Learning to Fly, two Throwback Stories

Nov30

So, we were talking about my Patreon prompts on Twitter, and something Inventrix said twigged some small memory, so I present to you two separate Learning to Fly stories from long-ago, in honor of the Animal People month on my Patreon:

First Wind and First Nesting, a story of a people I have never again explored, sadly, from 2012.

and

Some Say Life, an Addergoole fic of Luke and Arundel, from 2011.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1206070.html. You can comment here or there.

Two Beginnings of Stories

Nov14

Because (for *cough* SOME reason), I was suddenly feeling the urge to write slaves and magical schools.
These are bare intros, of course.

Slaves, School

There was a collar, of course.

Desmond hadn’t exactly been expecting it, but somehow, when it was there that morning in the middle of summer, pressed around Des neck and already body-temperature, it wasn’t a surprise.

Every year, on Aleriaon the 1st, 28 citizens between their fourteenth and nineteenth birthdays woke up wearing a collar. It was chosen entirely at random — or so it was claimed, by those in charge of claiming such things — and you never knew if you would be the one to wake up like that.

And absolutely nobody knew what happened after that. The collar meant something, of course. You would, if you traveled in the right circles, run into people who wore collars — adult people, people at least past their twentieth birthday. They worked for other people, the sort of people that were recognized when they walked down the street and the sort that made a point of not being recognized at all. And they never, ever spoke about what the collar meant, or what had happened. Rarely, unless they were serving as Herald or Voice, did they speak at all.

Des had only once even seen someone with a collar. They had been at the Court building for something his father needed to do, and the collared person had been standing behind the judge, saying nothing, doing nothing, as if they were simply a part of the scenery. Something about that had spoken to him: being on display, being rooted to the spot, being voiceless. The image had stuck with Des: like a lucky rock, brought up and caressed and studied until the edges have worn off and it’s shiny with use. He couldn’t remember the warmth of the Courthouse or the noise, the way people had been shoving and unruly, the expression on the judge’s face. But every detail of the collared person’s expression, their stance, their clothing, their collar – every inch of that remained ingrained in memory.

He woke early, the pressure of the collar startling him. Both hands went to his throat. The metal there — when there had been nothing of the sort when he went to sleep; Des didn’t even own a necklace, much less wear one to bed — could only be one thing. It wasn’t all that wide, not like the one on the collared person in the courthouse, maybe the width of Des’s thumb. It was warm, not too thick, a few sheets of paper together, no more, and it had no closure. It had no embossing, either; he had read that the collars often were embossed although you had to be up close and personal to see the pattern.

Presumably, someone got up close and personal with collared people, but Des had never figured out whom.

He hopped out of bed and hurried to a mirror. The collar was pale rose gold, looking redder against his olive skin. it had enough room for him to slip two fingers under it, but no more. It was unmarked, as far as Des could tell, and it didn’t seem to do anything.

::Report to the Central office at 1 First street at 11 a.m. today::

The voice seemed to echo against the inside of Des’ teeth somehow.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1201991.html

Slaves, School 2

“There’s a girl in my room. In our room. In the room. A girl. Kneeling.” Austin skidded into the dorm’s common space. He wasn’t exactly alarmed, but this wasn’t… normal.

Well, it hadn’t been normal back home, at least. Austin wasn’t sure what was normal anywhere, anymore.

Up until a week ago, Perekatta University had been a story, a feature in several of Austin’s childhood storybooks and then the backdrop in a dozen more “chapter books” and more grown-up novels. The books had come from his Aunt Karen, a courtesy-title Aunt who’d been a schoolmate of his parents. Austin had read them all, at first dutifully and then with more interest and enthusiasm as the stories expanded.

There had been no girls kneeling in the boys’ dorms in the books, however.

“A girl,” Austin repeated. He’d gotten the attention of a couple of the upperclasmen.

“Not exactly.” Randy was sitting sideways in the biggest armchair, legs over one arm. He set down his magazine languidly and grinned at Austin.

Austin wasn’t sure what the joke was. “Exactly, yes. A girl, in the boys’ dorm.” Austin was the first pre-frosh here. He wasn’t sure this was going to work out in his favor, even if he had been about to pick exactly the bed he wanted. “She called me sir.”

“That–” Randy swung his legs down onto the floor and leaned over his knees. “It wasn’t in the books, was it?”

