Present

There were things Mike expected to come home to during the summer.

Students, sometimes – the trusted ones, with the invitation to his public home areas.

Desserts and other treats.

Once in a while, a co-worker, who needed stress relief or a shoulder or just wanted to hang out.

Flowers, some times, when said stress relief, etc., had been very appreciated.

What Mike did not expect to find – on the floor, just inside the doorway – was a boi. Specifically, a boy, bound in iron ankle and wrist and collared in the same. A naked boy, kneeling on the tile of the entryway. With a tag attached to the collar.

Mike knelt down on the tile. He contemplated Masking, but, though the boy looked human, he was in the middle of the Village. Humans didn’t come here.

Michelle,

The name was a cue. Before the boy lifted his head, Mike shifted into a female form, wishing – for at least the twenty thousandth time – that she was any good at all with shaping Unutu.

I found this on my rounds. I have no idea what to do about him. As soon as you sign this paper, he’s yours.

Treat him well, Michelle. And don’t Keep him for too long.

Luca

Beneath his signature was a scribbled transfer of Ownership. Attached to the note was a pen.

“Laudanum, hrrm?”

The boy did not look up. Mike ignored ethics and dipped into probably-Laudanum’s emotions. She had to have some idea what was going on before she signed this.

Worry. Worry, want, anticipation, anticipation, anticipation! Worry, concern.

No fear. And the impatient anticipation smelled to Mike like arousal. “Well, then.” She signed the paper. “Laudanum, you’re mine.”

He didn’t speak, yet. Was he mute? Had Luca ordered him into silence? “Speak.”

The boy’s voice was rough, as if unused for a long time. “I’m yours.” Only then did he look up, his astonishingly green eyes meeting Mike’s. “Mistress.”

Luca did give her the most awesome presents.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/491930.html. You can comment here or there.

Begin Again

Mar11

For @dahob’s prompt

Content warning: emotional abuse, motherhood, foul language

The first week was weird.

For the most part, she stayed in her bed and didn’t talk to anyone.

She replayed scenes over and over again, re-read conversations, deleted e-mails and then pulled them out of her trash bin, taped together paper notes.

You know better, seriously. I know you have trouble with this stuff but you ought to have…

Come on, you know I was just joking. Even you ought to be able to…

When are you going to wake up and…

She cried, a lot. She ate when she felt like she could. She puked, a little bit. Then she cried some more

Sometime in the second week she picked up a book. In her mind, she heard, only kids read that shit.

“Fuck you.” She said it out loud, because she could, and she read it. And then the second one in the series.

Maybe watch the movies, I suppose. If there’s nothing else on. But why bother with that crap? Come on, do something with your life.

“Fuck you.” This time it was louder.

By the third book, she’d stopped reading the old e-mails; she let the deleted ones stay deleted.

You know I want the best for you.

“Fuck you!”

It felt good. It felt really good.

She picked up her knitting. She hadn’t knit in ages, and, when she had, it had been furtive.

She went out to the park and started working on something in yellow wool.

Just buy it in a store. It’s not like you don’t have money…

“Fuck you.” She grinned down at the tiny toque. “Fuck you.”

Nobody looked at her oddly. You had to do a lot to be looked at oddly, here.

The fifth week, she’d knitted a jacket and booties, too.

You know you’re not fit. You know it’s better for everyone…

“Fuck you.”

She walked up to the door of the huge Victorian house and knocked on the door. “Lady Maureen?”

The impressive woman who ran the créche raised one elegant eyebrow. Six weeks ago, she’d said one thing. Today…

“I’d like to raise my baby, please.”

Because she could. Fuck you.

She was surprised to find she was smiling.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/490671.html. You can comment here or there.

That Guy Thursday: Nilam

Mar6

(It’s Thursday where Rix lives!)

Nilam cy’Friedmar

At first glance, Nilam could easily pass for a particularly ruddy one of Aelfgar’s children. He’s built similarly – solid, pale skin, and a stubborn chin – although his hair is ginger, not blonde, and his skin is more prone to freckling.

He’s not all that tall – 5’11” – but very lanky, which he never outgrows. Despite his modest height, he tends to go around looking like he can’t quite get clothes to fit him; for all her flaws, Margherita at least gets him in the proper length pants.

His Change does not change him, physically all that much, and many of the mental changes are buried under the Keeping. His hazel eyes turn sapphire blue, and he gains three inches in height and loses 20 pounds.

As to his innate? We shall have to wait until he is no longer Kept to learn more about that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/488027.html. You can comment here or there.

That Girl Thursday on Friday: Miryam

Mar1

Cautious and yet friendly, Miryam had a winning smile even before her Change.

Once her power expressed itself, she had a smile to die for. Or kill for.

