Tag Archive | boom

The Cup

Pellinore has appeared in June Again,, Boom, amd Visit From School, and was referenced in Legacy, where JohnWayne showed up.

The rumors had been flying around for years. Pellinore had listened to them all, and tucked them in the back of his mind. The Thorn Vessel. The Wooden Death. The Hawthorne Cup.

The world was a bigger place now than it had been when he was young, bigger and so much smaller all at once, and it took him a long time to gather enough information. He traveled – he got the feeling many of them did. It made it less obvious that they didn’t get older, that they never really fit in. The story traveled, too, changing and mutating, but parts of it stayed the same. There was a cup, and it was magic.

It had been years since Addergoole, years since he’d been caught and released by Cya on his graduation day, but when he decided it was time to go looking for the Cup, Pellinore went looking for Cynara first. She could find anything. She’d know where to start.

He was braced for some other Kept to answer the door. He knew she’d made a habit of collecting them. He’d visited her from time to time, only to be greeted by another Addergoole grad wearing another collar. He even expected the guy to sort of look like him. Half the time, they did.

He wasn’t expecting the same ears, the same eyes. He tripped over his words, managing nothing but stammer for a moment. Finally, he came out with, “Pellinore. I’m Pellinore, that is. Lookin’ for Cynara.”

“Pellinore?” The boy stared at him. “From Addergoole?”

“Long time ago, yeah.” He hadn’t been that famous. Not for this kid to know him, had he? “Do I know you?”

“I’m JohnWayne.” The boy tugged at his collar. “Was sh’Xanthia. Now oro’Cynara.” He was still getting used to that, too. “You’re my father.”

Pellinore coughed. That had not been what he expected. “Yeah. Yeah, I reckon I am.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/401986.html. You can comment here or there.

Visit from School

Sep12

First of two I want to write for inventrix‘s prompt “Pellinore.”

This Pellinore has appeared in June Again,, Boom, and referenced in Legacy.

As first referenced in Loose Ends and Tying Off (these two stories reference slavery and mistreatment), the Addergoole staff make visits to graduated students to check up on them.

Cynara wasn’t surprised when Professors Drake and Pelletier showed up at her doorstep. By now the staff had to have noticed what she was doing, and, while she had gotten good marks for being one of the more level-headed students in her year, she was, after all, part of Boom. If anyone merited looking-in-on, it was her and her crew.

Pellinore, on the other hand, seemed both startled and upset when he opened the door. “Profe…” He stopped, as if unsure if saying that was giving away some secret. “What?”

“May we come in?” Trust Professor Drake to look over Pellinore’s shoulder like he wasn’t even there and ask Cya. She was glad the kids were with Leo today. She wasn’t sure this wouldn’t get unpleasant.

“Professor Drake, Professor Pelletier. Come on in. Pellinore, take their coats, would you? Can I get you something to drink, Professors?” Pretend everything is normal. Pretend there’s nothing to see here.

The Professors were less interested in pretend than they had been when Cya had been in school. “No drink, thank you. Pellinore, how are you doing?”

He glanced at Cya, then back at the Professor. Cya managed not to roll her eyes. A basic precaution could cover most of what the Professors were looking for. But she had nothing to hide. “Be honest with the Professors, but don’t feel the need to tell them anything you don’t want to.” She headed into the kitchen to get water anyway, giving him the pretense of privacy.

She could still hear them. She listened over the sound of the faucet as Pellinore coughed. “I’m all right. I don’t… I didn’t like getting caught. She trapped me,” he added, more quietly. “Like I was back in school.”

Professor Drake chuckled dryly. “That is what school is supposed to teach you to avoid.”

“Feu Drake.” Professor Pelletier was far less amused. “Does she treat you well, Pellinore?”

“Well, I’m Kept.” She could picture his shrug. “But she’s not a bad sort. Her kids are kinda wild.” He hesitated, and then continued more slowly, “but, ya know, if I was gonna be Kept again… I can live with this.”

“Is that because you believe you have no choice in the matter?”

Cya chose her Mentor’s question as a cue to re-enter, carrying four glasses of water on a tray. It was an interesting question, but she didn’t want them to get comfortable quizzing him.

Pellinore looked at her over his water glass, then glanced back at their former professors. She smiled, but didn’t try to send him any messages.

