Tag Archive | giraffecall: result

The Beggars… a story of the Fairy Road for the Giraffe Call

Jan28

For [personal profile] skjam‘s prompt

I think this is in the same setting as Loaves (LJ), which, then, I think is in the same setting as Strange Neighbors (LJ) and the Fairy Road (here on LJ)

“I’ve just realized…I haven’t seen any homeless people or beggars on the street for at least a month. Where did they all go?”

The words where hardly out of Andrew’s mouth when he regretted them. His partner, Cary, was eying him strangely.

“What do you mean, Andy?” he asked, cautiously, Andrew thought. Like there was a secret he wasn’t supposed to know. There were a lot of those in the City Police Force. Too many.

“Well, there used to be the blonde lady down on Castor Street, the one that you could see the spark in? Like ‘man, this woman must have been hot in her heyday?’ I haven’t seen her in… since the day I got the promotion,” he realized, and then, more to his chagrin, realized he was still talking. Verbal diarrhea. It had cost him comfortable promotions and raises before, before he and June moves to the City. Was it going to lose him another one?

Cary was certainly still looking at him oddly. “I know her,” he answered slowly. “And the old black man down on West Indes Street…”

“..the one who would sing with the sweetest voice, every time you dropped a dollar in his cup?” Andy nodded eagerly, half hoping that this was going somewhere positive and half not caring, because these things needed to be said. “I remember him! The day after I got the promotion, I bought him a sandwich, and he sang for me for twenty minutes.”

Cary’s look was changing. “This city has a lot of beggars.”

“Had, it looks like. Man, is something happening?” He was always the last to know. “Bussing, or a serial killer no-one wants to tell me about, or something?”

“Something’s happening all right,” Cary answered slowly. “Get your coat. We’re taking a walk.”

Wishing that didn’t sound so much like “wandering into a back alley,” Andy slipped his coat on. “You knew something was going on?”

“You’re new, you see. No-one knew if they could trust you, so they gave you to me. But if you’ve heard Old Tyler sing, that means you passed.”

“I passed?”

“You passed. And now, Andy… well, there’s more to our City than meets the naked eye. Come on, and I’ll show you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/247353.html. You can comment here or there.

So I’ve Started Out

Jan27

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

Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ.

Flying, Arundel was learning, was hard work, and exhausting. Even though Mr. Hawk told him that it wasn’t all in the muscles – “If you were doing this all with physical strength, you’d never get off the ground. Your flight is as much a part of your magic as, well, whatever you innate power is going to be,” – there was certainly a lot of something going on with his body, moving these new, strange, massive wings, keeping himself going.

And, of course, there was the falling. He wasn’t, he discovered, frightened of falling, but it hurt, and he liked to avoid the pain, not in the least because it made Sylvia tut-tut at him, which made him wriggle in uncomfortable ways and made Porter glower and sulk.

He wanted to ask his friend about that, but they didn’t seem to have a lot of time to talk. There was class – they had a couple in common, but there were always other people around. Then there were magic classes, and then sessions with their Mentors, and then they were in the suite that Sylvia had finagled for them, despite the objections of the Director’s secretary, who seemed to think that Arundel and the otter girl ought to be sharing a room.

He wasn’t entirely stupid. He’d seen other kids in their class Kept, just like Porter had. He’d seen the collars before Sylvia had put one on him, and he had some idea of how those relationships went, or at least how some of them went, controlling, uber-power-dichotomy sort of things that were still a lot like high school dating. But he wasn’t, as far as he could tell, dating Sylvia, and he wasn’t entirely certain why not.

Luke had said he could come to him with anything. Arundel wasn’t sure that this was the sort of thing he meant – the PE teacher seemed like the “how do I break the bully’s nose” or “how do I not fail math” sort of guy, but “anything” meant anything, and, besides, he wasn’t sure who else to ask. So, at the end of a long, exhausting flying session, stretching his shoulders and wings on the ground, Arundul cleared his throat and, very nervously, asked.

“Sir… this ‘Kept’ thing?”

Luke got an uncomfortable, gassy expression. “What about it?”

“It’s real? I mean… of course it’s real.” He could feel the effects. “But it’s okay?”

“Okay is relative,” Luke grunted. “But it’s allowed by school rules, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“This school is a little messed up, sir. Sorry…. but it is.”

“I’m not arguing.”

