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Begin Again

Mar11

For @dahob’s prompt

Content warning: emotional abuse, motherhood, foul language

The first week was weird.

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

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

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

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

When are you going to wake up and…

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

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

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

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

“Fuck you.” This time it was louder.

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

You know I want the best for you.

“Fuck you!”

It felt good. It felt really good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fuck you.”

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

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

“I’d like to raise my baby, please.”

Because she could. Fuck you.

She was surprised to find she was smiling.

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

Identity, a continuation of FaeApoc/Addergoole @kissofjudas

Mar8

After Persuasion, after Hyphens, after Step-Father, after Old History, after At the Gate, after Fathers.

Orlaith looked at Silas. She didn’t miss the tone in his voice, even if it looked as if their son – and the man claiming to be their son’s father – had overlooked it.

Silas had not taken easily to jealousy. It did not suit his cy’Linden nature at all; straightening out the terms of their relationship had been a complicated dance that did not always involve only two partners.

Silas wanted to let this one know who was boss.

And it would do him good to have her back him up on that.

She smiled. It wasn’t her nice smile, her doctor-face. It was the one she generally smiled when someone was going to pay for something.

“Well, he does have that little tattoo on his left buttcheek, just inside the crack… but I like your method better, darling.”

Adder was looking panicked. “I have a tattoo?”

Ora laughed. She’d expected that response, actually. Not many people took the time to look there on themselves – or on their partners. “I left my mark on you, when you were sleeping.” She felt a little apologetic about that, but only a very little. “I was feeling possessive that day.”

“…ah…” Adder was blushing. “So…?”

“I like Silas’ idea. I’ll be more sure you’re actually who you say you are, that way.”

Adder looked between her and her partner, looking more and more like a lost puppy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/489456.html. You can comment here or there.

That Guy Thursday: Nilam

Mar6

(It’s Thursday where Rix lives!)

Nilam cy’Friedmar

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

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

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

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

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

Hyphens, a continuation of FaeApoc/Addergoole @kissofjudas

Mar6

After Step-Father, after Old History, after At the Gate, after Fathers.

Charity case. Hunter-Hale didn’t question his father.

Nor did he question his mother. “I’ll be right down, darling.” Her voice sounded both tinny and icy over the intercom.

He turned back to the guy claiming to be his father instead. “So you’re Adder.” He didn’t look like much. The way his shoulders rolled forward, the way he kept looking at the ground; he looked like a beaten dog, one really hoping someone would throw him a bone.

Hunter-Hale wanted to feel sorry for him, but his parents had taught him the dangers of that. What they hadn’t taught him, the end of the world had.

(“You little shit,” the man had screamed at him. “Do you know who I am?”

“Two hours ago, you were dying on our sidewalk.” He had turned the shotgun to the man’s chest, although – ten years old, then, and small for his age – he hadn’t been sure he could actually fire it. “An hour ago, you were eating food my sister cooked for you. Now, you’re demanding we give you more, because you used to be someone important.”

“Not used to be! I am! I’ll have you arrested for this!”

“All the cops have fled the city. Right now, the only law is us.” Hunter had done a little jerk with the shotgun he’d seen on a movie he wasn’t supposed to be watching. “Get out. And don’t come back.”)

That man had fled, but he hadn’t been the only one. It made Hunter-Hale reach for his gun when this one spoke again.

“I’m Adder. And you’re Hunter-Hale.”

“I am. You know, I’ve always wondered – why the hyphen?” He peeked up at Silas to be sure he wasn’t screwing anything up.

Adder didn’t seem to mind burning time talking. “It needed to be the whole thing, and putting it as one word didn’t look right.” He shrugged one shoulder apologetically. “It’s the way it came in the vision.”

“Hunh.”

“Who’s the guest, Silas, Hunter-Hale?” Mom was moving forward like she was a Queen in her castle. Hunter liked it when she did that, but it could be a little scary. “Oh. Oh, hrm. Has he proven who is is, yet?”

Mom sounded intrigued. More than that, Hunter-Hale realized, she sounded predatory.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/487730.html. You can comment here or there.

Bad Kids, a drabble of Luke and Mystral

Mar6

After Revival, after Impasse

“Tempero Intinn, you sonofabitch.”

That’s my Myst.

The ninja froze. Slowly, he set his sword on the treehouse floor. Even more slowly, he began speaking. “Telling… you… the… goal… of… the… mission… gah… bitch… CHILDREN.”

The …ninja… sank to his knees, holding his head. Luke shared a brief glance with his wi – his mate. “I’ll go to the kids.”

“Daddy! Mommy!”

“Ow, you little shit!”

