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February is World Building Month. Day Twenty-Five: Addergoole

Feb28

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-fifth question comes from [personal profile] anke and is for Addergoole.

What’s the reasoning behind keeping future Addergoole students in the dark about pretty much everything?

This one is actually fairly straight-forward.

One of the primary purposes of the Addergoole School is to encourage more half-breed children to Change, thus coming into the full extent of their powers, and to Change in a safely controlled environment, where they are unlikely to, say, set the school gym on fire or get killed by a mob.

Stress and surprise can trigger the change, and a series of stressors and surprises can trigger it more quickly than all the surprises at once; thus Hell Night, which originally was meant to spook and scare students more than it was meant to ambush them into Keepings.

However, for various and sundry reasons, the Administration is happier if every student of Addergoole experiences a year Kept. A secondary reason for the secrecy is that it makes new students easier to catch.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/682733.html. You can comment here or there.

Promises

Feb28

This is to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt to this January card for [community profile] origfic_bingo.

It fills the “promises made” slot, and is in Addergoole, which has a landing page here

“I promise you,” Regine had said, when she had first locked a collar around Ambrus’ neck, “that as long as you are mine I will take care of you.”

It hadn’t been the promise that he’d wanted, but at the time, he hadn’t knows that he could want things, and so he had taken it as a kindness and a courtesy.

“The children you sire here will all go to Addergoole, that I promise you.”

That had been over a year later, long enough that Ambrus could think about wanting things, long enough that he’d begun to count on his fingers the number of times he had taken a woman to her bed.(128)

But Addergoole was an abstraction to him, a project, and the children he might be siring, even the one he had already held and named, they were all even more abstract. His mistress was smiling at him.

And it wasn’t the promise he wanted, still, and he did not think he could ask for things, so he took the promise as a kindness and a courtesy, and thanked his mistress sweetly.

“I promise you that my use for you is far from over.”

The promise came nearly fifteen years later, as Regine was wrapping up what she called “the initial phase of the Addergoole project,” already gearing up for “the educational phase.” Ambrus hadn’t, exactly, asked for that promise, but she had offered him freedom, and he had panicked, thinking, now that the initial phase was done, she was sending him out into the world.

It wasn’t the promise he wanted, but by now, he was used to the way his mistress spoke, and the bond of Keeping was pushing heavily on him. So he nodded, and accepted it for what she’d actually meant, and moved on.

“I promise you.” This time she was swallowing, hard, having trouble with her words. He had noticed, by now, so many years later, that she rarely made promises like this: only for him, and even more rarely her crew, did she speak so casually. “I promise you, Ambrus, that should you ever wish to come back, you will always have a place in my home.”

That wasn’t the promise he wanted. But Ambrus had learned to wait.

“…and in my heart.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/682348.html. You can comment here or there.

Unwelcome Guests, Part the Third

Feb27

To [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of Unwelcome Guests & Unwelcome Guests, Part II

(I should pay a little more attention to my list; this was for longfic)

Baram and his family are part of the “Baram’s House Elves” sub-series of the Addergoole ‘verse, which can be found here; Baram is also a background character in Addergoole.

“Girls.” Baram nodded at Via and Aly the second he heard the “basement” door shut.

“On it already, boss. Jaelie’s down with the kids and Aloysius. And Aly’s been waking up the rest of the defenses. Now she can swap with Jae and Jae can get the trees ready.”

“Good.” Baram paced out onto the front walk. There wasn’t much to pretend to do here, but he could still pace.

Behind him, the girls moved. This was not their first attack, not by far. They knew what they were doing.

The walls shifted. They weren’t awake, whatever Viatrix had said, but they were ready, braced, and stronger than they normally were.

“Precious cargo tucked in.” Jaelie touched Baram’s shoulder. “Aloysius has rear guard.”

“Good.” Baram didn’t have to like the useless thing to admit he could come in handy. “Trees?”

“They’re good trees, aren’t they?” She stroked the trunk of one of the front-gate flanking plants. “My favorite trees.”

Baram suppressed a shudder. Hawthorn trees weren’t supposed to be that big, and they were not suppose to /purr./ “Good trees,” he agreed. “Almost here.” The dust was rising on the horizon. “Inside.”

“Boss…”

“Inside. Might not be a fight, best to find out.”

She sighed. “Inside, yes, boss.” She slipped out of sight just as the motorcycles roared into view.