The petite girl has a miniature coke-bottle figure, everything in proportion in a 4’7″-tall package. Green antennae and green fairy wings top off her petite figure.

She has deep brown hair in corkscrew curls, warm brown skin, and eyes as green as her wings.

It’s hard to tell much more about her. She hides everything behind a small smile that can grow into an intoxicating, addictive grin in a heartbeat.

She tries not to leave much of an impression, but doesn’t bother not leaving the withdrawal behind her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/484214.html. You can comment here or there.

They Were Over

Mar1

For lilfluff‘s prompt.

Nilam is an Addergoole: Yr9 characters. Forrester comes to school in Year 10.

She had thought she was done with him when he took the collar off her neck.

She walked away; he walked away. Neither of them were comfortable with the way the last year had gone. Neither of them wanted to be friends. They were over.

She had thought she was done with him when the dreams stopped.

She had a new Kept, a lovely boy who didn’t fight her too hard and made the sweetest noises when she had to punish him. She curled up around him at night and, after a few months, she stopped dreaming of her former Keeper. They were over.

She thought she was done with him when he graduated.

Their daughter looked nothing like him and everything like her. Her dreams had stopped, the whispers of his Words not coming through, anymore, even when she scolded her Kept. She didn’t say, anymore: good Kept do this, bad Kept do that, the way she had learned his Keeper’s Keeper had said. She didn’t punish her Kept for having thoughts. And she didn’t dream about him anymore. They were over.

She thought she was done with him when she graduated.

She was leaving everyplace she’d ever known him, every place she’d ever seen him. She was leaving the last places that echoed with his name – and all the classmates that knew Forrester was Kept by Nilam, and look what that did. She was leaving everything behind that could in any way suggest Nilam. Everything.

She walked out of her new apartment and walked right into her former Keeper.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/483949.html. You can comment here or there.

Educational

Feb27

This was supposed to be for @dahob’s prompt, but it really ended up somewhere else. Enjoy it anyway!

Ambrus/Ambrose and Phillipa are Addergoole: Yr9 characters. Phillipa has shown up in previous stories as well; see her wiki page for details.

“You should try Keeping someone.” His Mentor was gentle but insistent; he gave Ambrus-called-Ambrose this speech at the beginning of each year.

“I like being a bottom. And it’s not like I need to provide more kids to the program.”

“Still. You should understand what it is to top.”

“But I…”

His third year there, he finally gave in. Understand what it is to top. Fine. Fine, he’d Keep someone. At least then his Mentor would stop pushing him.

It wasn’t hard to grab someone. It wasn’t hard for the normal students to grab people, and he had a generation and more on them. In the end, he simply walked up to her and made the offer. He layered it with enough flowery words and enough silly affection that the prickly girl with the thorns in her hair to match her personalty stepped into his sugar-sweet trap.

It was almost shameful how easy it was.

On the other hand, it got hard really quickly after that, and just kept getting harder.

“This is sick. I got through six weeks. Six weeks! And then you had to come and… trick me.”

“Don’t cry.” He wasn’t ordering her, he was pleading with her. And to his horror, she stopped crying with a strangled choke. “Shit. That wasn’t an order.”

She looked up at him through the tangled vines of her hair. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“No.” He sank down on the bed. “No, not really.”

“They why did you do it? Why catch me? Why…” She tugged on her collar in a gesture he recognized all too well.

Dryly, he gave he an honest answer. “My Mentor thought it would be a good idea.”

“I wonder if he talked to my Mentor about it.”

“Valerian, right?” His memories of Laurel were an interesting and heady mix. “I’m sure I could convince her it was a good idea.”

“I bet. You could probably convince people up was down.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

He sighed. “Are you going to spend the whole year hating me?”

“Depends. Are you going to spend the whole year ordering me around?”

“Well, that is, generally, the point of having a Kept, as I understand it.”

“Kept? Is that what this is called? Better than ‘pet,’ I suppose.”

“That’s a specific sort of… never mind.”

She pushed her vines out of her face and looked at him. He was startled to find how pretty she was, under the thorns. “Tell me.”

Ambrus responded well to direct orders. He sat down on the bed, near Phillipa but not touching her, and began to tell her about pets, and toys, slaves, and lovers, and all the permutations of being a sub that he had encountered.

“You know a lot about this from the other end, don’t you?” She wasn’t angry anymore, and he hadn’t had to lean on his power to get her there.

“I do.” He shrugged. It wasn’t anything he was ashamed of; if anything, trying to Keep someone was the embarrassing part.

“Teach me.” She shifted to sit a little closer to him, took his hand in hers, and put it on her collar. “It could be educational.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/495078.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/483009.html. You can comment here or there.

Signs of Love

Feb26

For itsamellama‘s Prompt.

