Giraffe Summary! Read the Crazy Fiction! Answer the Many Questions

Jan31

Since our Last Summary (LJ)

I have written for the January Giraffe Call (and on LJ):

The Cracks
The Dark of the City (Lj)

Dragons
Origins of Smokey Knoll (LJ)
Planning Board Woes (LJ)
Home to Pixie Town (LJ)

Fairy Town
Strange Neighbors (LJ) [After the Fairy Road (here on LJ)]
Loaves (LJ)
Burning Summer Quest (LJ)
The Beggars (LJ)
City Holiday (DW)
Re-Blessing the Church (LJ)
()

Fae Apoc
Digging through History (LJ), after Scrounging for History (LJ)
Down in the Dark (LJ)

Tir na Cali
Tea with HER (continuation 2) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation 3) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation 4) ()

I have written for the December Call (perks & commissions):
Commissions from Last Call:
Addergoole
So. (LJ) Between Years 28 & 29
Yr9
So I’ve Started Out (LJ) after “Some Say Life.”
Nice Guys (LJ) After “Changed.”

Aunt
Princesses, Knights, and the Huntsman (LJ)

Stranded
Strand-Workers and Strand-Working Organizations (LJ

I have written not for any Giraffes:
Addergoole: Boom
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour/a> (LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Addergoole Yr9
Consequences (DW) Addergoole Yr 9, Ceinwen & Thorburn

Rin:
Hurt/Comfort (LJ) [Donor perk]

Vas:
Reveal SOMETHING? (LJ)

Stranded:
Tangling isn’t just a walk in the park (LJ) Spring & Lance [Donor Perk]

And I asked you more questions:
Mini-Call Poll (DW) (what time should I hold a livewrite for the Mini-call?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/250528.html. You can comment here or there.

The Dark of the City, a story of the Cracks for the Giraffe Call

Jan30

For [personal profile] kay_brooke‘s prompt

The city always looked its best at night, or in the fresh near-dawn just after a rain. The lights dimmed all the rough edges, and made what looked grubby in daylight look romantic, noir, cheerful. In the daytime, the city looked run-down, grubby, like its denizens, past its prime. But like the hookers and hustlers, the nighttime added a shine to everything.

Lane walked down the South Street at midnight, nevermind which of those categories might fit the tight leather pants and tighter tank top, breathing in the smoke-tainted air, feeling the city lights against bare shoulders. The world was beautiful, for a certain definition. The world was certainly better than during the daylight. Times like this, you could believe in a little magic. Times like this, the world covered up its gritty parts for you, made itself into a story.

“Hey, you. I’ve got thirty dollars if you’ve got five minutes.”

The voice was greasy and slick, coming from a dark alley. Not the sort of place Lane liked to go. “Not here. Not there, for sure. Down by Lauren Park. In the light.”

“Heh, kid, not everyone likes the light. Come on, my money’s as good as anyone’s.”

“I don’t do creeps, spooks, cops, or monsters,” Lane answered shortly. “And if you’re hiding in a shadow, I can’t tell which of those you might be.”

“Only way to get the money.”

“I’m not a junkie.” Anymore. “I’m not that hard up for cash.”

“Pity,” the voice glorped. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

Lane had started running at “Pity.” By then, it was too late. Something was already grabbing, pulling, tugging.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Tripped, elbows scraping across the pavement, scrabbling for any sort of purchase, Lane gave in to the small bomb of magic living deep inside. “I don’t do fucking goblins, either!”

The world exploded in a blast of light, a tiny sun, followed by a long splash of water, flooding the streets, washing away all the … filth… Lane stood up, looking around in the sparkling air. The city was always its best just before the dawn, just after a rainfall. Times like that, you could believe in a little magic.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/250134.html. You can comment here or there.

Home to Pixie Town

Jan30

For Friendly Anonymous’ prompt.

Dragons Next Door has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Passiansi was going home for the summer, which was just about forever in pixie years, but her mother had insisted, and her father had shaken his fist, and that had been it; Passiansi was packed up and shipped out Home.

