Tag Archive | giraffecall: result

Rude Roommates – Stranded World/Autumn – Giraffe Call for Prompts

Oct15

For Wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt.

Stranded World and Autumn, though I don’t know just when. Stranded has a landing page – here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 7

“No, I don’t mean walking through a ghost will give you a chill, or take ten years off your life, or any of that sort of nonsense. I mean it’s rude.” Autumn pursed her lips at the difficult man who was, of all things, arguing with her about the paranormal while trying to haggle her down on a particularly complex original piece of art. A charmed piece, at that, which suggested to her that he knew more than he was saying about both the art and the paranormal.

“Rude?” He raised an eyebrow in what had to be a studied expression of disdain. “You’re talking about being rude to the dead?”

And now she had him. She smirked at him, and set aside the artwork, which would find its proper home in due time. “Well, sir, that’s a common thread throughout many cultures, isn’t it? It’s certainly considered rude to ‘speak ill of the dead,’ for one; it’s considered proper to honor a dying person’s wishes, and we pay homage to the dead in their cemeteries, do we not?”

He could tell he’d been out-maneuvered, but he was certainly going somewhere with this.

“Well, if it’s rude to walk through them, then we’re talking about dealing with them like they’re people, right? Then isn’t it rude of them to stick around a house they no longer own?”

The dead care nothing for deeds and titles would be the easy answer, but it was not, for all its ease, honest. Autumn’s frown came back, and she could feel it wrinkling her brow. “The dead don’t ‘stick around’ because they want to trespass,” she countered. There was a piece of art for this – and she hadn’t known why she was inking it, but she’d done it, framed it, priced it, and then put it on a shelf under her workbench. She pulled it out, now, the twist of the Ways suggested with the way the trees and the house closed together. “I think you’d like this piece better than the one we were discussing,” she continued, in apparent non sequitur. “And if you wish to continue discussing spectral roommates, perhaps the nice coffee place down the road, after the festival closes?”

“Moon-beans? Certainly. Nine tonight, then?” He didn’t balk at the too-high price on the smaller piece of art, passing her his credit card without further discussion. Amos Talbot. The name suited him.

“Thank you, sir.” She nodded politely, and wondered if she’d just set up a date or an appointment for an exorcism.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/147945.html. You can comment here or there.

The Grey Line – Unicorn/Factory – for the Giraffe Call

Oct15

For YsabetWordsmith‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory- landing page here (or on LJ)

This happens after Preconceptions.

Commenters: 7

“I’m sorry, that’s an Administrator-level decision.”

“Well, we have an Administrator again, don’t we? Let me talk to him, please?” The woman, pinch-faced and exhausted, looked desperate. Antheri did his best I’m-so-sorry face and shook his head woefully at her over his steepled fingers.

“Administrator Giulian has gone out for a walk, I’m afraid.”

The woman paled, her complexion going ashen and dead-looking. “A walk? Out there?” She gestured with the hand that still worked; the injured arm was clutched over a heavily swollen belly. “Out there? But it will be weeks before they send us a new Administrator.”

“At least,” Antheri agreed. The Under-Administrator was rather proud of himself for this; the paperwork to fill the position of his supervisor took longer and longer each time, as the Higher-Ups did their best to find someone that the rest of the world wanted to get rid of. And the Town wasn’t even all that bad – at least, if you knew how to handle it. “If that’s all…?”

Badly-suppressing sobs of frustration, the woman took her leave. She would give birth to her bastard on the factory floor, like so many others had, and if it was one one of the strange and fae river bastards, well, it would never survive the coriander-laden air of the work floor.

No wonder she wanted to leave. But when they left, seventy-four percent of the time, the women did not return to work; when they gave birth on the floor, they only died forty-three percent of the time, and were permanently incapacitated beyond the ability to work another fifteen-point-five percent of the time. That meant, statistically, it was more reasonable to make them work until childbirth. Training new workers was expensive, time-consuming, and slowed down production.

The Administrators, though, and the Higher-ups rarely saw it that way. There were Policies. There were Regulations. There was Morale to consider, even though, Policies or Rules or Morale or WhatHaveYou, it was still Antheri who heard it when the Almighty Production was down.

Easiest just to never let it get to an Administrator at all.

And how convenient that this one had chosen to go walking so soon. He’d been asking questions, awkward and uncomfortable questions. He’d been letting people take time off in non-peak times. He’d been reading his predecessor’s notes.

And now he was gone down to the river, and Antheri would begin the paperwork for his…

“Under-Administrator! Come here!” Impossible! That bellow! Well, perhaps he’d simply gone mad? Antheri scurried out, doing his best toady impression.

“What is it, sir? Did you enjoy your… sir, what is that?” The Administrator had taken off his coat and wrapped it around something, around a bundle bigger than an infant, but not as large as a small dog. Near the large man’s shoulder, something glittered.

