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The Life You Make

Nov17

For rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

This is a continuation of the Baram story posted in Monster (LJ), Memories (LJ), and One Sharp Mother (LJ).

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 17 – landing page here (or on LJ)

Baram threw the monster – a real monster, a beast, a so-called returned god, a shit who had been attacking his neighbors – through the front wall, and jumped after him. The thing had ripped out a few of Baram’s ribs, and done something unpleasant to his stomach, but right now, he didn’t care. He’d care later, maybe, when his house was safe.

He ripped the weapon out of the god’s hands and shoved it through the creature’s face, swearing incoherently at him, spitting blood all over the thing. He jammed the weapon into the creature again and again, spewing profanity and bodily fluids over him, until the thing was in pieces. Then, only then, did he look up.

In the doorway of the house, a bunch of kids – more than he thought there ought to be by nearly double – were staring at him. In the gate to the backyard, his women were standing, holding up, loosely, a bleeding Grigori.

He looked back and forth between the groups. His women. His family. His house. And strangers. He showed teeth to the Grigori stranger, who took a cautious step backwards into Jaelie. She, in turn giggled.

“He followed us home,” she offered, pointing at the ruined side wall. “Can we Keep him?”

The Grigori wilted under Baram’s gaze, which made him smirk through a mouthful of blood. “Only if he’s useful.”

“Jasfe Eperu τεῖχος,” the man offered, and, behind Baram, the wall put itself back together.

“All right,” he allowed. “As long as he doesn’t piss on the carpet, same as the dog.”

“Wow.” A kid’s voice he didn’t recognize brought Baram’s attention back to the doorway full of children. “Your dad’s awesome.”

“He’s not…” Gerulf started, and then met Baram’s eye. “Yeah,” he said, as a small smile crossed his face. “Yeah, he’s pretty cool.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/178920.html. You can comment here or there.

Character Development Meme (morning Warmup), Question 2

Nov17

As discussed here and on LJ, I’m going to do this meme for a few characters (I’m rotating seasonal sibs to not totally overwhelm myself).

Feel free to suggest another character, and I’ll work through them in rotation.

Question 1 here and on LJ.

Question 3 here and on LJ.

2.) What are your characters most prominent physical features?

The RoundTree Siblings:
They share a stubborn chin they inherited from their father and a strong nose they got from their mother, a build that is sturdy or athletic rather than willowy, and a medium height that is neither tiny not giant.

Winter’s hair went prematurely white (his sisters blame Spring); he wears it long and in a ponytail, and it’s arrow-straight.

Autumn’s hair is a curly mess of russet, which she wears mostly-loose.

Summer’s hair is golden blonde, and as straight as Winter’s. It spends much of its time in a ponytail.

Spring’s hair is dirty blonde, light brown, and worn feathered and, no surprise, a little chaotic.

Conrad: The tail is probably the most notable, and his oversized, extra-digits-and-knuckles hands and feet. With his Mask hiding those Changes, the hands and feet are still oversized, and his once-broken nose and blue, blue eyes stand out more strongly.

Rin: Rin is a model of her ethnicity, as is not all that surprising from a member of the royal family. Her long black hair and small mouth with its rather generous smile are most notable; her skin is a light mocha-tan in the cold season, but, after several seasons at war and on the road, is burnished to a dark very-slightly-olive tan.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/178529.html. You can comment here or there.

Character Development Meme (morning Warmup), Question 1

Nov15

As discussed here and on LJ, I’m going to do this meme for a few characters (I’m rotating seasonal sibs to not totally overwhelm myself).

Feel free to suggest another character, and I’ll work through them in rotation.

Question 2 here and on LJ.

(1) Describe your character’s relationship with their mother or their father, or both. Was it good? Bad? Were they spoiled rotten, ignored? Do they still get along now, or no?

Spring: Spring never knew her father; he died when she was still in the womb. Her relationship with her mother is at times very wild – Mrs. RoundTree has distinct ideas about where her children’s lives should be going, and, as a tangler, especially, Spring is very good at countering that. She was a wild kid, who turned to her brother as a father figure, and in a pinch, she’s much more likely to go to Winter or Autumn than to Mom for help.

