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Love and Hospitality

Feb24

For

[livejournal.com profile] rix_scaedu

‘s prompt.

Addergoole has a landing page here

This prompt pinged on a conversation I was having with [personal profile] inventrix about Nydia’s life after school and her son Corentin.

This take place near the end of Year Eight – Wren is living in the Village, as she graduated at the end of Year Seven.

Icon (in DW)is a clip of this lovely art of Wren.
Followed by Graduation Plans

"We could do this, you know."

Nydia looked over at Wren uncertainly. "This?" She looked down at the cake they were making. "You mean, the planners idea?"

"Exactly." She piped another rose onto the edge of the second tier. "Cy’DJ, cy’Maureen, we’d make a good team. We could go into business together in a small city, use the stipend Regine gives us as seed money, and raise our kids together." She tilted her head towards the penned-off playroom where her two and Nydia’s two were playing together. "They get along, and we get along…"

Nydia blushed furiously, a lovely indigo color over her unmasked complexion. "I don’t like girls, like that," she whispered.

Wren smiled reassuringly. "I don’t either, not really," she whispered back. "But that’s not what I meant. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with two friends living together, is there?"

"No, of course not," Nydia answered hurriedly. "It would be nice to have someone else to help with the babies." Dysmas had expressed some interest, when he was still in school, but since he’d graduated, all he’d done was send cash-filled cards for holidays and Cory’s birthdays. "But… boys? I mean, it might be nice, once in a while, to have a man around."

"I know," Wren nodded wistfully. "To have someone to take care of the heavy lifting, literal and figurative."

Nydia thought about that for a moment. "And figuratively," she echoed. Was that what she’d been missing? Wren had seemed rather happy, the year Elfred Kept her. And then with Kellagh the next year, but…

"I don’t want to be Kept again." She’d loved Dysmas. She still loved Dysmas. But she didn’t ever want to be under the collar again.

"Me, neither," Wren agreed thoughtfully. "But there’s nothing saying we have to. Look," she said, putting the last touches on the cake. "We can do this. We can offer love, and hospitality. Both as a business…"

Nydia was beginning to understand. "…and at home," she nodded slowly. A man didn’t have to be Keeping them to take care of, as Wren had said, the heavy lifting. "I like this plan."

 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/282449.html. You can comment here or there.

Presented

Feb23

For [profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt – more of “Birthday Present,” from the December Giraffe Call.

Addergoole has a landing page here

Content warnings: mind control.

“I’m not…” Noam gave up. If this infuriating bitch wanted to think he was stupid, let her. What would it matter? He was trapped. he couldn’t move, and, even if he could, he’d been paying attention. He couldn’t really get away from her – the school had no exits, or, if they had, he hadn’t gone through enough of the dungeon to find them yet – so running was, at best, a stalling measure.

It’s her birthday… You should thank me.

“Thank you,” he said, not certain if it had been an order or not. “You think Brenna will like me?” As conversational gambits went, that one was pretty lame, but she already thought he was a moron, and he wasn’t really trying to make friends with her. He had her pretty firmly in the category of not-friend, and planned on keeping her there.

“I know I had a ribbon around here somewhere… Aistrigh unutu. There, that ought to match your patterning better. Hold still.”

“Already holding still,” he muttered.

“Aren’t you clever,” she crooned sarcastically, as she tied a teal-green ribbon around his neck. “Yes, I think Brenna will like you. She’d been complaining that she can’t find anyone.”

“She talks, then?” He hadn’t been certain.

Hera chuckles. “She’s shy. It’s probably why she can’t find anyone. But you’ll be good to her, won’t you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Well…” She patted his shoulder and studied him thoughtfully. “I plan on giving you to her, you know, not Keeping you myself and letting her just play with you. That would be entertaining, I suppose, but you’re really not my type.”

“I guessed,” he muttered. Too pretty, too dumb…

“Mm-hrmm. I like my men shorter, brighter, and stronger. Less Dionysus and more Hephaestus.”

The back-handed complements and insults were giving him whiplash. She liked him, but she thought he was stupid. Not her type, but pretty and god-like. He wanted to nod, couldn’t, so just made a little noise instead.

“Don’t grunt, dear, it’s not pretty. Here, take you… no. you’re holding still like a good boy.” She stood on her toes to unbutton his shirt and tug it out of his pants, leaving him blushing at the contact. “There. You may move enough to take your shirt off. Leave it on my bed.”

He shrugged his shirt off and let it fall on the mess of her blankets. Like this, almost all the markings of his Change were showing. He hoped she decided that was enough, and didn’t make him show the rest of them.

“Mmm.” She studied her work critically. “One more ribbon… Aistrigh unutu… you can move enough to put your wrists behind your back, crossed over each other.”

