Tag Archive | giraffecall: result

Twin Study, an AU!Addergoole Second Gen

This is non-canon, set sometime after the apoc, well into the second gen of Addergoole

“Identical twins are nature’s clones, if you’ll forgive the whimsy.” Regine held a stethoscope to Ted’s chest.

“I don’t really want to forgive anything.” Ted pulled against the restraints holding her in the chair. “My parents…!”

“Shh. Almost done here, and then you can go back to your classes.”

“What’s this all about? Where’s Bill?”

She’d never know what her father had been thinking when he’d named them that. Then again, the guy in the chair next to her was Kirk, which was fine, but turned out his twin was named Picard.

“Your twin is completely safe and fine. She will attend Addergoole when you have finished your four years here.”

“So you’re going to keep us apart for eight years? What the hell?”

“It’s much easier to determine the effects of stressors when you have a control.”

“A control…”

It was Fili, on the other side of her, who figured it out. “Woah. You’re not… that’s sick. That’s Nazi Sick.”

“Godwin’s Law,” Ted warned reflexively.

“Godwin can suck it. She’s using our twins as a control group. How do you even use someone as a control group? I mean, things happen to people, right?”

“Not… like… comatose people.” Homer’s voice was quiet. “Dr. Regine… what did you do with Sampson?”

“Your twins are perfectly safe. You will meet them again when your four years in Addergoole are over. And now, of course, I must remove the memories of this conversation from you.”

“What about our parents?” Fili’s voice was small. “How can they be all right with this?”

“They can’t.” Ted sagged against her bonds. “But she’s already said she’s going to remove our memories…”

“You are all very smart children. I approve. Now hold still for another moment…”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/438905.html. You can comment here or there.

Intimately Involved, a story of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call (@wyld_dandelyon)

Dec29

For wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt.

Linda was the first to figure it out.

And, like everything in the family, even that was a lie. Deborah was the first to figure it out, and James was next.

But they were intimately involved; they had all the information ahead of time. The rest of the family only thought they were intimately involved.

Except Cherie; Cherie had the only reasonable expectation of involvement. But the family had never been known to be reasonable about anything, especially where The Aunt was concerned.

“How could you?”

Linda opened with that before she even said hello or “mind if I come in?” She was pushy but not stupid; she didn’t enter the Aunt House without an invitation; she just stood in the doorway and shouted.

There was no use denying it or asking what she meant. Deborah brewed up a pot of tea and stared at her sister. “Well, when a man and a woman lie together, and he experiences pleasure known as orgasm inside of her…”

“Nobody said anything when James came around. You’re entitled to a little bit of romance in your life. But we thought you’d be responsible. You wanted this, Deborah.”

“That’s an assumption.”

“You never… You didn’t…” She sputtered it, as if uncomfortable saying what they all knew: of the four sisters, Deborah hadn’t gotten married early or pregnant even earlier.

“I understand how the family works.”

“Then how could you…”

“I can only assume by the annoyed ghost of an ancestor. I took all reasonable precautions and some unreasonable ones.”

“Except abstaining!”

“I did say some unreasonable precautions.”

“So now what?” Linda had come down from the anger and was looking worried. It made it easier for Deborah to sympathize with her sister; it wasn’t as if she didn’t feel worried as well.

She poured two cups of coffee and passed one through the open door.

“I really don’t know.”

“…Oh. Dear.”

Next – http://www.lynthornealder.com/2013/03/30/precedent-a-continuation-of-the-aunt-family-moreplease/

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/438596.html. You can comment here or there.

The Stories Tell… a story of the Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Dec29

To flofx‘s prompt

Once upon a time, they told people to be good to their children, or the faeries would take those children away. And they believed it.

Looking back on it, looking at the paperwork, the faded clippings, I must have been almost two when it happened. I remember being cold, and alone, and crying. Then I remember Mother and Father, and not being cold or alone anymore.

Snowfall showed up a year later. I wasn’t there when we took her, but I remember Mother bringing her home. When we took Rainy Night, two years after Snowfall, I was old enough to help.

I got Tornado on my own. I remember Father looking at me and asking me why, why him.

I remember, too, telling Father that I had always wanted a big family. And that Tornado had been wandering around on his own, wearing nothing but a diaper. Father laughed, and we had another sibling.

Mother is dark and Father is fair, so the range in our complexions is often thought to be the vagaries of genetics. There are a lot of neighborhoods in the city, and we have lived in many of them, so there is little question as to whence come the children with no pregnancy; they are with us when we move. Although we never move too close to where we have found our family. Mother is stern and Father is kind, and they raise us, love us, the way the places we came from never did. They love us as their own, and we love each other as kin.

My parents say that some day, when I’m older, we will find me a wife, dark like I’m fair and stern as I am kind, and we will carry on Mother and Father’s work. But today, I am looking for a little brother.

The night is silent, and clear, and cold. I will name him Clearness, or perhaps Silent Night. His father has been sitting in that bar for hours.

Once upon a time, people were warned to take care of their children, or the faeries would take them, and they believed it.

They will believe it again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/438065.html. You can comment here or there.

Adhara Speaks

Dec27

Inspired in part by this comic – http://www.rhymes-with-witch.com/rww10042012.shtml

To flofx‘s prompt

We were born from the same place.

My mother liked to point that out. We’d been born from the same people, from the same place, from the bed. We’d been conceived on the same night, three years apart, each of us.

I don’t know why they kept trying, after the first disaster. But they did. Every three years, on the same night. And every time, the were given another child. And every time…

…well, some attempts worked out better than others, let’s say that.

I was second. I was The Blessing, which isn’t an easy weight to carry, not after Sirius, who was A Burden They Must Carry.

This all fit, I think, into some sort of belief my parents had, but never managed to share with me. It wasn’t Sirius who ended things for them, but Altair, who came three years after me. Well. Altair ended our mother. Our father held on after that long enough to see me, Deneb, Cygnus, and Lyra old enough to last on our own – until Lyra was almost three years old. Until the day passed when they would have conceived the next one.

Then father took out Altair. That was a bloody and dark day, and none of us – those of could feel, those who can remember – will forget that day.

It was a noble and brave thing of him to do. Altair had grown strong and nasty, even though he was younger than I was. But that meant that that left three of us to fend for ourselves – and to handle the monsters born in between.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/437427.html. You can comment here or there.

Together/Again

Dec26

For rix_scaedu‘s prompt. Blame/credit to @dahob for the names and Changes of the twins.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

"It’s not that I don’t like you…"

"And I like you, too. It’s just…"

"Yeah." They liked each other, they just couldn’t live together without blowing things up. They’d been trying since they first came to Addergoole. They weren’t getting any better at it.

"The kids?"

"I’ll take Yang. You take Yin. They’re young, they’ll adapt."

—

Thirteen Years Later

"Bye, mom." Yang kissed his mother on the cheek. "Take care of yourself, all right?"

"That’s my line. You… behave yourself. No mischief you can’t cover up."

"You know I’m a good kid." Yang gave her his best innocent look. "Sweet and harmless."

"I know you are. Go on, sunshine. Shower at least once a week and don’t trust everyone you meet."

She worried about her boy, all alone in this place.

—

"Check your knives, and keep that spear under your bed." He kissed his daughter on her cheek and patted her head. "Don’t let any boy past your doorway unless he’s willing to promise you he means no harm, and if they give you trouble, tell them they have to meet me before they can get any further with you."

"Da-a-a-d." Yin checked her knives anyway, and gave her father a tight hug. "Don’t go fighting monsters without me, all right?"

"I’ll be safe, sweetie. You do the same." He slipped a palm-knife of bone into her coat pocket. "Don’t borrow anything you can’t pay back right away and don’t lend anything you can’t afford to lose."

