Helping a Friend Out, Part Two

Dec20

Part One
Addergoole-verse, Early 2012 (in the middle of the Apocalypse)
Written to rix_scaedu‘s commission.
I do not have an Agmund icon. But here’s Luke looking uncomfortable about the whole thing.

The boy was not happy about Agmund’s presence, but he was more than willing to lay out the details of the attack. The Nedetakaei nest had at least ten human hostages, was in the middle of what had been a very populous area before the gods came to town, and had been lain with booby-traps, Worked wards, and at least three explosive trip-lines.

“They don’t want anyone coming in to them, but they’re not going out much, either. They come out just after dark, about every fourth day — no set pattern, but it’s been three days with nothing, so hopefully today’s the day — but they always bring at least two of their hostages, and they go out in two-person teams. If we want to wipe out all three, we have to get the two when they’re out —”

“And then beard the third in the lair or hope they come out. Da. Roof attack?”

“Booby-trapped.” Dominic smiled grimly. “It’s almost as if they expected combat-ready opponents with wings.”

“Always said, Mara’s greatest failing was predictability. But you.” Agmund tapped the boy’s shoulder. “You are not a Mara, no?”

The boy folded up a bit. “Don’t need to rub it in,” he muttered.

“Who is rubbing in? I am not a Mara, either.” Agmund dropped his Mask for a moment, letting the bearishness of his features show through. “So we are not so predictable. What about up from underneath?”

“Under… never thought of that.” The boy’s wings twitched in a habit he’d probably picked up from Luke. The fliers that didn’t study under him didn’t get that habit of nervous telegraphing in quite the same way.

“Then we should look, no, and hope they did not think of it either. Think of it this way,” Agmund offered, with a large grin, “it is much cleaner now than it would have been a year ago.”

Dominic made a face. “Sewers. I hate sewers, even clean ones. But it’s not a bad idea.”

“If back-up had come, what would your plan have been then?”

“Like I said, wait for the two to come out, then storm the place. I don’t want any hostages to die… but the Nedetakaei have to be taken out. They’re too dangerous otherwise.”

“Willing to try it my way, this time?”

Dominic studied him. “Well, you’re the grown-up, and you came to back me up.”

“You are a grown-up too,” Agmund reminded him. “I was there when you received your name, Shifting Shield.”

“But you’re the one with the experience,” Dominic countered. “So your plan wins this time. We go from below?”

“We go from below,” Agmund agreed. “And we go quietly, when the first ones leave.” He growled an Idu out, sending his senses through the street below, and was pleased to hear Dominic do the same.

The boy didn’t appear to have the words for Earth or Worked things, but with a mutter to himself (“Everything has air and water;” he sounded as if he was quoting someone), he did a Working to Know the air and water beneath their feet. The two patterns together would tell them where they were going.

“There,” they pointed at the same time. The manhole cover was just a few yards from their feet. And, as if on cue, the back door to the warehouse opened and two Nedetakaei exited.
Agmund nodded to the boy, and they got to work. It might be messy, but the Bear could go back to Addergoole and tell Luke that one more of his Students had survived. That, in Agmund’s opinion, was worth far more than wading through a sewer.


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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1215458.html. You can comment here or there.

Protected: Get-away – for Patreon

Dec16

Get-Away

Dec16

This story follows Ty, a character from Addergoole, the boarding school for fae teenagers, who happens to have a gender-swapping ability as part of their magical heritage.

💰

Ty would never be one to dun the old alma mater, no matter what criticisms other alumni raised. For one, as an early student and one of the few that had grown up surrounded by fae, Ty had always had an advantage over other Addergoolians. For another, even if the school had discouraged the use of Ty’s innate power in the field — field in this case being the halls and bedrooms of Addergoole’s dormitory floor — there’d been plenty of classroom practice in that and all of the magic Ty’s fae ancestry provided.

read on…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1213841.html. You can comment here or there.

Growth Spurt

Dec14

Two-plus generations after the end of the world. Probably Canon.

“Very good. Now, let’s find Leia, daughter of Pavarti.”

“You’re stunting his growth, you know.” Cya strode into the conference room as if she belonged there. The three people around the conference table looked up at her with variations on surprise and annoyance.

“How do you keep getting past the wards?” Regine fussed. The Director looked as if she was half-curious, half-irritated.

Cya didn’t blame her, but she wasn’t going to explain, either. Not that I Found a teleporter who can sneak past your wards without a whisper would have been that helpful an explanation, either, since Cya had not intent of letting Regine anywhere near her teleporter.

“I Found a way,” she said, instead. “Luke.” She nodded respectfully at the smirking-and-trying-not-to Mara. “And you must be their pet Finder.”

The boy — man, he had a beard and everything — shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not anyone’s pet. And what was that crack about my height?”

