Tag Archive | character: rin

Icon Flash: Bed-Warmer (Rin & Girey)

Oct10

New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Today’s icon:

Girey

Icon & Art by Djinni

Reiassan has a Landing Page (LJ Link).

Rin was whistling as they left Ossulund, clean, well-fed, and clothed in things that fit, or at least mostly fit. She’d forgotten how fun it was to spend time with her friends, how relaxing it was to be on common ground with the people she was talking to.

Girey was, she noticed, in a better mood, too, although in his case, she had a feeling it had more to do with leaving Ossulund than being there. The crowds of Callanthe had made him tense enough that he’d barely enjoyed the luxuries of civilization he’d been missing so much, although he’d probably be back to missing them soon enough.

She turned to look at him in his custom-tailored Callanthe qitari, sitting comfortably, finally, in the wider saddle. The left-buttoning on the tunic had been her own petty joke, since all he seemed to do was whine, and whining counted as unskilled labor. But talking with Noni during their stay in Ossulund had gotten her thinking.

“He’s pretty enough,” her old friend had agreed, “especially when you clean him up. Dress him up in silks and he’d make you a fine bed-warmer, Rinny. No shame and no harm in that – until you want to get married. Then what are you going to do with your grumpy Bitrani pet prisoner?”

“Plenty of people have both a bed-warmer and a spouse,” she’d argued. She’d already seen the point, but she let Noni say it; she needed to hear it.

“Their bed-warmers aren’t foreign nobility. Yours is.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/141598.html. You can comment here or there.

Rin & Girey…. adrift

Sep29

Guys, I don’t know what to write next in Rin/Girey. I know that there should be more story on their trip, but I’m just not sure WHAT.

Mew.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/137211.html. You can comment here or there.

Furlough, (Rin and) Girey

Sep28

A short drabble of Girey, in Osslund, after:
In Context (available in Tales for the Sugar Cat), Unexpected Hello (LJ, and Not. Jealous. (LJ)

Furlough

“Relax.”

It was easy for Karak to say; he was on his third cup of the bitter, greenish drink that the Callanthe drank as a cocktail. Girey had swallowed one small glass by not breathing, but had declined a second, his tongue still burning from the first.

“No, I mean it.” Karak set his glass down, and shook his head warningly. “You’re not in battle anymore, soldier. Let it go.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Girey answered stiffly. Where had Rin and Noni gotten to? There had been a lot of laughing and whispering, and they’d headed upstairs, leaving him shackled to the chair with this one-legged veteran for company.

“You’re still on duty. Rin’s been hauling you across the country for how long, and you’ve still got your back stiff, you’re still acting like you’re on patrol. Relax. You’ve been mustered out.”

“I was captured,” he countered.

“And, not to be rude, but your country was defeated. You can’t lead a noble resistance from the back of your captor’s goat, and, besides, you’re not going to stab her in the back.”

“You seem awfully sure about that.” Never mind that Girey was pretty sure he was right.

“I’m pretty sure about people, that’s all. If she continues to treat you right, you’ll continue to be loyal to her.”

“That’s an exaggeration.” He was not “loyal” to the enemy!

“All right, all right. Another drink?”

“No.” Training kicked in, covering over his sullenness. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough.” And so had the other man, but that wasn’t his place to say.

“Hardly. I could build a table with you, you’re so stiff. So you’re not loyal to her, but you’re not going to stab her. You can’t really escape. So relax. It may not be the rest time you were hoping for, but it’s a rest. You don’t have anything you have to do here.”

He studied his empty glass thoughtfully. “So,” he said, carefully, in Callanthe, “you’re suggesting I look at being taken prisoner as… a furlough?”

The veteran laughed. “You were a commissioned officer, all right. Nobility? Enlisted men know to take every break you get. Never know when another one might come.”

“You might have a point.” Girey leaned back in his seat, pondering Karak’s words. If the soldier had noticed, Rin had; if she thought he was still preparing for battle, she’d never let down her guard around him. Maybe it was time to relax.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/136562.html. You can comment here or there.

Rin & Girey Story: Baths – When Is This?

Sep20

So, I thought this story was after “Pause in the Journey,” but the weather doesn’t fit…

Girey woke slowly to the warm sun streaming in, and the familiar sound of water splashing. He reached for the tent flap to close it, eyes still closed, and hit wood instead of canvas.

Wood. He opened his eyes, blinking, as the long evening past came back to him. It had been raining buckets, cold nasty stuff that didn’t seem to want to let up long enough for them to pitch a tent, and so they’d kept riding long past sunset, torches lighting their way, until they’d found this way-station. His captor seemed to have an allergy to them, using the sturdy buildings only when no other opportunity presented itself, but this had counted as an emergency, or she’d been too damp to care about her normal objections.

She hadn’t shared her logic with him – she never did – so Girey was left to simply be happy for the soft bed, the roof, and the pleasant fire. And the splashing water, which made less sense now that he knew they were in a waystation.

Splashing…? And the scent, trailing under drying-goat-odor, of perfume. Girey sat up, looking around. A bath? There was a bath?

He had his feet on the floor before his arm was jerked short, his left arm chained to the box-bed. He swore quietly in his own language; did she ever, ever forget?

