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Mission to Paris

Feb22

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

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

Addergoole has a landing page here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t? I thought… your parents…”

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

“Blonde and beautiful.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Briars and Vinegar: Bitter and Sharp, a story of fae-apoc post apoc for the Giraffe Call

Feb19

For Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Part 4 of 4.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

Part 1: Briars and Vinegar (LJ)
Part 2: Briars and Vinegar: Blood on the Snow (LJ)
Briars and Vinegar: For 100 Years (LJ)

The girl’s braid was nearly twice as long as she was tall, and it was loose around the top. She sighed at it, and tied it in a knot to take up some of the slack.

“Be welcome in my home,” she murmured formally. Her rose hedge parted before her, and she stepped out to greet them, offering Jeri her hand. “I’m Vin.”

“Vin?” Jeri shook the girl’s hand.

“Vinegar. My sister, my twin, she was Wine.” She makes a tired, irritated gesture. “She died a long time ago. She got all the power, you see.”

“I…” Jeri shook her head, looking at her friends. Clarence shrugged; he didn’t get it either.

“There should be food in the kitchen, and wood in the woodshed.” Vin brushed past them. “I generally wake up for a little while every summer and get the place in shape, then sleep through the winter. I can live on almost nothing that way. It’s almost a superpower.”

Hearing the tired bitterness in her voice, Clarence began to understand her name. “How long have you been here?”

“I lost count a long time ago.” As she said that, she paused by an interior wall, her hand on a series of hashmarks. “For a while, I’d wait until the longest day of the year passed, and make another mark.”

When her hand moved, Clarence counted the marks. Ten, twenty… “You’ve been here longer than eighty years?”

“How long ago was the War?” she asked vaguely. “Do you still remember the war?”

“Remember?” Jeri choked. Darrel had been reduced to staring in awe. “It’s been over eighty years since you came here!”

“No, no, not you personally. I mean, do people still talk about it?”

“Oh!” Jeri nodded, q quick, nervous, rapid movement. “Sort of, I mean. Ther was a war. Bad stuff happened. There were faeries and gods, but they all left or died.”

“Or went into hiding,” Vinegar agreed. “Back then, people would kill fae on sight, because the people who started the war had been fae.” She pulled piles of clothing from a cupboard. “If you stand there in wet clothes, you won’t warm up. Change into something dry, and I’ll start the fire.”

“So you went into hiding? Couldn’t you just… pretend not to be fae? You don’t look like a faerie,” Darrel grumbled.

“I don’t age. I don’t change. And, back then, people didn’t move towns all that much.” She set wood in the fire and started it, Clarence noticed, like a normal person, with flint and steel. “It was very obvious what I was. And nobody cared, that I couldn’t have done those things. That all I could do, the whole of my magic, was to make roses grow. So I came here, and I made the roses grow.”

“Briars and Vinegar,” Darrel muttered. “Sharp and bitter, and so much longer lasting than flowers and wine.”

If Clarence hadn’t known better, he’d have said that his friend was in love. And from the look on the girl’s face, she was, for the first time in a very long time, contemplating something sweet.

“I do store well,” she allowed, her lips finally curling into a smile.

Next: Briars & Vinegar: Eating the Roses (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/276622.html. You can comment here or there.

Briars and Vinegar: For 100 Years, a story of fae-apoc post apoc for the Giraffe Call

Feb19

For Stryck‘s prompt, although title from Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Part 3 of 4.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

Part 1: Briars and Vinegar (LJ)
Part 2: Briars and Vinegar: Blood on the Snow (LJ)

Bleeding, damp, and frozen, the three of them made it through the hedge of roses and crawled weakly towards the house.

The snow was falling in earnest now, covering their path, covering them as they struggled the last twenty meters, their clothing torn, their skin rended.

“If we never do that again,” Jeri mumbled,

“Yeah. I’ll count us lucky.” None of them mentioned that they would have to leave again. None of them were certain they could.

It was Clarence who made it to his feet to try the doorknob and, finding it locked, pushed off a mitten to pick the latch. They could break a window – but they would need the building as intact as it could be if they were going to survive.

It was Jeri who pushed the door shut again, making sure they’d all gotten in, with all their gear; it was Darrel who, knife out, began to clear the place, slowly but professionally. It would do them no good at all to get warm, only to be eaten by a monster or killed by a feral human for their gear.

“It seems warm in here,” Jeri murmured. “Some sort of geothermal heating system, maybe, old tech?”

