Tag Archive | donor

Paying the Rent

Mar3

For [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt for more of the Baram-and-his-house-elves story.

Baram and his family appear in:
Monster (LJ)
Memories (LJ)
One Sharp Mother (LJ)
The Life you Make (LJ)
Safe (LJ) and
Cost of Living (LJ)

Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ

“We’re taking a road trip,” Jaelie told her nervous Kept. “Pack enough clothes for a three-day stay, and then shower and clean yourself up. Trim anything that needs trimming, and make sure you’re well-scrubbed.”

He blanched, and nodded. She grabbed his arm, and clarified, “Clean, that’s all, don’t scrub yourself raw, Wish. I just want you to smell nice.”

“Yes, Mistress.” He didn’t look any less nervous, either heading into the shower or when he returned, half an hour later, so clean he nearly sparkled. It made Jaelie smile in exasperation at him.

“I know you’re not a virgin,” she teased him.

He flushed in return. “Of course not. But there’s a difference between… ah… my life before and serving you, and there’s a much wider difference between that and being hired out.”

She patted his shoulder. “Your job isn’t to please them, it’s just to get them pregnant. We – well, I – get paid by the baby, not by the orgasm.”

That only made him flush deeper. “And what if I don’t? I haven’t had children in… well, that I know about, several centuries.”

“Then we’ll come up with something else. Or test-tube it. Magic can solve almost anything, don’tchaknow?”

He nodded, relaxing a little, and picked up his bag. “Yes, Mistress. This – this woman, she directed the school you all attended?”

“And coordinated our births and, in a matter of speaking, the births of all of our children. Yes. She seems thrilled to have your blood to add to the mix.”

“And this is the school that taught you how to give orders to your Kept?”

“Yes, it is,” she confirmed.

“It seems like an interesting place, to have produced three women as tough and as sharp as you and your, ah, sister-wives?”

She barked out a laugh. “Sister-wives, that’s a new one!

“I hope you don’t mind?”

“No, but you might not want to try that on the others.” She led him out to her car and tossed their bags in the trunk. “Addergoole is… yes, a very interesting place. A crucible of sorts.”

“And the children that this Regine wants me to father, they would be attending this school? And raised by… well, by their mothers, I would assume?”

“If one of the mothers doesn’t want the kid – that happens sometimes – then I might ask for custody. We could handle another kid around the place, and mine are old enough to not need constant attention anymore.”

He studied her in surprise as they got in the car. “You’d raise my child?”

“You’re mine, aren’t you? That means taking care of you where you come from too, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, in a manner of speaking…” He shook his head. “So I’m to father children for this school. For her breeding program.”

“You sound unhappy about that.” She started the car anyway, and headed out onto the highway. The roads were still mostly clear; after Wish’s people’s first attack had been so clearly rebuffed, many of the monsters had chosen to go elsewhere.

“It’s an interesting thought, to be used as a stud horse, as an aeosthena. I suppose it hammers home how far down I’ve fallen.”

“Careful with that,” she warned him. “Your sense of superiority is going to get you in trouble.”

“Apologies, Mistress.” He shoulders slumped, and he slouched in his seat, looking disconsolate. Jaelie let him sulk for a while, while she drove, and thought about feeding more children into Regine’s grinder.

After a long while, she reached over and set a hand on Wish’s thigh. “We raise our kids good,” she told him, “tough. They won’t be in the position we were, Aly and Viatrix and I, when we went there.”

“And the children I father?” he asked quietly. “They Belong to their mother, of course. But I’ve never fathered a child before, without the mother Belonging to me.”

“Aaah.” She patted his thigh. It didn’t seem kind or useful to point out that that was what he got for trying to kill her family, so she didn’t. “I’m sure you’ll father some very tough children, Wish.”

“Thank you.” He smiled uncomfortably back at her, and then tensed unhappily as they reached the wards around Addergoole. “What the…”

She braced herself. She’d been through this before. “Sit, sit. Don’t move. Close your eyes, it helps.”

He keened deep in the back of his throat, struggling against the order as she drove them, white-knuckled, through the thick defensive wards. She’d never seen it hit anyone this hard, and wondered if it was his returned-gods-ness, his purebloodedness, or his age. “It’s okay,” she croaked. “Wish, it’s okay, I’ve got you. Almost, almost… there.” She relaxed, and felt him do so as well, as they passed the wards. “You can move now.”

“That…” he panted. “That was horrible.”

“And we’re expected. It’s pretty effective, I’ve been told, at keeping out intruders.”

“I can imagine!” He shook his head. “Well, at the very least the school is well-protected.”

“Yeah.” She fell quiet again as she drove the last half a mile. “Wish… can you do this without, without your partners knowing that it’s under duress?”