It looked like Luke would have been comfortable leaving the conversation there, and Arundel really couldn’t blame him for that. But he still had questions, and he had to start somewhere.

“The collar…?”

“That’s part of larger Ellehemaei society. Not required, but common. Tells other people ‘hands off.'”

“Okay, I can get that. But, um.” He pulled some grass unhappily. “Everyone else I see wearing a collar, they’re all, cuddled up to their… their owner?”

“Or Keeper.”

“To their Keeper. And a couple even say ‘my boyfriend’ or ‘my girlfriend,’ like they’re dating. And Sylvia…”

“Well, Sylvia’s always been a bit…” Luke paused, frowning. “Reserved. Ask her about it?”

Arundel blanched. “No, thank you!” He wasn’t scared of Sylvia. But she didn’t like questions a whole lot, and she didn’t like personal questions at all.

“Hunh, like that, is it?” Luke shook his head. “Do those stretches I showed you. I’ll think on it a little bit. But as to what you’re asking – it’s not always ‘dating,’ whatever that means this decade. It doesn’t have to be sexual.”

“Ack.” The grass was very, very fascinating. “Ack,” he muttered again. “Okay. Um. Sorry I asked?”

Luke stood up. “Stretch. Worry about Sylvia on her time. And on my time, we’re going to go through those flight positions.”

Worry about Sylvia on her time. It seemed like reasonable advice, and also seemed less likely to get him assigned more push-ups for making his Mentor uncomfortable. Arundel waited until he was back in their suite, showered, dried, and patiently drying his wings before he went back to worrying about Sylvia, under the theory that time that wasn’t for classes or Luke belonged, for good or ill, to his Keeper.

He was still chewing it over when Sylvia walked into his room – she did that, without knocking, and he really couldn’t figure out how to complain – and started drying his wings for him. The touch felt, as her touch always did, nicer than it ought to, nicer than anything. “Sylvia,” he started cautiously. Half the time when he started talking, she just shushed him.

This time, she just said, in her so-very-mild neutral voice that left him a little anchorless, “Arundel?”

“Isn’t Keeping generally… I mean, doesn’t it usually sort of act like dating?”

“It often does,” she agreed, her neutral getting a little colder.

“But you and me…?” Why did Hayley think I’d need a shrink?

“You and I are not dating,” she answered, setting the towel down. “I would not force dating on you.”

He turned to look at her, folding his wings in. He was beginning to learn how to not hit people or low-lying objects or walls or irate professors with them, but only recently. He really, really didn’t want to hit her with his wings. Certainly not now.

“You wouldn’t… force… dating on me?” he repeated, carefully, to make sure he had heard her right. “You think it would be force?”

“I Own you,” she answered, stepping backwards a half-step. “I could tell you we were dating, and we would be. I could tell you to take your clothes off, and you would.”

He sat down on the bed with a thump. “Sylvia, you’re a pretty girl who’s been nice to me since you met me. You could tell me to take my clothes off without this Keeping thing, and I would.”

“But the Bond takes away your choice,” she explained, a little plaintively.

He shook his head, more than a little disbelieving. “Well… so does not asking me, wouldn’t you say?”

Next: Trying (LJ) (Arundel/Sylvia Year 8)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/246592.html. You can comment here or there.

Burning Summer Quest, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan26

For moon_fox‘s prompt

Probably goes with Strange Neighbors (LJ) [After the Fairy Road (here on LJ)]

It was the hottest summer on record. It may have been the hottest summer ever. The sidewalk was melting. The roads were sticky. Even the devout were wearing bikinis, and you don’t want to know what the sinners were wearing. Fry an egg? You could cook a roast on the hood of the car.

And our air conditioner was on the fritz. We had six so-called adults, two cats, three rats (the domestic sort), and one small child in a four-bedroom house, we had eaten all the popsicles, and our air conditioner was spitting out lukewarm air.

So Jordan and I went on a quest.

We went to Wal-mart: sold out. K-Mart: sold out. Target? Mobbed AND sold out. Ames, the corner store, the grocery store, the overpriced appliance store behind the carpet place. We drove around the city in shrinking concentric circles (at least the AC in my old Ford still worked), stopping at every place that might, possibly, in some universe, sell us an AC unit. I cried at the Rent-a-Center guy (he was unimpressed). Jordan threatened the pawn shop guy (likewise unimpressed); we offered to buy one off an old lady with three sticking out of her windows (in our defense, she was at least holding a garage sale).