Moore is from a story I’m working on for Addergoole: Year 9, although he’s a Yr. 16 Student.

Cumhai is from A Couple Helping Hands and Littermate and Strange Favors

Addergoole has a landing page here

“Found anyone you like yet?” Cúmhaí tossed Moore a beer and flopped down in the chair across from him.

He shook his head. “Nah.” Being an upperclassman was still a little weird to him; he wasn’t sure how Cúmhaí was adjusting as quickly as she was. “They all talk too much.”

She snorted, her face twisting while she doubled over in what he assumed had to be laughter. When she looked up at him again, she’d gotten it down to a smirk. “Such a guy.”

“Hey.” He gestured at his ears. “No fun when they can’t slow down enough to make themselves understood.” Much to his frustration, his Change nor his Words had come with an easy fix for the deafness that had plagued him from childhood.

Cúmhaí’s smirk slid off her face. “Okay, for you, I can get that. But…” One of her doggish ears twitched. “I don’t think you’ve met all the new students yet. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Coo…” It was too late; she was already gone. Moore leaned back against the couch and prepared himself for a blind date.

“Right in here, no, he doesn’t bite. Well, my brother does, but I’m not introducing you to my brother right now. Here. This is Moore. Moore, this is Janoah.”

Cúmhaí ushered the slender girl in and half-pushed her at the chair that was normally her own. She looked straight at Moore. “You two make nice, now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He rolled his eyes at her. This was not going to end well, was it?

Across the coffee table from him, Janoah was looking at him with wide eyes. Deaf? she signed.

He stared at her. What?

Sorry, sorry. You deaf?

Yes. He found his hand gestures getting excited. You?

She shook her head, color coming to her pale cheeks. She had very nice cheeks. Moore shook his head. Distracted. He didn’t need distractions right now.

Mute. Her signs were better than anyone he’d signed with in a long time. She added a complex sentence that meant, more or less, “as long as I’ve been aware.”

He spared a glance for Cúmhaí, who was watching from the corner. “You win.” He spared his crew-mate a grin, and turned back to the pretty girl with the eloquent hands.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/482752.html. You can comment here or there.

Doug gets a Hug, a story for the Giraffe Call

Feb25

For imaginaryfiend‘s prompt. Doug and Ana are Addergoole characters. Addergoole has a landing page here

“She’s a dancer.”

That’s what Luke had said.

Doug looked at the girl. She was short, muscular, and lush, her black curls tied into a ponytail. She’d shown up ready to dance.

“Dance.” If she couldn’t handle him being short, she wasn’t going to be able to handle him.

She set down her MP3 player, turned up the music, and started….

It was dancing, Doug had to admit, but it was just about having sex with an invisible partner. He found his pants getting tighter. Shit. “Not this bump and grind shit,” he snarled. “Dance.”

She turned around and stuck her tongue out at him, then bent down and changed the track.

She could dance. This was going to be an interesting four years.

“Who’s the new girl?” Willow was one of Doug’s fourth-year Students, not a dancer, not a monster hunter. His half-brother’s former Kept and current beloved.

“Be nice.” Doug didn’t snarl at her. That would have been sillier than even he felt.

“I’ll be nice, but who is she?”

Ana was coming out of the locker room. “Ana. Willow. Play nice.”

He expected Willow to Keep Ana, and he was right. It took some of the stress off of him; it put Ana firmly off-limits. His brother’s girlfriend’s Kept. Only Willow herself was more off-limits. It kept him – ha – from making a fool of himself.

She was a good dancer, a wonderful dancer. Training her was actually fun, actually challenged Doug to remember moves lost in his memory. He was rough with her, harsh; he always was, when he was training. She laughed at him, stuck her tongue out, and kept dancing.

When she fought with Willow – every couple fights – she cried it out in dancing in his studio. When she was freaked out by her powers, by her Change, she danced it out in his studio. It made sense; he was her Mentor. It made him want to protect her. It made him go home and drink.

“Doug, I, ah.” Willow wanted to ask him something. Doug waited; he was feeling particularly cranky. “Aleron is coming to visit this weekend.”

He grunted. Aleron did that. It was good for him that he was still connecting with Willow after he’d graduated. That didn’t mean Doug had to smile about it.

“Ana doesn’t want to stay in our room while Aleron’s there.”

“Don’t blame her.” Ana was very straight-forward about being second fiddle.

“She wants to spend the night with you, Doug.”

“…what?”

“I let her choose. She chose you.”

“…okay.” What else was he going to say?

He queued up some of his favorite old movies, chilled down some good beer, and paced. Why him? Was she just trying to thumb her nose at Aleron? Doug didn’t think his little brother would even notice.

