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The Bloody Rose of Morning
For Vryka’s prompt.
Facets of Dusk has a landing page here.
Cole woke.
He generally considered this a good start to the day, getting things off on an immediate positive note.
He woke in a bed, which was even nicer, a comfortable bed with soft sheets. The day was already looking up. And there was a warm presence next to him, soft-skinned and pleasant smelling. The night was beginning, slowly, to come back to him, in blurry flashes. The team… the team was in another room, in the same house, or perhaps several rooms. Their hostess…
…Propped herself up on one elbow and smiled at him. “The water of the dawn falls sweeter than the rain of the evening.”
Ah, this.
Cole wracked his mind, but the only thing that came up was
“He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him
Of the better times”
The girl smiled uncertainly at him and reached for a bottle by the bedside, while, still smiling, Cole cursed himself. Josie had been on a roll last night, pulling lyrics out of her ass, and even Aeric had been able to come up with a poem or two. Cole? Cole could manage Chumbawumba.
“But the sweetest morning comes,” she continued, her gaze far too intense for his comfort, “with the coldness of reasoning.”
Oh, shit. Where was Josie when he needed her?
Right, not watching him in bed with another woman. Or at least not with this bronze-skinned beauty with the stunning eyes.
Stunning eyes. Stunning… blue… eyes. Sinatra!
“I thought I found the gal I could trust,
watta bust, this is how the story ends:
She’s gonna turn me down and say,
‘Can’t we be just friends?'” He gave her a game smile, but she was frowning at him. Which was still a lovely expression, but not the one he was hoping for.
“Those who would be drunk upon the bloody roses of the morning beware the price of the wine,” she informed him firmly.
“The price…” He quashed the Kanya West lyrics that came to mind, and just shook his head. “It was a lovely night, beautiful.”
“The bloody morning wine,” she repeated, one hand gesturing crudely at parts of herself, “is sweet, but ware the path its taste will lead.”
He had to get out of here before he ended up married. Again. Was it bigamy if the wives were in different worlds? “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” he tried weakly, and, because it generally solved things, he kissed her.
She kissed him back, and seemed to agree with him, by the press of her body, that it was a good idea. So he kept kissing, fully intending to keep on tasting her bloody morning roses as long as she’d allow it.
Until someone started pounding on the door. “Those who taste the morning wine must pay the sherrif’s rosy fine!” shouted a deep and angry voice.
Sighing, Cole reached for his pants, the girl, and his gun. And the morning had been looking so good!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/274965.html. You can comment here or there.
Underneath, a story of Facets of Dusk for the Giraffe Call
For ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kc_obrien‘s prompt, with a side order of comments asking for more development of the female team members and for more time in-world, not just through-the-door.
Facets of Dusk has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
“It’s awfully dark in here,” Josie murmured unhappily. “I can’t feel the sun at all.” Or the trees, or the wind. There was a breeze, at least.
“But it’s rather warm,” Peter countered. “Or at least constant. It’s not a case of no solar heat, then, a burn-out planet.”
“It’s…” Aerich looked around disdainfully. “Rather dirty.”
Josie turned to look at him, trying not to laugh. He got so bent out of shape when he was laughed at. And, to be fair, the place was rather dirty. Untouched-feeling, stale, and the dim light only made it seem more so.
“Xenia and I will scout,” Cole declared, to no-one’s surprise. Xenia and he scouted, like Peter read instruments and Alexa Opened. Like Josie Knew. “You guys stay within a block of here, and see what you can find out.”
“Got it,” Alexa answered, crisp and professional like the suits she preferred. Josie smiled to herself, even though this world was making her a bit uncomfortable.
“They’re kind of cute, aren’t they?” Peter whispered, in a voice only for her ears. “G.I. Joe and Action Figure Girl?”
She swallowed another giggle. “They are,” she agreed, not admitting just how cute she could find them. “So, Science Man, why don’t we do our own exploring?”