Conrad: He doesn’t know who his father is, although a year and a half at Addergoole has led him to assume it’s someone in Regine’s breeding program. His mother, Maria, did her best to raise him well, with the help of her older brother and her father. He has a distant-but-okay relationship with his mother, with some small amount of resentment that he keeps very very deeply buried for sending him to Addergoole; he gets along well with his grandfather, and his uncle taught him most of the “manly” skills that come in handy so rarely at Addergoole.

Rin: She’s the seventh daughter in a family of nine, not spoiled but not ignored either. Her mother is more or less professional royalty; she’s never left Lannamer and rarely leaves the palace complex. Her father is a bureaucrat and a businessman who manages portions of the royal finances and helps to keep the roads going and the weapons heading out. Neither are particularly strong in the faith/magic of that world, and neither are of a particularly military or scholarly bent. They approved of Rin’s time in university, but are a little lost by her decision to go military. She, in turn, thinks fondly of them, but with not a great deal of respect.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/175803.html. You can comment here or there.

Family Ties

Nov14

For an anonymous prompt.

This is in the Fae Apoc Setting, which has a landing page here (and on LJ).

Regine, the speaker, is a character from Addergoole, as are all of the characters she mentions (except Falk).

For a family tree, see here.

Regine discusses fae genetics, Addergoole Year 5.

The field of Ellehemaei genetics is still in its infancy, as such things go. Human genetic codes are still, for the most part, a mystery; adding to that the complexities of our extra-terrestrial ancestry leads to a very complicated field of study indeed. One must narrow the field to hope to achieve anything within a lifetime, even our long spans.

I have narrowed my personal field to two specifics: the mysteries of the way the so-called “half-breed” genes create new patterns as they combine and recombine, and the “throwbacks:” full-blooded Ellehemaei born from two half-breed parents.

To the second, of course I’m interested in Jamian, and not just in it but in its children-to-come and in its half-siblings, who, while they all have very interesting and rather powerful Changes, have not become full-blooded Daeva by any stretch.

But to the first, I confess to an vested concern in my own family line, where, after all, my own interest in Ellehemaei genetics first sprang. My half-brother, Falk, for instance: although we have the same Grigori father, my Change was to a full-blooded Grigori and his, to put it bluntly, was not.

Nor have his children exhibited full-blooded Changes, despite the very strong genetics leaning that way in at least one case. Caity and Kailani are both brilliant young women, nearly as an intelligent as a full-blood might be, but they are not Grigori. Likewise my great-niece Sarita, Falk’s granddaughter by his first wife, Fatima, although in her case, she seems to have inherited a skill with people rather than any brilliance. I confess, I wish Sarita had found someone more intelligent to father her children, or at least split the fathering between two, but it will be interesting to see what comes of her children with Finn.

I expect more of Kai’s children, or at least her child by Conrad. He comes from very strong stock, after all, and is himself more bright than he gives himself credit for. They should create a very smart child together; perhaps, if all works out, I can combine the streams again with a child of theirs and a child of Caity and the indomitable Richard. From that line, I expect to find the leaders of the next generation, perhaps my successor to this mantle.

And from my own children and grandchildren… it remains to be seen. Agatha has not exhibited the taste in men I would have hoped for, but that seems to be a trait of my daughters. Ramona certainly did not choose the fathers for Ofir and Oralee that I would have picked, and it shows, most strongly in Ofir’s academics and paltry understanding of social mechanism. One can only hope that the repeated Grigori strain in Agatha’s child by Ofir will be enough to balance out the idiocy of the father there.

Oralee’s choices were, genetically, better. I look forward to seeing what her child by Ib will become, with the Mara and Grigori bloodlines both so strong there.

I have four more generations. In that time, I should be able to find or create the patterns I am looking for. In that time, I should be able to re-introduce a pureblooded line, a stronger, better Grigori line, to my bloodline.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/175612.html. You can comment here or there.

Some Say Life

Nov14

For stryck‘s prompt.

This is in the Fae Apoc Setting, which has a landing page here (and on LJ).

Luke is a character from Addergoole, as is Doug; Arundel is a Year Nine character who shows up in Changed. He was born from a sketch of @Inventrix’s – here.

Luke’s first son is mentioned here.

