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Bully for You

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole, Year 15

Addergoole has a landing page here.

“I don’t need another school. I’m going to the community college with everyone else.”

Thus had started an argument with Lor’s parents that had lasted the entire school year, past graduation, over the summer, and right up until the moment the short guy with the amazingly strong grip had picked Lor up and dragged him away from his friend Joe’s parents’ house and to the underground bunker that was supposed to be a “finishing” school. Like Lor needed finishing. He was plenty done already.

Then he’d actually gotten to the school, and Lor had changed his mind. The classes were hard, sure, but Lor had never minded a little challenge. And his classmates were no challenge it all.

It took him four days to get little Andreas – technically a year above Lor, but shorter and younger than him; everyone here was shorter and younger than Lor, it was awesome – to get Andreas doing his math and science homework, and two more days to get cute Candy doing his English homework and a few things on the side. Somewhere in there, people showed off some tentacles and horns, but Lor shrugged it off. Apply a little pressure and, elf or fairy or human, everyone bent.

Up until this point, he’d mostly been picking on “upperclassmen,” just for the humor value. There was Pano, of course, who he’d managed to get to do his homework, but that was it. It took him halfway through the second week of school to get another kid in his year, skinny guy named Kelsey, to start hauling his lunch for him. It was a pretty sweet deal, and he was beginning to thing his dad was right, and a finishing school was totally the way to do.

And everything was sweet until a skinny girl showed up at his lunch table with her hands on her hips. “That,” she declared, “is my brother.“

“And? S’my bitch now.”

“And I’m not okay with that.”

“Cytherea, Cy, it’s okay.” Kelsey squirmed in his chair; Lor’s smile just got bigger.

“Listen to your brother, Cy.”

“No. Lor, I challenge you.”

Next: Dance the Dance

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663159.html. You can comment here or there.

Do-Gooders

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole/Fae Apoc Post-apocalypse.

Addergoole has a landing page here; Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here;

Jaenelle knew there was going to be trouble the minute the little group drove into their town.

Drove, for one. It was 2019; things had started blowing up in 2011. There were plenty of cars, sure, but who could find gas? And people who could find gas either drove something tiny and fuel-efficient, or a truck for hauling things around. Not a bus.

And, of course, they were teens or twenty-somethings. Nobody adult rode around like that, fresh-faced and smiling and with a bus full of children and, what, miracle supplies? Perfectly clean things that they’d gotten from somewhere?

The girl had bounced out of the van and waved at the gate like there weren’t monsters everywhere and they weren’t making a scene. “I’m Berry; we’re here to help.”

Help. Like they needed help. Jaenelle talked to Farah and they talked to Bob and Angus and they talked to Constance and Miranda and their husbands John and Jon, and they talked to Keith, who was serving as mayor because they felt like, even if there were only thirty of them left, they needed some pretense at government.

But by that point, Jody and her feel-good husband Frank had let in the van full of children (with their children), and blankets and booze had done what blankets and booze did throughout history. The kids, Berry and Hawthorn and Zahavi they called themselves, as if their names weren’t probably Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed, were into everything. They took over the farming, first, and then the doctor’s station, as if some teenager knew better than Bob and Farah who had been emergency room doctors before the Fall. They took over the school, like they knew more than Constance, and even the general store.

“I told you,” Jaenelle told Keith, when he was suddenly no longer mayor. “And what happens when they leave?” Half their thirty-adult town was deferring to these children for everything, and the other half was close behind.

Keith looked far too thoughtful. “What if they never leave?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662975.html. You can comment here or there.

By the Time Anyone Noticed

Feb9

This is to [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt here to my 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.

By the time anyone noticed, it was far too late.

Cleone took her children from Addergoole, walked with them out into the world, the younger on her back and the older toddling along as best he could.

She walked until she found a place she could live, and set about making it a home.

From that home, she set up a way-station for other Addergoole graduates, or so she called it, a place where those wandering could rest their weary feet and have something to eat and drink before moving on.