Baram did his best to look casual. There was a bolt that needed fixing on the gate, anyway.

There were six of them, four males, two females; four warriors, two bitches, if Baram was reading them right, but they didn’t split along gender lines. They were wearing leather, which might mean they were young – or might mean they were pragmatic. Baram had met Aelfgar and his soldiers; Baram sometimes remembered, in dreams, flashes of being a soldier.

Take nothing for granted. They could even, he supposed, be just wandering through. Since the world had started ending, they had definitely seen odder things.

“Afternoon.” He nodded at them, doing his best to seem normal-and-human. Normal-and-human was not an easy setting for him, but these were people riding large motorcycles and hung with weapons. Their bar was a little lower than people in suits in glassy offices.

“We’re looking for a pair.” The leader – probably female, hard to tell, didn’t matter much in this case anyway – snarled it out without even bothering with the pretense. “One male, one female, skinny. They came this way.”

Baram shook his head. “Haven’t seen anyone like that.”

The leader narrowed her eyes and glanced, briefly, at the man Baram had tagged as her bitch. He paled, closed his eyes, and murmured incoherently.

“They’re near. I promise it, I swear it.”

“You lie.” It wasn’t clear whether the woman was talking to the man or to Baram. It didn’t matter; she was drawing a weapon. “You. Tell me again. One man, one woman.”

Baram shook his head. “Bad idea. Ride away now.”

“You, you are not going to tell me what to do.” She dismounted, and took steps towards the front gate. “Tell me. One man, one woman. And I might let you live.”

“Last chance.” He still hadn’t drawn steel. He didn’t need to. “Ride away. Now.”

“You fucking deaf or just stupid? Give us our prey and we’ll let you live.”

Baram found himself roaring, just as the trees by the gate found they could reach the woman. “This. This is a Safe. House.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/681233.html. You can comment here or there.

They Have to Notice Eventually

Feb26

[personal profile] anke commissioned this continuation of By the Time Anyone Noticed, a story of a former-Addergoole-student mother from the February Giraffe Call.

The Addergoole setting has a landing page here, although Cleone is a new character.
Short summary of the setting: there is magic and people who can use magic (modern fantasy, and then post-apoc fantasy after, well, the apoc) The school, Addergoole, has a long-standing contract by which students tend to graduate with two children who then go to Addergoole themselves in their late teens.

This is placed somewhere after the apocalypse… since I haven’t determined the year, the year notations are x’d out

By the time anyone noticed, it was far too late for them to stop her.

Or so she hoped.

The letter arrived via courier, the way they did these days.

Dagmar, child of Cleone, it is our pleasure to admit you to the [xxty-xth] year of the Addergoole school. Classes will begin on the [xth] of September [xxxx].

Should you require transportation…

Cleone burned the letter and locked Dagmar, along with her younger son, in the panic room in the center back of her house. She whispered words here and shouted words there and above all she kept things going on as normally as possible – except that her children were now locked in a tower. Which, because this was Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement, her tower and her children, nobody thought was that abnormal, and nobody asked a single question about.

It was, wholly and entirely, Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement. Her home and the surrounding buildings had tidy walls that kept out marauders. Her collection of humans who worked in the fields were drilled in weapons, so that they could fend off wild animals or fae-born monsters. The Addergoole students who had come and never left, they had continued to train in all those skills their alma mater was so good at instilling. It had all made so much sense when she explained it to her townspeople. Nobody had ever questioned it.

Another letter came for Dagmar. Cleone shredded this one and fed it to the pigs. She made sure the gates were sound; she made sure the ballistas were in good repair.

She made sure everything was as normal and innocent and benign as she could make it, that her routines were routine, even as she braced for the impact that was coming.

One of her Addergoole grads tried to leave, a week after the second letter’s arrival. They did try, from time to time; they snuck out at night or they slipped out while working or, sometimes, they just walked out the gate as if they were allowed to leave. Gilana had always been trouble, from the day she and her three children showed up at Cleone’s halfway house.

Cleone did what she had to. She locked those three children in the tower with her own two, locked Gilana in the hawthorn-and-rowan-lined basement dungeon, and kept on pretending nothing was wrong. When Dustin, the probably-human serving as de facto Mayor of Cleoneville, began to ask questions, she gave him the same line she always did.

“I do what is needful to keep us safe. Right now, this is what is needful to keep us safe.”

