Tag Archive | giraffecall: result
Fallen
For Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned prompt. Written in the fae apoc ‘verse, at the time of the apoc.
The Faerie Apoc Landing page is here (and on LJ)
Content warning: gore and implied implications.
As her people counted things, Alionda was rather young. She had seen her first century only a few years before the gates back into the human world opened up, and it was only through an accident that she managed to get through at all, much less as quickly as she did.
She had, however, fallen through one of the secondary gates that had opened when the rebels wrenched open the main doors – quite literally fallen, as this gate was several hundred feet above the ground.
The Ellehemaei body can survive many things that a human can not, but it still suffers from impact injuries, and the Word Tlacatl was not one Alionda the Water-Singer had much skill with. She lay there, at the bottom of a strange hole lined in grey rock, for several days, hungry, her lungs punctured, her body broken, unable to speak enough to form the Words to help heal herself, unable to do much more than hold herself together. She lay there, each breath agony, for an eternity, while around her the city moved and people shouted and clamored and somehow never saw her. If there was a hell, she had found it, below her heaven of Ellehem.
“What have we here? Lovely… and still alive.” Her eyes had flown open at the sound of a voice – a human voice, she was fairly certain. He looked human. He looked handsome. And he was smiling at her. “Are you an angel from the sky, or a demon?” He scooped her into his arms without seeming effort. “I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/185880.html. You can comment here or there.
W-T-F, a story of #Addergoole, for the Giraffe Call
To ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lilfluff‘s commissioned prompt – a bit more of Uh-Oh (Lj) and Oh, Shit (LJ).
Raylan is the brother of a character in Addergoole.
The strange woman muttered a few more words under her breath and, like a stage magician’s trick, pulled her hands apart, revealing long strips of cloth. “Listen,” she murmured quietly. “Hold still and this won’t hurt. You have my word on that.”
She did someone else with her hands, making Ray’s ears pop. “You can talk, as long as you keep it quiet.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, not trying all that hard to be quiet.
“I’m wrapping you up so you have a harder time wriggling, what does it look like?” Indeed, she’d grabbed his ankles and started wrapping the cloth around him over his pants, twisting it firmly.
“Okay, I get that, but I mean, with me. Aside from the floating me in the air thing, which is, by the way, terrifying.”
“I thought that would be patently obvious. I’m kidnapping you.”
“Okay, okay.” He kicked his bound ankles in frustration. “Why? I mean, you said I wasn’t what you were looking for, but I’d do. Who were you looking for? Maybe I can help you? I know this neighborhood pretty well.”
“Well, I suppose it’s possible you know. There’s a young man who lives in this neighborhood. He was about five foot tall the last time I saw him, but that was several years ago; he’s probably grown. Blonde hair. Blue eyes, very blue eyes. Prone to broad shoulders and a nose that is going to make him look like a thug.”
“Curry?” he blinked at her. “You’re looking for Curry?” How could someone go looking for that lump of meat and think he’d do instead?
“Curry, ah yes, that would be his name. You know where he lives?” She’d gotten to his hips by now, wrapping with impersonal efficiency.
“I – yeah. Right down the street.” He turned to point, only to see his father running towards him. “Dad! DAD!” he shouted.
“Raylan! Ray…. Twyla?”
Dad knew this nutcase? “Dad?”
“Dave…?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/185834.html. You can comment here or there.
In Flight, a story of Dragons Next Door for the Dragon Call
This is to lilfluff‘s prompt in the last Dragon Call.
It comes after/during Parent-Teacher Conference (LJ)
“Are you holding on?” Jimmy called back over a shoulder.
“Yes!” Juniper giggled. The wind was whipping past them, so she’d tucked her braid into the back of her shirt, but now she was back to holding on to the handlebar with both hands. The school below looked very small. Even Jin looked small – and Miryam and her friends looked tiny.
“I didn’t know that there were saddles for dragons,” she yelled happily. “I didn’t think people could ride… people.”
“Don’t be silly.” His ear-crests did a funny ripple that they did when dragons were happy. “You ride centaurs, don’t you?”
“I have… but centaurs are half-horse. You’re not half-anything.”
“You’ve ridden on your brother’s shoulders, haven’t you? This is the same thing!”