He coughed. “Way I see it, sir, ma’am, there’s been nothing we’ve done since we were conceived we had much choice in. Cya might be another trap, but she’s a nice one, at least.” He looked over Cya’s shoulder at the adults. “If you see JohnWayne or Pepper-Potts in your ‘visits,’ tell them their daddy says hello.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/401390.html. You can comment here or there.

Countdown to Addergoole Year Nine: Cynara

Jul29

52 38 Days To 52 Weeks

For the 52 days leading up to the 52 weeks of Addergoole: Year 9, I will be posting something Addergoole-related (almost) every day.

Today I present to you Cynara, Red Doomsday.

Cya has appeared in a number of stories, after beginning life as a roleplay character (as did several others, including Eris, Mark, and Kylie from Year 5, and Leofric, Howard, Zita, and Fran in Year 6…). My favorite pieces involving Cya were written by inventrix, here and here…and this piece by cluudle

Art of her by Inventrix is available here.

Cynara is a slender girl with some curve to her, a generous smile, freckles over most of her body, stunning green eyes and dark brown hair dyed red on top. The only child raised by a security-expert father, she spent much of her childhood moving from place to place. She’s known by the end of her first year at Addergoole (Kept by the vampire, Dysmas), for her obsession with planning ahead. By the time her children come to Addergoole, years after the apocalypse, she’s also know for collecting new Kept.

I encourage you to pester her with questions! Ask her anything!!

The first six question-and-answer sessions are still open as well:
Noam
Reid Solomon & DJ
43 to go: Jeremiah and Lolly (LJ)
45 to Go: Timora (LJ)
46 to Go: Porter (LJ)
47 to go: Wylie (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/379131.html. You can comment here or there.

Beer

May4

“I need a beer,” Cya informed her Kept.

“So go get one.” Fafnir had not yet, in the week since Hell Night, adjusted to being Kept; indeed, he was, if anything, adjusting in the other direction. “Better yet, get me one, too.”

He would have to learn. She had. Then again, she’d never required that much correction.

And Dysmas’ hand had been subtle, subtle enough that it had taken her all of last year to work out everything he’d trained into her – and she was still finding pit-traps.

She stared at her Kept for a moment, wondering how she was going to handle him. She didn’t have her former Keeper’s subtlety.

She didn’t have to be subtle, she realized. She didn’t want a pet, and she didn’t want Fafnir cleaning up messes in his brain for the rest of his school time. She hadn’t exactly been tidy with Cabal, after all.

He still talked to her. She couldn’t have done that badly, right?

“What?” She was, she realized, still staring at this Kept. Deciding what to do with him.

“When you are Keeper, you get to tell your Kept what to do. Right now, I’m Keeper. That means I get to tell you what to do.”

“Oh, come on, Cya, don’t…”

She frowned repressively at him, and was mildly surprised to see that it worked. “Do not tell me what to do.”

He jerked a little as the order hit home. “Cy…” The order cut him short and he settled for glaring at her.

“If I need to give you a direct order every time I want you to do something, I will. It is my preference that you learn to anticipate.”

“I’m not your fucking slave!”

“I could release you and go get someone else to Keep.” She didn’t normally snap like that; maybe she should try with someone else.

“Or we could just go back to dating. The dating was nice.”

“This is how things are done in Addergoole. This is dating, for here.” She closed the distance between them, looking down at him. She didn’t want to trade him in; she just wanted him to act like a proper Kept. “Go get me a beer, Fafnir.”

He stood up as if he was on puppet strings. “Goddamnit, Cya, what the hell?”

“And don’t complain about it,” she added, possibly a little vindictively. “If you can manage to not make sullen miserable faces the whole time, you can get yourself a beer as well.”

His shifted his face into a rictus grin and then, after a moment of apparent thought, managed a halfway decent normal expression. “Better?”

She wondered if he’d realized he had to go past her crew to get the beer. “Better. Get yourself one, too, if you want.”

He didn’t say thank you, but she didn’t really blame him. She watched him go, contemplating his tail and the nice ass underneath. Maybe next year she should get someone who didn’t want to fight it the whole time. There were nice subby boys out there, plenty of them at Addergoole, and as a fourth-year student – a fourth-year student in Boom, no less – nobody was going to mess with what she wanted.

But right now she had Fafnir, heading back with two beers and not-quite-a-scowl, and she needed to deal with him. “Thank you.” He’d even remembered which beer she liked.

“Cya…” He paused, with an expression she recognized as finding-the-edges-of-an-order. “Why are you doing this to me?”

