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Funerary Rites Twenty-One: Home

Sep6

First: Funeral
Previous: Family

🔑

“Well,” Chitter commented dryly, “that was entertaining.  And entirely unexpected.  Senga, do you have any nice family?”

“No,” Erramun answered for her.  “Mirabella eliminated all the members of Senga’s family that might be considered nice.  Except Senga, who she chose to leave alive and actually protected.”

“Well, Senga’s not nice, she’s ruthless, sweet, and staring at me like I mean murder.  Why’d her aunt leave her alive?”

“Mirabella always has her reasons but she almost never shares them.  Shared.”  Erramun frowned.  “Someone killed her.  I want to know who.”

“I do, too.  And not just because they beat me to it.” Senga frowned.  “I don’t know, but I feel like Eaven is too obsessed with this place.  I feel like everyone is too obsessed with this place.”

“Well, move in, make it your own.  That’s the first step.”  Erramun gave her a gentle push.

“Hey, Bound guy, let the lady move on her own.” Chitter glared at him.  “You’re not supposed to be pushy, you’re supposed to be pushed.”

“And you are supposed to be moving in and being a supportive crew member,” he retorted.  “So support.  The sooner the threshold recognizes her, the safer we will all be – and that includes you, little programmer.”

Senga took a step forward while they argued, and then another.  Home.  She got her feet moving and managed to push herself through the half-open gate and beyond it, down the long, wide driveway.

“Aren’t we bringing the moving van?” Ezer asked behind her.

“In a moment.”  Erramun followed her slowly down the driveway.

The grand front garden had gone to weeds and thorns.  Well, it had always been more than  a little thorny.  The circled drive between the two flanking wings was cracked.  She muttered a Repair Working at the worst of the cracks and watched it seal up under her feet.  The doors were closed, at least, and the shutters on all the windows latched.

“Clean up later?” Erramun suggested.  “Let’s get in the front door and remind the house that it’s yours.”  He rested a hand on her shoulder.  “We’re right here.”

Allayne took the cue, as she was so good at.  “We’re right here with you.”  She put her hand in Senga’s left.  “Come on.  Do you know what parties we could throw here?  How much fun we could have here?  Ooh, and I bet we could set up-  but that’s for later, come on.”

“I want to have a whole room for my computers,” Chitter – well, chittered.  There was a reason that was her name.  “A whole wing.”

“Hey,” Ezer scolded, “save some for the rest of us, eh?  It’s a big place and all, but -”

“But there are two residential wings.”  Senga started walking. “Not counting the servants’ wing.  “And there are two and a half floors each on each of those wings.  Chitter can have a floor of a wing.  We can all have a floor of a wing.  And then when we’re settled, we can decide what to do about the rest.”

Her hand was on the doorknob.  She held her breath.  She half-expected the house to reject her, the threshold to bar her entrance.

Erramun had gotten in, and by the rules of the fae, he was her.  “I’m home,” she murmured softly.  She opened the door and stepped very carefully inside.

Next: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2018/01/10/22baggage/

 
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Beauty-Beast 24: Home

Sep6

First – Previous – Landing Page – Next

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By the time Shel deposited Ctirad back at the house with a pile of clothing, Ctirad wasn’t particularly sure if he felt more or less like himself than he had in ages.

He felt different, that much was for sure.  His head was swimming.  Shel had gotten him joking, laughing, and relaxed in a way he couldn’t remember ever being.

And now he was back in Timaios’ master suite, waiting for his master to arrive home.

It was like getting off the roller-coaster.  He felt like his legs were swaying under him.  

He knelt down on the floor and tried to find his calm place.  The pants moved strangely with him, and he thought about taking them off. Continue reading →

The Mystery of the Broke(n) Church

Sep5

I rolled my story dice and ended up with this. 

🎭

The church theatre company was hurting.

Everything about the church was almost always hurting.  It was in a town that had once been prosperous, it had tried gimmick after gimmick – including painting the church purple – to draw in attendance – and it was suffering from having been built in the early 1800s and, purple siding or not, in need of repairs, constantly in need of repairs.

The theatre company brought in a little money, but their costumes were all fifth-hand, the stage was sad and falling apart, and the only person they could get as a stage manager was going deaf.

Then Pastor Jim had a brilliant idea.