“Jin doesn’t have a saddle!”
“Jin can’t fly.” The ripple was longer this time, like a laugh. “Are you holding on really, really tight?”
“Real-ll-ll-ly tight,” she assured him, and clutched a little bit more firmly.
“Good! Here we go!” He ducked his head down, and then further down, to the left, his right shoulder rising up, bringing Juniper with it. She had time to start a whooping roller-coaster scream before he went all the way upside down, the straps of the harness pushing against her, holding her on, while she whooped and hollered, and then he was back upright again, his ear-crests open fully. “You liked that?”
“I loved it!” She leaned forward, hugging his neck even as the handle-bar dug into her stomach. “You and Jin are the best big brothers ever!”
She was pretty sure the way his crests wiggled like that was a good thing.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/184835.html. You can comment here or there.
Oh, Shit, a story of #Addergoole, for the Giraffe Call
To lilfluff‘s commissioned prompt – a bit more of Uh-Oh ().
Raylan is the brother of a character in Addergoole.
“None of that,” she smiled. “Stay quiet, and this won’t hurt much.”
Raylan stared at the crazy woman for a moment. Was she kidding? Was she just really insane? Batshit crazy, Dad would say, when he thought Ray wasn’t listening. Often about Mom, who Ray had never met. “Fuck that,” he muttered, and then, louder, as loud as he could, “fuck that! Fuck you! Help! Help! FIRE!” He struggled, even though he was floating in mid-air and wasn’t sure what good it would do, flailing with all four limbs, kicking and punching and shouting as loudly as he could.
He mostly had his eyes scrunched up, but when he peeked, the woman looked more than a little bit affronted. Good! He kicked again, and shouted, a little louder, “FIRE!!” as his foot actually connected with her shin, and then with her knee. “Damnit, someone!”
She muttered something else under her breath, and suddenly, he couldn’t hear his own voice. He kept shouting, trying not to panic, but it was hard when he was floating, either voiceless or deaf, in mid-air. He kicked harder, instead, connecting with her hip this time.
“That’s enough of that,” she snapped, reassuring him that he hadn’t lost his hearing. He kicked all the harder, until she backed away from him prudently. “Now,” she glared at him. “I did say something about it not hurting much, didn’t I?”
Raylan fell still, looking at her face. He hoped someone had heard him. He hoped they were coming soon.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/184764.html. You can comment here or there.
Safe
For ![[profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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)
Addergoole has a landing page here and on LJ
Jaelie looked at her new possession, back at her employer, and over to her child, before going through that cycle a second time, this time smiling. “All right,” she told her new Kept, “you heard the man. Viatrix?”
“Already on it.” Indeed, she was nearly to Baram already. “Shaina,” she called out to her oldest daughter, “get those kids inside. All of them, no arguments. Alkyone, can you help Jaelie and her new pet with the walls?”
“Got it,” Aly nodded. “Jae, I’ll get the back. Take a minute, get him up to speed before he puts a spear in one of us, all right? Make him safe.”
“On it.” She pointed at a bench, one she’d made herself, that would now need hours of repair from a stray axe swing. “You. Sit.”
He sat. He didn’t have any choice, but his expression suggested he was still affronted and surprised.
“I’d get used to it, if I were you,” she advised, amused. “You attacked us. You yielded, so you get to live. Doesn’t mean that we’re gonna follow Roberts Rules of Order or the Geneva Convention… you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“I understand the gist of it,” he answered primly. “We have been living here – ah, well, I have been living here; they had been, but they’re dead now – that is, in this country, in this world, for several months. Long enough to learn the language.”
“Good for you,” she sneered. “At least you’d learned enough to say ‘I yield.’”
“It seems to have turned out to be helpful,” he answered, looking a little ashamed. “But I do not know how it is you treat your prisoners here.”
“Well,” she pointed out, “you’re going to find out. And you’re not exactly a prisoner, now are you?”
“No? Err, that is, no.” He blinked. “No, sa’Briar Rose, I am not.” He bent his head in a show of submission.