He actually was stunted, Cya noted, or, at least, he’d barely made it past five foot. He was handsome, too, in a sort Cya tended to prefer. “You must have kept him behind some pretty intense wards when I came to visit, his graduation year,” she commented to Regine.

“You were busy with John-Wayne that year.” Luke’s answer did nothing to cover the small but telling reaction Regine’d had. “That boy actually needed you.”

“I know he did. But I might have made an exception to several rules for that one, and I’m fairly certain she,” she nodded at Regine, “knew it.”

“Hello,” the Finder complained. “Right here. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Find my closest relative on that list, why don’t you?”

“How do you know there will be one?” Regine asked, too calmly. There was one, then.

“Because my father sent at least 2 other children to this school and my mother sent at least one other. THe odds say that even if I don’t have a grandchild coming next year –” she didn’t, unless one of her sons had lied to her, and she was fairly certain neither son would send any child to Addergoole that they didn’t have to “—I probably have a grand-niece or grand-nephew. Or, knowing both of my parents, maybe a brother or sister.”

The Finder had a pinched look on his face. He was working hard at her challenge, but it was a new concept to him. “Who are you?”

Cya flopped down in a chair and grinned at him. “I’m Cya. The Finder. I knew they had to have one, you see; they’ve gotten much more targeted and they can’t rely on computerized records the way they could back in my day. But they really are stunting your growth.”

His finger landed triumphantly on a name. Cya glanced at it, considered it.

“Ah, that’s Orlaith’s son Hunter-Hale’s child. Good luck,” she shot to Luke. “Going to their Manor can’t be fun.”

“Like going to the Ranch?”

“We like you at the Ranch, remember?” She grinned at Luke, then just as quickly wiped the expression off her face to aim a solemn look at Regine. “He’s how old? If he’s John-Wayne’s age, you’ve had him here for a while. Doing this? ‘Find the kid on a map?’ That’s kindergarten stuff.”

“It’s a necessary task.”

“Thing is, kid — sorry — the man doesn’t look like an idiot. He doesn’t look like he needs remedial Finding or even needs your help finding a job. So… “ Cya steepled her fingers and looked over them at the Finder, who, by this point, was glowering at her. “Creche kid? She offered you a job, and it made sense, since you didn’t have a family to back you up. Not a bad choice, and if I hadn’t had Boom, I might’ve done the same. Problem is… you’re stagnating. It’s factory work, but with your power.”

“I Find people.” He’d moved on to puzzled now. Good. Puzzled meant he might listen.

“Good. You can Find an abstract — you found my grand-nephew there. So how about find the nearest Addergoole-descended person who could really use Addergoole’s help ASAP?”

Hie forehead pinched again. He stared at the map and, after a moment, his finger settled on a place about a hundred miles out.

Cya had already come to that conclusion, but she still nodded at him. “Good. See? You can stretch your power. Luke, I brought a teleporter who can site off of Finds. Give me three minutes and I’ll take you there.”

She turned to Regine. “Hoard the Finders if you want. The ‘Porters are harder to pin down, for you or for me. But if I find out you’re keeping them in kindergarten, I’m going to start offering them all better jobs at higher pay. You’re a school Director. Challenge them.” She stood up.

“Wait. Better job. Higher pay? Pay?”

“You swore an oath,” Regine hissed.

“Yeah, well, so did you. And the oath has an escape clause, remember?” The kid looked almost ready to leave with her.

“Come on, Luke.” Cya was grinning and not bothering to hide it. “Let’s help out that Addergoolian-in-distress.” If Regine still had a Finder by the end of the year, she’d eat her hat. “Kid… you know how to Find me.”

John-Wayne can be found at his own tag; he’s Pellinore’s son.

Orlaith (Cya’s half-sister) can be found here; her son Hunter-Hale can be found here.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1212296.html. You can comment here or there.

Shifting, a continuation (finish-ation) of Addergoole yr17

Dec14

After Shades, for my Third Finish It Bingo Card. Addergoole Year 17.

“Why don’t you ever get angry?”

It had been three days since Abrelle’s hair had started tinging blue, three days where both she and Kevin had tried to pretend that nothing had changed, three days where she desperately wished that his Change involved changing colors, or that she had any skill with Hugr, emotions. She knew what she was feeling. He knew what she was feeling; he could read it in her hair. But he hadn’t given her any clue what he was feeling, and that was driving her a little bonkers (which, it appeared, was a weird shade of chartreuse, in small stripes).

He’d picked another fight, and she was in the process of buckling him up in a series of straps, mummifying him with leather. She’d done it so many times already (and it was only November!) that she hardly had to think about it: grab collar, hook the apparatus into position, grab arms, start buckling. She hadn’t even been focusing on him; she was still halfway in the book she’d been reading for VanderLinden’s Lit class.

She blinked at him, finished the next strap, and considered the the question. “Thinking,” she told him, so he didn’t think she was ignoring him. She moved down him, smoothing his fingers against his sides with a gentle petting motion before buckling the strap around his upper thighs.

He usually took until she got to his knees to settle down, but this time he was calm already. “Take your time.”

“My Keeper,” she said slowly, as she buckled the strap above his knees… “Sit down, here, that’s good, thank you. My Keeper, he liked to bait me. And then he would tell me things like ‘no, a good ladylike Kept doesn’t lose her temper.'”

“Didn’t know you very well, did he?” He pressed his ankles together while she got the last strap buckled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She swung his legs up onto the bed and straightened him out, making sure everything was laying smoothly.

“I mean…” He wriggled against the straps, now that they were all in place. “You’re not exactly ladylike. That sounds like someone who drinks tea with their pinkie up and doesn’t want to break a nail. I’ve seen you in combat training. If you really wanted to, you wouldn’t need orders to hold me still. Or straps.” He wriggled a little more. “But, I mean, he’s gone. And you still don’t get mad, no matter what I do.”

“That’s… not exactly right.”

“Your hair doesn’t ever change, well, it does now, but still, you don’t ever really express anything, you just take it all and then you tie me up and… I calm down and you don’t do anything.” He paused. “Wait. Wait, are you saying you are mad at me? Shit, shit-shit, shit!” He started pulling more intently against the restraints, actually trying to get out.

He couldn’t. But Abrelle sat down and pulled him until his head was on her lap anyway. She stroked his hair and petted him until he stopped swearing.

He looked up at her, frowning, lip-bitten. “I don’t know what to think. If you’re mad and you don’t show it, how am I supposed to know anything you’re thinking. How’m I supposed to know if I do something wrong?”

Rather than answering the difficult question, Abrelle raised her eyebrows at him and smirked. “I think I’ve been pretty clear when you do something wrong.”

“Well, yeah, but if you showed anything, then I’d know before I hit the “go sit in the corner and be quiet” spot. Or, you know, know if you were angry instead of just wondering if you thought something was a bad habit you ought to nip in the bud.”

“Is there a – no, you’re right, of course there’s a difference.” She’d been Kept, after all.

“Yeah. See? So… why don’t you get angry? I mean, why don’t you show anything? Your hair doesn’t even flicker.”

“I…” Abrelle stroked his hair for a little while. “You cannot tell anyone. You cannot even hint at it, you can’t whisper about it, I’d rather you didn’t think about it much while you were out in classes but I won’t make that an order unless you want me to.” Thought orders had messed her up more than anything her Keeper had done to her; she tried very hard not to do those to Kevin. “Okay?”

He stilled and looked up at her, forehead furrowed. “It’s serious. And you don’t want – what, no, not other students. The staff to know.” He chewed on his lip. “Is it okay? Is it hurting you? If you’re in pain somehow or damaging yourself, you can’t tell me not to tell the staff, that’s horrid.”

She pet his hair soothingly. He had the softest hair. He’d changed shampoos a week into being Kept, when it’d started to be clear how much time she’d spend running her hands through his hair. She definitely liked the feel of the new stuff better, and was very pleased that he’d made the change, presumably for her.

She took a minute to find her words. “It’s not something that’s damaging me. It’s not hurting me. But it might cause problems with some of the staff, and I don’t want… I’m not ready to deal with that.”

He looked thoughtful. “How about… you tell me, and if I think it’s something to worry about, then you come up with a time when you’re ready to deal with it and the staff-problems?” He wriggled cutely in her lap and gave her a wide-eyed and innocent expression. “I want to know, I really do. But I don’t want to be stuck not being able to help you.”

“I’m surprised you care.”

“I Belong to you,” he pointed out. “That comes with a bit of caring.”

“Oh.” She thought she might be disappointed. She wasn’t sure what that said.

“Hey. Hey.” He wriggled in her lap until she looked at him. “Hey, your hair’s doing a thing. Come on, I was teasing, or, you know, not being entirely honest. I, uh. We butt heads, but I like you, okay? I mean… really like you.”

“Like you said, you Belong to me.”

“No, no. I mean, yes. Yours. But come on.” He squirmed demonstratively. “You get me. And, uh. I like it when we just sit around and talk and stuff. And there’s stuff. I like that, too.”

She wanted to say you’re not making any sense but he was. And he was smiling. Oh, her hair must be doing something.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a good color. So… you like me and I like you and if that involves a lot of bondage, well, I’m actually not complaining about that… .but you’re going to tell me your secret now?” He gave her the hopeful wide-eyed look again.