That got her a crooked, dry smile. “Are you telling me that nobody has ever ordered you to act like you’re happy?”

She winced. “Nobody’s ever whored me out,” she countered, getting a matching wince from him.

“All things considered, I’d rather this than being sold, and rather either than being dead.” He patted her thigh gently. “Mistress, this is not horrible. I’m worried, yes, but, ah, much as I hate to admit it, I’m mostly worried that I’ll let you down somehow.” He winced again, harder this time. “And there you see how far I’ve fallen.”

It didn’t seem fair to scold him for that, so she didn’t. She smiled, instead, and squeezed his hand. “You’re going to to do just fine, Wish. I know you are.” She looked over the Village, trying not to tense up at old memories. “I have faith in you.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/710878.html (Paying, Forward)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/290652.html. You can comment here or there.

Out of their minds, a story of Bug Invasion for the (January) Giraffe Call

Mar1

For fflox‘s commissioned continuation of
All in Your Head (LJ), after
From the moment they breathed our air (Lj) after: Staying in the City (LJ) and Spooks vs. Bugs (DW)

“You’re not real. You’re in my imagination.”

“I don’t believe in you.”

“I can live my life without you just fine.”

“Aah-choooo!”

“I’ve never seen this many fair folk. I’ve never seen anything like this many so close to a city.”

“Or ghosts. It’s like everyone who ever died here is back…”

Paula was, generally, a well-grounded, sensible, rational young lady, or so her bosses had said, so her teachers had said, so her friends had believed. She had her feet on the ground and she didn’t, as a general rule, believe in things she couldn’t see.

She was also, and had been for several months now, infested with an alien symbiote that read her mind and sometimes controlled her body.

The bugs had invaded dozens of planets, some successfully, some failures, but none, she was getting the impression, as big a failure as Earth was becoming for them. Their system of bonding with native hosts had, she had been told, served them well even on planets where they couldn’t manage a full-scale invasion. They could sit undetected that way, breed that way, and conquer large parts of the planet from “on the ground.”

They had, she was pretty certain, never faced this sort of resistance, a two-front rebellion from the un-infected outside their walls and from their hosts, the hosts they needed to survive the pollution, in their very homes and bodies.

And Paula, the sensible one, the one who didn’t believe in, say, faeries and was a fan of pharmaceuticals to help the unstable, found herself slipping from host to host, suggesting that they look at the fae, asking how they dealt with the voices in their head, reminding them to forget their allergy meds.

She was too practical and too calm for any of this to really work for her, sadly; she couldn’t really see the fair folk or ghosts that well, and she had never heard another voice in her head before, except her conscience and the echoes of her mother.

But she could help the others. She could sit down with a new friend and talk her through a panic attack, talk her through a dark moment until the friend could look up and say “this isn’t real. That’s not me saying that,” and have control of her head again. She’d done that before, for college friends, bad acid trips or just bad brain chemistry, more than a few times.

She knew it was working the day that three of her friends, all at once, sat down and said “You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real.”

And it was, finally, too much for the symbiotes, as all three fled their hosts and lay choking, dying on the ground like so many ant-fish looking things.

“You’re not real,” another friend said, and a fifth said “the ghosts are really thick here. Do you think bugs have ghosts?”

And that was it. AS their non-symbiote family watched helplessly from their controlled-environment ship, well over half the hosted bugs fled their clearly-insane human hosts, as unable to handle the strange brain chemistry as they were the atmosphere.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/288957.html. You can comment here or there.

Planting Future, a continuation of Tir na Cali for the Feb. Giraffe Call.

Mar1

For stryck‘s commissioned continuation of Second Pressing.

Tir Na Cali has a landing page here.

Keri wanted to complain.

Keri liked complaining in general; if Onyx had been feeling less generous, she would be irritated that the girl had been bought with them. But Keri had skill, as she and Taris did, and that was what their new master would need.

He, their new Lord, had, with some advice from Taris, picked the best of the field slaves from their old master’s former staff, the best and those that, while not wonderful, were motivated enough to be trained. He had taken Keri and Onyx shopping with him for equipment, and set all three of them to buying furnishings.

The vineyard he had purchased had been abandoned for almost twenty years, bad dirt and bad business sense driving it bankrupt and bad blood leaving it empty. There was a lot of work to be done to make it tenable again, and for the first couple weeks, that work was all on the shoulders of the three of them and their Lord.

So Keri, of course, wanted to complain. She was a soft thing, not used to hard work, and their former master had spoiled her, right up to when he’d sold them.

