Kendra, a slim, mousy girl, complete with mouse ears and nose, walks into the room nervously, and settles into the big rocking chair, looking out at the gathered audience. Her hands smooth her blue skirt uncertainly.
“Um, hi?” Her voice is a tiny squeak. “Professor Pelletier said you wanted to ask me questions?”
Kendra is a character in the Addergoole web-serial.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/255364.html. You can comment here or there.
This is, I think, ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lilfluff‘s fault.
The summer between years 31 & 32 of the Addergoole school
The boy with the unfortunate name of JohnWayne seemed to be settling in decently to Yoshi’s mom’s collar by the first time Yoshi visited home. At the very least, he wasn’t fidgeting, wasn’t hiding, and had learned to stay away from Uncle Howard and leave Gaheris alone.
He had, interestingly, far more a sense of curiosity than most of Mom’s Kept had displayed, displayed in part by the place that Yoshi had found him.
He also seemed to be lacking in common sense enough to pretend he’d just happened upon the hidden closet and hadn’t seen anything. Then again, Yoshi wasn’t sure he could blame him. After all, he’d found Mom’s trophy rack.
Yoshi had seen it before, of course. From the look on JohnWayne’s face, he hadn’t been expecting that.
“That…” He gulped, and tapped the saddle-leather collar hanging under the tidily-lettered “Pellinore.” “That’s my father’s name.”
Yoshi took another look at the kid – weird that they’d started out grown-ups and ended up kids, while Mom never seemed to change. He could see it, in the eyes, in the pointed ears. “I remember him,” he agreed. “He was a nice guy when he was here. Mad as hell about it for a while, though. Mom said he nearly blew up the car.”
That didn’t seem to help Johnny-boy any. He blanched, a trick with his complexion, and looked back at the rack. “All those names…?”
“Yeah. All Kept. Mom’s Kept.” He had his own trophy rack in the castle. Taking pity on the boy, he reached over and tapped the very first one. “That’s my dad’s name.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/254212.html. You can comment here or there.
Read my story “The Wish Machine” (from the Aunt Family ‘verse) in this month’s EMG-Zine!
All the Addergoole Fanfic!!!!
![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonfly wrote this story of Kayros and Vic.
kajones_writing created
these characters and then wrote
this story and
this story.
And
cluudle wrote this story set in the same general timeline as my current Boom ‘fics, staring Yoshi’s paternal half-brother Etienne.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/253667.html. You can comment here or there.
After: Separation Anxiety (<a
href=”http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/381004.html”>LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (<a
href=”http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/384190.html”>LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (<a
href=”http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/388716.html”>LJ)
Kept du Jour/a> (<a
href=”http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/390514.html”>LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (<a
href=”http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/391532.html”>LJ)
Meeting the Family (LJ) (a chat log)
and
Roleplay Log (Cya/Cabal, posted by cluudle); about one month after the beginning of this story.
Content warning: implied neglect-style abuse.
“Cya? Protect your Kept.”
She sighed, and headed out to the barn, the echoes of her conversation with Cabal still ringing in her ears. He was right, of course. He was usually right.
“So you show your son that you’re a Keeper who lets their Kept be-“
No. No, she had never been that sort of Keeper. Cabal knew that; he’d been her first Kept. She’d always taken care of what was hers, of who was hers. And Panlong should be no different.
”Yoshi wants him here so he can deal with him.” She had to let her son grow up, sadly, and part of that was letting him deal with Pan on his own. She couldn’t keep solving his problems forever.
“Come here.” The boy looked filthy, tired, and hungry. He’d been cleaning the stable for… hunh. Probably too long now. She knew better than that.
“Mistress?”
“Cynara,” she corrected, as he walked hesitantly over to her, his shoulders slumped. Yep, he stank. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. She grabbed his shoulder as gently as she could force herself to be, and steered him out behind the barn.
“Cynara?” he squeaked. There was a hose around here somewhere, and a drain…
“Strip. We’ll burn those clothes if they can’t be salvaged.”