“It is going to be sad to see this church go,” he commented at the little stop-and-shop, when he knew one of the town busybodies was listening.  “We’re never going to find out what happened behind that brick wall.”

“What brick wall?”

Pastor Jim would feel bad using Trent Sheperd like this, but Trent was just the right sort of person.  And his voice carried.

“You know, in the basement.  They covered it over in the last renovation, of course…”

The next Sunday, the pews were packed – and the theatre company’s basement rendition of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart opened to a sold-out house.

Pastor Jim kept laying clues, and spent the rest of his time getting in the way of people trying to follow those clues.

If he came up with something clever enough, he reckoned, they might even raise enough to fix the broken old wall behind the brick wall.  And maybe the ancient catacomb behind that.

 
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Quick-Thinking

Sep5

Written to kelkyag‘s prompt.

🔬

The pay at the Lab was really good, and the benefits were literally unbelievable.

Jess reminded herself of that whenever she started feeling like she needed a Henchman t-shirt or an old lion-tamer’s whip and chair.   She had two kids of her own and a niece at home; the Lab gave them a place to live that was probably the most secure three-bedroom house on the planet, had a top-notch school, and paid Jess enough that she could take them all on a really good vacation every year.

Which she needed, because right now she was supervising a slap-fight between two interns who just happened to be handling vials of what she thought was probably a neurotoxin.  Continue reading →

The Hidden Mall: Blood, Thicker Than

Sep5

There was blood everywhere.  Abigail fell down onto the floor and yanked off her cardigan, wrapping it around her ankle quickly.  Too late, she realized she’d let go of both Livs.

“Liv-” she called, but the dirty one was chasing after the clean one, leaving a trail of blood behind her, too.

Somewhere in her bag she had something better for this than a sweater she’d actually been fond of.  She dug through her bag one-handed, holding pressure on the wound with the other hand.  There.  The scarf wasn’t the best thing, but that and the Kleenex and she had a bandage of sorts.   She pressed the Kleenex against the wound until the blood seemed to slow, then checked. Continue reading →

A New World: Artle

Sep5

First: A New World

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Kael allowed herself a small smile, even as she tried to puzzle that one out.  Hospital?  Hospes?  Something about guests.  

“Oh, that can’t be true, they wouldn’t open the place and have it be dangerous!”

So a hospital was somewhere for  – people who had been hurt?  Perhaps a place to rest after people had been taken by a sleeping potion.  There had been quite a few sleeping potion traps in those lower levels. Continue reading →

A New World: Tourists

Aug31

First: A New World

⚗

She had almost finished the potion when the first “tourists” arrived.  A “tourist”, it appeared, was a person with a flashing glass tablet held in their hand, clothing that did not seem appropriate for any time or era, and a habit of touching everything.

“It says here,” said the older woman, “that this is where Kael created her potions.  And this woman here is represents Kael.  She didn’t like visitors much,” she added in a stage whisper.  “Hello, Kael.”

Didn’t like visitors much.  That was an interesting way of putting it.  But between the fact that she was playing a representation of herself and what Mr. Vibius had said, Kael knew how to act.  “Shhh,” she hissed.  “At this stage, you may disturb the potion, and if you do that, I may test the next potion on you, and I doubt you’d like that one.”

The younger daughter – not a woman yet, not even thinking about being a woman yet – stepped right up to the yellow line of tiles someone had installed. “Why aren’t you using the big cauldron?  It’s got something boiling, too.”  She spoke in a curious but quiet tone and ignore her parents’ attempts to pull her backwards.

“The big cauldron can wait. It is merely a distraction potion and will not be hurt by a little extra boiling.  This one, though, this one requires careful attention, and for that I require a smaller cauldron.  See, with this cauldron, I can see to the bottom.  Careful, don’t breathe in the fumes.”

The girl stepped back another step and glanced over her mother as if looking for permission or reassurance.  

“There won’t be anything here that’ll hurt you, honey, it’s a museum,” her mother tutted.  “They’re not allowed to do anything dangerous.”

That was the sort of opinion that could get the girl hurt or maimed.  “Actually, this is my potions-room, and in here, things could often be deadly, not just dangerous.  Even a mild and curative potion could end up burning the nostrils and giving one visions or headaches.”

“Like hatters,” the older daughter put in.  “Breathing in mercury fumes.”

Kael only followed a few of those words, but the meaning was clear enough.  And the mother was tutting.  “I can’t believe-”

“When this place opened,” the father put in, reading from a booklet, “several guests had to be hospitalized.”