She sighed. “Okay. I need one of my arms back, though.” She slid her left arm out from under him and fished out the necklace living down in her cleavage. “So. My Keeper. He didn’t like displays of emotion, didn’t really like emotion, especially not negative emotions. And I was… very emotional. I was very unhappy in the collar and I really didn’t like him. I still don’t like him.”

“Urgh.” He wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like an asshole.”

Abrelle snorted. “YOu’ll get no argument from me on that point. Except maybe that you’re not using a strong enough word. ANyway… he didn’t like emotions, and, well. You might have noticed the Keeping makes emotions, and… being ‘human’ makes emotions, and being pregnant….” she sighed and waited for him to stop the whole-body nose-wrinkle sort of disgust expression he always made when kids came up. “THat makes emotions, too. And being in trouble for having emotions…”

“Just makes things worse. Is he still here?”

“No. No, he graduated last year. Besides,” she tapped his nose gently, “he’s not your revenge, dear. He’s mine. So… I had, have, a friend who is very good with magical items, and I had her made something — because I wasn’t allowed to do WOrkings, and, even if I was, I’m awful at the Emotions word — something to shift my emotions. Not destroy them, just take the emotions and offe them as a shift to vision, a color, like my hair. THen I could decide if I wanted to feel them or not.”

“Hunh.” He considered. “So… the blue?”

“Well, at first it was supposed to be just negative emotions. But what we did was slide the thing in my bra for a week and have it read everything I was feeling, and then extrapolate from there what it should block and what colors it should show. Love… I wasn’t feeling any love at the time, let’s say that. ” She stroked his hair, waiting for the horror or disgust or confusion.

You are feeling worried, suggested the greenish-blue haze over her vision. Suppress? Allow?

Allow she decided. The trinket would probably not last much longer anyway. She was going to have to get used to her emotions before they all came flooding back.

“Your hair’s a funny… a couple funny colors.” He twitched in his bonds. “So… your friend made you a magical item that, uh, it shuts off your emotions? You get to decide what you’re going to feel and what you’re not?”

“I did.”

“Do you, um. Do you want me to be like that?”

She didn’t need his hair to turn colors to tell her he was worried, too. “Do I look like a giant asshole?” she asked, possibly more sharply than she’d intended. Having the emotions back did strange things to her speaking.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “No. No, ma’am. It’s just… uh. You haven’t been Kept in ages, years, right?”

“Since my first year,” she agreed.

“And you’re still wearing it. I mean, it looks like you’re starting to let stuff through? But if you’re still wearing it, when you obviously don’t have to care what your Keeper thinks anymore…” He looked away and struggled at the straps a little bit. “I just thought,” he muttered to her knee, “maybe you preferred things that way? Quiet? Calm.”

She stroked his hair and considered his words. “I like you the way you are. I like… well.” She ducked her head and found herself smiling, “the excuse to tie you up.”

“But you’re…” He was flushed but a smile was creeping in at his lips, “you’re still wearing it? So you like me, uh, excitable?”

“I like you the way you are,” she repeated. “And I really do like this.” She tugged on the strap around his arms.

His flush darkened and he looked away. “I like it too,” he muttered, “but I’d like it better if, uh. If you responded.”

“If I respond,” Abrelle picked her way through the words carefully, “it’s going to get loud. And I might say things I don’t mean.”

“I say things I don’t mean all the time! And sometimes I say things I do mean but wouldn’t say if I wasn’t shouting.”

“I know.” She stroked his hair. She could tell from the way he was struggling that tying him up wasn’t going to do it this time, or, at least, it wasn’t going to be enough on its own. “I’m just warning you. It’s going to get pretty shouty in here.”

“Well, then, so I won’t be alone shouting.” He hesitated. “And, uh. So I’ll know I got a reaction, maybe I won’t have to shout quite so much, too.”

“Hrrm.” She smiled crookedly at him and caught his hand, squeezing his fingers. “But I’m still going to tie you up, you know.”

“Well, yeah. I mean. That part’s fun, although…”

“Although?”

“I mean,” He shrugged jerkily against the straps. “You’ve got me all tied up, but, I mean, I…” He shook his head.

“Tell me,” Abrell ordered. Her vision suggested guilt, and she tolt it she didn’t want to bother with that right now. She could indulge in guilt later, when she’d figured out if something was going wrong with her Kept.

“Urgh,” he complained, and then, quickly, ‘I just wondered why you kept my clothes on all the time? I mean,” he spoke a little more slowly, the pressure of the order clearly off, “you get me all tied up, you could do anything you wanted to me. I Belong to you, you can do anything you want to me. And it’s not like you’re afraid I’m not gonna say if I don’t like something.”

Abrelle shut her mouth. That had been almost exactly what she’d been going to say.

