Tag Archive | character: kailani

Educational disagreements

Mar9

This ficlet comes after: No Apple for Teacher, which followed Useful.
Both of those fics are after Retirement and Retirement 2: 50 years after the original series, Kai finds herself in possession of Rozen while she considers leaving Addergoole East.

“You’re not teaching them enough!” Rozen’s voice was a roar. He knew he was getting way too loud, and some part of him – the part that cared about the Bond – felt a little guilty about that.

The rest of him was angry enough to override that part.

“I’m teaching them plenty! When have you been a teacher?” Kai glared up at him, her hair a halo of red. Here, alone, she looked like herself. He tried not to let that distract him.

“More times than you give me credit for! I was even a Mentor a couple times!” Now his pride was pricked. “Look, you want me to teach them combat. You have to let me teach them combat.“

“I’m letting you teach them combat.” She was implacable. She wasn’t even shouting anymore. Rozen didn’t know what to think about that. It was starting to take the wind out of his sails, though. “I just don’t want you to teach them to be assassins.”

“Look-”

“I’m looking. You don’t need to keep saying that.”

Finally, he’d gotten her irritated. He swallowed the guilt-misery and nodded acknowledgement. “I’m not teaching them to be assassins-”

“No, you’re not.”

“Could I finish, please? I’m not teaching them to be assassins,” this time he hurried on before she could interrupt him again. “Just to take care of themselves. They’re kids, Kai, and the world is awful.”

He dropped to his knees. “Please?”

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Love Meme: Kai and Rozen, Autumn and Ink

Feb15

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here are [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s second and [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s first prompts. Kailani and Rozen are from Addergoole; Autumn from Stranded World.

Kai and Rozen
End of Year Five

Some days it felt like she hardly had time to think, like Conrad was too busy to even look at her, like nobody in the suite but her would look at Tolly’s child, because the boy was Tolly’s, even though he was hers.

Kai had the twins in a stroller and was walking down the halls. It was a week before graduation; she doubted anyone was going to try to attack her now. Besides, she still had Conrad collared, even if he was acting more like it was a collar now and less like a trophy.

She noticed someone sneaking up on her anyway. One of the Thorne Girls might’ve done something clever, like going around in circles until they were behind their stalker.

Kai wasn’t that sort of clever. She turned around so that the stroller was behind her.

“Rozen.” She found she was pleased but not too startled, and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Nobody ever does.” He smirked, proud of himself. “You’re looking good, Red. Motherhood suits you.”

“Yeah?” There was nobody around to yell at her for blushing, which was good, because she hadn’t figured out a Working to get around that yet. “Thank you.”

“I mean, it would suit you more if those were my brats, but hey. Take what you can get, hey?”

Kai rolled her eyes at him, but she was still smiling. “They’re not brats. And I think they’re happier with their mother having some free will.”

“Yeah, well.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath tickling her. “Some day you might feel differently.”

What she felt had nothing to do with it. She didn’t think she needed to say that, though. “Some day.”

He was leaving soon, after all, and it was a big world. She’d probably never see him again.

Autumn and Ink

Autumn would probably always remember the first time she’d put ink to her skin.

Winter was struggling to teach her, their mother was busy with Spring and Summer, and their father had been dead for two years. Autumn’s skills weren’t falling into line with Winter’s, with their mother’s, or even with what they could remember of their father, so she had gone on her own to a family friend and asked him to teach her.

Pastor Jim had taken a long look at the wide-eyed child and sighed. “All right. But we keep this between us and your mother, all right? We don’t need to tell the parishioners.”

“Church magic is church magic and Strand magic is Strand Magic.” Even then, Autumn understood that.

“Good. Now.” He’d called her mother, been very very polite and respectful – everyone was polite and respectful when it came to Autumn’s mother, but he was even more so. When he’d hung up the phone, he’d headed to the daycare section behind the church and come back with some washable Crayola markers. “Let’s see, shall we, if what works for me works for you.”

He drew a circle on the back of Autumn’s wrist, and suddenly, she understood so much more.

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Addergoole: the Original Series – Horse-trading

Aug20

Kai frowned at the charts in front of her: genealogies, descriptions, birth dates and years. You could follow patterns easily enough down any given genealogy, but that wasn’t what was making her frown.

Read on: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/archives/1301

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Changes and Adjustments

Jan21

This comes after Retirement and Retirement 2, some 50 years after the Addergoole stories, and features two characters from those stories. It is written to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s Prompt.

The wagon was small, and sometimes it felt more like a cage than a living space, a cage, and some awful test, the sort other people might have stressed about back in school.

Rozen had driven a wagon before, but he’d never gotten good at it; he had the Words to understand horses, but he’d never really practiced them. Kailani had taken a thoughtful look at him and said “here. You drive the first stretch. We’re taking this highway south, and we’re staying on the highway unless there’s an issue.”

“What if I don’t want to?” he’d grumbled, instead of “what if I don’t know how.”

She’d smiled placidly at him. “We all do things we don’t want to.”

He knew how to bully people, but he had no idea how to be Kept. Rozen had clucked to the horses and got them aimed with more trouble than he’d thought possible and, when they proved recalcitrant, muttered a Panida Working that spurred them on.

He felt like he was being spurred himself. Her orders were like thistles rubbing against his skin, goading him on, pushing him. Her calm, unflappable smile was weird and it made him twitchy. Kailani wasn’t calm. She wasn’t placid.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, finally, an hour out of the town she’d been living in. “You don’t look like you anymore.”

She ran her fingers through her hair – red again, that was a relief, not the white it had been when he’d been deposited on her doorstep – and hrrm’d. “I feel like me.” She smiled, a little mischief there he didn’t remember either. “Are you certain it’s me and not you?”

Rozen twitched. “I haven’t changed.”

“I find that interesting, actually. It’s been decades. Our grandchildren are grown adults and the world – the world has changed considerably. And yet, if I ran into you in the hallways of Addergoole, instead of the Rozen you were then, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

He shrugged. He knew his smile was lazy and a bit sharp. “You’d be surprised. You were always surprised when we ran into each other.”

“Frightened, Rozen. The word is frightened.” He stole a glance at her, but she was smiling. “You were quite scary. It was your job.”

“Haven’t changed,” he drawled. He didn’t know what it meant when she only smirked wider.

The wagon moved on, the world – such as it was now – moved under their wheels, and the woman he’d once wanted to Keep hummed cheerfully while she watched the scenery.

“The world’s changed,” he offered after a bit. “It ended, I guess.”

“The world we knew ended.” She looked sad for a moment. Rozen stomped on the surge of guilt he felt. He had not made that sadness. This was not his fault. “And you kept going.”
She made it sound like a complaint somehow. Rozen looked at her sidelong, trying to figure her out.

“You’re still here, too.” And young again. Being Kept by Ancient Kailani had been weird.

She smiled sadly. “If you ran into me in the halls of Addergole, as I am now, as you were then, what would you do, Rozen?”

The same thing, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t lie to her. He stared wordlessly at her instead.

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Useful

Sep20

Set ~50 years after Addergoole: the Original Series, after the “Retirement” stories.

To her credit, his owner hadn’t said “make yourself useful.”

To his frustration, when she’d said “I want to make use of you,” it hadn’t been anything like what he’d had in mind.

Rozen looked at the class – all girls, all in their teens – and then back at Kailani. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“You’re close enough to full strength now.” She had her analytical voice on. She was, however, also smiling. “I’m sure you can handle teaching self-defense.”

“Self-defense. Right.” He looked at the girls. They looked back at him, as uncertain as he felt. “All right. I’ve got this,” he told Kai. “I won’t hurt ’em. You can… go do whatever you do. Dean.”

She hesitated. He saw the moment where she questioned her decision to leave him alone with teenage girls. He wanted to be offended – but he didn’t want her to get into the habit of thinking he was harmless, either.

Rozen turned his back on his owner and studied the girls. “All right. We’re going to start with you showing me what you’ve got. Don’t hold back. I’m hard to hurt.”

Un-slump-me prompt call

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April A-Z Blogging Challenge: S is for Sky

May1

The Meme Master Post

S is for the shore, and the sky, and the storm

I was going to do another piece of Things Unspoken for this, but:

a) I just posted one, and I like to wait for feedback before posting the next.

b) I’m waiting for a city name and it seems weird.

c) I’ve written about Nereids and Octopi and am a bit tapped on oceanic things

d) Sea-and-sky will always be Kailani to me.

(I am writing this in Written Kitten Sky, and this is the pic as I begin)

So I’m going to talk about Addergoole and Kailani.

Kailani was, as far as I can recall, the first character I came up with for Addergoole. Her name was almost certainly the first – it means “sea and sky” in Hawaiian, a name picked to suit her perfectly.

In the world Addergoole is set in – the Faerie Apocalypse – the names fae fathers give their children have, or are supposed to have, great meaning and significance. Every father spends some time in meditation – some take this duty far more seriously than others – contemplating their child’s future. Even those who have not a bit of foresight will often gain some insight during this ritual, and those who take their duty seriously will use that insight in naming their child.

(Some don’t. Aelfgar, for instance, who names his children things like “Elf-gift” (Aelgifu); Shadrach, who named his first two children after himself: Chander, Chandra).

Kailani’s father knew what he was doing with her! Sea and Sky is a perfect name for this relatively stormy personality. She has a strong affinity for the water and the wind – both in terms of personality and in her magic. Her physical skills – dancing, fighting, riding – have a fluidity about them given to her by the water and the wind. And she will see calm at first, utterly laid-back, and then the storms will roll in and she will blow her top.

All of the main characters – and most of the background characters – in Addergoole have some story behind their name, but I’m the fondest of Kailani’s, even now.

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March Is Women’s History Month – day two: Kailani as a Tween

Mar16

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly, who asked for Kailani as a tween.

Kailani is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“His name is Gibbous Moon Over the Lake, but we call him Moonlake.”

The instructor was an earthy woman – brown hair, browned skin, and a smell like loam – a friend of Kailani’s mother who called herself Stormshadow.

That was unimportant. What was important was that she was holding the bridle of a horse. A horse.

“He’s a very calm boy, but watch his ears. They’ll tell you if he’s upset, or interested in something, or spooked.” Stormshadow patted Moonlake’s head. “And his tail – you can hear it flicking back and forth.”

“Like cats.” Kai put her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks heating up already. “I mean…” She released her hand, “with the ears and the tail, not the same language, I mean, obviously, one’s a small carnivore-predator and the other one’s a large herbivore-grazer. But they both move their ears for emotions, and their tails. And here?” She touched the horse’s shoulders gently.

“Very good. Yes, they don’t use the same body language as cats, but if you’ve taught yourself to read feline body language with any rate of success, you should be able to handle horses with little problem. Of course, you’ll be on his back, which is different from cats, I’m sure.”

Kailani giggled. “It’s a little different, yes. But I really get to ride him? He won’t mind?”

“He won’t mind. Moonlake is a nice boy, and he likes being able to spend time with people. Here’s one more trick. You can offer him treats, but you have to be careful to keep your thumbs out of the way. Like this.”

Stormshadow wasn’t watching Moonlake; she was watching the young girl with the frizzy hair who was clearly falling in love. “No charge,” she told Moonchild, Kailani’s mother. “In another year, this girl is going to be working at my stable nonstop just to be around the horses.”

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