"Don’t put your back to someone you don’t know." She patted his hand. "I’ll be fine, dad. Take care."

"You too. Go on, midnight baby."

He worried about his girl, all alone in this place.

—

"And don’t forget who you are…" Yang muttered his mother’s favorite advice. "As if I…"

"…could forget something like that. Don’t trust anyone I don’t know. How am I …"

"…ever going to meet anyone if I don’t…"

"…trust…"

"YOU!!!"

Bags went flying. The two tackled each other, mirrors save for gender, while their luggage launched across the hallway.

"I thought…"

"…we’d lost we…"

"forever."

—

On the other side of the school, as the echos of the reunited twins reached their ears, she looked at him. A wistful, amused sigh escaped her lips. "Sometimes Regine knows what she’s doing, after all."

"And sometimes we don’t."

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436981.html. You can comment here or there.

On the Water

Dec25

For imaginaryfiend‘s prompt.

My twin and I were born on the same day, but on different planes of existence.

My father is a boatwright, you see, and while my mother was carrying me, my father – our father – was creating a boat. Building it from the felled trees to the shaped hull to the sails. Building her, my twin.

Our mother – who sewed the sails and shaped the carvings – told my father that it was a foolish conceit, when we were young. “You’ll turn her brain, telling her the boat is her sister.”

My father, who would not sell that boat, of all the boats he had crafted, smiled, agreed, and persisted in calling the ship his daughter, my twin.

“You’ve got to stop,” my mother said, when I was seven, and running along the boards more evenly than on solid ground, swimming in the ocean rather than playing in the park. “You’re twisting her.”

My father, who had watched me learn from my twin how to swim, smiled, nodded, agreed, and continued calling her my twin and my sister.

He couldn’t see her, the way I could, but I don’t think he needed to. He had brought forth the shape of my sister, and, in that shaping, he knew where her soul was – and that she had as much soul as I did.

“Stop it, or she’ll be ruined for anything but sailing.” My mother was not shouting, but it was a close thing. I was a teenager, and I had taken to the seas like I had been born with a keel as much as my sister had.

“Yes.” My father nodded, and smiled, and agreed. “She has been ruined for aught but the sea since she and her sister were begun.”

“She. Is. Not. Her. Sister.” And now my mother shouted. And now my sister and I shouted back, with her keel slapping the water and my voice rising up across the water.

“Yes. We. Are.”

And that was when things truly got complicated.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436692.html. You can comment here or there.

Sister Trouble

Dec25

This is to @DaHob’s request for something involving Joff and Ivette in school. This takes place in Year 7 of the Addergoole School, in some poor unsuspecting college.

“Man, your sister….” Nathan shook his head. “I don’t know how you live with her, man. If she was my sister…”

Joff could feel the waves of lust coming off of Nathan. He looked away, hiding a smirk with a mumble about “Man, s’my sister.” His sister, the succubus.

Because his sister (and housemate, in the apartment he’d insisted they get) was who she was, he did ask, curiously, “you haven’t?”

He found the way Nathan flushed – and his nervous expression – to be very interesting. What was Ivette up to? “What? No, man, I mean… I know she’s saving herself for marriage.”

“She’s what?” Joff sprayed his beer, and then had to hastily adjust Nathan’s emotions before the bigger kid could freak out. “Sorry. I mean,” he concocted a lie hastily, “she’s mentioned that before, but I didn’t think she’d go through with it. At home, sure, but here, you know, college, all these handsome guys around…”

Aaaand now Nathan thought he was gay. Well, a lot of the small-town types couldn’t tell “gay” from “pansexual” anyway, and it wasn’t like Joff wasn’t sleeping with Oliver and Mark from Nathan’s fraternity (and Alice and Amy from the sister sorority. Letting him and his sister loose on a college campus might have been Regine’s worst mistake yet).

Nathan’s funny colors didn’t seem to be ack, gay funny colors, though. They were still lust colors. Interesting lust colors.

“Look.” Joff stood up. “I gotta study for tomorrow’s class. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll have a talk with Ivette, okay?” He patted Nathan’s shoulder, and watched how the boy’s emotions swirled. He should go out drinking more.

No, he should study more. He had promised Zeke he was going to try a real career, something he really wanted to do.

“You’ll talk to her? For me?”

“She can’t stick to this ‘saving herself’ thing forever. I know my sister.”

In more ways than I ought to. He dodged before Nathan could drunk-hug him, and headed home, wondering what the hell Ivette was up to.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/441413.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436420.html. You can comment here or there.

Littermate

Dec24

For imaginaryfiend‘s prompt; before/after A Couple Helping Hands

Cúmhaí was in Addergoole.

Begley had known she was coming. It’s how it happened, or so everyone told him.

But he’d been here a year, where nobody knew he was The Midget (well, okay, he was still far too short, but in Addergoole, you learned not to judge too much based on size, or the four-foot-tall girl ate your shins.) And after that, it was one thing to know your giant sister would be showing up, and another thing to have her there, sneering and stupid and getting into trouble.

Begley sighed. She wouldn’t talk to him, of course. She wouldn’t really even look at him. She was a miserable pain in the tail, but she was his sister, and if anyone was going to kick the snottiness out of her, it was going to be him.

And it was Hell Night. Hell Night when everyone wanted to beat on everyone. Begley had done his time under the collar. It hadn’t been horrid, but it wasn’t what he wanted for his sister (even if it would teach her a thing or two)

And there was his sister, fighting against The Thing. Losing against The Thing. In a fair fight, Cúmhaí was a wildcat… wild… dog, he supposed, but there was nothing fair about this, and she didn’t know what she was up against.

“Let… her… GO.” No fucking creep was going to Keep his sister. Certainly not THIS fucking creep. He dodged danced, distracted, slipped, slid, and, when he had The Thing all turned sideways… bit.

A mouthful of The Things’s Things was not what Begley wanted, but it was what he needed right now. The scream told him he’d hit the right spot.

The flying through the air told him he hadn’t hit him hard enough.

Coming to in his sister’s arms told him he must have done something right.

Next: Strange Favors

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/436097.html. You can comment here or there.

A couple helping hands

Dec21

For kay_brooke‘s prompt. Set in Addergoole in a later year; @Inventrix’s lovely random AG-character generator gave me Cumhai and Begley, and the rest was easy.

“What. The. Hell?” Cúmhaí darted through the halls, bouncing off of walls that weren’t the right shape or size anymore.

She could smell the shapes of the halls, that was the thing, and, one, being able to smell walls pretty much freaked her out, and, two, they weren’t the same shape as they’d looked yesterday.

Also, her ears hurt, for a much larger value of “ear” than she was used to.

And she thought the floors might be moving.

“Oh, look, a pupp… bir… puppy bird. Come here, pup.” The floor was moving, moving because someone was thudding towards her with the biggest feet she’d ever seen on a human being.

Then again, this place seemed to defy the definition of “human being” she was used to.

“Back up,” she snarled. “Back up and leave me alone.”

“Fraid I can’t do that, little pup. Not today.”

“Stop calling me pup!” He was a lot bigger than her, and he was blocking the hall. And the hall was moving, which was totally unfair.

“Coo!”

And, to top things off, there was her obnoxious little-older-brother Begley, ducking in between Cúmhaí and the giant. “Coo, I’ve got this one.”

“Oh, bork off, Beagle.” He sort of looked beagle-y today, more than her midget brother ever had before, ears and all. She landed a punch on the giant’s nose and started running.

“Coo!”

But she was gone. She’d had one blessed year at home, one quiet year without her obnoxious older brother. And then she’d gotten sent here, here, and that was all his fault too. And now he was even trying to “protect” her. He’d always been trying to protect her, and It had always been ridiculous.

And now the halls were twisting and bending, and her inner ear was trying to turn itself inside out. Puppy bird. Puppy bird? What kind of stupid nickname was puppy bird?

Her nose hurt.

“Oh, hello.”

The voice came out of nowhere, as did the hands that suddenly wrapped their way around Cúmhaí’s throat, cutting off her air, and grabbed for her hair, pulling her head back, and grabbed for her… tail? tail?… forcing her backwards into an arch. “Aren’t you lovely?”

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She could’t move. There were too many hands. Hands everywhere.

Much to her humiliation, Cúmhaí realized she was panicking. She couldn’t move. Every time she tried an attack, another hand grabbed her, blocked her, bent her further backwards. And she was seeing stars.

“Let her go!”

Shit, not the Beagle again. Not that.

“She’s mine, little pup. She’s going to be doing what I say pretty soon, aren’t you, pretty birdie?”

“Ack.”

“See?” The invisible hands bent her a little further backwards. She felt as if her spine was breaking. “And she’s going to be mine, and be good. Because if she’s not, I’ll break her back and leave her for the giant.”

Fuck. Fuck. She struggled in earnest this time, only to get pulled even further back on herself.

“Let her… GO.” She heard the impact, but couldn’t see a damn thing. Her captor was laughing, of course he was. Everyone laughed at the Beagle. Laughing, laughing… and suddenly, the laughing turned to screaming.

“I’ll get you, you midget piece of shit.” From ten hands on her, she felt only four. Four she could deal with. She began fighting in earnest, pulling herself back on herself.

She had just gotten free when she heard a yelp, like a sad puppy being thrown.

Next: Littermate (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/435439.html. You can comment here or there.

Nephew-Nieces and Other Family

Dec18

To clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Addergoole has a landing page here.

If you would like to see this family tree, I can oblige.

First day of school, Year 21 of the Addergoole School

“Bye, Mom.” Dom and Carey kissed their mom-dad’s cheeks, patted its shoulders, and fled into the school before they could be burdened with any more excessive advise. “We’ll be fine!”

It was Carey who called it over a shoulder, because Carey was in charge of reassuring that parent; Dom got to reassure their other biological parent, when Ty visited.

“Free at last.” Dom’s quip fell a little weakly as they stared at the door – a thick steel door in short cement wall that seemed to come out of the ground.

“Do you think Mom-dad…?”

“Worries too much? Yeah. Loads.” Dom made its voice sound firm, no matter how shaky it was feeling. “Look, we’re gonna be fine.”

“Of course you are!” A lush girl patted them both on the back. “Aren’t you two pretty? And you’re going to do just fine; I’ll watch after you. I’m Adorlee, by the by.”

“Dominique sh’Tya.” Dom held out a hand, which conveniently meant turning around and moving out of the new arrival’s grasp. “This is my twin, Cary sh’Jaya.”

“Your twin… by a different mother?” Her pretty brow furrowed. Dom sighed. They’d figured, maybe, here in Addergoole, it wouldn’t confuse people so much.

“Both our parents are…”

“Wait, did you say Tya? Oh, darnit all! That makes you my nephews.”

“Nieces.” Carey had opinions about gender. They were different from Dom’s opinions.

“Nephew-nieces. Are you one of Mi – Professor VanderLinden’s?”

“Oh, now don’t make it sound like such a thing… but yes.” The pretty girl – Adorlee? – Adorlee pouted at them. “Well, at least let me show you around.”

“Or me.” The voice was different. Angrier. Colder. The face was different – older, since it had been over a decade. But Dom recognized a brother.

“Eryk!” Carey and Dom left the overbearing Adorlee in the dust to surround their half-brother in hugs. “You can show us around.”

Carey had opinions on a lot of things. Incestuous family tree or not, Dom hoped Eryk-is-an-acceptable-boyfriend wasn’t one of them.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/434674.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder