For Stryck‘s prompt, although title from Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Part 1: Briars and Vinegar (LJ)
Part 2: Briars and Vinegar: Blood on the Snow (LJ)

Bleeding, damp, and frozen, the three of them made it through the hedge of roses and crawled weakly towards the house.

The snow was falling in earnest now, covering their path, covering them as they struggled the last twenty meters, their clothing torn, their skin rended.

“If we never do that again,” Jeri mumbled,

“Yeah. I’ll count us lucky.” None of them mentioned that they would have to leave again. None of them were certain they could.

It was Clarence who made it to his feet to try the doorknob and, finding it locked, pushed off a mitten to pick the latch. They could break a window – but they would need the building as intact as it could be if they were going to survive.

It was Jeri who pushed the door shut again, making sure they’d all gotten in, with all their gear; it was Darrel who, knife out, began to clear the place, slowly but professionally. It would do them no good at all to get warm, only to be eaten by a monster or killed by a feral human for their gear.

“It seems warm in here,” Jeri murmured. “Some sort of geothermal heating system, maybe, old tech?”

It did, indeed, seem warm. “Could just be that we’re frozen,” Clarence pointed out. “There’s no wind here, so it seems warmer. It’s well-insulated, at least.”

“Guys,” Darrel called urgently. “Guys, come here.”

Knives out, they limped into the other room as quickly as they could, to find Darrel staring in distress at the bed.

There, in the bed, wrapped in blankets, her hair in a braid that reached onto the floor, slept – slept, because they could see her moving – a beautiful girl, no older than they were, maybe younger, with perfect-pale skin and ridiculously long lashes.

And, as they stood there gaping, roses began growing up around her, briars, mostly, with one white flower. She sat up, slowly, and they could see she was wearing a long-sleeved gown. “Goo ahway, plis, end noobahdy nids tah gite hahrt.”

Her accent was so thick, they could barely understand her. “It’s storming outside,” Clarence tried, speaking very slowly.

“Wine-tyre?” she asked, slowly. “Uhlyridih?”

“We were surprised, too. We don’t have gear for this weather.”

The roses stopped growing, and the girl stood up. “Steey,” she said, her speech becoming more comprehensible as they got used to the odd accent. “If you mean nah harm.”

“We mean you no harm,” he assured her. “We just want to warm up and dry off.” He turned to his friends, but they were staring at the girl in awe.

“Clarence,” Jeri said, very quietly, “she made those roses grow from nothing.”

“Fae,” Darrel whispered. “She’s a fae.”

“I am,” the girl agreed, “but the saddest sample you’ll evah find. That,” she gestured at the roses. “That’s all I can do.”

Clarence took a moment to digest that. “You’re a Fair Folk. A magic one. A myth…”

“…with the sole and entahre power of growing roses. Yes. You see why I hide out here?”

Part four is: Briars and Vinegar: Sharp and Bitter (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/276406.html. You can comment here or there.

For anke‘s prompt, although title from Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Part 1: Briars and Vinegar (LJ)

The snow kept blowing, pushing away the nice drift they’d been standing on, revealing more and more roses in front of them – not just a rose bush, it seemed, but an entire hedge, a monstrosity of roses sticking out of the snow, their thorns long and sharp, their buds few and blood-red, like the drips Darrel was leaving on the snow.

“Maybe we should head back,” Clarence sighed. “The deeper we dig, the more thorns we find. This seems fruitless.”

“But it’s right there,” Jeri complained. Indeed, they could see more and more of the house, through the hedge of briars. “And the other place was barely there. This one looks lived in.”

“Well, if it’s lived in, maybe they don’t want company?” Darrel pulled out his long knife and contemplated the hedge. “They might not be happy if we cut through.”

“They might not,” Clarence agreed. “I think I see a break over there.” He slogged that way through snow that seemed to grab on to his snowshoes and pull him downwards. Night was coming. If they didn’t find shelter soon, he wasn’t sure they’d survive. It was madness to stand here fighting with a flower bush.