“Very good. Now. Do not attempt to cause harm to me, the other adults of this family – Alkyone, Viatrix, or our employer, Baram. Do not attempt to cause harm to any child within our property, or to the children of the four adults of this family, ever. The property, for the purposes of your orders, is bordered by the stone wall, where its foundation stands right now, on three sides, the border finished by the line of hawthorn trees in the back. Do not leave said property without the permission of one of the adults here, henceforth defined as Alkyone, Viatrix, Baram, or myself. Do not…” She continued, watching his expression sink into defeat. When she had covered all the basics, she stopped; her throat was getting hoarse. “You can call me Jaelie when the children or others not of this family are around. When it is just the adults, you will call me mistress, or sa’Briar Rose.”
She smiled at him, although she knew it did not look friendly. “You can stand up now.”
He did so, smoothing his ripped and bloody pants. “Those orders were, ah, very thorough,” he coughed, clearly checking his mind to be certain even that complaint was acceptable. Jaelie smirked fiercely at him, and he continued. “Mistress. I was under the impression that you ladies were, mmm, young, due to your speech patterns, despite your fierce and very effective combat techniques.”
“We’re all under fifty,” she agreed. “We just had a very… thorough… education. And we believe in keeping our families safe.”
“I would love to see this school.”
“I’m sure the Director would love to get her hands on you, too. If you’re very good – or very bad – I may take you to meet her.”
“Oh. Good?” he asked weakly.
“Perhaps. Come on inside. You’ll be sleeping in my room. Be nice to my kids.”
“Ah, which of them are your kids?”
“Gerulf and Vondra. They’re the ones with green eyes, if it helps.”
“Green eyes. Right.” He looked so very lost. Jaelie patted his shoulder sympathetically.
“It’s not going to be that bad. We might be half-breed kids, but we know what monsters are, and we aren’t them.” No matter what their employer was billed as.
“Thank you,” he answered. “Ah… did you mention that one of the ‘adults’ here could heal… mistress?”
“Yes.” She patted his shoulder again. “Let’s take care of that before you fall over, pet.”
“Thank you, mistress,” he mumbled.
“I don’t have that much left for him,” Viatrix told them, “but I’ll keep him from falling over for now and take care of the rest of it tomorrow. Bossman was pretty badly ripped up.”
“I saw.” She frowned unhappily. “Did you get him to lay down and rest?”
“Only through threats and bribery.”
“Ah.” She winced on Via’s behalf. “If you need some help with that…?”
“You and Aly take care of the kids – and you’ve got this one to deal with.” She poked their new Kept in the ribs. “Right, you, what’s your Name?”
“Ah.” He squirmed uncomfortably, until Via poked him again. “Sorry. My name is Aloysius, oro’Briar Rose, clearly. I was Named the Pear.”
“Fruit or torture device?”
“You’re all very well-learned for… ah, yes. Both.”
“You might want to think on the merits of a new Name.”
He coughed again. “Well. I suppose, at the moment, that’s up to sa’Briar Rose.”
“Mmn. We’ll worry about that in the morning. I’m going to check on the kids. When Viatrix is done healing you, go into the kitchen and wait for me there. If you know how to do dishes without making a mess, it’s officially now your turn.”
“Yes, mistress.” Looking more than a little overwhelmed, he sat and allowed Via to heal him.
Jaelie headed into the living room, where Alkyone had herded the kids. All the kids. “Is it me?” she asked Jaelie. “Or did our child number double?”
“And then some,” she confirmed. “Kids’ friends from school. All right, kidlings, listen up.” She let her voice rise to drill-sergeant level. “I need you to split into two groups for a moment. If your mother lives here, over here,” she pointed to the left of the room. “If your mother does not live here, over here.” She gestured at the left of the room. “Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” called the boy who had told Gerulf that his dad was awesome. Slowly, the kids organized themselves, with a minimum of pushing and shoving.
“Please, ma’am,” one small kid said quietly. “Don’t make us leave. It’s scary out there, with the men with wings and things.”
“Stop making shit- stuff, sorry – stuff up, Xandra,” a bigger boy scoffed.
“I am not making things ups, Thomas Hidlay!”
Jaelie eyed the girl thoughtfully. “All right, all right. Line up for me, children who are not my offspring. Now. I want each of you to call your parents and let them know where you are. You first, loudmouth.”
“Hey, you can’t…!” another kid complained. “That’s mean.”
“Calling him loudmouth? Of course I can.”
“It’s not nice, though!”
“Well, is he nice?”
“No!” several other kids chimed in, but it was Vondra who protested quietly.
“Mom, he’s my friend.”
“All right, then, my apologies, Thomas. But please do call your parents.” She snuggled Vondra while Thomas made the phone call, mostly out of apology, partially because her babies were okay. She watched the kids on the phone, hiding here because here was safe, and held her own daughter even more tightly. She’d made the right decision, bringing them here. She’d made the right decision, picking a good monster to protect them.
And learning to protect them herself, of course. She glanced at the room where Baram slept, and smiled faintly. They were safe here. Other people’s babies might have to rely on them, too, but that was okay.
One by one, the kids called home. Some of their parents answered, and told them “stay put. Stay put and we’ll come get you.” Jaelie talked to the ones who wanted to talk to her, assuring them their kids were safe, safe, sound, and would be fed and cared for until they could get there. She’d take care of them.
The ones whose mother didn’t answer, whose father didn’t answer, she hugged, and told them the same thing. And “We’ll try again in the morning.”
Because there would be a morning. She looked out the front door one last time, and murmured a Working to the grass to eat what was left of their attackers. They would not have another morning, the interlopers, and Jaelie and her family would. And that was as it should be.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/184507.html. You can comment here or there.
Creeped Right Out
From rix_scaedu‘s commissioned prompt.
A continuation of Creeped, originally posted here and on LJ
Faerie Apoc, Addergoole Year 9 – landing page here (or on LJ)
Ceinwen scrambled for a handhold, anything to grab onto, her fingers finding nothing but water and more water, her feet finding nothing at all, even though she’d been on solid ground just a second ago. A pond. A sinkhole? This was ridiculous. She scrambled some more, flailing and trying to keep her head above water. She couldn’t see anything except the water and, what looked like a long way away, the hall. She couldn’t see the man like a tree at all, even though, even now, she wasn’t sure she wanted his help.
A strong hand, nothing like branches at all, grabbed her wrist and pulled her out. She flailed, trying to get her other hand around the wrist, managing just as she felt as if her arm would pop out of its socket. Thus hanging from a very strong-feeling wrist, dripping, over the impossible endless pool, she looked around.
She knew the guy holding her. Unlike everyone else around here today, he still looked human, normal, for a certain definition of normal; Thorburn was a big guy, especially for someone still in school, tall and broad-shouldered. In a school with sports teams, he’d probably have been a football player. Right now, he, dressed in a long-sleeved button down rolled up past his elbows, appeared to be playing fisher, with her as the fish.
“Easy, easy,” he murmured, pulling her to solid ground and setting her down next to him. Paying no attention to how wet she was, he held her against him, his hand settling across her lower back. “The halls aren’t safe during Hell Night.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” she panted. The guy with the pine needles was coming closer, walking around what looked like a very small sinkhole. Just small enough to nearly drown her.
“She looks tasty, Thorburn. Let us have a nibble?”
“Come on, Curry, you’re a herbivore. You’re not gonna chew on the girl.” Nevertheless, he was holding her tighter.
“I never said I’d eat her, but I might like a bite. She looks tender…”
“I’m not dinner,” she protested angrily, glaring at the guy… tree… thing.
“You’re already marinated and everything,” he leered. “Good thinking, wearing white.”
“Oh… Oh!” She clutched her arms over her chest, blushing, backing against Thorburn’s safe, human warmth.
“She does look good enough to eat.” And this was another voice altogether, gravelly, rocky… yes. She glanced up to see another big guy, and didn’t this school have any nice, skinny, small guys? She’d seen them, in her classes; they couldn’t have all Changed into monsters. She shrank further into Thorburn’s big-but-human strength as a walking statue, rough-cut of some black stone, thumped towards them. “Come on, Thorburn, cut us a piece.”
“No.” His voice was so very loud, this close to his chest. “No. Ceinwen is mine.”
“I’m what?” She twisted to look up at him; he was looking down at her very solemnly, very seriously. “Um… Ceinwen is Ceinwen’s.” Ug smash. Barbarian take girl. No thank you.