Austin took a step backwards. “No.” He didn’t ask how did you know about the books?

Randy answered anyway. “Everyone here either grew up attached to the Uni somehow, or they ended up reading the books. I mean, once every, maybe, ten, fifteen years we end up with a wild talent. You know, someone completely a mystery. But you didn’t have that look.”

“What look?” Austin was beginning to get offended.

“Your hair wasn’t on fire. Nothing was on fire. So. You didn’t know about the girl, well, the creature in your room.”

“Creature?” There was a certain inevitability to this conversation, like Austin was reading an invisible script. Well, if it got him answers, he’d read the script.

“She’s a Fah. An elf, if you will. They signed a treaty with the Incantara Primus, oh, centuries ago. Maybe millennia.” Randy flapped his hand, clearly un-interested in the details. “So they serve us for a period of time. Anyway, there’s three things to keep in mind about the elves.”

Suddenly, Randy looked serious. Austin wondered if he was being pranked. Still, he looked attentive.

“First, you don’t give them your full name and, preferably, you don’t give them your real name at all. Use a nickname.

“Secondly. if they get any of your bodily fluids – yeah, even that–”

Austin stared blankly. “That?” What was “that?”

Randy didn’t seem to notice. “–Be certain you get some of theirs in turn. And thirdly, do not ever shed their blood over live earth, and try not to shed it over any sort of earth at all. Water or fire’s best, and if you use water, dump in a lot of bleach before you send it down the pipes. Understand?”

“Don’t use a real name. Don’t give them bodily fluids without a trade of same. Don’t — do people really have to be told not to bleed them over bare earth? Who’s going to bleed them at all?”

Randy’s expression shadowed. “You’d be surprised. Go on, kiddo. Meet the Fah. Just remember what I told you.”

View poll: More, please?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1199078.html. You can comment here or there.

Thimbleful Thursday – Easy Street

Oct15

“I’m telling you, one more run, that’s it. Just one more score, and we’re on easy street.” Pell leaned back against the fence, grinning. “And this last one was a sweet one, wasn’t it? In, out, smooth as butter, no hitches at all.”

“Why is it,” Kell mused, “that every time you say something’s going to be smooth, I start to worry?”

“Well, that, my friend, is because you have no faith in me at all. Now, look, I’ve got all the info already. My source set me up good. You, me, Fell, the three of us in and out and kabang, we never have to see each other again, we never have to see nobody we don’t wanna see again.”

“This source.” Kell made the word sound sour and dirty, “that’s the question. They get, what, a quarter of our take?”

“Yeah, uh, something like that.” Pell shifted from foot to foot.

“And they give you the locations. But you’ve never seen them. You just dead-drop the money and get the information the same way?”

“Yeah? And?”

“And you never thought that was the least bit hinkey?”

“Why should I? I mean, Fell set us up. Fell’d worked with them before, and I know Fell from that Southwest job, you remember. Hellion set that one up.”

“And Hellion is such a good judge of character, too, aren’t they?” Kell’s headshake was more sad than upset. “Seriously, Pell, something’s just a little off about this.”

“Come on, Kell,” Pell wheedled. “Think about the money. Think about Easy Street. Not having to do anything else like this ever again, if we don’t want. Not having to work if we don’t want.”

“If it sounds too good to be true…” Kell muttered.

“Well, it’s not like this job is going to be a simple one or anything. We’re going to have to work damn hard for this last score. But once we do…”

“Easy street.” Kell wasn’t that hard to convince. People that were didn’t usually end up in their line of work. “All right. Let’s go.”

The building was just as the plans had suggested; the target was just where they were supposed to be, the security as easy as hacking a baby monitor. Pell handled the extraction with customary finesse while Kell handled the getaway car.

“See?” Pell drove into the drop-off site. “Easy-peasy, easy street.”

“You know,” Kell agreed slowly, “you might actually be right for… what’s that smell?”

“You’ve done quite well in acquisitions,” the voice over the car radio purred, as the gas knocked them unconscious. “But now I want you in a more front-and-center position in my slave shops. As merchandise, I think.”

Written to this week’s Thimbleful Thursday Prompt: Easy Street, and part of my d/s ‘verse. Probably.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1187306.html. You can comment here or there.