It was a fair question. Did she have a fair answer? She ran her hands down his back a few times while she thought about that. Because this is the way it is didn’t quite seem like enough.

“Because I need you to not fight this, to not fight me.” That, at least, was honest. “Because, Fafnir… you are what I get to have for myself, in this place. Next year, if you have your own Kept, you’ll understand, maybe. But this year. This year, I need you to be mine.”

He turned to face her, resting his forehead on her shoulder. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. “But…”

The but, she knew, was when she had him. She fell silent, and let him surrender on his own.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/332485.html. You can comment here or there.

Vacation, a story of Boom-Apoc (@inventrix)

Apr4

This takes place a little bit after the apoc begins, ~ August or so 2011.

“Come on.” Cya took Yoshi’s hand in her left and Viddie’s in her right, trusting that Gaheris would tag along afterwards. Unsurprisingly, it was Yoshi that dug in his heels.

“Where are we going? We can’t be moving again and you said everything was fine with Uncle Leo for a bit.”

“We’re not and he is. Everything’s fine, Yoshi.”

“Then where are we going?”

“On a vacation.”

Her oldest son looked at her in blatant, complete disbelief. “Mom, the world is ending. There’s gods floating New York City. And Uncle Leo…” He fell quiet, likely not wanting to upset Viddie.

“The world is ending,” Cya agreed. “But we’re safe here, and… I think we need a little family time.” Because her oldest son was also not stupid, she added, a bit more honestly, “and there are several places I want to go scout.”

“Should we be just running off?” He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. “I mean, RV, sure, but are we telling anyone where we’re going?”

“I told Magnolia.” Because Mags owed her a favor, and because she trusted her to wait until someone noticed to explain.

“We’re sneaking out!” Viddie laughed. “That’s awesome. Except the part where you yell at anyone else who does that.”

She grinned proudly. “When you’re the mom, you can make the rules.” It wasn’t completely impossible. Leo was Legally Ruki’s mom, after all.

“When I’m the mom,” Yoshi declared, “we’ll do stuff like this all the time.”

“I hope you’ll bring me along once in a while,” she teased, ignoring the stab in her heart. They were growing up. Sooner or later, they’d be Adults, and they’d leave her. Sooner or later, they wouldn’t belong to her anymore.

But right now, she had a loaded RV, two kids, and her favorite (and only current) Kept. “Let’s go. Quick, before anyone else notices.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/314727.html. You can comment here or there.

In The Tub, a vignette of Cya/Boom/Postapoc

Apr2

I realized I’d had Panlong in the tub for two months, whoops.

This story comes after:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Meeting the Family (LJ) (a chat log)
Roleplay Log (Cya/Cabal, posted by cluudle)
Cleaning Up (LJ), One month later and 2 Vignettes of Cya (LJ)

Panlong was, unsurprisingly, in the tub, the water almost to his chest. If it weren’t for the antlers, he’d look helpless; even with them, he looked lost.

“Scoot up.” She set the mugs on the wide edge of the tub. “The one with the blue marshmallows is for you.”

“Thanks?” He scooted forward in the tub, clearly confused, and then even more confused as Cya started pulling her clothes off. “Ma’am…”

“Have you been Kept before, Panlong?” She already knew the answer, of course. But it was as good a place to start as any.

“Yes, ma’am,” His eyes were very firmly fixed on her face. “By Tethys. And then by Selena.”

Tethys she already knew too much about. “Selena sh’…” Naked, she slid into the tub behind her

“Sh’Oralee, ma’am. Cy’Linden.” He was sitting stiffly, trying not to touch her at all. She wrapped her arms around his chest, feeling the tension there.

“That explains a lot. Lean back against me, carefully, Pan, mind those antlers.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Curiosity got the best of him, and he leaned. “Explains, ma’am?”

“I think this is one of this situations where you can lay off the ‘ma’am’ for a bit.” Gentle. She needed to be gentle with him. It wasn’t his fault. “Bad Keeping begets more bad Keeping begets bad behaviour. It wouldn’t have occurred to you that anything was wrong with Yoshi.”

“Oh.” He was board-like against her, as far from relaxed as was possible to get. “My Keeping wasn’t bad. I mean, Tethys…”

“You said you were never happy when you were with her. There’s no need to protect her now, Pan.”

“Are you going to kill her?” His voice was thready and, against her hands, his heart was pounding hard and fast. “Only… she’s my friend, you know? Now?”

“I’m not going to kill her.” Only in saying it did she realize it was true. “That’s Yoshi’s job, should he want it. And I’m not sure he will.”

“Oh.” He sagged her in arms. “Are you going to kill me?”

She planted a careful kiss on the back of his neck, just below the collar. She really needed to make him his own. “No. No, Pan, I’m not going to kill you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/313853.html. You can comment here or there.

Three Cya-Bois, a series of Vignettes for #Addergoole/Boom-Apoc

Mar28

This was SUPPOSED to be a little lead-in to a d/s scene with Cya’s Year 21-into-22 boi, Cadwr, but about halfway through the first bit I realized scenes in kid-Yoshi’s-point-of-view were not going to segue nicely into nakedtimes, so, well, here’s three of Cya’s bois through Yoshi’s point of view. He’s 5 at the time of the first one at 13 at the last one.

Nilam (End of Year 12):
“Are you the new guy?” Yoshi could barely see over the dinner table, but he could see the way the guy was squirming from the way his feet moved.

“I… yeah? I guess.” He squeaked. Grown-ups did that around Mom sometimes.

“Can you help me with dessert? We’re having peach cobbler, but I’m not allowed to handle a knife yet.”

“I… she told me to stay here.”

Yoshi frowned thoughtfully. Mom did that sometimes. He didn’t know, maybe doing-what-Mom-said was a grownup thing. He and Viddie didn’t listen that well.

“Okay.” He brought the peaches, a bin, and a knife over to the boy. “I’m Yoshi. Here, make small slices. Of peach. They go there.”

“Nilam.” He was a redhead, but his hair was lighter than Mom’s, and his eyes were very blue. “Very thin slices?”

“Very thin,” Yoshi agreed. He wondered how long this one would be scared for.

Pellinore (End of Year 14)
He’d been pacing around the kitchen until Yoshi got him to help with the apple betty. Now was sitting in his chair at the dinner table, glowering at Yoshi, at Cya, at Viddie, who didn’t understand, at his plate.

Yoshi didn’t really understand, either, but it worried him a little. Anger was new. Anger didn’t seem like a good plan.

“That’s enough,” Mom said, in the You’re in Trouble Mister voice. Yoshi had never heard her use it on a grown-up before. He found it interesting, in a not-me sort of way. “If you’re going to glower and sulk, you’re not going to do it around my boys. You can get it under control, or you can leave the table.”

“You…!”

“Not here,” Mom cut him off. “We’ll argue later, if you want. Right now, you’re going to act like a civilized being or leave my table.”

Yoshi knew that sulky look. Everybody got it around Mom eventually. He shut up and let Pellinore figure it out on his own.

Njörðr (end of year 20)
The kid had been ghosting around the cabin for a couple days, trying to avoid Gaheris, trying to avoid Mom and yet gravitating towards her when they were in the same room. Definitely avoiding Uncles Leo and Howard, but all the smart ones did that.

Yoshi and Viddie were apparently young enough not to be a threat (the guy wouldn’t get within a mile of Eryk or Dora, so it was probably age and not, say, horns), so they found themselves with a Jory shadow more often than not.

“You can follow us around all you want,” Yoshi told him on the third day of this, “but can you be useful?”

“Uh?” The panicked look the guy gave him made Yoshi wonder, once again, whyyy his mom brought home such useless guys (except Gaheris, of course. And Dad.) “Useful?”

Viddie thrust the berry basket at him. “Pick berries, put them in the basket.”

“Oh.” Njörðr took the basket and looked at the berry bush.

Feeling a bit of sympathy, Yoshi added “Watch out for the thorns.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/311790.html. You can comment here or there.

Two Vignettes of Cynara – Addergoole Boom Post-Apoc

Feb8

This first vignette happens around year 20 of the Addergoole school, 3-4 years after the Apoc begins. This is a little bit after this scene. Note: Cya is known for keeping Kept for a year directly after they graduate Addergoole; she Kept Gaheris for 3-1/2 (the apoc messed with her normal methods of doing things)

Cya lay in bed next to Gaheris, not sleeping, running through their date – date! DATE! – in her head, running through what he’d said to her. What she’d felt about what he’d said. The way he’d looked at her. He was, she thought, maybe really staying.

She felt, guiltily, at the edges of her love for Howard, her love for Leo. Feeling this comfortable with another free Ellehemaei felt like a betrayal, felt like she was cheating on them, in a way that having, sleeping with, Kept never had.