He could tell, too. “Look, you’re not… your Keeper, and I trust you.” He twitched at the straps. “When I ask you — like, okay, the once I asked you to untie me, you, well, you untied me. I trust you,” he repeated. “I wish, you know, I could tell when you were angry, ‘cause then the bond gets all loud in my head making up options, but, uh, really, I wish if you were gonna tie me up so much, maybe you would do something with me once you’d gotten me tied up?” He wriggled in what Abrelle thought was supposed to be an enticing manner but mostly looked adorable.

Abrelle let the affectionate amusement wash through her and chuckled at him. “All right. But I’m going to warn you…”

“It’s going to be wild?” He smirked playfully. “You warned me about that already. Shouting, oh no. However will I survive?”

She rolled him onto his side so that he was off of her lap, catching him before he could roll too far away, and leaned down, very deliberately, and bit his earlobe. “My temper isn’t the only thing that’s gotten repressed over the last couple years,” she murmured into his ear, “and it’s not just going to be shouting that’s going to get wild.”

His cheeks turned pink — and his thin pants did nothing to hide the other signs of his sudden interest. “Oh no,” he repeated, but his voice was shaky and almost eager. “Wild, oh, no. However will I survive?”

Abrelle caught sight of her hair, which was turning deep blue and purple in vivid stripes. She slid the emotion-catcher out of her bra and left it on the nightstand timer. “Let’s find out, hrrm?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1212016.html. You can comment here or there.

Helping a Friend Out, Part One

Dec10

Addergoole-verse, Early 2012 (in the middle of the Apocalypse)
I was thinking about Luke during the apoc, his oaths, and… his friends

Agmund Fridmar was, of course, not unaware that his cy’ree, his Students, and those called cy’Luca, Luke Hawk’s Students, were in a bit of a cy’ree battle, and had been since there were more than three of them to glare at each other across the Dining Hall.

But his Students’ animosity toward Luke’s Students – and, sometimes, he supposed, towards the man himself – did not mean that Agmund had to feel anything of the sort, nor did the cy’Luca’s animosity towards cy’Fridmar and towards Agmund mean that he couldn’t help out Luke in a tough spot.

And the fact of the matter was, Luke was in a tough spot right now, although he would probably have preferred that Agmund and the other professors didn’t take notice. There was a war raging – or, at least, there were dozens and dozens of battles raging, and if you shook them all out, you could see two or three sides that were relatively consistent. There were cy’Luca, former cy’Luca but still the same wide-eyed, eager Warriors for Good, out there fighting against ancient would-be gods. They were losing, on average, but there were doing far more good than one might imagine they would have, and their wins were spectacular.

They were, however, dying, slowly and quickly, in singles and en masse, and Luke was trapped here, in Addergoole, staring at the walls and pacing like a caged tiger. Regine had him wrapped up in orders, and she had no sympathy nor concern, it seemed, for all of those cy’Luca out there dying in a battle she herself had seen coming, had planned for, had engineered them conceived for.

Agmund had his own oaths, but Agmund had always been better with words then Luke, their ins and outs, particularly their outs. His oaths left him a lot more room, and today, the room he was taking from them was a field trip of sorts.

This particular cy’Luca had no fondness at all for him. Dominic, the Shifting Shield. His demonic-looking Change — purple skin with black points, horns, claws — had led the cy’Fridmar during his time to try to recruit him, aggressively. But he’d always been cy’Luca material, and he’d gone to the winged White Knight side in earnest.

Tonight, he was going up against three Nedetakaei who were taking over a neighborhood under the aegis of a chaotic would-be god who’d taken over a northern city, and Agmund had reason to believe his expected back-up wouldn’t be showing up. One of them was dead, one of them had gotten captured, and the third one had been lying.

Agmund walked up to the young man. He didn’t bother to try to be sneaky. He was not here to test Shifting-Shield; he was here to aid him.

“They’re not coming,” he said, before Shifting-Shield could say anything. “So I am here. Stand down,” he added, and let his accent thicken. They did believe him more when he sounded like a bad Russian Boris and Natasha imitation. “Am here for backup, not to fight you.” He gave his best scolding-professor expression. “Nedetakaei is the enemy, da, not me?”

The boy relaxed and bristled at the same time, shifting from ready for a battle to ready for an argument. It was good he knew the difference. “Yeah. The Neds are the enemy, yeah.”

“Very good. Now tell me what we’ve got.”

Part II: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1215458.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1211109.html. You can comment here or there.

Learning to Fly, two Throwback Stories

Nov30

So, we were talking about my Patreon prompts on Twitter, and something Inventrix said twigged some small memory, so I present to you two separate Learning to Fly stories from long-ago, in honor of the Animal People month on my Patreon:

First Wind and First Nesting, a story of a people I have never again explored, sadly, from 2012.

and

Some Say Life, an Addergoole fic of Luke and Arundel, from 2011.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1206070.html. You can comment here or there.

