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Not All Bad

Aug12

First: So, Who Are You?.
Previous: Anything She Wants
“How does that feel?”

Blaecleah shifted his weight on his knees, shifted his hands behind his neck, and twisted to look up at his – err. At Niobe. “Exposed,” he admitted. “Ah, um… kinda like puppet strings being tugged. Not bad…” He shook his head, feeling weird as his neck moved against his hands. “Just different. Vulnerable.”

“Rather.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at him. “You look very good like that, I have to say. And it wouldn’t be out of the range of my power to leave you like that for, say, an hour every evening.”

“I can think of a lot worse ways to spend an hour.” Blaecleah’s mouth was going to be the death of him.

“And many of them I could probably do. Do you understand?”

“I get that you control me. Sedge showed that pretty well.” Yep, definitely gonna kill him. “I mean, I know I got in over my head already.”

She frowned. Crap, crap, crap. Blaecleah backpedaled. “I’m sorry. I know, you just want to make sure I understand, right?” Please?

Niobe’s expression softened, and she patted his head. Blaecleah found himself leaning into the touch, and tried to pull away. “It’s more than just controlling you – or, at least, it’s more than just making you follow orders. It’s going to twist your brain around, too. It’s going to make you want to make me happy.”

She cradled his face in both hands. Blaecleah found himself looking up into her eyes and swallowing against sudden panic. “It’s not all bad, though.” Carefully, as if afraid he would break, she placed a kiss on his lips.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/772372.html. You can comment here or there.

Rick-(steam)Rolled by Looooove (@korionfray)

Aug11

Haven’t done one of these in a while!

So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, does a weekly writing inspiration, which includes a writing prompt.

A prompt from many weeks ago:

So go ahead. Use the lyrics from “Never Gonna Give You Up” as your inspiration. Like it? Don’t like it? Really honestly stuck? Go to your iTunes or other music playing apparatus and hit shuffle. Use the first song that comes up. You might be surprised.

So this is her fault. 😉

We’re no strangers to love

It was the sort of courtship you snuck between classes and club time, child care and bar-hopping. It was the sort of courtship that looked accidental while being nothing but accidental. It was the sort that started with “hey, you’re in Theatre Club too, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t his first courtship, but it was the first he’d pursued with such intensity.

You know the rules and so do I

She was cautious, of course: she had graduated from Addergoole and, while she didn’t quite recognize him as having done the same, she knew to be cautious, knew to distrust kindness, and knew the buddy system and every other rule of safety far better than most of her companions.

And he was, in turn, just as careful. He knew, if the boys in his dorm didn’t, that a boy could suffer just as badly from incaution as a girl could, that the rules didn’t care about gender, and that one had to know who you friends were – and, more importantly, who your friends weren’t.

A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of
You wouldn’t get this from any other guy

So it took six months before she agreed to his so-casual invitation to go out to dinner, and even then she, suspicious to the last, turned down his offer of shared babysitting. It took eight months until he got her to invite him to her house, and nine until he finally got the nerve up to drop to his knees in front of her.

“I hardly know you,” she protested.

“I’ve been following you, watching you, since my first year of school.”

“But I don’t remember you at all.”

“I know.” He ducked his head and tried not to smile. “You were rather distracted.”

“And you really mean
”

I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling
Gotta make you understand

“I do. I can’t help it, I do. I watched you with them – those boys, those girls. I watched you with your cy’ree. I watched you here, all year.”

She stared at him. “You’re obsessed. Did someone Work you?”

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

“No. I mean, not for that. Not this. This is
 just an obsession. But I mean it. I want to go all the way.”

We’ve known each other for so long
Your heart’s been aching, but
You’re too shy to say it
Inside, we both know what’s been going on
We know the game and we’re gonna play it

He offered her his wrists, knowing she was staring at him in disbelief. “I want to treat you better than all of them. I want to do better. I want to show you how it can be.”

“You want to
 you don’t want to Keep me?”

“No.”

And if you ask me how I’m feeling
Don’t tell me you’re too blind to see

He shook his head. “No. No. I want you to Keep me. Until it all gets better for you.”

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/770516.html. You can comment here or there.

Teaser: Baram’s Elves Piece for Rix

Aug11

“Your target was never here.” Baram punctuated his sentence with a sharp kick to the bikers’ leader’s ribs. The woman grunted, and, on the other side of the field of battle, the nearly-dead tank made a pained noise.

Interesting.

Worry about it later. Baram picked up the boy.

Commissions are open here!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/770029.html. You can comment here or there.

The Dead Gods Come Visiting, a story-bit of the FaeApoc

Aug10

This story is set in the late apoc of fae apoc, and follows
Mourning Lost Gods and
The Destruction of the Gods.

We’d gotten – not comfortable – but okay with the quiet, even in the few weeks it had been. We’d started to become accustomed to the lack of aerial fights, to the lack of strange semi-human people attacking us, to the way the world stayed the same – ruined, barely habitable, but the same – from day to day.

And then this half-dead… elf limped into our shelter. She was muttering under her breath, things we could barely tell were magic, and she was bleeding from at least seventeen places. Her stone-like skin was cracked, split, and burned, and underneath, she was bleeding red like the rest of us.

We froze. I froze, at least. Around me, the others shifted, reaching for weapons we no longer kept at hand. The god was barely over five foot tall, a tiny girl, but we had been less terrified of muscle-bound bikers with shotguns.

I saw the minute she noticed us, her tiger’s-eye eyes going wide. She ducked her head in what, in a human, I would have thought was an apology.

“I saw your fire,” she croaked. “I…”

And then she fell over. Sticking from her back was an arrow shaft; they hadn’t even bothered to strip all of the thorns off of the hawthorn before shooting it.

We spent a few minutes arguing. Quite a few of us wanted to dump her off the roof or, preferably, another roof, further away. A couple wanted to cut her head off, just to be sure that she stayed dead.

But Marie and Donald, who had been a paramedic and a school nurse before the world ended, they checked her pulse and found her still among the living, and that made everything more complicated. We didn’t so much talk about it as we shared a twelve-pointed look.

Then Kingfisher pulled out his filleting knife.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/839925.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/768781.html. You can comment here or there.

Reynard Spills his Story – a new story taking place in Fae Apoc/Addergoole ‘verse

Aug9

First: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/753621.html
Previous: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/763771.html

The woman – the woman it appeared Reynard might belong to – was staring at him. Her eyebrows were raised in clear doubt, and her expression was nothing he’d call a smile, no matter how generously he wanted to color the truth.

He shifted again. He knew that was a bad idea; every time he did it, another thorn pricked him. But he couldn’t help it. He’d never been all that good at sitting still.

“It’s not that exciting of a story.” It was a weak protest, in part because he was pressing against the orders and suggestions she’d put on him, in part because his brain was fogged and his thoughts were moving slower than molasses.

But it was a protest because of those things, too, and so he stalled for time while he tried to come up with a plausible coloring of events he barely remembered.

She gave him three heartbeats to believe he’d gotten a break. “At the moment, fox-boy, it is the most important story of your life, because it determines what happens next. Considering your current situation, I’d tell it carefully, concisely, and well if I were you.”

Was there a single woman who’d graduated Addergoole with a sense of humor?

Well, if he’d gone through Addergoole as a girl, he might not have, either. Reynard shrugged, despite the prickling of poison in his arms, and gifted his probably-Owner with the best smile he could muster up.

“Yes, ma’am. It was something like this…” He dropped his voice, and tried for the storytelling cadences he’d learned from his Mentor.

    Know, oh Mistress (he began), that I am not an evil man, not as aught but the book people would have you believe.

    (The woman leaned back, and something that could have been a smile crossed her lips.)

    But I was Named truly, and truly I lived up to my Name, ever since the day that the school released me…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/767819.html. You can comment here or there.

…Tied up with String

Aug8

To [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of â™ȘBrown Paper Packages♫.

The tag read, in a tidy handwriting that Ackelea was pretty sure she recognized,

Don’t say I never gave you anything.
For that matter, don’t let him say I never gave him anything, either. There are a lot worse options for him than you – me included – and the boy was practically begging for it.

By signing the below, I, Ackelea cy’Solomon, agree to take Ownership of the attached package. He shall live under my name until I choose to release him.

There was a line underneath, and, thoughtfully, a pen attached. Ackelea muttered a couple quick Idu Workings to be certain she wasn’t signing anything but what she could see, and then marked the signature line with her glyph.

She knew what was coming, so she was braced for the ear-popping world-twisting feeling as the Keeping took hold; the squeak from inside the package as her ears popped was the first indication that there was actually a real, live, conscious person in there.

The boy was practically begging for it.

That could mean a lot of things, especially if she was right about her anonymous gifter. Ackelea murmured a quick Levitation Working and got the package inside her threshold. After a moment’s consideration, she settled it down on her bed.

“Hold on a moment,” she told the brown wrappings. Getting no response, she took said moment to change into a nice kilt and her favorite shirt. Pants might have given a stronger impression – but she didn’t like to wear enough clothes to wear a kilt. Too warm, too confining.

The brown wrappings, obviously, held still while she changed. And they held still while she began to unwrap them – it- him.

Someone had taken the time – ha, someone – to wrap this package up nice, so she took her time to appreciate the wrapping. Twine, real twine, tied in pretty little double-bows. Seventeen of them – she counted out loud – and then three layers of paper. It wasn’t butcher’s paper – again, she checked – just brown paper spiraled around the person inside.

She got the feet out first. Bare feet, naked feet. And then the ankles – also bare, the thighs-naked – and “Oh, aren’t you nice.” She found herself making a noise like a purr, her, purring. This was going to be an interesting year, wasn’t it?

“You are a nice one… so far.” Flat stomach, almost too flat. Skinny-boi. She almost didn’t want to keep unwrapping.

She got to the nipples, to find them both pierced with thick-gauge piercings. “Well, that’s not all that common these days, is it?” She found her lips curling in a smile. “You really were asking for it, weren’t you?” She was talking to a wrapped package. That was, she had to admit, a little weird. Right. Time to get the mouth unwrapped.

The neck was bare. That was – interesting. Useful, though. The mouth, on the other hand, he’d wrapped up, gagged with a long knot of rope. “Aah.” Ackeleah chuckled. “Ah, that’s adorable.” She patted the bare flank. “All right, almost done unwrapping you.”

This time, the boy made a noise – not much of one, just a little thing. It almost sounded like a protest.

Ackeleah pinched what came to hand – his inner thigh – and went back to unwrapping. He fell quiet again, leaving her to her monologue. “You’re gorgeous, you know. But I’m sure you know that, looking like this. Looking like – where did your clothes go? You can’t have been wandering around naked on Hell Night… well, I guess that would have counted as asking for it.” She pushed the paper off his face, revealing wide eyes, wide brown eyes staring at her. “Are you worried, boy? A little concerned about your situation?”

She was purring again. What was she going to do with herself?

She sliced the rope gagging him with a very careful application of claws, and pulled the knot out of his mouth. Hemp. He’d been tangled up by a sadist – of course, she’d guessed that already.

“There you go. Now… what am I going to do with you?”

He dropped off the in the most graceful controlled fall Ackeleah had ever seen, landing on his knees with his hands behind his back and his head bowed. His voice was rough, but there was no hesitation at all in it.

“Whatever you want, mistress. Anything at all.”

â™ȘWhen the dog bites, when the bee stings…♫

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/767112.html. You can comment here or there.

Anything She Wants…

Aug6

First: So, Who Are You?.
Previous: Orientation

I can do almost anything I want to you.

Blaecleah swallowed. “Okay.” It really wasn’t okay. On the other hand, he was sort of past the deciding point on this one. “Okay, so this is why it’s supposed to be hard to handle.”

“Yeah.” Niobe opened her eyes. “Yeah, that’s why it’s hard to handle. What you gave up when you took Sedge’s bet, you gave up free will. Freedom at all. Choice. Until your term is up.”

“That’s…” terrifying. “A bit intimidating.”

“It ought to be. We’re almost to my room, come on. We can handle the hard stuff inside.”

“There’s harder stuff?”

The sound she made could only be called a laugh because he didn’t want to call it a bark. “Depends on your point of view, I suppose. But yeah, it’s probably safe to say there’s harder stuff.” She squeezed his hand, a gentle sort of squeeze. “Man, I did not sign up for this.”

Blaecleah swallowed around a lump of guilt. “I’m sorry. It was just, he pricked my pride…”

“…and he wants something I can offer, and used you to get it. Oh, don’t – look, if I say ‘don’t worry,’ it’s never an order, okay?”

“Okay?” He was still trying to work on the concept that she could order him not to worry, and have it work.

“-don’t worry, you were well and truly set up. This isn’t your fault.”

Despite the don’t worry not being an order (whether or not the world ought to work that way), he found her reassurance a little calming. “Thanks.”

“Look, this doesn’t haven’t to be horrible or anything. As a matter of fact, the general goal is for it to not be horrible.” She swung open a door. “Come on in. This will be your room, too, for as long as I’m Keeping you.”

Blaecleah looked around. He’d shared a room his whole life, in the creche, but… “There’s only one bed.” It was a big bed. But still.

“That there is. Kneel.” She barely waited for his knees to start obeying the order. “Take off your shirt and then put your hands behind your head. There. How does that feel?”

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Next: Not All Bad

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/764313.html. You can comment here or there.

Reynard’s Story Unfolds – a new story taking place in Fae Apoc/Addergoole ‘verse

Aug5

First: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/753621.html
Previous: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/761398.html

Reynard’s brain felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton. His short-term memory – and, he was pretty sure, some of his long-term – was foggy, muddled, or just plain gone. And what he could remember – well, wasn’t the best set of memories.

He was fairly certain the woman sitting in front of him wouldn’t take any of that for an answer. What was more, although she hadn’t given him a direct order, he could feel the pressure of the bond on him.

That was strange. But he wouldn’t get any answers until he gave her what she wanted. If then.

He cleared his throat, and found that that too hurt.

“I was – I was…I guess I was being a ‘fox in the henhouse.’ If you remember my name, you know I’m not…” He was being kind of pitiful. He swallowed against the pain and tried again. “I was having fun. Seducing a double handful of pretty people.” The memory brought a nostalgic smile to his lips. “Balancing as many secrets as I could and getting as many of them in bed with me at once at the same time. I was having a blast.”

He risked a look at her face, and was a bit relieved to find that she was smirking at him.

“I remember that about you.”

“I – I’m glad?” He wished he could remember her.

“Not a bad thing, being remembered. Go on.”

And now that, that was an order. Reynard swallowed again. “Turns out I was somewhere someone else was making a home and she, she didn’t like what I was doing. Called me out, her and her beast.” He twitched his hands to make a gesture, only then remembering he was bound. “Fuck, ow! Big guy.” He smirked sideways. “Did it right and fair, too. Next thing I know I’m on my knees and this gorgeous redhead is whispering in my ear, you can be mine or you can be his.” He shrugged.

“Next thing I know, I wake up here with your knife pointing at me.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/763771.html. You can comment here or there.

Tweets: Planning a City

Aug4

I’ve been having fun plowing through ideas on Doomsday/Boom Town today, & I thought I’d share.

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I did some math, decided the circles need to be twice as big in radius, and also remembered apartment buildings, which I imagine will be in groupings near the center tower.

Still working on layout!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/763001.html. You can comment here or there.

Takes a Village to Build a City, a ficlet of Boom Town/Cynara

Aug4

It was a pretty story to say that she’d built the city alone, but Cya wasn’t – wasn’t insane in that manner.

Gaheris and Trenton helped her design the city, with books and plans spread out over her kitchen table. It was Trenton who reminded her to include places for worship, for those who had gods who weren’t murderous dead bastards.

It was Daveon she tracked down first – and it was remembering Daveon, in an old-home reminisce about The Old Days Before the War, that got her thinking about the city in the first place.

She’d met Daveon on the job, back when jobs were something she did to earn money and not to survive, spent a few very-very discreet evenings with him, and then, when the job moved on to another location, they’d remained friends. Finding fae out in the world, fae you could talk to, was rare and to be treasured; finding friends, even rarer.

Back before the world ended, Daveon had been a power plant engineer. When she’d found him, he’d been a bored farmer and a junkyard engineer. Getting him to come work for her was almost no effort at all. Getting back to the site where her city would be, that was trickier: Daveon had been living in Florida.

After she had the base wall up, after she’d built her first block of houses, the electrician was the second one she went looking for.

This time she stretched her power: Find me an electrician, who can do the work I need and is willing to relocate to do it. Find me someone who has the skills and inclination and personality I need.

More than four decades after the end of the world, that wasn’t the easiest thing to find. In the end, she found herself in Texas, making a deal with a fae on his third life since the war, or, rather, making the deal with his wife and their oldest daughter.

The third person she went looking for was a teleporter.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/762773.html. You can comment here or there.