Tag Archive | character: pelletier

Love Meme: Pelletier and Luke

Feb20

A long time ago

“Don’t mind them.”

The fur-taker looked up to see a man filling her doorway, wings spread, carrying something on a tray. Bowls, mugs – whatever it was, it smelled good.

“Come in,” she offered weakly. The threshold here was so much less than her swamp, so thin she was fairly certain it held only out of courtesy. Even in her little house in the Village, Regine’s magic weighed heavily. In here, in her office…

It was nice of him to pretend, anyway.

“You’re Luca, aren’t you? The Hunting Hawk.”

“And you’re the pelt-taker. Regine said you’re using the name ‘Shira’ here?” He stepped inside and closed the door with his foot.

“It’s close enough.” The Fur-taker wondered if she ought to be worried, but he was not giving off any sense of menace or danger, spread wings or no.

“The others…” He sat down and put the tray between them on a small table. Stew. And tea. “Don’t mind them.”

“You said that already.” Which meant he had more meaning in mind than the words themselves held.

“They’re…” He shrugged. “… Fancy.”

The fur-taker smirked. “And I am not.” She plucked at the hem of her sleeve, a loaned outfit – from Luca here, not from one of the women – and comfortable.

“I’m not, either. But it suits us. They’re not sure about seers. The pure-bloods, they don’t like what they don’t understand.”

The fur-taker smiled her sharp smile, the one that said life is hard. “And they understand so little. But you.” She looked at him, Looked at him, and nodded. “You understand too much. Be ware, Hawk, or it will cripple you.”

It would, she already saw it. But there were paths in which it would free him, too.

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] chanter_greenie‘s first prompt.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1255494.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Don’t Stick Out

Jan10

Written to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt. Before Year 19 of the Addergoole School.

Shira Pelletier was having a bit of trouble.

“No, this is ridiculous.” The girl would not come out of her house, and had settled for talking to Shira through the tiniest crack in the door. “There is no way. I’m safe here. I’ve got food, water, the people don’t hate me… If you go away soon, that is. I don’t want to stick out.

“Maressa, I’m sorry, but if you don’t come with us, in a few months you are going to stick out far too much. Your parents -“

“My parents are dead. My parents are gone. They went off to fight the war. They left me, okay? So fuck whatever they wanted for me.”

“…I’m absolutely certain they wanted you safe.”

“Yeah, well, then they shouldn’t have left me here alone. They should have stayed.”

“Your parents…” Shira sighed. There were things she couldn’t say, not standing here on a formerly suburban street. “I’ll save that for another time. I know that you are safe here at the moment, but how long do you think that can last? Food, water – I don’t see many crops being planted, and you have no meat animals.”

“This is the burbs. Nobody knows how to plant crops.” Maressa threw up her hands, the gesture barely visible through the doorway opening. “Or, like, butcher animals, or anything. But they know how to store food okay. And everyone that ran off left something. We’ll be fine for another year.”

In another year, Maressa would have Changed. Shira swallowed, and dropped her voice even lower. “Maressa, do you remember your parents telling you stories about f—

“We don’t talk about those things here. We don’t talk about anything like that. We’re all normal. Human. Here.” She punctuated that with kicking the door. Shira sighed.

“Then come with me. I can’t promise everyone will be normal, but we can teach you how to plant crops, and how to husband animals – how to take care of them, that is, how to herd them and how to use them for food. And then, if you want, you can come back here and teach these people.”

Those that would have survived.

“Why me?” Maressa’s voice was still edgy, but she was about to give in. “Why not anyone else here?”

“Because your parents are the ones who set this up. And although you may hate them, they took some measures to provide for your future.”

“Why do you sound like that?” The door opened a bit further. “All fancy, like something out of a book?”

Shira allowed herself a small smile. “Because I am a teacher. And I would be honored to teach you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1044971.html. You can comment here or there.

First Cohort’s Graduation, a drabble story of Addergoole

Sep15

I felt like writing this, so I did. Year four was pretty awful for everyone.

End of Year Four of the Addergoole School

The students had all walked across the stage, had all been given their names and released from one set of obligations and oaths into another. Various bonds and promises had broken. The students milled around now in the Village, waiting for parents to pick them up, waiting for Luke’s Jeep to take them to the airport.

Regine watched them from a distance, accompanied by Mike and Shira Pelletier. They bounced about, nervous energy making them louder than they normally would be. Students who had spent four years ignoring each other talked now, bonded by the feeling of “us against the world.”