She realized from the warmth suddenly coming off of him that there was more than one way to read her suggestion, and from the heat inside of her that she wouldn’t mind either one. But they were both professionals, of a sort. She cleared her throat, ready to backpedal. “That is…”
“We explore this world,” he agreed, rescuing her. “And then, later, perhaps…”
“Later.” She could hear his smile in his voice better than she could see it, but she could feel her own stretching her lips. “For now…” She dropped her mat on the ground and sank into a lotus position, hearing Peter move away, his instruments beeping softly to him, sending out an eerie glow.
Slowly, the glow faded from her awareness, and the beeping, Aerich and Alexa pacing out a perimeter, Peter reading the emanations of the world. Slowly, her senses stretched outwards – the Door, behind them, in a sturdy metal archway meant to last. Around the doorway, a building, still standing, tallish – about seven stories – made mostly of metal and stone. Around it, a block of similar buildings reached to slightly shorter heights.
She stretched further, tasting the dust in the air, the abandoned feeling of this place, the suggestion, beneath all the dust, of not quite abandoned, as if someone had left the light on, planning to come right back. Feeling Cole and Xenia, skulking around like thieves in the night. Feeling the edges of their world, a tall structure somewhere above. A roof. A roof above the entire city.
“We’re in some sort of created cavern,” Peter said at the same time. “And it seems like there’s another such pocket directly above this one. And above that…”
She stretched her senses, reaching for the power of the ground under her, reaching for the sunlight. “Ah,” she moaned, as the life and bustle and sunlight! assailed her, pressing in on her, talking to her in words she couldn’t understand, pushing into her. “And above that is the city.”
“Indeed,” he agreed. “Above that is where the people are.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/234171.html. You can comment here or there.
December Kink-Bingo Mini-Challenge
From my card, the second row.
Settings include Addergoole, Tír na Cali, Facets of Dusk, and Space Accountant
5 stories, exactly 100 words each.
Content warnings: language, semi-dubious-consent. Continue reading
Target
Facets of Dusk is still lacking a landing page; Tir na Cali’s page is here and here on LJ
“Her?”
The Agent set down her scope and shook her head. “She doesn’t seem like all that much, Joe. She’s pretty enough, but nothing stunning.”
“Look again,” her partner insisted. “Look at her eyes.”
The Agent took another look, and set down her scope far more carefully. “Shit,” she shook her head. “What in the Consort’s pants are we going to do with that?”
“Run?” her partner suggested. “Running sounds good.”
~
“What do you mean?” Cole was impatient with, well, with everything, but with things that were esoteric, magical, he was even less tolerant than Simon. He shook his head at Josie. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Actually, she is,” Alexa corrected gently. “The Doors don’t always lead to the same place every time, that we know. It seems to be part volition, part unknown variables – and I think one of those unknown variables could very easily be a pulling from the other side.”
“A need,” Josie agreed, “or something very intense.”
~
Blaise stared at the small fire in her back yard, the roasting remains of the pigeon crackling as bits of fat fell into the flames. If she burnt it enough, maybe nobody would ever find out how it had died. If she roasted this area enough, maybe noobdy would ever know what she had done.
“Blaise!” Her mother, she thought dispassionately, sounded terrified. Sometimes she thought the daft bitch knew more than she let on. “Blaise, honey, step away from the fire, please. You know how much I worry about flame.”
She closed her eyes, willing the inferno back inside of her. “Yeah, mom,” she murmured, trying to sound innocent. Naive. “Yeah, Mom, I know.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/198972.html. You can comment here or there.
Icon Flash: Facets of Dusk & Ekwara
Continuing flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.
Today’s icon:
A Jaunx, from Ekwara
Icon & Art by Djinni
This icon was drawn at the same time as my Alexa icon, so it’s always been rather Facets-of-Dusk for me. This story crosses the Facets multiverse with Djinni’s comic Ekwara.
Facets does not yet have a landing page (whoops!) but it does have a tag, below
It was beginning to be old hat. Take a hand, wait for the chain to form, open the Door, step through. Alexa was getting very good at it. The rest of the team was getting good, too, at all the things they had to do when they reached a new location, recon and integration and information-gathering. They were, after so many false starts, acting like a team.
