Tag Archive | character: shahin

Second-year magic lessons

This is written to a prompt cluudle left back in August, 2015

Luke didn’t like her, and he really did not like teaching her.

Shahin found that a little amusing, but she tried not to antagonize the man too much. She wanted to become better at Kwxe. Everything she found in every vision told her she was going to need it. Everything the teachers didn’t want to tell her enforced that – up to and including the fact that, despite the fact that Luke did not like teaching her, he’d agreed to meet with her three times a week to practice Kwxe.

“What are you going to use this for?” he demanded today. Shahin smiled, a small expression that was as dry and as careful as she could make it.

“I was thinking,” she offered, “that I would use it to stop Dragons. Or – if I can’t stop them…” She would stop them, she knew it. But that would be much later. “…then to stall them.”

She noted that he was surprised, and a bit chagrined, and quite a bit worried. She decided she could live with that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1089486.html. You can comment here or there.

March Is Women’s History Month – day one: Shahin as a Tween

Mar13

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from clare_dragonfly, who asked for Shahin as a tween.

Shahin is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“Who are you?”

The new boy, Shahin decided, was rude.

“Shahin Laskaris.” She raised her chin and stared at the stranger. “And who are you?

“Steve Talbot.” He grinned like he was proud of himself for being Steve Talbot. Shahin raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She was still working on the delivery of that line. Teachers chuckled at it, but her fellow classmates –

“What, you had to think about it?”

– were less cultured, she supposed. “Time will tell.”

“Yeah, while I’m getting a pretty firm opinion of you already. Why are you so stuck-up?”

Stuck-up? “I am not!” Whoops. She glared at the new boy, only to find him grinning back at her.

“There you go. Look, it’s fine to be fancy and formal but you have to unwind once in a while too, you know? Come skateboarding with me.”

“Come… what?” She took a step backwards and watched him. She didn’t think he was joking. But nobody had ever offered anything like that. “Not now.”

“No, I don’t think skipping my first day of school is a good idea. But what about after school?”

“Your parental figure won’t mind?”

“Nah, what about yours?”

“Mine won’t notice.” She looked down at her outfit, mostly to point it out to him. She’d spent a lot of time picking it out – little heels, the tallest her aunt would let her buy, and a cute ruffled plaid skirt. She looked like something out of an anime, which was the idea. She didn’t, though, look like she could go skateboarding.

“I can lend you sneakers, I’ve got small feet.” He didn’t seem to ever stop smiling. Shahin found it fascinating. “Say yes?”

“If I must.” And she found she was smiling, too.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/693095.html. You can comment here or there.

How Do We Manage?

Feb21

This is to wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt to this January card for origfic_bingo.

It fills the “management” slot, and is in Addergoole, which has a landing page here

Warning: discussion of incest.

“You have it easy.” Aelgifu sighed and flopped against the back of her chair.

“Easy?” Shahin raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow in question. “I’m not arguing that I don’t have a hard life, although I miss Emrys – although I had him here a year longer than you had Io.”

They were sitting in one of the cozy visiting rooms in Lady Maureen’s voluminous creche and child-care center, Ayla’s daughter and Shahin’s three-and-a-stepchild playing around and with them. Shahin managed to look simultaneously matronly and adorable while nursing young Belladona; Ayla had never managed to feel anything but half-naked and frumpy.

“Well, you don’t mind the preliminaries.” How much could you say around two-year-olds? What would babies Niobe and Arturo remember?

“I don’t recall you minding the preliminaries with Ioanna.”

“That’s was different. And the baby-making parts were, ah, separate. Dr. Caitrin helped with those.” Dr. Caitrin had been necessary for the complex Workings that had turned part of Ioanna’s female DNA into sperm and then impregnated Aelgifu with that sperm – Ayla was a bit fuzzy on the details, but the end result had been Niobe.

“Well, it’s not as if Dr. Caitrin couldn’t help you with a nice boy’s consent.”

“Finding someone I can stand enough to bother with is half the problem.”

“I really doubt you want to go the route of magically-and-inexplicably-attracted-to-your-brother.” Shahin seemed to have no problems at all talking about such things in front of her children. Well, with her relationship with Emrys…

“That’s it.” Ayla sat up straight. “Shahin, you’re brilliant.”

“I know, but… how, in this case, exactly?” Her friend was watching Ayla with both eyebrows raised.