He looked like he was considering running, but none of her Kept tried that more than once. Having a Keeper who can Find you anywhere had to be a bit disheartening, she supposed. “Strip?” he repeated, even as he did so. This is not being gentle, Cya. She knew that. She also knew she was going to have to work herself up to gentle.
The slow nervous trickle of urine running down his leg suggested that perhaps she would have to work up to it more quickly. “Am… are…” he stuttered.
She picked up the hose, noting someone had left it in the sun. Good, the first spray wouldn’t be horrid then, and it was late July. “I am going to wash you off,” she told him, trying for gentle and at least managing calm. “And then I am going to take you inside and give you a proper bath, and you and I are going to have a conversation.”
“Okay?” he squeaked, uncertain whether or not to be relieved.
“And Cabal is not going to shoot you,” she added helpfully.
“Good?” he gulped, as she started the hose.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/252547.html. You can comment here or there.
This is actually a storified chat-log from a chat RP with @inventrix after
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ)
and
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Content warnings: implied past abuse.
“Idu Intinn” is a, um, magic spell meaning “Know Mind;” in short, surface telepathy.
By the time they reached the Ranch, Panlong was collared, nervous, and very confused-seeming, in part, Cya was sure, because Yoshi couldn’t seem to settle on a way to treat the older boy.
Leo, shirking chores, appeared next to the car as if summoned to help unload, half-Masked as he tended to in fuzzy-antler season, his ears and tail showing but not his antlers. Cya smiled at him as she got out of the car and popped the trunk; Yoshi, still Masked, and Panlong, still un-Masked, followed her out of the car, looking various shades of unhappy.
Leo stopped dead in his tracks, and Cya’s heart sank. She’d expected some reaction, once she told the crew. Not on sight. She did this every year – didn’t she?
Leo glanced between Pan and Cya, looking super-suspicious. “Who’s this?”
“Leofric sa’Lightning-Blade this is Panlong oro’Cynara,” she introduced them formally. “Pan, Leo.” At some point, she’d need to learn the Name Pan had earned. Not today.
Leo, still watching Panlong warily, inclined his head in a brief greeting. He then, pointedly, said nothing to him, instead turning to Yoshi as they unloaded the car. “So, how’d it go?”
Panlong was clearly fighting his instincts with his terror and common sense, and did not turn his back on this bigger buck as he moved as Cya directed. She kept both eyes on him and muttered a quick Idu Intinn, just enough to let her follow the conversation from beyond normal earshot, reading the conversation from Yoshi’s ears and eyes.
“It went,” Yoshi answered carefully.
“…I see.” Leofric was clearly not pleased with this answer, but didn’t press the issue. Instead, he made a tense gesture at Pan. “Friend of yours?”
“He was in a crew with my Keeper,” he answered slowly. “I thought Mom might like him.”
“Oh.” Leo managed to put enough hostility into that one syllable to level a small country. “Well. It looks like you were right.” The boy is still here, after all. For the moment.
Yoshi winced a little bit. “Mom probably wouldn’t like it if you did permanent damage to him,” he muttered sotto voce…
Cya was conveniently in line of sight, still, but not in earshot. Panlong, on the other hand, hovering between her and Yoshi, could hear just fine. She noted the way he flinched forward and deemed it an acceptable level of twitchiness. He deserved some nerves for what he’d done to her son.
“Only permanent?” Leo kept his voice down to the same level and looks up at the kid, grinning. “That’s easy.”
Yoshi shook his head. “I know why I don’t like him. Why don’t you?” This time, it was quieter, quiet enough that a slowly-sidling-away Pan could only hear that SOMETHING is being said.
Cya was glad for the Idu, wanting to know the answer. She moved closer to Pan, to put a hand on his shoulder, and pointed out where he needed to put things – Yoshi’s things in his room, Pan’s things…
“Hunh. Hallway closet for now.” She was not going to be sharing room or bedspace with this one. Certainly not right away.
Outside, Leo considered the question thoughtfully. “It’s complicated,” he finally settled on.
Oh, good, Leo. Complicated. Cya sighed again. This was going to get messy.
And then Yoshi made it messier. “I’m all for more reasons to hate him. Is it ’cause he kinda looks like you? I mean… Mom’s brought home your half-brothers before.” Yes, dear. About fifty percent of the time. Or nephews, or great-nephews.
Leofric tensed and shot Yoshi a sharp glance. “Why did you think Cya would like him?”
There was a pause while her son considered her answer. Cya studied the boy, antlers, blonde hair, that chin she knew so well, while waiting. He shoved his suitcases in the hall closet, and looked out at the car like it was a war zone.
“She has a type.” Two types, thank you. Possibly three. “And, well, I wanted to fuck with him. Getting him under Mom’s collar seemed a good way to kill two birds with one stone.”
Cya chuckled, and then had to make it a cough.
“Go on,” she snapped at Panlong. “Keep moving.”
Leo’s fingers twitched in a barely-repressed reflex. “What did he–” He cut himself off mid-sentence and exhaled loudly. “If you feel like talking about it…”
Listening, Cya felt her glare at the boy deepening. What did he do, indeed.
Yoshi’s breaths were getting shakey. “Not yet. Thanks, Uncle Leo.” He smiled uncertainly. “Pan wasn’t the worst of it, but Mom doesn’t ever Keep girls.”
Oh. Oh. Some bitch was going to die a messy, bloody death. A slow one. Pan, seeing the look on her face, backed up slowly towards the closet.
Leofric looked like he was going to say something, then just smiled crookedly. “No, she doesn’t.”
Oh, dear. Cya wished, momentarily, for a deeper Idu, but she wouldn’t do that without his permission.
Yoshi’s face twisted in worry. “Uncle Leo…?” he asked nervously.
“It’s okay.” His smile looked a bit forced and uncertain to Yoshi’s eyes, like he wasn’t sure it was the right response. “You talked to your mom about it, yet?”
Hardly. She frowned, and resisted the urge to shove the boy in the closet.
“A little. I mean, Pan was in the car, so there was only so much. And… she’s my mom,” he adds uncertainly. “She sounds like she gets it, but can she, really?” He sounds like he’s not sure he wants to know.
Oh, son. She bit her lip and went for the next load of luggage.
“Yes.” It was a very definite yes. “She does.”
“I’m not sure I want to think about how Mom knows that sort of thing.” Yoshi squirmed uncomfortably; listening in, Cya did, too. “She said you might… get it?”
Leofric glanced away, looking conflicted. “…I might. If…” He trails off. “Whenever you want to talk about it, I’ll… try.” It was time to break this conversation up. She grabbed Panlong and steered him towards the others with another chest.
She paused by the pair, son and beloved, meeting Leo’s eye. He gave her a twisted half-smile, almost apologetic, then gave himself a shake and inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. With that, he was back to normal-for-Leo. He smiled at her again, a real smile but with an edge. “How’s the new boy doing?”
“Terrified. Rightfully.” She kept looking at him for a moment. “Don’t kill him, Leo.” It was almost a request, almost a plea. And then she couldn’t stand it anymore, and hugged him, tightly, fiercely.
He hesitated, then hugged her back carefully “I won’t kill him.” And, as an afterthought; “I won’t let Zita kill him, either.”
“Thank you, Leo.” She pretended not to notice the death look he sent the boy, and added, instead, “if I thought he was un-redeemable, he never would have survived the drive home.” And that, she made sure Panlong heard.
For a moment, Leo’s smile looked almost bitter. “I figured.”
“Are you mad at me?” she whispered, confused by the bitterness.
“What? No, of course not.” He was obviously confused by the question, so she tried to explain.
“You’re getting that way where I don’t know where you are again,” she muttered in his pointed ear.
“Where…? I’m…” He trailed off, then glanced at Yoshi and away again. “Sorry.” It was just barely audible. “But I promise, you haven’t done anything wrong, and I’m not upset with you. Okay?”
Looking at his face, she knew it was going to have to be enough right now. She nodded, and then, still up against his ear, she whispered, “I love you, Leo. I always will.”
His arms were warm around her for just a moment. “Anything else need to be brought in?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/252178.html. You can comment here or there.
After Witness (LJ Link)
Three-Way (LJ)
In the Audience (LJ)
Just Be Yourself (LJ)
Addergoole has a landing page here (here on LJ)
This probably needs a trigger warning for magical thinking
Basalt was, Ahouva was learning, not as hard to work around as she’d feared. He didn’t appear to have a temper, certainly not on the lines of Kendon’s, and he had a great deal of patience with her while she fumbled around, trying to figure out how to make him happy.
She was not sure she liked this list that he insisted on – “write down everything that makes you really happy, and everything that makes you unhappy” – but it had become a kind of meditative exercise, a minute after each class where she let herself just think about herself, and how she felt. Sharing it with him every evening – that was less comfortable. It never failed to get a frown, and it never failed to get a “good girl,” until she was finally, today after her magic class, adding “talking about this list” to her list of things that made her unhappy.
Thoughtfully, and because she didn’t like him frowning, she added “Kissing Basalt” to the list of things that made her happy. It was honest – he’d insisted on honesty but, thankfully, not complete honesty – and it would make him smile. She liked it when he smiled.
She closed her notebook and headed out into the hall. He’d be waiting for her; he always waited for her after her last class. It could be kind of romantic, like he was some 1950’s boyfriend, if she didn’t think he was afraid Kendon would get his hands on her. That… She paused in the doorway, and wrote “thinking about Kendon” on the list of things that made her unhappy. Thinking about Kendon terrified her.
“So you have Kendon’s little toy now, ‘Salt?” She paused in the doorway. Kendon’s toy. That was her. Not anymore… but that was her. What would Basalt say.
“I Own Ahouva,” he confirmed, slowly. “Why, Calvin?”
Calvin! She knew him! He’d been all over Timora for the first couple weeks, and then… nothing. And Timora had come out of Hell Night with Arundel, and not speaking.
“Getting’ kind of bored, thought you might want to exchange… favors. She’s a cute little thing.”
“You don’t have anything I want.”
“Are you sure?” Calvin’s voice dropped to a whisper, and Ahouva’s heart dropped. Slowly, she slunk back into the classroom. She could hide. She could… something. Run away? She could run away. Somewhere. Slowly, she sidled out the back door.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/251269.html. You can comment here or there.
To Anonymous’ commissioned prompt, a continuation of this story (and on LJ).
Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ.
Calvin had seemed like such a nice guy.
Looking at him now, from the safety of Arundel’s arms, Timora wasn’t certain anymore. Sure, he’d taken an interest in her, when no-one else had, but here he was standing there next to Tiggs, staring at her, and claiming she was his. Arundel had said he was too late. Too late? That seemed like a strange thing to say.
“Is that right?” Calvin seemed to agree with her on that, at least. “Is the ickle bird-boy right about that one, Timmy? Is he too late?”
He was probably waiting to trap you. Looking at him standing next to Tiggs, it seemed more than a bit likely.
“I really liked you,” she told him, wincing as her voice came out like a slow-speed car crash, then wincing again as he – and Tiggs, and Porter – took an involuntary step backwards.
“I like you, Timmy, that’s why you’re going to be mine. Quietly. Right?”
“I told you, Calvin, you’re too late. Leave her alone.” Arunde’s voice was louder and more high-pitched, and his wings were spreading to fill the hall.
“You couldn’t keep her if you tried, junior. Hand her over now and no-one gets hurt.”
Keep. Mine. Timora shook her head. “I’m not yours, Calvin.” Her voice was getting more level, but it still sounded like tortured metal. “Stop it.”
Calvin was loosing his cool. “Well, this little shit can’t keep you. How’s he going to protect you?”
That was the second time in less than an hour someone had mentioned protecting her. “Porter, Arundel,” she whispered.
Porter was quick on the uptake and covered his ears. Arundel’s hands were busy holding her, but, on the other hand, he didn’t seem nearly as bothered by her voice as everyone else.
“You’re being silly, Timmy,” Calvin said, and then she screamed.
This time, she was paying attention. Even with his ears covered, Porter was wincing, walking backwards slowly away from her. Calvin and Tiggs, who were either slow, brave, or stupid, didn’t even try to cover their ears.
“Tim-” Calvin began, over the start of her scream, which only sounded like a three-car pileup running into a flock of eagles. She pushed a little more air into it,adding a semi truck full of upset canaries to the sound crash, and Calvin and Tiggs started running. She made it louder, as loud as she could go, and Porter tripped over his feet backing up, falling on his tail.
Arundel stood there, holding her, seeming hardly fazed at all.
She caught her breath and stopped, smiling at him, then a little more apologetically at Porter. “It really does work.”
“It does,” Porter agreed shakily. “Your speaking voice is still pretty…”
“Oh, yeah.” She clapped her hands over her mouth, abashed.
“It’s okay,” the tiger-man assured her. “Come on, buddy, let’s get her into the doctor’s. Do you think it’s your power, that’s why she doesn’t make you run?”
“I guess?” Having the person carrying you shrug was, Timora discovered, a rather strange sensation. Sort of like a very mellow roller-coaster. He looked down at her thoughtfully. “Everyone has a power,” he informed her. “Porter can make doors. Anywhere. It’s pretty awesome. Me? I’m fearless.”
She made a noise that she hoped was encouraging, and he grinned at her even more widely. “And you’re really pretty. Here, Doctor’s office. I think you’re fine, though. It’s not a bad Change.”
The nurse shooed them into an exam room, all three of them, although Porter stayed near the door, as if guarding their escape. Once in there, Arundel picked up as if he hadn’t stopped, not seeming to mind the one-sided conversation. “So yours seems to be… sort of…”
“Kelpie?” Porter offered. “Kelpie meets a banshee.”
Dr. Caitrin walking in stopped all speculation. “The tapes are very interesting. It’s going to take a while to get control of that, I think, Timora, so I’d ask you to be careful with your voice until then, all right? In the meantime…” She laid her hands on Timora’s ankles and began muttering under her breath. “Interesting.”
“Interesting?” Arundel asked. “I see hooves. And a tail, right?”
“Unsurprising, considering her ancestry. Yes. Yes. This is going to be an interesting Change, and I don’t believe it’s over yet. Are you Keeping her?”
“Ah. We need to talk about that.”
“Keeping?” Timora whispered. “Calvin…”
“Yeah,” Arundel muttered. “I’m not him.”
“Hrmph. Well, Timora, take these two pills. If you are in pain in the morning, come see me. In the meantime…” the doctor looked thoughtful. “I don’t normally suggest Keepings, but, if he thinks he can hack it, and you’re willing, Timora, considering your peculiar power, I’d consider Arundel.” She pressed the small blue pills into Timora’s hand and, on that very odd note, left, Porter following discretely behind her.
“Well.” The eagle-boy flared his wings uncomfortably. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything, I really don’t. But I was gonna offer…”
She looked up at him uncertainly. “If you’re the only person I can talk to without them running away…” she whispered.
“There is that, but that seems like a lousy reason to Keep someone. ‘Here, be Mine so you have someone to talk to.’” He shrugged again. “I’ve been watching you, and I like you.”
“You make it sound like stalking.” It was nice to be able to speak again without someone flinching. Then again, he’d started looking nervous.
“Well,” he squirmed, “kind of? I mean, everyone kind of stalks the new students around here. I guess I got stalked last year?”
Oh, he looked nervous because he was nervous, not because of her voice. Nervous of her? “Why are you all squirmy?” Lovely, she winced; that was exactly the way to get a guy to like her.
“Well, I don’t want you to think I’m a creep like Calvin. I mean, I guess I deserve it.”
“Did you set me up to get terrified and dragged around and what-have-you, Kepted?” she countered. Calvin had done that. Calvin who had seemed so nice. Arundel seemed nice, too.
“No? I mean, I just kind of tried to be where I thought he’d set you up, so I could rescue you. Well, Porter got there first…”
“Okay, that’s a little creepy,” she agreed. But… “Why?”
He folded his wings up uncertainly, hiding his head. “Because I like you.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/249760.html. You can comment here or there.
Warnings on this snippet: Implied abuse, implied rape, death threats, mind control.
In the series with:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ) in the Boom!/RP timeline. I believe this is part three of four four of five five of MANY.