Luke swooped down from the platform in a barely-controlled dive. There, by the side door, Chavva and Icarus were fighting, like the good little warriors that they were, kicking and scratching and biting and, above all, not cooperating.

“The first thing to remember, if a stranger wants you to go somewhere, don’t be a good kid.” They hadn’t been the first children Luke had taught that lesson to, but the world was a dark place, and he had made sure to drill it in. Play -abductions, where they got to kick and fight against Dad, had driven the lesson home. “You’re a good kid for your Mom, for your Dad, for your family. Be a good kid for your teachers. But never, ever be a good kid for someone trying to take you somewhere. Be the baddest, most mis-behaved child you can manage.”

Chavva was biting now, good girl, going for the jugular, while her brother was using a small weapon that he must have had stashed in his pajama pants.

Luke felt a surge of paternal pride, never mind that Icarus wasn’t, technically his son.

And then he attacked.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/487508.html. You can comment here or there.

Post-Apoc Studies 101, a continuation from the January Giraffe Call (@rix_scaedu)

Mar5

To Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of this unnamed fragment from the Jan. Giraffe Call.

“You don’t think the things you learned in your human school will be useful?” Tomas was looking around, pacing around, sniffing the air.

“Well. Why am I going to need to know history now? Or literature?”

“Hrmph.” He sat down with a thump. “Because you will need to remember the past. Don’t you people have a quote about that?”

“Those who don’t remember the past, I think.”

“Are doomed to repeat it. yes. You’re going to want to remember that information, so you can share it.”

“If the world depends on me remembering my 9th grade global studies, we’re screwed.”

“Surely you remember one thing.”

“Ninety and ten. And irregular coastlines.”

“Explain.”

She stirred the heating soup with a chopstick. “In developing countries, especially with , um, bad leadership-“

“Dictators?”

“Those. Ninety percent of the wealth is held by ten percent of the people.”

“So they’re controlling everyone else with their wealth. How does that help you here?”

“Well, I don’t have any wealth, and I don’t know where the people are with wealth.”

“But that’s what you need to find. Wealth, or people with wealth.”

“You want me to be a dictator?”

“Better than being dictated to.” He grinned at her cheerfully. “At least, in my book. So what’s wealth?”

“Money.” Duh… She was surprised to find him shaking his head at her. “What?”

“Money is what you use to buy wealth. What good is a bunch of paper?”

“It buys stuff from… damn. Okay. But the guys who had all the money before, they can have supplies, and probably full roofs, and all that stuff.”

“So that’s a good place to start. Supplies and a roof are wealth.”

“Supplies and a roof. Check. Wait. So, people who had money might have wealth, right?”

“Right. In the world we were living in, money was almost the same as wealth.”

“You know a lot for a hobo.”

“You know enough to know that I’m not a hobo.”

“Yeah, but I’m having a hard enough time dealing with everything else that happened right now. Dealing with the fact that you’re a 300-year-old fairy is just too much.”

“That is fair. Back to your lessons, then, and I believe your can of foodlike stuff is burning.”

“Caramelizing.” She stirred it carefully. “So, right now, wealth is ‘things people need and want.’ Okay. So, I don’t want to be poor. And I really am, right now. We are, unless you have a lot more up your sleeve than I think you do.”

“We’re rather poor right now. But. Did you take physics, did your school teach such a thing?”

“Physics? Yeah.” She stirred her food again, wondering where this was going.

“So you understand the idea of potential energy, yes?”

He was sounding less and less like a hobo every minute. “Yes. Like a ball at the top of a cliff has a lot of potential energy.”

“So what we are sitting on, my dear student…” He sounded positively Giles, now, as he sat a pebble on the edge of their rooftop campground, “is a great deal of potential wealth. And all it needs is a little shove.”

Armona watched as he tipped the pebble off the edge.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/542328.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/486742.html. You can comment here or there.

Enough Warning, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@RealBriGang)

Mar4

For [profile] realbrigang‘s prompt. Thanks to @inventrix and @dahob for the names.

By most measures, they’d had enough warning.

They’d gotten enough advance notice, between Iesult’s spotty and erratic future-seeing and Gerauld’s contacts in the government, to know when things were going to go weird. They’d had enough time to hit the stores before everything was stripped down to lime juice and off-brand saltines. They’d even had enough time, in part due to Khalim’s money-market philandering, to get a cabin off in the middle of nowhere and stock it up.

They’d had enough time to get themselves safe, in other words. They had time to warn their friends and family, in vague or concrete terms, depending on whose kin and kin, and how close they felt to them. They had time to get five of their closest to a nearby cabin, even.

Compared to most of the world, they’d had more than enough warning. By the time the city they’d been living in was rubble, they’d been settled in their cabin for a month. Julep had started a garden, Ieseult and Gerauld had finished the wall around the cabin-area (with help from some other fugitives from the end of the world), and Khalim had stocked them up on non-perishables and paper goods. They were in good shape – them, and the little group of twenty others who were holed up on the mountain with them.

They’d had enough warning that Khalim had turned most of his money into solid assets by the time the stock market blew up. They had supplies, real supplies, and a small community of like-minded individuals, in a place that was built for off-the-grid living. They were going to survive – and they had enough weapons to make certain they weren’t overrun. They were doing pretty well for themselves.

The four of them, the twenty of them, the fifty from that mountain, all gathered in the ski lodge nearby to watch the last TV broadcast from New York.

They watched as the bridges crumbled. They watched as the ocean flooded in. They watched until the tv showed them nothing but snow and static.

They had not had enough warning for this. There could never be enough warning.

They watched, holding hands. Not just the four of them, friends since elementary school. Not just the twenty, kin and kind. All of them, everyone on that mountain.

“How can we go on?” someone whispered.

Iesult cleared her throat, unsurprised to find it was tight with tears. “Together.” She coughed, and said it again. “Together.”

They would be pretty well off. Together.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/486171.html. You can comment here or there.

Impasse, a drabble of Luke and Mystral

Mar2

After Old School, after …Ninja…

::Luca!!::

Myst’s call ripped across Luke’s brain. He dropped everything. Everything, in this case, involved the …ninja… in his hands, and one of his swords.

He took to the air while still searching for Myst’s mind. Where, where…. he searched for heat signatures and found her very unique one. There… and her mind was unconscious. And someone was picking her up.

Luke swallowed the roar of anger only with centuries of discipline. Whoever they were, they weren’t expecting an air attack, even now. He swooped, grabbing both Myst and her attacker in one dive.

Only to find her attacker holding a wooden sword and aiming it at Luke’s throat.

He landed with a thump in Icarus’ tree fort. “Just back up nice and slowly. I’ll take the girl. You take the sword.”

He hadn’t Worked without words in a while, but he thought his Jasfe Tlacatl as strongly as he could at Mystral.

The ninja squinted at him, still pointing the sword at his throat. “Not till I get what I’m here for.”

Luke breathed as levelly as he could. He knew what a hawthorn wound to the windpipe could do. “What are you here for?”

The bastard laughed. “That would be telling.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/485172.html. You can comment here or there.

Old History, a continuation of Fae Apoc/Addergoole

Mar1

After At the Gate, after Fathers

Adder was out of options, short of selling himself, and he’d thought about that a few times.

When he’d really started thinking the collar looked like a good option – at least then someone would feed him, in theory – he’d decided he’d at least be reasonable about it.

Orlaith hadn’t loved him. Adder was smart enough to know that. But she’d been a good Keeper; she had been, as she said, very clearly practicing to be a good Keeper.

Adder had a feeling, looking at the man calling his firstborn son, that her knew why, now.

He coughed, and shifted the weight of his rucksack. “Where’s Ora?”

The boy spoke. Had it really been that long ago? “Mom’s fine. You didn’t answer the question.”

He didn’t look like a miniature Adder, chin and cheekbones be dammed. His shoulders, his voice; he was a miniature whoever-the-hell-this fucker-was.

Adder’s stomach growled, and he remembered that he was hungry, tired, and down to his last pair of socks. He swallowed the lump of possessive frustration. He hadn’t been cy’Linden for nothing.

“The world’s sort of falling to shit out there.” He gestured behind him. It hadn’t escaped him that his son was living in a mansion, a mansion that still had power. “I came to talk to Orlaith. to ask if the Woods-Witch had a place for me.”

He hoped he didn’t sound too pitiful.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/484622.html. You can comment here or there.

…Ninja… a drabble of Luke and Mystral

Mar1

After X Marks the spot, after Partnership

Three. Four. There were more than he’d seen the first time. He disabled them, leaving them unconscious and unable to hold a weapon. One, who was sighting on his daughter’s room, he killed accidentally.

Anger. He took a few deep breaths.

::One more sweep on this side, and I think we’ll be clear. How’re you?:: Mystral’s mental voice settled him, called him.

::Almost done. I’ve got their lead… damn.::

He’d thought cyanide pills had gone out with the cold war.

He knocked the last one of his out, and grabbed the… ninja… before he could kill himself. ::This is not the evening I had planned, Myst. Do you want to help with the interrogation?:: He shook the … ninja.. and jammed his handkerchief between the man’s teeth. “Tempero tlacatl…” ::Watch out. They’re old-school::

He ducked as one that he’d missed tried to bean him with a crowbar. “Someone is going to die tonight!”

This was not what he’d had planned for this evening.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/484472.html. You can comment here or there.