Thimbleful Thursday – Clam Up

Oct4

“I can’t get her to talk,” Aijen complained. “I’ve tried everything. I sang to her. I bribed her. I took her for long walks on the beach. I left her alone and snuck up on her to see if she talked to other people. I fed her the best foods I could find. I hired people to make her fancy clothes and the most fashionable shoes. And nothing. I remember her sweet voice. I can hear it in my dreams. But she’d clammed up and nothing I do can to get her to talk again.”

“Aijen,” sighed his dear old family retainer, “you’ve never read the Little Mermaid, have you?”

Written to Last Week’s Thimbleful Thursday Prompt: Clam Up

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1181596.html. You can comment here or there.

Planning Rescue, a continuation of Daxton and Esha

Aug10

This is the next post in the ‘Rescue, of Sorts’ storyline, which can be found at this tag: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/character:+daxton

It is written to a donation by thnidu after Rescued Indeed…

It took them a week to escape the castle, although their eventual bid for freedom was far less dramatic than the first time they’d met. “Just want to scout the countryside,” Daxton assured his parents, and, “they want us to rule something, we ought to see what we could rule,” Esha told her captain.

Nobody believed them, of course. The beauty of it was that it worked whether it was considered truth or lie — let their friends and family think they were off working on the next generation of Ducal heirs. In a sense, they were.
The manor house they found had been carved from a mountainside and built outwards from the stone they’d pulled. Aside from a population of wild mice and some small mountain foxes, it hadn’t been tenanted in a while, but the walls, built when the world was a stronger, stranger place, were still true and strong.

There was a barracks on site that, with some work, could house a mercenary troop in far more comfort than they were used to. And there was a village nearby that could use the protection of a strong force so close.

“It’ll take work,” Esha pointed out. “A lot of work.”

Daxton’s smile was crooked, more amused than pleased. “Still better than a dungeon.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1154556.html. You can comment here or there.

Ch-ch-ch-changes… (A continuation for the Summer Giraffe Call)

Aug5

It is written to a commissioned present for rix_scaedu as a continuation of Insta-Cure and Soul Fire from my Summer Giraffe Call.

Betsy and Aspen looked at each other again, then looked back at Topher. They looked at each other, then at Topher. On the third look, they tackled him, Betsy with a pillow, Aspen aiming for the tickle offense.

Topher fell back, trying to fend off both of them without grabbing anything inappropriate. “What?”

Betsy wrinkled her nose at him. “I’m glad you’re all confident and everything, but there’s a thin line between confident and being a jerk.”

“Well, that’s what I was trying to tell you. Well, I suppose I wasn’t trying so much as hoping you’d read it from my mind,” Topher admitted slowly, “but I mean, I don’t, say, hit on the two of you because I didn’t think I had a chance. But that’s because I thought I was a schlub.”

“You’re not a schlub, Topher! See, that’s what I was talking about! You’re always putting yourself down.”

“I get it, I get it. I said I thought I was, remember? That’s like in the isn’t now-tense or something. So now… well. I still think you’re both beautiful. And I still think I could hit on you. But well… you’re both beautiful. And nothing we did there with the fire did anything about my powers of decision-making. So, uh. I’m going to go to the gym. I think I know where it is. And maybe, hunh. Betsy, you’re super fast but maybe if I worked I could keep up with you if you jogged at a reasonable speed? Get some running in.” He was grinning, but for once he looked happy rather than goofy.

Betsy stared at him. “And this really isn’t about getting into a threesome with Asp and me?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I would totally go for a threesome if I had a chance. But mostly, I just wanted to see if you’d hit me.” He leaned back with his hands folded behind his head. “You are lovely, awesome women, and I think I have some catching up to do before I can seriously proposition either of you. And, well… I’m not the only one used to thinking of me as kind of a schlub, am I?”

Betsy coughed and looked away. Aspen leaned forward, her fists clenching on her lap. “Now, you… you listen here, mister,” she blustered, “I don’t put up with anyone describing my best friend that way!”

“Yeah, but there was never much we could do about the jocks and the football players, and, come on, I knew I couldn’t take them all in a fight and after a while, neither of even tried. We just learned how to work around them, how to hide and how to keep them off our backs, right? Not exactly brave heroes.” He held up both his hands. “We’ve gotten a lot better. And, while we’re being honest: neither the jocks or the Queen bees would be that much of a challenge now, would they? It would be like swatting flies — ha, or bees — with a sledgehammer.”

“I can’t… magic… someone just because they’re a little rude!” Aspen glared at him. “That would be like, like, well, it would be wrong.”