There was a chance they’d need it. Mike cleared his throat. “Well, there goes the First Cohort.”

“Indeed.” Regine’s lip twitched. It wasn’t a smile, not as normal people smiled. Mike wasn’t even sure it counted as an expression for Regine.

“How do you think they’ll do?” He snuck a look at Shira, but she was ignoring him. “Do you think they’ll be okay, out in the world?”

“We gave them everything we could, every educational tool we had at our disposal.” Regine’s eyes tracked them coldly. Shadrach, who Mike had failed so badly. Dita, who had chosen her road and nailed herself to it with her stiletto heels. Isra. Lavanya. Linden had Named four Students as Adults today, and he wasn’t entirely certain he’d done well for any of them.

“We educated them.” Shira spoke slowly, thoughtfully. Her Students were all Third Cohort or younger. She had no horse in this race, as it were. “We taught them about being fae. We taught them about fighting, and we taught them history and science, literature and so on. But did we equip them for the end?”

Mike felt as if someone had dropped a truckload of rocks on his chest. The end. There were few scarier words than those, from a seer’s lips.

Regine cleared her throat. “We’ve followed the plan. If you believe the plan needs changing, Shira, then perhaps we should discuss it with the entire staff.”

If she expected the Skin-Taker to back down, she was barking up the wrong tree. Shira raised her perfect eyebrows and smirked.

“Why don’t we do that, then. Michel?” She made Mike’s name sound lovely in French. “What do you think?”

Mike watched Shadrach and Meshach hop into Luke’s Jeep. He cleared his throat and nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we ought to look at the plan again.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/981589.html. You can comment here or there.

Leaving the Swamp

Apr2

Written to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s question here: How did sa’Skin-Taker end up at Addergoole?

After A Vision to Purchase.

~1895

The visions wouldn’t leave her alone.

It had been three years since the woman had visited her. The payments had come as promised, quality stuff, and with some planning Chantal could have lived for years on the largess of her client. But the visions wouldn’t stop.

She had moved out to the swamp because she did not like touching people anymore. Touching people led to visions; visions led to nightmares and that worrisome time when she couldn’t separate the vision from the reality in front of her. But she was touching no-one, speaking to nobody but the man who brought her goods and took her furs, and yet the visions kept coming.

She knew what she had to do. The Fur-taker packed up the things she would need, leaving much of the cabin’s supplies where they were. Either someone else would find the cabin and use it, or she would be back.

The man who brought her food was willing enough to take her to dryer land. The fur-taker assumed he’d probably gotten rather rich on her over the years, but she hadn’t been interesting in accumulating wealth, and she’d been less concerned about his honesty than his reliability.

He proved half her suspicions correct and the other half slightly less correct when he handed her a leather bag at the edge of the water. The bag jingled quietly as she took it; the fur-taker raised her eyebrows at the man.

“I’ve put it aside for you over the years. You’ve done well by me and it was the least I could do.” He handed her two pieces of paper. “That, and these. Train tickets. You said you were going to San Francisco.”

The Fur-taker was rusty on her human manners. “Thank you,” she said, more cautiously than gratefully.

“We’re each given to do what we may. Do what you can, Fur-taker.”

“I will,” she assured him. That was why she was leaving the safety of her swamp, after all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/917874.html. You can comment here or there.

A Vision to Purchase

Mar27

Set ~1890, in response to a conversation with cluudle last night.

Content notes: this includes allusions to some of the most awful stuff in the Addergoole ‘verse, but mostly in passing.

She was living in a cabin in the swamp.

It suited her; away from people she saw less, felt less. Also, she was still a fur-taker, would always be one, and that was a trade best plied alone. A man came once a month – he took the furs and skins and things, and brought her food and clothing and such.

Today was not that day. She grew a little fuzzy on the passage of time, true, but the moon had been full when he’d come last, and it was only a half-moon now. And yet there was a boat bumping against her dock.

The fur-taker threw on pants and her favorite shirt, soft and worn, the cuffs stained, but so comfortable. She had fancy clothes, but she did not dress fancy for uninvited guests.

She was “decent” enough by the time the delicate knock came at her door, and flung said door open with a dramatic woosh.

There was a woman standing on the fur-taker’s porch. She was dressed tidily, expensively, in a smooth dress that was just a little too sleek to be fashionable. She had, the fur-taker noted with approval, put on thick boots in defiance of fashion and deference to sense. Beyond her, a man waited in a sturdy row-boat.

She was, the fur-taker noted, a beautiful woman, blonde, clear-skinned, with a firm set to her chin and an equally determined set to her shoulders. She cleared her throat. “Are you the one they call the Skin-Taker?”