Dustin clearly considered asking more questions, and then just as clearly thought about the people who had, in the past, asked too many questions. Safe, in this day and age, was a motivator for most people, at least those still alive to be motivated.

Nobody else asked any questions. Knowing where Gilana was – and where her children were – made certain nobody else tried to leave, either. Everything was fine, everything was normal, and everyone was armed to the teeth.

They were waiting when the people from Addergoole came to take Dagmar off to school.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/680047.html. You can comment here or there.

Sporting, a story of Fae Apoc for the January Giraffe Bingo (@Rix_scaedu)

Feb25

To [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s prompt to my January orig-fic card. This fills the “Sports & Games” slot.

This is probably in my Fae Apoc setting; its landing page is here.

“Run.”

She hissed it in his ear, and the man had no choice but to run.

“Flee!”

She called it after him, and so, of course, he fled. She’d given him pants, at least, a shirt, and shoes, although all were too thin for this forest, for the trees that lashed at him and the rocks that caught his feet.

“Escape!” It echoed through the woods, an order; it echoed through the man’s body and self, an imperative. It echoed in her dogs’ barks, a taunt. It echoed in the pounding of his feet, a song.

Run.

His feet hit the ground, hit the ground again. He could run quickly; when there had been tracks, when he had had a name, he had been a track runner, a good one, a prize-winning one. Now, he was nothing but the running, and so he did it with every ounce of his being.

Flee.

Behind him, the hounds were baying. Behind him, the chase was beginning. A little bit of a head start, of course; it wasn’t sporting otherwise. And then they would come after him. They would chase him, unless he could flee.

Escape.

Somewhere, deep inside him, the man knew what happened to the runners. He knew he wasn’t the first; he knew that most of them never came back, and those that did never came back more than once. This was his third run. He had to escape. He had to find a way out of here.

Run. Flee. Escape.

The man’s feet caught on a vine and he stumbled, but there was no pause, no option but to keep running.

A branch hit him in the face; a thorny vine ripped at his shirt. His lungs burned. He kept running.

Sun shone through the forest ahead, sunlight; he had not seen sunlight in his memory. Sunlight meant freedom. He kept running.

Run, flee, escape.

The woman followed, the hounds followed. The man kept running.

Run-flee-escape.

Feet pounded.

Feet bled, and kept pounding.

Feet shuffled in a run that was mostly stumble.

The man tripped on a root and fell, hanging at the edge of a precipice.

Run.
Flee.
Escape.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/678670.html. You can comment here or there.

A Sea Change, a story of Addergoole Yr43 for @Rix_Scaedu

Feb22

This is a continuation of Planning and
Microbit One, set in Year 43 of the Addergoole School, for [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commission.

Regine had practice remaining calm in the face of volatile personalities. She had plenty of practice, in fact, with this particular volatile personality; she and Luca had been working together, alongside Michael, for centuries.

It did not, thus, particularly faze her when Luke glared at her with another wide flap of his wings, although she did note that he must be particularly upset, as he normally was more mindful of her paperwork.

“We are doing good here, Luca,” she repeated, “both for our students and for the world.”

“Tell that to the ones that we don’t catch in time.” It came out as a snarl; that was a little excessive even for Luca. Regine allowed her eyes to drift down to the papers for a brief moment. “No, wait, don’t. I don’t think I could stand to watch you preach that sanctimonious bullshit to someone who’s stuck in a bad Keeping.”

“Luca.” Regine coughed, an altogether unnecessary affectation, but, then, she was not a robot, no matter what some people would suggest. “When we started this project, you understood the difficulties, and you agreed with its necessity.” She pushed a pile of papers forward. “The statistics suggest that sixty-three percent of these students would not be alive if it were not for our school.”

“Try telling that to one of your children after they’ve been raped, why don’t you?” Luke’s snarl had gone to a growl. “Oh, wait.” He wasn’t flapping anymore. For some reason, Regine found that worrisome. “Your kids somehow never end up with that sort of problem.”

Ah.

“Luca, just because a child is of our bloodline is no reason to let ourselves become distractible. It is important to remain unbiased…”

“FUCK unbiased!”

And yet, his wings did not flare. His feet were spread a little bit apart, his hands were easy at his sides, and his wings were staying folded against his back.

That, Regine realized, with something of chill in her heart, was battle stance. And despite the shout of his profanity, his voice was otherwise quiet: conserving energy.

She didn’t think he would continue, but once again, he surprised her.