“And I’m not saying magic them. I’m saying, you fight monsters every weekend and most school nights. Betsy, sure, she was picked for this, she’s got the powers. But you, me? We’ve been doing this for three years with just what we got from being born. I know you don’t use your magic normally, you just wale on them with that big old stick, just like I do.” He was leaning forward again, looking intense. “I’m not the only one that has to stop doubting myself in this group, guys. And I’m not saying we should beat the bullies into a pulp… but maybe it’s time to stop being shoved into lockers, hey?”

Betsy and Aspen were both staring at him as if he’d grown a second head.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1153016.html. You can comment here or there.

Rescued Indeed…

Aug1

This is the next post in the ‘Rescue, of Sorts’ storyline, which can be found at this tag: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/character:+daxton

It is written to a commissioned present for clare_dragonfly, as well as to kelkyag‘s prompt here for my Summer Giraffe Call and a very-requested line item to my Finish It? request.

The wedding was the sort of pomp-and-circumstance affair you’d expect from a nation in the middle of a long peacetime, not one that was attacked on nearly a weekly basis. It was rich and extravagant, and if the coffers of the Duchy and some of the King and Queen’s own money had been plundered to pay for it, so had many people donated time and materials to the event as well.

The bride was stunning, in a confection whispered to have been designed by the groom. You could see the lines of armor in the design of the bodice, and she carried her sword proudly. They were still a nation at war, after all, and she was a soldier.

The groom was handsome, walking tall, recovered from his ordeal in the Red Queen’s dungeon. He wore a suit no less fancy than the bride’s gown, and he, too, carried a sword. They were accompanied by seven warriors, all of them armed to the teeth.

They wore white, all of them, even the priests, the Duke, the Duchess. Most of the guests gave some nod to the white as well, if even just a sash. There was no red to be seen anywhere in the temple or around it. The Red Queen had been driven back but not defeated, and they would not give her quarter here, in their most intimate of celebrations, even in showing her color.

The bride was nervous, but she walked straight forward, her back straight, a smile on her face that would have been beaming had it not been quavering a bit on the edges. The groom smiled almost shyly as he looked around the gathered guests: so many people, his smile seemed to say, although he and his bride both understood. This was only about them in a very small part; this was about not being defeated.

Daxton reached his long march down the left of the temple as Esha finished walking down the right. There his parents, her captain and first lieutenant, and the three highest priests of the duchy awaited them. Daxton reached his hands out to Esha and she, in turn, clasped his wrists.

There were words said, of course. The Duke and Duchess began, speaking of the deal they had made, should anyone rescue their son. There was a moment of silence, because many people had died in attempting that rescue, and so many more people had died in this awful war against the Red Queen. Daxton and Esha bowed their heads no less sadly than anyone else in the temple; they, too, had lost people, and they, too, wanted to remember those people.

Then there were homilies and vows, promises and quiet jokes, input from the crowd — loud input, in some situations, and a few snickered whispers that were probably still louder than intended. For all of the solemnity, marriage was a fun affair and a public one; Daxton and Esha joked right back along with their guests, as did the priests and the Duke and Duchess, the Captain and the attendants.

The ceremony segued naturally into the feast, with the jokes growing louder and more wild, the shouting sliding into group songs. “Let the Red Queen hear what she’s missing!” was a common refrain. Nobody was surprised to hear Esha joining in; the bride, after all, was a mercenary, even if she had been catapulted into nobility by her exploits.

Almost everyone was surprised when Daxton joined in on one of the crudest songs, even presenting a verse nobody had heard before. When Esha elbowed her new husband, he blushed. “The Red Queen’s guards sing, too,” he whispered to her, before providing yet another verse of the ridiculous song.

Eventually, the party died down. The bride and groom slipped away — snuck away might be more accurate — to Daxton’s suite up in the castle.

A few weeks from now, they might head out to the country, to find a piece of land they could grow comfortable on. For tonight, they locked and barred his door and pulled the curtains tightly closed.

“They’ll be expecting…” Daxton began.

Esha shook her head. “Let them expect. We are alone together and it is our wedding night. What happens here is our business and ours alone.”

It wasn’t — not in some sense. They belonged to the Duchy, their returned son and their hero, and they knew it. But for tonight, they could pretend.