Taris and Onyx, on the other hand, were blissful. They had, first and foremost, a second chance to prove themselves, and, secondly, a very light hand on their reins to allow them to do so. The plants their Lord was seeding were fascinating, and his ability to change them once planted opened up a whole world of opportunities to experiment that they’d never before even imagined. It was, in Onyx’s mind, the best world she could have dreamed of, and Taris seemed to agree.

When it became clear that Kari was not of the same mind, when she seemed determined to keep complaining, the two of them took her aside, in the barracks they’d cleaned out and refurbished first as their temporary home.

“Look.” Onyx did the talking. “It’s hard work. It’s a lot of hard work.”

“I thought you said we wouldn’t get sold to be manual laborers,” she cut in.

“No, Taris said that’s what happened if we weren’t lucky. Field work.” She didn’t talk about the other options.

“But you two act like you just won the lotto, and you’re grubbing out in the vines like the lowest field hand. I don’t get it.” She looked down at her chipped and cracked nails. “Why is this better?”

“Because,” Taris cut in, “Lord Karl listens to our advice, and heeds it. Because he’s trying something new, and knows it – if he fails, it will be because it was an experiment. Less taint,” he clarified. “And if he succeeds…”

“If he succeeds, it will color us, too,” Onyx took back over. “These berries;” she picked up a bright-pink grape-thing, “these could make his fortune. And he will remember us when it comes time for rewards.”

Keri chewed on a nail. “So all this digging in the rocks…”

“It’s planting our future along with his,” Onyx agreed. “That’s a comfortable old age we’re fertilizing there, for the Lord and for us, too.”

“Planting our future,” the girl repeated. “I like that.”

Next: Success (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/288380.html. You can comment here or there.

About the Want

Feb28

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of


Part 6 of 7.5
“You have quite a bit of interesting stuff here,” I countered. “I mean… stuff I’ve never seen before. Languages I’ve never seen before.”

“That is because, my dear, you have never traveled, have you?”

“I went to Michigan on vacation once,” I offered defensively, “and I’ve seen Niagara Falls from the Canadian side.”

“That doesn’t count,” Jordan poo-pooed. “That’s a day trip.”

“You have, I think, seen a great deal where you are. But you long to see wilder things, things that are not so… what is the word?”

“Mundane,” I answered, suddenly tired of it all. “Dirty. Routine.”

Jordan was looking at me strangely. “We have a house. We live with four other adults, two cats, three rats, and a toddler. Three of the adults are in a love triangle, one of them is a performance artist, one is insane, and three of them change gender presentation depending on the day. You work in a museum. Last weekend, we went urban spelunking in the old mental ward. What is routine about your life?”

“We never go anywhere!” I was aware, on some level, that I was having this argument, this argument I’d carefully been not having for years, in front of a complete stranger. But it had been a damn long day, and the argument had been a damn long time in coming.

“We have responsibilities!” Jordan shouted back at me. “We have things we have to do, JJ, and we can’t just be like Ashton and hare off whenever we want to!”

“Why not? Ashton does fine!”

“Because Ashton doesn’t get anything done that needs to get done! Ash isn’t here looking for an AC, Ash wasn’t getting the groceries last week, Ash wasn’t fixing the porch. Face it, JJ, it’s you and me when it comes to being grown-ups, and if you bail on me I’m never going to forgive you!”

“Toni buys groceries,” I offered weakly.

“Toni has a child to feed. You know, it’s not that I don’t want to travel, J.J. I’d love to see Paris. I’ve been saving up for years. But someone has to clean the shit stains out of the toilet. Someone has to be an adult. And I wish for once it was someone other than me…. ma and you.” The last bit was gentle, and a little bit guilty-sounding. I didn’t complain. I tried to be a grown-up, but Jordan seemed to have been born knowing how to do it.

“Mr. Ting knows what you need,” the small man said quietly. “Now, the question becomes… will you take what you need from Mr. Ting’s store? And can I provide it?”

“And can we afford it?” Jordan added bitterly. “Do you like us enough to give us a reasonable price?”

“Aaah.” He took in air in a long sigh. “That is not how my pricing works, dears. Mr. Ting is not about like and dislike. Mr. Ting is not about profit.” He picked up one of the #^^#(275)^, the shiny silver pointed tubes. “Mr. Ting is simply about need.”


🛸
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/286307.html. You can comment here or there.

Making new History, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Jan. Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

Feb28

After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)
Learning of History (LJ
Getting over History (LJ)

Part 7 of 7.5

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

“That’s a harsh chance to ask us to take.”

Karida stared down into the pit at the witch, Amalie, Fiery, and Dor hovering nearby, Amalie’s song seeming to hang in the air. The witch stared back up at them, the hope leaving her face.

