Dinner, a ficlet for the December Prompt Call for Wyste

Jan5

Written to [personal profile] wyste‘s prompt

There were things Taran expected from Ei. He expected dinner ready when he got home from work. He expected ridiculous movies and cuddling and a certain needy affection that he loved. He expected obedience when they were playing and backtalk when they weren’t, and an eye-searing sense of fashion that made office parties quite entertaining.

He did not expect to come home and find dinner for three on the table, and Ei sitting patiently on the couch with another guy. Ei was smiling, but it was a nervous smile, and the guy – shaggy beard, perfectly groomed hair, terrifyingly blue eyes – was smiling reassuringly and patting Ei’s hands.

“This, ah, this is Joseph.” Ei sprang to his feet. “This is Joseph, and I want to bring him home for dinner.” Taran’s partner jutted out his chin in nervous defiance. “And for good.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1040545.html. You can comment here or there.

Bound Up, a story of Fae Apoc for the Christmas Prompt Call (@Rix_Scaedu)

Jan5

To rix_scaedu‘s prompt Fae Apoc, probably around 2009, 2010.

The call came from an unknown number, straight to voicemail. When he listened to it hours later, his heart dropped.

“It’s time.”

There was no return number, no way for him to protest. He called his assistant and had him rearrange his schedule for the next three days. “Something’s come up. Family matter.”

It was only a lie if you had a narrow view of what family meant. He told his pilot where to go, then told him to wait two days before returning without him. “I’m not sure how long this will take.”

That was absolutely the truth.

He straightened his tie, smoothed his sleeves one more time, and made sure his vest was properly buttoned. Her house was not so large as all that, but rather than screaming of new money, its old bones whispered it in every column.

He rang the doorbell, and had the always-slightly-unnerving experience of hearing nothing. He waited, hands loose at his sides. The first time, he’d rung it again. And again. Most people only did that once.

Her newest minion answered the door. The butler suit looked perfect and perfectly normal, unless you knew where to look. He didn’t look. He didn’t have to; he’d worn it, if only for an uncomfortable day.

He didn’t introduce himself. He didn’t have to. The butler bowed. “She will see you in the south garden room.”

“Thank you.” He nodded politely to the person playing butler, because it never hurt to be friendly, and headed to the south garden room.

The Gyrfalcon was waiting for him. She smiled and gestured him to a seat. A chair; this meeting was starting out better than he’d feared. He sat, making it a bow.

“It’s time.”

“So your message said, sa’ Gyrfalcon. It’s not a good time, though. My business…”

“Your business was a gift, no?”

“The seeds, yes, but…”

“A gift with strings, correct?”

He swallowed. “Yes, ma’am. A gift with strings.” But it had been five years, and he’d stopped waiting for the call to come.

“Your business is in a place where it could do well with you stepping back for a month or two.”

A month or two. He could live with a month or two.

“I’ve taken the liberty of sending some texts to your assistant. Everything will be fine, and, as long as you are discreet, nobody will suspect a thing.”

“I’m always discreet.” He dropped to his knees, the habit still there in his muscles. “We might as well begin now, then. Sa’ Gyrfalcon -”

“Not to me, darling, although your enthusiasm is notable. No.”

“No?” He swallowed. His former Mentor was a known quantity. He could trust her when she said his business would be fine; she’d helped him start it, after all. “Then…”

“There is a young woman, about your age. She wasn’t my student, but a cy’ra of yours did her a disservice. In turn, we are going to do her a service.”

“We.” His throat was dry. He stayed where he was. He’d made a deal, after all.

“We. One year under her collar, and your debt to me will be considered paid.”

“One year-! You said two months!”

“I said you’d be away from your business for a month or two. She understands that your business is important, and has promised to allow you to maintain it. As I said, as long as you are discreet, there should be no problem.”

She stood. She was a tall woman, taller still from this vantage point. “She’ll be here within an hour. We might as well get you ready, dear.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1040184.html. You can comment here or there.

Languary Day… Three: Word Order & Magic

Jan5

Sentence order for Whispers is
Verb Object (Object adjective) (adverb) Subject (subject adjective)
subject is the portion most likely to be dropped, as in Spanish, if it is clear from verb conjugation.

This appears to be the order – or close to it – that I like for magic-using languages.

Which leads to a note – unlike Old Tongue (The magic language in Fae Apoc/Addergoole), Whispers is not a Magic Language in and of itself. One CAN do magic in other languages (and some groups not mentioned here yet do). It’s just that the Institution and its subgroups primarily use Whispers in their often-highly-ceremonial magical practices.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1039963.html. You can comment here or there.

!AU! The Hawk Comes to Doomsday !AU!

Jan4

This came out of Education and Collars and is entirely in an alternate universe(henceforth AU). For one, the bet made would not come out with Luke losing. For another… Meep. WWIV.

(The assumption here is that Regine, for some reason, skewed the data, probably by using a very specific subset of years, to show that Cya’s former Kept had a slightly LOWER survival rate than their classmates. About the only way this could happen.)

Luke had vacation time coming, and Regine had no reason to deny him a sabbatical, unlike the last time he’d asked – times, every year from 2011 through 2025. He got one of his surviving former students to cover his classes for a year, worked with his current students to place them with new mentors, and elicited a promise from Mike to not come looking for him for at least a year.

Then he flew to Cloverleaf and presented himself to Cynara Red Doomsday, in possibly the most awkward situation he had found himself in since he was a teenager, centuries and worlds ago.

The dictator of a small nation was knitting on her front porch when he arrived. He dropped down to one knee and lowered his head, which meant that he didn’t need to watch her expression, which looked amused.

“I had a deal with Apollo.”

“You did.” She didn’t sound amused at all.

“So, for the next year, Cya Red Doomsday, I Belong to you.”

“For the next year, Luca Hunting Hawk, you belong to me.” She set her hands on his shoulders. “Is your crew going to kill me?”

“They don’t know.” His head was swimming. He stayed still and focused on keeping his wings as motionless as possible.

“You didn’t tell them, you mean.”

“I made Mike promise not to come looking for me.”

“Then they know something is up. I repeat: are they going to kill me?”

“They can’t.” Something caught in his throat. He made himself look at her and found her face solemn. “You have me.”

“I’m sure it occurred to you that you have just made Boom utterly unstoppable for the next year.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes. It had occurred to me.”

Her hands dropped to her sides. “Please stand up.”

She might have said please, but Luke found himself jerked to his feet like a marionette nonetheless. He mantled, regaining his balance. She didn’t seem to notice.

She looked him in the eye. Like most women of her generation, she had no trouble doing so. “All right. This isn’t about Boom Keeping Addergoole. This is about a bet you made with a teenage kid I was Keeping.”

She paused. Luke didn’t know whether to be relieved or more worried, so he waited.

“I don’t normally Keep grown men. Men, yes, adults, but 20 year olds, not to put too fine a point on it, are not you, Luke. But this was about you being able to stand what you set Apollo up for so that, my dear, is what we’re going to do.”

Luke blinked at her. He hadn’t been sure what to expect. He’d been more than a bit worried. He hadn’t had any space in his mind for what do I do when being called ‘dear’ by Cya Doomsday feels good?

This was going to be an interesting year.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1039754.html. You can comment here or there.

And your Little Friends Too

Jan4

Written to [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s prompt

Callis had finally gotten the last of the babies to sleep when someone knocked on the door.

He didn’t so much sigh as slump with his entire body, and even that he only indulged in for a half a breath. He gestured to Mike, nearly as old as he was, and to Candace, who might only be twelve but was murder with a rifle. Odile would have to watch the babies, and then they’d have to go through the whole process of getting them to sleep again. But that was later. Right now, there was the threat at the door.

Callis leaned his body over from the side to peek out the view port. They’d learned that the hard way, in their last hide-out. They’d learned a lot of things the hard way.

A man was standing in front of the peephole, his hands up and empty. “Callis Avondale? I’m just here to talk.”

Callis looked back at Mike and Candace. They were frowning, worried. The babies were stirring. Colby, the youngest, had started crying. If he stood here and shouted through the door, the kids were just going to get worked up. “Stand back and keep your hands where I can see him.”

Candace stepped up into position. Callis might not survive this, but their attacker would last about three seconds after his first strike. He took a breath and another breath and steeled himself, then pushed the door open.

The man standing on the other side was shorter than Callis, but muscular like he’d never missed a meal. His t-shirt was clean and his jeans didn’t have any holes, and neither did his sneakers.

“Callis?”

“That’s me.” His skin was itching just standing here, looking at this clean guy with his perfect shoes.

“My name’s Luke Hunting-Hawk. We have a place for you in a school, a safe place with food and water.” His gaze clearly took in Callis’ ripped clothes.

“All of us?”

“All… Your friends?”

“The kids. I’m not going to leave them. They’re just kids. They’ll die out here.”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “You want to bring your friends with you.”

“What, is this sort of exclusive bunker?”

Luke shifted a bit and coughed, looking embarrassed. “You could say that. It’s a school. But I can come up with a safe place for all your friends.”
“But not in the school.” Callis frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair. Who’s going to teach the kids to read and write and hot-wire a car and all the other useful stuff?”

He thought the man might be getting a little exasperated, until his slightly twisted expression settled into a chuckle. “All right. I’ll get your friends set up with a full education, hotwiring included, full meals – and help finding their own place when and if they’re ready to go out on their own, or when you graduate school. In the meantime, would you settle for someplace warm and safe for them while I get you settled in school and make arrangements for them?”

“Just like that?” Callis took a step back. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is, the school wants you to attend. There’s been a spot reserved for you for a long time. So you come to Addergoole, and your friends are warm and safe.”

Callis huffed quietly. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“I can’t give you any guarantees. But I give you my word that I will help your friends as best as I can, and that you’ll be free to visit them at least, say, once a month.”

The food supply was running low and one of the babies had a bad cough. Callis sighed. “All right. But the ones old enough to understand get to make up their own minds, all right?”

Luke smiled gently. “Of course. There’s a couple thermoses of soup in the van and some blankets; we can get started as soon as you’re ready.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1039345.html. You can comment here or there.

Trouble in Paradise, a further continuation

Jan4

A Change in Routine
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor
Lessons in the Dojo
[personal profile] inventrix‘s from RP logs
Education and Collars
Much offscreen RP lies between that last post and this one. Summary: It’s been a long time since Cya handled an unwilling Kept, and Apollo reminds her far too much of her crewmates when they were young and stupid reckless. Also, she didn’t used to be running a school and a city. Leo can see how it’s stressing her out and has offered to take Apollo off her hands.

Re. Olindo and Adeen; Olindo is a cy’Linden crewmate of Apollo’s who, being as stupidly headstrong as Apollo, had managed to get himself caught by unsavory people of a handwavey sort. Adeen is their stabilizing force, but she’s still in Addergoole.

Apollo looked both thoughtful and nervous as he walked back into Cya’s house, a combination of expressions that made her nervous and told her he’d probably been talking to Leo.

She was mending a pair of pants – the hard way, because unutu had never been one of her good words – so she let him pace and hem and haw nervously for a few minutes before looking up. “Yes?”

“What do you want?” he demanded, and then winced and sat down with a thump on the floor. “I mean… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I didn’t know I was making you miserable -“

“Didn’t care, you mean.”

“Didn’t know! But I didn’t really care at first, either.” He coughed and looked away. “Until we found Olindo. Then I started to get the point, I guess.”

Nothing like a well-placed object lesson to hammer things into thick skulls. If only that had worked with Leo.

Leo had been insane. This kid was just young.

And very plaintive. “And I don’t want to be Kept. I really… I still don’t think I need a babysitter. But I don’t want to be making you mad all year, either.”

“That’s the bond.” Hell of a time for it to finally kick in.

“I mean, I’ve been Kept, I went to Addergoole. But if I’ve got to be Kept, I don’t want to be a burden. And I don’t know what you want!”

She studied him, hands up in frustration, tears unshed in his eyes. “I want…” Careful, careful. Phrasing was everything with a Kept. “What I’m hoping for is that you can take this opportunity to grow up a bit, and to look at life more carefully, so that when you leave here, you and Olindo and Adeen don’t dive headlong into trouble.” Which she would probably get them out of, if she noticed in time. But no need to let him know they had a safety net.

“But it’s not like you can see me thinking! I.. You… You’re just… unhappy with me all the time!”

Shit. Cya took a deep breath. She set down the pants she’d been mending and walked across the room so she could pet Apollo, carefully, mindful of his crown of horns. “I think it’s time we go talk to Leo.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1038670.html. You can comment here or there.

Languary Day Two: Phonotatics, Feet, and a bit of history

Jan3

Conlang didn’t get picked in yesterday’s rotation, so I’ll start with yesterday’s post today: phonetics and feet.

Note: Everything in Language of Whispers is subject to lots and lots of change, as it’s a work in progress. For instance, I’ve already added two more consonants.

I’ve been playing with zompists’s generators. What I’ve decided is that the Language of Whispers is, ah…

(C(L))V(C)

With CV being the most common syllable construction.

Certain consonants do not start a word – r, l, ch.

I’m still working out consonants that just don’t go together; I’m sure there’s actually a rule there. jl in that order, pd, tp, ssr.

English leans towards iambic foot (In very rough generalizations, no need to pedant on this one ;-); Whispers leans towards trochee and dactyl feet.

The origins of the Language of Whispers are lost in the deep, dark annals of history. There are those, especially in the secretive reaches of the Institution, who believe that the language was first spoken to mankind by demons or by angels. Since most of the Institution doesn’t believe in demons, this is considered more of a fanciful belief than a real one.

Over the centuries, the language has shifted – three separate dialects, various loan-words, and so on – and has suffered heavily from disuse at times. Only in small, hidden enclaves is it spoken as a casual language, and thus it often ends up using loan words for everyday items.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1038516.html. You can comment here or there.

Education and Collars, a further continuation

Jan2

A Change in Routine
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor
Lessons in the Dojo
[personal profile] inventrix‘s from RP logs

Dinner with Leo had been… Interesting. Educational, Luke decided, like every visit to the Ran- to Boom’s place. Wherever Boom’s places were.

For one thing, it had taught him that he needed to visit Howard, or maybe talk Shira into doing so.

For another, it had taught him he owed Apollo an apology. So, sitting in Cynara’s living room while Cynara and Leo made small talk about their students, he looked Apollo in the eye. “I shouldn’t have split your crew up. I’m sorry.”

There was a pause while Apollo processed that. Then, “Yeah. No biggie, I guess.” Apollo tugged on his collar and looked away.

Luke coughed. That. “I’m not going to apologize for asking jae’Red Doomsday to Keep you.”

Apollo glanced at him sideways. “Why not?”

“Because you needed it. Because being here is good for you.” He could see Apollo readying a scoff. He kept talking. “I failed you as a Mentor. But I’ve seen what Cyna- Cya can do as a Keeper.”

“Yeah? Have you seen her collar collection?”

Luke snorted. “I’ve watched her pick her Kept for the last sixty years. If I were Regine I could tell you their survival percentages…”

“Please don’t,” Cynara murmured. When Luke glanced over, she was once again chatting to Leo about something one of their Students had done.

“…I can’t. I’m not that good at numbers. But I’d bet you anything it’s higher than that of the rest of the Addergoole grads.”

“Anything?” Apollo leaned forward, a fierce twist of an expression on his face. “Would you bet a year under this collar yourself?”

Cynara and Leo stopped talking. For a moment, it seemed to Luke that the entire city stopped talking.

It was a fair question. He glanced over at Cynara, only to see that she was studiously watching a patch of wall over Leofric’s shoulder.

“Well,” he started to hedge, “there’s the problem of my teaching job…” No. He needed to give the kid a fair answer. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d be willing to gamble that.” Mike would kill him. Slowly. But it wasn’t like there was much danger of it. “But are you sure jae’Doomsday is interested in being gambled with?”

Apollo glanced guiltily back at his Keeper. “Um. Well. She Keeps someone every year. You said it.”

“All students just out of Addergoole, all of them. Hell,” he added with some frustration, “there was a good chance she would have picked you up without my intervention.” The boy certainly had the look, and that was something Luke wasn’t going to say out loud in front of any of the three of them. “I’m not exactly her type.”

“She doesn’t need a ‘type’,” Apollo retorted with some frustration. “She has Leo and Howard.”

Oh. Well. Luke coughed. “Anyway. Yes. I’d be willing to gamble on that if jae’Doomsday would be willing to be gambled with.”

And the dead gods help him if he was wrong.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1038122.html. You can comment here or there.

Warm and Cozy

Jan2

to an anonymous prompt. It kept going, so I guess I was having fun with it 😉

The wind had been blowing hard all day, and the snow had not so much been coming down as coming sideways, stacking up against the house and making stripes of drifts along the yard.

It wasn’t a day to be outside, but Anya finished the last of her chores anyway. The ducks had to be fed, the firewood needed to be split, and the mailman got cranky if she didn’t check the mail at least once a week.

It was on the trudge back up the driveway that she noticed the strange way the snow was drifting near her front porch. It shouldn’t be lumping like that; the bushes she’d tried there hadn’t lasted through the last cold winter and there was nothing in that garden but ferns and moss now. And yet… there it was, a drift clearly pushing the snow up against something a couple feet away from her porch.

Something peachy brown. Something peachy brown with a tuft of… black? On top that could, sure, be some sort of junk or debris but could also be…

“Shit.” Anya didn’t so much live in a neighborhood as five miles outside the closest thing that could be in any way called a neighborhood, the sort of place where even the local radio DJs sometimes joked about dumping bodies. Nobody had actually done it, at least not in living memory, but there were always the stories.

First things first, check the crime scene. She’d watched enough procedurals to know that much. There was one set of footsteps, quickly being filled in. She snapped a picture with her phone, and another of the body.

The body moved. It wasn’t much, mostly a shudder. Anya jumped, yelping. The body twitched and moaned.

“You are not a body.”

A head lifted out of the snow. Blue lips croaked out the beginning of a word, lost in racking coughs.

“Right. If I don’t want you to become a body right here on my yard, I’m going to have to warm you up.” She knelt down beside him. “I’m going to pick you up. Don’t fight it, okay?”

She was answered by another hacking cough.

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

He was heavy, but he wasn’t much heavier than a dead deer. She got him up – she was going with him, although she hadn’t gotten enough snow off of him to be sure yet – in an awkward carry, inside in a series of stumbling heaves, and dropped him as gently as she could on her love seat.

“Hypothermia, hypothermia.” She thumbed through her phone until she found what she needed. “Right. Off with your – snow, I guess. Are you wearing clothes?”
He shook his head.

“Right. Goddess, when I said I wanted a man, this is not what I meant. Towels, towels.”

The towels were easy; drying off a naked man who could barely cooperate was harder. She read over her phone again and stuck some water in the microwave to warm, talking all the while. “You’re supposed to shiver, if you can. Here, have a blanket, and here’s another.”

He was skinny, when she got the snow off of him, tattooed all over in patterns like a drunk man’s paisley, and his hair had gone shaggy. Wrapped in a plaid blanket and sipping on mint tea, he looked a bit like a hipster. “If you say you were freezing before it was cool,” she muttered, “I might just throw you out in the snow again.”

He held up his hands in surrender, and she got a glimpse of what his smile looked like. “Good, good.” The house was warm, but she put another log on the fire just in case. “Get settled in.” She talked to the ducks, she talked to the snow and the cats. Talking to another human being that didn’t seem to talk back wasn’t even close to strange. “Get yourself all warm and cozy. Once you’re up to temperature, we can worry about things like clothes… and how you ended up in my front yard.”

There were scars hidden in the tattoos, and a long mark she thought was probably a brand. She had a feeling it was going to be a long story. Anya glanced out the window; the snow had covered over the last of his tracks and the road was a foot deep in white. “We’ve got time,” she assured him (and herself). “Nobody’ll be bothering us for quite a while.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1038035.html. You can comment here or there.