“Did you expect this, when you came to rescue me?” Daxton lay on the wide bed and stared up at the ceiling.

“I barely expected to survive.” She lay on her side studying him. “No, let’s be honest. I expected to die. But someone had to try, we were going to keep trying, and I wanted it to be me dying, not someone more important.”

Daxton rolled over to look at her. “You’re important to me.”

Esha smiled crookedly. “Well, then… I’m glad I lived.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1147424.html. You can comment here or there.

Sunrise, Sunset – a commissioned continuation for the Giraffe Call

Jul23

Written to sauergeek‘s commissioned continuation of “The Sun Comes Up from my Summer Giraffe Call.

Painting was not easy. The technical skill was relatively simple. Nina had been rendering elevations of potential buildings since she began working. She could display a leaf on the canvas. She could show you its veins and the way it curved.

That was not what Aspen did. Aspen made art. His paintings made feelings happen, deep in Nina’s gut. They showed movement and light and the way the air tasted, fresh by the reservoir, darker by the road.

She kept coming back, looking at his art, trying to imitate it, failing and trying again. Frustration filled her. She crumpled up drawings and tossed them away, only to recover them to feel the sensation over again. Sometimes, she felt anger rising up inside her, and if nobody else was in their little corner of the park, she would shout, letting it out in a way that felt too loud, too bright.

Aspen seemed to understand. “I started studying painting because our substations were ugly,” he told her, one day when she had flopped on the ground in frustration and helplessness. “Nobody could understand it, but people were coming to the parks less and less. People need fresh air. People need to spend time around other people, and time alone.” He’d gestured at the building, which had been painted to blend into the landscape, the foliage and the detailing technically perfect. “So I sat out here, making sure that it was working, that people were visiting without being repulsed. The more I sat here, the more I wanted to paint things. The more things I painted, the more I wanted to make them interesting. The more I tried… well. One night, I realized I’d been dreaming.”

Dreaming. She’d heard of it — whispers, from people with names instead of numbers, from people who did not approve of people with names. Dreaming made your brain tell you lies. It made your mornings uncertain, these stories that did not exist fluttering through your mind. It made you unreliable. “I do not dream,” she informed Aspen.

His brush moved over his canvas. After a few minutes — he was painting leaves again, autumn leaves although it was still springtime outside — he smiled at her. “You will. And when you do, then you will bring color to your paintings.”

He patted Nina’s knee. It was the first time she could remember anyone touching her casually. “In the meantime, the anger is a good start.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1145377.html. You can comment here or there.

Ashes in the Rain – for the Summer Giraffe Call

Jul19

Written to book_worm5‘ prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call Round 2

Jorin found the new guy kneeling in a field, staring at the waste of his wheat, his face dry but the expression on his face as heartbroken as if he’d been sobbing. Jorin stifled a sigh; he could remember when he’d been the new guy. This place was hard, harder than any other place Jorin had ever lived, and it wore on you.

“Hey.” He kept his voice mellow. “Hard luck. The whole field?”

“It was just barely holding on. The weeds here are nuts. But I’d just gotten a crop really going…! And then that damn fire.” He looked down at the cold, damp ash; the hard rain had doused the fire, but too late for the wheat.

Jorin knelt down next to him. “This place is hard.”

“That’s what it says in the brochure.” The guy’s voice cracked — bad joke or the start of more tears, Jorin couldn’t tell. “It’s hard. But you get to try. They didn’t tell us it would all go up in smoke.”

“They don’t. They don’t know, not really. Company wonks, that’s all. The people who plan this stuff.” Jorin’s brochure had said this is your second chance and he’d believed it. “But it’s what they’re willing to give us.”

“So what now?” New-guy ran his fingers through the dirt. “That was all I could afford, and it’s all gone.”

“Now you learn about this place.” Jorin ran his fingers through the dirt until he found one, a seedling just starting to crack. “See? This place is hard and the wheat is harder. But after a fire… the seeds sprout. Give it a week, and your field will be green again.”

New-Guy swallowed. “You’re serious?”

“It’s kind of like us. We got hit with something — all of us, we really did.” It was stupid and poetic, not Jorin’s usual bag. He said it anyway. “But you stick us here, hard cases all of us… sometimes we sprout.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143943.html. You can comment here or there.

Searching for Answers, Chapter 3 of The Portal Closed

Jul19

After: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007793.html and http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007910.html – for the Finish It! Bingo. Not technically a finish, per se, but another chapter.

“If there are other portals, it stands to reason that someone has heard of them.” Clarence came into their hide-out with his arms loaded down with books and his backpack heavy with more.

Barbara set up the camp light and cleared the main table to give them a workplace. “Like that old woman, oh, dear…. Dorothy. Dot Garrington. The one who told us when she had been to Ombrion, and we thought she was putting us on for the longest time?”

“Or,” Diane said more softly, “Donald Jackson, the one that Verdana told us about. Went missing here — I still have the clipping. Because he died in Ombrion.”

“Do you think there’s another portal here? In [town?] If we have to go further out, it’s going to take some doing, especially with the school administration getting so concerned about us.” Barbara wrinkled her nose. Mr. Richardson was doing his best to intervene on their behalves, but the school administration had started paying far too much attention to the four of them.

“Well, that’s the first thing to look into. We know about Mrs. Garrington, and we know about Donald Jackson. Verdana confirmed those. So we have to find anyone else. I’ve got twenty years of old newspapers from old Mr. Dellard’s garage, and gloves, because old Mr. Dellard is not the tidiest.”

“How is that not going to bring suspicion?” Ralph demanded.

“Because Mr. Dellard paid me to clean out his garage,” Clarence shot back. “Because we need spending money, and we’re not old enough for jobs — and besides, I’m too short for the counter of anything retail here, and I don’t think they’d hire me as a fencing instructor.”

Barbara did not giggle, although she did smile a little bit. They were all shorter than they had been, but Clarence, they had discovered, did not have his growth spurt until eighteen or nineteen. He, of course, found the entire thing completely unfair, but there was not much one could do about biology in Ombrion, and less here on Earth.
“Jobs are a good point. I could pick up some babysitting work. The Hardessy triplets are nothing after dealing with…” Barbara trailed off softly. There were things they never talked about. That was one of them. “Well, anyway. I could babysit.”

“I think the branch library needs someone to work afternoons,” Diane offered, “and there’s more research time. After we read through Clarence’s papers here.” She slid on a pair of gloves and picked up a notepad.

Barbara did the same. “So, we’re looking for Dots and Donalds. Strange stories and missing people?”

“And maybe missing time. You remember when we made the paper and all got grounded for a month and a half?”

“Urgh. Yes.” Barbara glared at the paper. That one had been Clarence’s fault, but it was ancient history in so many ways now.

Ancient or not, it probably didn’t stink as bad as these papers. Barbara opened a window after the first thirty-year-old paper, but that didn’t help much until Ralph opened another one on the other side of the building. It meant they had to be quieter — their little hideout might be out of the way, but people did still walk by here — but since all they were doing was reading, that wasn’t all that difficult.

“Got it!” Ralph crowed out. “Look, here…” he dropped his voice to a whisper as all three of them glared at him. “Here. I mean, probably not the only one, but Millie Dioli, here. She was missing for a week, and they assumed she’d fallen in the river.”

“People fall in the river all the time,” Clarence argued.

“Yes, but they don’t come back talking about strange things she saw in the library. The Dolan library,” Ralph added, with heavy emphasis. They looked around the building they were in — the “old, abandoned library” that had “Dolan” carved very clearly above the front door. “She said she’d been in the library the whole time, and that she’d only been gone for an hour.”

“Nnng.” Barbara curled her knees to her chest. “They didn’t institutionalize her, did they?”

“No, although she was, um, ‘soundly punished for her lies’ and eventually told them she’d been off playing pirates and lost track of the time.”

“If she’d been ‘playing pirates’ in the Bay of Sorrows…” Clarence pursed his lips. “That would explain the time shift.”

They all shuddered. The Bay of Sorrows seemed to work differently from the rest of Ombrion in all ways, and it was infested with pirates that they had never been able to get rid of. “So what happened to her?” Barbara leaned forward. “If she didn’t get institutionalized…”

“I brought some phone books.” Clarence pulled them out of his bag. “Although if she married…”

Diane shook her head. “After ‘playing pirates’ with those pirates?”

They all shared another shudder, and Barbara pulled Diane close to her in a sisterly hug. “Probably not,” Clarence allowed. “Dioli… Dioli… All right, she’s in the phone book. But we should keep looking, too. If she’s only been to Ombrion, she won’t be able to help us find someplace else.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143339.html. You can comment here or there.

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