Addergoole, early Year 8

Luke had never had a child of his own with wings.

Theron had barely Changed at all, and his Change hadn’t been one that could fly. Doug – well, Doug didn’t have functional wings, and the less said about that the better. That was two sons out of three, and the third, well, Ké couldn’t keep Aleron from him forever, not with Addergoole to contend with, too, but the boy wasn’t grown yet, and only time would tell there.

He contented himself with Students. He’d taught Ib how to fly – and never mind his personal opinions there, how much it stung to see Ké’s son by another man with the wings his sons didn’t have – and Alisha how to maneuver her tiny, semi-useless pixie wings. He’d taught seven years of cy’Lucas how to fight, how to stand up for themselves, and how to be good, honorable men.

When Arundel showed up in Caitrin’s office with wings exploding out of his back, however, he had to bite back a cheer. The boy wasn’t really, the way they sorted things, cy’Luca material, but that was beside the point. Wings! Real wings, albeit feathery ones instead of the bat-wings that would indicate a full-blooded Mara, but wings that looked functional.

The rest was a foregone conclusion, although both Mike and Laurel put in their bids for the boy, and a week later, when Caitrin judged the wings had come in properly, the two of them were out on the ledge behind the school, tasting the wind.

“Easy,” Luke counseled. “The first few times, just glide, let the air carry you. Don’t worry about falling; it’s not far enough to hurt much and, anyway, Caitrin can patch up anything you do to yourself. Side effect of being nearly-immortal,” he grinned. And the benefit of teaching Ellehemaei kids, since all teenagers thought they were nearly immortal anyway.

“Easy for you to say,” the boy muttered, but he was spreading his wings anyway. The wide wings seemed to owe more to eagles than angels or demons, but Luke was confident the actual flying would work out much the same. “Just… Jump and glide?”

“You have a little skill with kaana, right? Feel the wind, let it tell you where it’s going… and then jump.” Luke demonstrated, and then turned in mid-air to watch his new Student.

“Jump,” the boy muttered, but he did it, feathers at the tips curling to catch the wind. And just like that, he was gliding.

And, just like that, he panicked, flapping hard, flailing. Luke hid a smirk and banked to catch the boy before he hit the ground. “Easy, easy. Everyone does that the first time.”

“Everyone?” he muttered, cautiously finding his feet.

“Even me, kiddo.” Luke patted the boy’s back. It was good to have a kid to take care of again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/174677.html. You can comment here or there.

Uh-Oh… A story of #Addergoole, for the Giraffe Call

Nov13

For cluudle‘s prompt.

Wren is a character in Addergoole, a Fourth Cohort student who, last year, was Kept by Phelen, also a Fourth Cohort student. They have a small story, “Poaching,” in Other Sides, the weblit anthology.

For more on Wren and Ray’s father before their birth, see Too Human

Addergoole Year 5, not at Addergoole
Life wasn’t as fun since Wren had gone away to school.

Raylan wandered around the neighborhood, watching the leaves fall, mumbling incoherently to himself. A reputation for being just as crazy as his sister had kept the bullies off of him, even if, unlike her, he had to fake it.

He wondered if she’d come home for the holidays this year. She hadn’t, last year, and Dad had made a couple closed-door phone calls and come back to say, seeming content, “your sister is very involved with her new boyfriend. I’m sure she’ll snap out of it eventually.”

“Eventually” had been the last week of summer break, with a small baby in tow she didn’t want to talk about – and Wren who was self-possessed, sad, but comfortable in her skin in a way she hadn’t been before she left school. Ray wasn’t sure what he thought of all that, either, but Raven was pretty adorable for a nephew. If he had to have a nephew when he was fifteen, and all.

And Dad thought it was fine. Ray stomped around another block, trying to figure out what was going on with Dad. And with everything. No boarding school for Ray, though Dad was pushing him to pick a good college. No worries about Wren’s pregnancy, or the new boyfriend her letters went on and on about. No worries as to how Raven’s unnamed father was going to help Ray’s sister raise a kid, or how Wren was going to juggle the kid and college. No worries…

“…Well, hello, aren’t you handsome?”

That was not what he’d expected to hear, eight blocks from home at the edge of the suburbs. Ray looked up, then up some more, to find a very, very pretty woman who looked very, very dangerous looking down at him. She tch’d and brushed her hand over his chin. “No stubble yet, not even all the way ripe. But handsome.”

He found his voice. “…Excuse me?”

“No excuses needed. You’re not the one I was looking for, but you look good enough to do as a bonus. Come with me.”

“Um… no?” he backed up quickly. “No, thanks, ma’am.”

“So sweet,” she chuckled. “But you’re coming with me.” She reached out her hand, and he found that he was floating a few inches off the ground, floating towards her.

“Hey!”

“None of that,” she smiled. “Stay quiet, and this won’t hurt much.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/173366.html. You can comment here or there.

Revelations

Nov12

For natalief‘s prompt.

After Generations, and on LJ, written for this Call as well.

Chandra had never been quite certain about her grandmother’s misapprehensions about her mother, but she had been content to leave things as they were, for fear of rocking a boat that had been sailing uncomfortably for longer than she’d been alive.

It wasn’t until her daughter [daughter] was ready to go to Addergoole, along with her half-brother and her uncle, and her mother was back home, disconsolate and miserable after another relationship had gone to hell, that Chandra decided she needed to intervene. For one, she’d realized that her mother and grandmother’s relationship was barely older than her. For another, now in her thirties, the under-two-decades between her and Megan didn’t seem like such a wide gap.

She cornered Grandma Shira first, while Mom was out in the Village shopping, uselessly.

“We need to talk about Mom.”

“She’ll be done flighting around in a week or two and settle down, once Marco is in school,” Shira answered her tiredly, “and we can get back to life as usual.” She set her head against the window tiredly. “My other kids turned out all right.”

Chandra sighed. “Your other kids weren’t abused, Grandma. I did okay in Addergoole, and Carrig had me watching out for him, and our kids will have each other. But nobody knew about any of this back then, did they?”

“Megan never said anything…” Shira murmured.

“You know better. They still call your cy’ree the support group. You know why Kept who aren’t happy don’t say anything,” Chandra pressed. It wasn’t the same reason she hadn’t said anything when mom had gotten out of line, but it had its similarities.

Something in her voice had gotten her grandmother’s attention. “There’s something you’re not saying, isn’t there? Something else. Not just Shadrach the monster, may he rot.”

“Not just my father, no.” She emphasized “my,” and watched her grandmother’s eyes narrow in understanding.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/171953.html. You can comment here or there.

Generations

Nov12

For ankewehner‘s prompt.

Shira Pelletier is a professor in Addergoole, whose youngest daughter Megan (a 1st Cohort student, and thus no longer in school in Year Five, when the story starts) is a constant disappointment and frustration to her. Chandra and Carrig are Megan’s children.

For more on these characters during Year Five, see Motherhood

Addergoole, Year 21
Shira had had one year of quiet, true quiet, in her house.

Megan came and went, flitting back and forth to her mother’s house when the latest job or boyfriend or get-rich-quick scheme failed, when her father got sick of her, or when she just wanted to hide and cry. Her children stayed with Shira, growing up into, she hoped, decent human beings despite their mother’s choice in fathers for them.

Chandra was seventeen when she “left” for Addergoole, moving out of her grandmother’s house and into the school next door; when her brother left two years later, he was sixteen. Shira’s granddaughter, who had learned to be responsible very early, struggling against Megan’s flightiness, managed to stay childless for those two years, and Shira, for the first time, had spent some private time getting to know her quiet, introverted grandson.

As much as she’d enjoyed that, she’d reveled in the quiet. Megan had moved into her house like a whirlwind after school, her two young children and all her trains of drama in tow; for sixteen years, Shira had worked her life around the stranger she’d given birth two and her children. She couldn’t help but celebrate the peace and quiet.

She held parties. She invited over new lovers and old, including a couple former students who, now in their thirties, were reasonably safe lovers for her (she wasn’t VanderLinden, to sleep with children. She’d never stoop to that. Thirty, thirty-three, that was a different matter, never mind when they were younger than her daughter). She’d managed to get pregnant, again, something she’d been fairly certain she’d never do.