Run Away

Nov16

Fae Apoc, for my Hurt/Comfort card. After And Your Little Friends Too

Odile didn’t trust this whole set-up.

She’d been outvoted, and Callis and Candace had made very good points. They were hungry, they were dirty, and a couple of them had been sick for weeks. They weren’t in great shape. But it was their shape, the shape they’d picked and built and fought for, tooth and claw and knife and gun. There was nobody to tell them what to do, nobody to take out their anger on them. They might not be safe, but they were, well, safer.

But there was an adult with a van, which set off every alarm Odile had, and he wanted to take them somewhere, which set off even more alarms. She stayed near the back, with the little ones who didn’t trust him, either, and the older ones who were as cautious as she was. There was food, but she wanted to wait, to make sure it wasn’t drugged. There were blankets. Blankets could be a trap. There was a smiling adult, not even as tall as Callis, who looked over every one of the children as if he wanted to collect them all.

“Odie?” A toddler, Jenny, tugged on her sleeve. “Odie, hungry.”

Odile swallowed. Nobody was falling asleep; nobody was falling ill. She scooped Jenny up into her arms, noting that she didn’t weigh enough. Had she been this skinny last time Odile picked her up?
She carried Jenny over to the van. The thermoses were full of warm soup, and the man was dishing it out as if he had no fear for his own hunger.

“Just a little for this little one, please.” Odile made herself smile at the man. She didn’t use names. Most of them didn’t. That’s how strangers got you.

“Of course.” He didn’t question her, didn’t press food on her. He filled a small mug with soup and handed it to Odlie, along with a plastic spoon. “Careful, it’s hot.”

“You heard him, sweetie. Little sips, blow on it first.” She talked Jenny through eating the soup, an eye on the stranger the whole time. She didn’t want to trust him. She didn’t want to trust any of this. But she didn’t want to lose her people, either.

She caught his eye; he hadn’t missed her staring at him. “We can leave whenever we want?”

He hesitated, considering his answer. Odile found that interesting. “There will be a chance every day for you to leave when you want. This place, it’s a secure place, so you’d have to be walked out, but I give you my word, if you want to leave, you’ll be walked out within forty-eight hours.”

Odile’s ears popped. She wrinkled her nose at the sudden change in pressure and looked at the man. He seemed sincere. He seemed careful about his sincerity.

“You’re trying to make sure you don’t, uh, you don’t overpromise, aren’t you?”

“Trust is built slowly.” He looked as if he knew that from experience. “I don’t expect you kids to believe me right away. But if I lie to you, you won’t ever believe me again.”

“Smart man.” Odile sipped a little of the soup in Jenny’s bowl, just one spoonful. “Good cook.”
He smiled, like he recognized the challenge there. “A friend of mine made the food. She’s a very good cook, and I’ll pass along the compliment if you don’t come with us. She’ll be pleased to hear it.”

Odile found herself relaxing. She forced herself to stay strong, stay tense. “Good food, too.” She poked at it. “Fresh vegetables. Some sort of meat in the stock.” She gave Jenny back the bowl and got her settled, all while keeping an eye on the man.

He didn’t seem to mind all the scrutiny. “We have a farm, and a garden. We’re way off the beaten path.”

“And you came looking for us.”

There was a pause. The man was considering his answer very carefully. “I came looking for Callis. He is a, uh, well, we have a school, and it survived the, ah.” His voice twisted and turned bitter for a moment. “The ‘Collapse,’ I guess we’re calling it. The school survived mostly intact, and we have all our records. Callis was on our rolls since the day he was born, and so I, well, came looking for him.”

“You spend a lot of time combing the ruins for legacy students?” She’d heard the term in a movie. He looked impressed… and then he looked tired.

“I’ve spent all summer plucking students from the ruins. And… finding the ones that didn’t make it.” His whole body seemed to sag. “It’s not a fun job, but sometimes I get to save someone.”

“And that’s what this is? Saving us?” She was prickly again, looking for the trap.

He didn’t get defensive. That was interesting. “You’re starving, and many of you are ill. Your hide-out is safe as long as you don’t run into anyone as strong as, say, a grown man. What I can give you — what my place and my friends can give you — is a safe place free of predators, food, and a way to start a garden, clothing, and medical care. Callis bargained for an education, including a practical education, for all of you. I can teach you how to fight, or my son; he works well with women warriors. When Callis is done with school, you can stay, or we can help him and you find a new place, a safe place.”