And then, as we were heading home in defeat, wondering how we were going to tell the roomies (never mind the toddler, the cats, and the rats) that we had failed – Failed! on our epic quest! – Jordan slammed on the brakes.

There, right there in the heart of the third-worst neighborhood in town, in a place I swear was a braid joint just yesterday, was a small store with a smaller sign: “Mr. Ting knows what you need.”

“Well,” Jordan shrugged, “at this point, anything is worth a shot, right?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/246121.html. You can comment here or there.

Tea with /HER/, Continued More, a story of Tir na Cali for the Giraffe Call

Jan26

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

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

I bid him a quiet, respectful, tearful goodbye, and sold him to the best broker in town, demanding – and getting – promises about his well-being and the type of place to which they’d sell him. He’d do well. He was so very well…trained.

I was angry at the Ice Queen all over again after that – for being right. For winning, again. For being my Countess. For calling for me when my mother was dying. But I went. She was my liege, and she’d been right.

The conversation was tense, unhappy, and stressed for the first half hour, until she set down her cup and stared at me. “Let’s stop beating around the bush. You sold Michael, and it makes you miserable.”

“My mother is dying,” I countered tensely.

“My the Goddess hold her close and move her on,” she murmured devoutly. “There will be a time for the funeral, and there will be a time for mourning. And I will be there beside you for that, Treanna, you have my guarantee.”

That, I’ll admit, took me quite by surprise, but I just nodded. “Yes, your Ladyship.” It’s something you get very good at saying.

“But right now,” she continued, as if she was flipping the page to the next item on her agenda – and she really could have been, for all the expression she had – “I have a gift for you.”

“I’m sorry, Your Ladyship?” I asked blankly. She’d shifted gears too fast on me this time.

“It’s not really…” she gestured, and, for the first time in my life, I thought she might be nervous. “Well. I could wait, if you prefer, until you are installed as Baroness.”

“I would rather,” I said, rather stiffly, “rather not discuss my installation as a done deal. My mother is still breathing.”

“But you will inherit. And likely you will do so soon. I can release you from this tea, and call for you again when the suitable mourning has been done. Or we can continue to talk now.”

It was clear from her tone which she wanted. But my mother was dying. “I would like that, your Ladyship. To come back later, at your leisure.”

“And at yours.” She gestured, smiling gently. “Tend to your mother, Lady Treanna.”

It wasn’t much longer. The healers and doctors had done everything they could for her, and all that was left was the horrible waiting. Alone, because I had sold Michael. Alone, because, with Michael there, I had never bothered to look for a partner, a companion, a Consort.

I held her hand through her last breaths, and I called the priests and the priestesses to lay her to the Goddess’ hands. I spoke the words I needed to say, and did was what required. I, like every child of Tír na Cali, am very good at doing what is required.

And then I went home, where I could be more alone, and sat, pondering my next step.

And there, wrapped in a ribbon over his perfectly-tailored suit, sitting on my front porch, a leash from his golden collar to my front door (my mother’s front door, my front door), was a boy. A man. A slave.

I’ll keep writing this in increments until @Dahob thinks it’s done… 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/245705.html. You can comment here or there.

Loaves, a story for the Giraffe Call @Rix_Scaedu

Jan26

For Rix_scaedu‘s prompt

“What we need,” Katydid declared, “is a place to eat.”

Jorge looked over at her dubiously. “Like a dining room table? ‘did, I’m sure you’ve noticed, but this is a shanty.”

“No, no.” Her gesture took in the small jury-rigged building. “This is a place to sleep and not freeze. We need a place to eat.”

“Okay, you’re repeating yourself. Have you gone to the clinic recently?”

“No,” she frowned. “They make my brain buzz. This place, Jorge, this shanty-town, Hoover-ville, cardboard city – we need a place to eat.”

“We’re all starving, yeah, Katydid. I know that. We ALL know that, ‘did.”

She bit her lip. “Why don’t you ever listen?”

“Because you never make sense! You come down here like you belong with us, but you don’t, and then you say things like you’re making fun of us. Why don’t you go home?”

“I don’t have a home.” Her knees went up to her chest, and her hair covered her face. Jorge expelled air loudly.

“Whatever happened, there in the ‘burbs, it can’t be worse than starving.”

“We’re not going to starve.” She stood abruptly and hurried out of the hut, leaving Jorge to stare in her wake.