“So leave me here. Leave me in this pit,” she spat bitterly. “Leave me like everyone else has.”

“Talk like that and I will,” Karida snapped. She didn’t want to, though… but her company’s safety was at stake. “What do you know of what you are?”

“Freak. Monster.” She sat down hard on a pipe, her tail lashing. “I know I can purify water, purify food. I know this happened when I turned seventeen. And I know I don’t get older.”

“Have you ever made someone a promise?”

The witch thought about that one for a moment. “No. Yes. Yes, that I would keep their water clean if they didn’t attack me.” She hissed softly. “And then… then I could not stop. I couldn’t stop helping them, even when they took everything from me. Not until that kid threw a rock at me. I… I see.”

“You’re smart, good. Promise that you mean no harm to us or our company, that you will not betray us, and we will take you with us, and teach you.”

“That’s a lot to ask.”

“This is my family we’re talking about. And you’ve already attacked us once.”

The woman’s tail twitched, and she looked down at her fingers, at a broken claw, at her ragged clothing. “How did you get to learn what you were, to use it? How come you have clean clothes and family, when I have nothing?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Dor answered, the spite out of his voice. “But you have a lot of life ahead of you. You can have all that, too.”

“Guys,” Amalie interrupted, “we still haven’t found anything to bring back to the company. Not enough, at least. We need to move on…” She hummed quietly. “We need to find the feast/to twist ‘way from the beast/to bring to large and least/to give to each, to each.”

The witch looked up at them. “I can help with that,” she said, with the faintest hint of a smile. “I can help you bring something to your company. If you let me out. And I can help you avoid the real monsters. The beast. I know this city. I’ve been living here for… for a long time.”

“Swear it,” Dor said sharply. “Swear that you mean us no harm.”

The witch sighed. “I, once-called-Sana, swear that I will do no harm to you four, to your company, to your family, unless you first harm me. I swear I will not betray you, if you let me out of this pit.”

“Good enough?” Dor asked.

Amalie frowned, humming. “I… Family and kin/under the skin/buyer beware/move forth with care?”

“Tricky,” Karida sighed. “We may have to try something else, but for now we can simply be careful. Once-called-Sana, what do we call you now?”

“They call me witch,” the woman answered, as Dor made stairs down to her. “I call myself Nightwalker.”

Next: Trusting in History (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/286146.html. You can comment here or there.

Productive, a story of the Unicorn/Factory for the January Giraffe Call (@anke)

Feb27

After The Grey Line (lj), for [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned Prompt. Part One of ??

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Administrator Guilian had found the unicorn foal a very light burden, barely heavier than a small child, so light he could almost, if it weren’t for the horn pricking at the side of his throat, forget it was there.

But his assistant’s reaction, now, that reminded him fully why he was there, and why he was carrying this small burden. He advanced slowly on the man, watching Antheri’s hands. He was reaching for something in his drawer… that couldn’t be good.

“The unicorns, their touch can kill you,” Antheri repeated nervously, as Guilian kept closing on him.

“That is what I’ve heard. And yet, I’ve also heard that their touch purifies. I’ve heard that their touch can do other things, as well…” The images he’d gotten didn’t really count as “heard,” and they hadn’t been all that clear, but he’d gotten some interesting bits here and there.

“Kill. Their touch can kill.” Antheri whipped out his revolver, pointing it with shaking hands at Guilian. “And you’ve brought one of those monsters in here, you madman. After everything I’ve done to keep them out. After everything we’ve done to cleanse the Town of their taint. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that it was time for a change,” Guilian told him, his eyes firmly on the gun. He set the foal down carefully; he couldn’t see it, he wasn’t that pure, but he could feel it, and feel where its legs were shakily settling onto the ground. “I was thinking that the Villages hate us, And wondering why that was.”

“They’re backwards. Ignorant. Spiteful. They cling to their old ways.”

“What happens to the waste from the factory, Antheri? That part of the tour kept getting put off. I imagine you would delay it until I was replaced, am I right?”

“If goes into the river,” the little today spat. “Where else would it go?”

“In other Towns, in other Factories…”

“And their production is not nearly as high as ours. It goes into the river, Administrator, because it halts the reproduction of these monsters. And with less of the pests around, the factory workers focus better, and produce more. And there are none of those pesky filters, no water recycling back end, no stupid swamp tanks to clean out and nursemaid. And we produce, Administrator, more than Any. Other. Factory. And that is what they pay me for.” The toady stared wildly at Guilian, waving the gun with no clear purpose. “And now you will die, and they will send me another fool.”

next: The Governors (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/285354.html. You can comment here or there.