He didn’t like where that was going, but he did it anyway, rolling his shoulders a little bit, trying to get comfortable. She walked around behind him, muttering to herself, nothing he could quite hear, and tied the second ribbon around his wrists, rather firmly.

“Don’t try to get out of that, mind you. You can move now. Follow me; we’re going to go see Brenna.”

“My shirt?” he asked, even though he had a feeling it was a lost cause.

“Mmm. I’ll bring it by later, don’t want to ruin the effect. Hush now, and not another word until Brenna says you’re hers.”

He hushed and followed, because he didn’t have any choice in the matter, frowning at her back. He felt conspicuous, exposed, and cold, all of which were pretty accurate, shirtless, bound, and following a girl more than a foot shorter than him like a trained puppy.

What if someone sees me like this? was quickly replaced by Is he looking at me? as they came upon Jabez. The short, dark, dragon-like boy shared a PE class and a History class with Noam, but they’d never really spoken. His eyes slid right over Noam now.

“Hera,” he nodded at the short girl, and

“Hey, Jabez,” she replied, and that was it. Noam might as well have not been there at all.

“Don’t frown,” Hera scolded, when the other boy was out of sight around a curve. “It makes you look sullen.”

He felt sullen. But he smiled anyway, trying to make it not look horribly fake.

“That’s better.” She patted his shoulder as she stopped by a door in another pod. Noam’s heart did weird things in his chest as she knocked, and he spent a bad couple minutes trying to find a loophole in her orders. He didn’t really have to stand here waiting like a… well, like a birthday present, did he?

But he did, and he had just sighed in frustration when the door opened.

Brenna hadn’t been expecting company, he was fairly certain: she was wearing a long t-shirt over leggings, her hair pulled back in a kerchief. Her TV was going in the background, and the smell of popcorn filled the room.

“Hera!” She stepped back into her room a couple jittery steps, looking uncertain. “And… Noam?” Her voice squeaked a little. “Hera, what did you…”

“Happy birthday, Brenna.” She pushed Noam forward until he almost bumped against her friend’s threshold. “He’s yours now.”

“You… got me a boy?” She reached out for Noam, and, somehow, he managed not to flinch back. “You got me Noam?“

Was that a good thing or a bad thing? He didn’t know, and he couldn’t ask, so he smiled gamely at her. She’d always seemed like a nice girl. Could she fix this?

“I did. Take him, Brenna, I think you’ll have fun breaking him in.”

No, no, he didn’t want that. He shook his head unhappily, nervously, but Brenna just smiled. She had, he noticed, what would be a very nice smile under other circumstances.

“I think I will. This is the nicest gift I’ve gotten this year. Come in, Noam, you’re mine now.”

“Tell her your hers,” Hera urged from behind him, as, for lack of anything better to do, Noam stepped into Brenna’s room.

“I’m yours,” he said unwillingly, and then clamped his mouth shut.

“Very good. Hera…”

“You two have fun,” Hera chirped, and headed down the hall. Brenna closed the door, locking a struggling Noam – he could struggle! He’d better do it fast! – in with her.

“So…” She looked him up and down, smiling uncertainly. “This might be fun.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/281557.html. You can comment here or there.

Mission to Paris

Feb22

For @theladyisugly’s commissioned prompt: “VanderLinden & Aelfgar’s child has some mission in Paris” from the January Giraffe Call.

Belfreja is an Addergoole Year Nine student; this is set sometime around the end of year 15 – before the apocalypse but after she has been out of school for a bit.

Addergoole has a landing page here

Belfreja studied the dossier one last time, made sure she had memorized all pertinent details, ran her fingers over the silk of the underwear, and then dropped it all in the garbage bin and muttered a quick Abatu Unutu under her breath, destroying everything in the bin.

She remembered Yuriko from their time together at school. The girl had been a Cohort behind her, and spent most of her time with different people, but eventually everyone talked to Belfreja. She’d spent four years making certain that was true, and then three more years after graduation reinforcing it.

They called her, those that called her by such Names, The Connection, and for three years, she had been making connections, drawing people in, working with people for her own purposes, and for those of the Organization. A storm was coming, they all knew, and they needed to be prepared. Belfreja prepared by meeting people, and by convincing them.

She left the airport, shedding her coat in one garbage can and, a mile later, letting the red in her hair slowly change to its natural golden. Even Regine couldn’t watch entire cities, after all, and she wanted Yuriko to recognize her. With her horns Masked, the hair would have to do it. The hair and… she unbuttoned one button and took a deep breath, shifting that part of her Mask as well, to show her other assets. Yuriko might be straight. Addergoole did, on occasion, graduate one or two. But she’d remember Belfreja for her assets. Everyone always did.

