Archive | March 2013

An Education

Mar21

For [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of Educational.

Teach me.

It was the best way to couch it to him and, it seemed, the best way to show her, too.

Ambrus could teach. He hadn’t been given that much opportunity, before, but he knew how it worked. He had been watching people teach for years, spending his free time around teachers, reading the books in the Library on teaching. He had an idea of the concept.

And Phillipa seemed to enjoy learning. She wasn’t one of those goody-good-good students, the ones who knew everything and kissed the teacher’s ass – he couldn’t imagine her kissing anyone’s ass, or anyone’s anything, for that matter – but give her a challenge and she dove into it with a vengeance.

Learning how to be a sub was her new challenge. Teaching it was Ambrus’, and he found that, despite knowing all of it, so many of the ins and outs, teaching was turning out to be an entirely different thing.

“We’re going to the Library.” He was running out of other ideas. She kept asking why. He couldn’t remember, not clearly, the last time he’d asked why.

“Why?”

He almost laughed. Instead, he took hold of the ring in the front of her collar. The gesture forced her chin up, so that she was looking into his eyes. He smiled; she shivered. Something about his smile did that to her. He couldn’t really say he disliked it, but it was certainly novel. “We are going to the Library to research the condition of being submissive. You may come along unbound and speaking, or you may come along bound.”

Ambrus was a little surprised to see Phillipa licking her lips. “Bound sounds kind of hot.”

Damn. How was he going to get this one past Luke? He took the opportunity as a teaching moment while he worried about that.

“‘It sounds hot’ is one of the primary reasons for a great deal of d/s. After all, being Kept might be a cultural condition…”

“But being a submissive is a social kink.” Phillipa recited the response with a lip-licking smile. “Yes, sir. And I’m being a submissive today, right, sir?”

He’d found he couldn’t stand being called Master. Well, he was in charge, he could choose which title he wanted to hear.

“Today is a sub day. Good girl.” He patted her head and thought about the problem he’d created. All right. Taking her bound to the library. “Go put on that pretty little sundress. Skip the shoes and underwear. You won’t need them.”

“Yes, sir.” Her arousal was coming off her in waves. Ambrus adjusted his pants and thought about will-power, and the sacrifices of being in charge. You should Keep someone, indeed. His Mentor was a sadist.

While Phillipa dressed – such as it was – he dug through the toy box until he found the restraints and collar he wanted. His penchant for playing dress-up with her meant that his Kept had more collars than anyone but Zita. Luckily, she didn’t mind.

Today would be white leather. He took off her classroom collar and buckled the heavy collar around her throat. O-rings everywhere; this one jingled like a parade.

Then he added wrist cuffs – jangle, jangle, until he hooked them behind her back – and then the ankle cuffs. He stepped back and grinned at her.

She smiled back, testing out her range of motion. “I think I need a leash.”

“I think you need a leash, too. Conveniently, I brought one.” He hooked it to her collar. “Now. Let’s go to the Library.”

“I thought you said I was going to be silenced.”

“I like talking to you.” He kissed her, because the taste of her lips was wonderful. “Fine. Do not speak unless spoken to until we get back to the room. You are a hard woman to please.”

“I try.” She was grinning widely. Ambrus found her pleasure thrilling, a sort of thrill he didn’t remember feeling in a long time. He could make her happy, not because he had to, but just because he wanted to. That was neat.

Leading her through the hall made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. What if they ran into a…

“Ambrose.”

“Luke.” He swallowed hard. Ever since Regine had first brought him here, the angry Mara had terrified him. Even when Luke had clearly been trying not to be scary, he had still been so angry.

“Phillipa.”

“Sir.” She was grinning, the little minx, grinning. Awesome. He’d never seen an unhappy Kept be able to pull of a real grin.

“This is an interesting arrangement for the hallway.”

Oh, he was going to do his disappointed face. Ambrus smiled back at him, hoping he could pull this off. “We’re going to the Library to research Kept-Keeper dynamics.” He threw in, for fun, a little barb. “My Mentor thought it would be good for me to learn how to Keep someone.”

“Hrmph. He would.” Ambrus thought he saw the ghost of a smile on Luke’s face. “Well, if Wysteria doesn’t complain, I won’t either. Have fun, you too. Just… not in the halls.”

“Yes, sir.” Phillipa’s grin was catching. Ambrus tugged on her leash. “Come on, Pretty Petal Pony. Let’s… study.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/495078.html. You can comment here or there.

Pi No Wri Mo: March has 33 days, right?

Mar20

So… if I count Friday-Saturday-Sunday as one day, I’m on par!

(The thing I always forget to do in these no-wri-mo plans is put in skip days. Company happens. Sick happens.)

Monday was a pretty good day, but it couldn’t make up for smushing three days into one. I *am* just going to count them as three, and if I have a couple really good days, well, that might work it out.

So, as of yesterday, I had written

7309 Other words [goal 8000]
23077 Addergoole words [goal 22500]
1938 Rin Words [goal 1500]
and a total of 32324 words [goal 32000].

Then I went home and got hung up working on the Addergoole landing page, and did… pretty much nothing. This landing page is going to kill me O_O

How are you guys doing?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/494488.html. You can comment here or there.

Irish Soda Bread

Mar19

T. and I like cooking for the holidays.

We really do. It’s a fun excuse to try something we don’t normally do. Or something we like doing that’s a lot of work.

We have never made soda bread before, so we decided we would try that this time. We went with this site. I think it’s a bit preachy, and did not attempt to verify the veracity (heehe) of its claims, but I wanted to try a simple bread first.

(Plus another recipe we found called for a stick of butter. I am trying to lose weight here, people!)

To quote the site: The basic soda bread is made with flour, baking soda, salt, and soured milk (or buttermilk). That’s it!

So that’s what we did. Our Dutch Oven is a bit big, so I nested a round Pyrex inside it, put the bread in that, and otherwise followed the recipe completely (we did the brown bread one, the 1st recipe).

Tasty! T. thinks it needs another flavor if we do it again, and it is an immensely dense and filling dough, but it worked really well with our corned beef brisket in french onions soup.

Experiment: Success.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/494326.html. You can comment here or there.

Magic Mondays: frodleikr

Mar18

In the setting of Faerie Apocalypse and Addergoole, Frodleikr is a Word, one of the cornerstones of magic. It is a Domain, a category of thing-to-affect, rather than a Manifestation, which is a manner-of-affecting.

[personal profile] clare_dragonfly asks: When was frodleikr lost, and how the heck do you even lose a Word?!

Nobody knows. Nobody is talking. And who can fault them?

The legend is that the thirteen departed gods (and the one that stayed) each had their Words. Eleven were given to share among all of the fae, but three gods favored specific breeds: Frodleikr went to the Daeva, of course. The other two went to the other two breeds.

Not every Daeva had access to the Word, of course, but many of the oldest did. The theory goes that it was lodged in the strongest fae blood. And, as time went on, fewer and fewer fae, it is theorized, had access to the words and fewer and fewer could teach its use.

Nobody’s quite certain when it vanished from memory. Certainly, the Council still remembers it, and the oldest of fae still alive. But who wants to admit that they’ve misplaced a building block of the universe?

If the Grigori and Mara know what happened to their Words, by the by, they’re not talking

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/493973.html. You can comment here or there.

16-Minute Saturday: 100 Per Cent

Mar17

This is written to the image prompt here for “Sixteen Minute Saturday,” something I adapted for alliteration from Ty Barbary’s 15-minute Fiction.

I’d love if more people played along!

“It’s data tagging.”

“Like facial recognition?”

“Exactly like facial recognition. They pass by this camera… see? And then we know which one they are.”

“Doesn’t work for the females, though.”

“No, we’re still working on that. But the antlers are very close to unique.”

“Very close to…”

“Well, all right. It’s not an exact science by any means.”

“Aren’t you in the exact science department?”

“No, I’m in the tracking animals department. Exact sciences is down one floor and over three rooms.”

“Right, right. So. It doesn’t track the females and it’s not one hundred percent accurate at tracking the males. So what does it do?”

“Well, it projects the patterns on to them, too, in a hard-light display that is really pretty nifty.”

“It’s nifty.”

“Yep. Really nifty. And, what’s more, mating interest is up one hundred percent for females looking at the males with the nifty displays.”

“…One hundred percent.”

“That’s what I said.”

“So, are you the growing-antlers department, by any chance?”

“No. That’s up one floor and over two rooms. And it hurts like hell. But let me tell you… totally worth it.”

“One hundred percent?”

“In clinical trials – me – more like one thousand percent.”

“Going.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/493107.html. You can comment here or there.

Fire, a drabble of Luke and Myst (@kissofjudas)

Mar17

After Strong Relationships, after Bloodless.

The …ninja… writhed in Mystral’s grip, mentally and physically. He fought her, struggling against the invasive Working with everything he had. Zen.

Zen. A place of quiet. A place of water.

The storm rushed through, ripping the water out of the pond, revealing his thoughts below. The camp. The quiet trade in those who would grow up to be such very good slaves. The wooden chains.

Calm. The ninja breathed. He could not kill himself, as he should, as he had been ordered to. But he could dream of the fire. Fire. Fire, and the way it touched the sky. The way his home had burned. The way the bridges behind him had burned.

The storm rushed in and blew out the fire, showing the camp, again, the fortress with its little cabins, so tidy, all in a row, with its silence. With the silence of death, although many people lived.

Fire.

Snow, and the way the children sometimes did die, in the winter, hauling wood, doing chores.

Fire!

The coffles being led to sale across the continent.

Fire? The ninja was running out of energy. He felt as if his mind might burn out.

And that would be okay. He would never survive the failure of this mission, anyway.

Fire. He remembered the fire.

~

Luke knew he was out of control, or, at the least, balancing on a knife-edge of control and rage.

Bring it on he’d shouted at the wind, and then, angrier, “Come to me, or, goddamnit, I will find you.”

No-one came. He couldn’t actually leave. He wouldn’t leave the children. But he needed to hurt someone. He needed to hear them break beneath his hands.

He muttered Working after Working, searching the surrounding area. There, there, there. There. The dead ones, the incapacitated ones. They were all as he had left them. There. And there, one, walking towards him, trying to sneak up on him.

“You will die,” he informed the air, intentionally mis-aiming his call. “For invading my home and attacking my family. You will die.”

“But you will die, too.” The voice was female, level, cool, and evil. Luke spun as if surprised to look the direction the voice came from – not where the woman was coming from. He readied his attack. Let her think him blustering and foolish. “And your children will go to the Unit. No matter what you do, foolish man.”

“What Unit?” He strode forward, just a step. Not far enough to leave the children un-protected, but far enough to make it look that way.

“My Unit.” She really thought he was a moron. “The Unit.” Now her voice was coming from yet another direction, and she was sneaking up on the kids. Luke did not smile, but inside, the fighting glee rose in him. “Your kids will do well. Then again, mutt children always do.”

Mutt. For a moment, he saw red. Control it, old son, control it… The voice inside his head was Mike’s. He’d worry about that another time. Right now, he had a bitch to capture.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/492973.html. You can comment here or there.

Syllabic Sunday: Kids and kids

Mar17

Children! They are required for continuation of the species!

Like all people, the Cālenyena have children, and they have words for them, of course

Pabap is a baby, a “carry-on,” or tes-tyētyē (self-carried), testyē.

Lerū is a child, generally one tall enough to walk but not tall enough to carry a spear or throw weapons.

This is the equivalent to their goat terms:

Pebyab is a tiny goat, not large enough to do much but bleat.

Lelū is a young goat kid, old enough to walk but not to be ridden.

The similarities in terms is not accidental. Especially when a herding culture, the Cālenyena tended to gather all their young together and raise them, so that babies and goat kids would grow up under the watchful eye of the pregnant mothers and the too-old to ride. Similar still happens today in remote villages and small towns.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/492794.html. You can comment here or there.