Archive | May 17, 2013

Amends

May17

This may require more context than is available; it comes out of a couple different Addergoole-based RP’s .

Bracken is a former Addergoole student. not a good one, either, rebellious and difficult. She’s, at the point of this story, going through a heartbreak, trying to fix the damage in her heart and her psyche, and trying to make amends with people she’s harmed. Nick is her Kept. Alexi was, at one point, Bracken’s last year of school and Alexi’s first, Bracken’s Kept.

Sometime around Year 21 of the Addergoole school; 5 years after the world ended

There had been easy pieces of Bracken’s recovery journey.

Talking to the teachers at school had not been comfortable, but she’d been able to yell, to lay blame, to explain I wasn’t a bad kid, not really. I was terrified. And then you yelled at me.

Talking to the mind-healer had not been comfortable, but it had been productive. She felt her fear trickling away, even as the pain remained. She felt a sense of worth she’d never before known, and she could begin to allow herself the comfort of the man in her bed, the one who had told her he’d stay.

(The other one had said he’d stay too. But, at the moment, that wasn’t what she was trying to fix. He had his own road to walk).

This one was harder. This wasn’t someone who had wronged her; this wasn’t the ghosts in her own head, or someone who loved her as she was, scars and broken pieces and all. This was someone who clearly felt that she had wronged him, which was a whole new kettle of fish.

Nick, the teleporter who had stayed, brought her to Silas and Orlaith’s door, not for nearly the first time. And, again, poor timing or just bad luck, Alexi answered.

Bracken studied the skinny hermaphrodite and, for a moment, could not find the words to say. Nick’s gentle prod to her side reminded her that staring at someone could be considered intimidating.

She cleared her throat. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He took a step backwards, as if the small space could protect him more than the threshold she wasn’t going to cross without an invitation.

Nick’s hand on her back calmed her before she could say something stupid. “I came to talk to you, if it’s okay…?” He was wearing a collar. It struck her that the only time she had seen him without had been just before she’d put hers on him, and just after she’d taken it off.

“To me?” Alexi squeaked it out. “Uh. Why?”

That was a very good question. Bracken took a moment to suss out a decent answer. “You’re scared of me.”

“Well, yeah.” He peered at her, seeming to be suggesting that wasn’t really an answer.

“That means I did something wrong.”

“Uh? I mean… I guess I mean uh?” Alexi took another little step backwards, hand hovering over what Bracken assumed was a panic button. She held up both her hands.

“I screwed up, Alexi. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I promise, it was never my intent to hurt you. And if I did, if you’re still scared of me now, it means I did something really wrong. And I’d like to make amends.”

The hermaphrodite blinked owlishly at her. “You want to… apologize?”

“Yeah.” She frowned, and found herself looking down at her toes, shoulders hunched. “I do. I want to make things better.”

“Why?” He was moving back towards the gate, at least.

She shrugged hard. This was hard. People were a lot harder to fix than cars, or clothes, or buildings. “Because I didn’t mean to make things bad in the first place. And…” Her shoulders jerked again. “It bugs me that I hurt you. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it as soon as it was out of her mouth. “You can’t erase the past.” He’s stopped moving closer. “You can’t undo it.”

“No. No.” She shook her head. “I can’t. But maybe I can make amends?” She was running out of ways to say the same thing. “Maybe we can, I dunno, understand each other a little better?”

He thought about that for long enough that she was starting to squirm. Finally, he nodded. “Come on in, if you mean those who reside here no harm.”

“I mean you and yours no harm.” She was surprised to find his invitation worked. “I thought you were…”

“I’m a kept boy without being Kept.” He smiled for the first time she she’d arrived. “I never really had a problem with that part of it.”

“I noticed. Urm.” She followed him into the small gate-house, which was surprisingly large enough for the three of them and rather well-appointed inside. “That’s why I was surprised when I saw you, and you were…” Hanging out with Marius had not improved her vocabulary. She flapped a hand.

“Frightened,” Nick provided.

“Frightened. Yes.”

Alexi frowned. “That bothered you?”

“Yeah?” She swallowed and struggled not to yell. “Yeah, it bothered me. I’m not scary. I’m not the bad guy.” She shrugged roughly. “I rescue people. I help people. I’m not good with people, but I’m not one of the monsters.”

“I know.” Alexi’s voice was soft, barely audible. Bracken glanced at him, then looked again. He looked a little confused, and a little worried. “I know, Bracken. You were never one of the bad guys.”