There were others that could find people better than Bel could. There were others that could hide from surveillance better than she could. But when you got down to the nit and grit of it, no-one could connect people like she could.

She called on an old friend at a cafe, chatted about the weather and the incoming storm, mentioned a friend out in the mountains of Spain who was making a “retreat” deep into the side of the mountains, well away from prying eyes. In the conversation, she dropped Yuriko’s description – her Masked description – and was rewarded with a suggestion she talk to someone at a cafe down the road.

At the cafe down the road, she ate croissants and sipped tea with a man she’d first met her first year out of Addergoole. They talked about politics, French, American, British, worldwide, and, in twists and turns around that conversation, about the politics of the Ellehemaei. They murmured suggestions for hiding-holes, and whispered even more quietly of the problems with the Council, and the problems with those who would defy the Council.

They didn’t speak of rebellion. They both enjoyed living.

In the twists of that conversation, she told him she was looking for Yuriko, and he told her he thought the girl had been working at the cafe across the street. She kissed him for old time’s sake, and moved on.

The cafe across the street had no friends of hers, so she had to make a new one. The waitress behind the counter had the right look to her, so Belfreja spent an entertaining hour chatting her up, and was sure to tip generously and ostentatiously. When the waitress was thanking her, she mentioned the pretty Asian friend from school she was looking for…

…oh, so sad, Yuriko had quit. She’d gotten a better job at a cafe across town.

Sh stopped on the way to chat up a street vendor, bought a pair of sunglasses from him and flirted for a little while, talking about the way life was these days, talking about the craziness of the world.

She leaned forward as she talked, letting him ogle the way her assets fell just a bit out of her blouse, how the white lace of her bra showed under her silk blouse. She liked to flirt, of course; she was, in some ways, always going to be her mother’s daughter.

(And, unlike her half-siblings, also one of her mother’s greatest nightmares – but that was a tale to which this was only the prelude).

And people, many people, liked to flirt back with her. The sunglass-vendor told her three personal secrets and seventeen pieces of gossip by the time she had to make up an appointment to move on, and had given her the name of an awesome cheese-monger and a phenomenal hairdresser.

As she left, he had, as happened to her more often than was believable, slipped her a piece of paper telling of a meeting happening in a secret location, and the person she could go to to find that meeting. Belfreja attracted revolutionaries the way her siblings attracted lovers.

She pocketed the paper; if her business with Yuriko went quickly, she’d check it out. Not only did she attract certain people, she really enjoyed cultivating them. She enjoyed, in a manner, cultivating everyone. It was part of her charm.

But she had to reach Yuriko before the girl knew she was coming, which meant getting across town sometime before the world ended, a shorter time limit now that it might have once been. So she cut her chit-chat with the next vendor to a mere half an hour, and hurried to the cafe where, she was pretty sure, her quarry would be.

She was rewarded for her diligence at Le Chat D’Argent et Noir, where, at a back table, a pretty girl with Japanese features and mocha skin was flirting with a customer. Belfreja picked a seat with care. She wanted it to take a while for Yuriko – she was pretty sure it was her, at this point; the green eyes were a dead giveaway – to notice her, but she wanted to be able to see if the girl left the restaurant, too.

Once seated, she sipped on her third coffee of the day, chatted up the handsome waiter, and, in between sips, muttered a Working to tell her more about her target.

It was Yuriko, that was certain; most people wore their self-identity like a name tag on their psyche, and she was no different. Blue-green with purple notes, a dream of the sky and feet barely planted on the earth, a flighty thing, a pretty thing, with a smile that could brighten the world.

That family line got the prettiest Changes, but it was Yuriko’s weather ability, and her skill at manipulating chaos, that had sent Bel to recruit her. That, and the fact that she was easily bullied, but only if you knew the right words.

Bel liked people whose keys she could twist, but only if nobody else could.

Once she’d gauged Yurkio’s identity and her mood, she shifted so that the girl could see her, making sure her Mask looked identical to her last year at Addergoole, making sure she looked like she wasn’t looking at her quarry, posed herself, and waited.

She was rewarded in short time by a quiet gasp and the sound of footsteps – towards her, good. They hadn’t been friends, but they hadn’t been enemies, either.

“Bel,” Yurkio said, from behind her, maybe hoping to surprise her. Bel jumped a little, just for fun, and turned, smiling.

“Oh, Yuri! I was hoping to find you here!”

“You were?” Yurkio sat down, looking unhappy. “I’ve got years till Tethys and Sören have to go to school.”

“You do,” she agreed. “I’m not here from Addergoole. I don’t work for them.”

“You don’t? I thought… your parents…”

Bel smiled ruefully. “Lots of people think that, sadly, but no. I’m not all that much like my parents. Either of them.”

