If I were to write a Completely Different sort of sexy/kinky fantasy serial (Separate from Steam-Goats, promise), what are the top three things you’d like to see in such a serial?
What would you LEAST want to see in that story?
What setting would you like for such a story?
If your answer is “but I wouldn’t read erotic serials,” that’s okay, too.
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After Goodbye Tradition.
Beckett also has an appearance in Don’t Cry, Baby; Leithe also shows up in A New year, a New… Who?.
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/407350.html
Beckett spent a week trying to pretend he wasn’t sulking, and another week trying hard to ignore the questions. None of them were polite. Some of them were just insulting.
“So, Mirella cut you free?”
“So, you couldn’t hack it as a Keptie?”
“So, you’re in the market now?”
So, so, so. No, no, no. Beckett didn’t feel free. He didn’t feel like he’d failed. He felt, more than anything… angry.
“I wish…” But life didn’t work that way.
“What do you wish? Maybe I can make it come true.”
He knew Leithe. He shared a couple classes with her; more importantly, Mirella had declared her utterly and completely off-limits. She was petite, lovely, and looked nothing at all like Mirella.
“I’m not sure.” Beckett shrugged. Pretty girls didn’t generally talk to him – part of why he’d been such a sucker for Mirella. “I wish she’d either never Kept me or never released me, I guess.”
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” She tilted her head and frowned at him. “When it breaks, the bond? It makes you feel like everything is going sideways.”
It did. Beckett nodded cautiously.
“And it makes you feel empty.”
“You’ve been Kept?” It was a stupid question, but he was good at those. Everyone was Kept eventually.
“I did my time. You got off easy, some people would say.”
“Being hers… it wasn’t bad.” He’d felt like he’d been worth something. “Not being anyone’s kind of sucks.”
“Well, there’s always the alternative.”
Beckett swallowed. Even HE could pick up what she was offering. But was that somewhere he wanted to be?
“Think about it?” Leithe tilted her head again. She was smiling; she had a pretty smile. “And if not that… well, come talk anyway. Having friends around here is helpful.”
“Friends.” Beckett swallowed. Friends, he could do. “Okay. Uh. Friends.”
Mirella had cut him free. For the first time, free didn’t feel like falling.
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After The Cup and The Cup, Part II, and The Cup Part III, and The Cup, Part IV, in that Order
They drove North.
The drove quickly out of the immediate reach of Boom – the Ranch; the shantytown that had built up around it and, slowly but efficiently, turned into a small city; the two the Ranch had originally been built near.
It got bigger every time Pellinore visited; when he’d first come by, soon after the end of the world, it had looked like nothing more than a sad collection of terrified refugees, and Boom trying to hold them all together. Now it could be a nation-state, if Boom had interest in ruling anything at all.
In Boom’s immediate reach, the roads were smooth and likely in better repair than they had been before the Gods War. Pellinore knew the minute they passed out of the territory, because the highway became one solid pothole from shoulder to shoulder.
“Can the van…” He shut up halfway through the sentence. For one, it risked him biting his tongue off. For another, it was Cynara’s van. It could handle potholes.
“Yes.” She answered anyway. She had a habit of doing that.
“Good.” He braced himself a little better in his seat.
He couldn’t help glancing back at his son. His son, and a complete stranger to him.
John-Wayne shrugged back at him, as if saying she does that. Like the only thing they had in common was Cynara.
Well, it kind of was. Pellinore looked back at the road…
“Watch out!” That wasn’t a pothole. That was a hole that could swallow a small country, and definitely could eat a large van.
He’d no sooner shouted those words than he remembered he had better words to use, and that he could use them with impunity. He didn’t wear her damn collar any more. “Tempero Unutu, Meentik Eperu, Meentik Unutu δρόμος, δρόμος, δρόμος.” He spat the Words out, controlling the surface of the road down into something smooth and safe, pushing earth under it to hold it up, and then making more road. “Tempero Unutu δρόμος.” More road. Please, more road. “Jasfe Unutu δρόμος.”
He lay back in his chair, panting, as the road knit itself back together under the still-moving-forward tires of Cynara’s van.
“Good job.”
“Thanks.” For a moment, he missed the warm rush that the praise would have given him, back when he was hers.
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