“It isn’t our job to remain unbiased, Regine. It isn’t our job to treat these children as subjects, separated by their Changes and genealogy and nothing else. If we’d wanted to do that – if you’d wanted to do that – you shouldn’t have sold it as a school.”

He took a step forward. It took every ounce of Regine’s not-inconsiderable self-control to not back up. “But we did. And we have been selling it as a school for generations now. As such.” He rolled his shoulders and his head before continuing. “As such, Regine, it is our responsibility to treat these students as people.

“As Students.” He continued, with another step forward. “Not just because they are our children – because you made damn sure each and every one of us contributed to the project so that we’d stay emotionally invested, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” There was no shame in that.

“Yes.” His mimic sounded angry, for all of that. “Not just because these children are our family, Regine, but because we are their teachers and Mentors.”

His voice dropped into something low and smokey. Regine could not, for a moment, remember where she had heard it before.

“This is what we’re going to do, Regine.” He’d taken another step forward. If he had a weapon, he could be skewering her with it about now. “You are going to take Students. A full cy’ree, every year. Starting now; I’m sure we can rearrange things.”

Ah, yes. That’s where she’d heard the voice. Regine swallowed.

“Students.” She tried not to sound nervous; she failed. That was interesting.

“And you are going to teach a class. A full rotation class, every day. Don’t give me shit about your responsibilities, Regine; the world is over. There’s a lot fewer people to manipulate than there used to be.”

Regine nodded. “As you wish it.” The last time she’d heard Luke talk like that, people had died.

A large number of people.

“If you feel that will help.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/676168.html. You can comment here or there.

Tower, a story of post-apoc Ag for the OrigFic Bingo

Feb21

This is to @inventrix and Sky’s twitter prompts to my December OrigFic card; this fills the “Tower” square.

It is set in post-apoc Addergoole-world, not in the school, sometime around year 50 of the school, with new characters.

“What do I do, what do I do?”

Leontyne was in the habit of talking to herself. It wasn’t a particularly good habit, but it wasn’t her worst habit by far, and her children were fond of it, as, they said, it telegraphed her pretty darn well.

Her children. Addergoole had gotten the first two, because that’s what happened. And it wasn’t as if Leontyne’s experiences there had been horrible. But now her third child was coming of age, the first two still in Addergoole – and her third, Jerome, had been born outside of the auspices and breeding programs of her alma mater.

“What to do, what to do?” She had very little faith in the Tarot, not like the woman who’d raised her had; she wasn’t a precog, as far as she could tell, wasn’t a seer of any sort. But she used it the way she used the dice and sometimes even the Bible, as a randomizer for decision-making. She tapped the edge of the deck on her small table. “Where to go. Where to go.”

“Mom, you’re doing it again.” Jerome poured her a cup of tea. He was a good boy, when he wasn’t getting into trouble – so, for about fifteen minutes awake, and then when he was asleep, much like her older two. He’d be a hell-raiser in Addergoole or anywhere else. “What to do about what?” He lifted the Tarot deck from her unresisting hand and pushed a scone in front of her.

“You.” She sipped the tea; once they’d got the hang of growing it, they’d been in business. “This is the new – what?”

“Me?” He had the lost-kitten look all of her sons learned from birth (no surprise there). “What did I… hunh.” A card had fallen from his hand onto the table: the Tower.

It wasn’t a card Leontyne could remember seeing before; it wasn’t one from her deck. A tall edifice twisted into the sky, three-sided, surrounded by interlocking circles of walls.

She’d seen that before, in a brochure left by a travelling salesman.

“Doomsday Academy.” The card sat on the table, making change and transformation and chaos. She quirked her lips up and smiled at her most chaotic of sons. “Think they’re ready for you?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675347.html. You can comment here or there.

Unwelcome Guests, Part the Second

Feb21

To [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned A continuation of Unwelcome Guests.

(I should pay a little more attention to my list; this was for longfic)

Baram and his family are part of the “Baram’s House Elves” sub-series of the Addergoole ‘verse, which can be found here; Baram is also a background character in Addergoole.

Delaney snaked her way in front of Ardell, grinning, all sweetness-and-light and innocence. Baram didn’t budge, and he didn’t miss the three weapons she was carrying openly. Spear, sword, gun.

“We heard you were running a safe house, Baram. We heard you had some Addergoole girls working for you. We heard you had weapons, had food.”