And yet they kept doing it. He was surprised Darrel hadn’t mentioned sorcery yet. Darrel liked the old tales, the old myths. He liked to believe in magic, and dragons, and monsters. Jeri liked to believe, on the other hand, in old documents and old maps, old books and older pamphlets, as if the ancients had somehow had all the answers.

Clarence just wanted to find new things, or things that, at least, no-one living knew about, since, as everyone liked to tell him, the ancients had known everything, been everywhere, and done everything. But, since they were dead and he wasn’t, finding it all over again, he thought, should count.

“I found something,” he called. It wasn’t a gate, not anymore, but he could see the edges of the arbor that had been there, and the swinging door that had fallen off, or been pulled off by the weight of roses. They would have to crawl, but they could get through.

“Doesn’t it seem strange?” Darrel asked, as he and Jeri slogged over to him, “All these roses, still doing fine all this time later? We’ve never seen anything quite this alive.”

“They don’t have many flowers anymore,” Jeri pointed out. “Maybe they went wild?”

“But it’s winter, or, well, it’s acting like winter. They shouldn’t have any flowers at all by now.”

“We’ve seen stranger things,” Clarence soothed them. “Right now, we need to get to that house, so we warm up, then go tell the folks at home about this.”

“Right,” Darrel agreed, rubbing his hands. “And put a bandage on these thorn-holes in me.”

The tunnel through the briars seemed smaller than it had when he first looked, but surely that was just the perspective, comparing it against Darrel’s broad shoulders. “Right,” Clarence steeled himself. “I’ll go through first. Jeri, you bring up the rear.”

Part three is Briars and Vinegar: For 100 Years (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/276188.html. You can comment here or there.

For ariestess‘s prompt, although title from Rix_scaedu‘s prompt.

Names from here

The world had fallen into chaos two hundred years ago, although the exact year was unclear. Record-keeping was not as precise as it had once been, and the exact year that the old world ended had been, it seemed, in some debate at the time.

Slowly, the world rebuilt. And slowly, as towns grew back into cities, people began to explore the lands they had left abandoned.

Clarence slogged through the early-season snow on unfamiliar snowshoes, muttering quietly at the sudden and unexpected fall that obscured trail and hazards alike.

“The map,” Jeri offered, “says there should be a road here.”

“The map,” Darrel countered, “is a million years old. The road is probably long gone.”

“The old roads don’t just vanish,” she countered stubbornly. “Besides, an old map is better than no map.”

“Unless there’s a dragon around here that’s not on there.”

“There’s no such thing as dragons.”

“Guys.” Clarence hissed out the word. “Guys, shut up for a minute.”

This wasn’t their first exploration, even if they were acting like kids – it was the snow, it brought out the five-year-old in all of them – so both of them fell quiet at his tone.

Once it was clear that nothing was immediately going to attack them, they moved forward, to see what he was looking at.

“Is that a rose?” Darrel whispered. “How is it…”

“I have no idea. Maybe the snow took it by surprise, too?” In the middle of a drift that Clarence’s walking stick said was at least a meter deep, a single red rosebud stood out like a blood drop. “It looks unreal.”

“Do you think there are more?” Darrel began digging in the snow, pushing aside the drift. “Or maybe an old wall, or some sign of something other than this endless nothing?”

“There could be a whole town under the snow,” Jeri put in, but she, too, was digging. “Or a road.”

“You and your… ow!” Darrel yanked his hand back, the blood drip clear on his wool mitten. “Blasted ruins, there’s something down there.”

“Roses have thorns,” Clarence offered helpfully. “Guys, it’s starting to snow again. We should get back to that building we saw.”

“If by ‘building,’ you mean ‘two walls?'” Jeri shook her head. “Look, just over the edge of the drift – there’s a chimney. It’s closer, at least.” The wind was beginning to pick up again, whipping snow back into the hole they’d been digging, whipping it away from the rose. “We should be able to make it there before dark.”

Part two: Briars and Vinegar: Blood on the Snow (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/275816.html. You can comment here or there.