Odile looked at his face, and at the way his shoulders were held, and at his hands. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Just because this school wants Callis, you’re going to give us all a place to live? I mean, nobody does that. Not without wanting something in return.”

He was still again. “You’re children,” he protested, then shook her head, like he knew that was bullshit. “Okay. Here.” He sat down on the back edge of the van, so he was on eye level with her. “When you’re grown and educated, healthy and fed… I’m going to ask you to help me help other people. Other kids, other people who need help. Lots of ways you can do that — be a doctor, be a soldier, be an arbitrator, someone who helps people figure out disputes. And you’ve got a while to figure that out.”

“Grown-ups don’t do this,” Odlie protested. “They don’t. They just, put you in poxes, put you in, you know, where they want you, what they want you.”

The man frowned at her. “Maybe,” he said carefully, “the world changed enough that some grown-ups do. You figure out what you want to do, all of you, and then you can figure out how you can help me. “

Odile took a breath. “You don’t sound like a grown-up.”

He snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’d heard that. We have a deal?”

“You’re gonna make sure we’re safe fed and educated, all of us, until we’re, what, adults?”

“Call it twenty, as near as we can estimate, for the ones that don’t know.

“–and then help us set up again out, somewhere, in the world?”

“Yep.”

“And, in turn, you want us to help other… uh. other kids?”

“Other runaways,other refugees, other people who need it.”

She’d never said runaway. None of them did. Say that word and the grown-ups knew you didn’t have anyone. But even as she took a step back, he leaned forward, his voice soft.

“I know runaways. I’ve helped them before. Now, I don’t know if your parents survived this ‘Collapse.’ But if you don’t want to go looking for them, I’m not going to, either.”

She hadn’t seen her parents since something like a year before the world ended. Odile swallowed against something stuck in her throat and nodded. “You–” She coughed, clearing her throat. “You have a deal. I can help other kids, no problem.”

“And I can make sure you’re all fed and sheltered.” He stood and stretched, smirking a little bit at himself. “No problem.”

She still didn’t trust this whole set-up, but Odlie was willing to try.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1200826.html. You can comment here or there.

Spotlight Story: Addergoole

Nov8

A story written to showcase the Addergoole setting. If you find terms that I missed that are not accessible to the non-Addergoole reader, please let me know.

The halls were black, with only the faint red glow of the emergency lights illuminating them. It was early, and the only sounds were haunted-house spooky: the wind through creaking trees whispered down the passage, two stories underground where there were neither trees nor wind; the whispers of ghosts that probably didn’t exist, speaking in strange languages about deaths that probably hadn’t happened; the thumping of some giant that seemed to shake the whole compound.

Keely took notes. The sounds were a nice touch, and new; the thumping of the footsteps wasn’t new, but he still liked it. The cobwebs that seemed to brush across his face in the corners were an interesting touch, and there, at an intersection that went straight to the stairs, a deep puddle appeared to block the route. An exposed pipe (normally all plumbing was discretely hidden) dripped dark sludge into the puddle.

It looked as if the school was falling apart. On the other side of the intersection, the wall itself was leaking some green, glowing goo. The floor shook again; Keely steadied himself and kept going.

He was being herded. The puddle meant he couldn’t take the stairs; the thudding behind him meant he wanted to go forward. He went forward. Right now, that was where he wanted to be anyway. He stuck to the center of the hallway, avoiding the cobwebs and the strange discharges from the walls, the way the paneling seemed to bulge out in the shape of a human every so often; the way doors and passages seemed to vanish as he went past them.

A little music played somewhere, just below the conscious hearing range, the increasing chords of a horror movie. Keely watched a girl run by, her baseball bat clung firmly in her hands. He grinned approvingly at her fleeing back. It might not stop the monsters, but it would slow them.

A passage that had disappeared suddenly flickered. Keely took shelter behind a bulge in the wall and murmured a quick line of magic, disguising himself, painting the illusion of woodgrain over his own skin and clothing until he, too, was nothing but another lump in the wall. This was where he’d been headed: Pod 8. A head poked out, and he stifled a sigh. Not her. Had he missed her?

“Looks clear,” muttered the head — it belonged to a first-year student, a guy whose name Keely hadn’t bothered to learn yet. “We should move.”

The guy stepped out of the passageway, followed a moment later by Keely’s target. Kjellfrid; a first-year girl in Keely’s History, PE, and Literature classes. She had a smile like sunshine in this underground bunker and a way with words like a rapier. And today was the day for catching the underclassmen.

Keely stayed hidden for the moment. He’d seen a shadow move, and down the hall the goo was dripping into a humanoid shape. He’d have to time this right, if he was going to get what he wanted out of today.

The two first-year students moved cautiously down the hallway, the unknown guy sticking close to Kjellfrid’s side. She, in turn, was running her fingers along the wall, muttering at something. She wasn’t doing magic, was she? Keely frowned. The first-year students weren’t supposed to know magic yet.