It did, indeed, seem warm. “Could just be that we’re frozen,” Clarence pointed out. “There’s no wind here, so it seems warmer. It’s well-insulated, at least.”

“Guys,” Darrel called urgently. “Guys, come here.”

Knives out, they limped into the other room as quickly as they could, to find Darrel staring in distress at the bed.

There, in the bed, wrapped in blankets, her hair in a braid that reached onto the floor, slept – slept, because they could see her moving – a beautiful girl, no older than they were, maybe younger, with perfect-pale skin and ridiculously long lashes.

And, as they stood there gaping, roses began growing up around her, briars, mostly, with one white flower. She sat up, slowly, and they could see she was wearing a long-sleeved gown. “Goo ahway, plis, end noobahdy nids tah gite hahrt.”

Her accent was so thick, they could barely understand her. “It’s storming outside,” Clarence tried, speaking very slowly.

“Wine-tyre?” she asked, slowly. “Uhlyridih?”

“We were surprised, too. We don’t have gear for this weather.”

The roses stopped growing, and the girl stood up. “Steey,” she said, her speech becoming more comprehensible as they got used to the odd accent. “If you mean nah harm.”

“We mean you no harm,” he assured her. “We just want to warm up and dry off.” He turned to his friends, but they were staring at the girl in awe.

“Clarence,” Jeri said, very quietly, “she made those roses grow from nothing.”

“Fae,” Darrel whispered. “She’s a fae.”

“I am,” the girl agreed, “but the saddest sample you’ll evah find. That,” she gestured at the roses. “That’s all I can do.”

Clarence took a moment to digest that. “You’re a Fair Folk. A magic one. A myth…”

“…with the sole and entahre power of growing roses. Yes. You see why I hide out here?”

Part four is: Briars and Vinegar: Sharp and Bitter (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/276406.html. You can comment here or there.

Briars and Vinegar – Blood on the Snow, a story of fae-apoc post apoc for the Giraffe Call (@anke)

Feb19

For [personal profile] anke‘s prompt, although title from Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Part 2 of either 3 or 4, we shall see.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

Part 1: Briars and Vinegar (LJ)

The snow kept blowing, pushing away the nice drift they’d been standing on, revealing more and more roses in front of them – not just a rose bush, it seemed, but an entire hedge, a monstrosity of roses sticking out of the snow, their thorns long and sharp, their buds few and blood-red, like the drips Darrel was leaving on the snow.

“Maybe we should head back,” Clarence sighed. “The deeper we dig, the more thorns we find. This seems fruitless.”

“But it’s right there,” Jeri complained. Indeed, they could see more and more of the house, through the hedge of briars. “And the other place was barely there. This one looks lived in.”

“Well, if it’s lived in, maybe they don’t want company?” Darrel pulled out his long knife and contemplated the hedge. “They might not be happy if we cut through.”

“They might not,” Clarence agreed. “I think I see a break over there.” He slogged that way through snow that seemed to grab on to his snowshoes and pull him downwards. Night was coming. If they didn’t find shelter soon, he wasn’t sure they’d survive. It was madness to stand here fighting with a flower bush.

And yet they kept doing it. He was surprised Darrel hadn’t mentioned sorcery yet. Darrel liked the old tales, the old myths. He liked to believe in magic, and dragons, and monsters. Jeri liked to believe, on the other hand, in old documents and old maps, old books and older pamphlets, as if the ancients had somehow had all the answers.

Clarence just wanted to find new things, or things that, at least, no-one living knew about, since, as everyone liked to tell him, the ancients had known everything, been everywhere, and done everything. But, since they were dead and he wasn’t, finding it all over again, he thought, should count.

“I found something,” he called. It wasn’t a gate, not anymore, but he could see the edges of the arbor that had been there, and the swinging door that had fallen off, or been pulled off by the weight of roses. They would have to crawl, but they could get through.

“Doesn’t it seem strange?” Darrel asked, as he and Jeri slogged over to him, “All these roses, still doing fine all this time later? We’ve never seen anything quite this alive.”

“They don’t have many flowers anymore,” Jeri pointed out. “Maybe they went wild?”

“But it’s winter, or, well, it’s acting like winter. They shouldn’t have any flowers at all by now.”

“We’ve seen stranger things,” Clarence soothed them. “Right now, we need to get to that house, so we warm up, then go tell the folks at home about this.”

“Right,” Darrel agreed, rubbing his hands. “And put a bandage on these thorn-holes in me.”