He reached across the small space and, very carefully, as if afraid she’d bite, he patted her knee. “I know that.”

She wasn’t sure if she should be reassured or more worried, but she felt a little tension leaving her shoulders anyway. A glance at Nick told her that he was, if not smiling, at least frowning less. “You’re still scared of me, though.”

“You were so angry. All through my whole first year. And when you showed up here, you were angry again. You’re kind of scary when you’re angry.”

“I fix things.” She sounded like she was pleading, and she wasn’t sure she cared.

“If you’ve ever seen yourself waving a wrench around…” Alexi shrugged. “Sorry. I mean. I know you’re one of the good guys. But you’re just kind of scary. And when I was Kept by you – you were angry all the time. So you were kind of scary all the time.” Alexi shrugged again. “Sorry. I really am. I’m not trying to freak you out…”

Bracken sighed. She was beginning to understand what happened. “No, it’s all right. I think I get it.” She mirrored the hermaphrodite’s gesture, patting a bony knee. “You’re happy here?”

“I really am.” The smile that lit up that face was something Bracken didn’t remember seeing often, and it was short-lived, sliding quickly to something like worry. “Are you?”

She glanced over at Nick, then back to her former Kept. “Happy?” It was a question she’d never really been comfortable with. “I’m learning how to be.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534576.html. You can comment here or there.

Deaths in the Faerie Apocalypse, Part II

May17

This follows after Deaths in the Faerie Apocalypse, Part I

The returned gods had already started killing people, simply by direct deaths – smiting, experimentation, accident. However, they would up their death count by orders of magnitude when they began fighting amongst themselves.

When two gods fight, they often do so on a very large scale. Fireballs can miss their target. Ditto a cloud of ice. Ceilings can collapse – buildings can collapse. Ruin a big enough dam and a city can be lost in an instant. Set the wrong thing on fire and you end up with gruesome deaths.

The returned gods did all of this and more. They broke bridges, buildings, roads. They blew up gas stations. Any given ten minutes of the gods fighting looked like something out of an action movie (or it looked liked two people staring at each other and muttering. “Destroy Mind” leaves very little residue. But very few fights were conducted that way).

They fought over territory. Some unwisely claimed ancestral lands and then learned that the real meat was in other places, places that small, petty gods had claimed. Some found that three of four of them had claimed what had been different places, once upon a time, and were now one big city.

They fought over laws – how they would govern, how they would work in and around the human laws and power structures. They fought over perceived and real insults.

And then the Ellehemaei who had remained, tired of this show and indignant about the entire thing, got in on the act, and started fighting back.

How and why did the returned gods all return at once? Answer here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534926.html / http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/668774.html / http://addergoole.livejournal.com/237411.html

Part III: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/540099.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534355.html. You can comment here or there.

Genre

May17

To [personal profile] kelkyag‘s commissioned continuation of Sidekick. For the complete story, see here.

The Aunt Family has a landing page here.

“Tragic.” Eva was finding her voice, although it was taking effort. “Aunt Rosaria, what are you talking about? There’s nothing tragic about Uncle Arges, unless you mean those horrid Hawaiian shirts. And who’s Willard?” She flapped her hand. “I know that Willard is Aunt Ramona’s son. And I think you’ve said that he’s like Stone, or he was, but he left the family. I didn’t know people could leave the family.” She frowned. “Aunt Rosaria, I don’t normally sound this silly.”

Her aunt patted her leg. “I know, dear. Believe me, I really do. I remember when my aunts had this effect on me. It’s as if you are feeling the whole weight of the family staring down at you from one old lady, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way…”

“That, my dear, is because you are a nice girl. You’ll age out of that in time, I imagine, because you are also a very strong girl, and those two do not often go together.”

Eva coughed, uncertain what to say to that.

Her aunt wasn’t done yet, though. Of course not. Aunt Rosaria was a story-teller. “Argie loved Willard. Not in that sort of way, but as a hero, a role model. He looked up to that boy like he hung the moon. And that, that almost turned into a real tragedy. But it is one thing among many that we failed to see.” She pursed her old lips tightly. Eva thought she might cry; a granny, cry? She’d never seen that.

“Aunt Rosaria, you’re being immensely vague.”

“Turn left here, darling. I know I am. But there are stories we can see clearer, if we look at the pictures, than looking at the truth.”

“And this is one of them?”