“Blonde and beautiful.”

“But not, however, superficial. Unlike my maternal parent.” And unlike, she didn’t say, that judgement of me.

She didn’t need to say it; she was good like that. Yuriko nodded reluctantly. “Sorry. So, you were looking for me?”

“I was,” she agreed. “You have some very nice skills that are wasted working here, Yuri.”

“But I like wasting them working here,” the other girl pointed out sharply. “It’s pretty, it’s peaceful, and nobody bothers my kids.”

“It is all that,” she agreed. “But it’s not going to last.”

“You can’t know that!” The places where hooks would go were beginning to get formed. Bel started sharpening those hooks.

“I don’t,” she agreed, “but people I know do. It’s not a hard prognostication, and it’s being seen pretty regularly now.”

There, there was the first barb. Yuriko knew about seers. She’d been cy’Peletier, after all.

“I,” she frowned. “Not just in the States?”

“Not even first in the States. But we’re bunkering down, anyway, up north where things seem to be likely to stay stable.”

Stable was a good one; she could see it hit home. “And my kids?”

“Good teachers, other kids to play with – normal kids.” Normal was code for human, and human could be a very good thing… yes. Yes, she was almost hooked.

“And you could really use my skills? I could consider it…” she dithered.

Bel slipped in the final hook. “Jasper’s already there.”

Yuriko’s eyes widened. She’d always been fond of her second child’s father. Was she fond enough? “I’m in.”

Bel smiled. “Wonderful.” She loved her job.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/280348.html. You can comment here or there.

Picking Grapes

Feb18

For cluudle‘s prompt.

Shiva and Niki are characters in the webserial Addergoole.

Addergoole has a landing page here.

“Niki, stop squirming.” Shiva flicked the back of Niki’s ear with forefinger and thumb in exasperation. “You’d think no-one had ever picked your grapes before.”

“Shiiiiiiiva,” her Kept whined, sitting very still because he had no choice and still managing to give off the impression of wriggling. “It tickles. And you didn’t have to thwap me,” he added, sulking.

“This was your idea,” she pointed out. “You can hold still, or I can tie you down.”

She felt a stillness come over him as he stopped fighting the order. “That could be fun.”

“It could,” she agreed. She leaned forward to breathe against the back of his pointed ear. “And if you’re very good, then we will do that later.”

A tiny moan escaped him, a sound she was pretty sure he didn’t know he was making. “I’ll be good,” he whispered, the words seeming to come from deep inside him, from the person behind the bitchy mask.

“I know you will,” she purred. His ear was right there, so she licked the back of it slowly. “You’re my wonderful, wonderful slave, aren’t you?” And was he in the mood to take that as it was meant, and not act insulted?

The soft groan suggested that he was. “All yours.” Sometimes, sometimes she could remind him why he’d asked her to collar him. It seemed today was one of those days.

“Lay on your stomach for me,” she murmured, “and I’ll finish harvesting this batch of grapes.”

She waited for him to shift around, and then straddled him, one hand on the center of his back pinning him, while she used the other to pick the juicy red grapes that grew, Bacchus-like, from thick vines in his hair.

On the bedstand, a bowl already overflowed with the fruit. “I’m going to make the sweetest wine from you, my beautiful boy,” she whispered, watching him shudders at her breath on his shoulders. “And then we’ll get drunk off you.”

“Yes, Shiva,” he groaned, twitching as she murmured the Words to coax his vines to fruit again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/274626.html. You can comment here or there.

In the Infirmary

Feb14

After Prickly. This is set in the Addergoole ‘verse, whose landing page is here on DW & here on LJ, in year 9.

Gar carried Sylvie to the Doctor’s office, met on the way by Luke, who, to Gar’s eyes, looked as if he was trying not to laugh. And then, mostly because she didn’t tell him to, he waited with her. He hadn’t meant to do… that. To perforate her like that. Parts were showing that shouldn’t show. And he’d done that, because he was angry. It made him feel a little ill.

“That,” she said weakly, “was not what I was expecting.”

He laughed nervously. “No?” Where was the damn doctor?

“No,” she confirmed. “I expected… irritation, I suppose.”

“Irritation?” He took a few long, slow breaths. He didn’t want to get angry again. “You trapped me into slavery.” He said it as quietly as he could.

“I did,” she agreed. “I trapped Arundel last year. And I was trapped the year before. It happens often around here.”

“And people don’t normally explode?”

She made a grimace he assumed was supposed to be a smile. “Not normally so… literally, no. Normally they just yell a little, and calm down. I didn’t even yell.”

He looked at her face, because that part wasn’t all messed up. “I can believe that,” he muttered. “You don’t seem like a yeller.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/267821.html. You can comment here or there.

“Porter needs a Girlfriend”

Feb11

For [personal profile] inventrix‘s commissioned prompt.

This falls in the Year 9 Timeline, after Prickly (LJ) and Nice Guys (LJ)

Addergoole has a landing page here on DW (and on LJ).

December, Year 8

“Porter needs a girlfriend,” Arundel told Sylvia. Not that’s she’d necessarily listen, but she sometimes would have a conversation with him if he couched it the right way. And this, this was starting to bother him.

“Girlfriends are hard things to come by here,” his Keeper answered, more in the tone of informing him of a fact than with any interest. Of course, that’s how she usually sounded. “He could find a Keeper with no trouble at all, but he has been resistant to the idea. We might find him a Kept, but that would be trickier.”

“He really just needs a girlfriend,” he tried again. “You know, someone to hang out with, and neck with a little bit, cuddle and watch TV and all that sort of thing?” He wasn’t sure she did. They certainly didn’t have that sort of relationship. Then again, he wasn’t sure that was the sort of thing she’d want.

“I’ve never had that,” she answered, possibly reading his mind. He wasn’t always sure she couldn’t. “It sounds… I think it sounds pleasant.”

Arundel gulped. It seemed like an opening. It seemed like his chance. “Would you like to?” he offered.

“Like to?” she looked intrigued. Intrigued was good, right?

Porter could wait. “Would you like to have a boyfriend?” And, because she could misinterpret the oddest things, “me, I mean?”

Late September, Year 9
“Porter needs a girlfriend,” Arundel told Sylvia. Not that she’d listen, but she was getting better about that, not that he wasn’t her Kept anymore. Now that she had a new Kept. He didn’t know what to think about that, though Gar seemed like a nice sort.

“Porter?” Timora whispered, and then wrote, quickly, on her whiteboard, “I didn’t think people down here did ‘dating.’”

Arundel laughed uncertainly. “They really don’t, not very often,” he agreed. “But I’ve heard it happens, and can you see Porter with a Kept?”

She smiled, and wrote, “Catnip mouse?”

“There’s Kendra, she graduated last year, she was a mouse,” he smirked. Timora was fun. More fun when they were alone together, but they couldn’t spend all their time locked in his room. He had his crew, after all; they had the crew.

“Mice?” Sylvia smiled. “Maybe another cat, instead?”

Arundel pictured that for a moment. He didn’t know any other cat-Changes, but he hadn’t met everyone yet. But Gar was chuckling.

“Oh, man, can you imagine the sound? No, thank you.” Sylvia shot him a disapproving glare, and Gar only smiled broader. The rocky Ninth-Cohort seemed to enjoy tweaking his Keeper, and didn’t seem to mind when she glared at him. Arundel didn’t get it. But then again, he’d never really gotten Sylvia, either.

“Right, right, not a cat,” Arundel interrupted. “And there’s no mice that I know of. Bird?”

But Timora, his Timora, was writing again, so he shut up and let her “talk.” Her hand flew over the white-board, and in a moment, she held up: “Why not just people? Just try different people until someone clicks.”

The others read the board a moment after Arundel. “Like speed dating?” Gar offered. “Addergoole speed dating seems hazardous to everyone’s health.” He tugged on the chain around his neck pointedly, making Arundel squirm.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Sylvia countered slowly. “Not speed dating, that’s silly. But just bring girls by for dinner, girls we know are single, and see if he make friends with any of them.”

Timora drew a smilie face, while Arundel nodded, feeling as if his plan had run away without him.

Timora, it turned out, had Opinions. Arundel hadn’t been expecting that, certainly not as many as she had. He knew she’d only acceded to being Kept by him to have someone to talk to, which left him feeling a little bit left-behind by the whole process – happy to have her, but totally uncertain what do do with her. And now!

“Her first,” she whispered to him, tilting her head at a girl in the lunch room. Arundel gulped.

“She’s a Sixth Cohort, Timora,” he murmured.

“She’s pretty. And smart. And you’re only asking her over for dinner, right?” She smiled at him sweetly, and he sighed.

“If I get my wings broken for asking, I’m going to be grumpy,” he told her.

“You’re fearless,” she scolded. Wasn’t he supposed to be doing the scolding?

“But not stupid. Not that stupid, at least.” He wanted to make her happy, though, and he wanted Porter to have a girlfriend, and he didn’t want to make Sylvia frown at him. So he found Cynara cy’Drake in a quiet moment between classes – when her insane crew were nowhere around – and invited her to dinner in their suite.

Five minutes and a half-dozen promises later, he’d managed to get her to agree to dinner. Porter, he feared, was more likely to vanish through the floor than hit on her, but maybe then Timora would trust his judgment.