Passing the Cat, a story of the Aunt Family for the Mini-Giraffe Call

Feb26

For rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt, after That Damn Cat (LJ) and Bless the Cat (LJ).

Aunt Family has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Zenobia had held on to a hundred and ten, not because she really was enjoying life anymore, not even with every charm she could come up with, but simply to irritate her family.

This also meant that her niece was not young and, possibly, Zenobia considered, rather irritated as well, which hadn’t really been her point. Of the seventeen potentials, Elenora had always been her favorite niece for the position, and she’d made an effort, as much as she did with anyone, at least, to be friendly with the girl.

Girl. She chuckled into her tea. The girl in question was now in her mid-seventies, hale and hearty but prone to be a bit crotchety. And Zenobia was at the end of her ability or desire to hold on any longer, so she was having a long talk with her niece.

“This,” she said, about two hours and four cups of tea in, “is The Cat.” The Damn Cat allowed himself to be picked up in a way he never would have tolerated in her younger days. “You will find that he neither likes to tell you about himself nor to be talked about.”

“Yes, Aunt Zennie.” Elenora had taken on the family’s annoying habit of talking to her as if she was a little gone in the brain. Zenobia whacked the woman over the knuckles with her tarot deck as if she was a wayward child.

“If you’re going to be the next Aunt – and you are – you might as well know what you’re doing,” she scolded. “Pay attention and stop acting as if I’ve gone batty.”

“And what if you have?” she snapped back. “Talking to your cat? What’s next, talking to your tea? Having conversations with the lawn furniture?”

“Your Aunt Fabiana talked to her settee quite frequently in her mid-thirties. It told her all sorts of things her husband was up to behind her back. My point is, young lady, you might be a little more willing to believe things when you’re a member of this family and have been for seventy-three years.”

Elenora glared back at her. “I’m perfectly willing to believe normal things like demons and ghosts, the tarot and charms, but Aunt Zenobia, you’re talking about talking to your cat!”

“Yes I am,” she hissed, “and you would do well to listen.”

“You would,” The Damn Cat finally deigned to say. “I have helped your Aunts more than you can imagine.”

“My… Aunts. Plural.” Elenora studied The Cat thoughtfully. “You are, then, not an ordinary cat.”

“I should say not.” He groomed himself pointedly. “Not in any way. But I am still, miss, a cat. I like cream, and chicken. And the occasional slice of beef.”

“He is a very pampered cat,” Zenobia admitted, “but he has more than earned his keep and, Elenora, I think he will do the same for you.” She looked her niece in the eye. “There are many things I will leave you, because you will be the Aunt. The Cat, I am leaving to you because you are my heir.”

Next: Legacy Cat (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/284206.html. You can comment here or there.

Presented

Feb23

For [profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt – more of “Birthday Present,” from the December Giraffe Call.

Addergoole has a landing page here

Content warnings: mind control.

“I’m not…” Noam gave up. If this infuriating bitch wanted to think he was stupid, let her. What would it matter? He was trapped. he couldn’t move, and, even if he could, he’d been paying attention. He couldn’t really get away from her – the school had no exits, or, if they had, he hadn’t gone through enough of the dungeon to find them yet – so running was, at best, a stalling measure.

It’s her birthday… You should thank me.

“Thank you,” he said, not certain if it had been an order or not. “You think Brenna will like me?” As conversational gambits went, that one was pretty lame, but she already thought he was a moron, and he wasn’t really trying to make friends with her. He had her pretty firmly in the category of not-friend, and planned on keeping her there.

“I know I had a ribbon around here somewhere… Aistrigh unutu. There, that ought to match your patterning better. Hold still.”

“Already holding still,” he muttered.

“Aren’t you clever,” she crooned sarcastically, as she tied a teal-green ribbon around his neck. “Yes, I think Brenna will like you. She’d been complaining that she can’t find anyone.”

“She talks, then?” He hadn’t been certain.

Hera chuckles. “She’s shy. It’s probably why she can’t find anyone. But you’ll be good to her, won’t you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Well…” She patted his shoulder and studied him thoughtfully. “I plan on giving you to her, you know, not Keeping you myself and letting her just play with you. That would be entertaining, I suppose, but you’re really not my type.”

“I guessed,” he muttered. Too pretty, too dumb…

“Mm-hrmm. I like my men shorter, brighter, and stronger. Less Dionysus and more Hephaestus.”

The back-handed complements and insults were giving him whiplash. She liked him, but she thought he was stupid. Not her type, but pretty and god-like. He wanted to nod, couldn’t, so just made a little noise instead.

“Don’t grunt, dear, it’s not pretty. Here, take you… no. you’re holding still like a good boy.” She stood on her toes to unbutton his shirt and tug it out of his pants, leaving him blushing at the contact. “There. You may move enough to take your shirt off. Leave it on my bed.”