“And this is one of them. So.” The old woman coughed, folded her hands, and began. “Once upon a time.”

“Not so very long ago, and yet so very long ago.” Eva remembered the lines as if it had been only yesterday she’d been sitting at her aunt’s feet.

“Very true. Once upon a time, but not so long ago that we’ve forgotten, there was a boy.”

“Was he a prince?” She found she didn’t feel silly; the questions were part of the ritual, after all.

“He was the son of a royal family, but he was not the heir. That was his cousin, the Princess. That was all right with the boy. He didn’t want to be King. He told everyone that could hear that: ‘I don’t want to be King. I want to be a wizard, and live in a tower.’ He told it to his aunties, who patted his head, and told him to wash the dishes, for in this land, everyone had to wash dishes.”

“In that land and in ours.”

“As in ours, yes. Even Princesses. He told his uncles, who clucked and scolded. ‘Boys are not Wizards. There are no Wizards in this land.’

“‘There are wizards in the next land over.’ The boy was determined.”

Eva, lost in the story, pulled herself out enough to wonder what the next town over translated to, in the real world.

“What kind of wizards were there?” She inserted the question, because the story seemed to want it, and because she wanted to know.

“That was the thing. Nobody knew. They weren’t even sure how the boy knew that such things existed. For the royal family, you see, had taken to ignoring all the other nations around it.”

“That doesn’t seem very wise.”

“They were not, truly, the wisest of families. But perhaps that is a goal to which no family can honestly aspire, be they royal or not.”

“So they ignored all the other countries?” Eva could picture both her family and the royals they were describing, one superimposed upon the other, staring at each other and pointedly ignoring everything behind their backs. Her Aunt Asta wore the queen’s crown, in this image.

“They did. But this boy, he wanted to be a wizard.”

“And there were no Wizards.”

“Not in the land they lived in. But the boy insisted. His uncles and aunts told him to hush. His mother and father told him to hush. His sisters and brothers told him to hush. But the boy insisted.

“‘I will be a Wizard,’ he insisted. ‘Not a shiny one, not a brave one, not the best wizard – at least not to begin with. But I am not a Prince; I will never be a King. So I will be a Wizard.”

“Couldn’t he have been a Hero?” Evangaline found she was getting deep into the story.

“He could have been a Hero. He would have been a very good Hero. but his inclinations – and his talents – did not lay in that direction. He had been born, as very few are, to the mantle of Wizard. And he knew it.” Aunt Rosaria’s voice broke, just a little bit. “And the royal family knew it as well.”

“They tried to talk him into a different path. The Hero. The Demon-Slayer. Even the Love Interest. There were plenty of lovely girls around. A Lothario would have had more than enough to do. But the boy did not want to be any of these things.

“The family was determined, however. There had never been any Wizards in the realm. It was not done. It was simply not done.” For the first time in her life, Eva heard her aunt’s voice rise up in broken anger. “And because it was not done, we…” She took a breath, and stared out the window at the moving scenery. “Because it was not done, the royal family told the boy he had a choice.”

“A bad choice.” Eva barely breathed the words.

“The worst choice. He could stop being a Wizard, stop this insistence that he was somehow different from everything the kingdom had strived for. Or he could leave.”

Aunt Rosaria looked back at Evangaline. “And, as almost everyone had known, in their heart of hearts, that he would, the boy chose to leave. What choice, really? He could be himself – or he could stay in his kingdom.” The old woman’s voice broke again. And she looked old, in a way she had not before.

“He left, of course. He left us… the boy left the royal family. He left without taking so much as a bag, a cookie, a silver coin. He left taking not even the clothes his family had given him, leaving behind everything, everything of the family. He left. And for a while, the family thought they could be relieved. The would-be Wizard was gone. They did not need to worry about the things that could not be. They did not need to look into the ways Wizards could be contained. They could have a Princess, and they could be content.”

Rosaria took Eva’s hand. Her touch was cool and papery, but her grip was firm. “It was not until many years later that the family truly learned what they had lost, in sending the boy away.” Her tone was sepulcher, and there was a terrifying crypt-door-closing finality in her words.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534069.html. You can comment here or there.

Mini-Giraffe?

May17

If I do a Giraffe Call this month, it will be a mini-call.

I will either go with something random or, more likely, do a setting-specific call, or, possibly, “would you like to see 250 more words on an extant story?”

Thoughts, oh my readers?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/533845.html. You can comment here or there.