“Brothers. I have an inordinate share of brothers, and I know at least two of them have no interest in women.” Their father had said all my kids turn out gay, but nobody was going to take Aelfgar as an expert in anything except fighting. “That’s brilliant.”

Shahin shook her head, but she was smiling, not scoffing. “It is. I’m glad I thought of it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/674807.html. You can comment here or there.

What was Lost

Jan31

This is to clare_dragonfly‘s prompt to my December Bingo card for origfic_bingo.

It fills the “Lost and Found” Square.

It comes after/concurrent with –
Toy Soldiers
With Friends Like These…,
Cleaning Up and
this scrap (http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/398701.html)
Monsters
Mimosas.
S for Shahin
E is For Emrys/Harder than Diamonds

and is part of my Addergoole sub-‘verse, with characters from my Addergoole webserial.

“You know your options. What are you going to do?”

Ty studied its mistress unhappily. “That’s not a fair question, and you know it… Mistress.”

“I know. And I apologize for that. This isn’t going to be easy on you, Tya, whichever route either of us take.”

“No.” Ty rolled its shoulders. “But… maybe that’s what I needed. Life was easy for a long time. And now…”

Shahin packed the last piece of bedding into her pack. “And now, you need to pack, or not.”

Ty winced. “And leave you, follow you, or wait for you.”

“Yes. I apologize. But…”

“I understand. If I had someone like Emrys…” The message had come back from Addergoole, not from Regine, but from Shira Pelletier. Tell the Rapier: What was lost might be found again; the fire has always been at home in the cold; the hills are not hills.

Shahin nodded crisply. “I do need your decision.”

“I’ll come with you.” It didn’t take long to pack up its gear; it had come with little and half of that had been confiscated. Ty was surprised, on filling its pack, to find that its mistress was adding things – another blanket, a hunting knife, a small mess kit.

“Tell me why?”

Ty sighed. “Because I can help you. Because this is going to be really dangerous, and you don’t even know exactly what you’re getting into.” It swallowed, but found it couldn’t stop. “Because I don’t want to be left behind. And… and because you’re making me somebody better.”

Her hand lingered on its cheek. Ty sighed. “I hope you found Emrys. I, um. I think I’m finding Ty.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/651527.html. You can comment here or there.

Character Notes for Nano (for Shahin)

Oct10

Shahin Laskaris, sh’Chloe
16 years old
Female

Appearance:
Shahin has dark brown hair that is not quite as jet-black as she would like. Her skin is never-sees-the-sun pale, and powdered even paler; her features, despite her white skin, are the Lebanese of her father’s ancestry, especially her nose.

She’s short and slender, 5’4″ tall and with a very slight build. She tends toward goth fashion, especially EGL (Elegant Gothic Lolita); the black clothing and dark lipstick and eye makeup accentuate her pale skin. Her wrists are always covered.

She’s often referred to as a troubled child, or sometimes as just a trouble child. She revels in her role as a freak in her current public school, and much of her day-to-day clothing is designed to accentuate that. She doesn’t have many friends back in her public school, and is used to being alone, but does prefer having a few people around now and then.

Character arc notes”
Book one is about Shahin learning She’s Not All that, and that there are bigger freaks in the world than her. It’s about her learning that friends are a thing, for good and bad.

Book two is about her learning exactly how much there are bigger freaks, and how much she is Not All That, which should be very uncomfortable for her. She likes her facade. She understand how it works.

Template in this and previous post via Cluudle

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/577614.html. You can comment here or there.

E for Emrys – Harder than Diamonds – a story of Addergoole for the Giraffe Call

May8

This is for, I believe, Friendly Anon’s “E” prompt, “Emrys.

It comes after/concurrent with –
Toy Soldiers
With Friends Like These…,
Cleaning Up and
this scrap (http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/398701.html)
Monsters
Mimosas.
S for Shahin

There had been any number of hard things in Emrys’ life with Shahin.

Many of them had been, in retrospect, a very soft level of “hard,” teenage drama, teenage angst and jealousy and anger.

Some of them, even some of the moments very early on… there were nights Emrys still woke with the memory of that cabin, the dragon, the monster’s knife sliding down Shahin’s pale skin. Those moments still counted as hard, diamond-hard. (“Our love is harder than diamond.” They still said that, moments when everything seemed harder than they could bear.)