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Rin’s voice, treacherously cheerful, wafted over the screen separating the two halves of the small cabin.

“You chained me to the bed,” he informed her, although he was sure she hadn’t forgotten.

“I did,” she agreed.

“Let me go.” That was, of course, futile. He’d spent nearly every moment of his captivity so far chained to something. As if he had anywhere to go.

“You’ll have to wait until I’m done with my bath. Just give me a few more moments, and you’ll have your turn.”

His turn. A real bath, from the sounds of it, with soap and warm water. A chance to be clean, to wash the stink of goats off his skin, if only for a little while. He lay back down, trying not to sound too impatient. “I’ll wait.”

“Good.” She made splashing noises for a few more minutes, while he tried not to think about the hot water, the soap, his captor, naked, in the tub just a couple body-lengths from him. He squirmed uncomfortably, his chain jangling. “Almost,” she called, and he could hear her stand up, the water sluicing off her body.

Girey caught his breath, and reminded himself that she was the enemy, his captor, and generally a miserable woman to be around, not the sort of woman that hung around Bitrani war camps.

Of course, a treacherous part of his mind whispered, if he had captured her and not the other way around…

He yanked hard on the chain, letting the shackle dig into his wrist, and thought about sword-drills. Sword-drills, and long marches through swamps, and not….

“All right.” She dropped a fluffy scrap of cloth atop him. “Stand up, it’s your turn.”

He stood, blinking to clear his eyes. She was in her undertunic and trousers, hardly revealing clothing, her hair falling loose and damp around her shoulders. And she was smiling. Girey held out his wrists to her, surprised as she unlocked his wrists altogether.

“No peeking,” he teased nervously, as she ushered him behind the screen.

“You have nothing to worry about there,” she assured him.

“Good.” He tried not to think too hard about why that itself would concern him.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/132081.html. You can comment here or there.

Yet more kissing!

Aug13

[personal profile] lilfluff requested Jas-who-will-be-a-boy/Rin or Girey in the kissing meme.

Notes: “Tuathan” is what the Cali royalty call themselves. Girey’s language is not actually Italian, but it’s within close enough that Jas could pick out basic words.

Not canon

Jas knew better.

There were rooms in the sub-sub-sub-basement sections of the Agency where you just didn’t go, and there were rooms where, when you had to clean something, you cleaned very carefully only where you were told to, and didn’t cross the blue lines.

You never crossed the blue lines.

This time, well, the blue line had been under something, and s/he’d moved it (Jas was still coming to terms with pronouns. Everyone here, even the cats who knew better, treated him like a boy. But there was still the little voice in the back of his/her head saying that wasn’t quite right. Yet. Yet?). Jas had moved the box, because it needed to be cleaned.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t tripped, but the next thing he knew, he was falling through a bright blue doorway…

…and landing in the middle of a campfire. He yelped, and stumbled backwards…

…into the arms of the most beautiful non-Tuathan woman he had ever seen. Heart pounding, ass mildly scorched, and still smelling slightly of cleaning products, Jas did the only thing that came to mind.

He kissed her.

He knew the logistics, of course. He’d kissed other slaves, in the barracks, boys and girls, and Lords had kissed her, once or twice, before she shifted to boy’s livery. He knew what he was doing, and, it seemed, so did the woman.

It lasted about three heartbeats before the man, chains jangling, yanked him away. “You came through there?” he asked, in heavily-accented Italian. Jas, now even more disoriented, nodded. The doorway was about four feet up in the air, shining bright blue.

“Go home,” the man grunted, and threw Jas through the doorway.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/109247.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days Second Semester: 10, Coming Soon: Reiassan

Aug5

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written.”

Reiassan/Rin & Girey – landing page here (and on LJ).

Pan over a rocky landscape, following a river that wends its way south, past a white-walled cliff city, past farms cut into the mountains. As we begin, the travel up the road, running Northwards, looks like a long, ragged snake.

Voiceover: The two nations on the continent of Reiassan have been at war as long as either of them can remember.

As we grow closer, the snake reveals itself as an army, slowly marching, tired, wounded, but proud. The almost-universally dark-haired and short figures wear bright colours, and we can hear, over the crescendos of the music, the thudding rhythm of a cheerful marching song. Their armor is Romanesque in feel, and their mounts, those that have them (Officers, better-dressed, no less tired, no less wounded) ride tall, husky goats.

Finally, after generations, one nation has emerged victorious.

We see, among the short, brightly-dressed soldiers, others, dressed in bland browns and tans, wearing chains, some male, some female, mostly taller, fairer people. The camera is still moving Northwards, picking out faces on the long train of people.

The war is over.

Cut to generals signing treaties in a tent, one dark-haired, one blonde, both tired-looking.

Pan out from the tent to the mess of the battlefield. Scavengers and medics tend to the wounded and bury the dead. Near the tent, a man in rich-looking robes is forced to his knees on a platform.

The Callanthe had defeated the Bitrani. They have killed their King.

We see the axe begin to fall, and the camera cuts away, again. A dark-haired woman in a bright green tunic looks down at a scruffy blonde soldier in the remains of expensive, if dull-colored, clothing and armor. His hands and ankles are shackled.

Now they must learn to live with them.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/99133.html. You can comment here or there.