“You heard the girl,” the tree-man urged. Was that really Curry? He hadn’t seemed that nasty before. She stepped carefully away from Thorburn – the water was still right behind her – and glanced at the other men. Creatures. Maybe their nastiness was just hidden along with their weirdness.
“Yeah,” the stone guy agreed. “You heard her. If ‘Ceinwen is Ceinwen’s,’“ he quoted with a sneer, “then Ceinwen is fair game.”
“Fair game,” Curry echoed. “Come here, pretty girl. I wanna show you my cones. Then Basalt can show you his stones.” He giggles as if the horrible rhyming pun was the cleverest thing he’d ever said. Maybe it was.
“Um, no.” She stepped back towards Thorburn, just a little. “Not interested. Not big into the landscape features thing, sorry.”
Thorburn pulled her close again. “She’s mine, guys,” he repeated. More softly, he murmured to her, “It’ll make them go away. They’ll leave you alone if you’re mine.”
Basalt laughed loudly. “She doesn’t want to be yours, big guy. She wants us. She wants a real hard man.”
“A real guy,” Curry echoed, “not some cy-” the second man’s hand hit him hard across the jaw. “Ow, goddamnit! A real man. Send her over this way, big guy.”
Basalt glared at his friend for a moment, then turned back to Ceinwen, leering, beginning to come closer. “You’d have fun with us, pretty girl. And when we were done with you, well, there’s plenty of creeps wandering the halls. Plenty of guys who’ll want to have fun with you.”
“And some of the girls,” Curry leered, moving closer and closer, reaching out for her with an arm that seemed to grow.
“Leave her alone,” Thornburn rumbled. His hands were heavy on her shoulders. “I’ll take care of you, Ceinwen. Protect you from these creeps. From all the creeps.”
She turned to look at him, putting more distance between herself and the encroaching monsters. “Yeah?” she asked nervously. “You won’t let them touch me?”
He stepped forward, not sheltering her, but putting himself between her and them. “You’re mine,” he murmured. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“Aaw, don’t do that,” Curry whined. He was just a pine-needle away from her now; she backed up, scrabbling away from him, and found herself between Basalt and the water. Her foot slipped, and Basalt and Thorburn both grabbed for her.
Pulled between their two arms, she swung, scrabbling, over the pit. “Come on, pretty girl,” Basalt leered through a face like a landslide. “Come play with us.”
“She’s mine,” Thorburn yelled. “Let her go, Basalt.”
“I don’t hear her saying that.” Basalt tugged a bit, pulling her arms wide apart. Ceinwen bit back a whimper. “Come on, Thorburn, let go. Let us have our fun. You can have her when we’re done.” He licked his lips, even his tongue black and rocky. “Unless someone else outbids us.”
She lost control of the whimper, and it slipped out of her lips. “You’ll really protect me from them?” she asked, in a tiny voice. This was the twenty-first century; she wasn’t supposed to need a freaking chaperone. “I mean, I should be fine after today, but I’m… ow… sort of stuck.” She bit her lip, humiliated.
“I’ll protect you from all the creeps,” he assure her. “You’re mine.”
“I’m… ew. Ug Tarzan, me Jane.”
“You can swing from my vine,” Curry sniggered.
“Nothing like that,” Thorburn assured her. “Just… you know, think of it like an upperclassmen taking care of a younger student. Sort of a big-brothers little-sisters program.”
“Yeah, I’ll.. nevermind.”
“It’s not brotherly you’re looking for,” Basalt laughed. “But we sure as hell aren’t looking for a sister sort, either.”
Ceinwen, her arms beginning to go numb, looked between the two of them. “Thorburn,” she gasped, feeling his grip on her slip and fail. “I’m yours!”
Basalt swung her into his arms with impressive strength and surprising gentleness, her feet barely touching the water. Just as gently, he passed her over to Thorburn. “All yours, bro.”
Thorburn gathered her into his arms. “Now,” he murmured, “let’s you and me go have a talk.”
“I’d really like to eat first,” she protested. “I appreciate the rescue and everything, but breakfast…?”