He shrugged his shirt off and let it fall on the mess of her blankets. Like this, almost all the markings of his Change were showing. He hoped she decided that was enough, and didn’t make him show the rest of them.

“Mmm.” She studied her work critically. “One more ribbon… Aistrigh unutu… you can move enough to put your wrists behind your back, crossed over each other.”

He didn’t like where that was going, but he did it anyway, rolling his shoulders a little bit, trying to get comfortable. She walked around behind him, muttering to herself, nothing he could quite hear, and tied the second ribbon around his wrists, rather firmly.

“Don’t try to get out of that, mind you. You can move now. Follow me; we’re going to go see Brenna.”

“My shirt?” he asked, even though he had a feeling it was a lost cause.

“Mmm. I’ll bring it by later, don’t want to ruin the effect. Hush now, and not another word until Brenna says you’re hers.”

He hushed and followed, because he didn’t have any choice in the matter, frowning at her back. He felt conspicuous, exposed, and cold, all of which were pretty accurate, shirtless, bound, and following a girl more than a foot shorter than him like a trained puppy.

What if someone sees me like this? was quickly replaced by Is he looking at me? as they came upon Jabez. The short, dark, dragon-like boy shared a PE class and a History class with Noam, but they’d never really spoken. His eyes slid right over Noam now.

“Hera,” he nodded at the short girl, and

“Hey, Jabez,” she replied, and that was it. Noam might as well have not been there at all.

“Don’t frown,” Hera scolded, when the other boy was out of sight around a curve. “It makes you look sullen.”

He felt sullen. But he smiled anyway, trying to make it not look horribly fake.

“That’s better.” She patted his shoulder as she stopped by a door in another pod. Noam’s heart did weird things in his chest as she knocked, and he spent a bad couple minutes trying to find a loophole in her orders. He didn’t really have to stand here waiting like a… well, like a birthday present, did he?

But he did, and he had just sighed in frustration when the door opened.

Brenna hadn’t been expecting company, he was fairly certain: she was wearing a long t-shirt over leggings, her hair pulled back in a kerchief. Her TV was going in the background, and the smell of popcorn filled the room.

“Hera!” She stepped back into her room a couple jittery steps, looking uncertain. “And… Noam?” Her voice squeaked a little. “Hera, what did you…”

“Happy birthday, Brenna.” She pushed Noam forward until he almost bumped against her friend’s threshold. “He’s yours now.”

“You… got me a boy?” She reached out for Noam, and, somehow, he managed not to flinch back. “You got me Noam?“

Was that a good thing or a bad thing? He didn’t know, and he couldn’t ask, so he smiled gamely at her. She’d always seemed like a nice girl. Could she fix this?

“I did. Take him, Brenna, I think you’ll have fun breaking him in.”

No, no, he didn’t want that. He shook his head unhappily, nervously, but Brenna just smiled. She had, he noticed, what would be a very nice smile under other circumstances.

“I think I will. This is the nicest gift I’ve gotten this year. Come in, Noam, you’re mine now.”

“Tell her your hers,” Hera urged from behind him, as, for lack of anything better to do, Noam stepped into Brenna’s room.

“I’m yours,” he said unwillingly, and then clamped his mouth shut.

“Very good. Hera…”

“You two have fun,” Hera chirped, and headed down the hall. Brenna closed the door, locking a struggling Noam – he could struggle! He’d better do it fast! – in with her.

“So…” She looked him up and down, smiling uncertainly. “This might be fun.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/281557.html. You can comment here or there.

Getting Over History, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Jan. Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

Feb23

After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ)
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)
Learning of History (LJ

Part 6 of 7
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

The witch at the bottom of the pit, the monster-thing that was maybe not a monster at all, looked up at them uncertainly.

“Why would you care?” she repeated. “Why would anyone care?”

“Why care?” Fiery echoed, her bound hands going to smooth her own ragged hair uncertainly. “Families don’t.”

The witch nodded in agreement. “What she said. The people who knew me threw me out. The people who knew that one threw her out. Why would your people be any different?”

Karida sat down on the edge of the pit and dropped her Mask. Her extra-large feet and long, thick tail dangled over the edge. “We just fought you with Workings and magic. What made you think we weren’t the same as you?”

The woman blinked at her, the question obviously taking her completely by surprise. “How… What…?”

“How?” Fiery repeated. “HOW?” she demanded, urgently.

“We will teach you,” Amalie soothed the girl. “We will…” She hummed quietly, and then continued, “bring you, teach you, wash you, show you, sing you, reach you, wash you know you. Teach you, reach you, show you, know you; bring you, sing you, Bring you home too.”