Walking away from Shahin had been harder than most of those times. They had squeezed hands, kissed, and broken their vows of forty-seven years without a backwards glance. Neither of them had shed a tear. Neither’s voice had trembled. Their kids were grown and gone; their grandkids were grown and gone. Their great-grandkids would be leaving for Addergoole soon.

And neither of them were big on revealing their cards, in any case. So he walked away from his warrior wife, walked into the hands of another woman.

That had been a hard moment, sapphire-hard like the etchings in Shahin’s arms, blue-hard like the tears he wasn’t going to shed. That had been a difficult moment, but it had been what he had to do. They were warriors, and this fight was going to happen here, with these people, and not where Shahin’s path was headed.

They were warriors, and they had made their decision, hard as it had been, hard-like-sapphires and blue like misery as it had been.

That had not been the hardest moment in Emrys’ life, but this one was. Kneeling on the floor of their enemy’s camp, knowing that he had failed Shahin, that moment was harder even than diamonds. And he did not know if their love was stronger than that.

And this one is a bonus. It comes after Addergoole: TOS, at the beginning of Year 6 of the Addergoole School.

“How does it feel, not being the youngest anymore?”

Emrys rested his hand on the small of his wife’s back as they watched the new students trail in. She, in turn, leaned into the hand, so subtly that no-one but him could tell she was leaning at all.

“They look so young.” Her voice was pitched for his ears alone; she shifted to pose as a new student stared openly. Shorter even than them and ginger, he looked as if he’d never seen a goth before.

“So did we.” Emrys turned his sharpest smile on the ginger boy before he got any ideas. “Remember?”

Shahin smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in her dress. “That was a century ago.”

“A year.”

“The same thing, in the fullness of things. It was forever ago, either way.”

Emrys found himself smirking, just a bit. His wife, love her as he may, was a bit of a drama queen. “And here we are, back at the beginning.”

“Back at the beginning,” she agreed. She licked her lips and turned her smile, now, on a tall blond in a cowboy hat.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/528375.html. You can comment here or there.

S for Shahin, a story of Addergoole Post-Apoc for the Giraffe Call

Apr26

To natalief‘s Prompt of the same name. After Mimosas.
The hermaphrodite – known alternately as Ty, Tya, and Red Sun at Night, and now known as oro’Shahin – studied its mistress uncomfortably.

The mimosas, Ty thought, had been a good idea. They had melted a bit of the ice Shahin kept around herself like a shield, gotten the vestiges of a smile of out her. Ty found, and was surprised and enlightened by the discovery, that those smiles had become a bit of an addiction.

I will allow you in my bed, she’d said, when you have learned what it is to serve. And it had been, so far, an education. Not just in serving, although Shahin had been an apt and firm instructor. But in the life she and her people lived, in the hunt for the monsters that survived – and in Ty’s mistress herself.

Ty kowtowed. It was a position with which the slender fae had more than a little experience, although generally in situations more playacting than real. Now, with the feel of Shahin’s metal-and-leather collar weighing down its neck, the position took on far less playfulness and far more gravity. It could stay down here forever.

“I would send a message to sa’Lady of the Lake.” Ty spoke to the floor. “It has been long enough that she’s going to be sending someone to look for me.” There, mistress, take that information for what it’s worth.

“And what would you tell her?” Ty didn’t dare look up at Shahin’s face, not yet, but he thought she was not too displeased.

“Ah. Well, mistress, therein lies the rub.”

“And what rub is that?” She had not, yet, given her new Kept a pet name; most of the time she used no name at all. Ty wondered at it, being nameless. Would it eventually forget its name?

Ty coughed. “You asked what I wanted. What if I want to stay?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/520908.html. You can comment here or there.

M is for Mimosas in the Morning, a story of Shahin/Fae Apoc-post-apoc for the Giraffe Call

Apr23

To anke‘s prompt. After Monsters and others.

“Mimosas in the morning?” Shahin studied her Kept, who had stirred up mix of orange juice – and where had Ty gotten that? She had to assume it’d figured out how to Meentik it up – and, even more improbably, champagne. “Hardly manly.”

“Neither of us, my dear Keeper, can be counted as manly. You may be as tough as one by some estimations – although I’d say they’re wrong. You’re as tough as a woman, which I’d count as far stronger.”

“You want something. And you’ve dangled far afield of your answer.” Neverthless, she sat down, swirling the drink and watching the bubbles rise.

“Don’t I always want something?”

“Well, often, at the very least. Is this poisoned?”

“Of course not.” As if to prove it, Ty lifted the glass. Before the slender hermaphrodite could drink, however, it flinched, running afoul of an order. “If I may?”

“You may.” Shahin took a ridiculous pleasure in that order, although it had been laid in as a supply-train precaution, rather than out of sadism. Don’t eat more than I or my lieutenants put on your plate. She hadn’t said drink, but she’d proven to be impatient with any loophole-searching.

Ty sipped the mimosa. “Not poisoned, dear Keeper.”

“Very good.” She sipped her own. “And very good. Your Working?”

“My Working.” His shoulders rolled. “I didn’t have any orders against this sort of thing…”

“No. I’m certainly not going to stop you from a domestic Working. Especially not one this good.”

She was intrigued to watch the set of his shoulders relax. He’d been worried. Interesting. “Now.” She leaned forward, watching him flinch away. “What do you want?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/517114.html. You can comment here or there.

Monsters, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call

Apr10

To thnidu‘s prompt
There was a monster to fight.

There was always a monster to fight. it seemed as if they had been fighting monsters forever. Maybe they had.

Shahin closed her eyes, shutting out the world of the now. She reached for the vision, pulling it from the vague, taunting recesses of her mind. When? Where? What? She demanded her power answer her and, cowed, it did so.

The monster was a troll, one of those fae that had given up any pretense of humanity. It was coming to them; it had a plan. An ugly plan, and she could see the timelines in which it succeeded.

They had been there before. She would not let them end up there again.

It would be here in half an hour. Shahin stood up, and spat out the orders that would change here into the battlefield of her choosing.

She fought with swords. Her Name was the Ice Rapier, after all, and, if the blades she wielded were not quite rapiers, well, she was not quite as Ice as her reputation would have you believe.

She fought with swords, cutting into the flesh of the monster, into its bone, into its heart. But she fought with words at the same time. She was a short woman and the monster was tall, taller than anything human. She could drive her blades only so far into it. But she could whisper, Meentik Kwxe, Burn, baby, Burn, and the flesh of the monster would light on fire. And then Qorawiyay Hugr Phobos, run, you fucker, run and the flaming monster, suddenly terrified, turned and ran.

She laughed with glee as she chased the thing down. Running away, it was easier to hit, with Meentik Hiko bursts of electricity and with the arrows of her team.

And when it fell, she stood on its chest and cut its head off with her swords. One less monster to fight.

M for Mimosas; after Why Swords

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/508768.html. You can comment here or there.

Why Swords, a setting drabble of Faerie Apoc post-apoc, for the Giraffe Call

Apr10

After:
Toy Soldiers
With Friends Like These…,
Cleaning Up and
this scrap (http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/398701.html)

“Why swords?” Ty lounged – there was nothing else to call it – on Shahin’s bed, watching her as she prepared herself for battle once again. “It’s not like you don’t know what guns are. It’s not like you couldn’t get someone to Meen… damnit… to create them for you.” It pressed both hands to its forehead as the pain of nearly disobeying an order hit.

Shahin took a moment from her preparations to stroke Ty’s hair until the pained look went away. “Supply chain, primarily. And not getting jumped by other people who would like guns and don’t have someone to Meentik them up.”

“Supply chain?”

“If you have a gun, you need bullets. You need someone who can repair it. You need someone who can make guns, or find them, either magically or through old tech – and that takes parts, and materials, and machinery. Supply chain. A sword takes a hot enough forge and a guy with a good arm and some practice.”

She made tiny circles with the tip of her weapon. “Besides, it’s in my Name.”

Ty laughed, although its eyes were tracking the point of the blade. “That’s a good reason. You could have just said ‘style,’ you know.”

“I have been accused of being the world’s vainest warrior.” Fairly, she had to admit. “But this isn’t just vanity. People have guns, sure. But people have more pointed things. This sword is pushing it, really. A pitchfork would be more normal, or a machete.” She tilted her head at her weapons rack, where she had examples of both. “The world is a lot more obviously violent than it used to be, and a lot more poor in manufacturing.”

“I do live in the same world you do, you know.” Now its pride was pricked. Shahin couldn’t help but smile.

“Now you do. But until we captured you – no, I don’t think you did.”

Monsters

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/508553.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder