Tag Archive | lovememe

Love Meme: Reid and Regine

Feb27

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s third prompt. Reid and Regine are from Addergoole. This was a wee bit tricky~

Reid and Regine

For all of her noble quest to show the value of half-bloods, when Reid met Regine, she still had many of the prejudices of the pure-blooded.

Reid had been dealing with those prejudices for nearly as long as Regine had been having them. He found them irritating on a good day, angering on a bad day, and on his worst days, they tempted him into shouting.

She had a good project, a good plan, and a good point, so he set his jaw and joined her program, and that would have been it – a carefully polite working relationship, line drawn and never budged, colleagues and nothing more.

Except one of those bad days happened through no fault of Regine’s.

There was a phone call. It was a long-distance call, and such things were expensive. It was quiet, it was intense, and nobody but Reid heard it.

And that would’ve been it. He had long experience not blowing his lid, not showing his anger, but Regine chose that day, that exact time when he had just hung up, to ask/demand something in her particularly Grigori way.

And Reid exploded. He snarled and shouted and swore, all of it bloody with the rage that was his birthright and name-right, and informed Regine in no uncertain terms that if she had hired an expert in Mind Workings than she damn well ought to respect his expertise.

And Regine, in a move unprecedented for her, bowed her head and very humbly apologized. And then – and this might have been the kicker – she asked Reid if he would show her the Working she’d been asking about.

It wasn’t a Magic Moment. It didn’t change her forever. But it did allow Reid to talk to her as a colleague and, sometimes, as a friend, and that, in the end, helped more than anything else.

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Love Meme: Beryl and Stone

Feb23

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] kelkyag‘s third prompt. Beryl and Stone are from the Aunt Family.

Beryl knew how most girls at school were with their big brothers.

In her opinion, much of that was because their big brothers were big jerks, but she had noticed that was the way family dynamics seemed to flow, outside of the Family.

(She made an informal study of such things, because she didn’t really want to marry a cousin, should she end up marrying someone, and so she didn’t want to be lost the way her father said he’d been, way back when.)

But Stone wasn’t like that. Stone helped her with her homework, and, once, showed her how to cast a charm so her worst bully tripped over his feet every time he got close. And they talked about spellwork together, and she showed him secret tarot spreads and tricks with the tea leaves.

She told him Maddy Spinner was no good for him, too, but she was pretty sure any sister would’ve done that.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1257240.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Love Meme: Jin and Junie

Feb21

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] sauergeek‘s first prompt.

Jin had been just old enough to be annoyed by this whole little-sibling thing when his mother had put Junie in his arms.

He hadn’t instantly fallen in love with her. She was small and fragile and loud. He, at that point, had very little interest in things small and fragile and loud.

It was weeks later, when he found out that he could make very minor illusions and had to show them off to someone, that’s when things changed.

His mother was brewing a tisane and couldn’t be disturbed; his father was reading a large tome in the library and looked like disturbing him would not go well. He could wait for dinner – but Jin did not want to wait for dinner. (Patience was a hard- and late-earned skill for him.)

So he decided to show the new baby the illusion.

And she cooed. She reached out for it with her chubby little hands. She was thrilled. Jin felt amazing. This tiny little thing, this thing that cried all the time and nothing at all seemed to soothe her – she liked his illusions.

That cemented it. From that day on, Junie was Jin’s first audience for every illusion, every spell (that was safe to her, of course; he kept the others to a room behind the garage where no-one else came), every cantrip.

And, eventually, Junie found out Jin’s secrets, too.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1256243.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Love Meme: Pelletier and Luke

Feb20

A long time ago

“Don’t mind them.”

The fur-taker looked up to see a man filling her doorway, wings spread, carrying something on a tray. Bowls, mugs – whatever it was, it smelled good.

“Come in,” she offered weakly. The threshold here was so much less than her swamp, so thin she was fairly certain it held only out of courtesy. Even in her little house in the Village, Regine’s magic weighed heavily. In here, in her office…

It was nice of him to pretend, anyway.

“You’re Luca, aren’t you? The Hunting Hawk.”

“And you’re the pelt-taker. Regine said you’re using the name ‘Shira’ here?” He stepped inside and closed the door with his foot.

“It’s close enough.” The Fur-taker wondered if she ought to be worried, but he was not giving off any sense of menace or danger, spread wings or no.

“The others…” He sat down and put the tray between them on a small table. Stew. And tea. “Don’t mind them.”

“You said that already.” Which meant he had more meaning in mind than the words themselves held.

“They’re…” He shrugged. “… Fancy.”

The fur-taker smirked. “And I am not.” She plucked at the hem of her sleeve, a loaned outfit – from Luca here, not from one of the women – and comfortable.

“I’m not, either. But it suits us. They’re not sure about seers. The pure-bloods, they don’t like what they don’t understand.”

The fur-taker smiled her sharp smile, the one that said life is hard. “And they understand so little. But you.” She looked at him, Looked at him, and nodded. “You understand too much. Be ware, Hawk, or it will cripple you.”

It would, she already saw it. But there were paths in which it would free him, too.

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] chanter_greenie‘s first prompt.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1255494.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Love Meme: Rosaria and Willard

Feb16

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] kelkyag‘s second prompt. Rosaria and Willard are from the Aunt Family, as per the tree below.

Rosaria and Willard

Rosaria had brothers. She had sons, she had a father. She had had, for a while, a husband, although that seemed like a very long time ago.

So when she tried on “I love him like this,” like a father, like a brother, like a son, she knew of what she was speaking. And none of them quite fit.

She had other nephews, too, and she could not say that she felt for any of them what she felt for Willard. Willard was – he was different, and not just because of the spark. He was important, and not just because the family had severed him from their embrace and their power. He was her friend, and that… that was what had saved them.

“He should be gone from you,” Elenora had complained. Elenora was the sort that would complain about that. “He is gone from the family, and yet I can see you’re still writing to him. You’re still pining over him.”

“He’s gone as my nephew.” She lifted her chin and glared at Elenora, glared at her Aunt, at the Aunt and dared her to challenge that. My nephew sounded strange when she was still so young, but that was what he had been, and in their family, that was a special bond. “You severed that. But he was my friend. And he is still my friend. He will always be that, no matter how far away he is.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1253265.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Love Meme: Kai and Rozen, Autumn and Ink

Feb15

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here are [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s second and [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s first prompts. Kailani and Rozen are from Addergoole; Autumn from Stranded World.

Kai and Rozen
End of Year Five

Some days it felt like she hardly had time to think, like Conrad was too busy to even look at her, like nobody in the suite but her would look at Tolly’s child, because the boy was Tolly’s, even though he was hers.

Kai had the twins in a stroller and was walking down the halls. It was a week before graduation; she doubted anyone was going to try to attack her now. Besides, she still had Conrad collared, even if he was acting more like it was a collar now and less like a trophy.

She noticed someone sneaking up on her anyway. One of the Thorne Girls might’ve done something clever, like going around in circles until they were behind their stalker.

Kai wasn’t that sort of clever. She turned around so that the stroller was behind her.

“Rozen.” She found she was pleased but not too startled, and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Nobody ever does.” He smirked, proud of himself. “You’re looking good, Red. Motherhood suits you.”

“Yeah?” There was nobody around to yell at her for blushing, which was good, because she hadn’t figured out a Working to get around that yet. “Thank you.”

“I mean, it would suit you more if those were my brats, but hey. Take what you can get, hey?”

Kai rolled her eyes at him, but she was still smiling. “They’re not brats. And I think they’re happier with their mother having some free will.”

“Yeah, well.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath tickling her. “Some day you might feel differently.”

What she felt had nothing to do with it. She didn’t think she needed to say that, though. “Some day.”

He was leaving soon, after all, and it was a big world. She’d probably never see him again.

Autumn and Ink

Autumn would probably always remember the first time she’d put ink to her skin.

Winter was struggling to teach her, their mother was busy with Spring and Summer, and their father had been dead for two years. Autumn’s skills weren’t falling into line with Winter’s, with their mother’s, or even with what they could remember of their father, so she had gone on her own to a family friend and asked him to teach her.

Pastor Jim had taken a long look at the wide-eyed child and sighed. “All right. But we keep this between us and your mother, all right? We don’t need to tell the parishioners.”

“Church magic is church magic and Strand magic is Strand Magic.” Even then, Autumn understood that.

“Good. Now.” He’d called her mother, been very very polite and respectful – everyone was polite and respectful when it came to Autumn’s mother, but he was even more so. When he’d hung up the phone, he’d headed to the daycare section behind the church and come back with some washable Crayola markers. “Let’s see, shall we, if what works for me works for you.”

He drew a circle on the back of Autumn’s wrist, and suddenly, she understood so much more.

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Love Meme: Doug and Fridmar, Cxaidin and Zizny

Feb15

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here are rix_scaedu‘s and kelkyag‘s first prompts. Doug and Fridmar are from Addergoole; Cxaidin and Zizny from Dragons Next Door. To quote Zizny in an earlier piece:

“For a grown adult dragon, the pronoun is ‘thez.’”

“Theza” is the possessive.

Doug and Agmund Fridmar

Some people went into battle like a well-oiled machine. Doug’s father, for example; he moved with sparse, sharp movement, did what needed to be doing, and drank afterwards with the same mechanical precision.

Some people fought like it was sex: with ridiculous intensity, angry, wild, some strikes almost like caresses, some like orgasms. Of the Thorne Girls, Massima fought the most like that, and she fucked like she fought. Afterwards, she drank as if she was going to take the bottle to bed with her, too. Sometimes Doug felt as if he envied the bottle, and other times he pitied it.

But so very few people fought like a dance, like every move had a place and yet was beautiful. So few people fought such that you could choreograph your movements around theirs and they would notice and do the same right back at you.

Agmund Fridmar, big, fierce, bearish Agmund, fought like a ballet, like a symphony, like a dance, and afterwards, when they drank, his movements had the same precision.

Once, once, Doug had thought of an old and awful quote on dancing bears: “The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all.”

That proverb had it wrong, Doug was sure. The marvel of Agmund Fridmar was definitely in how well the Bear danced.

Cxaidin and Zizny

Zizny had fire.

In a literal sense, of course, all dragons had fire. It was their birthright, their gift, their curse.

But dragons were a long, long-lived race, one of the oldest, and they tended, after a few times of setting their nest alight, to be calmer, more thought-out creatures than their flamey breath would suggest.

Zizny was not calm.

Zizny questioned resolutely. Not only the assumptions of others, not only the writings of dragons and other-creatures of the past, but theza own assumptions, theza own truths. Zizny would ask one day why the sun was rising as it always had, and then the next day ask exactly why the dragons got along with humans – or, perhaps, why they shouldn’t get along better with said humans. Thez would question the entire stork arrangement and then snarl at a passing centaur for some comment about dragon history and its habit of going up in smoke.

(This did happen, sadly, but most of the very important dragon records were carved in stone or etched in metal. Very heat-durable metal).

Cxaidin loved Zizny’s fire, the sparks that seemed to fly off whenever Zizney was involved in a new quest, the way thez made Cxaidin question even thezself. Above all, and after all, and in spite of all, Cxaidin loved Zizny’s heat.

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1252143.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Love Meme Again!

Feb14

I am bringing back the Love Meme from 2012, but just for today/maybe as long as this week:

Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B. (Please chose characters from my settings.) I might answer with a drabble, a quick bit of meta, or a list, just to make things that tiny bit more interesting.

Note 1: The love may be agápe, éros, philía, or storgē.

Note 2: Warning, you may get incest if it’s canonical to the characters or fun for me to write.

Note 3: Name as many sets as you like *g*

Note 4: I’m only writing these for V-day and around that time. I might not ANSWER all your sets. 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1251621.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Crew

Aug8

In continuation of the second story here from over a year ago.

Ib woke not in pain. He woke not aching everywhere, not unable to move. He woke.

He woke, which meant he wasn’t dead. That in itself was a bit of a shocker. The last time he’d had a beat-down like this – close to this, there hadn’t been as much bone-snapping that time – he’d ended up in the hospital for weeks and in agony for months.

Today, he had a little pain in his lungs and his throat was a bit raw. That… that was not how this worked.

He looked up at the big guy in the doorway. Baram looked sort of like unfinished clay, like someone had lumped him together and then forgotten to glaze or bake him. He also looked like anyone going through the door would have to go straight through him. The doctor would have had to go through him to get to Ib; maybe she’d gone through the wall. That seemed like the safer option.

Ib had more important questions at the moment. He squeaked, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Why?”

Baram’s brow furrowed. “Mine. Not theirs.”

Oh. Ib swallowed. Well, if that was the price he had to pay… “Y-“

“What he means-” Rozen somehow shouldered the bigger guy aside. Ib had never been so grateful for an interruption. “-is that he considers you crew, and doesn’t like other people fucking with his friends.”

“Oh.” Friends. These were the sort of friends that you wanted, in a place where people randomly tried to break all your bones.

“I mean, if you want to Belong to him, I’m sure he won’t object. It might be a little awkward, and I don’t think he’s all that into guys.”

“No, no, that’s all right.” Ib cleared his throat, and found he could speak without squeaking if he spoke very slowly. “Thanks.”

“Crew.” Baram thumped his chest with his fist.

“Crew.” Rozen, unsurprisingly, was smirking.

“Crew.” Ib found himself smiling, too. Crew.

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