And from that home she set up a small school, a place to educate her children and the children of nearby people (and the children of those who passed through).

She set up fields to grow food and fiber, and bakeries to bake bread, and a game preserve in which to hunt, so that her children and the other children were well-fed and well-clothed. She had the roads in the are well-paved, so that carriages could carry the surplus to other areas, so that no child would starve nor suffer, and to carry educational materials and such as well.

She made certain the road from Addergoole to her little home was kept in very good repair indeed, and made sure that the school was always kept very clean and stocked with the best books and the best food she could acquire. Everyone in her area was very well taken care of, especially her children.

Except that nobody left.

Oh, humans came and went and just seemed to decide to stay around. Children grew up and left town and came back with wives or husbands or both. And the Addergoole grads that wandered through… stayed. Just stayed.

By the time anyone noticed, it had been a decade, and it was almost time for her oldest to go off to Addergoole.

By the time anyone noticed, she had quietly amassed an army, willing or no.

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

They Have to Notice Eventually

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/661877.html. You can comment here or there.

Back Around Again, a vignette

Feb9

This is to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Warning: rough situation, very unpleasant, even if the characters are baddies.

Ardell and Delaney are characters in Addergoole, and relatively unpleasant ones, at that.

“Hungry.” Del’s voice was soft, barely a whisper.

“Silence.” They both flinched, Ardell and Delaney, and they were both silent.

“I’m sorry.” Ardell mouthed it; Delaney knew those words by heart by now. She shook her head. No. No, this wasn’t Ardell’s fault. They’d thought it was a good place to settle, both of them. They’d thought the town looked comfortable and more than willing to trade safety for shelter and food. They had also, of course, thought they were invincible. Twenty years of surviving – thriving – after the apocalypse had not yet proven them wrong on that one, on any of those points.

They had not accounted for the man on the mountain. They had not accounted for the village already having a protector, one who did not want others horning in on his business.

They had not accounted for the fact that he might be more powerful than they were, even combined.

“Good.”

Delaney twitched. More than anything, she hated the praise. She hated the warm rush through her and the sense that she was doing right. She looked down at her knees, at the cold stone floor under them, and said nothing.

“Now.” The man – he had not given them a name; he had not given them anything, yet, except collars and chains and a cold stone chamber. “You’ve been here a while. Are you ready to listen to sense?”

Sense? Delaney’s tongue darted out and she licked her lips. What was sense, here?

She looked at Ardell, thinking about the last time they had been chained and naked and kneeling. She looked back at the man and wondered what sort of sense he wanted to pretend he was making, wanted her to pretend he was making.

She nodded, slowly, and mouthed the words Yes, Master. She would do what he wanted. That’s how this game worked.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/661459.html. You can comment here or there.

Addergoole/Criminal Minds Xover for @Rix_Scaedu, Part III

Feb7

This began here with a meme; it takes part after Rix’s guest fic here (and click “next” for the second part.)
It continued here.

Spencer Reid was a genius. There was absolutely nobody in the world, not even the snottiest Grigori, that could argue that point.

He was, however, looking at a book written in an unknown alphabet in an ancient language. Morgan wasn’t sure if the kid could handle that, even as smart as he was.

Derek paced the room, watching the kid out of the corner of his eye while he pretended to profile the murderer and the victims with the rest of his attention.

“Quipia Tlacatl οστά, Tempero Eperu πέτρα Tempero Tlacatl οστά, επάνω, ανατέλλω, εγείρομαι.” Up, rise, rise up. Slowly, while he pieced together the pieces of their likely-dead enemy, Derek pulled the bodies out of their impossible positions embedded in the bedrock.

“What was that?” Spencer rubbed his eyes and looked around. “Is there some coffee around here?”

“Just talking to myself.”

“You only do that when you’re stressed or working through a problem.”

“Well, this case justifies both of those, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s just that there was something that you said that sounded Greek. ????, that’s bones. I didn’t know you spoke Greek.”