Cya was, in person and away from her crew (a group of Sixth Cohorts so crazy they not only embraced but fully lived up to their crew name of Boom!), less intimidating, enough that everyone (even Gar) seemed to enjoy dinner.

But Porter was still ears-down whiskers-twitching by the time she left. “That’s the sort of woman who alphabetizes her sock drawer,” he claimed. “I am terrified if I spend too long near her, she’s going to sort my stripes.”

Despite this, Timora seemed unswayed from her plan, and Arundel, a little confused as to how he managed to always lose control of everything, found himself looking through the lunchroom with her again, picking out more potential dinner dates for his friend.

“You said he needed a girlfriend,” Timora pointed out when he protested.

“Yeah, but, maybe he can find his own?”

“He helped me out a lot on Hell Night. I just want to help him, too. What about her?”

“Heidi?” The pretty blonde girl had deep-swooping ram’s horns and a sweet smile. “I’m not sure she’s into guys, but I’ll ask.” She was, at the very least, less imposing than Cynara, and only a year ahead of him.

She accepted the invitation with far less song-and-dance than his first attempt – she was, after all, cy’Valerian – and dinner was relaxed, fun, and with all the romantic spark of two aged nuns taking tea. “She’s fun,” Porter commented. “We should have her and her girlfriend over more often.”

Timora was still not stoppable.

Next, she pointed out a student in Arundel and Porter’s cohort, a studious blond girl named Sofia. Knowing by now that it wouldn’t work to argue with her, short of an order, Arundel sighed, and politely invited Sofia to dinner.

Sylvia, he noticed, was getting increasingly impatient with these diners, which made Gar all the more snarky, but, on the other hand, seemed to make Timora happier and happier. The whole thing made Arundel more than a little confused, and not exactly happy.

“If this one doesn’t work out…”

“If this doesn’t work out, one more, and then I’m done, and we can let Porter find his own girlfriend,” she assured him. “Besides, she seems like a nice girl.”

She was, indeed, nice, proper; she and Sylvia got along very well. Porter, on the other hand, seemed, while not unimpressed, kind of lost around the very sleek, class-president-type girl. “She needs like a future presidential candidate,” he complained woefully. “Not a guy who opens doors.”

“One more,” Timora reminded Arundel. “You said I could try one more.” And then she smiled at him, a wicked smile he wasn’t used to seeing from her. “Do you think they’re softened up enough yet?”

“Softened… what?”

“Well, Sylvia wasn’t going to let just anyone into her suite. She puts up with me because she doesn’t know what to do with me. But nobody else will have my power. And Porter is kind of skittish around girls, but by now, he’s relaxing enough to crack jokes.”

HE stared at his Kept. “You planned this?”

“Well… I liked Sofia for him. But I have a better idea.” Her grin was growing wider. “So let’s invite Belfreja to dinner.”

“Bel… the girl with the…”

“Beautiful assets.” Timora’s smile was gone now. “There are so many boys after her that no one has managed to Keep her yet for the crowd around her.”

“And you want to add Porter to the list?”

“No.” She looked deadly serious. “I want to cut through all that and have Porter Keep her, before someone like Calvin wins the race-for-Bel’s-collaring.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?” he asked slowly.

“I got lucky. You and Porter – and my power – and I didn’t get it bad at all. But I’ve seen some of the others in my Cohort – and even Gar isn’t really happy with Sylvia. I think Porter and Belfreja could really get along,” she added. “They both have that noir feel to them.”

He thought past the girl’s assets to her personality and, slowly, nodded. “I think you’re right, Timora. Good idea,” he added, knowing the Bond would roll over her with the praise, and, while she was smiling in the giddy aftereffects, stole a kiss.

“You know,” he continued, “I don’t think Porter’s the only one who needs a girlfriend.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/265870.html. You can comment here or there.

Two Vignettes of Cynara – Addergoole Boom Post-Apoc

Feb8

This first vignette happens around year 20 of the Addergoole school, 3-4 years after the Apoc begins. This is a little bit after this scene. Note: Cya is known for keeping Kept for a year directly after they graduate Addergoole; she Kept Gaheris for 3-1/2 (the apoc messed with her normal methods of doing things)

Cya lay in bed next to Gaheris, not sleeping, running through their date – date! DATE! – in her head, running through what he’d said to her. What she’d felt about what he’d said. The way he’d looked at her. He was, she thought, maybe really staying.

She felt, guiltily, at the edges of her love for Howard, her love for Leo. Feeling this comfortable with another free Ellehemaei felt like a betrayal, felt like she was cheating on them, in a way that having, sleeping with, Kept never had.

Stop it, she told herself, with a tiny, suppressed squeak of frustration. Even beyond the sexual, Howard had Magnolia, and loved her. Leofric had Zita, and they – they had their perfect balance together. It was no more cheating to have Gaheris than it was for either of them to have their loves.