She had never, Cya noted dispassionately, seen someone fight so hard against her mind control. Well, there had been Pelinore, but that had been physical Workings against the car. She’d learned, after him. Panlong, in the back seat, was barely moving, trembling with the effort.
She glanced over at Yoshi, to find him looking at their captive thoughtfully. “I think he thinks I want revenge,” he told Cya, rather flatly.
That stopped Pan dead. “Revenge? Yoshi, what? I didn’t…”
“Except when Tethys sent me to you,” Yoshi answered sharply. “Then you sure as hell did.”
Cya felt her claws digging into the steering wheel. Shit. If she didn’t kill this kid, she was going to have to Keep him to keep Yoshi’s father, her crew, or both, from killing him. “Yoshi,” she interrupted slowly, “are we killing this one?”
“What?” the boy yelped, trying very, VERY hard to move now. “Okay, okay, Keep me. I can handle being under the collar again, but come on, Yoshi. You never said no. I thought…” He slumped against the back seat.
Her son sighed. “No, Mom. I mean, I want to poke him with a stick a bit. Maybe kick him a few times. He’s kinda naive, but Tethys had him good and brainwashed. He doesn’t deserve to die for being stupid.”
“I thought…” Pan repeated woefully.
“Tethys,” Yoshi bit off tersely, “did not encourage complaint. Or bad moods. Or the concept of saying ‘no’ to anything. You were under her collar, Pan. You should have known what it was like.”
The boy couldn’t slump any lower, but he was trying. “You seemed so happy,” he muttered. “I was never that happy when I was under her collar.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/249280.html. You can comment here or there.
After
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ) and
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ). in the Boom!/RP timeline. I believe this is part three of four four of five.
In a crew with my Keeper this year… Cya’s smile didn’t falter. “I don’t mind at all. Hop in, Pan. I’m Cynara du’Red Doomsday, Yoshi’s mother.”
The boy – if he wasn’t a relative of Leofric’s, she’d eat her hat – looked a little startled, but he got into the back seat of the car, letting Yoshi load his luggage. Double mistake, but then again, most kids hadn’t been raised by Boom.
“Doomsday?” he asked, as she got back into the driver’s seat, Yoshi riding shotgun. “Yoshi, man, you didn’t tell me your mom was in Boom.”
“No-one asked.” Her son still had that dead tone that she remembered far too well from other Kept, other years. She wasn’t entirely certain this Pan would survive the drive home.
Well, her crew being what it was, she was very good at hiding bodies.
Once they were on the long, straight stretch of highway headed home, she muttered a quick Working under cover of a well-timed coughing fit from Yoshi. The boy in her back seat wasn’t going anywhere now. “Talk to me,” she murmured to her son, gentling it just enough to not be a command.
Yoshi squirmed. “It… I know what everyone was talking around?” He offered uncomfortably. “And some of the stuff your Kept du jour have… well, like the one guy, with the nightmares?”
Cya tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Njörðr’s time at Addergoole had been… well, nightmare-inducing. “I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you,” she said softly, instead of all the things she wanted to say.
“Well,” he squirmed uncomfortably. “I knew about Keeping. I mean, with your Kept du jour… Somehow Tethys caught me anyway.” He held up both hands, presumably to keep Cya from Finding the bitch right now and ripping out her guts. “Mom… She wasn’t. I mean. I’ve heard stories. She wasn’t like, like Jordy’s Keeper. I mean, no scars. And she already had her two.”
Slowly, Cya unpeeled one hand from the wheel and offered it to her son. “There’s more than one way to be a horrendous Keeper, hon. Ask your Uncle Leo, sometime, maybe.”
Panlong, in the back seat, had latched on to one part of their conversation. “Kept du jour?”
“Oh, yeah,” Yoshi grinned, with feigned casualness. “Every year, Mom picks up a new Addergoole grad and Keeps them for a year. Last year was a bunny.”
“New…” Pan moved for the car door, only to realize that he couldn’t. He paled slowly. “I’m fucked, aren’t I?”
“Look at it this way,” Yoshi said, with cheerful malice that suggested he was quoting something, “it’s only for a year.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/248193.html. You can comment here or there.