He smiled gently, but it seemed to have an edge to it. “Shh,” he warned her, and put a finger over her lips. “we’ll talk, and then you can have lunch. But there’s some things you need to understand first.”
“…” It looked like she really did. Her mouth wouldn’t open; sound wouldn’t come out. She struggled upwards in his grasp, staring at him, gesturing angrily: what the hell?
He patted her arm. “Calm down and stay still until we’re in my room. You’ve said you’re mine. Now I have to explain to you what that means, and what it will entail.”
She calmed down, her lips still pressed together, and settled in his arms, still. Her mind was running in little circles, but they refused to be even all that upset of little circles. He had told her what to do, and she had done it. There hadn’t been any choice involved. There hadn’t been any… anything involved. She was… his? What the hell did that mean?
Two of the older students had been having a talk the other day, just them and her in the beginning of a class. The words “be careful what you say” had come up no less than four times. At the time, Ceinwen had thought it odd. Now, she wondered if it had been a warning.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/180816.html. You can comment here or there.
Linkback Incentive Story
This is my linkback incentive story for the November Giraffe Call (Dreamwidth.
The first part of the story was originally posted here (DW); I am continuing it with an additional 50 words for every linkback to the Call or the stories from the call.
The city lay in ruins. Nila didn’t know when, if ever, Michael was coming home. Power had gone out a week ago, and the looters had come through the neighborhood like locusts. She’d held them off when she could, hid with the children when she knew she couldn’t, but it was time to leave.
She settled Susan in her Kevlar sling and from there into her car seat, and made sure Allan’s backpack was balanced and light enough, taking the far heavier pack for herself. She checked all of her weapons and both of Allan’s, stared for a while at the note to Michael, and led her children out of their home.
The highways were buckled and bent, twisted like a ribbon in ways that would be unbelievable, if you didn’t know that god-monsters walked the earth now. Nila took the back roads near there, keeping an eye on the gas gauge. If she’d planned this right – yes. The car ran out of gas just as they reached the edge of the worst devastation, past the mobs and the crazy people, past the banks of less fuel-efficient cars and the toll-takers.
She settled Susan on her back and held Allan’s hand with her left, and sited a path south. South, she’d heard, the devastation was less complete. South, the winter would be warmer and more survivable.
She focused on the path in front of her, on her children, and tried to ignore the ruins around them that had been home.
~
They had been walking now for three days. They had to take it slow; Allan was sturdy for his age, but he still tired easily, and Nila couldn’t carry him, not and Susan, too. The kids were taking it like champs, but she could tell, as the sun began to inch downwards, that it was time to stop.
She was focused on the children, ignoring her training in a way that would have horrified her former Mentor, ignoring the surroundings, when they rounded a bend in the long country road and found it blocked.
There was a long awkward moment when she stared at the man-creature and he stared back at them. “Creature” because he was clearly not entirely human, “man,” because the part of him that was looked like a boy in his mid-twenties. “Awkward…” because the thing was clearly trying to decide if they were a threat. Them, a twenty-two year old girl and her two young children. She took a long look over him, cataloguing his injuries, noting that he wasn’t Masking the things that marked him as inhuman – or perhaps no longer had the energy to?
His doglike ears canted in her direction, and she dropped her own Mask, letting him see the flower-like patterns that swirled across her skin, and the blue “petals” of her ears. “We just want to pass,” she told him carefully.
He stepped out of the way awkwardly. “I won’t stop you.” From the way he was swaying, he couldn’t if he wanted to.
Nila sighed, and set her pack down. “Swear you mean me and mine no harm.”
The man-creature stared at her. This clearly wasn’t what he’d intended, and she could tell he was looking for the trap. With some people, it would be a bear trap, quick to snap shut. Nila’s ways were – if not gentler, at least a little bit slower. This would bite him – not that he’d notice, at least.
He seemed to be reading her body language . She, for her part, was too worn for dissimilitude. What he saw – a tired girl, concerned about her children and worried about the potential threat in the road – was all her.
He nodded, reluctantly but, she thought, seeming no other choice. “I swear that I will do no harm to you or to your children,” he gestured at Allan and Susan, who were being very good and very quiet.
It was more than she’d asked for. Nila nodded brusquely. “Shirt off. Sit down.”
“What?”
“Take your shirt off,” Allan helped. “And sit down. Mom’s in business mode.”
Nila smiled appreciatively at her son, as the stranger sat down uncertainly, trying to pull off his shirt while watching her the whole time. “I notice you didn’t promise.”
“I’m a young mother with two small children. What can I do?” she asked innocently.
He coughed. “You’re an Ellehemaei. They’re baby Ellehemaei. And I’m out of power.”
“Well, then, you’d better just relax and trust me, oughtn’t you?” She smiled sweetly at him. “Allan, here, take your sister. Watch protocol.”
“Check.” Her son sat down with his back to a tree, watching the road in both directions, cuddling his baby sister.
“That’s my boy.” With a proud smile, Nila sank into lotus and began chanting a healing over the man.
After his first startled gasp, she looked up at him, smirking. “Name?”
Despite the good faith shown in the initial healing, he hesitated now.
She tch’d impatiently at him, and touched the part of him he was still Masking – the injuries he’d hidden under a glamour, to look less wounded, or to protect her children’s theoretical tender sensibilities. “I either need to see this, or to have your Name, to do this properly.”
Still, he hesitated. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“What are you, seven?” The setting sun and her own impatience made her short. “I will not laugh at your Name. I can’t Work a healing while laughing.”
“You don’t want to promise anything at all, do you?” he grumbled.
“Nope,” she agreed.
The man sighed, those dog-like ears going flat. “I’m Tros, Named Ganymede.”
“Thank you, Tros.” There wasn’t time to giggle. She dove back into her Working, pulling out only when she was certain he wouldn’t fall over in the next day. “You were pretty badly damaged.”
“Nedetakaei and returned gods. It was a nasty fight.”
“It must have been. But you walked away from it.” She left the question unspoken.
“They didn’t. But there were four of them, and six of us, and as far as I know, now there’s just me.”
“Aah.” She studied him for a moment. “I’m sorry for your loss.” They’d all lost someone.
“Everyone loses people in battle.” His ears canted unhappily; she took the cue and dropped it.
“I’ve healed you well enough to get away from here. I’ll heal you fully – for a price.”
He watched her uncertainly, as he tested out her repair job. “What’s your price?”
“Swear to help me watch and protect my kids and my own back for the next-” she did quick logistics in her head – “twelve days, and I will heal you and help feed you for that long.”
“Seven days,” he bargained.
“Ten,” she countered. “Starting at sunrise.”
“You have a deal.”
“Your oath?”
He nodded slowly, not entirely willingly. “If you promise to heal me completely, and to keep me healed and help feed me for the next ten days, beginning now but counting from sunrise tomorrow, I will watch your back and help you protect you and your children.”
She smiled crookedly at him. “I knew you were one of the good guys. I promise to heal you as completely as my ability allows, and to keep you healed and fed for the next ten days, beginning now but counting from sunrise tomorrow.”
The air settled around them with a pop.
Tros nodded, a little uncertainly, his ears twitching at the feel of the oath. “The sun’s going down,” he pointed out. “Do you have shelter for the night?”
“Girl scout, always prepared. Is there a good spot around here?”
“Just off the road, there’s a decent overhang out of sight.” He pointed. “Be a bit hard for the kids to get down it, but I can carry your son if you carry your daughter.”
Allan bristled. “I can manage a hill!”
“Calm down, little man,” Nila murmured. “Let the man help.” Her son subsided unwillingly, and Nila turned back to their new companion. “All right, show us.”
He was still limping, she noted; how bad was the rest of the damage? Not for the first time, she wished for more strength in the diagnostic Words. But he picked up Allan with no apparent strain, and gestured down the steep cliff.
“All right, kid, just hold on tight, kay?”
“I know how to do this,” Allan complained.
“Your kids do basic training on the weekend?” Tros was studying Nila with amusement as he started descending.
“Watch your footing,” she muttered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
They made it to the bottom in silence, Tros still watching Nila uncertainly. “You seem like you planned for this.”
She shrugged, and pulled out the pop-out tent from her backpack.
“That’s… a little small.”
“Well, it packs better that way.” She muttered a complex working around the miniature tent, and it expanded into a shelter suitable to fit the four of them, albeit tightly.