The fur-taker waited. This was her home. It was not up to her to identify herself first.

The woman coughed twice. “My name is Regine; I am called the Lady of the Lake.”

Nobody the fur-taker had heard of. But she’d done the proper thing, so she got a nod. “I’m the Skin-Taker.” This seemed like a social visit; she hesitated and added, “my father named me Chantal.”

“‘Stony’ and ‘song’.” The woman nodded. “They say that your name fits you.”

The fur-taker smiled sharply. She had shaped her teeth to points, herbivorous Change be damned. “Both names do.” To the woman’s credit, she didn’t flinch. “Come in, if you mean me and mine no harm.”

“I mean you no harm at all.” The woman took the invitation and stepped into the fur-taker’s cabin. “I come simply to consult. They say you are the best seer that has ever been.”

The fur-taker nodded her head. “That has been said.”

“I come to commission a seeing from you.”

Chantal closed her eyes. “They come at a high price.” Out here, she did not have to touch people, to see the future. Out here, there were only the small futures of deer and weasels and other such things.

“The price to not knowing is so much higher.” The woman’s voice broke. Chantal opened her eyes to surprise a brief moment of vulnerability on her visitor’s face. Not a Grigori, then, despite the loveliness. They were never vulnerable. “I have brought… some things. And I will send more with your man every month for ten years, if you perform a seeing for me.” She pulled a parcel from her bag; the smell of cheese wafted to Chantal’s nose. And – she sniffed deeply – yes, gunpowder and… cardamom. And as the woman opened the package, she saw salt and the glint of steel: one steel knife, and a new pistol, the style strange to her eyes.

She nodded crisply. “This is a good price,” she agreed. Her mouth was watering; it had been some time since she’d tasted cheese like that. “I will need to touch you.”

Some cringed at that. She was not particularly clean, living in the swamp, and she looked dirtier than she actually was. This woman put out her lily-white hand without hesitation.

Chandra closed her eyes and took the hand. Images flashed through her mind, pushing, forcing their way out. She gasped, forcing herself not to release the other woman’s hand. “The end will come,” she was singing now, always singing. “Those gone will come. The stars will come; children will come.” She shook her head, clearing the song. “It is coming, Lady of the Lake. The fire.”

“Yes. And after?”

After. “After?” The question prompted new images. “Death comes hard and slow, scours high and low. Rips the life away, steals the child away.” Again, she shook her head like a cat, clearing the images. “It will be hard. There may not be many left at all.”

“And if I go through with my plan?”

Plan? Again, the images pushed at Chantal. She opened her mouth, but nothing but a moan came out. She tried again. “So many sad children. Dead children, crying children, broken children.”

“And the rest?” The woman’s voice was implacable, unshakable.

Chantal’s vision cleared. She opened her eyes, confused, unhappy, but at the same time… “They thrive. The world ends, and they strive. The cities fall; they’re alive. The fires burn – they survive.” She spoke no more.

She didn’t need to. The woman nodded, sadly, it seemed. “Then I will do it. Thank you, Skin-Taker. Your payments will come as promised.”

Chantal waited until the woman had left, until the boat was out of sight. She picked from the package of payment a small bottle of scotch. Square and heavy, it did not seem to suit the woman who had just been here.

But at the moment, it suited Chantal just fine. She drank, sips at first and then gulps, until the sight of the sobbing, bloody girl had been scrubbed from her mind.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/915144.html. You can comment here or there.

Doeees anyone know if I have determined anywhere in writing~

Jun4

~what Professor Pelletier’s Name is? And, if so, is it somewhere I can easily change it?

Help?

Edit: It’s not in the character: Pelletier tag.
Edit: Or on the wiki

Edited again: Her Name-name, her Adult Name, the way Luca’s is Hunting Hawk and Regine’s is Lady of the Lake

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/724701.html. You can comment here or there.

Linden-Flower Tea

Dec18

This came about because of a box of tea my roommate just showed me. 😉
It helps to know that Mike is Mike VanderLinden, whose original use-name is Linden-Flower.
Shira is Professor Pelletier; Maureen is Lady Maureen Foxglove. All three are staff at Addergoole.

It had started as a dirty joke between Shira and Maureen, shared over their third or fourth beer one late night in Mau’s Tavern.

“Well,” Shira had been laughing, “if all else fails, there’s Linden Flower tea for what ails you.”

“Unless it’s lindens that ail you, of course.” Maureen had smirked over her beer and they had moved on to more tree metaphors.