But still.. countered the little voice in her head. The one that said that that’s not what Cya did. Cynara planned, and she was there, and she was always there when she needed her.

And that is not going to stop, she reminded herself. She was still going to be the one that was there. But this… this could be okay.

Slowly, uncertainly, Cya let herself fall in love again.

The second one is in line with this series:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Meeting the Family (LJ) (a chat log)
Roleplay Log (Cya/Cabal, posted by cluudle)
Cleaning Up (LJ), One month later

Cya escorted her dripping Kept into her cabin by the back door – because, with a house designed with two growing boys in mind, the route from the back door to the bathroom was unobstructed and hard-surface, very hard to ruin, and because that door was closer to the barn, and thus a shorter route for her jittery, unhappy Kept.

Once in the bathroom, she gave Panlong a gentle shove towards the tub. “Fill it with water at a temperature you’re comfortable with, and get in, in whichever order you’d prefer.” No use chancing that he might still have New Kept Syndrome and end up hurting himself trying to follow vague orders. “I’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to make us some doctored hot chocolate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammered, and started the water. Cya hid a sigh in her turning, and hurried through the cocoa-making. Cabal was right. She really hadn’t been fair to the boy.

She didn’t want to be fair to him, of course. She wanted to make everyone who had hurt Yoshi pay… Didn’t you have this conversation with your father once? she reminded herself sharply. And what did you tell him?

“If you kill everyone who ever hurts me, Dad, I’m never going to learn how to do this revenge thing right on my own.” She muttered it under her breath, smiling a little bit at the memory. Her dad had made such a boggled, lost expression at that…

…sometimes Leo reminded her of her father. Especially around Ruki. Best not to think about Leo right now, it would only muddle things more. She poured a generous shot of hoarded Kahlua and a tiny smidge of vodka into the cocoa, poured it into two mugs, and added a handful of marshmallows to each mug. Time to deal with the boy. Time to figure out if he could be dealt with. If he could be helped.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/264191.html. You can comment here or there.

All you can be, a story of Addergoole Year Nine

Feb8

After Damn list (LJ).

Ahouva’s stories all come with that warning: magical thinking.

I don’t like being scared of my Keeper. He shouldn’t have seen that. She shouldn’t have written that.
She shouldn’t have even thought it; it was okay to be frightened of your Keeper. He was in charge of her, after all. He had the power of life or death over her, that’s what Kendon had said. That was frightening, very reasonably frightening.

But it made Basalt unhappy, and the last thing she wanted to do was… “Where are we going?” Stupid, dumb, stupid, questioning him. Keeper knew what he was doing. That’s why he was in charge, not her.

“Outside. It’s still nice enough out, and I thought you might like the open air.”

“…Oh.” She blinked, not sure what to think about that. “Thank you?”

He smiled down at her. “You’re welcome. So.” He opened the door. “You don’t like the list?”

“I…” she quailed. “I didn’t say that!”

“I know. And if you really disliked it, it would end up on the list, wouldn’t it?”

It had taken some twisty thinking to keep it off of there. Guiltily, she muttered “yes?”

“Ah.” He paused, the sun shining down on them. “I want to know what’s really going on, not what you think I want to hear.”

“But then…” she stopped herself, but not in time. He shook his head.

“Finish that sentence the way you originally planned to. Please.”

The please didn’t make it any less of an order. “But then you’d be angry with me. I’m not very grateful. I’m not very good at being Kept.”

“Oh, Ahouva.” He hugged her very carefully. “You’re very good at being Kept. But you’re not very good at helping me be a good Keeper to you.”

“I’m sorry?” she squeaked. It felt nice to be held in his arms. And safe. Kendon’s arms had never felt safe.

His breath was warm across her hair as he sighed. “I asked you to write the list because I want to know what’s going on in your head – and because I want you to think about your wants and dislikes, instead of just mine.”

“But why?” she muttered into his shoulder. “It’s easier to be a good Kept if I just think about what you want.”

“I know, honey.” He pressed her a little closer to herself. “But what I really, really want is for you to be the best Ahouva you can be. Sorry,” he added ruefully. “I know the other thing is probably easier.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/263569.html. You can comment here or there.

Prickly

Feb8

After Trojan Gift (LJ). (I realized I needed to define their relationship more clearly before I wrote further ahead with Sylvia/Gar

This is set in the Addergoole ‘verse, whose landing page is here on DW & here on LJ, in year 9. Sylvia the Otter-girl is the character in the icon, by @Inventrix, shown here:
.
To say Gar was pissed would be to woefully underrepesent the situation.