The girl nodded uncertainly; Karida couldn’t blame her. That had been one of Amalie’s sillier ditties.

Down below her feet, the witch keened. “And me?” she groaned. “Would you leave me here, ignorant?”

“You know something,” Karida pointed out. “You could help Fiery’s people.”

“Not like you do. Not like,” she gestured at the stairs. “That sort of thing.”

“So suddenly scrounger trash has something you want?” Dor was, to put it mildly, cranky. Karida couldn’t really bring herself to blame him. “After you attacked us?”

“Humans have been using and hunting me for decades. They’ll do the same to your little captive there. It’s what they do, when their blood turns sour.”

“But you knew we weren’t from your village, if you knew we were ‘trash scroungers,” Dor grumbled.

“And? You with your girl there in ropes, do you think others of your kind haven’t done the same? Slavers, people-takers, food-stealers all of you. I don’t want to be stolen.”

“But you want to be rescued and taught?” Karida asked, caught up in the narrative.

“I don’t want to be left in a pit! If you’ll teach her, why not teach me, too?”

Amalie was frowning now, humming her tune slowly, as if she couldn’t quite get it to go properly. “Viper in the nest,” she murmured, “kitten at the breast, Wildfire in the hearth, candle burning bright thenceforth.”

Karida took that all in. “So she’ll either be fiercely loyal or betray us utterly.” She looked down at the witch. “That is a harsh chance to ask us to take, with our whole company at stake.”

Next: Making New History (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/281124.html. You can comment here or there.

Mission to Paris

Feb22

For @theladyisugly’s commissioned prompt: “VanderLinden & Aelfgar’s child has some mission in Paris” from the January Giraffe Call.

Belfreja is an Addergoole Year Nine student; this is set sometime around the end of year 15 – before the apocalypse but after she has been out of school for a bit.

Addergoole has a landing page here

Belfreja studied the dossier one last time, made sure she had memorized all pertinent details, ran her fingers over the silk of the underwear, and then dropped it all in the garbage bin and muttered a quick Abatu Unutu under her breath, destroying everything in the bin.

She remembered Yuriko from their time together at school. The girl had been a Cohort behind her, and spent most of her time with different people, but eventually everyone talked to Belfreja. She’d spent four years making certain that was true, and then three more years after graduation reinforcing it.

They called her, those that called her by such Names, The Connection, and for three years, she had been making connections, drawing people in, working with people for her own purposes, and for those of the Organization. A storm was coming, they all knew, and they needed to be prepared. Belfreja prepared by meeting people, and by convincing them.

She left the airport, shedding her coat in one garbage can and, a mile later, letting the red in her hair slowly change to its natural golden. Even Regine couldn’t watch entire cities, after all, and she wanted Yuriko to recognize her. With her horns Masked, the hair would have to do it. The hair and… she unbuttoned one button and took a deep breath, shifting that part of her Mask as well, to show her other assets. Yuriko might be straight. Addergoole did, on occasion, graduate one or two. But she’d remember Belfreja for her assets. Everyone always did.

There were others that could find people better than Bel could. There were others that could hide from surveillance better than she could. But when you got down to the nit and grit of it, no-one could connect people like she could.

She called on an old friend at a cafe, chatted about the weather and the incoming storm, mentioned a friend out in the mountains of Spain who was making a “retreat” deep into the side of the mountains, well away from prying eyes. In the conversation, she dropped Yuriko’s description – her Masked description – and was rewarded with a suggestion she talk to someone at a cafe down the road.

At the cafe down the road, she ate croissants and sipped tea with a man she’d first met her first year out of Addergoole. They talked about politics, French, American, British, worldwide, and, in twists and turns around that conversation, about the politics of the Ellehemaei. They murmured suggestions for hiding-holes, and whispered even more quietly of the problems with the Council, and the problems with those who would defy the Council.

They didn’t speak of rebellion. They both enjoyed living.

In the twists of that conversation, she told him she was looking for Yuriko, and he told her he thought the girl had been working at the cafe across the street. She kissed him for old time’s sake, and moved on.

The cafe across the street had no friends of hers, so she had to make a new one. The waitress behind the counter had the right look to her, so Belfreja spent an entertaining hour chatting her up, and was sure to tip generously and ostentatiously. When the waitress was thanking her, she mentioned the pretty Asian friend from school she was looking for…

…oh, so sad, Yuriko had quit. She’d gotten a better job at a cafe across town.

Sh stopped on the way to chat up a street vendor, bought a pair of sunglasses from him and flirted for a little while, talking about the way life was these days, talking about the craziness of the world.