The tunnel through the briars seemed smaller than it had when he first looked, but surely that was just the perspective, comparing it against Darrel’s broad shoulders. “Right,” Clarence steeled himself. “I’ll go through first. Jeri, you bring up the rear.”

Part three is Briars and Vinegar: For 100 Years (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/276188.html. You can comment here or there.

Briars and Vinegar, a story of fae-apoc post apoc for the Giraffe Call

Feb19

For [personal profile] ariestess‘s prompt, although title from Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Part one of either 3 or 4, we shall see.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

Names from here

The world had fallen into chaos two hundred years ago, although the exact year was unclear. Record-keeping was not as precise as it had once been, and the exact year that the old world ended had been, it seemed, in some debate at the time.

The remaining population had gathered together in small communities and, from there, rebuilt a world, a much smaller world than their ancestors had known. Large portions of the world were simply left alone, either unsafe in and of themselves, or too far from a population center to be safely or easily traveled to.

Slowly, the world rebuilt. And slowly, as towns grew back into cities, people began to explore the lands they had left abandoned.

Clarence slogged through the early-season snow on unfamiliar snowshoes, muttering quietly at the sudden and unexpected fall that obscured trail and hazards alike.

“The map,” Jeri offered, “says there should be a road here.”

“The map,” Darrel countered, “is a million years old. The road is probably long gone.”

“The old roads don’t just vanish,” she countered stubbornly. “Besides, an old map is better than no map.”

“Unless there’s a dragon around here that’s not on there.”

“There’s no such thing as dragons.”

“Guys.” Clarence hissed out the word. “Guys, shut up for a minute.”

This wasn’t their first exploration, even if they were acting like kids – it was the snow, it brought out the five-year-old in all of them – so both of them fell quiet at his tone.

Once it was clear that nothing was immediately going to attack them, they moved forward, to see what he was looking at.

“Is that a rose?” Darrel whispered. “How is it…”

“I have no idea. Maybe the snow took it by surprise, too?” In the middle of a drift that Clarence’s walking stick said was at least a meter deep, a single red rosebud stood out like a blood drop. “It looks unreal.”

“Do you think there are more?” Darrel began digging in the snow, pushing aside the drift. “Or maybe an old wall, or some sign of something other than this endless nothing?”

“There could be a whole town under the snow,” Jeri put in, but she, too, was digging. “Or a road.”

“You and your… ow!” Darrel yanked his hand back, the blood drip clear on his wool mitten. “Blasted ruins, there’s something down there.”

“Roses have thorns,” Clarence offered helpfully. “Guys, it’s starting to snow again. We should get back to that building we saw.”

“If by ‘building,’ you mean ‘two walls?'” Jeri shook her head. “Look, just over the edge of the drift – there’s a chimney. It’s closer, at least.” The wind was beginning to pick up again, whipping snow back into the hole they’d been digging, whipping it away from the rose. “We should be able to make it there before dark.”

Part two: Briars and Vinegar: Blood on the Snow (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/275816.html. You can comment here or there.

Picking Grapes

Feb18

For cluudle‘s prompt.

Shiva and Niki are characters in the webserial Addergoole.

Addergoole has a landing page here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Late planting

Feb18

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt, after Bitter Vintage

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

The Wild Ones are a family line of half-breed Ellehemaei; the lives of three of them are chronicled in my very dark webserial The Wild Ones’ Blood.

The guest at the gate turned out to be female, which set the trio of sisters no more at ease, female, and with pointed, Doberman-like ears. Kin, perhaps? they stood casually, their tails and their ears the only thing showing how tense and fight-ready they were.

The Doberman-woman wasn’t hiding it at all. Her face was set in a snarl. “You have what is mine,” she growled.

“This is our land,” Aglæca answered, her voice lazy, her hand on her knife. “We have only what is ours here.”

“You have what is mine,” the woman repeated, “and I will have it back.”

“Bitch, we don’t have anything of yours,” Cassandra hissed. “Be gone before we cut you into pieces and feed the pieces to our pigs.”

“He came here,” the dog-woman insisted, and now all three of them were listening very, very intently to her. “He came here, I know. he told me it was the last thing he had to do for the Old Man, and so I let him come. And he never came back.”

Aglæca was not certain if the low whining sound of anger came from her throat, her sisters’ throats, or all three, but she knew it was her that spoke. “He. He was your Kept, your possession? You owned that creature?”