He stood in the hallway, shaking. You don’t hit girls. You don’t hit girls. You don’t…

“You trapped me!” he shouted, fists clenched. Her otter-ers twitched, but her expression didn’t change.

“Don’t shout. Yes, I trapped you. You’re handsome and clever, and, with Arundel having gotten a new Kept, I find I miss having a warm presence in bed with me at night.”

“You…!” He couldn’t shout. What was more, he knew exactly why. “I’m your possession now,” he hissed angrily. She hadn’t told him not to explode, and he felt the rock quills coming to the surface. “You trapped me because you wanted a teddy bear.” Fury, denied the shouting, erupted in a cloud of red-rock spikes. “And made sure I knew exactly what was happening.”

“Ow.” The weak sound of it forced him to look down at her. At his Owner. At his Owner, lying on the floor, about a million tiny pieces of rock sticking out of her, bleeding little trickles everywhere and still managing to look mostly calm.

The collar provided him information: It is hard, although not impossible, to kill an Ellehemaei with conventional weapons. That takes hawthorn, rowan, or an innate power with those properties, although beheading has been known to work, as has removing the heart.

She wasn’t going to die. He was pretty sure that was a good thing.

Students who kill another student will be expelled and possible expunged, the collar informed him.

“Shut up, shut up,” he muttered. Rocks, he was good at. That was the first thing he’d started learning. “Abatu eperu,” he muttered, making all the piece of shrapnel vanish. He was better at transmute, but he was pretty sure she didn’t want diamonds sticking out of her, either. “Why me?” he muttered. “Couldn’t you just, you know, ask me to sleep with you?” He picked her up as carefully as he could, wincing at the blood smears.

“That is often mis-construed and even more often rejected,” she muttered weakly. “I wanted to be very clear.”

“Yeah, well, congrats. I think I was clear on my feelings on it, too?”

“Very,” she wheezed, and passed out.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/262914.html. You can comment here or there.

Damn List, a story of Ahouva/#Addergoole Year Nine for… um.. myself.

Feb2

After Moving On (LJ

Content warning for more … post-trauma magical thinking. I really don’t know what to call it but Ahouva’s brain is not a fun place to be and she’s not very nice to herself.

Out the back door of the classroom, down a side hallway, if she turned left here she could make it to the place where they went outside for kaana lessons. She planned out her route, even as she examined Basalt’s orders – and not just the very few he made orders directly, but all the other things he said that didn’t force obedience, just tested it.

She didn’t have an direct rules about where she should be after class, but he had said “I’ll meet you after your class.” That could just be courtesy, but it was probably a test. Probably a test she was in the process of failing. Just because Calvin creeped her out. Bad girl.

Chastising herself: she knew better. She knew to do what she was told. If she did what she was told, Basalt would at least have less reason to be unhappy with her, to punish her. He hadn’t punished her yet, except these lists, but that just meant it would be horrid when he finally did.

She slowed down and, forcing her feet to keep going, turned around. She had to go back. It was the only chance she had at understanding what he wanted of her. It was her only chance of minimizing her punishm-

“Ow! You bastard!” Ahouva stopped inside the doorway again, trying to stay hidden and still listen. That was Calvin, wasn’t it?

“If you ever,” Basalt’s voice was low and menacing, a rumble like a volcano about to erupt, “say anything like that where Ahouva can hear you, I will break more than your nose, you pissant little piece of shit. You leave my Kept alone.”

“You can’t get away with this shit.”

“Watch me. Bring your useless little friends, and I’ll bring my friends, and we’ll see how that goes.” He was terrifying. She pressed herself against the doorway and tried to become invisible. “Get out of here. I don’t want her to have to deal with you.”

“I’m gonna…”

“Now now, you aren’t. Get out of here.” Ahouva heard someone walking away, hurrying away, what a wonderful idea. She should…

No, she shouldn’t. She made herself smile faintly as Basalt rounded the corner, and stopped, frowning.

Frowning. Frowning was bad. She took an involuntary step backwards. “I’m sorry?”

“I didn’t want you to hear that.” He wiped his hand on his jeans, leaving a wet streak on the black denim. Ahouva gulped, and stepped back again, cursing herself as Basalt’s frown deepened. “‘Who, I’m sorry. Believe me, I didn’t want you to hear that.”

“I believe you,” she answered dully.

“Oh, balls, honey, come here,” he grumbled, holding out a hand. Unwillingly, she reached out for his hand, putting her fingers over his fingers. “Ahouva, Calvin is a grade-A asshole. I don’t want him bothering you. What are you…?”

“This stupid list,” she muttered, scribbling in it. “It’s still after class and…”

He peered over her shoulder. “Oh. Well. Let’s go talk about that, okay?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/255729.html. You can comment here or there.