Alexa swung the door open, holding Josie’s right hand with her left, and stepped through. One step – the ground was soft, squishy grass. Two steps – it held her weight, and Josie’s, without buckling or sinking. Three steps – the terrain around them was wooded, bright green. She saw no buildings, which was odd. Normally, in order for there to be a door…
She looked around, a strange thought occurring to her. She’d seen those trees. She’s seen that cat-like creature over there, the one doing something that looked like casting a spell, opening a… a vortex of stars, much like some of her own Doorways. She’d read about this place.
She looked behind her, hurriedly. There was no door, just as slowly shrinking portal that Aerich was stepping through. That left Peter on the other side. Ignoring all protocol, she shoved Josie into Aerich, pushing both of them into the portal, and grabbed Xenia and Cole’s hands. “Back, back now!”
They had had enough close calls. They let her push them all back in. As the door shut behind them, Cole asked, mildly, “Alexa, what the hell?”
“I’ve seen that place before,” she told them, and then, because she had seen a number of worlds that they hadn’t, she clarified, “in a comic, a web-comic.”
“A comic,” Aerich scoffed. Peter looked up, curious.
“If we can prove that worlds that are fiction to us…”
“Ekwara,” she cut him off, “is where lost things wind up. And there was no door on that side.”
“Oh.” Aerich blinked. “A one-way Door?”
“Exactly. And, while it’s a lovely comic…”
“…we don’t want to get trapped there,” Cole agreed. “Good call, Alexa.”
She ignored the rush of warmth, mostly because, with that Door off-limits…
“So,” Xenia asked, “where do we go now?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/192102.html. You can comment here or there.
IconFlash – Facets of Dusk, Josie – Still Falling
New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.
Today’s icon:
An open doorway onto clouds
Icon from http://www.myknownbuzz.com/doorway/
Directly after Falling Falling Falling Down (LJ)
The fear Josie never spoke of – and she knew they all had one – was that they would step through the Doorway someday and be trapped in a deadly situation with no way back through the door.
It was an entirely rational fear on the surface of things, tainted by the acid-trip echoes that colored it, twisted by her deep conviction, down in her hidden places, that the team would abandon her in such a situation, rather than risking another member to save her.
When they stepped through into sky, she felt – no, knew – her worst fears were coming true. They tumbled down the side of the building, twisting and turning as they fell, plummeting down towards – towards what? Even in her worst nightmares, they never landed.
But she knew this fear, knew this scenario, having played it out a thousand times in her head. The team would not save her, but she could save herself, could save all of them. The building was not too far, all things considered, and there were things that looked like doorways spotting it. If she could manage…
She was not Aerich, with his world-warping magic. She was not Alexa, with the doorways. But she was Josie, and the wind and the rain spoke to her, the earth and the trees and the birds. And if the earth and trees would cooperate…
She pulled the rope from her pack with some difficulty, losing her change of pants in the process. She could save them all.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/140184.html. You can comment here or there.
IconFlash – Alexa – Through the Door
New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.
(Yes, if you want to make me an icon to get me to write a flash about it, you can. In that case, I’ll even write 2x as much!)
I’m starting with DW, in alphabetical order. Today’s icon:
Facets of Dusk, Alexa.
Icon & Art by Djinni
There was always a moment, when she stepped through a Door, when Alexa felt as if she was walking in eternity. She closed her eyes, every time, despite common sense and protocol, but it didn’t help. For that endless moment, she was standing in space, the stars all around her, lost in the ice of Void.
She took a breath. She always remembered to breathe deeply when she was here, in the non-place. It smelled like nothing she’d ever felt anywhere else, like power and pleasure and fear. It felt like freefall, like firing a semi-automatic gun, like the best orgasm of her life.
Breathe in, breathe out, and step. The step was as important as the breathing; she’d learned quickly that the others didn’t see what she saw. They saw a doorway, felt maybe a small wrenching, and they were through. If they got impatient, though, if she was too slow, then they jostled her. The first time they’d jostled her, they’d ended up in one of the far-variant worlds, and it had taken them seven dangerous Door-steps to get back home. She did everything she could to make certain that didn’t happen again.
