“Porter needs a Girlfriend”

Feb11

For [personal profile] inventrix‘s commissioned prompt.

This falls in the Year 9 Timeline, after Prickly (LJ) and Nice Guys (LJ)

Addergoole has a landing page here on DW (and on LJ).

December, Year 8

“Porter needs a girlfriend,” Arundel told Sylvia. Not that’s she’d necessarily listen, but she sometimes would have a conversation with him if he couched it the right way. And this, this was starting to bother him.

“Girlfriends are hard things to come by here,” his Keeper answered, more in the tone of informing him of a fact than with any interest. Of course, that’s how she usually sounded. “He could find a Keeper with no trouble at all, but he has been resistant to the idea. We might find him a Kept, but that would be trickier.”

“He really just needs a girlfriend,” he tried again. “You know, someone to hang out with, and neck with a little bit, cuddle and watch TV and all that sort of thing?” He wasn’t sure she did. They certainly didn’t have that sort of relationship. Then again, he wasn’t sure that was the sort of thing she’d want.

“I’ve never had that,” she answered, possibly reading his mind. He wasn’t always sure she couldn’t. “It sounds… I think it sounds pleasant.”

Arundel gulped. It seemed like an opening. It seemed like his chance. “Would you like to?” he offered.

“Like to?” she looked intrigued. Intrigued was good, right?

Porter could wait. “Would you like to have a boyfriend?” And, because she could misinterpret the oddest things, “me, I mean?”

Late September, Year 9
“Porter needs a girlfriend,” Arundel told Sylvia. Not that she’d listen, but she was getting better about that, not that he wasn’t her Kept anymore. Now that she had a new Kept. He didn’t know what to think about that, though Gar seemed like a nice sort.

“Porter?” Timora whispered, and then wrote, quickly, on her whiteboard, “I didn’t think people down here did ‘dating.’”

Arundel laughed uncertainly. “They really don’t, not very often,” he agreed. “But I’ve heard it happens, and can you see Porter with a Kept?”

She smiled, and wrote, “Catnip mouse?”

“There’s Kendra, she graduated last year, she was a mouse,” he smirked. Timora was fun. More fun when they were alone together, but they couldn’t spend all their time locked in his room. He had his crew, after all; they had the crew.

“Mice?” Sylvia smiled. “Maybe another cat, instead?”

Arundel pictured that for a moment. He didn’t know any other cat-Changes, but he hadn’t met everyone yet. But Gar was chuckling.

“Oh, man, can you imagine the sound? No, thank you.” Sylvia shot him a disapproving glare, and Gar only smiled broader. The rocky Ninth-Cohort seemed to enjoy tweaking his Keeper, and didn’t seem to mind when she glared at him. Arundel didn’t get it. But then again, he’d never really gotten Sylvia, either.

“Right, right, not a cat,” Arundel interrupted. “And there’s no mice that I know of. Bird?”

But Timora, his Timora, was writing again, so he shut up and let her “talk.” Her hand flew over the white-board, and in a moment, she held up: “Why not just people? Just try different people until someone clicks.”

The others read the board a moment after Arundel. “Like speed dating?” Gar offered. “Addergoole speed dating seems hazardous to everyone’s health.” He tugged on the chain around his neck pointedly, making Arundel squirm.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Sylvia countered slowly. “Not speed dating, that’s silly. But just bring girls by for dinner, girls we know are single, and see if he make friends with any of them.”

Timora drew a smilie face, while Arundel nodded, feeling as if his plan had run away without him.

Timora, it turned out, had Opinions. Arundel hadn’t been expecting that, certainly not as many as she had. He knew she’d only acceded to being Kept by him to have someone to talk to, which left him feeling a little bit left-behind by the whole process – happy to have her, but totally uncertain what do do with her. And now!

“Her first,” she whispered to him, tilting her head at a girl in the lunch room. Arundel gulped.

“She’s a Sixth Cohort, Timora,” he murmured.

“She’s pretty. And smart. And you’re only asking her over for dinner, right?” She smiled at him sweetly, and he sighed.

“If I get my wings broken for asking, I’m going to be grumpy,” he told her.

“You’re fearless,” she scolded. Wasn’t he supposed to be doing the scolding?

“But not stupid. Not that stupid, at least.” He wanted to make her happy, though, and he wanted Porter to have a girlfriend, and he didn’t want to make Sylvia frown at him. So he found Cynara cy’Drake in a quiet moment between classes – when her insane crew were nowhere around – and invited her to dinner in their suite.

Five minutes and a half-dozen promises later, he’d managed to get her to agree to dinner. Porter, he feared, was more likely to vanish through the floor than hit on her, but maybe then Timora would trust his judgment.

Cya was, in person and away from her crew (a group of Sixth Cohorts so crazy they not only embraced but fully lived up to their crew name of Boom!), less intimidating, enough that everyone (even Gar) seemed to enjoy dinner.

But Porter was still ears-down whiskers-twitching by the time she left. “That’s the sort of woman who alphabetizes her sock drawer,” he claimed. “I am terrified if I spend too long near her, she’s going to sort my stripes.”

Despite this, Timora seemed unswayed from her plan, and Arundel, a little confused as to how he managed to always lose control of everything, found himself looking through the lunchroom with her again, picking out more potential dinner dates for his friend.

“You said he needed a girlfriend,” Timora pointed out when he protested.

“Yeah, but, maybe he can find his own?”

“He helped me out a lot on Hell Night. I just want to help him, too. What about her?”

“Heidi?” The pretty blonde girl had deep-swooping ram’s horns and a sweet smile. “I’m not sure she’s into guys, but I’ll ask.” She was, at the very least, less imposing than Cynara, and only a year ahead of him.

She accepted the invitation with far less song-and-dance than his first attempt – she was, after all, cy’Valerian – and dinner was relaxed, fun, and with all the romantic spark of two aged nuns taking tea. “She’s fun,” Porter commented. “We should have her and her girlfriend over more often.”

Timora was still not stoppable.

Next, she pointed out a student in Arundel and Porter’s cohort, a studious blond girl named Sofia. Knowing by now that it wouldn’t work to argue with her, short of an order, Arundel sighed, and politely invited Sofia to dinner.

Sylvia, he noticed, was getting increasingly impatient with these diners, which made Gar all the more snarky, but, on the other hand, seemed to make Timora happier and happier. The whole thing made Arundel more than a little confused, and not exactly happy.

“If this one doesn’t work out…”

“If this doesn’t work out, one more, and then I’m done, and we can let Porter find his own girlfriend,” she assured him. “Besides, she seems like a nice girl.”

She was, indeed, nice, proper; she and Sylvia got along very well. Porter, on the other hand, seemed, while not unimpressed, kind of lost around the very sleek, class-president-type girl. “She needs like a future presidential candidate,” he complained woefully. “Not a guy who opens doors.”

“One more,” Timora reminded Arundel. “You said I could try one more.” And then she smiled at him, a wicked smile he wasn’t used to seeing from her. “Do you think they’re softened up enough yet?”

“Softened… what?”

“Well, Sylvia wasn’t going to let just anyone into her suite. She puts up with me because she doesn’t know what to do with me. But nobody else will have my power. And Porter is kind of skittish around girls, but by now, he’s relaxing enough to crack jokes.”

HE stared at his Kept. “You planned this?”

“Well… I liked Sofia for him. But I have a better idea.” Her grin was growing wider. “So let’s invite Belfreja to dinner.”

“Bel… the girl with the…”

“Beautiful assets.” Timora’s smile was gone now. “There are so many boys after her that no one has managed to Keep her yet for the crowd around her.”

“And you want to add Porter to the list?”

“No.” She looked deadly serious. “I want to cut through all that and have Porter Keep her, before someone like Calvin wins the race-for-Bel’s-collaring.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?” he asked slowly.

“I got lucky. You and Porter – and my power – and I didn’t get it bad at all. But I’ve seen some of the others in my Cohort – and even Gar isn’t really happy with Sylvia. I think Porter and Belfreja could really get along,” she added. “They both have that noir feel to them.”

He thought past the girl’s assets to her personality and, slowly, nodded. “I think you’re right, Timora. Good idea,” he added, knowing the Bond would roll over her with the praise, and, while she was smiling in the giddy aftereffects, stole a kiss.

“You know,” he continued, “I don’t think Porter’s the only one who needs a girlfriend.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/265870.html. You can comment here or there.

All in your Head, a story continuation of Bug Invasion for the Giraffe Call

Feb11

For [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s commissioned continuation of
From the moment they breathed our air (Lj) after: Staying in the City (LJ) and Spooks vs. Bugs (DW)

This came out a little strange, and I’m not certain it *entirely* got across what I was trying to do, but here it is.

Those who had already been bonded with a bug had a unique advantage over those who didn’t. They had many, many disadvantages: they shared their brain with a symbiote who could skim their thoughts, affect and shift those thoughts, alter moods, and take over their body. They were, because of that symbiote, tagged and lojacked, stuck, now that the bugs had been repulsed from continuing attacks, in small encampments behind enemy lines and even if they could get out, the humans had learned what to look for, and would often shoot them on sight.

On the other hand, they were behind enemy lines, with an enemy sharing mind-space with them, and the bugs did not seem to have a tradition of keeping secrets from their hosts. And they were learning how to reboot their symbiotes, giving themselves more and more time to talk – to plan, that was important – without their enemies overhearing.

And there were a host of things that they’d found the bugs just couldn’t handle. Ghosts and fae, that had been a fun one. Paula was still giggling about it – much to the consternation of her symbiote (The bugs had humor, but it was more on the lines of puns and clever-tricks than slapstick or situational comedy).

She wasn’t giggling about the chemical sensitivity – no one was. The expelled symbiote had died, and the host had nearly done so. But she hadn’t, and that told them something very useful. And the hosts were talking.

Talking was risky, of course. The symbiotes only stayed dormant for so long, and the “so” was hard to predict. And when they were awake, you had to trust yourself to not think about the plans, not even think that there were plans. You had to be very good at being a prisoner in your own mind.

She’d been going back and forth about that one for a while, when she had room to think, chewing over it, trying to figure out how to plot a rebellion against something in your own head. The ghosts helped, but the bugs were beginning to understand them and, as they understood them, were less likely to glitch out.

The chemical sensitivity was trapping the bugs into environmentally-controlled ships, buildings, and bubbles, which, in the end, would probably give the rest of the world the tools they needed to defeat their enemy. But it did nothing for those already bonded, if they didn’t happen to have asthma or a chemical sensitivity.

For all of her mulling over it, Paula ended up almost literally tripping over her solution.

Her symbiote, for all the little it talked to her, had clearly been worried ever since the woman with chemical sensitivity had rejected her invader. That had, she gathered, never happened before. But if it had happened once, the bug seemed to think, could it happen again?

It sent waves of pleasure-feelings through Paula in an urge to soothe and, she thought, bribe her: ::good human, you wouldn’t kick me out to die?::

::I don’t know how.::

But it could be done. Somehow. Somehow, if its body thought it was dying from you. Which was easier said than done, she was pretty sure, short of poison, short of actually almost-killing-yourself. Which really didn’t solve the problem.

And then she tripped over Anya.

Anya was new to their collection of hosts, a slight girl with a nervous tic and a habit of staying in the back of any conversation. She’d seemed shy but not all that unstable when Paula met her, but now, she was curled up in a corner, staring into space.

“What is it?” Paula asked her gently.

“My meds,” the girl admitted. “Without them, without them it’s hard to stay calm. I have to work to remember that the voices in my head aren’t real, and the worst part of it is, now, one of them is.”

One of them is. She sat down next to Anya, carefully not thinking of anything but the girl’s problem. “How do you normally deal with the voices in your head?” she asked. She’d had a friend in college with panic attacks… and another one who learned how to self-induce them to get out of tests.

“I tell them they’re not real,” Anya whispered. “And then they stop bothering me for a while.”

“Have you tried,” she asked, even more slowly, “trying that with the bug?”

“I…” She closed her eyes, and curled up on herself. “This isn’t real,” she murmured. “You’re not real. You’re just a figment of my imagination, and I don’t need to listen to you.”

When she opened her eyes, she seemed happier, more human – and Paula had the beginnings of a plan.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/265529.html. You can comment here or there.

Differences of Opinion

Feb10

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

🔖

Mrs. Gent was either very easy to flatter, or she simply liked to play the game. She giggled happily at me. “You’re too sweet, dear. Thank you so much.”

“Thank you,” Jordan tried, and, after another moment sipping lemonade, “I don’t see prices on anything?”

“Oh, Mr. Ting sets all the prices when he sees the customer,” she chuckled, as if Jordan had said something silly. “You can’t just write prices on a shelf and expect them to be right all the time. As it is, sometimes we have to change our labels.”

“The labels, really?” That startled me, and Jordan was still stewing over the price thing. “I see some of them aren’t in English.”

“But some of them are,” she snapped. I’d hit an invisible nerve. “And what you need will be labeled for you, and priced for you, by Mr. Ting.”

“He sounds like a very hands-on guy.” So now Jordan was pissed, and Mrs. Gent was pissed, and I was feeling under fire for no good reason, which, yes, I’ll admit it, made me feel kinda pissed off too.

“He is,” Mrs. Gent answered coolly. “He prefers to handle each of his customers with the individual attention they deserve, whatever language they speak.”

“So, wait.” The language thing had clearly tweaked her, but I really didn’t understand why. “You’re saying that the signs are in the languages of the people who might need them? Ma’am.” I didn’t want to get kicked out before we’d had a chance to ask Mr. Ting for an air conditioner. I really, really didn’t want to go home without one.

“Yes, exactly. How else would you do it?”

“Uh…” Jordan frowned. “Generally, stores that we go into around here – that is, in this city – have signs in the language of the neighborhood, or just in English, or both. And the price is the same for everyone.” That part was added sharply. None of this “pricing for the customer.” I think it stunk of prejudice for Jordan; I know it smelled a little bit like that for me.

“What a strange way to do business,” Mrs. Gent complained. “But then, if you don’t read English, or whatever this language of the neighborhood is, then how do you shop?”

“With practice?” I spent a lot of time shopping in Asian food markets; I knew how this worked. “Or buy pointing and gesturing.”

“It seems very inefficient. And the prices?”

“The same for everyone,” Jordan repeated.

“So for you two and, for example, a … what is the word… fat-cat businessman, the same price for a radio?”

“The same.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” she frowned. “When Mr. Ting returns, perhaps I shall go looking at these stores. But in the meantime,” she said firmly, “you are in our store, and our store does not work that way.”

“I see.” Jordan looked with a frown at the lemonade. “We are.” We exchanged a short glance: we were, more or less, stuck with this. We needed that air conditioner.
🔖

Next is The “A” Shelves!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/265464.html. You can comment here or there.

The Snow War

Feb9

For [personal profile] kay_brooke‘s prompt.

They used the weather against them. They knew, after all, how to handle the snow. Their enemy did not.

So they stayed ensieged, locked in their city.

Summer turned to fall, and they moved deeper into their territory, ceding land when they had to, moving to the higher ground at the center of the city.

The enemy pushed forward, slowly, inexorably. They had never been stopped. Sometimes they took their time, as they were here, but they were never rebuffed, never defeated. And they would not be defeated this time. No man, no strategist, no army could beat them.

And the city, slowly, retreated, folded in on itself, gave up the lower ground, as it did, every autumn, as winter encroached on the city, as the snow began to fall. They people moved into their tight little winter houses, packed together under the hill, where they could conserve heat, where they could conserve energy.

The enemy, who were never defeated, certainly not by a little snow, plowed on forward, taking gleefully the land the city abandoned. They stomped through the late-October falls, and the November hail and blizzards. They bombarded through the first week of December.

And then the real storms came, the second week of December, when the enemy had really begun to think they were winning. They were bivouacked a mile into the city, stretched out around the whole city like beads on a string, camping in abandoned houses. Abandoned summer houses, with wide doors and no fireplace but the cooking fire. And then the snow fell, they were trapped, trapped and unprepared.

And when they were trapped, the city struck back.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/264946.html. You can comment here or there.

Two Vignettes of Cynara – Addergoole Boom Post-Apoc

Feb8

This first vignette happens around year 20 of the Addergoole school, 3-4 years after the Apoc begins. This is a little bit after this scene. Note: Cya is known for keeping Kept for a year directly after they graduate Addergoole; she Kept Gaheris for 3-1/2 (the apoc messed with her normal methods of doing things)

Cya lay in bed next to Gaheris, not sleeping, running through their date – date! DATE! – in her head, running through what he’d said to her. What she’d felt about what he’d said. The way he’d looked at her. He was, she thought, maybe really staying.

She felt, guiltily, at the edges of her love for Howard, her love for Leo. Feeling this comfortable with another free Ellehemaei felt like a betrayal, felt like she was cheating on them, in a way that having, sleeping with, Kept never had.

Stop it, she told herself, with a tiny, suppressed squeak of frustration. Even beyond the sexual, Howard had Magnolia, and loved her. Leofric had Zita, and they – they had their perfect balance together. It was no more cheating to have Gaheris than it was for either of them to have their loves.

But still.. countered the little voice in her head. The one that said that that’s not what Cya did. Cynara planned, and she was there, and she was always there when she needed her.

And that is not going to stop, she reminded herself. She was still going to be the one that was there. But this… this could be okay.

Slowly, uncertainly, Cya let herself fall in love again.

The second one is in line with this series:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Meeting the Family (LJ) (a chat log)
Roleplay Log (Cya/Cabal, posted by cluudle)
Cleaning Up (LJ), One month later

Cya escorted her dripping Kept into her cabin by the back door – because, with a house designed with two growing boys in mind, the route from the back door to the bathroom was unobstructed and hard-surface, very hard to ruin, and because that door was closer to the barn, and thus a shorter route for her jittery, unhappy Kept.

Once in the bathroom, she gave Panlong a gentle shove towards the tub. “Fill it with water at a temperature you’re comfortable with, and get in, in whichever order you’d prefer.” No use chancing that he might still have New Kept Syndrome and end up hurting himself trying to follow vague orders. “I’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to make us some doctored hot chocolate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammered, and started the water. Cya hid a sigh in her turning, and hurried through the cocoa-making. Cabal was right. She really hadn’t been fair to the boy.

She didn’t want to be fair to him, of course. She wanted to make everyone who had hurt Yoshi pay… Didn’t you have this conversation with your father once? she reminded herself sharply. And what did you tell him?

“If you kill everyone who ever hurts me, Dad, I’m never going to learn how to do this revenge thing right on my own.” She muttered it under her breath, smiling a little bit at the memory. Her dad had made such a boggled, lost expression at that…

…sometimes Leo reminded her of her father. Especially around Ruki. Best not to think about Leo right now, it would only muddle things more. She poured a generous shot of hoarded Kahlua and a tiny smidge of vodka into the cocoa, poured it into two mugs, and added a handful of marshmallows to each mug. Time to deal with the boy. Time to figure out if he could be dealt with. If he could be helped.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/264191.html. You can comment here or there.

Character description and signal Boost

Feb8

djinni is hosting ICON DAY 21!!

And for an icon request, #1 was Summer. Here’s her description:

Summer is younger, a sunny blonde; her hair is generally pulled back in a loose ponytail, strands falling in her face: http://www.my-hair-style.com/2010/08/23/the-sleek-ponytail-in-its-various-different-avatars-for-fall/

She prefers bright colors for her clothes, especially yellow, orange, and that bright colour in between those two. Simple clothes, probably a T-shirt like this – http://images.footballfanatics.com/FFImage/thumb.aspx?i=%2FproductImages%2F_619000%2Fff_619717_xl.jpg&w=400 saying something clever- I like “Yes, and?” or, if smaller, “try.”

Like her siblings, her face shape is most like this picture here: http://www.edinburghpastoralcounselling.com/resources/coupleiStock_000008560478Small.jpg; her skin is tan but not deeply so.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/263782.html. You can comment here or there.

All you can be, a story of Addergoole Year Nine

Feb8

After Damn list (LJ).

Ahouva’s stories all come with that warning: magical thinking.

I don’t like being scared of my Keeper. He shouldn’t have seen that. She shouldn’t have written that.
She shouldn’t have even thought it; it was okay to be frightened of your Keeper. He was in charge of her, after all. He had the power of life or death over her, that’s what Kendon had said. That was frightening, very reasonably frightening.

But it made Basalt unhappy, and the last thing she wanted to do was… “Where are we going?” Stupid, dumb, stupid, questioning him. Keeper knew what he was doing. That’s why he was in charge, not her.

“Outside. It’s still nice enough out, and I thought you might like the open air.”

“…Oh.” She blinked, not sure what to think about that. “Thank you?”

He smiled down at her. “You’re welcome. So.” He opened the door. “You don’t like the list?”

“I…” she quailed. “I didn’t say that!”

“I know. And if you really disliked it, it would end up on the list, wouldn’t it?”

It had taken some twisty thinking to keep it off of there. Guiltily, she muttered “yes?”

“Ah.” He paused, the sun shining down on them. “I want to know what’s really going on, not what you think I want to hear.”

“But then…” she stopped herself, but not in time. He shook his head.

“Finish that sentence the way you originally planned to. Please.”

The please didn’t make it any less of an order. “But then you’d be angry with me. I’m not very grateful. I’m not very good at being Kept.”

“Oh, Ahouva.” He hugged her very carefully. “You’re very good at being Kept. But you’re not very good at helping me be a good Keeper to you.”

“I’m sorry?” she squeaked. It felt nice to be held in his arms. And safe. Kendon’s arms had never felt safe.

His breath was warm across her hair as he sighed. “I asked you to write the list because I want to know what’s going on in your head – and because I want you to think about your wants and dislikes, instead of just mine.”

“But why?” she muttered into his shoulder. “It’s easier to be a good Kept if I just think about what you want.”

“I know, honey.” He pressed her a little closer to herself. “But what I really, really want is for you to be the best Ahouva you can be. Sorry,” he added ruefully. “I know the other thing is probably easier.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/263569.html. You can comment here or there.

I HAVE NEW ICONS YAY!

Feb8

Djinni has posted my new icons and yay!


Winter, from Stranded World


Me, in Construction Mode


Giraffe!!

Over here, I’ve been pondering what icons to request this coming time.

Annnd! [personal profile] meeks has posted her queue – three of my pieces (Diapering Dragons, The Deep Inks, and Dragon Next Door) are on the list to work on next.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/263260.html. You can comment here or there.