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Reformed?
Okay, this was supposed to be short. It is not short. It is a riff off of a comment from a request for dark fic prompts from like 2 months ago.
It took a while.
Damon Rudd had not meant to reform. He had been living a perfectly happy life destroying anything at that pissed him off, thwarting people who got his way (heroes with overdeveloped moral senses usually, Golden Hawk and Wise Ibis and the like), being amazingly rich and getting richer, and more or less doing whatever he wanted to do. This had been working fine, until, walking behind one of his businesses, he found a woman and two children digging for food in his dumpster. This, Damon found, pissed him off. But because he was not an idiot, he was able to see that what pissed him off was not the woman. Continue reading
Hidden Mall 66: Questionable Information
Abby didn’t think her mouth could get any dryer, her throat and more choked, but that phrase – that idea – where the one who’s killing the Abbies is – made her feel like her mouth was full of sand.
She tried to clear her throat and found herself coughing instead. Liv fumbled in her bag until she managed to press a water bottle into Abby’s hands. “Here, here. Why didn’t you – here, drink.”
Abby sipped the water slowly. “Yes – thank you, Liv.” She sipped more. “I want to find the Abby that’s killing the rest of us.”
Shit, was that secret information? Was I not supposed to say that? Continue reading
Running in the Bear Empire 43: Trapped
First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous:42: Home
Next: 44: Tricks
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I did try to kill you.
“It would be nice to not be reminded of that,” Deline muttered. She held up her hands in his direction. “I suppose it’s hard for you to forget it.”
“The funny thing is, in most situations, it would be easy as anything to forget. You’d be dead. Your head would have been turned in. The bounty would have been collected, and I would be on to my next job.” He huffed, almost a laugh. “I didn’t think much about what I was doing – I mean, I thought about the hunt. I learned early on not to think about the deaths. They come, they go – sometimes they haunted me, but most of them just… they passed on.” Continue reading
Hidden Mall 65: Ignoring the Right Advice
“So all the people who have come through here,” Abby swallowed. She was feeling very parched again, as if the ghost mall had taken longer to get out of and taken more out of her than she’d guessed or anticipated. “All of those people, and only three of them were us. Where did the rest of us go?”
“I think you know-” Yadira stopped herself again with a small huff. “The practice of being obscure is a hard one to break. I apologize. I think that many, many Abigails have died, and that while not as many Olivias have died, many have been stranded.” She paused, and then admitted, so softly that Abby could barely hear her, “That magic is new. The fact that only pairs – and only specific pairs – can travel the malls is very new. So much has happened since the curse came down. It’s changed everything about this place, and none of it for the better.” She looked between them solemnly. “How did you come to this particular place?”
“Ignoring advice we’d been given,” Abby admitted. Continue reading
Haunted House 46: Further Plans
First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
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“You don’t – you can’t – you would – what would you-” Mélanie caught herself and focused very carefully on her breathing for several breaths. “Sir. Jasper.” She looked at him with wide eyes and found that his grin had stuttered into something of a worried expression. She patted his shoulder, not wanting him upset, and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry you, you, ah, you caught me by surprise. What did you mean – what-”
“Oh, Mélanie, my sweetness.” Jasper pulled her into a tight hug, rubbing her back until she could breathe again. “I didn’t meant to upset you, I didn’t. Why does this- what upsets you?”
She peered up at him from the confines of the hug. “I don’t want you to risk yourself. I was so upset when the – when those thugs had you, and I, if you got caught, it would be horrid. I don’t want something like that happening to you!” Continue reading
Running in the Bear Empire 42: Home
First: Running in the Bear Empire
Previous:41: Discovery
Next: 43: Trapped
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“You know, we could probably live here pretty comfortably forever.” Carrone looked at the door of the cabin and back to Deline before setting his pack on his shoulders. “I’d get better at hunting eventually.”
“I’m not sure you’d say that in winter.” Deline smirked at him, although she could guess easily enough what was going on in his head. They were leaving, which meant they were going to the capital. When they got there, everything could change. Continue reading
Visit the Lady’s Garden
This is just a fun Addergoole ficlet, and I swear it really is fun.
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“So you get your own garden?” Gernot walked around Pihla’s room slowly. “This is pretty nice. But – no bed?”
“There was one, but I talked them into giving me more dirt instead,” Phila admitted. “I sleep in this part, here.” She toed the dirt as she watched the upperclassman and his assessing looks.