When he didn’t see her for several days, he thought she’d gone back to the ‘burbs, drama or not. Not that he KNEW that was where she came from, but good, clean shoes, sturdy clothes that were nevertheless the latest fashion, and hair that had been cut in the last month, plus teeth so straight and even as to look fake, did not look like city-poverty to him, much less shanty-town poor. He wished her luck, said a prayer for her, and moved a warmer girl into his shanty.

It was the girl, Annie, who told him what Katydid had done. “There’s a kitchen. They’re giving out food”

“A what?”

“In the middle of the ‘Ville. Follow the smoke.”

So follow the smoke he did, ’cause his stomach was trying to eat itself, and there, in the squarest shanty he’d ever seen built, with three banners for a tarp, Katydid had laid out tables, and over an oil-barrel stove, complete with chimney, she was dishing out soup and dumplings.

“Where…?” Jorge started, but the wildness was running high in the girl’s eyes, and he fell quiet.

“Jesus had fish,” was all she’d say.

Hooverville, non-Wiki Hoovervilles, shanty-town

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/245336.html. You can comment here or there.

Strange Neighbors

Jan25

For anke‘s prompt(s)

After the Fairy Road from the last Giraffe Call.

The park in the middle of the city had always been creepy, but, in its heyday, it had also been beautiful. Children had, once, played there, and the overgrowth that filled up its four quadrants had once been tamed, with tiny footpaths wriggling through like snakes. Now, only the desperate or rushed used the main roads, and only the fairies could find the foot-paths.

The apartment building on Milton, overlooking the park, had also seen better days. In its heyday, it had been a fine luxury building, and the suite size and facade still showed that. The rooms were large, the building was passably well-upkept, but the rich neighborhoods had moved North, leaving the Stanton Arms behind.

The tragedy of the park hadn’t helped, of course; no-one with children wanted to be near there. Anyone with sensitivity either was drawn there or repulsed, like magnets, depending on pole. And normal people, inasmuch as there were such things as normal people, for the most part had either heard the rumors, seen the crime rates, or just “knew” it wasn’t a good place; the reputation of the park clung to the building like coal dust from a smokestack.

That left the Arms to college students who couldn’t afford better, out-of-towners who didn’t know any better, fae who knew things about the park even the most sensitive human didn’t, the sensitive who could stand the ghosts, and Errol’s cousin Carolina, who ran an Etsy shop specializing in “genuine” fake magical artifacts with real punch.

That meant, of course, than anyone who had any sort of shady magical deal they wished to engage in ended up at the Arms and the park, seeking someone with just the right twist for their corkscrew. Which was, as Errol and his cousin well knew, one hell of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/243615.html. You can comment here or there.

Tea with /HER/, further continued, a story of Tir na Cali for the Giraffe Call

Jan24

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of Sunday’s installement: Tea with HER (continuation) (LJ) and Saturday’s Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)

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

“I know this, Treanna, because, believe it or not, I was nineteen once, myself. And when this happens… come to me again, and we will talk.” She sipped her tea, her eyes smirking at me. “I’ll enjoy it.”

I sold him, of course.

I didn’t want to. I was entirely in love with him, a little more gone than was reasonable. And selling him without him ever getting him to love me was admitting defeat.

But I’d started to grow up, even as my mother got more and more ill. And looking at him, I couldn’t help but remember every childish tantrum, every teenaged secret I’d whispered in my ear. He’d known me at my worst. No wonder he’d never love me.

When you reach a certain point, you put away the pink diary and the teddy bears and the dolls. When you reach that point again, it’s time to move on from your first companion.

I bid him a quiet, respectful, tearful goodbye, and sold him to the best broker in town, demanding – and getting – promises about his well-being and the type of place to which they’d sell him. He’d do well. He was so very well…

There (exactly) ends 750 words… *evil laughter*
(note: I’m not THAT evil. I’ve already written another 150)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/242800.html. You can comment here or there.

Behind Door Number Three

Jan24

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

Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ.

Porter stared at the strange girl who had so tidily taken control of their lives – Arundel’s more than his, certainly, but still. Then it hit him. “Right. Come on, Arun.” He dropped to his knees and got a shoulder under his friend’s arm. “Stand up, that’s it.”

“Ow,” Arundel complained weakly.

“Yeah, I know. Those look like they’re gonna hurt worse than a tail and my ears did. But you gotta stand up.”