She was staring at the stick (try technology first, then ask Caitrin. No need to alarm the nice Doctor if it was nothing but a mood swing out of nowhere) when her youngest daughter pounded on the door, a tiny son in her arms.

She was balancing her latest grandchild – he had a lovely head of curly black hair and, although Megan was staying mum on the topic of fathers, his name at least wasn’t Shad or Chad or anything like that. Marco she could live with – and talking quietly with Dr. Caitrin when Chandra came home early for their Sunday dinner. She had that pale green-tinged look that Shira recognized from the mirror.

Seven months later, juggling a daughter, a grandson, and a great-granddaughter, Shira decided that peace was overrated. For the first time in her life, she also decided to hire a nanny.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/171497.html. You can comment here or there.

“Just Be Yourself”

Nov9

From rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt.

A continuation of the Three-Way story.
3-Way originally posted here and on LJ, continued here (LJ) and then here (LJ and then
Here (Duet) and Here on LJ – and then here: Preferences (LJ) and here (and on LJ).

“I was hoping you’d be my girlfriend.”

Ahouva stared at Basalt. “You ripped out Kendon’s guts because you wanted a girlfriend? There’s got to be an easier way.”

“That was Jeremiah,” he demurred. “I beat them down until they yielded to rescue you.”

“I didn’t need rescuing!” More quietly, she added, “I was doing fine. I’d finally gotten to the point where I could make Kendon happy, where he didn’t yell at me much at all.” Now she was going to have to do it all over again with this guy. More subdued, and a bit nervous, she added, “you’re not going to be like Thorburn, are you?”

“Like him how?” he asked carefully. His knees were still touching hers. She should pull away, but she didn’t really want to.

“I’ve seen Ceinwen crying, when she doesn’t think anyone was looking,” she muttered.

“I’ve seen you do the same thing,” he countered, and she winced.

“Sorry! I don’t mean for anyone to see me; I’m just overreacting.”

“And you don’t think Ceinwen was?”

“Should I?” she asked nervously. “She seemed so level-headed, not a mess like me.”

He shook his head. “Damn. All right, this is going to tricky, isn’t it?”

“You could give me back?” she offered timidly.

He shook his head. “No. No, I’m not going to do that. After this, Kendon’s going to be worse than ever before.”

She winced, swallowing a comment. He’d just made things worse, no matter how you looked at it. “Then… tell me what you want from me?”

“Hold on, I’m still on your last question.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m kind of slow, so you have to be patient with me, okay?”

She nodded, not certain if the “hold on” meant to be quiet or not. That got her a real smile from him – he had a very nice smile, when he tried – and then a thoughtful sigh. “Okay. The short answer is, Thorburn and I took away different things from being under cy’Linden last year. I don’t know what he’s doing to make Ceinwen cry – I hadn’t known she was crying, though that explains some of the things Penny’s said – but I don’t want to do anything to make you cry.”

She stared at him. Kendon hadn’t liked her crying, either. “I can try not to cry…” she offered. Obviously she had to get better at hiding it.

He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, Ahouva. I mean – you asked if I was going to be like Thorburn. And I’m telling you no, I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be like Kendon, either.”

“Okay?”

He frowned, and she, wondering how she’d managed to upset him already, cringed. That just made him frown more deeply.

“Every evening, I’m going to ask you if I have done anything to upset you. I’m going to want – and order –to know everything, so if you have to write it down in a notebook to remember it at the end of the day, do that.”

“Okay?” This sounded like an excuse for punishment waiting to happen, but maybe she could change her definition of “upset?”

“If something bothers you badly enough that you want it to stop right away, tell me right away. Right then. Even if we’re in public.” He touched a finger to her nose. “I do not want to be upsetting you.”

She winced again, and nodded, because he seemed to want her to agree. “Okay? I mean, yes, sir.”

He sighed quietly. “Okay.” He seemed to be willing to let it go, at least. Maybe she’d be able to work around it. “On to your second question.”

She was getting lost. “Okay?”

“What I want from you.”

Oh, that one. She nodded, eyes down. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s Basalt,” he corrected gently. “I’m really not fancy enough to be sir for anyone.”

“Yes, Basalt.” She peeked up at him. “Not ‘master’ either?”

“Does it – be honest with me – make you happy to call someone master?”