“I picked up a few words on an old case. And we’re walking over piles of bones here.” He patted Spencer’s shoulder. “How’s the translation going?”

“If I just had a key.“ He raked his hands through his hair. “Something, anything. I know I’ve seen this alphabet before.” He closed his eyes. “On my mother’s bookshelf. It was a book hidden in something else – The Joy Of Cooking.”

Derek watched the genius’ brain work. “What do you remember about it?”

“She said… she said it was a history.” His hand moved while his eyes remained closed, the pencil sketching on the paper. Old Tongue letters. The History of the People in the New Land.

Derek was here to keep the team from learning the wrong things.

He was here to profile and catch criminals.

He was here for his team.

“I’ve seen it… now that you draw it like that, it came across my desk, years ago.” He sat down and took the pencil from Spencer. “This. This is ‘new,’ if I remember right.”

He could ruin the whole investigation and hurt Spencer’s brain if he gave him the wrong information.

He drew the symbols more carefully than he’d ever written anything in his life.

“And this is ‘Law.’ Law was a big deal in the paper I read.”

“Okay, so something in here means ‘history,’ and that word there means ‘new.’“ Spencer nodded. “I can work from that. Could you get me some paper?”

“On it.”

Derek dropped an empty legal pad in front of his teammate and waited for the all-clear to dig.

—

The shovel moved. The dirt moved. He muttered another Working, to make it lighter, easier to sift for the dig team, easier for him to move. The shovel cut ground, the dirt lifted up, he hummed another Working.

Reid’s pencil moved, his lips moved, the paper fluttered, the pages of the killer’s book moved. He muttered something under his breath and made another note, his murmurings making a counterpoint against Derek’s Workings. His pencil sketched out another symbol. The pages moved. The paper fluttered.

“I think I’ve got the start. But Morgan, if you could remember anything more of this paper you read, it would be great.” He turned to look directly at Derek. “Like a translation.”

Derek swallowed and tried to cover. “Look, kid…”

“Profiler.” Spencer had that pissed-off look he didn’t often get. “With three PhD’s. Look, I don’t know what you’re doing, but the fact of the matter is, we’re trying to catch a murderer, and you’re obstructing the investigation if you’re withholding information.”

Derek sat down with a thump. “Look… Reid.” He covered his face with his hands and tried to think. “Some things…”

“You don’t have to explain to me. But if you know what’s in this book, Derek, you know your job. I won’t ask you why you know, or why you were hiding it from me. But you know what your duty is.”

Derek picked up the book and scanned it. “You were nearly there, you know.”

“While you… did what? Don’t think I didn’t notice the second scan showed the bodies at a different strata of the earth.”

“You said it yourself. There’s no way to bury a body in bedrock.”

“That doesn’t explain how the bodies aren’t in the bedrock anymore, either.”

Derek flipped a page. “It’s written in a language called Idu a’Iduþin-”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. In its own language, Idu a’Iduþin means ‘to Know all there is to know.’ The book starts with a list of dates-”

“I knew it!”

“-and a list of descriptors. He doesn’t give any of them names. Let’s see. The first date is June twenty-first, eighteen-twenty-six. Brown hair, brown eyes, pales skin. It references a page further back…” He flipped through the book. “She didn’t expect me. This land has not been preyed upon in some time; perhaps not since the last time I came through…”

“Morgan.” Reid was still staring at him. “How can you fluently read a language I’ve never even heard of? How are the bodies in dirt now when they were in bedrock when we got here?”

Derek smiled tiredly. “Magic.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/697664.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/660116.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

What Happened After School? Pania and Efrosin

Feb6

This is a brief summary of the after-Year-9 lives of two of my characters from . I may do more of these, if there is interest.

After this

Let me be your boyfriend, Efrosin had suggested, and Pania had, in all honesty, really considered it. He was a nice guy, when he was trying to be. He was the father of her son, which was another argument both in his favor and against him. After all, she hadn’t asked for that.