Shira had forgotten the whole thing until Christmastime, when a box of linden-flower tea had shown up under her tree. Once that had been done, though, the gauntlet had been thrown and it was on.

Linden scented oil. Linden sachets. Little linden-leaf-embroidered towels. “Good for what ails you.”

“Unless the lindens are ailing you.” Not that Mike was ever what actually ailed them, Maureen and Shira. They had their weaknesses, neither would deny it, but vain and vapid Daeva were not on either’s list.

After a while, it creeped into Shira’s everyday vocabulary. She had a student who was having some issues with body image, and, in speaking to Caitrin, suggested the boy might want some linden-flower tea for what ailed him. Another year, she suggested it to Laurel, when she and Wysteria were having a falling-out in their invisible relationship. Once, she even said it to a student.

“I don’t know. It’s just the whole idea is a little nerve-wracking. I get all the urges, but then I start getting scared and over-thinking everything…”

“Have you considered some linden-flower tea?” In Shira’s defense, it had been a long week. She covered it quickly, segueing into something else before coming back to the suggestion more directly.

But in all those years, it never occurred to her – and possibly not to Maureen, either – that the target of their joke was aware of it.

Until she found a box of tea under her tree again that Christmas, with a note attached:

Don’t bother with the infusion, come straight to the solution. ~M~

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Lost in Translation, Orig-Fic, Addergoole

Dec17

To Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lost in Translation square.

Summer, Between Years 9 & 10 of the Addergoole School

“You’d think this would be easy.” Shira Pelletier stared at the document in front of her.

“No.” Feu Drake shook his head. “No. Some might think this is easy, but I would not be one of them again.”

“You’re doing it again.” She glanced up at him, not yet irritated but willing to sound it.

“Of course I am ‘doing it again.’ I am not certain you would ever be reasonable to expect something else of me, j-“

“If the next sound out of your mouth is a jae, you’re doing this on your own, Drake.” Now, now she was becoming actually irate.

“You are rather younger than I am.” He managed to make the statement of fact sound like a reproach. Shira was un-reproached.

“And does that mean that I am your junior?”

She caught the faintest twitch that meant she’d either amused the man or caught him by surprise. “You posit a curious question… Shira.”

“See? I knew you could use my use-name if you tried hard enough.” She allowed herself to be mollified, because if she kept this up much longer, it would no longer be sparring and be something far more like flirtation. (Maybe. With Feu Drake, it was hard to tell even when he was naked. Clothed and poring over ancient papers, there was almost no option short of a Working to get a certain answer). “This part of this piece makes no sense.”

“Are you sure it’s not you?”

“I am certain it’s not me, Feu Drake.” She pushed the sheet over to him – a piece of gold pressed thin as paper and inlaid with the ancient script of Old Tongue, Idu a’Iduþin. “This part here, the prophecy. ‘The mother who cares not?'”

Drake frowned. “‘The mother who…’ yes, ‘who gives no caring for her children but simply births them as the mice do.’ An odd way to phrase that.”

As the mice do. Shira sighed. “Oh. Well, it can’t be one of ours, can it?”

“I don’t see why not. Addergoole was prophesied in at least three different texts.”

Shira looked back at the words. “‘Shall…’ but something is missing, isn’t it?”

“Lost.” Drake picked up a leather-bound book and passed it to Shira. “But here’s a Greek translation. You think it’s one of your Students?”

As the mice do. “Let’s just say, I’m hoping it’s a mistake of translation.”

“jae” is a diminutive honorific; the prefix for those who outrank you is sa’, and for equals you simply skip the honorific.

Shira Pelletier and Feu Drake are professors in the Addergoole School.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/617966.html. You can comment here or there.

Way Back Wednesday: Shira Pelletier

May8

1702

The woman stalked through the forest.

She had not worn a name in many years, and could not, precisely, remember what she had been called when she had landed here.

She spent her time, her attention, worrying about more real concerns: She had to eat, and to eat, she had to hunt. She needed shelter, sometimes, and for that she needed to build. She needed, more rarely, companionship, and for that she needed to speak to the fur-hunters who also worked her forests.

“Wild girl,” they called her, and chasseuse sauvage, and fourreuse de forêt, and more pleasant names. They paid her in trinkets and good food for the furs she brought them, and gave her company without asking questions.

And none of them asked about her ears, which perked above her twisted hair like a deer’s.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/528106.html. You can comment here or there.

Visit from School

Sep12

First of two I want to write for [personal profile] 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.”

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