For @Theladyisugly’s commissioned prompt from the December Call.
Yngvi and Sigurd are characters in Addergoole (Sigurd only shows up, so far, in the Halloween story Tricked, as an 8-year-old.
Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ.
“So.”
“So.”
Yngvi looked over his son – his only son, and likely to remain that way, and also, although he tried not to think about it too much, his nephew – and tried not to curl his lip.
They’d done a very good job of keeping in touch, up to a point. And then school had happened, the way it did, and the sweet teenaged boy he’d known had, like so many before and after him, vanished.
Vi wasn’t sure he knew this kid; worse, he thought maybe he did know him, from the dark places in his mind, from the monsters that had forced him to learn how to fight. From the mirror.
“So,” he said again, looking at the boy half an inch shorter than him, lean to his muscular, his hair cut short and fashionable. They could be brothers. The horns, of course, added to the similarity; Sigurd’s were twisted like corkscrews.
“So.” The boy’s smile was every bit as sharp as his horns. “You wanted to see me.”
“We hadn’t talked in a few years. I do try to keep up with my family.”
“I remember. Christmas and Fourth of July.” He pulled a small pocketknife out of his pocket, one of the first gifts Yngvi had given him. “And sometimes we’d go to the park. Do you want to go to the park today, Dad?”
Yngvi felt his shoulders tighten, looking down at his son. Sometimes, the animal inside took over, and then there were contests of will, butting heads. Sometimes, as his father had told him, you couldn’t have two strong men in the same room; it just didn’t work. Autumn was worst, and it was summer now.
He didn’t want to butt heads with his son. He called on every bit of his innate power, every ounce of knowing-the-right-words that he’d ever needed, and said, a little bit to his surprise, “the park would be nice, Siggie. There’s one right down the road.” He tilted his head. “It’s still pristine. These people keep their land pretty well.”
Something in Sigurd’s demeanor shifted, twisted, relaxed. “I’d like that,” he admitted quietly, and pocketed the knife. Ynvgi started walking, and, slowly, Sigurd fell in next to him.
“You came,” he said after a while. “I didn’t think you would.”
“It’s your birthday, Sig. I’ve never failed to show up for your birthday. I wasn’t sure you’d come, though.”
“I wasn’t sure I would, either,” he admitted. They had dropped their voices, until they were near-whispers, as if hiding this from someone. Who? Yngvi wished he knew. Next to him, Sigurd shrugged out of his leather jacket. “I wasn’t sure I’d get permission.”
Permission. Yngvi’s head whipped around so fast, his horns whistled in the air. Permission? Yes, by all the blasted returned gods, there was a collar around his son’s neck, small, leather, black to match the jacket.
“I thought you graduated,” he hissed angrily.
“I did.” The tightness was back in the boy’s expression. “I graduated in June. Earned my Name.”
Cautiously, Yngvi touched the collar, assuring himself it was there. It wasn’t, as pieces of wardrobe went, ugly, but it was a slave collar on his son’s neck. “Do I have to kill someone?” he asked flatly. “Who do I need to kill for you, Sigurd?”
His son looked, for a moment, frightened, and then something else. Touched? Worried? “I… I took this on, Dad,” he offered, very nervously. “I wasn’t tricked into it.” He was talking fast now. “I needed a favor, a couple little favors, and he’s a nice guy. We worked out a deal. Please don’t kill him? I kinda like him. Liked him before the collar,” he added hurriedly, stepping back as if afraid Yngvi was going to flip out.
Took it on. For a moment, Vi wasn’t certain he wouldn’t do something stupid. Then he found a calm place and, very carefully, hugged his son. “All right,” he murmured, as reassuringly as he knew how. “I won’t kill him. But I would like to meet him.”
Crushed against Vi’s chest, his horns brushing his father’s hair, Siggie sounded like a child again. “You would’ve? If I didn’t want this? If I was stuck?”
“Siggie, I’d move the world to help you or your sisters. I’d ruin the world for you.” Yngvi smiled faintly at his only son. “So.”
Sig smiled cautiously. “So.”
Siggie from another point of view – by Inventrix, at the beginning of his first year of school.
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