“Cowboy movies.” She smiled, contentedly, drank his beer, and slowly snuck closer to him on the couch. By the end of the second movie, she was cuddled against his side.

“Ana…”

“I asked Willow. Tonight… anything’s okay.”

“Is that what you want?” He was holding his breath, holding his arm just an inch above her shoulders. She nuzzled his chest.

“Yes.”

“…you’re sure?”

“Yes.” She raspberried into his chest. “Doug. Sa’Brontosaurus. Yes.”

Doug stopped arguing. At least, for the moment.

She could dance, oh, departed gods. This was going to be an interesting four years.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/481688.html. You can comment here or there.

Laziness X4

Feb24

After Laziness as an Art Form. From rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation.

They said the words. If they had a choice, it wasn’t a good one.

Then to add insult to insult, their captor – Segenam, she supposed – spit on their faces. Somehow, this dissolved the sticky webs, and left them sitting on the floor, rubbing their eyes.

Then he explained what they’d just agreed to. How they Belonged to him. He gave a couple demonstrations. Roanna only needed one.

“So now what?” She was trying to gain some equilibrium. She wasn’t sure, given the situation, that that was possible. But she’d adjusted to everything else so far. She could adjust to this.

“First, the four of you get in my room and clean it.”

Roanna sighed. Of course. Kidnapped by a spider-man and she ended up doing housework.

Tamberlain, she discovered, was a whiner. Zuleyma turned out to have never cleaned anything in her life, but Merton surprised Roanna by being better with a scrub brush than she was.

Cleaning was the start. Then laundry. Then cooking dinner. Zuleyma was better cooking than she was cleaning, but Tamberlain was hopeless.

“It’s a pity.” Segenam shook his head. “You’re the prettiest of the lot.” He was pointing at Tamberlain. He’d already established that he wasn’t going to bother learning their names. “But you’re useless.”

“Are you going to just let me go, then?”

Roanna thought that was decidedly unfair – if it were true. But that seemed unlike their… guy-who-controlled them, there had to be a better word than that.

“Of course not.” Roanna wasn’t sure she wanted to be validated on that one. “I’m going to sell you to the highest bidder. I can’t really Keep all four of your all yeah.”

“Sell… um. I am good at some things.”

Roanna snuck a glance at Tamerlain. He was blushing. “Are you really…”

“Shush, you.” Tamerlain’s blush only got redder, but he still managed to defend himself. “You’re good at this stuff. I’m good at… other stuff.”

Roanna let it drop. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be involved, but if it made him happy and made there… ugh… Owner happy, well, good for him.

She’d thought “and by the way, we have an Owner now” would be weird, when they got to class, but it turned out a large portion of their Cohort was in the same situation. The weird part turned out to be Segenam’s “hoarding.”

“People keep yelling at me for what you did.” She had managed to corner her Owner in the hall between classes.

He frowned. “I hate yelling. Tell them … tell them something about fair and square, I guess. And, I mean, if they want to talk about buying from me…”

With a sinking feeling, Roanna realized where he was going with that. “If they’re thinking about purchase, I’ll take down their name and credentials, and what they want to offer, how’s that? Then we can see how people’s offers add up.”

Segenam smiled. He didn’t do that often, and Roanna was a little creeped out at how good that made her feel. “Smart girl. I like that idea.”

“Thanks, sir.” She was not certain how many of the other Kept Segenam was sleeping with, but he wasn’t sleeping with her yet. She didn’t like how that made her feel yet, either.

“You’re a good Kept.” He patted her shoulder. “Go ahead and get that all together. All four of you are open for sale, so take any offers and don’t commit to anything.”

“Yes, sir.” She found herself squirming again, but she wasn’t give into the feeling and actually ask, even me? when he’d already answered it.

Notebook in hand, she went out to go about the process of auctioning herself off.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/481380.html. You can comment here or there.

That Guy Thursday: Thorburn

Feb21

Is Thorburn just a big jerk?

Those, and other questions, such as what exactly is his Change, have yet to be fully answered in the course of the Addergoole story.

He’s domineering, pushy, and sometimes a little bit weird. His nightmares are the stuff of, well, nightmares – some of which we can probably blame on his former Keeper. Maybe all of it. But he is, slowly, unbending.

Thorburn is a tall guy, and a big guy, 6 foot 5 inches tall and broad across the shoulders. His friend Basalt is wider and stronger, but Basalt is made out of rock.

Thorburn has a square chin, startlingly pale blue eyes, a perpetual 5-o’clock shadow, and skin the color of chestnuts. He wears his hair in braids down to his chin.

He dresses primarily in T-shirts and jeans, although he owns, looks good in, and sometimes enjoys wearing nice dress clothes.

Nobody has seen his Change since he got out from under the Collar. Who knows when we will?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/480855.html. You can comment here or there.

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