Never mind that she had been born in the Big City and lived her whole life in Smokey Knoll, and her parents and their parents before them; never mind that “Home” hadn’t been home for their line of pixies in fifty years or more, sometime around their fifth birthday, the summer before they were officially adults, the family decreed that every young pixie had to visit Home, the pixie city down in the southlands.

The twelve-hour bus ride – the bus driver seemed uncertain about having a pixie on the greyhound, but shrugged and took her full-price ticket. “You paid for a full seat, you get it,” the rotund human – or maybe an ogre – had declared, and Passiansi had rode the twelve-hour drive in absolute luxury – dropped her off at an elaborate gate, huge by pixie standards but, to a girl who’d gone to a human school her whole life, not all that impressive. It wasn’t even as big as the school doors.

But it was where she was going, so she flew through it. So this was Home, then? Tiny, with aspirations to some sort of Big-ness? Hidden off the side of the highway where humans wouldn’t even notice it? A doorway between two stone walls?

She hit the shimmering line of the glamour, and was knocked backwards, nearly falling back out of the doorway. “Woah.” She hovered in place, trying to take it all in. It was a carnival and a madhouse and an explosion all rolled up into one, the buildings climbing up into the sky, stacked on top of each other like Christmas presents, the roadways sometimes just tunnels, sometimes nearly as broad as a human street. And in the streets, in little floating carts – how did they get them to float?! Were they hanging from wires? How did it all work – were pixies of every color selling what looked like just about everything.

Passiansi felt for the pocket-full of pixie cash her grandmother had handed her. “You’ll need this to get down the rue-rue,” she’d told her. “Save the rest for later.” Feeling its hard jingle, seeing the thousand beautiful carts, Passi was sure it wouldn’t be weighing her down long.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/250013.html. You can comment here or there.

Nice Guys

Jan30

To Anonymous’ commissioned prompt, a continuation of this story (and on LJ).

Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ.

Calvin had seemed like such a nice guy.

Looking at him now, from the safety of Arundel’s arms, Timora wasn’t certain anymore. Sure, he’d taken an interest in her, when no-one else had, but here he was standing there next to Tiggs, staring at her, and claiming she was his. Arundel had said he was too late. Too late? That seemed like a strange thing to say.

“Is that right?” Calvin seemed to agree with her on that, at least. “Is the ickle bird-boy right about that one, Timmy? Is he too late?”

He was probably waiting to trap you. Looking at him standing next to Tiggs, it seemed more than a bit likely.

“I really liked you,” she told him, wincing as her voice came out like a slow-speed car crash, then wincing again as he – and Tiggs, and Porter – took an involuntary step backwards.

“I like you, Timmy, that’s why you’re going to be mine. Quietly. Right?”

“I told you, Calvin, you’re too late. Leave her alone.” Arunde’s voice was louder and more high-pitched, and his wings were spreading to fill the hall.

“You couldn’t keep her if you tried, junior. Hand her over now and no-one gets hurt.”

Keep. Mine. Timora shook her head. “I’m not yours, Calvin.” Her voice was getting more level, but it still sounded like tortured metal. “Stop it.”

Calvin was loosing his cool. “Well, this little shit can’t keep you. How’s he going to protect you?”

That was the second time in less than an hour someone had mentioned protecting her. “Porter, Arundel,” she whispered.

Porter was quick on the uptake and covered his ears. Arundel’s hands were busy holding her, but, on the other hand, he didn’t seem nearly as bothered by her voice as everyone else.

“You’re being silly, Timmy,” Calvin said, and then she screamed.

This time, she was paying attention. Even with his ears covered, Porter was wincing, walking backwards slowly away from her. Calvin and Tiggs, who were either slow, brave, or stupid, didn’t even try to cover their ears.

“Tim-” Calvin began, over the start of her scream, which only sounded like a three-car pileup running into a flock of eagles. She pushed a little more air into it,adding a semi truck full of upset canaries to the sound crash, and Calvin and Tiggs started running. She made it louder, as loud as she could go, and Porter tripped over his feet backing up, falling on his tail.

Arundel stood there, holding her, seeming hardly fazed at all.

She caught her breath and stopped, smiling at him, then a little more apologetically at Porter. “It really does work.”

“It does,” Porter agreed shakily. “Your speaking voice is still pretty…”

“Oh, yeah.” She clapped her hands over her mouth, abashed.

“It’s okay,” the tiger-man assured her. “Come on, buddy, let’s get her into the doctor’s. Do you think it’s your power, that’s why she doesn’t make you run?”

“I guess?” Having the person carrying you shrug was, Timora discovered, a rather strange sensation. Sort of like a very mellow roller-coaster. He looked down at her thoughtfully. “Everyone has a power,” he informed her. “Porter can make doors. Anywhere. It’s pretty awesome. Me? I’m fearless.”

She made a noise that she hoped was encouraging, and he grinned at her even more widely. “And you’re really pretty. Here, Doctor’s office. I think you’re fine, though. It’s not a bad Change.”

The nurse shooed them into an exam room, all three of them, although Porter stayed near the door, as if guarding their escape. Once in there, Arundel picked up as if he hadn’t stopped, not seeming to mind the one-sided conversation. “So yours seems to be… sort of…”

“Kelpie?” Porter offered. “Kelpie meets a banshee.”

Dr. Caitrin walking in stopped all speculation. “The tapes are very interesting. It’s going to take a while to get control of that, I think, Timora, so I’d ask you to be careful with your voice until then, all right? In the meantime…” She laid her hands on Timora’s ankles and began muttering under her breath. “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” Arundel asked. “I see hooves. And a tail, right?”

“Unsurprising, considering her ancestry. Yes. Yes. This is going to be an interesting Change, and I don’t believe it’s over yet. Are you Keeping her?”

“Ah. We need to talk about that.”

“Keeping?” Timora whispered. “Calvin…”

“Yeah,” Arundel muttered. “I’m not him.”

“Hrmph. Well, Timora, take these two pills. If you are in pain in the morning, come see me. In the meantime…” the doctor looked thoughtful. “I don’t normally suggest Keepings, but, if he thinks he can hack it, and you’re willing, Timora, considering your peculiar power, I’d consider Arundel.” She pressed the small blue pills into Timora’s hand and, on that very odd note, left, Porter following discretely behind her.

“Well.” The eagle-boy flared his wings uncomfortably. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything, I really don’t. But I was gonna offer…”

She looked up at him uncertainly. “If you’re the only person I can talk to without them running away…” she whispered.

“There is that, but that seems like a lousy reason to Keep someone. ‘Here, be Mine so you have someone to talk to.’” He shrugged again. “I’ve been watching you, and I like you.”

“You make it sound like stalking.” It was nice to be able to speak again without someone flinching. Then again, he’d started looking nervous.

“Well,” he squirmed, “kind of? I mean, everyone kind of stalks the new students around here. I guess I got stalked last year?”

Oh, he looked nervous because he was nervous, not because of her voice. Nervous of her? “Why are you all squirmy?” Lovely, she winced; that was exactly the way to get a guy to like her.

“Well, I don’t want you to think I’m a creep like Calvin. I mean, I guess I deserve it.”

“Did you set me up to get terrified and dragged around and what-have-you, Kepted?” she countered. Calvin had done that. Calvin who had seemed so nice. Arundel seemed nice, too.

“No? I mean, I just kind of tried to be where I thought he’d set you up, so I could rescue you. Well, Porter got there first…”

“Okay, that’s a little creepy,” she agreed. But… “Why?”

He folded his wings up uncertainly, hiding his head. “Because I like you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/249760.html. You can comment here or there.

Down in the Dark

Jan30

For clare_dragonfly‘s prompt

~*~

We knew it was coming before it came.

That wasn’t prescience; ask anyone and they’ll tell you we have no fae in our group. Just a bunch of kids.

But our city was one of the last to get hit. I guess nobody wanted to claim to be god of Detroit (To be honest, this is what told me they weren’t like, real gods, or American-Gods gods. Detroit has deities. Ask anyone). So by the time the false gods started showing up, we all knew what was going to happen, and we were at least somewhat prepared.

Anyone who had a place to go, who could afford it, who had a way to leave, they’d already left. That left us. We couldn’t leave, our stupid rental was right in the monster’s path, and even if we had cars or bus fare, we had no-where to go.

On the other hand, we knew the stinking underbelly of this city like nobody’s business. So we packed up everything we could afford, and, when the faker gods finally showed up in Detroit, we went down. Into the sewers. Down into the forgotten passageways. Into the place where there had almost been a subway. Into the tunnels.

And there we have remained ever… okay, I can’t keep up the melodrama anymore. Yeah, we live down here. Not in the sewer proper, no. I mean, shit still rolls downhill, and people up there, what few there are left, still use their toilets. No, we’re over here, in what used to be a maintenance tunnel. We come up and scrounge in the daylight, and then, when the monsters are out, we come back down here.

It’s not much of a life, I’ll admit, but it’s a life, and it’s getting better every year. And we survived, which is more than anyone said we would, even before the war.

Not bad for a bunch of drop-outs and burn-outs, eh?

~*~

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/249572.html. You can comment here or there.

“Are We Killing This One?” More of the Story of Addergoole Post-Apoc (@inventrix @cluudle)

Jan29

Warnings on this snippet: Implied abuse, implied rape, death threats, mind control.

In the series with:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ) in the Boom!/RP timeline. I believe this is part three of four four of five five of MANY.

She had never, Cya noted dispassionately, seen someone fight so hard against her mind control. Well, there had been Pelinore, but that had been physical Workings against the car. She’d learned, after him. Panlong, in the back seat, was barely moving, trembling with the effort.

She glanced over at Yoshi, to find him looking at their captive thoughtfully. “I think he thinks I want revenge,” he told Cya, rather flatly.

That stopped Pan dead. “Revenge? Yoshi, what? I didn’t…”

“Except when Tethys sent me to you,” Yoshi answered sharply. “Then you sure as hell did.”

Cya felt her claws digging into the steering wheel. Shit. If she didn’t kill this kid, she was going to have to Keep him to keep Yoshi’s father, her crew, or both, from killing him. “Yoshi,” she interrupted slowly, “are we killing this one?”

“What?” the boy yelped, trying very, VERY hard to move now. “Okay, okay, Keep me. I can handle being under the collar again, but come on, Yoshi. You never said no. I thought…” He slumped against the back seat.

Her son sighed. “No, Mom. I mean, I want to poke him with a stick a bit. Maybe kick him a few times. He’s kinda naive, but Tethys had him good and brainwashed. He doesn’t deserve to die for being stupid.”

“I thought…” Pan repeated woefully.

“Tethys,” Yoshi bit off tersely, “did not encourage complaint. Or bad moods. Or the concept of saying ‘no’ to anything. You were under her collar, Pan. You should have known what it was like.”

The boy couldn’t slump any lower, but he was trying. “You seemed so happy,” he muttered. “I was never that happy when I was under her collar.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/249280.html. You can comment here or there.

Digging in the History, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

Jan29

For The [personal profile] inventrix‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of Scrounging for History (LJ), Part 1 of… probably 7.5

Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“Let’s explore a little before we get the whole company,” Dor urged. “Maybe not a lot, but let’s at least tell them what we’re looking at.”

“Besides,” Amalie added, then paused, hummed for a moment, and said again, her voice a half-octave lower and more reasonable sounding, “besides, Karida, maybe there are food supplies here, if it’s a settlement?”

Their logic was sound, and the older members of the company wouldn’t accuse Dor of being flighty, a dreamer, the way they liked to with Karida. “All right,” she agreed. “I think we can look a little bit further before we go back. But if we run into anything dangerous…”

“We know the drill, Kara.” Dor rolled his eyes, and followed her around the corner of the building. “Do you think anyone’s still living there? Or anything?”

“We’ve never seen a city this intact. It’s hard to tell.” That was the safe answer. Inside, she was trying not to bounce up and down: a city! We found a real city! And there’s a real sky-trapper, two of them! This will be The Story! This will be My Story! Reluctantly, as Amalie hummed behind her, she amended Our Story.

The next building had the bottom parts of its walls intact, as well as a full foundation, and part of a floor. Karida spent a moment staring at it, at the sheered-off nature of the structure, tracing the line down. “There really were dragons,” she murmured, “or something huge. They knocked off,” she drew a line in the air with her hand.

Amalie hummed again. “The monster’s claw was cutting still…”

“…through the years and through the houses?” Dor offered.

“Doesn’t scan right. The monster’s claw had cut through time, through… cut through years, through the city’s long-shed tears.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Dor complained. Karida, who did not sing, kept quiet. Amalie would get the song right.

It was up to her to get the now of it proper, so they had a song to sing and a throat to sing it with. She stepped into the basement, carefully dancing down the stairs. In smaller settlements, they had found food – but they had also found monsters, demons, feral humans, and sometimes just corpses. Lots of people, she thought, hadn’t made it out in time. Centuries later, they were still entombed, rotting slowly away in their homes.

“It must have been horrible,” Amalie whispered. “When the monsters flew.”

“They still fly,” Dor countered. “They just aren’t as many.”

“I’ve never seen one.”

“With luck,” Karida interrupted, “you never will. They’re not nice things.” She was stretching her senses ahead of her, feeling out the space. There were three rooms down here, some old metal things, a small puddle of water and… “Dor,” she warned.

He nodded, and gestured Amalie back to look-out position, before drawing his two wakizashi and following Karida down the stairs. “Do you know?” he asked tersely.

“Not yet.” Her senses told her life, and general size, but that was it. Something the size of a human could be a bear, or a monster, or a person. She stepped into the dark, holding her staff in front of her.

Continued in: Delving in History (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/248884.html. You can comment here or there.

Tea With /Her/, further continued, a story of Tir na Cali for the Giraffe Call (@dahob)

Jan29

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of:
Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation 2) (LJ)

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

I really wanted to send him back.

I was in no mood to play. I had been mourning my mother for a week, for three years before that bracing for her death, and I was exhausted and staring at the Barony that was now mine, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.

“Go home,” I told him, not really meaning it.

He quailed, swallowed, and said, in a voice that squeaked with nerves, “Forgive me, Baroness Treanna, but Her Ladyship told me to inform you that if I was to returned, it would be by your hand, or she would consider me a runaway.” He gulped. “I really don’t want that, ma’am.”

I looked him over. His accent was East-coast, southern from the sounds of it. He had freckles and a fading tan; he’d been kept indoors for a while, maybe a few months, but he had to be fairly new to California. I admit, I was both distracted and intrigued.

I unhooked his leash from the doorknob. “What’s your name?”

“Ja – I mean, whatever you wish it to be.” He was clearly terrified, and trying to stick to a script. Not broken, not really. He didn’t know how he was supposed to act, just what he’d been told to say.

“I’ll think on it. For now, I’ll call you boy.” I wanted to tweak him, to see if he still had any pride. To see how far I could push him. Petty, but I wasn’t in a good mood.

He swallowed, glaring at me for a split second before he looked back down at the ground. “Yes, mistress. Whatever you want.”

“Come on, then, boy. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying, and you can call the Countess’s secretary and schedule an appointment for me.”

He swallowed, even as he followed me – it was that or drag his heels and fight the leash; his hands were cuffed behind his back. “Call? Mistress?”

I rolled my eyes. He was certainly no Michael, rough, raw, and untrained.

Certainly no… I sat down, hard, tugging on his leash and pulling him down on top of my in the process. That bitch. She had done this on purpose. To show me what Michael must have thought.

“Mistress?” he squeaked uncomfortably. He was going to take a lot of training. A lot of attention. I smiled slowly. Just like the Ice Queen to teach me a lesson and give me a pleasant distraction from my grief in one package.

“I’ll teach you,” I told him.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/248765.html. You can comment here or there.

Re-blessing the Church

Jan28

For flofx“‘s prompt, with information from this site.

Very likely in the “Fairy Town” setting of many of today’s stories.

Possibly proof that I should stop writing before 11:30

🐑

They were building a new church, which caused quite a bit of consternation in the City.

Not for the faith, which was as welcome as any other. Not for the construction, not in itself. Buildings were sometimes built, even in the legacy parts of town.

The problem was, they were doing it, as the saying goes, right, and thus they were doing it in such a way as to worry just about everyone.

They had torn down the existing building, or what was left of it, and in tearing down the lawyer’s office (they never lasted long, in the City), they had found that a church had once stood there, a church and a churchyard. And they had then found, in excavating, the cornerstones of the church in the foundation of the lawyer’s office, and, in digging further, two things they hadn’t wanted to find: the skeleton of a lamb, under what had once been the front step of the church, and a tome describing the blessing of the land.

There had been plans to turn the land into a museum, into a small shopping center, into a library. But the land had been blessed as long as there are feet walking on this ground, and there were still feet, so the land must remain holy.

The church-yard, the cemetery, had been moved when the church had burnt down, the skeletal remains and their stones heading down to Sacred Heart several blocks down. The human remains had been moved, but the kirkevarer, the church-warning, had not. A sensitive was hired to come find it and awaken it, while stone-masons and architects built the church.

“It must be holy,” they said, one person to the next, and so all the psychic energy of a city rich with power was pressed into the work of making the building holy, making it worthy of the blessed land, making up for the decades of lawyers and hair dressers. “It must be holy” and every person who had ever called themselves Christian in the city came to the first Sunday service, dressed in their best and focused on the purest thoughts they knew.

“It must be holy,” and the city, the whole city, murmured prayers over the building, over the new stone where the old kirkevarer was re-buried. And the corpse-lamb, the warning spirit, glowed over the whole block, shining brightly with their blessings.

🐑

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/248486.html. You can comment here or there.

Kept du Jour, a story of Boom!Post-Apoc for @Inventrix & @cluudle

Jan28

After
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ) and
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ). in the Boom!/RP timeline. I believe this is part three of four four of five.

In a crew with my Keeper this year… Cya’s smile didn’t falter. “I don’t mind at all. Hop in, Pan. I’m Cynara du’Red Doomsday, Yoshi’s mother.”

The boy – if he wasn’t a relative of Leofric’s, she’d eat her hat – looked a little startled, but he got into the back seat of the car, letting Yoshi load his luggage. Double mistake, but then again, most kids hadn’t been raised by Boom.

“Doomsday?” he asked, as she got back into the driver’s seat, Yoshi riding shotgun. “Yoshi, man, you didn’t tell me your mom was in Boom.”

“No-one asked.” Her son still had that dead tone that she remembered far too well from other Kept, other years. She wasn’t entirely certain this Pan would survive the drive home.

Well, her crew being what it was, she was very good at hiding bodies.

Once they were on the long, straight stretch of highway headed home, she muttered a quick Working under cover of a well-timed coughing fit from Yoshi. The boy in her back seat wasn’t going anywhere now. “Talk to me,” she murmured to her son, gentling it just enough to not be a command.

Yoshi squirmed. “It… I know what everyone was talking around?” He offered uncomfortably. “And some of the stuff your Kept du jour have… well, like the one guy, with the nightmares?”

Cya tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Njörðr’s time at Addergoole had been… well, nightmare-inducing. “I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you,” she said softly, instead of all the things she wanted to say.

“Well,” he squirmed uncomfortably. “I knew about Keeping. I mean, with your Kept du jour… Somehow Tethys caught me anyway.” He held up both hands, presumably to keep Cya from Finding the bitch right now and ripping out her guts. “Mom… She wasn’t. I mean. I’ve heard stories. She wasn’t like, like Jordy’s Keeper. I mean, no scars. And she already had her two.”

Slowly, Cya unpeeled one hand from the wheel and offered it to her son. “There’s more than one way to be a horrendous Keeper, hon. Ask your Uncle Leo, sometime, maybe.”

Panlong, in the back seat, had latched on to one part of their conversation. “Kept du jour?”

“Oh, yeah,” Yoshi grinned, with feigned casualness. “Every year, Mom picks up a new Addergoole grad and Keeps them for a year. Last year was a bunny.”

“New…” Pan moved for the car door, only to realize that he couldn’t. He paled slowly. “I’m fucked, aren’t I?”

“Look at it this way,” Yoshi said, with cheerful malice that suggested he was quoting something, “it’s only for a year.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/248193.html. You can comment here or there.