In the end, what killed his chances was simple. “Figure out who Efrosin is,” she told him, as gently as she could. “When you can tell me that, with a straight face and in full honesty, then we can talk.”

She felt like a hypocrite as she said it, knowing full well that she didn’t really know who Pania was either. But she said it, and he left, like a weight off her chest.

She tried being Good Keeper Pania, and found that it was harder than she’d expected (and that Terach also found it difficult to be Good Kept, and had no interest in making it easy for her to be Good Keeper).

Efrosin came to visit from school, and she told him, gently, that College Party Boy was a nice role, but she didn’t think it was him.

She tried being Older Role Model Pania, and found that frustrating, and the Eleventh Cohort difficult to mentor. So she tried being Nobody’s Ever Going to Victimize Me Again Pania, and that, at least, was rewarding, although she had a feeling Doug didn’t buy the act.

Efrosin’s Good College Student role was even harder to believe than the party boy.

She moved on to Sharpshooter Pania on a whim, and found that there, there was something she really enjoyed. Her Mentor was surprisingly unsurprised by this, and brought in an ancient fae to teach her proper use of bow and arrow and a young fae to teach her better gun skills.

By the time she graduated, she’d found that Mom and Deadly Aim Pania was a comfortable fit… but Efrosin was still trying to figure out something better to be than Tom Cat Eff. She made sure he saw his son every month or so, and made no further effort to try to change him.

~

Pania graduated and moved to college, taking her two sons with her. Efrosin… still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Everyone else liked the roles, why couldn’t she?

He made sure he saw his sons every chance their mothers gave him, difficult as Reese and Pania had not settled close to one another. He went from college – high honors, but what did it matter – to the Peace Corps, because maybe there he could figure out something he wanted to do with his life?

Pania picked the college with the best preschool program, picked a major that gave her plenty of time with her children and the chance of a high-grossing career, and practiced both gun and bow every weekend.

Efrosin came back from the Peace Corps with the realization that he liked the rush he got from helping people, and got a job as an EMT in a city equidistant from Reese and Pania.

The world ended three years into Pania’s college career, when her sons were seven and six.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/658757.html. You can comment here or there.

Balancing Odds

Feb5

For [profile] kunama_wolf‘s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “evening the odds” square.

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

1800, somewhere in England

Feu Drake eyed the woman in front of him over his tea. “You are an interesting woman.”

“Thank you.” She sipped her tea in turn, decorous despite the shackles on her wrists. “And you are an interesting young man… Ignazio, was it?”

“That’s as good a name as any.”

“‘Fire,’ jae’Fire-Drake. You are not interested in subtlety, are you?”

“I am not certain jae is appropriate here, Miss… Attwater, was it?”

“Du’Nicor.”

“Ah, yes. Maya Attwater, named the Nicor. You liked that better than knucker, or you were Named when the word was still nicor?“

“You’re a well-educated young man, aren’t you?”

“I endeavor to be. Although I would argue the young in any company but yours.” He sipped his tea again – it was a very nice blend – and smirked at the woman.

“Are you calling me old, Ignazio?”

“Far be it from me to impugn my elders.”

“At this rate, I’m going to believe you don’t actually like me.” Her shackles clattered as she sipped her tea. “You do get such good tea. however do you do it?”

“I own a tea room, Miss Attwater. It comes with the territory.”

“And such an interesting occupation that is for one of your lineage…”

“But you presume again.”

“I am known to be presumptuous. Now, tell me, are these silly shackles really necessary?”

“Miss Attwater, you are known to be several things. One of them is, indeed, presumptuous. Another is that you are almost universally fatal to the men you spend time with. And, as you have expressed some interest in spending some time with me, in, I believe you said, seeing what there was to see when you got this suit off of me, well, yes. I believe they are necessary.”

“They wouldn’t stop me, you know.”

“I am simply evening the odds, Miss Attwater.”

“Do you really have to call me that?” She set her tea down with a thump.

Finally, Feu Drake smiled. “Miss Attwater, there are any number of things I could call you. considering your situation, I think, if I were you, I would be satisfied with the niceties.”

Her shackled hand raised halfway to the collar around her neck – like the rest of the chains holding her, it was made of wood – and then dropped back to her lap as her chains pulled her short. “You are quite unfair.”

“That, my lovely Maya, is the point.”

See wiki here, for Nicor/knucker, and wiki here for tearoom.

Feu Drake teaches Law at Addergoole.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/658304.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Four: Faerie Apoc

Feb4

[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 fourth question comes from [personal profile] lilfluff and is for the Faerie Apocalypse

After the apocalypse what has happened the former ‘blindness’ that kept regular humans from noticing the fae. Did it go away for good? Just temporarily weakened? Never really went away and people only noticed because of how blatant the Returned were being?

For a reference to the Blindness of the Gods see here.

First, what is/was The Blindness of the Gods?

The colloquial expression is used to describe the fact that true humans – and those Faded with very very thin fae blood – cannot see Ellehemaei for what they are. Mask up or down, these people see only a human; their mind rewrites everything else to fit within a normal world.

It was lain in place when the Gods left this world, back in the late BC’s. It was meant as a protection for humans – if they could not see the strangeness, the gods reasoned, they could not be intimidated, bullied, or awed into following those fae that remained as gods, as leaders, or as masters. It also served to protect the fae; even a god can be taken down by angry enough, clever enough, humans, especially in a group. Their descendants, especially the young ones, could be taken down with comparatively no effort.

Because it only had sporadic effacacy on mixed-blood humans, and because someone could be entirely human except this ability to see unMasked fae for what they were, the fae tended, as a whole, to remain Masked when in mixed company, even before the war.

The sundering that brought the departed gods back to Earth also broke this blindness. And this time, there were no older, authoritarian gods to put it back. After the Return, the Blindness of the Gods was entirely gone, and fae who wished to hide (most of those who wanted to survive!) had to rely on their own Masks.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/656585.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Three: Addergoole

Feb3

[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; feel free to add questions!

The third question comes from [personal profile] lilfluff and is for Addergoole

Do the Nedetakaei have anything even vaguely similar to the Addergoole school?

To be honest, the Nedetakaei are far less established in my head than the Shenera Endraae. That being said… here goes world-building.

The Shenera Oseraei do not have an overarching organizational structure even as much as the Shenera Endraae do; instead, the exist in small groupings – the Elf Queen, seen In the Hall of the Elf Queen, is one such.

Side track: some people go Nedetakaei, some are raised that way.

Second side track: thanks to [personal profile] rix_scaedu for much of this in terms of ideas and planning.

It is very likely that the Nedetakaei have several small "military schools" where they train their young; filial attachment or piety is not common among the Children of the First, as their primary and, indeed, only loyalty is supposed to be to their ruler, their King or Queen or Regent (until that ruler is overthrown, of course). Such schools would do well in indoctrinating the young in the mentality necessary to claw your way to the top of the pile and, of course, to ensure the next generation.

One caveat: while the Nedetakaei have halfbreeds, they also hate them. No school of theirs would involve a halfbreed breeding program.

Terminology:

The Ellehemaei fall into two political groups:

One call themselves the Shenera Oseraei, the Children of the First. They call the other group Ashanevai, which means monkey-fuckers.

The other group call themselves the Shenera Endraae , the Children of the Law. They call the other group Nedetakaei, those who have forsaken their Names, which also means those who have forsaken the Law.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/655763.html. You can comment here or there.

The last of the Kai/Rozen Drabbles

Feb3

So a while ago I posted a meme, and I am slowly working my way through answering.

Kai/Rozen: AU (Where he does Keep her his first year) here

While this fic takes place in Mendosa’s office, it comes with the implied warning that it is, after all, a Keeping fic.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/655581.html. You can comment here or there.