💧

Next: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/09/05/a-new-world-artle/

Swift of Hands

Aug30

Written to sauergeek‘s prompt, in a ‘verse that I just created.  

🏃

Defekisal was running.

This was not an actually common experience in Kisal’s life, because when you did things right, you didn’t have to run.

But luck had not been with Kisal today, and so it was time for pounding sandals on flagstones and the terrifying feeling when fingers almost caught on the back of a tunic.

There was another tunic under that one, just in case, but it was a blow to pride to get caught, on top of the ridiculous pride-ding for getting made in the first place.

Kisal skidded under a fence.  If they ever fixed that fence… but the fence-owner was a Sister and wouldn’t repair it unless the Guard or the Magistrate forced her to.  Which they might; Kisal had to remember not to run this way again for a while, and tell Podefemide to avoid it too.  Femie got made a lot more often than Kisal.  Something about the way she looked at people; she couldn’t quite hide the challenge in her eyes.

The fence wouldn’t hold the guards for more than a couple seconds, but that was all Kisal ought to need.  She grabbed a rain-gutter at just the right spot and swung herself upwards.  There was more than one reason to stay slender and keep in good shape, and throwing oneself bodily up onto a shed roof was one of the best.  She slid down the steep roof, caught the flagpole, and hurled herself over the next fence.

Her shoulders ached, but she was nearly away now.  She ducked into the nearest temple – a lowercase-T temple, the sort that were safe but only allowed on suffrage by the big-T temples – and dropped the outer tunic into the donation bin it had come from.  The rag tied over her hair became a belt that looked far nicer when turned inside out, and a wash at the charity fountain cleaned the dirt and make-up off of her face.

The back door of the temple held a selection of scarves; she dropped three gold walek in the bin and wrapped one around her waist as a skirt, the other around her head for a pretense at modesty.

She meandered down the road, stopping at a vendor to buy a posod-fruit and pass on a message.  The Guard hurried by her, never even noticing her.

Kisal picked up another old tunic at the next temple down the road and went back to work.

 
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Half-breed of Heart

Aug29

Written to clare_dragonfly‘s prompt. Doug is a character from Addergoole (The Original Serial), Addergoole: Year Nine, and the current Addergoole: a Ghost Story.

💪

Doug was not a Mara; he was not one of the pure-blooded Warriors, the Protectors of the fae.

He had been aware of that since the moment he Changed – if he hadn’t been pretty sure of it long before that.

His father was a Mara who did not have Mara children.  His mother was the halfbreed daughter of a Daeva (the Inspirers, the succubi, the pleasure-givers and pleasure-takers); said Daeva did not bear Daeva children any more than Doug’s father could have Mara.  The chances of Doug being Mara were about as slim as the chances of him being elected president of the world.

His Change had just cemented that: his wings that would never sustain flight, his body that could not take damage the way that a Mara’s could.

The thunder that rumbled out of him when he was particularly irritated.

The fact that he was, when touching someone, when touching someone with his feet on the ground, stronger than his father or than any other Mara he’d ever gotten to spar with him.

He wasn’t a Mara.

Right now, he was damn glad of that.

His student Hestia – his newest, his youngest, his smallest student, Hestia – had felled the monster.  She had done a damn good job of it, especially for someone whose Change was not warrior-related.  But then the monster had made one great final heave – and landed on top of Hestia.

Hest weighed maybe 110, most of it muscle – but there was only so much muscle could do for you without any leverage.  Her spear was still in her hand, but she’d dropped her blade.

And the monster weighed almost as much as three elephants combined, and was twice as fat.

Doug grabbed the nearest long thing – part of the building they’d been fighting in, a beam or something.  The building probably needed it.  He needed it more.  He set his feet in the dirt, let his toes feel the ground below him, and pulled on the thunder.

He shoved the stick under the monster, aiming carefully, not wanting to hit Hestia, and he pushed.

Three counties away, they were closing their windows.  The sky flashed and sparked.  The ground  flashed and sparked.

The corpse of the monster lifted, an inch, a handspan, a foot, two yards.  Doug heaved, the world sparked, and the monster flew a couple feet through the air and landed with a wet thump.

He scooped Hestia up into his arms, muttering healing Workings and curse words at her indiscriminately.

 

 
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