Antheri took a step backwards. Up here, in the offices, the air was not infused with coriander. Up here, they didn’t need it. “Sir, what’s that?” How had he gotten it in his arms? How was he still alive? “Sir, I don’t think…” He was still back-pedalling, but the file cabinet behind him, his precious files, were in his way. “Sir…” The damn man was still walking forward. “They’re poison, you know!” He was babbling now, reaching into the back of the cabinet. “They can kill you with a touch. They can draw out your soul.” Somewhere, somewhere… there! The old revolver had done him well with his third boss. It would serve him well again.

“So I’ve heard.” Why, damn him, WHY didn’t he seem worried?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/147483.html. You can comment here or there.

Memories

Oct15

For Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole – landing page here (or on LJ)

This happens after the storyline of Addergoole; for reference, see this guest story

Commenters: 2

It had never ceased to plague him. His memories of death and dying were picture-perfect, dozens of deaths, at least, some of them in worlds that had made Professor Valerian frown and Professor Pelletier twitch when he described them (which was, of course, half of why he described them). But his memories of what was, in theory, his current life, were either non-existant or fuzzy. Even large parts of his time at Addergoole were a blur.

He worked as a mechanic, because he was good at it, because he didn’t have to remember much from day to day (the skills didn’t go, just the people, and the events), and because it paid well. He paid a couple former Students of his Former Mentor, and one from Valerian, to keep his cave – a house when he’d started and, from the outside, still mostly a house – and his bed warm and comfortable, more than willing to share the money. You helped your cy’ree. He didn’t forget that. You helped your crew, your cy’ree, and your brothers. If he had any of those.

But now the stupid departed gods were coming back, and they were ruining all of that. The world kept moving, changing, and his uncertain memory couldn’t keep up with the changes the interlopers were imposing on the city around him. The clients who kept money in his pocket were fleeing the city, and encouraging him to do the same. Run and hide. Prey ran and hid, and girls. He might hate his memories of death, but Baram did not fear it.

He thumped down the street from the shop – no work today, go home, the boss had said, get your girl and get out of here – to his home, pushing aside overturned cars and, once, because it was in his way, moving a broken bus off a wounded human. He muttered the healing Words at the human so she’d stop screaming; something was wrong. The place where his cave was looked wrong.

A growl started deep in Baram’s throat. The fucking returned gods had gone too far.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/147351.html. You can comment here or there.

Monster

Oct15

For Cluudle‘s prompt.

Faerie Apoc, Addergoole – landing page here (or on LJ)

This happens before the storyline of Addergoole; for reference, see this chapter

Commenters: 2

Badrick died.

He died like he had in his dreams, bloody and violently. They pulled him apart, the mob, and, although the details were different, the pain was the same. The shouting was the same. The blood splattering everywhere, his blood, his entrails, his life.

“Why?” he managed, before the farmer hit him in the throat with the pitchfork. He knew why, deep in his cold heart. Monster, they’d screamed. Monster, beast, demon. Demon, they shouted, as the pitchfork pierced his heart.

That wouldn’t be enough to kill him, not on its own, but they had come prepared. They doused him in oil, pinned him to the crossroads with wooden stakes, his heart still pumping blood out of his body, his lungs still trying to push air. They lit him on fire and then, by some luck, then, as his pants began to burn, he lost consciousness.

~

Robert woke screaming, not for the first time, rolled over and stifled the scream in his pillow before anyone could hear him. He could still feel the fire licking over his skin, although a quick, surreptitious pat-down told him that no, he wasn’t on fire. He wasn’t dying. Not this time, not right now.

He wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep tonight. He slipped on a shirt over his sweats, checked to make sure he hadn’t woken anyone, and headed out for a walk.

The dreams weren’t always the same, but they always ended badly, in blood and fire; they always ended with or near death. And they’d been getting worse. They’d been getting more and more vibrant, lately, seeming to take over even when he was awake.

His ankle twisted, snapped, seemed to stretch out of shape, and he grunted, swallowing another scream. Now even the pain was following him into the waking hours. Was he never going to have a moment of peace, a moment – thought and complaint were cut off by a feeling like his skin splitting, as if everything inside was too big to be contained anymore.

A woman screamed, loud and terrified. “A monster!” Mrs. Colburn, from down the street. She sat behind them in church. “A monster!” she repeated, “a demon from hell! Kill it, KILL IT!”

~

He woke in a field, in pain and stinking of smoke, with no memory of how he’d gotten there, no memory of what it was like to not be in pain… no memory, he realized, at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/147086.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call Story – Ninja Kitty (Tir na Cali catpeople)

Oct15

For ankewehner‘s prompt.

