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Devil Deals

Jul10

I’m taking prompts ’til 6 tonight; this is both halves of Rix’s prompt, asking for Aviv & Rozen post-apoc. This takes part before Into the Woods, available in Tales for the Sugar Cat

Aviv:

There were times when doing what needed to be done meant strange partners and uncomfortable partnerships. He trekked alongside what had once been a highway, chewing over those thoughts. Some people, he’d never have to deal with again: Ardell and Delaney had gone over to the Nedetakaei and, while he would miss Del, he wouldn’t miss the partnership of them.

Baram had died. Ib was off somewhere hunting with Eris, speaking of strange partnerships. The Thornes… He hadn’t seen them in decades. He knocked on a tree for luck at that. Most of the baddies from Addergoole were gone, one way or the other, and yet here he was, weeks from home, looking for one of the baddest.

“You made it.”

And the big bad wolf had found him. He nodded acknowledgement at Rozen. “I told you I would.”

“Things get in the way, sometimes.” His tone said: for other people. Not for me.

“They move,” he shrugged in response. “So, you got my message.”

“I did. Safe haven for the likes of us?”

“Not everyone is as strong as you are. Some of them need protection.”

“From humans.” The disdain was thick; Aviv boggled, again, that this monster was still among the Shenera Endraae.

“From mobs,” he agreed mildly. “From humans.”

“And you’re the guy to provide that.”

“My team can provide that, yes,” he agreed. Stay mellow. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago, when he was far weaker than he was now.

“So what do you need from me?”

“Your hunting range is out of our current zone. Keep an eye out. Send them our way if they need it. Provide safe passage through your territory to those who just want to keep moving.”

“And what’s in it for me?”

This was the hard part. This is where you made deals with devils. “What do you want?”

Rozen:

“What do you want?”

He loved it when it came down to that. Then you got to set the terms of the engagement.

Truth be told, however, Aviv’s plan wasn’t all that bad of one. Not everyone had been gifted by a Change as nice as his, and the hatred the humans had for them was as broad and unthinking as any predjudice. Little things like Mea, like Dita, they had never done anything to deserve the mob hatred.

He smiled, letting the squiddy boy squirm on the hook a little bit. “Ah, now, that’s the question. Everyone wants something, right?” Though he really didn’t want for much. He had a nice set-up here. “So what I want is a hand with a little hunting.” Come down and play on my level, Saint Squid. You’ve never been as good as you thought you were.

Aviv was frowning; good. “Regine’s going to catch you at this eventually, Rozen. You can’t keep farming these people like your own personal crop of entertainment. It’s practically Nedetakaei.”

“Practically, but not. I abide by the terms of our arrangement,” he answered smoothly. “And as for Regine, she never fusses for all that long. She needs me guarding her flank too dearly.”

“Mmfg. So, what help do you need?” Seemed Regine wasn’t the only one that needed him to watch her back.

“They send me girls. But if they truss them up and send them like some sort of sacrifice, everyone cries and the girl doesn’t stop yelling for months. If I track them down in the forest and snatch them… it goes smoother.” And he’d never really liked the screaming.

“So if you kidnap them, they take it better than if their parents sell them?” Aviv frowned cynically. “You know, that makes a sick sort of sense. And you want me to help?”

“Hell, you know you’re good at it. Scare them a little. They’ll run right into my arms.”

This also takes part before Retirement

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/74653.html. You can comment here or there.

Joff Gets a Pony

Jul9

I am taking prompts tonight; this is from @daHob’s prompt “Joff gets a pony.”

Year Six, i.e., after current Addergoole timeline.

Joff looked over his half-sister thoughtfully. “‘Vette…?”

This was the first time since they had been at Addergoole that they’d both been free and unKept, and they were finding it a bit heady, or, at least, he was. It was harder to tell with her. She loved everything, everything that brought anyone near her pleasure. Sometimes, he thought she was a far better succubus than he’d ever be an incubus.

Like right now.

“You said you’d always wanted a pony,” she answered, trying for innocent and almost managing, despite the devil-girl look her Change had given her. “Well, he’ll have to do for now.”

Joff looked at the boy, on all fours next to Ivette, bitted, gloved, collared, and saddled. “This isn’t quite what I had in mind,” he admitted, but, before she could pout at him, he knelt down and took the handsome, sweating cheeks in his hands. “But he looked delicious. Thank you, Ivette. May I ride him for a bit before you take him back?”

“Of course, little brother.” She tapped the boy on the ass with the riding crop; tense and twitching already, he jumped nearly out of his skin. “Lee, be nice for Joff here. Do everything he tells you to, do you hear me?”

He mumbled out an answer around the gag that sounded rather like “yes, mistress;” she smiled beatifically down at him.

“You’re such a good boy, darling. I know Joff is going to have such fun riding you.” She tapped his ass again, making the leather crack loudly, and then passed the crop to Joff. “Aren’t you, little brother?”

He looked over the boy lustily. Smart of his sister to know he’d had his eye on this one since the first day of school. Amazingly thoughtful of her to snag him as a present, and truss him up like this.

“I am,” he agreed, suppressing a giggle. The boy was big enough. Maybe he really would just ride him around the room.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/73413.html. You can comment here or there.

30daysmeme, Sparkle Lust

Jul5

Day 25 of 30 days of Fiction: “26) Write a personalized rejection letter for the YA novel ‘Sparkle Lust.'”

This is an in-joke of sorts off of the Addergoole setting; one might wonder why, of everyone, you never see Ardell’s Change…

Dear Ardell Drake:

Thank you for submitting your novel “Sparkle Lust” for consideration. However, we are not interested in publishing it at this time for several reasons.

Firstly, although you billed this as YA, and I acknowledge that the main characters are, indeed, teenagers throughout most of the story, the subject matter is uncomfortably dark even for jaded adults.

The story itself, of a stifling, abusive stepfather, a distant father, an inappropriately interested professor, and a heavy-handed first boyfriend, bears telling, I believe, but the dark and fantastic elements that you choose to couch it in bring it into the realm of a terrifying acid trip. In addition, although I am impressed with the way your metaphors carry through the entire tale, I am not certain why you chose to use something so reminiscent of recent well-known YA novels as a symbol for uncertain sexuality.

That similarity – the sparkle which you even put in the title of your novel – would open this publishing house up to potential lawsuits, since it cannot be said that your novel is a parody or satire of the original.

Additionally, the thinly-veiled autobiographical nature of some of your details is worrisome, and would likely cause many of our customers distress. If such things are truly happening in an American boarding school; action should be taken.

And, as a personal reason, Dr. Regine Avonmorea gives this publishing house quite a bit of money, and would be very irked with this novel. And your stepfather would break my neck.

My apologies, and we wish you luck with another publishing house,

Lyn Thorne-Alder
Editor,
Alder’s Grove Press

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/69391.html. You can comment here or there.

Kink Bingo: His (Marking/Possession)

Jul3

[community profile] kink_bingo – O-1 – possession/marking – from my card.

Fae Apoc, Addergoole, year Nine, the same characters as here. Fae Apoc’s landing page is here (Lj Link); Addergoole is here.

She tried to breathe, but found she was having trouble working around the panic. He’d seemed like a such a nice guy, before today. Before he and his friends had jumped her in the hallway. Even then, he’d hung back, trying to convince the rest of them to be gentle with her.

It hadn’t been his hand that had bruised her ribs, but it was his large, large hand around her throat now. Not choking, not at all, though his thumbs were pressing into the sides of her neck with nearly bruising force, but holding her while she struggled, holding her upright while she wanted to collapse to the ground and sob.

“Look at me,” he murmured. Terrifyingly, her body obeyed without asking her what she thought about the matter, she found herself looking into his dark brown eyes. He looked concerned, even now.

“What?” she whispered. She’d worn her voice out, earlier, shouting. “What do you want from me?”

“Time will tell,” he answered unhelpfully. “What I already have from you is what you need to understand. I’m going to let go of you for a moment, and I want you to sit down and try to pull yourself together, okay?”

Since sitting down was what she wanted to do anyway, she nodded, feeling his fingers catching her chin as she moved. Why didn’t he just let her go?

She didn’t want to leave right now, she reminded herself. The halls outside were dark and full of monsters. In here, it was light, and there was only the one monster, at least.

He released her, and she sagged to the floor, watching him with dull interest as he walked over to his desk and picked up a bag. “I know,” she breathed, “they told me words had power. Watch what I say. I didn’t think…” She hadn’t thought. That covered it.

“You can be caught even if you are thinking. It just takes more work. And I’m won’t be unkind. But you have to be very clear on this. You agreed to it, no matter what the duress. I own you. And until I graduate, or you do, you belong to me. You’re mine, Ceinwen. That is, after all, what you said.”

She nodded, afraid to repeat it, afraid something else would happen if she reinforced it. She was his. What did that mean? He couldn’t keep her a prisoner here, could he? In the middle of a school?

He returned to her, still holding the bag. “I will take very good care of you,” he murmured, as he knelt in front of her.

He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. This close, now that she could breathe again, he smelled earthy, but not unpleasantly so. “I will protect you,” he continued, a bit louder. It sounded like a ritual. “I will guide you, and keep you safe, and warm, and fed.” The next kiss went on the top of her head, and then he tilted her chin up with one of his huge hands, and kissed her lips. “This is what I will do for you, Ceinwen, because you are mine.”

“I’m yours, Thornburn,” she echoed, moved by something she couldn’t put words to. The situation seemed to demand the words from her, but her pride demanded she add on to them. “Although I didn’t know what I was saying, although I came to you because I was scared, because you said you’d keep me safe.”

“And I did, and I will.” He reached into the bag, then, and pulled out… something. It glittered warmly in the artificial light. Some sort of necklace, it looked like, a series of amber plaques bordered and connected in gold. A choker? It had no closure, she noted, in a moment of rising panic. How was he going to put that on her? How was it going to come off?

He murmured words that made no sense, and the choker parted between two plaques. She shied back, and he moved forward more quickly than she could escape, holding the choker against her throat, around her neck, with one hand. He pressed the ends closed, murmuring again, and the necklace settled in to place against her skin.

“You are mine,” he repeated, “and I’ve marked you such. As long as you’re wearing my collar, no-one will mess with you. No-one will touch you, no-one will harm you.”

The collar was warm, a weight that seemed to encircle all of her the way his hands did, echoing her pulse back to her. She took a breath, and felt it remind her of its presence, pressing against her windpipe. She shifted, and it moved with her. He would be with her every moment she wore it, because she’d never be able to forget it was there.

Tears welled up in her eyes, but the panic was gone. She couldn’t escape this. “I’m yours,” she repeated. With his mark on her, wrapped around her, there was no way to deny it.

He brushed a thumb against the collar, looking pleased. “You wear it well,” he rumbled. “I will be proud to have you as mine.”

The pressure against her throat seemed unbearable, as his praise sent waves of pleasure through her. She was lost.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/68162.html. You can comment here or there.

30Daysmeme, On the Set

Jun30

Day 24 of 30 days of Fiction: “24) Write a scene on a movie set”

In FaeApoc setting, or, at least, meta about the faeapoc setting, specifically the web-serial Addergoole.

Fae Apoc has A Landing Page (LJ Link).

“So, wait, what’s supposed to be going on here? Isn’t this a little unbelievable? Instant lust at first sight?”

Arthur rolled his eyes at Mindy. The actress had the arrogance and the look to play Shahin, but she understood none of the subtlety, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t even bothered to read the script, much less the source material.

The girl they’d gotten to play Kailani was a brilliant actress, but that was the only way she could ever be called brilliant. She didn’t need to be, of course; her lines were all written for her. The guy playing Conrad had the smile down, and that was all he really needed. Olly, playing Jamian, on the other hand, was so impressive at the role that Arthur had yet to figure out if the actor was in actuality a guy or a girl.

And Arthur himself? He stepped up to Mindy, setting a hand on her bare back. “It’s not quite first sight,” he murmured; “they’ve been courting all week. And, of course, there’s the magic to contend with.”

“The magic,” she said flatly, thinking, clearly, that it was a come-on. Yeah, she hadn’t read the script.

“They are made for each other,” he smiled, without a touch of shame. “Almost literally. They are carried away with lust, not because they’re both so damn hot,” he allowed that to be a smirk; both he and Mindy knew they were good looking, after all, “but because the touch of bare skin sends something like electricity through them. They get carried away by the feedback from her power.”

She looked up at him through long eyelashes; they’d even gotten the height right in their casting. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

He pressed his hand against her. “I like to know where I stand.”

Yeah, he thought, grinning to himself, they’d cast Emrys right, too.

My current fund-raising goals:
art for the Rin & Girey Ebook
and bedroom carpet for our new-house-to-be.

Donating gets you access to special donor-only posts! Every $4 gets you one month of access.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/66939.html. You can comment here or there.

30daysMeme: I Hate You

Jun27

Day 20 of 30 days of Fiction: “20) Write a scene with the opening line “I hate you; I just want you to know that.”

(Days 18 & 19 are waiting on [personal profile] kc_obrien to wake up)

Fae Apoc, Addergoole, year Nine, new characters. Fae Apoc’s landing page is here (Lj Link); Addergoole is here.

“I hate you; I just want you to know that!” She shouted the last words as she headed for his bedroom door. Somewhere, she could go somewhere and get away, think for a while, get away from his smug smiling face for a while.

“Sit down,” he said, without so much as a frown or a raised voice. Unwillingly, without any choice at all in the matter, she sat, her ass thumping on the squishy carpet.

“I hate you,” she muttered, scooting towards her escape on her ass. Unhurried, he walked past her and leaned against the door.

“And Friday you thought I was such a nice guy,” he teased.

“That was before yesterday,” she retorted. She wasn’t getting out that way, and the underground room had no other exit; she stopped moving. “I hate you.”

“You’ll get over it in time. At least enough to see that you made the right choice.”

He was so damn self-assured. He had seemed like the best choice, when he and his friends had been bullying her in the hallway Saturday night. “Just pick one of us and it will stop,” they’d kept saying. When the short one with the fangs bit her, she’d made her choice. Now, now she didn’t want anything to do with him, and she was stuck. At least she could still hate him.

“You can’t change the way I feel!” Could he?

“Actually, I could.” He sank down to the floor, so he ws only towering over her by a foot or so. “I could order you to love me. But I won’t.”

He sounded as if he thought he was being so very generous. “Thank you,” she muttered. “I still hate you.”

“That’s okay,” he replied, the smile finally gone. “I understand.”

My current fund-raising goals:
art for two upcoming e-books, and bedroom carpet for our new-house-to-be.

Donating gets you access to special donor-only posts! Every $4 gets you one month of access.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/64564.html. You can comment here or there.

Interesting links re. ethnicity

Jun13

I find 2a in this post by [personal profile] recessional to be very interesting.

I confess, I rarely notice ethnicity in stories and tend to fill in my own coloration (I wish wish wish cover art matched author’s descriptions!); in Addergoole, when trying to get an ethnic mix that approximated the ethnic mix of the US (while not having quarters of students), I still ended up with some weird concentrations. Maybe I should do an ethnicity cloud for Ag. Hunh, that would probably look weird.

But anyway, I liked the link.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/56730.html. You can comment here or there.

New Icons by Djinni!

Mar22

Girey! Looking cranky!

Girey is one of two protagonists of my fantasy romance journey series, creatively titled “Rin and Girey;” he spends most of the series cranky.

And Shiva! looking cranky!

Shiva is a background character in my webserial, http://addergoole.com, and the protagonist of her own super-secret miniseries (shh). She’s also a bit of an author-insertion.

Icons by djinni, from his most recent Free Icon Day

15-minute ficlet: Slideshow

Mar6

Originally posted to Fifteen-Minute-Fics, a 15-minute-ficlet to the prompt “platitudinous”

She smiled at the gathered crowd and took a long, deep breath. They would listen to her; they’d paid to come in here, after all. But would they hear?

She waited while they squirmed a bit. No-one expected her to be all that interesting, did they? They expected her to preach, to pontificate, to pour platitudes on their plebeian pates. They came to say they’d heard her speak, not because they expected it to be an entertaining speech.

“Punch ’em in the gut,” he’d recommended. “Don’t be platitudinous. Don’t use words of more than two syllables unless no other word will do. They’re here to look at you, after all, and for the cachet of hearing you speak. Let them look at you. Then, and only then, honey, hit them in the gut and don’t let them catch their breath until you’re done with them.”

He’d added a wry smile then, one she’d come to know very well. “I know you can do it. You’ve done it to me.”

She stepped away from the podium, carrying only the small remote control for the projector. She shed her business jacket. Let them look at you. All right, then; under the jacket she was wearing a thin, strappy chemise and a skirt that looked a lot less professional without its matching jacket, especially when a mystery breeze began brushing it to and fro, suggesting more than showing, but certainly suggesting a lot.

While they were staring at the moments of revealed thigh, at her freckled shoulders, at her flame-colored, hair, the projector screen lowered. She stood so that she was directly in front of the images, and showed them her pictures:

Avignon, where a would-be god sat on a throne in the middle of city hall, young men and women in chains at his feet. The light made it seem as if she, too, was chained before him. Click.

Barcelona, where the center of the city stood as destroyed as if an earthquake had hit it. She looked, now, as if she stood buried to her waist in rubble. The crowd began to make uncomfortable noises. Click.

Lisbon, looking as if nothing had changed, at first glance. Peaceful. Calm. Happy. Click… and so very uniform. Everybody the same. Everybody moving with a small careful fixed smile on their face: nothing wrong here. We like our uniforms. We are not stepping out of the crowd. Click.

The light of an American anytown showed them her face, with the same careful smile, the same blank expression.

“The enemy is already here,” she said into the nervous silence. “The questions is not when they will arrive. It is what. will. we. do?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/18938.html. You can comment here or there.