To rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

After Post-Apoc Studies 101, which is after story-didn’t-work-bit. Set in the Fae Apoc ‘verse, just after/during the apoc.

Potential energy

The pebble, tipped over the edge of the building by Tomas, tumbled down a long ways. They’d climbed – sometimes on the stairs, sometimes making up their own path – quite a ways to get up here, using gifts and tricks that Armona barely understood on the hardest parts.

She listened for its eventual smash against the pavement below, tiny as it was. “I’ve got height.” She looked down, for a moment, at the empty wreck of a street below. “You’re saying my lack of having stuff, right now, is a potential to have stuff?”

“You have energy. Your food-like thing.”

“Just done.” She pulled it off the fire and tested it with two peeled twigs. “Want some?”

“I ate, thank you. You have energy, and want. Want is a very strong force.”

“Strong enough to make things happen?”

“Well, what is it that you, ah, want to happen?”

“I want food, and shelter. A door between me and the rest of the world.” She ate a few bites of pork and beans. “Real food, not just cans. And a real roof. One that doesn’t leak.”

“But not deer you bring down yourself?”

“Mayyyybe. Still working on that one. And I want to not have to be pushed around.”

“And there we get to the crux of it. Who don’t you want pushing you around? Me? Your parents?”

“Anyone!” She thought about that. “Strangers, mostly. Guys. People who think they own the place. Jackasses.”

“And would you rather push them around?”

It was a very good question. It took Armona a moment to answer. “Yes.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/542328.html. You can comment here or there.