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I Should Visit, a story of Regine/Addergoole/Doomsday

May20

The one date reference in this currently sets it in 2053, year 59 of the Addergoole School and 11 of Doomsday Academy. However, I may move it a little later, to coincide with a project Inventrix & I are considering, one said Inventrix wakes up to consult. 🙂

Regine had a tendency to come to decisions slowly – not because she was in any way stupid, but because she liked to consider all angles of an issue and, on non-critical matters, saw no reason to go quickly. (In that, she was much like the old Grigori that had raised her, a fact Luke would not mention out loud or even think loudly where anyone might overhear it.)

Because of this, she often took long enough to reach a decision that Luke, having already gone through a much more blunt-object style of thought, was taken by surprise by the time she announced her results.

“I believe I should visit this ‘Doomsday Academy’, she announced, over a dinner shared between their crew.

Luke nearly choked on his beer. Regine raised her sculpted eyebrows at him.

“You have visited several times by now, haven’t you? And Michael here has visited so often that they have named a new drink after him. It is a project by an Addergoole graduate, and thus I have a vested interest in visiting.”

Luke looked to Mike for help. Mike was laughing too hard to even try. “It’s a lovely idea,” he managed. “I think Regine should definitely visit Cloverleaf. I think she’d find it very enlightening.”

“It’s not your territory, Regine, and you were not exactly kind to her. She’s not going to be patient with you.” You’re going to get your nose bent out of joint, and you’re going to ask me to do something about it. Or, worse, you’re going to try to do something yourself.

She simply looked calm and unflappable. Of course. “Cynara is hardly going to attack me and risk bringing the wrath of Addergoole on her descendants. Even Boom is not that unstable.”

Luke spoke very carefully. “The problem is, Regine, that Cya has never, ever, been unstable. And–” He felt mildly hypocritical, considering how long it had taken him to figure all of this out. But perhaps she could learn from his stupidity. “–they’ve had fifty-three years since they first attended Addergoole.”

“That’s hardly anything compared to three centuries. Or… more.” She nodded at Mike.”

Luke sighed. “No. But it’s quite a bit compared to sixteen years. Regine, you insulted Cya quite deeply. And–“

“Surely, if she’s so sane, she’s gotten over the insult after this many years?”

“Regine, how long did it take you to get over a minor slight?” He was beginning to get very irritated. It was beginning to show. And she was just watching him, as if she didn’t understand the problem. “Look. Right now, because Mike and I have been friendly and respectful, Doomsday and Cloverleaf do not entirely hate Addergoole and the Village. Do you really want that to change?”

“I simply want to see this school which a graduate of my school has managed. I really fail to see the problem.”

Luke glanced at Mike. The Daeva had mostly sobered, but he nodded, so very faintly. Well, thanks, that was a load of help. “You are purposefully ‘failing’ to see the problem. At least let her know you’re coming.”

“Well, then, it wouldn’t be a very good assessment, would it?” Curse her, she was enjoying this. What was wrong with the woman?

Having one straw left, Luke grasped it. “Then, if you’re going to pretend this is some sort of academic test, take her Mentor.”

“I cannot see any reason not to do that.” She nodded, as if she was giving some great concession.

“Good.” Luke left the room before he did something someone would regret. Hopefully, Drake could keep things from getting too out of hand. Hopefully, Boom really had grown up as much as he thought they had.

Hopefully, Regine would grow up sometime soon.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/943967.html. You can comment here or there.

Survival, a story of the Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@dahob)

May16

Written to dahob‘s prompt to my Giraffe Call!

Set in the world of Fae Apoc, sometime in late 2011/early 2012.

Day five. They were beginning to run low on supplies, no matter how carefully Yonit parceled everything out. Carl had a massive cut running down his calf, and it gotten infected, despite all of their care. They had spent the last four days complaining about the fae, wishing them all dead, and pacing the tiny, cramped life boat.

A massive fight between someone calling themselves Llšr and someone who claimed to be Poseidon had swamped the Atalus in the middle of a trans-oceanic trip. Yonit had been one of twenty-two people who had made it into this lifeboat; they’d lost radio contact with the other boats two days ago.

And now – now they were running low on supplies, and the bitching about the fae was getting worse, and Carl had a fever. She’d done what she could in whispers and muttering, but there was no privacy in the little tube of a boat, and she needed to be able to concentrate.

“I guess,” Carl muttered, sounding half-delirious, “you guys will have to eat me first. I hear the heart’s good eating. Save that for the women.”

Yonit swallowed hard. “Would you guys…” She was going to die. She was going to die one way or the other. Maybe she could manage to save them. “Would you rather be… be reduced to cannibalism? Or would you rather be on the boat with a fae? ‘Cause, um… some fae have the ability to make food. And water.”

She closed her eyes and waited for the shouting to start.


Having trouble picturing the lifeboat? It’s this sort.

If you want more, I’m sure I can manage more of this one! Drop a tip in the tip pack below.

Giraffe Call rates apply: $1/100 words.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/942014.html. You can comment here or there.

Home Sweet Home

May15

Written to Anke’s tweeted prompt: “building a shelter in the wilderness”.

This follows:Leaving Town, A New Flower, and Outnumbered. I don’t write about these guys very often <.<

Despite being Fae Apoc, no warnings apply.

*~*

The four of them had been walking for a while. To hear Nila’s son Allan tell it, they had been walking forever. Finally, they had come into the mountains proper, into places which had been, before the war, relatively uninhabited.

It had been over four days since they could see the city at all, and longer than that since they could hear it. They were moving slowly, but they were moving, and after the first attackers, people were, for the most part, leaving them alone. Perhaps it showed, on their faces, that they’d stand for no threat to the children. Perhaps they just looked too poor to bother. Nila wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She was, however, done walking. She led her little crew – she was carrying Allan right now, and her companion Tros was carrying her infant daughter Susan – off the narrow road and down an overgrown driveway. Nobody had come down here, from the looks of things, in at least a decade. They could camp here, and see what they could find.

What they found was two walls of an old stone house and a chimney, the rest of the house having fallen to the ground. Said ground was littered with the old rocks, but the surviving walls would make a nice wind break. It was going to be getting cold soon, after all. And from that… from that, maybe they could build a proper house.

There was an old car rotting to the side of the small clearing, and a half-collapsed well house. Nila leaned against the wall and smiled. “Home sweet home. Or, at least, it will be.”

She popped her pop-up tent up in the lee of the walls while Allan got to work picking up small stones and Tros scavenged for firewood. Their tent was a bit worse for wear after the days on the road – and a couple attacks – but it was still better than nothing. If it rained – and it looked like it would – they’d need more.

She got Allan picking up pine boughs instead of rocks while she cut long sticks from the surrounding trees. She still had some rope in her pack, enough to work as lashing. The sun was setting by the time she was done, but by the time it kissed the horizon, they had a roof over their little shelter and Tros had a roaring fire going in the pit he and Allan had made.

“Home sweet home?” he asked, softly, when both kids were tucked away in the tent, fast asleep.

“Well.” She looked at the rough roof. “It needs two more walls and a proper roof. But then it would be ours.”

“Ours?” He was supposed to be passing through, watching them for ten days in return for the healing Nila had done for him. But she watched him rolling over the word in his mind. “Yeah. We could make it ours.”


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White Flag, a story beginning of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@Lilfluff)

May15

Written to lilfluff‘s prompt here to my Giraffe Call!

Set in the world of Fae Apoc, sometime in late 2011/early 2012.

Mossliden’s spine was twitching. Her hands twitching. Her wings were twitching. But she raised her chin and very carefully held the white flag visible.

The Ashanevai were camped in a small, inaccessible cavern, very defensible and almost impossible to sneak up on. Mossliden approved, and she was not trying, at the moment, to sneak anywhere, but it still made her very uncomfortable.

A bearded man – humans would probably think him about 50, because he had grey in hair and beard and lines on his face – stopped her. “I know you.”

Mossliden nodded her head carefully. “We fought last week, at the waterfall. You took my left hand.” She waggled the healed fingers carefully at him. He was a fierce fighter. This entire band were hard fighters, or Mossliden ‘s people would have won already.

“Ah, yes. You fight pretty good for a Nedetakaei.”

“You fight pretty fiercely, for an Ashanevai.” Mossilden bowed her head again. “My leader sent me to talk about peace.”

“You mean surrender.” He grinned at her with yellowed teeth.

Mossliden didn’t take the bait. She’d been chosen to carry the flag in part because she was very good at not taking bait. “I mean peace.”

“Give your word that this is not some sort of trick.”

“I swear I’m here only to talk about peace, and for no other reason.”

“Hrrmph. Stay here. I’ll get the boss.”

Mossliden waited, as patiently as she could, pacing in short loops around the very small entryway. They kept her waiting. Of course they did. They wanted to be certain that they weren’t being ambushed.

When the leader came out, followed by a thin, stoned-looking mutt with greasy hair, Mossliden forced herself to a polite smile. Halfbreeds, all of them, of course. Not for nothing were the Ashanevai called that. But Mossliden’s people had a need now, and thus she must talk to them.

“I come to talk peace,” she said, carefully. Even more carefully, she repeated the words in the Old Tongue. “These come-lately ‘gods’ threaten our world. They threaten both my people and yours… and the humans. My Queen sent me to offer truce.”

“Shit.” The tall woman in front of Mossliden – all horns and fangs and dreadlocked hair and leather – cleared her throat and smirked. “Well, shit,” she repeated. “The world really is ending.”


If you want more, I’m sure I can manage more of this one! Drop a tip in the tip pack below.

Giraffe Call rates apply: $1/100 words.

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Kith and Kin

May14

(I think it will soon become clear that I started watching Orphan Black last night)…

Some Time After the Apocalypse

“No.” The woman — girl, she was a girl, and Caitrin would do well to remember it — shook her head and looked away. “No. No, that’s not- I didn’t- no.”

Caitrin couldn’t say she blamed the girl. “I’ll bring the forms by for you later.” Later would be soon enough.

Regine’s answer when Caitrin presented her with the children was less than reassuring. “I can work with that.”

It wasn’t enough that she’d gotten a letter on her seventeenth birthday, telling her she was accepted to a strange school, far away from everything, everything including John, to whom she’d been engaged. It wasn’t enough that accepted was a polite way of saying forced to go. It wasn’t enough that the place was underground. That it looked like a book plate of someplace rich, indulgent people spent far too much money, in the days Before the End Times. It wasn’t enough that she had to be here.

There was someone else here with her face.

Katharina stared at the girl. She knew that face. She had seen that face in the mirror every morning and every evening her entire life. Well, nearly that face. The girl in front of her was wearing make-up, visible and obvious make-up on her lips and around her eyes. And she had cropped her hair so short that it barely counted as hair.

The woman who had fetched Katharina touched her arm gently. “It’s all right.”

“She… she has my face.” Katharina had heard stories of twins, two people born sharing a single soul. The priest said they were to be pitied but avoided, because one needed an entire soul to be good and godly. Katharina swallowed. “She has my face.”

“I’m told,” Professor Valerian murmured gently, “that you get used to it.”

The girl with Katharina’s face winked, bold and brazen, and walked away. Katharina leaned against a wall and tried not to faint.

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In Which Amrit is Confused (FaeApoc, Amrit/Mieve)

May13

First: A beginning of a story which obnoxiously cuts off just before the description,
Previous: In Which Amrit is Gagged Again.

please note: I am posting two chapters at once.

Fae Apoc, approx. now.

Content Warnings: This setting, although not this ficlet, contains rape, mind control, and dubious consent situations.

This particular story contains kidnapping and slavery, bondage, violence, and will eventually contain Stockholm Syndrome.

Amrit

There had to be a catch. Nobody was nice just to be nice. Amrit worked his mouth around the new gag, slammed the axe into another log, worked his mouth around the gag again. It didn’t hurt anywhere. It didn’t chafe anywhere. It was even gentle on the places already hurting, and — assuming the hawthorn got out of his system soon — would probably not interfere with his own healing.

There had to be a catch. She had bought him from a slave market, dragged him here, chained him to the bed. She’d threatened to break his leg if he tried to run away. Not that it would stop him for long… but Amrit had broken bones before, and he didn’t like it.

She’d kidnapped, enslaved, and threatened him. But she’d put a nice gag in his mouth that didn’t hurt him, and, even after telling him he’d get no lunch, she’d fed him. He worked his mouth around the new gag and split another log.

The pile he had to split didn’t seem to get any smaller, but the pile he’d already split kept getting bigger. It was getting bigger more slowly, though, as the day went on, as his muscles ached and his body tired. He had another foot of height to go before he’d get his “reward.” Another foot, and the sun was beginning to set. Where was she? He split a log, looked around. No sign of her. He split another log, looked around. The plow lay idle, up against the garage.

Three more logs. He might finish at this rate. He looked at the chain hooked to his ankle. No, not yet. He split another log. He wasn’t sure if he could even do a Working, and his regeneration wasn’t all the way returned. No. Now he had to focus on convincing her to take the gag out. He split another log.

“Time for dinner.”

He hadn’t seen her coming, and Amrit had the axe in the air and ready to swing at the intruder before he realized it was her. Carefully, he set it back down.

She, surprisingly, hadn’t choked him yet. “Time for dinner,” she repeated.

Amrit shook his head fiercely. He had only one row to go, and he’d have earned his reward.

“It’s nearly dark. Come on.”

He shook his head again and gestured at the pile. So close. It wasn’t fair.

“Aaah. All right.” She muttered a Working and the light in the area rose like it was on a dimmer switch, gestured with her hand and floated another log into place on the block.

Amrit split it like he was splitting this whole wretched situation in half, and it fell apart in one hit. Another log replaced it, and he did the same to that one. And another, and another. The axe seemed a bit lighter. The hitting seemed a bit more fun. And then there was no next log, and Amrit looked up to see the rack entirely full.

“It’s time for dinner now,” she repeated. He thought she looked a little tired herself. “Put the axe away, there,” she pointed at a wall-mounted rack, “and come on in.”

He did as he was told. There was dinner in it for him, after all.

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In Which Amrit is Gagged Again (FaeApoc, Amrit/Mieve)

May13

First: A beginning of a story which obnoxiously cuts off just before the description,
Previous: Amrit Splits Wood.

Fae Apoc, approx. now.

Content Warnings: This setting, although not this ficlet, contains rape, mind control, and dubious consent situations.

This particular story contains kidnapping and slavery, bondage, violence, and will eventually contain Stockholm Syndrome.

Mieve
Her new slave’s mouth was stained with blood, his lips cracked open. That gag was truly a nasty thing.

Meive watched him drink his water and cataloged his body. Nice muscle, no scarring, none of the lopsided development slaves sometimes got. Tanned, but it had that look of someone who had tanned to look good, before the End. Or maybe he just had a Working for it. What damage had been done to him was beginning to heal already, and he was, if not so blasted frustrating, rather handsome.

She waited until he finished the water. He handed it over and waited, silently this time. His eyes were on the gag in her hand, and his tongue darted out to touch the wounds on the sides of his mouth.

She dropped the gag into the pocket of her work apron and pulled, from the same pocket, the hopefully-gentler piece she’d fashioned in the early morning. His eyes followed every movement. He licked his lips again. He looked like he was thinking. “What-?” he tried. He paused, watching her. She gestured, please continue. No Working started with Wha-

“What is that?”

Meive held up the gag. “It’s a gag.” She tried not to sound perplexed.

He picked his words with care again. “Why – why a new one?” His tongue darted out again and he licked the wounds.

“Because you’re not going to cooperate easily.” She knew she sounded tired. She felt tired. And it was only noon. “And the old one was cutting your mouth.”

“What does this one do?”

Mieve raised her eyebrows. He sounded so resigned. She didn’t believe it, not for a minute, but she responded carefully, as if she did. “It’s softer, so it won’t cut your mouth, and it shouldn’t cut your face or your tongue.”

“…why?”

“Because whether or not you’ll accept it, you’re my responsibility.”

He grinned suddenly and fiercely. “Careful,” he warned. “I might do something bad with that.”

“I don’t doubt you would. Let me gag you, and you can get back to that pile of wood.”

He hesitated, not moving towards her but not clamping his jaw shut either. His tongue darted out again. “Lunch?” He added, very careful-sounding, “please?”

Mieve relented, if only a little. she pulled a meat roll from her apron pocket, split it in two, and handed him half. “Some lunch, if only because you said please.”

“Fu -” He took the roll carefully. “Thank you.”

He ate it slowly, the first bite cautious and the next bites as if he was savoring it. Mieve matched his pace, nibbling slowly on the roll. They were one of her favorite things to make, but they didn’t keep well and they didn’t last. Some days, she really missed proper refrigeration. Or a Kept who knew refrigeration Workings.

Her captive looked more alive when he finished his roll. His eyes darted to the water bottle.

Mieve passed it over without comment and let him sip and rinse his mouth. She had sympathy for his position – but she couldn’t risk her own. “Time for the gag.” She tried to make her voice gentle this time.

“Fuck you, lady.” His voice held no heat, and he opened his mouth without further complaint.

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Kendra’s Homework

May13

“I have homework,” Kendra informed Ofir.

She had orders to inform him about homework. She could lift her chin up and be firm about that. She had to do her homework.

Why, she had no idea. But in all the myriad of stupid orders he’d given her, she liked that one more than most.

“All right. Do you need the library?”

Her own copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were tucked away in the box of stuff she’d hidden in her old room. She hoped the library had copies. She knew there were computers there she could use. “Yes, please. I need to do some reading.”

“Fine. I’ll walk you there. Get your stuff.”

It took only a few minutes for Kendra to be settled into the library, with Ofir’s firm and unneeded order not to leave until he came to get her. She settled the books beside the computer and started writing.

    S… S… Solange Carrieter sat in the corner of the compartment of the Hogwarts Express…

    She had only been in London for a few months when her Aunt Taffy had given her the letter. “You should have gone to Esterwind, of course, but with your parents missing, I arranged things so that you could go to Hogwarts. I think you’ll like it there.”

    Solange looked around again. Magic was real. She’d always known her parents were hiding secrets, but this… but magic…

    A kind-looking boy with a round face peered into her compartment. “Oh, hullo. Have you seen my toad?”

Possibly the first in a series. Kendra and Ofir are characters in Addergoole; the rest is obviously J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter.

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