Yes. No. Yes? “Maybe?” she offered carefully. “When I called Kendon master, sometimes it made him happy, and sometimes it made him angry.”

“But what about what you like?”

“I like having my owner happy with me!” Why did he keep asking what she liked? Why wouldn’t he tell her what he wanted out of her. “I like knowing what the right thing to do is!”

He sat back, lips closed tightly, and Ahouva quailed. Now she’d done it. Now he was going to be mad at her, and he was going to … what was he going to do? She peeked at him cautiously. She didn’t know what came next with him.

He had his face in both hands. “This… is going to be interesting.”

“You can still give me back.”

“No. I won’t.” He dropped his hands. “When you came here, you were a mouthy, bright, clever new kid. I liked you like that.”

“Nobody else did,” she muttered.

“Even if that’s true, which I doubt, they don’t matter, do they?”

Now he was on ground she understood. “No, master.” She smiled cautiously at him. “What you want is what matters.”

“Exactly. Good girl,” he added, saying the words very carefully. She shivered at the good feelings his words sent through her, as condescending as they were. He was happy with her?

He patted her shoulder gently. “What I want is you to be yourself. And I think that’s going to be trickier than I originally thought.”

She nodded, biting her lip. “How will I know what you like, then?”

“Mm. If you really bug me, I’ll let you know. But look, Ahouva, I’m really not that bright, and you are.”

“I’m not that clever. Kendon had to correct me all the time.”

“That’s because Kendon is an asshole, not because you’re not smart. When you came here, you thought you were pretty bright, didn’t you?”

She dropped her head. “I was stupid. I didn’t know how the world really was.”

“You were smart – are smart. You just didn’t know how to handle this place.”

“Kendon was teaching me.”

“Kendon was teaching you how to be a good little pet.”

“Isn’t that what being Kept is?”

“Only if that’s what your owner wants. What I want, as I said, is a girlfriend. You. Smart, mouthy, and clever.”

“Oh.” She blinked at him uncertainly. “What if I can’t be that anymore?”

He sighed, and, before she could say anything else, pulled her into his lap and cuddled her against him. “Then we’ll have to figure that out together.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/169433.html. You can comment here or there.

9 Things I Hate About…

Oct31

From rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt.

A continuation Three-Way, Preferences.
3-Way originally posted here and on LJ, continued here (LJ) and then here (LJ and then
Here (Duet) and Here on LJ – and then here: Preferences (LJ)

She felt as if she’d kicked him, which made her feel bad, made her want to curl up in his lap and tell him everything was okay. She sat on her hands instead, shifting until she was sitting cross-legged, straight-backed and looking him in the eye. “Is this really about what I want, Thorburn?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?

“Because, up until now, you haven’t shown much interest in what I wanted.”

“I told you I wanted your honest assessment.” The hunched-unhappy expression was vanishing, replaced with growing irritation. “If you don’t want to tell me, you can just say that instead of bitching at me.”

“I’m not bitching,” she answered, as calmly as she could through her growing tempest of mixed emotions. “I’m…” She struggled against the urge t make him feel better and lost. “I’m just confused, Thorburn. Why now?”

“You’ve never said it wasn’t what you wanted before.”

She blinked at him. “I told you I hated you. I told you I didn’t…” She shouldn’t there. Something was wrong with him and sex. “…didn’t like the collar. Wanted clothes for sleeping. Wanted…” Well, if he took many more of her things away for complaining, she’d be left going to class naked. “That I wanted my stuff.”

His expression was a bit puzzled. “There’s a level of complaining that goes along with being Kept. I could have stopped you from complaining, or punished you more for doing it, but I thought it was better to let you get it off your chest. But you’ve never come out and said you weren’t happy with me… so I thought you were just uncomfortable being Kept.”

“Is…” Yes, there was a difference, wasn’t there? “So… ‘stop treating me like a possession’ doesn’t help, because the stupid Law says I am a possession.”

He nodded. “Exactly. And it takes a little while to get used to that. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, but you need to understand that, or you’ll cause trouble for both of us.”

“I don’t want to cause you trouble.” She was already in enough trouble herself.

“I know you don’t.” He smiled sadly at her. “You’re a good Kept.”