“Stand up,” Sylvia echoed, and with a muffled whimper, Arundel made it to his feet. “That’s better.” She slid herself under his other arm. “Porter and I will get you there. I’ll take care of you.” She opened her door and they edged, carefully, through it. “Do you know any combat magic, tiger?”

“Um. I can aba… destroy stuff, but that’s about it. We’ve only barely begun to learn anything useful.”

“Pity. Well. Look fierce if anyone tries to stop us, then, how about that?”

Her tone made Porter bristle, even as he helped Arundel down the hall as gently as he could. “Who do you think you are, to boss me around like this?”

“Well,” she answered, maddeningly calmly, “I believe I’m the person who just Kept your friend. And while you’re under no obligation to do as I say, of course, he is, and, furthermore, I am only taking charge to keep you and he – and myself – safe, so it’s safe to believe that my ‘bossing’ is in your best interest.”

“Seems to me,” he grumbled, “that the only person I can trust to act in my best interests around here is myself. Come on, man, it’s not that much further.”

“Yourself, and your crew,” she agreed placidly. “Which, you may have noticed, we agreed to be.”

“Mmm,” he muttered, focusing on Arundel’s pained footsteps. “So you get a Kept out of this. I get to keep hanging out with my friend. Arundel gets…”

“A benevolent Keeper, the continued companionship of his friend, and my assurance that I’ll do my best to keep you, in turn, from being Kept. I also get your protection, once the two of you learn to fight. In other words, we become a small consortium of watching each others’ backs.” She smiled, a small, tight thing, as they reached Dr. Caitrin’s office. “If we end up liking each other, that will be a pleasant bonus. You two seem like people I might be able to like, and there have been precious few of those so far in Addergoole.”

“I could like you,” Arundel muttered. He was twisting in their arms, trying to arch his back. “But that could be the Keeping thingy.”

“Probably,” she agreed, the smile barely shifting. “I’m told I’m not, generally, all that likable.”

“That’s sad,” he frowned. “Porter will like you, too, won’t you, Port?”

Porter, sighing, forced himself to calm down, the fur on his neck and tail slowly settling. “If you want me to like her, buddy, I will. What are friends for, anyway?”

He met Sylvia’s gaze as they maneuvered his semi-delirious friend into the exam room. From the look in her eyes, she knew as well as he did that it would be a longer process than that. But they would both make the effort. That was, as he’d said, what crew was for.

~

It seemed she had a very specific, very close interpretation of “crew,” which Porter couldn’t really object to. Arundel was hardly standing again, swaying a bit with the effects of the little blue pills, when Sylvia dragged them to the Director’s secretary’s office.

“We need a three-room suite. I know one’s opened up recently.”

The woman looked over her glasses at Sylvia, clearly less impressed with her preemptory manner than Porter and Arundel were. “You do, hrrm? Didn’t I hear that Arundel was now oro’Sylvia?”

“Well, yes,” she answered easily, “but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need a three-room suite.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Will I need to schedule an appointment with Dr. Mendosa?” she asked quietly, but with clear, if entirely vague, threat.

“I believe we’ll be just fine. But a three-bedroom suite will give us all a little more breathing room, and that would be a very good thing,” Sylvia said very precisely.

The woman frowned, but nodded. “Very well. Since Professor Pelletier had suggested we hold this suite, I’m going to assume this is why. You can move in today.”

“Just like that?” Porter couldn’t help but ask. Why Professor Pelletier?

“When the psychic deems something,” Sylvia murmurs, “this Administration listens. It’s one of the advantages of this school.”

Porter, who had heard plenty of the disadvantages, listened with curiosity. “So. Arundel’s moving in with you, and you want me to move in with you, too?” The three-bedrooms thing was, he had to admit, strange, at least from what he’d heard.

“You want to spend time with your friend, don’t you? And we’re crew now, aren’t we?”

He had a feeling he was going to hear that argument a lot. “All right,” he muttered. He wasn’t all that attached to his room, anyway.

Later, with all their things carted into the suite and generally distributed between the three rooms, Sylvia declared that, now that they had a kitchen, she was going to do some real shopping.

“Stay in the suite,” she ordered Arundel, after having taken a close look at his eyes. “I shouldn’t be more than hour; if I’m longer than that, you may come looking for me.”

He mumbled something uncomfortable, and waited until she left to flop face-first onto the couch. “Shit.”

Porter flopped down in the armchair. “It could be worse?” he offered. “I mean, you have wings.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty awesome,” he admitted, twisting to look at the feathers, which coordinated with his hair nicely. “But … Sylvia.”

“Well, you said yes?” Porter pointed out, mostly to avoid the stab of guilt he felt. “I’m sorry about the doorway thing, man.”

“The porthole? I figured that was you. Though the rest was a bit of a surprise.”

“She promised she’d be good to you.” For some definition of “good,” he supposed. “Why did you say yes?”

“I wasn’t paying attention!” he shouted, and then put both hands over his head. “Ow. It’s like she planned this all out. And that’s impossible.”

“Well, think about what she said about psychics?” He wasn’t sure that was right, but it was an option. “Maybe she really did plan it out.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/242420.html. You can comment here or there.

Family Legacy

Jan22

For cluudle‘s prompt

Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ

This story requires, I think, some background to really understand.

Her father was scolding Falk again.

Regine could hear every word through the library wall. If she moved to the other side of the library, she wouldn’t have to hear them anymore, and would be able to focus on her studies. She was fascinated with this book, with the whole series of them her father had found and brought for her and Falk, one at a time, plying them with scholarly works the way some girls’ parents brought them toys or clothing.

“Haven’t I given you everything?” their father was demanding, in the quiet way that was so much more real, more intense, than the yelling she’d heard other men do. Her father never yelled. “I have provided you every advantage, Falk. Everything.”

Falk’s answer was almost swallowed. If their father was calm and soft-spoken, Falk was nearly inaudible on a good day. “You’ve given me everything to start, Father. And I am very grateful for that.”

“If you’re grateful, then why would you have done this? Why would you have besmirched my legacy this way?” Their father wasn’t shouting. He would never shout. But his voice was getting a bit more enthusiastic.

“I didn’t do this on purpose. Believe me, it was my sincere wish to Change properly. I don’t know what happened, Father. I didn’t do this to spite you. I didn’t do this at all.”

“My blood is pure-blooded Grigori. My line can be counted all the way back to the Greeks. To the Gods themselves. This must have been another of your experimental ideas.” Their father made “experimental” sound like a perversion. “You will fix this mockery, or you will leave.”

“Father…”

Regine looked down at the book in her hands, and moved to the other side of the library.

Regine and her father Changed as full-blooded Grigori; her half-brother, Falk, did not. At that time, the early 1700’s, the wheres and whyfores of pure-blooded or half-blooded were not understood. The genetics of the Ellehemaei are still not all that well understood.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/241305.html. You can comment here or there.

Scrounging for History, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@Inventrix)

Jan22

For The [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt

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

“I don’t know what we’re looking for,” Amalie complained, as they made their way over the rocky terrain. They’d left the wagons, with the rest of the company, on the last smooth place they’d found, the old road still standing, the encroached trees making it a deep, dark tunnel.

“Same thing as always,” Dor answered, as he always did. “Food. Livestock someone let wander. Plants we can eat. A lot of this area was settled and then abandoned, when the bandits moved in. Come on, Ama, you know this.”

“But why is it always us?”

“Okay,” Karida inserted tiredly, “that’s just a stupid question. Amalie, if you can’t come up with a new song, work on the tune to this one. It’s gone flat.” Turned to look at her cousins, she missed seeing the low outcropping until her shins barked against it. “Blasted returned gods!” She kicked the rock again angrily, then looked at it. Not rock, but a wall. “Like Dor was saying, settlements, see? Here’s a foundation.”

“That doens’t look like anything I’ve seen before.” Dor crouched down next to her feet, studying the remnant of a wall, tracing the lines with his fingers. “Is there anyone else around, Ama?”

With a swallowed grumble, their youngest cousin whispered the Working that would tell her if they were being observed. “Far away,” she answered after a moment. “Over that way,” she gestured out in front of them. “Ten, fifteen minutes’ walking, maybe longer. They’re faint. Maybe three of them, maybe five.”

“Should be safe.” He traced the wall while Karida walked along it, seeking a corner. She could hear him, as she found a stairway, murmuring “Idu eperu… hunh. This is some sort of formed rock, like the roads.”

Turning the corner brought Karida around the tall stand of trees that had grown up inside the foundation. She caught her breath, looking at the crumbled buildings, the trees and vines taking over, and, in the distance, the monoliths still standing. “It’s a lot more than that,” she murmured. “We’re going to need the whole company for this one.”

Next is: Digging through History (LJ)

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