Ardell slunk to the side of Delaney. No smile, more weapons. He often pretended, but he wasn’t pretending to be sweet, at least. “We heard you were living the sweet life here, surrounded by pretty things. Like the girl who answered the door. And we figured we’d pay an old friend a visit.”

Baram looked at the two of them. He glanced over his shoulder – very briefly – at Alkyone. He looked back at people who had been, if not his friends, his allies.

The next words came easily to him. “Who are you?”

They shared a look. A look, and then Delaney’s shoulders shifted, and Ardell took a step backwards. “We’d heard…” Ardell frowned. He looked actually bothered. “We’d heard you forgot things.”

“Did you really forget us?” Delaney did a believable pout. “After everything we went through together?”

Ardell picked up on the cue. “Yeah, man, all that time together in school, we were like crew. We were solid friends. And you forgot all of that?”

How much of it did they mean? Baram shrugged. “Forgot most things. Jaelie remembers for me.”

“This is Jaelie?” Delaney waved her fingers. “Hi. We’re old friends of Baram’s, like we said.”

“No.” Alkyone’s voice was hard. “I’m Alkyone. Jaelie is elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere.” Delaney sneered the word out. “Aren’t you cute? And I bet you think you’re smart, too. Move over, chica. We’re here to visit our old friend, Baram.”

“Alkyone is a new friend.” Baram spoke slowly, the way he could remember talking, sometimes, when he was having a bad day, “one of those episodes,” Jaelie called them. “Alkyone lives here.”

“Well, of course she does.” Ardell took Delaney by the shoulders and pushed her out of the way – carefully, Baram noted; there was no violence in the way they handled each other. “And you do, too, right, buddy? Remember how we said we’d always open our doors to each other?”

“Don’t remember you.” He remembered the conversation Ardell was talking about. Ardell and Del, Ib and Rozen and Baram. Baram remembered saying nothing, shaking no hands, just sitting back with someone pretty curled on his lap and watching them talk.

Baram wondered how much of the rest of his Addergoole experience he remembered differently, like the spider-girl and her horrified memories of him. But this was different; this was lies.

“Of course you remember us.” Ardell’s voice was getting sharp. “Of course you’re going to let us in. Baram, come on, think of all the things I’ve done for you. How much fun you had with my Kept over the years. How much fun you could have with my Kept now.”

“You have Kept?” That was a different matter.

“Boss. Trouble on the horizon.” Viatrix came up on Baram’s other side. “Looks like bad trouble, too. The alarms caught seven.”

The alarms had been the girls’ idea and mostly their implementation; Baram’s house wasn’t the only group of people still living here, but they were the most combat-ready and, in other ways, the most vulnerable. Kids made you weak, but in weird and strong ways.

“First alarms?” The first alarms were four miles out. Plenty of time.

“Second.”

That was harder; the second were two miles out.

A glance back at their unwelcome guests showed Ardel’s shoulder’s tense and Delaney trying to press herself as close to the threshold as possible. “Come on, Baram, you’ve got to let us in. For old time’s sake. For when we were friends.”

“Boss. They’re trouble.” Alkyone’s voice held warning. “And they’re bringing trouble here.”

Del’s voice shifted to nasty again. “And do you think they’ll care if you have actually helped us? No, they will take you down one way or the other.”

“You brought enemies to our door?” Baram didn’t need to look to know that Via and Alkyone were now holding their weapons. Via’s voice told him everything he needed. “You brought hunters here, to our safe haven?”

“It’s not yours, bitch.” Ardel had lost the last semblance of courtesy and niceness. “It’s our friend’s. Baram’s.”

“I think you’re under a misapprehension-” Alkyone began, but Baram had had enough of the back-and-forth, especially with potential hunters on the way.

“Their house, my house, our house. Not yours. Get in back. Basement doors by apple tree.” Baram pointed. “Stay there if you want to live.”

“So you remember us, buddy?” Ardel’s smile was back as fast as it had left.

“No.” Best to keep up the lie. “Get in basement. Fast.”

The door by the apple tree didn’t lead to the house basement, but the hidey hole there was safe, protected by Baram’s threshold…

…and a bit of a trap. Another thing Ardel and Delaney didn’t need to know until they were in there.

Luckily, nobody expected that sort of thing of Baram. They moved – fast.

On the horizon, Baram was beginning to be able to make out an oncoming enemy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/675139.html. You can comment here or there.

How Do We Manage?

Feb21

This is to [personal profile] wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt to this January card for [community profile] origfic_bingo.

It fills the “management” slot, and is in Addergoole, which has a landing page here

Warning: discussion of incest.

“You have it easy.” Aelgifu sighed and flopped against the back of her chair.

“Easy?” Shahin raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow in question. “I’m not arguing that I don’t have a hard life, although I miss Emrys – although I had him here a year longer than you had Io.”

They were sitting in one of the cozy visiting rooms in Lady Maureen’s voluminous creche and child-care center, Ayla’s daughter and Shahin’s three-and-a-stepchild playing around and with them. Shahin managed to look simultaneously matronly and adorable while nursing young Belladona; Ayla had never managed to feel anything but half-naked and frumpy.

“Well, you don’t mind the preliminaries.” How much could you say around two-year-olds? What would babies Niobe and Arturo remember?

“I don’t recall you minding the preliminaries with Ioanna.”

“That’s was different. And the baby-making parts were, ah, separate. Dr. Caitrin helped with those.” Dr. Caitrin had been necessary for the complex Workings that had turned part of Ioanna’s female DNA into sperm and then impregnated Aelgifu with that sperm – Ayla was a bit fuzzy on the details, but the end result had been Niobe.

“Well, it’s not as if Dr. Caitrin couldn’t help you with a nice boy’s consent.”

“Finding someone I can stand enough to bother with is half the problem.”

“I really doubt you want to go the route of magically-and-inexplicably-attracted-to-your-brother.” Shahin seemed to have no problems at all talking about such things in front of her children. Well, with her relationship with Emrys…

“That’s it.” Ayla sat up straight. “Shahin, you’re brilliant.”

“I know, but… how, in this case, exactly?” Her friend was watching Ayla with both eyebrows raised.

“Brothers. I have an inordinate share of brothers, and I know at least two of them have no interest in women.” Their father had said all my kids turn out gay, but nobody was going to take Aelfgar as an expert in anything except fighting. “That’s brilliant.”

Shahin shook her head, but she was smiling, not scoffing. “It is. I’m glad I thought of it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/674807.html. You can comment here or there.

The Storm

Feb20

For @DaHob’s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “Storm” square.

Addergoole has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ; the original series lives here.

Amaya has shown up before in Don’t Cry, Baby.

“The storm is at your command. What do you do with it?”

Amaya turned to look at Professor Valerian. Stare, really.

“I make it rain, Professor.”

“No. You made it rain when you were a child. When you were beginning to be a student, you made it rain indoors. Now, Amaya -“

“It’s a year later?”

“And what have you learned in that year?”

Amaya stretched. “To be careful.” She wiggled her fingers. “To be very careful with things more fragile than I and with things more powerful than I. I’ve learned Words.” She let her favorite ones roll off her tongue. Yaku. Kaana. And of course Tempero.” Water, Air, and Control. “I can push the weather with those.”

“You can. And you’ve been studying meteorology under myself, Professor Pelletier, and Professor Kairos.” The professor was watching Amaya, her expression patient. Amaya dug deeper.

“I have.” She nodded slowly. “Which means that I can use Idu-” She didn’t like that word, the one that meant Know, as much as the others “-to understand the storm. I mean, if there was real weather here.”

“I did tell you to bring a jacket.” Professor Valerian was, for the first time, wearing a coat herself – it was brown, with a thick velvety texture to it.

“You did.” Amaya slipped into hers. She’d had to buy it from the Store; the Village, despite being in South Dakota, rarely got cold enough to justify such a thing, and Amaya had come from a home far more southern than this. It was sleek and blue, the color of rain on the water. “And I did.”

She knew better than to ask too many questions. Professor Valerian liked certain questions – but only certain ones.

“Good. Let’s go, then.” The professor began walking, and Amaya followed.

It wasn’t long before the Professor was murmuring something to thin air – not a Working, Amaya didn’t think, but something like an introduction – and they were stepping out of the semi-controlled environment of the Village.

And into weather. It tickled at Amaya’s skin and brushed at her lungs, teased her and taunted her and grabbed at her fingers. There were clouds in the sky and wind in the air; there was a thunderstorm waiting to happen, just on the edge of the horizon.

“So.” Professor Valerian was smiling. Somewhere, her hair had come undone, and it flickered out in wild curls. “The storm is at your command. What do you do with it?”

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