Step again, the stars still twinkling beneath her eyelids, the scent of the Void still stinging her nose, and again, to let the entire team through the Door. And then, with a long inhale and a slower exhale, find her fingers, rooting her into her team, into the teammate holding her hand.
And they arrived.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/128902.html. You can comment here or there.
Kissing One’self
kink_bingo – I-2 – Mirrors and Doubles – from my card. As this is a kink bingo story, it is smutty, and it involves doppelgangers and clones.
I like this, but honestly feel I could do more with the theme.
Author’s notes: this takes place soon after this story (on LJ) where the Team has just found themselves facing dopples of two team members, Josie and Alexa.
💋
Cole lay in bed between Alexa and Alexa, near Alexa… and Cole. His doppleganger was smoking a cigarette; Cole reached over and took it from him, leaning over what he was pretty sure was a clone-Alexa to do so.
“Well,” he grinned, “this is the most fun I’ve had today.”
Clone or not, the Alexa he was leaning over hit him.
💋
They’d encountered doppleganger!Josie (who was very, very clear on the fact that she was not a clone) and clone!Alexa (who had no such problem) first, just steps into this new world. The Josies had still been trying to work out who got to freak out first when doppleganger!Cole (probably also a clone) had come around the corner, with what looked like a third twin of their opener.
Cole had had a bad moment there – the two Josies and the three Alexas seemed rather similar in personality to each other, and he knew exactly what he was capable of, especially when dirty, tired, and confronted with an unpredictable situation. He really didn’t want to have to shoot himself in the face – almost as much as he really, really didn’t want to find out that his doppleganger was faster on the draw than him.
But doppleganger!Cole had taken them all in, grinned, and said “where the hell did you clones come from, and, wherever it was, tell me you brought booze, cigs, and a shower.”
He’d almost dodged his Josie slapping him, too, still declaring that she, of all of them, most definitely wasn’t a clone.
The ice had been broken enough, though, that they’d been invited back to their dopple’s HQ, the basement of an old Zear’s store, complete with a couple creepy mannequins and, much nicer, half of the housewares department. There were twenty of them there, all ragged and dirty and all very glad of the supplies in their visitors’ packs. Aerich had been cranky, Xenia and Peter distrustful – but their dopples weren’t there, and, to be fair, they didn’t know their teammates that well, much less their teammates’ duplicates. Josie had managed to calm herself down, and the three Alexas had compared notes over the fresh apples his Lex had thought to bring.
That left it up to Coles to suggest the inevitable.
His dopple started it, with a raised eyebrow and a head-tilt at the two cloned Alexas. “They’re a riot in the sack together,” he murmured, which got him hit by the cleaner and more in-charge of the two. “But I have to admit…”
And his Lex finished it. “…I’ve always wondered what being in bed with two Coles would be like,” she grinned sharply, the kind of thing that looked sweet until you saw all the teeth she was showing. She turned to the clearly-junior dopple-clone. “Got a bed big enough for three?”
No one should have been surprised when someone with Lex’s genes shot right back at her with “I’ve got one big enough for five.”
And, while the rest of the team might role their eyes, truth was they weren’t going anywhere until Lex decided to open a Door, so might as well enjoy themselves for a bit, right? And Cole had earned them goodwill in more than one place with what Peter liked to call “his own particular brand of Cowboy Diplomacy.”
So Cole found himself kissing himself (he tasted like salt and Josie’s homebrew), while Lex went down on one of them, then the other and the other two did a mirror act that was illegal in several states but delicious in any world. Naked, they lost the few distinctions of clothing, and in the dim light, the lifestyle differences he’d seen – his Lex had a couple pounds on her dopples, and the junior clone had a sepia tattoo over her left hip – faded, leaving them identical brown writhing bodies. He grabbed for a head of hair, not caring which it was, and kissed the girl, then kissed himself again.
All three Alexas bit, but they all had their own unique moans and cries and, more surprisingly, their own tastes under his tongue. He looked up to see dark eyes staring down at him, or felt nails in his hair, and only when the girl there called him by one of Alexa’s naughty nicknames for him (“Coal shoot” was her favorite and least sensical) did he know which girl he was licking.
Of course, when he twisted to find dopple!Cole lining up for his, ahem, coal shoot, he knew exactly who was who, but it was still unnerving to see that leer looking down at him.
💋
Some time later, he reached over and stole his dopple’s cig, earning himself an elbow from one of several lovely Alexas. “I could get used to this,” he groaned.
“Me, too,” he heard himself agree. “So, are you leaving yours, or taking mine and me?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/92859.html. You can comment here or there.
Trouble in Doubles – Facets of Dusk – from kc_obrien and elfling_eryn’
From kc_obrien‘s request for Josie/Facets and elfling_eryn‘s prompt: “There’s only so much trouble you get into in a day…unless, of course, you have a clone or two at hand.”
Facets of Dusk, which needs a landing page.
Josie was holding on to Alexa’s hand this time, and they were both pretending that they just hadn’t gotten around to letting go, both pretending the other one needed the hand-holding. They’d gotten good at it, and in this world… this world, they both needed it.
It was like coming home, walking down the street in a neighborhood you’d known, and finding it blasted and destroyed by war. More than any other of the worlds Josie had seen, it looked like home. The signs were almost the same – hell, some of them were the same; there was the ruins of a Krispy Kreme, and she was pretty sure that was a FedEx office. The road names were mostly the same, or similar. If they turned that corner, they’d see one of the bars Cole thought they didn’t know he went to, or a bombed-out pit where it should be.
They turned the corner, because they were here to explore, and none of the instruments Peter was waving about, nor the charms Aerich was wielding, were suggesting danger. Josie’s senses were saying something different – saying Run. Leave. Flee. But she couldn’t pinpoint it, and she didn’t want to let down the team by panicking too soon. She held tighter to Alexa, which was good, and not just for the comfort the other woman gave her.
Because when they turned the corner, Alexa stared back at her. Alexa harder, dirtier, dressed in scavenged clothing that doesn’t fit perfectly, but nonetheless Alexa.
Josie backpedalled, swallowing a gulp of panic, reaching for the center of her calm and not quite finding it, scrabbling until she backed right into Peter.
“Easy, easy…” He hadn’t seen the Alexa clone yet, but he set his hand on her shoulder, trying for calming, she supposed. She could feel from the way his fingers tightened when he realized what she was panicking about. And then it got worse.
By that point, Alexa was looking at herself cautiously, the two of them so very calm about it. The dirtier version whistled sharply and, from a doorway to a mostly-standing building (that would have been Cole’s bar, back home), stepped… Josie.
They stared at each other, both of them breathing raggedly, uncertainly, both of them reaching for their Alexas, although her doppelganger had no Peter, no team watching her carefully (not true. The team was watching both of them, all four of them, but the clone-Alexa and clone-Josie had no other friends with them).
“No.” Even the voice sounded the same, the high, reedy panic Josie was trying to swallow. “No.” She glared at her Alexa angrily. “No. I know you’re a clone, but I’m not.”
Clone!Alexa shook her head. “Well, are you a twin, then? And if so, menina, your other half is totally screwing you. These guys look like they took a bath today.” Her diction was nothing like Alexa’s – lyrical, laid-back. Clone!Josie, on the other hand, sounded a lot like her.
“I’m not a twin. Not a clone.” She was, Josie noted clinically, starting to really panic. “I don’t know who she is but she’s an imposter.”
That just made Clone!Alexa bark out a laugh, one that Real!Alexa shared. “Come on, who do you think would want to be us? Up there in the shining places, maybe, but down here on the street?”
Josie was listening in awe. Behind her, Cole muttered to Aerich, “did you know this could happen?”
Instead of an answer, Aerich murmured back “Saints forefend we meet another of you. Can you imagine how much trouble two of you could get into?”
“Or more.” Xenia offered helpfully. “Since they have clones.”
Josie ignored them and stepped forward, offering a hand to Clone!Josie. “Hello,” she greeted her, using the calm tone of voice she knew helped her when she was freaking out. “So, ah, which would be better? A clone, or traveler from another world?”
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