After Find Me a Boy and Are You Her?, between Year 40 & 41 of the Addergoole School

The drive home was long, silent, and uncomfortable.

Cya kept stealing glances over at the boy in the passenger’s seat. He wasn’t fighting. She had plans in place for fighting. He wasn’t scared. She knew what to do when they were scared. He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t yelling, he wasn’t asking questions.

If she went through her normal script, he might find a way to kill himself and convince himself it had been her plan. This was very irregular.

Finally, she had to ask. “You really thought I was a serial killer?”

He glanced over at her. He wasn’t exactly moping, but he was making the face her boys did, and now her grandkids, too, when they didn’t get what they wanted. “They said it was like that novel, that you took one student every year as some sort of tribute.”

“…And the school just let me waltz in and kidnap someone?”

“Well, they do, don’t they?”

“All right, they do. But that’s because they know what I do with them.” That didn’t sound right. This boy was throwing her off her game.

“They said the school was afraid of you. So they let you take the leftovers.” He looked down at his feet. “I sent the other guy home.”

“Someone else was waiting? To be killed?” Cya had never planned to be mistaken for a serial killer.

“He didn’t need it. I need it. I…”

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“I lost everything! And he made me promise not to end myself. You were my only hope!”

“I’m not going to kill you.” She was beginning to get a little exasperated. “And you are not allowed to accidentally kill yourself, or go looking for ways to make me want to kill you.”

“No?”

“No. Finally, something she had in her script. “You are not allowed to hurt or damage anything that belongs to me.”

It took him a minute to get it, to remember that he’d agreed to Belong to her.

“Oh…”

She really didn’t know what to do about this.

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After Find Me a Boy, between Year 40 & 41 of the Addergoole School

“Come on, kid. You’re coming home with me for a while.”

It surprised Cya less than it ought to when the boy got up and grabbed his bags without question or argument, when he followed her to her car – the solar panels on the roof were mostly for show, but it ran pretty well, whatever the method – and got in, buckled himself in, even. It did surprise her how little luggage he had – one bag, and one small suitcase. And it surprised her when he started talking.

“So, you’ll take me away from here?”

He waited until she was buckled in to ask it. It sounded a bit strange, to her ear, like he was quoting a formula she didn’t know.

If he hadn’t already been in the car, she might have ducked in to ask her old Mentor. Since he was there, she went with honesty.

“If you agree to be mine, yes.”

This was not the script. This was not how things normally went. She hadn’t even lain down the first of the mind control Workings yet.

“So if I agree to Belong to you, you’ll take me home?”

“To my home.” He wasn’t running away. What the hell?

“Then I’m yours.” Okay, this was the weirdest thing yet. And he didn’t sound angry, more resigned.

“Yes, you are.” She flipped three levers and turned two dials, and got the car moving down the road. She could do this in her sleep, after all these years. Once, she’d been told afterwards, she had done a bit of it in her sleep.

She was falling into that long-drive trance, eyes on the long stretch of road and her mind running over the supplies at the Ranch, when he finally spoke again.

“Are you her?”

That could mean a lot of things. “Depends on who she is.”

“The Valkyrie. The chooser of the dead.”

“Oh.” She laughed a little bit. “No, that’s my niece.”

“Oh.” He didn’t sound relieved, maybe a little disappointed. She’d have to tell Ruki she had a reputation. “Then are you the other one?”

“Maybe. Who’s she?”

“They say every year, a pretty redhead shows up and chooses one guy, and takes him away from it all.”

“Oh. Well, that’s me.” She glanced over at him. “And you came anyway?”

“I lost it all.” His shoulders slumped forward a bit. “He challenged me, and he took it all.”

“Aah.” That explained some of it, then. She lapsed into silence, and so did he.

Her dash clock told her forty-five minutes had passed before he spoke again. “When you kill me… would you bury me somewhere warm? Cremate me, maybe?”

“When I… what?”

“That’s what they say. You take them, and then when you’re done with them, you kill them. Us.”

“And you came anyway?”

“I lost everything,” he repeated. She supposed it was a kind of answer.

“Sorry to disappoint.” What the hell were they saying about her? The last time someone had called her a serial killer, the world had still had large police forces. “But I’m not going to kill you.”

“Oh.”

And he was, she thought, the first person to ever look unhappy when she told them she wasn’t going to kill them.

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Between Year 40 & 41 of the Addergoole School – about 2 years before the story I just posted.

In a year or two, Cya’s grandkids were going to start attending Addergoole. In a year or two, the cycle was going to start all over again; she would pack them up with hawthorne in their pockets and rowan between their clothes. In a year or two, she would think about not doing this anymore. Not when the boys were younger than her grandchildren.

It had become, she thought, a bit of an addiction. Not even the sex – half of them didn’t like girls anyway – not even the control – she’d gone a year with nothing more than the base orders, just to see if she could, with the last one. But something about the routine. New year, new boy.

She dropped her Masks, safe in the boundaries of the Village, and let her power loose. Find me the boy, she told it. Find me the one that can benefit from this. The one I can hook. The one who won’t hate it all. The one we won’t hate.

Before she’d finished, practically before she’d started vocalizing, she could feel the tug. She followed the pull, combed her fingers through her hair, wondered if she should have put on make-up. She didn’t look any older… but this boy… this boy would be…

He wasn’t at Maureen’s. Cya was never sure if that was a good sign or not. Wandering around looking lost, hanging over Maureen’s fence… this one was sitting on the ground outside the tavern, looking like he’d lost his only friend.

Cya stopped in her tracks. At first, all she could see was the blonde hair, the antlers – just budding, little velvety stubs – the pose. Not him. No, no.

Him, her power insisted. That one. She’d never felt it this strongly.

It was like he could feel it. He looked up at her, and the spell broke. He was so pretty, for a moment she thought he might be a girl. His hair was fairer than Leo’s, nearly white. And his chin was a point you could use to cut cheese.

Saying the right thing wasn’t her power. And part of her mind was screaming No, no. We don’t *do* boys with antlers. We don’t do that again. But she found herself opening her mouth anyway.

“Come on, kid. You’re coming home with me for a while.”

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Cya liked her job.

That wasn’t surprising, really; with the help of her Mentor she’d faked the credentials she couldn’t push through properly, gotten an internship with a company that did something close enough for a resume, and now, three years after Addergoole, she had papers and a DBA saying she was an official security consultant.

What that meant in practice was that people paid her to find the holes in their security, digital and physical, and to tell them how to fill them.

Most days, she could let her power and the things her father had taught her take care of the heavy lifting. Today, however, she was waiting outside a college, looking for a blonde head of hair and a set of antlers she wouldn’t be able to see.

“Hi.” She loved the acid look she got from the girl walking next to her crew-mate. Barking up the wrong tree, darling, and I’ve been barking there longer than most. “I need to borrow you.”

“Great!” She wondered how long the over-done girl had been hounding Leo, from the way he jumped. “What do you need?”

“We’re going to break into a bank.”

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Her oldest son was off with his father, creating a kingdom he had already been Named prince of.

Her younger son was in Addergoole, in his fourth year.

Her current Kept was sleeping in his own bed. Horns (not antlers, never again antlers). Blonde hair. Aelf-get.

She rolled over to look at Gaheris. “I want…” she began. That wasn’t, really, a normal beginning for her.

“Yes?” His hand was in her hair. Strange, how few people she could tolerate that from. Him, among three. Maybe four.

She could do this. She swallowed. “I’d like another child.” That was the easy part. “And…”

“And…?”

“And I think I’d like a ring. Please.”

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A drabble. This comes after the first couple scenes in a forum I can’t get to right now, link to follow when I can. here

July, 2011

When you have spent your entire adult life planning for the apocalypse, there is a startlingly small amount of work to be done when the apocalypse actually, much to your chagrin, arrives.

Setting up the Ranch for their horde would take time, of course, but for the summer, camping out in tents worked.

They had food, and preparations for future food. They had armament, and ammo. They had clothing, trade goods, and a visible way to make power to cover for their electric deer. They had shelter, and were making more shelter.

So Cya went visiting.

Every Kept she had held, she’d given a wooden chest filled with supplies. But Cya knew people, and she knew that, leaving her, many of them would want to get rid of anything that reminded them of her. Part of her said “screw em, then.” But the louder part of her told her she owed them at least a second try.

Useless wouldn’t open the door to her. She was willing to leave that one at “screw him.” He hadn’t been all that good, anyway.

Hroderich wasn’t exactly happy to see her, and seemed to think that the fact that she’d been right was somehow her fault.

But he was also lost and scared, and was more than willing to take her care package, and her suggestion that he head for somewhere sparsely populated, preferably with at least one but no more than three other people.

Fafnir wouldn’t open the door to her, either; she left him a care package, and left his new Kept the key to a storage locker and a few whispered words that would give the girl her freedom, if she wanted it.

Nilam wanted her to take him with her. Instead, she sent him to Pellinore, to whom she’d given the last storage-locker key.

Cabal, she told where they were going, and only Cabal. But he was doing fine, and, of anyone, didn’t need her help.

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Early in Year 15, outside the Addergoole School

If there were things Pellinore had expected when he’d gotten shanghaied into a collar right out of school, they hadn’t been this.

He hadn’t expected being told to get a part-time job, and then, when that one failed, another one – and if he had, he wouldn’t have expected to be allowed to keep part of his paycheck. He hadn’t expected to be pushed into taking community college courses.

And he had not expected to be standing in an elementary school office.

“I’m here to pick up Yoshi Dayton.”

The elderly secretary looked at him over her glasses. “And you are…?”

“Pellinore.” He had a legal last name, the sort that didn’t start in oro’ or sa’. Sometimes it was hard to remember that. “Pellinore Wayne. I should be on the list…?”

“Ah, yes. Miss Dayton is very organized.” She flipped the book open. “ID, please?”

He showed his driver’s licence – something else Cya had made him get. The secretary looked up at him with a very sharp glance. “And you’re her nanny and housekeeper, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Close enough.

“She has a new one every year, you know.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Yoshi had told him that. Helpful Yoshi.

“You’re cuter than the last one, though. Well, I’ll call Yoshi’s teacher. Good luck, son.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Pellinore shifted from foot to foot, waiting, wondering what his life had become.

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Sometime after Yoshi’s time at Addergoole

“You…”

Yoshi watched his mother’s voice move without sound for a while. From long experience, he could tell that she was angry and trying not to show it, probably to protect the skinny cat-boy… cat-person at Yoshi’s side. The cat-person wearing her collar.

“Son, when I asked you to watch my Kept while I was out, this is not what I had in mind.”

“I know.” He couldn’t help squirming a little bit, and not just for said Kept’s sake. “But you said we could play, and he’s very good at Tlaca… the body Word, and so we thought we’d…” He gestured with his hands, not really explaining anything.

“And then you just, I don’t know, happened to get lucky, and you impregnated my Kept?” She raised an eyebrow. She knew as well as he did that he was always lucky. Although this one was sort of iffy on the positive-luck scale.

“Yeah?”

“Mmm….” As uncomfortable as it was, Yoshi had to admit it was kind of interesting watching his mom not have a plan. “We’ll figure it out. This is not what I meant by wanting more grandkids, by the way.”

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