Tir na Cali, catpeople. Cali has a landing page here (or on LJ)

Commenters: 10

“I don’t mean to sneak up on people, I just forget to make a sound sometimes.”

Cob looked at Lea, her ears raked back, her tail limp, everything in her body language saying “I’m cute, please don’t hurt me,” and sighed. This adorable little kitty had been trained in combat since she was old enough to walk. The mods she’d inherited from her parents had given her sharp teeth and sharper claws, and, whether it was nature or nurture that had made her predatory, she had turned out bloodthirsty either way.

“Lea,” he said patiently. “That’s a very good skill to have when you’re in the field.” If she was ever sent into the field. For all the training, he wasn’t sure the Agency would ever use their hybrid cat-people for their ostensible purpose. They looked too cute, even licking blood off their hands, and were too human-cat creepy, even by the standards of pet-shop moddies. They, Cob’s fellow trainer Jac had muttered, were firmly in the Uncanny Valley, and, being there, were too damn freaky to send out into the general population.

Even to their trainers.

“I’m very good at it, too,” she answered sweetly. “Aren’t I? Seen and not heard, right, that’s what Lady Pia said, but I’m not seen, either, am I? Unless I want to be.”

“Aaah. Come here, sweetie. One. I’m sorry about Pia. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about – but don’t quote me on that. Two. Don’t take out your frustration with the higher-ups on me, Miss Kitty.”

She blinked at him, all innocence, but her tail was lashing. “But Cob,” she complained sweetly, “you are my higher up.”

Cob studied the charming teenaged assassin-in-training who was his primary responsibility and realized, perhaps for the first time, just how human the hate in her eyes was.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/146698.html. You can comment here or there.

Love and Lovers, Expanded

Oct12

This story came out of my September Call for Prompts, and was prompted and sponsored by the_vulture. After some discussion, I expanded the original story:

It was easy enough when we were friends. I could lean against him at dinner, and he’d drape his arm over my shoulders, and it was wonderful, this little giddy thrill of being touched. I didn’t have to take it further. I didn’t even really think about taking it further, not then.

I liked him, from the first day we met. I’m not going to deny that. The way his lips looked when he was thinking. The way he talked. The way his brain twisted around problems. His big hands and the way they looked like they’d fit my shoulder perfectly. I was drawn to him, pulled in the way I get. “Moth to a flame,” some people say. My friends call it “sexually attracted to fire.” If he’d been another guy at the gaming group…

…but he was Jay, and it became quickly obvious that he had no interest in me like that. And that, I admit, was even more intriguing (call me arrogant if you want, but I was a non-ugly girl in a gaming club. Men that weren’t interested were generally also unfriendly). Jay was just Jay, like it didn’t occur to him that he should or could or would be interested. Like he was really talking to me, and not to a mobile opportunity for sex.

I didn’t chase after him, but I did go out of my way to talk to him, to make friends with him. “You know what colour my eyes are,” I joked, but the truth was, I just liked being able to talk to him, to be close to him. I liked being talked to, instead of around or past. I liked that we had things in common, other than games. I had games in common with everyone I knew.

He didn’t like being touched by strangers, so I knew we were close when he put his arm around my shoulders for the first time, and I knew I was gone when I couldn’t stand to move away from that warmth. He had no interest in sex, he’d explained (when I, rather awkwardly, asked if he was gay), so I knew something was up when he kissed me the first time.

I was raw and all jagged edges from a badly-ended relationship that time, and the kiss was shaky and awkward, and we both pretended it had been the bad beer and the bad moonlight, and We Shall Never Speak of This Again, patched up the little hole in our friendship and went back to talking about how Dumas had written such better stuff than Three Musketeers.

The kiss, like his arm on my shoulder, had burned its way into my nerves, and I’d wake up with a nagging suggestion in my mind that I ought to have more, or look at him and wonder how I could get him to hold me like that again, kiss me again, teeth or no.

By the time he got around to a second kiss, I’d managed to heal the raw spots in my heart, and had deciding that the normal boys were just not what I wanted. I wanted Jay. I wanted my friend. Sex? I thought I could do without. A small sacrifice to have a relationship that worked. And I loved him. And, to be honest… deep in my heart, I thought he just hadn’t had a girl he clicked with. I thought maybe sex with me would be different.

I’d been looking forward to cuddling, to having someone who liked touching without always wanting sex, to being held, but… I had habits built up from a few years of relationships, and it seemed natural for cuddling to turn into kissing, for kissing to turn into necking, for necking to turn into sex.

I knew better, at least on the surface and the first twenty or thirty times I started, I stopped myself. But I’m not asexual – pretty much the opposite – and, after a while, it started to get to me. I could masturbate, sure. Gods, I did. But playing solo is never the same as playing with a friend, and I wanted to know what he felt like inside me.