She leaned forward as she talked, letting him ogle the way her assets fell just a bit out of her blouse, how the white lace of her bra showed under her silk blouse. She liked to flirt, of course; she was, in some ways, always going to be her mother’s daughter.

(And, unlike her half-siblings, also one of her mother’s greatest nightmares – but that was a tale to which this was only the prelude).

And people, many people, liked to flirt back with her. The sunglass-vendor told her three personal secrets and seventeen pieces of gossip by the time she had to make up an appointment to move on, and had given her the name of an awesome cheese-monger and a phenomenal hairdresser.

As she left, he had, as happened to her more often than was believable, slipped her a piece of paper telling of a meeting happening in a secret location, and the person she could go to to find that meeting. Belfreja attracted revolutionaries the way her siblings attracted lovers.

She pocketed the paper; if her business with Yuriko went quickly, she’d check it out. Not only did she attract certain people, she really enjoyed cultivating them. She enjoyed, in a manner, cultivating everyone. It was part of her charm.

But she had to reach Yuriko before the girl knew she was coming, which meant getting across town sometime before the world ended, a shorter time limit now that it might have once been. So she cut her chit-chat with the next vendor to a mere half an hour, and hurried to the cafe where, she was pretty sure, her quarry would be.

She was rewarded for her diligence at Le Chat D’Argent et Noir, where, at a back table, a pretty girl with Japanese features and mocha skin was flirting with a customer. Belfreja picked a seat with care. She wanted it to take a while for Yuriko – she was pretty sure it was her, at this point; the green eyes were a dead giveaway – to notice her, but she wanted to be able to see if the girl left the restaurant, too.

Once seated, she sipped on her third coffee of the day, chatted up the handsome waiter, and, in between sips, muttered a Working to tell her more about her target.

It was Yuriko, that was certain; most people wore their self-identity like a name tag on their psyche, and she was no different. Blue-green with purple notes, a dream of the sky and feet barely planted on the earth, a flighty thing, a pretty thing, with a smile that could brighten the world.

That family line got the prettiest Changes, but it was Yuriko’s weather ability, and her skill at manipulating chaos, that had sent Bel to recruit her. That, and the fact that she was easily bullied, but only if you knew the right words.

Bel liked people whose keys she could twist, but only if nobody else could.

Once she’d gauged Yurkio’s identity and her mood, she shifted so that the girl could see her, making sure her Mask looked identical to her last year at Addergoole, making sure she looked like she wasn’t looking at her quarry, posed herself, and waited.

She was rewarded in short time by a quiet gasp and the sound of footsteps – towards her, good. They hadn’t been friends, but they hadn’t been enemies, either.

“Bel,” Yurkio said, from behind her, maybe hoping to surprise her. Bel jumped a little, just for fun, and turned, smiling.

“Oh, Yuri! I was hoping to find you here!”

“You were?” Yurkio sat down, looking unhappy. “I’ve got years till Tethys and Sören have to go to school.”

“You do,” she agreed. “I’m not here from Addergoole. I don’t work for them.”

“You don’t? I thought… your parents…”

Bel smiled ruefully. “Lots of people think that, sadly, but no. I’m not all that much like my parents. Either of them.”

“Blonde and beautiful.”

“But not, however, superficial. Unlike my maternal parent.” And unlike, she didn’t say, that judgement of me.

She didn’t need to say it; she was good like that. Yuriko nodded reluctantly. “Sorry. So, you were looking for me?”

“I was,” she agreed. “You have some very nice skills that are wasted working here, Yuri.”

“But I like wasting them working here,” the other girl pointed out sharply. “It’s pretty, it’s peaceful, and nobody bothers my kids.”

“It is all that,” she agreed. “But it’s not going to last.”

“You can’t know that!” The places where hooks would go were beginning to get formed. Bel started sharpening those hooks.

“I don’t,” she agreed, “but people I know do. It’s not a hard prognostication, and it’s being seen pretty regularly now.”

There, there was the first barb. Yuriko knew about seers. She’d been cy’Peletier, after all.

“I,” she frowned. “Not just in the States?”

“Not even first in the States. But we’re bunkering down, anyway, up north where things seem to be likely to stay stable.”

Stable was a good one; she could see it hit home. “And my kids?”

“Good teachers, other kids to play with – normal kids.” Normal was code for human, and human could be a very good thing… yes. Yes, she was almost hooked.

“And you could really use my skills? I could consider it…” she dithered.

Bel slipped in the final hook. “Jasper’s already there.”

Yuriko’s eyes widened. She’d always been fond of her second child’s father. Was she fond enough? “I’m in.”

Bel smiled. “Wonderful.” She loved her job.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/280348.html. You can comment here or there.