Keely muttered a little spell of his own, keeping his voice as quiet as he could and still have the Words take force. He moved the air to his ears, amplifying her voice.

“Frickin school of fricking would-be monsters, goblins and ghouls and frickin demons and all of them thinking they’re so full of themselves. Haunted house. Of course there’s a haunted house. What else would there be?”

Definitely not some sort of magic Working. Keely relaxed and turned his attention to the other problems: the shadow that was about to move past him, intent on the first-years, and the goo that had almost completed its shape.

The shadow was the easiest. He stepped back a few feet, ducking into an entryway hidden by illusion, and muttered another Working under his breath. He couldn’t hold it for long at all, but for a minute, the whole hallway would be flooded with light – not just the electric lights, but fake sunlight and the equivalent of a spotlight pointing down the hall in both directions.

The swearing he could hear from the hall wasn’t just Kjellfrid and her friend’s. Some shadow-figure didn’t like light. Keely grinned to himself. He pulled a Working of Invisibility around himself and slid back out into the hall. Kjellfrid and her friend were making good time in the bright mid-noon daylight of the hallway, laughing with each other.

There were no shadows to keep to at the moment, but Keely’s invisibility Working was one of his best spells. He paused for a moment to gloat, silently, at the former shadow-figure, now revealed to be a very unhappy 4th-year student. Luces. He’d been doing the same thing last year. He’d almost caught Keely, that time.

Not this time. The light was already starting to fade. You couldn’t just turn the power back on, not when the whole school was rigged for this horror show. You had to play the game with the rules as written.

Lucky for Keely, one of the rules was “cheat”.

He was pretty sure the goo wasn’t actually a person, but it was directly in front of Kjellfrid and her friend now. He could let it take the friend, he supposed. Keely wasn’t all that in to guys or anything, but a lot of the fourth-year students were a lot more non-discriminating.

But he had to keep Kjellfrid away from whoever thought the plot of the original Ghostbusters was a good idea for Hell Night pranks. Keely waited until Kjellfrid shouted and whispered his Working under her noise, looking for the source of the goo. It wasn’t a plant, technically; it wasn’t an animal. What that made it… Well, he’d always been good at working with flesh-and-blood.

He found a nice, deep, shadow — it might have been his imagination, but as the light faded, he thought the shadows were getting darker — and waited until Kjellfrid friend yelped in surprise-and-distress.

Surprise-and-distress, Keely snorted to himself. The mating call of Addergoole. He shot a Destroy Working at the goo, throwing in a Dismantle just in case. He was better at Dismantle…

The goo fell apart in a puddle of water and yellow ooze. Kjellfrid shouted in dismay; nearby, another shadow swore angrily.

Evgenia. Working with Luces, then, and fuck them. Keely was pretty sure he hadn’t been seen yet. He muttered an elaborate Working, one he’d been practicing for months.

The shadows erupted in shouts, and Luces, Evgenia, and two other upperclassmen erupted out, swearing and shaking their feet, their hands, their tails.

Smirking to himself, Keely slid on to another shadow, watching Kjellfrid and her friend make their way to the back stairs. They weren’t quite in the clear yet, but they were past the worst of this. And if they made it past Hell Night, this ridiculous farce of a hazing ritual, then they were past the worst of the school year.

Kjellfrid might not know Keely was watching out for her, but he was going to keep on, anyway, even if he had to stay hidden in the shadows until June.

An angry, panicked shout echoed down the stairs, and Keely slunk upwards, ready to fend off more trouble.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1196232.html. You can comment here or there.

Throwback Thursday – Briars & One Sharp Mother

Oct27

October 27, 2011. I was in the middle of a Giraffe Call – I often was, back then. 🙂 This one was “Spooks, Creeps, Ghosts, and Ghouls” And Rix had asked for more Baram.

What we got was Baram’s family, in their first appearance:

Jaelie was in the garden when the gods attacked. The garden, such as it was, was her territory, her sanctum and responsibility. She’d been the first to be hired, such as it was, by Baram (“bought” might have been more accurate, but the pay was good and the work not onerous, and she had little to complain of), the first to come looking for him after graduation, intrigued by the legend he’d left behind, and she’d thus been the first to carve out her own place in his haven.

Continue reading it here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/160866.html

I really like Jaelie. I enjoyed taking Baram’s story and turning him from a cartoonish villain into someone with depth, someone who liked protecting. This wasn’t the first step in that process, but it really helped cement it: Baram was a person; he surrounded himself with people – tough people, but most definitely people.

And I still really, really like Jaelie saying ““Yield better.” 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1192188.html. You can comment here or there.

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