“You were raised down here, in the Village?”
“Sort of? I was sprouted in the Meadow. But when I was old enough to go walking, my… parent took me and we explored the world until it was time to come here.”
“Sprouted. Parent.” Gernot took a step backwards towards the door. Pihla found herself smiling, although she was a little sad, too.
“Yeah. Unless you’re a tree, too-”
“You haven’t Changed yet, you can’t have!”
“I haven’t, that’s the very strange part. I don’t know what my Change will be like. But, ah. One of my aunts managed to fertilize with a Tree Change.”
“How do you know all of this?” He looked at the door and then glared at her.
Pihla sighed. She flopped down on one of the few chairs in her room-slash-garden and gestured at another one. “You have to know what not to say fast, when you spent your first ten years of life as a sapling. So I know a lot more than a lot of people coming here.”
Gernot sat down slowly. “Were you, were you leading me on?” He sounded less angry and more confused.
“No. No, not really. I mean – Unless you’re a Tree Change, like I said, we probably aren’t cross-fertile?”
“I’m a siren.” He watched her carefully. “Not a tree, not even seaweed. So-”
“So you have a very, very tempting voice. I noticed that.” She winked at him. She was smiling, not angry. “And I thought you were cute. Handsome. And I’ve waited a while to come here, to learn about this whole – this whole school thing. Trees grow up slower,” she explained carefully.
“So you’re – you’re-” Gernot huffed and tried to gather his thoughts. “You were – you wanted – you -”
“I probably can’t give you your child. And I don’t really have a bed here, or anything like that.” Her smile was patient but, more than that, interested. “But, if you want to, say, roll around in the dirt with me…”
Gernot’s eyes went to the place she’d said she slept. “I, ah. I-”
“Or, if you’d rather, I hear there’s a pool.” Now, now she was grinning. “Just maybe don’t sing while we’re at it, okay?”
He had no idea what was going on. On the other hand, he thought maybe that might be all right. And he had to admit – “Maybe. Maybe, uh. After you show me your garden?”
Pihla giggled. “It’s a deal. Come on, here, I’ll show you my favorite plant.”
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Although not really referenced. Pihlas grandparent/parent and aunt are found here:
Year Nine Chapter 31
Year Nine Outtake: Kheper & Curry
Hiatus Fic 5: Sprouting
Want more?
Been to Middle Earth; Do you speak my language?
Okay, this is entirely because DaHob sent me the link to Talk Nerdy to Me.
When Nat first saw the ads shouting “win a trip to Middle Earth,” she assumed it was just another studio amusement park, like “spend a weekend in the Wizarding World” or “Cruise on the Black Pearl.”
It wasn’t until she was lured by a clickbait article that she caught a clue as to what was really going on.
“Portal trips to other universes: are they as safe as they seem?”
It turned out that the answer was a firm no, something hammered home as Nat’s native guide physically moved her out of the way of a swinging mace and dropped her onto the back of a sturdy pony. “Tourist gold, they said,” he muttered. “Bringing fresh eyes and fresh treasure to Middle Earth! Nobody said they’d be idiots without the sense to come in out of the rain!”
“Hey!” She shifted on the pony and let it carry her away from the orcs. “Let’s see you come to my world and see how you do in a strange place with strange dangers, hunh, Gladrin son of Gladuil?”
“Maybe I will, maybe I will,” he retorted.
“Good! I look forward to it!”
Then, because she didn’t want to be the reason that the Ugly American trope was carried to another universe, she added, much more politely, “thank you for saving me. Do you think, for the rest of this trip, you could perhaps show me the things that you like the best about your land?”
She thought from the expression – the beard made it hard to tell – that she’d surprised Gladrin.
“That I will, little human,” he consented. “That I will. And perhaps we can return you to your land intact, mmm?”
Hidden Mall 64: Selling for Information
Abby was about to step in front of her friends when she found ‘Via stepping in front of her. “You leave her alone. We’re not selling anything, we’re not buying anything, we’re not giving anything. We’re just passing through. That’s it.”
“Oh,” the woman clucked, “but I have information. And I am willing to give it in exchange for something – if you have something you want to sell me.”
“That sounds-” Now Olly, too, was in front of her “-a lot like buying something, and we don’t want to do that. Not here.”
“And that’s wise. It is always wisest to never take anything that seems like too good a deal at the moment. So let’s see. Well, or too dear a deal, of course. If you want information-“ Continue reading