More than that. I was starting to get messed up about the whole thing. I knew he loved me, not just from his words, but from the way he held me, from the way he looked at me, but I wanted him to want me, too. I wanted him to touch me, and so I’d kiss, and then push the kissing further, and further, until he would tell me, so patiently, “please don’t.”

Please don’t. I started to wonder if something was wrong with me. I cut my hair, dyed it, bought new clothes. Other boys at the gaming club started flirting with me again, even Jay’s friends. I ate it up, but I wanted more. (I wanted it from him, even though I knew I wasn’t going to get it. Everyone else was just a substitute. Everyone else could be lying to me; I trusted Jay. Everyone else were just mooks; Jay was my partner. It was his opinion that mattered). I tried to replace substance with quantity; I started hanging out with the gaming club more, just to feel the rush of someone noticing I was female and alive. I started staying out late. Letting the boys drive me home. Letting them steal kisses that didn’t taste right, so I could pretend they wanted me. Letting them slide their hands inside my shirt, so I could remember what lust felt like.

I started feeling guilty, and the guilt started making me angry. I justified it to myself at first: I was home for dinner every evening. I came home to Jay every night. I wasn’t giving away anything he wanted – I didn’t even talk Dumas with anyone else, much less Descartes or the more obscure topics we both loved. I was there when he wanted me, to joke about politics and complain about work, to try strange exotic foods with cheap wines. But I don’t think he was fooled, and, sooner or later, I stopped being able to fool myself. I’d stopped giving my all to the relationship. I’d stopped giving much of anything, including a damn. I don’t think either of us were surprised when I moved out. I still loved him, as hurt as I was. But sometimes love really isn’t enough.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/144072.html. You can comment here or there.

Three-Way – the Duet

Oct10

Three Way came out of Giraffe Call and was sponsored for continuation by Rix_Scadeau. Originally posted here and on LJ, continued here (LJ) and then here (LJ

Ahouva clung to Basalt’s arm, not sure what he was doing or why he was doing it. Give Lolly back to Jeremiah? Was he going to give her back, too? She looked over at Kendon, still sprawled on the floor. He’d been really good to her, gentle and patient. It hadn’t been his fault that she was clumsy and stupid, that she made him…

No, that wasn’t right. That’s what he had said, over and over again. “I’m good to you, and you keep fucking up. I’m so patient with you, sweetie, but even I have my limits. I don’t like punishing you, but you leave me no choice.”

But she was bad. She’d been so slow to learn anything, even magic, which she loved, said all the wrong things around his friends, embarrassed him so much he’d started leaving her at home when he hung out with them…

She swallowed a sob. Why would Basalt want her? “Why?” she whispered softly.

He paused in his slow navigation of the bloody lounge and looked down at her. His smile looked gentler than anything she’d expected to see from him. “Why? It had to be done.”

It was almost what he’d said before, and it didn’t explain anything. “But…”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted, “but shush for just a couple minutes, okay? Then we can talk about it as much as you want.”

She sealed her lips and nodded mutely. Give Lolly back… And Basalt was, still holding her, kneeling by Jeremiah, who looked so very close to dead. He muttered something – a Working, something to do with kaana, that was air, right? – and then spoke softly to the gutted scarecrow. Gutted. The guy holding her had done that, hadn’t he? Kendon might have, but Kendon was in no better shape.

“I don’t know what you were up to,” Basalt was murmuring softly, “but we both know I’m not up to handling Lolly.”

Ahouva looked up at the petite blonde in the ridiculous little-girl outfit, sucking on a lollypop and watching a pool of blood move towards her toes. She shivered, faintly, when the girl looked up at her, ice-blue eyes dispassionate. She had caught looks like that before, when Lolly happened to meet her eyes, as if wondering what she’d look like opened up on a table, dissected. She’d heard stories of what the other girl was like in Biology class, too, what she was like doing dissections. What would she have been like, if Jeremiah had won Ahouva? Was that why he’d challenged Kendon for her?

“…so let’s make this quick,” Basalt was saying. “As per the terms of the challenge…”

“Lolly, you Belong to Basalt,” Jeremiah croaked.

Lolly nodded, still smiling. “Okay. I’m all yours, Basalt,” she chirped. Ahouva wondered if either of the guys saw the tears leaking down the girl’s face.

“Yes, you are. And now, as per the terms of our agreement, Liliandra cy’Linden, you Belong to Jeremiah the Prophet.”

For the first time since meeting her, Ahouva saw the other girl look startled. “I what? I… you what?” She looked down at Jeremiah with a faintly accusing glare. “That wasn’t…” She shook her head. “I Belong to you, Jeremiah, the Prophet.”

“Yes, yes you do, doll,” he grunted out. “Now go get me Dr. Caitrin, please.”

While she scampered off, Basalt stood, still cradling Ahouva. “Now that that’s done, we can talk.”

She wasn’t certain if he meant that she could talk, so Ahouva nodded, her lips still pressed together. Of everything Kendon had done when he was mad at her, she’d hated being shushed the most. It meant she couldn’t even argue in her own defense.

“I’m going to take you to my room,” he continued. “We’ll get your stuff from Kendon’s room after the doctor is done with him, and then we can work out everything else.”

Everything else? He sounded surprisingly reasonable for a thug, but he was still in public. The worst wouldn’t happen until the doors were closed and the Administration could pretend nothing was going on. Ahouva nodded again, wishing he’d get on with it.

“It’s going to be okay,” he reassured her, as he carried her down the hall like a doll. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

She stared at him incredulously. Was that was this was all about? Did he think he was rescuing her? Had she seriously just been white-knight-and-the-dragon by a cy’Fridmar monster?

That expression actually got him to stop, and, worse, it got him frowning. “All right, we’re almost there,” he said, almost to himself, and started walking again. Maybe ten steps later, he shifted her weight in his arms, opened the door, and let them in.

His room, Ahouva decided, was very man-cave. Dimly-lit, dark colors, not all that messy but that seemed, in part, to be because there wasn’t that much stuff. The bed and a desk chair were the only places to sit; he put her down on the bed and pulled up a chair.

“Okay. One, I rescind the order to shush, and I apologize for that, but I wanted to deal with Jeremiah while he was still half-knocked out with pain. He’s too smart to deal with normally.”

“It’s okay,” she demurred. Was the blanket on his bed… fur?

“So,” he continued, not really acknowledging her answer, “I don’t know why he was challenging for you. Do you?”

“No?” She shook her head. “I never even talked to him – or to his Kept. I only have one class with him,” she added hurriedly, “and I always sit next to… sat next to Kendon.” Now what was she going to do?

“I don’t think he was going for ‘romantic’ motives,” Basalt assured her. “But I wonder what he was up to.”

“What about you?” she asked. “Did I really look like I needed rescuing? I tried to smile and put a good face on in public, I really did!”

“Hey,” he interjected, surprise and worry clear on his face. “Hey, Ahouva, nobody’s yelling at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You managed to keep a stiff upper lip so well, it took a long time to notice anything was wrong.”

“Wrong? I mean, Kendon and I had our rough spots, but I was learning how to do better… I didn’t need rescuing,” she blurted, and then slapped her hands over her mouth. He could just give her back, too, right? Kendon couldn’t be too mad at her.

Basalt shook his head, looking at her. “I could really use an empath about now,” he muttered. “Listen, Ahouva. He was abusing you, and the bond – being Kept – was making you accept it. And it looks like maybe some stubbornness on your part, too,” he added in a mutter. Ahouva cringed and didn’t try to contradict him. “But you’re not with him anymore. You’re with me,” he added firmly.

“So…” She tried not to think about Ceinwen crying in the girls’ room. “What do you want me for?”

“Well…” He scooted his chair closer, until his knees were touching hers. “I was hoping you’d be my girlfriend.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/141404.html. You can comment here or there.

3-Way Continued

Oct4

This story came out of the late August Giraffe Call and was sponsored for continuation by rix_scaedu. Originally posted here and on LJ.

“This is ridiculous.” Ahouva, pressed between Jovanna and Aeowyn on the lounge couch, shook her head again, staring at the upperclassmen. They had pushed all the furniture to the walls, clearing a wide space in the center of the room, and now Kendon and Jeremiah were talking, quietly and intently, in the middle of the space. To one side, Jeremiah’s creepy little girlfriend, Lolly, bounced up and down like a kid

“It seems kind of romantic to me,” Jovanna sighed.

“It has that façade, doesn’t it?” Aeowyn shook her head. “You’re right, Who, it’s creepy.”

“Kendon and I are fine,” Ahouva continued, too aggrieved to be sidetracked. “There’s nothing wrong with us, and this creep with his creepy girlfriend has to go and get medieval like I’m some sort of possession..”

“Well, technically..”

“Oh, stop that, Aeowyn,” Jovanna snapped. “It’s just as creepy as the upperclassmen when you get into that.”

“I’m just saying…”

“I know, I know,” Ahouva handwaved unhappily. “But do they have to get all medieval?”

“There was that one time…” Jovanna began hesitantly. “At the dance?”

“Just a misunderstanding,” she insisted firmly, rubbing her shoulders. “He had a bit too much to drink, and I was being a bit loud…”

“Well, maybe he’ll win, then,” Aeowyn interrupted pragmatically. “He seems very strong, and the other guy seems kind of like a beanpole.”

“But he wants her enough to challenge for her.”

“For some reason…” She’d seen the look in his eyes. She shook her head. “It’s not romance, Jo. It’s… I don’t know, but it scares me.”

“After Kendon, I wouldn’t think a skinny nerd would scare you.”

She glared at Jo. “He’s not scary. He’s just enthusiastic.”

“Mm…”

“Hush, you two, they’re starting.” Aeowyn leaned forward in her seat as the upperclassmen began formal-sounding proclamations.

“If I lose this challenge, I promise that I will immediately transfer to you my Ownership of the Ninth Cohort Ahouva sh’Ruth,” Kendon said, the words formal but his body posture suggesting he had no fear of losing.

“If I lose,” Jeremiah picked up, just as certain-seeming, “I promise that I will immediately transfer to you my Ownership of the Eight Cohort Liliandra cy’Linden, called Lolly.”

What? Only Kendon’s order kept her in her seat. She glared knives at his back, suddenly wishing his failure. That weird little doll… why would he want her? Why was he risking losing what he already had?

“The terms of the challenge,” Kendon began, to be interrupted by the arrival of another group: Thorburn, with his girlfriend Ceinwen and his cronies, Curry and Basalt.

“We’re just here to witness,” the big man said easily, when Kendon and Jeremiah looked askance at him.

“What are the terms of the challenge?” Basalt asked. As the two explained it – again – Ahouva studied him nervously. She didn’t trust him or his friends; she’d seen them on Hell Night, stomping around like monsters, and she’d seen Ceinwen crying in the girls’ room. They were thugs, straight-out. Why were they interfering.

“Interesting.” Basalt was grinning in a way she definitely didn’t like. “What if I win? Do I get both girls?”

Kendon and Jeremiah started talking at once, shouting, arguing, until little creepy Lolly murmured, “if he challenges you both…”

“Stop helping,” Jeremiah snapped.

The tiny blonde fell silent, as Basalt, pleased, declared, “then I add myself to this challenge, challenging you both for your Kept.”

“And what are you putting up, if you lose?” Kendon snapped, while Ahouva tried to become part of the couch. No, no, not him. Jeremiah would be better…

“Myself,” the big man grinned.

~
Silence fell. “Yourself?” Kendon asked. “You’re putting yourself up as stakes?”

“I am. I’m not as pretty as the girls, I admit, but I think it’s a fair deal.”

They were thinking of backing out, Ahouva could tell, both guys shaking their heads. Maybe she could relax. Maybe she wouldn’t end up belonging to a monster; maybe she could stay with her Kendon. Then, sweetly, over the growing silence, they could hear Ceinwin asking Thornbun a damning question.

“Didn’t you say it was a major loss of honor to turn down a challenge?”

“I did,” Thorburn agreed, “but I’m sure their pride can take the hit. They’re big boys.”

No, damnit, Ceinwen, why? Did you need someone to be miserable with you? Ahouva glared at the girl she’d thought was her friend. Kendon had a temper. Taunted like that, he wasn’t going to be able to say no.

Indeed, he’d just spat out “accepted,” followed quickly by Jeremiah. Ahouva pressed her face against Jovanna’s arm and crossed her fingers, hoping, somehow, Kendon would win. He could do it, couldn’t he? He was so strong… and he wouldn’t have accepted if he didn’t think he stood a good chance. Right?

“Oh, my,” Aeowyn murmured, and then, a moment later, “Wow. Impressive.”

“Eek,” Jovanna added for commentary, and, loudly, “oh, shit!”

“Can anyone survive that, do you think?” Aeowyn pondered out loud.

“Gods, I hope so. I heard murder gets you expelled.” Ahouva cringed, her eyes still closed tightly, wishing her friends would shut up. Were they talking about her Kendon? No, they wouldn’t be that cruel.

“Wow… oh, dear.” Aeowyn’s knees curled up to her chest.

“Ahouva…” Kendon called, and she, finally, looked up. Her master, her boyfriend, was pinned to the ground, a spear of some sort through his shoulder, reaching for her. “Ahouva,” he said again. “He-” Jeremiah’s boot to his mouth shut him up, but she was already out of her seat.

She couldn’t use magic, he’d forbidden her to use it out of class. She picked up a stick, but he’d said she couldn’t attack anyone after she’d bitten one of his friends. She could flash them, maybe… no. “The clothes I put on you stay on you until I tell you they can come off, except during PE.” She couldn’t even do that. She sat down on the floor, tears flowing. He’d ordered her to help. She wanted to help, didn’t want to see him hurt. What could she do?

“Yield,” Jeremiah croaked, falling over next to Kendon. How had she missed that his intestines were spilling out? How could he still have been standing?

“Yield,” Kendon echoed, flopping like a fish on the floor. “You useless piece of shit, Ahouva, I told you to help.”

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I wanted to, but I didn’t know what to do!”

“Well, you’re someone else’s problem now.” He was coughing up blood. “I release you to Basalt. Ahouva, you Belong to Basalt now. Fuck. Someone call a doctor.”

Her world was reeling. This pitiful asshole on the floor, bleeding all over the carpet, he’d just ripped out what was left of her soul and passed it on to someone else. She felt like she was the one spilling her guts on the floor. She felt as if she was the one dying slowly. She’d failed. She’d failed and he’d given her up. She leaned over and puked, vomiting up what little she’d had to eat for lunch.

“Woah, woah.” A hand was on her back. “Here, puking in open wounds is probably a little extreme even for Kendon.” Even more gently, the deep voice added “you have to say the words, Ahouva; until you do, the promise is still eating at him.”

She looked down at Kendon, her vomit covering his chest. That meant the hand on her back was Basalt, didn’t it? And Kendon had just… “I belong to you now?”

“Yes, yes you do. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” With surprising strength and even more surprising gentleness, he picked her up like a baby. Up close, he smelled faintly of charcoal.

“Why?” she asked, leaning into his arms. What was he going to do with her now?

His shrug moved her like a wave and twisted her already unhappy stomach. “Someone had to. Uh, hold on. I have to take Lolly from Jeremiah and give her back.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/139218.html. You can comment here or there.

Little Lost Kitty Girl: Tir na Cali

Sep26

For [personal profile] lilfluff‘s commission and [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt, from the most recent Giraffe-Call-for-Prompts

Original post here.

They couldn’t have unlocked her collar if they wanted to; she wasn’t, legally, theirs. The girl they called Patches was a foster-kitty of sorts, placed with them to learn what a household was supposed to be like, and what a slave in that house was supposed to act like.

Where they were moving, however, was a small gated community, a step up the social ladder and the sort of place where a moddie slave would be hard to explain, so they left her behind. They made sure she had plenty of water and food, but packed up around her and set her to her room as they left, so she wouldn’t see them leaving her behind. The youngest petted her behind her furred ears for a while, and cried, forgetting, the way the family often did, that their kitty-girl could speak and understand English as well as any human.

The girl they called Patches, whose mother had called her Tanya-Marie, listened to all of it, and murrowled cutely, because her foster-owners were more comfortable with her miawing than speaking, and waited in her room until they were gone. She wondered, for a while, if she’d done something wrong. Raised in the Agency, she didn’t have the slave instincts that the other servants did; raised by other modified beings, cat-people, she sometimes gave in to feral behaviors. But she’d done everything they asked her to, and, despite all the jokes, she’d never peed on the carpet.

They’d left her her clothes, along with maybe a week’s worth of clothes, but they’d also left, by accident, a small laptop. Tanya-Marie hooked into the internet and began searching.

The walk, once she’d found her route, was long, and hurt her feet, used to indoor living. People stopped her, either for the novelty of talking to a cat-girl or for the concern of seeing a runaway slave, but her tags said she had free rein to wander (she was an Agency cat, after all) and there was nothing they could really do to stop her.

Three weeks later, a hungry and slightly bedraggled Patches showed up, miawing sadly, at her foster-owners’ new house.

She went to the back door; that had been one of her first lessons. Slaves went to the back door unless they were escorting their master or mistress. Slaves weren’t seen in the public areas of the house unless they were doing their job.

The cook-and-housekeeper, Ashley, answered the door, and tsk’ed unhappily when she saw Tanya-Marie. “Oh, you poor thing. Come on in here, no, right into the mud room with you. I told them they shouldn’t leave you behind, but, of course, no, they wouldn’t listen. Where have you been?”

Her throat parched, the cat-girl answered only with a weak “miew.” The older slave made a chagrined noise in the back of her throat.

“You’re a mess, aren’t you? All right, sit down, there, shower yourself off. I’ll bring you some clean clothes.”

The mud-room was equipped with a large utility sink, and it was there that Ashley had directed her. Ears flat – she didn’t like showers – Tanya-Marie did as directed. She showered until the water ran clean and her fur and hair were plastered to her, by which time Ashley had returned.

“That’s a good kitty,” she praised her, and, as Ashley always had, fed the girl a couple treats in a flat-palmed hand. Grateful for the food, Tanya-Marie lipped up the treats and swallowed them, then miawed cutely for more.

“Don’t try that on me, kitty. I know better.” Despite the scold, Ashley was gentle as she toweled off the younger slave. “Where have you been?”

Her throat wetted by the shower-water, she managed an answer. “Walking.” She held up one foot to show the old calluses and new blisters. Maybe she’d get another treat?

“Tch. They shouldn’t have left you, really shouldn’t. Why didn’t you go back to the Agency?”

The Agency was a lot harder to track than her foster-family had been. She had done some looking, of course, trying to find a facility to return herself to. In the end, though…

“This is where I was placed. I am supposed to stay with these people.” She headbutted gently against Ashley and the towel. “This is my home.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/135879.html. You can comment here or there.

Too Hot to Handle: Tir na Cali, Jason.

Sep23

For [personal profile] lilfluff‘s commission and prompt, from the most recent Giraffe-Call-for-Prompts

Original post here.

They’d caught him at a bar, and that had been bad. Jason had been far drunker than he ever wanted to admit to when the pretty blonde girl had lured him into her car and, from there, it seemed, into slavery. When he sobered up, he’d made his opinions on the matter endlessly clear, until the girl had drugged him into submission long enough to sell him.

The boutique she’d sold him to had done much the same, once he’d started hollering, but he was edgy and angry even drugged to the gills, and they couldn’t sell him, no matter how hard they tried. After a while, the proctor had pulled him aside and explained to Jason, punctuating the lesson with some discrete blows, that a slave who could not be sold was no use to anyone, and a slave with no use would be gotten rid of.

Jason wasn’t sure he believed him, but as his bruises healed, he began to notice that some of the other mouthy slaves had just… vanished. One of the older, more well-behaved slaves told him, in a frightened whisper, that they’d gone to the work camps. The boy made it sound like being sold into hell.

That got Jason’s attention, enough that he started trying, but it was too little and too late. No matter how hard he tried to play good, he couldn’t get the anger out of his system, and his fear only fueled that. Pretty ladies and their fluffy boy toys took one look at him and moved on to someone tamer. Even the big, rich businessmen wanted someone they didn’t have to worry about turning their back on. They were frightened of him, and they wouldn’t buy what they feared. The boutique passed him off to an auction house.

And here he was, chained to a post, between a girl who’d lost three of her fingers in a mechanical accident and a runaway who kept swearing and spitting at all comers. The girl sold, for a discount, but still, she sold. The boy on the other side of her sold. The old man past him, and the narrow probably-a-girl on the other side of the runaway sold. The runaway sold, to a tall blonde girl who stuck a gag in his mouth and leash on his collar – but he sold.

“Come on,” Jason complained, though noone was listening. “Nobody wants me?”

—

“I’ll take you.”

The voice came from behind him, a rumbling alto that could have been a man or a woman. He couldn’t turn around, not the way they had him chained, so he froze, and then, slowly, tried to make his body posture like the good slaves, the ones that sold. Eyes down. Mouth closed. Shoulders straight. He’d have knelt if he could have, but his collar and wrists were bolted behind him.

A blow fell on his shoulder and he winced. “I said I’ll take you.”

He should respond, but he didn’t want to get the title wrong, and he still couldn’t tell from the voice. “Thank you,” he answered, and then, going for always-call-your-professors-doctor, “your highness.”

The chuckle was behind his other shoulder. “Points for trying. You’re the mouthy one from Adele’s store, aren’t you?”

“Yes?” The laugh grated on him, though he tried not to show it at all. Damnit, they got mad when he didn’t try, laughed when he did…

“She told me she’d given up trying to sell you. You’re lucky she didn’t just send you straight to the work camps. You do know that, right?”

“Yes.” Now his teeth were gritted, and he was having a hard time keeping his head down. Why did everyone keep rubbing that in. “Although if no-one buys me…” he couldn’t help adding.

“I already said I’d buy you. The work camps aren’t going to get you. You’re too… well, too something for them.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Another light blow hit his shoulder. “You are going to have to learn some manners, but that should be easy enough; you’re a smart boy.”

“Thank you,” he hazarded a guess, based on intonation rather than the alto voice, “your ladyship.”

“Very good.” She stepped out from behind him, a woman as tall as he was, broad-shouldered and long-legged, her blouse dropping to her deep cleavage. Her black hair was cropped short and, despite the business outfit, she didn’t seem to be wearing makeup; the only thing she had in common with the Ladies who had refused to buy him was her grey eyes. “But you can call me Mistress.”

She gripped his chin, muffling any answer he might want to make, and looked over his face. “Nice jaw, nice eyes. Good teeth?” She stuck her fingers in his mouth; Jason barely resisted the urge to bite down. “Very good teeth. And you’ve got spirit.”

“Yes… Mistress,” he agreed, once she’d released his mouth. “That’s why I’m here.”

“That’s why you’re coming home with me, too.” She tilted his head forward until the wide collar bit into him, and did something behind his neck, then something more complicated behind his wrists. “They’re scared of you, the pretty little Ladies. I, on the other hand, am not.”

She was also not taking the handcuffs off, but Jason, for once, didn’t argue. She stood at least a head taller than the petite royalty he’d met, solid, built, and gorgeous. He might still be able to take her in a fight, but he didn’t tower over her. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Smart,” she smirked. She was clipping a leash onto his collar, but it was still better than a work camp. “You’re going to make such lovely babies.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/133906.html. You can comment here or there.