The praise sent an uncomfortably nice shiver through her. He thought she was good. He thought she was a good… slave. Well. “Thanks?”

He studied her. “You were saying,” he said, more gently than his norm and clearly a bit uncomfortably, “that I didn’t treat you the way you’d prefer.”

She nodded, nervous all over again. “I was. That… is not something a good Kept would say, is it?” She frowned at him, a spike of anger pushing through her desire to make him happy. “But it’s true.”

“But you think I’m nice to you?”

She sighed. They were sort of going in circles. “I do. You said you didn’t think I had context, but I’ve been watching. I’ve been listening. Talking to people, when they’ll talk to me.” Penny, mostly, and a couple other Sixth and Seventh Cohorts who were un-worried about Thorburn’s ire. “I watched Ahouva with Kendon… she’s my friend, you know. Or she was starting to be, before he got her.” She took a deep breath. This part was harder. “You’re gentle with me. You hold doors, and carry my tray in the lunchroom. You don’t yell at me, even when you’re obviously angry, and you’ve never hit me. No matter what Curry says, you’ve never let one of your friends… touch me… and you’ve protected me when someone’s gotten too close before. You take good care of me… and I know that not everyone does.” And she was beginning to believe, whoever had Kept him before, they hadn’t been nearly as kind.

He nodded, agreeing with all of her points, watching her carefully. “But it’s not what you’d prefer.”

She flinched. He was being very nice, but she still worried that there was a trap beneath the surface. “That part’s fine. I don’t mind being taken care of… I mean, it’s a little old-fashioned, but I can live with that. And I know that there really are jerks and monsters here, and that being protected isn’t a bad thing.” She trailed off, studying his expression nervously. “It’s not an either or sort of thing, is it? I mean… does the nice stuff go along with the stuff I don’t like?”

“What?” he frowned at her. “Well, that would be stupid. ‘Here, have a cookie and hold still while I beat you?’ No. I’m not that sort of asshole, Ceinwen.”

She relaxed. “Sometimes it seems like everything around here is a trap,” she explained and apologized all at once.

He seemed about to argue, and then nodded, with a rueful smile that she was fairly certain had nothing to do with her. “Okay, that’s fair.” He took her hands. “No more hedging. I promise I won’t punish you for it – now tell me what you don’t like about the way I Keep you.”

The air-twist of the promise slammed hard into the direct order, and Ceinwen spent a second trying to catch her breath, as the urge to answer pressed harder and harder on her. “The orders,” she spat out, just to make the pressure stop, and then flapped both hands at him, hurriedly. “No, no, I know that’s stupid but sometimes they make my head hurt, that’s all. I, Thorburn, sir, it’s really hard to be polite when you make me say things, I don’t like that you took all my stuff away. I don’t like sleeping naked. I feel helpless that way and you said I’d have to earn my nightgown back and then you never told me how to, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

She took a long breath, but the order was still pushing her on, despite the stunned expression on Thorburn’s face. “And my stuff. And this collar, which I suppose goes with the stuff, because it’s very pretty and only matches the clothes you bought for me or picked out of my clothes.” She shook her head. “That’s kind of petty, but it’s there, anyway and Thorburn could I please stop now before this gets really, really uncomfortable?”

He already looked pretty uncomfortable. He nodded, and squeezed her hands. “You can stop. But, tell me this – there’s more?”

She nodded mutely. Please don’t ask…

“You didn’t complain about the curfew, or not having time with your friends.”

She bit her lip. “Most of my friends are Kept anyway. I’d like to see them, I mean… but there’s classes? And I guess… isn’t that part of being Kept?”

He nodded, thoughtfully. “And there’s something that’s really bothering you, more than anything, that you were talking around the whole time.”

She gulped. Oh, no… She was nodding, though.

“Something you think will be even more uncomfortable?”

Another nod, her lips pressed as tightly as she could. Tears were already falling, but she couldn’t wipe them away. He was holding her hands too tightly. His face was doing something she couldn’t quite read, but it didn’t look good.

He took a deep breath of his own, looking more than a little worried. “All right.” He released her hands and tugged her against his chest in a massive bear hug. “I won’t ask. And when you’re ready, you can tell me. But for now – well. I think we have some room for negotiation.”

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