they weren’t making a scene. “I’m Berry; we’re here to help.”

Help. Like they needed help. Jaenelle talked to Farah and they talked to Bob and Angus and they talked to Constance and Miranda and their husbands John and Jon, and they talked to Keith, who was serving as mayor because they felt like, even if there were only thirty of them left, they needed some pretense at government.

But by that point, Jody and her feel-good husband Frank had let in the van full of children (with their children), and blankets and booze had done what blankets and booze did throughout history. The kids, Berry and Hawthorn and Zahavi they called themselves, as if their names weren’t probably Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed, were into everything. They took over the farming, first, and then the doctor’s station, as if some teenager knew better than Bob and Farah who had been emergency room doctors before the Fall. They took over the school, like they knew more than Constance, and even the general store.

“I told you,” Jaenelle told Keith, when he was suddenly no longer mayor. “And what happens when they leave?” Half their thirty-adult town was deferring to these children for everything, and the other half was close behind.

Keith looked far too thoughtful. “What if they never leave?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662975.html. You can comment here or there.

By the Time Anyone Noticed

Feb9

This is to [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt here to my 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.

By the time anyone noticed, it was far too late.

Cleone took her children from Addergoole, walked with them out into the world, the younger on her back and the older toddling along as best he could.

She walked until she found a place she could live, and set about making it a home.

From that home, she set up a way-station for other Addergoole graduates, or so she called it, a place where those wandering could rest their weary feet and have something to eat and drink before moving on.

And from that home she set up a small school, a place to educate her children and the children of nearby people (and the children of those who passed through).

She set up fields to grow food and fiber, and bakeries to bake bread, and a game preserve in which to hunt, so that her children and the other children were well-fed and well-clothed. She had the roads in the are well-paved, so that carriages could carry the surplus to other areas, so that no child would starve nor suffer, and to carry educational materials and such as well.

She made certain the road from Addergoole to her little home was kept in very good repair indeed, and made sure that the school was always kept very clean and stocked with the best books and the best food she could acquire. Everyone in her area was very well taken care of, especially her children.

Except that nobody left.

Oh, humans came and went and just seemed to decide to stay around. Children grew up and left town and came back with wives or husbands or both. And the Addergoole grads that wandered through… stayed. Just stayed.

By the time anyone noticed, it had been a decade, and it was almost time for her oldest to go off to Addergoole.

By the time anyone noticed, she had quietly amassed an army, willing or no.

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

They Have to Notice Eventually

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/661877.html. You can comment here or there.