“You… really are prepared.” He looked at his feet, abashed. “I was lucky to get out with a weapon and the clothes on my back.”
She patted said back, shooing him into the tent. “It’s all right,” she assured him. “I’m prepared enough for all of us.”
~fin~
Next: A New Flower
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What to do about Auntie X, a story of the Aunt Verse for the Giraffe Call
For Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt.
This is in the Aunt Family setting, which has a landing page now here (and on LJ).
Beryl is one of Evangaline’s nieces.
“But Mom…”
“Don’t argue. You know it’s your Aunt Beatrix’s turn to host Thanksgiving, and you know we can’t very well not show up only on her years.”
“But Moooom,” Beryl’s younger sister Amy picked up the complaint, “it smells funny there.”
“It’s the cats,” their older sister Chalcedony added. “Mom, come on. Someone needs to tell Beatrix that her house smells like cat pee.”
“Well,” their mother pursed her lips, “we do have a new Aunt in the family. Perhaps we can convince her to do the honors.”
Beryl faltered. “Now that’s just mean. Maybe we could call that TV show?”
“The last thing we want is some tv cameras in a Family house. Who knows what they’d find? Beatrix never had any kids, after all.”
“They’d find cats,” Chalce answered succinctly. “And who knows? She could have a kid in there somewhere, and nobody would be able to tell.”
“All right, you girls are just being silly. Sit next to someone with a cold for a couple days before the holiday, and I’ll let you have the Monday after the holiday home sick.”
“You know…” Their brother rarely spoke up. Men in the Family tended not to, after a while. Beryl had heard her father refer to them as the silent minority; personaly, she thought they stayed quiet mostly out of self-defense. Now, they all looked at Stone. Waiting. Stunned. He coughed. “Forget TV. The five of us could manage an intervention on our own.”
“An…”
“Five…”
“Seriously?”
“Awesome! Mom…!”
Their mother shook her head slowly. “An intervention. Well. It would make Thanksgiving awkward…”
“But it would make it smell so much better!”
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Encountering Dad, a story of Rin & Girey for the Giraffe Call
This is in the Reiassan Setting, which has a landing page here (and on LJ). It comes after everything else I’ve written in timeline for Rin & Girey, and directly after/during Mother Knows… ()
“I need to visit my parents,” Rin-Arinya-Arinyanca had declared. They had only been in the palace complex for a few days, but Girey had already learned that, much as when they were on the road, “I am going somewhere” quickly became “we are going somewhere.”
In this case, it was, at least, reasonable. They were attending Elenerja’s wedding that afternoon, already dressed for it in Callanthe finery. This was, in theory, just a brief stop.
Nothing these people did was brief, any more than anything they touched was dull-colored. They could turn dinner into a three-hour affair with the slightest provocation. The wedding was supposed to last from sundown until sun-up, with a week-long celebration afterwards. He’d asked “how do you people ever get anything done?” only to receive a cryptic “we’re very efficient” as an answer.
He followed her into her parents’ suite with more than a little trepidation. So far, people had been either nice or politely chilly, but those were family members, cousins, aunts, uncles. This was her parents. The parents of the woman whose captive he was. It was…
“Oh, you must be Arinya’s Bitrani captive.” A big hand clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve got an ancient Bitrani artifact I want to ask you about.”
“Uh… sure, sir.” He glanced at the hand – not all that big, by Bitrani standards, but for Callanthe the man was a giant – and then at the man, who was as tall as Girey was, green-eyed, and smiling fiercely. He collected himself, with a stern mental reminder that he was a prince, not a yokel, and ought to act like it, and stood up straight. “Where to?”
“Right here, into my study.” He steered Girey firmly through the door, then shut it with a solid thud behind them. Wood doors, Girey noted, and heavy – they might have far too many heirs, but they certainly lived like royalty.
“There,” the man smiled. This room was paneled in stone, with drawers, boxes, and shelves filling every spot. “I do have an ancient Bitrani artifact – it’s a scroll – though I know you’re a soldier and not a scholar. But Irri and Rinnie are going to go off about things that, frankly, bore me and likely bore you too. So I thought I’d get you out of there.”
“…Thanks?”
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