A beat, and then Cassandra asked over the rising silence, “You owned our kin?” Because creature, monster, and bastard he might have been, but he’d been a Wild One, too. That was why, in part, he wasn’t dead.

The Doberman snarled. “Own. I Own him. He is my love, and it was the only way to keep him from the Old Man’s grasp. So yes, yes I Own him.”

“Then you should join him,” Angela snarled, and, in a heartbeat, they attacked.

~

They planted the second rose – a red one – and the second grapes near the first pair, so that the two could twine together, and when the time came to make the wine, they mixed fruit and petals from all the plans together. “Let them be together,” Aglæca toasted, with the first glass of the season, “in the only way they deserve.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/274267.html. You can comment here or there.

Bitter Vintage

Feb18

For [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

The Wild Ones are a family line of half-breed Ellehemaei; the lives of three of them are chronicled in my very dark webserial The Wild Ones’ Blood.

This story has suggestions of violence and rape, but no on-screen either.

“That’s the last of this year’s rose wine.” Aglæca poured the dregs of the jug into two glasses, letting the last of the pinkish liquid drip slowly into the blue vessels. “And a month before it’s time to start on this year’s.”

“We’ll have to make do.” Angela took her glass and breathed in its floral notes. “It always sounds as if it’s singing to me.”

“Maybe it is.” Aglæca stared at her own glass, willing its secrets to her. “It’s always seemed to have a bit of… essence, I guess, in it, hasn’t it?”

“Life,” Angela agreed, and swirled a little in her mouth. “The last bit is always a bit bittersweet, you know?”

“The last we’ll taste of it.” Aglæca took an ungraceful gulp. “Until the next time. Yes, I think I almost heard a song. Or a scream.”

“Mm, screams.” Angela’s smile was sharp and fierce, like the woman herself. “Yes. I know there’s no blood in it, but you can almost taste it, can’t you? Just a little drip of his life, there?”

“You’re a poet, Ang. A bloody poet.” She stroked her sister’s claret-red hair, pushing it behind one tufted ear. “It should have his life in there, the way we’ve got the roots going.”

“Mmm.” That only made her smile wider, and she sipped the wine slowly, savoring it, savoring the essence in it. “Do you think he’s still alive down there?”

“I can’t imagine he can die that easily. And I made damn sure that he couldn’t get out.” She looked out the window, where the trellis of grapes shared space with the thorny roses.

“It must be horrible, having a plant growing into you, not able to move, able to feel everything.” Angela’s eyes clouded with memory, and her sister hugged her tightly.

“And he deserves every moment of it. Drink up. Cass heard something down the road, thinks it might be another one.” Before her sister could twitch, before she could show fear, Aglæca showed her teeth. “We might need to plant another rose bush.”

She was rewarded with a feral smile in return. “This time, let’s plant red ones.”

Continued here

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/273929.html. You can comment here or there.

Step on my Tail

Feb16

This story contains magic and references to Changes but no slavery, or sex. It does involve references to violence.

For @DaHob’s prompt

This takes place during the apoc, ~2012-2013

~*~

I love that house, you understand?

First house, paid for it right out of college with a fudgie little mortgage I only had to twist a few arms to get. So that’s my house, that’s my pride, my joy, that’s my territory.

And yes, I’m territorial. Find me an Ellehemaei who isn’t. It’s in the Law. It’s in our blood. And those of us with animal Changes… yeah. Snarl, hiss, spray on the corners. It’s our territory, gods-damn-it.

And there is, in that year, one thing I love more than I love my house, and that is my man. My beautiful buddy, my partner. My Tiger. We grew up together. We Changed together. Went to college together. We’d been side by side since we were kits, and we were going to be side by side forever. Tiger was the only person with a permanent invitation into my house.

And then three goddamned gods rip through the walls between the worlds and decide our little city is theirs.

I could forgive them that, live with that. I don’t need to be queen of the land, not me. I don’t need to be queen of anything but my own house.

And Tiger, Tiger isn’t really a King-of-the-Jungle sort, either. He’s content with his bars and his clubs and his dance halls, and me. He’s content being a small-beans king and a sometimes queen. We’re happy.

And then those fucking beasts decide that they wanted to go to the clubs. And they decide they’re kings of the goddamned fucking clubs. Of Tiger’s club. Of my Tiger’s fucking club, do you understand?

And there is one thing my Tiger can’t stand. And one thing I can’t stand. And when they tear out three of my Tiger’s ribs and leave him for dead, not knowing he was fae…

Then I get angry. And that’s why the city burns.

*

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