Stop it, she told herself, with a tiny, suppressed squeak of frustration. Even beyond the sexual, Howard had Magnolia, and loved her. Leofric had Zita, and they – they had their perfect balance together. It was no more cheating to have Gaheris than it was for either of them to have their loves.

But still.. countered the little voice in her head. The one that said that that’s not what Cya did. Cynara planned, and she was there, and she was always there when she needed her.

And that is not going to stop, she reminded herself. She was still going to be the one that was there. But this… this could be okay.

Slowly, uncertainly, Cya let herself fall in love again.

The second one is in line with this series:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Meeting the Family (LJ) (a chat log)
Roleplay Log (Cya/Cabal, posted by cluudle)
Cleaning Up (LJ), One month later

Cya escorted her dripping Kept into her cabin by the back door – because, with a house designed with two growing boys in mind, the route from the back door to the bathroom was unobstructed and hard-surface, very hard to ruin, and because that door was closer to the barn, and thus a shorter route for her jittery, unhappy Kept.

Once in the bathroom, she gave Panlong a gentle shove towards the tub. “Fill it with water at a temperature you’re comfortable with, and get in, in whichever order you’d prefer.” No use chancing that he might still have New Kept Syndrome and end up hurting himself trying to follow vague orders. “I’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to make us some doctored hot chocolate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammered, and started the water. Cya hid a sigh in her turning, and hurried through the cocoa-making. Cabal was right. She really hadn’t been fair to the boy.

She didn’t want to be fair to him, of course. She wanted to make everyone who had hurt Yoshi pay… Didn’t you have this conversation with your father once? she reminded herself sharply. And what did you tell him?

“If you kill everyone who ever hurts me, Dad, I’m never going to learn how to do this revenge thing right on my own.” She muttered it under her breath, smiling a little bit at the memory. Her dad had made such a boggled, lost expression at that…

…sometimes Leo reminded her of her father. Especially around Ruki. Best not to think about Leo right now, it would only muddle things more. She poured a generous shot of hoarded Kahlua and a tiny smidge of vodka into the cocoa, poured it into two mugs, and added a handful of marshmallows to each mug. Time to deal with the boy. Time to figure out if he could be dealt with. If he could be helped.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/264191.html. You can comment here or there.

Legacy

Feb2

This is, I think, lilfluff‘s fault.

The summer between years 31 & 32 of the Addergoole school

The boy with the unfortunate name of JohnWayne seemed to be settling in decently to Yoshi’s mom’s collar by the first time Yoshi visited home. At the very least, he wasn’t fidgeting, wasn’t hiding, and had learned to stay away from Uncle Howard and leave Gaheris alone.

He had, interestingly, far more a sense of curiosity than most of Mom’s Kept had displayed, displayed in part by the place that Yoshi had found him.

He also seemed to be lacking in common sense enough to pretend he’d just happened upon the hidden closet and hadn’t seen anything. Then again, Yoshi wasn’t sure he could blame him. After all, he’d found Mom’s trophy rack.

Yoshi had seen it before, of course. From the look on JohnWayne’s face, he hadn’t been expecting that.

“That…” He gulped, and tapped the saddle-leather collar hanging under the tidily-lettered “Pellinore.” “That’s my father’s name.”

Yoshi took another look at the kid – weird that they’d started out grown-ups and ended up kids, while Mom never seemed to change. He could see it, in the eyes, in the pointed ears. “I remember him,” he agreed. “He was a nice guy when he was here. Mad as hell about it for a while, though. Mom said he nearly blew up the car.”

That didn’t seem to help Johnny-boy any. He blanched, a trick with his complexion, and looked back at the rack. “All those names…?”

“Yeah. All Kept. Mom’s Kept.” He had his own trophy rack in the castle. Taking pity on the boy, he reached over and tapped the very first one. “That’s my dad’s name.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/254212.html. You can comment here or there.

All the Love! Linnnnks!

Feb2

Read my story “The Wish Machine” (from the Aunt Family ‘verse) in this month’s EMG-Zine!

All the Addergoole Fanfic!!!!

clare_dragonfly wrote this story of Kayros and Vic.

kajones_writing created
these characters and then wrote
this story and
this story.

And
cluudle wrote this story set in the same general timeline as my current Boom ‘fics, staring Yoshi’s paternal half-brother Etienne.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/253667.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder