Tag Archive | morepls: fulfillment

Dead Gods Bleeding, a continuation of Fae Apoc

Oct29

This story is set in the late apoc of fae apoc, and follows
Mourning Lost Gods and
The Destruction of the Gods
and The Dead Gods Come Visiting
.
We’d gotten ourselves as settled as we were going to be, gotten ourselves a little more comfortable with the end of the world, and, most importantly, we’d gotten comfortable with the lack of godlets everywhere. Then a godlet walked into what served us as a house and fell down half-dead.

We were all looking at each other when Kingfisher pulled out his filleting knife. Then it went from a cautious twelve-pointed look to a panicked 11-pointed look. The question was half what is Kingfisher going to do and half what do we want him to do?

“She’s a human being…” Kingfisher looked at his knife, then at the stone-skinned girl lying on the floor. “Well, she’s a being, and one that isn’t trying to kill us. And someone was clearly trying to kill her. Makes her, if not an ally, then not our enemy right now.”

There was another look around the room. Finally, it ended up being me that had to speak up.

“It’s logic, I guess.” I looked down at the elf on the floor. She looked so harmless. Then again, they often did. “But when she wakes up, we’re gonna need promises of no-harm and no-brain-fuckery from her. First thing, no hedging.”

“I agree totally.” Kingfisher leaned over to speak to to her, although I’m not sure she could hear him. “I’m going to cut the arrow out, miss. This is going to hurt a lot.”

She didn’t answer, but, then again, when the knife went in, she didn’t moan, either. She didn’t make any sound at all, not when he cut around the arrow-head, not when he pulled it out.

“Did you kill her?” Jason leaned forward. Worried or relieved? I couldn’t tell.

“With this?” Kingfisher waved his steel knife around. “Hardly. They might have, though.”

“I..” The elf groaned. “You want… promises.”

Somehow, the elf levered herself onto an elbow. Her color was better, I think: how do you tell on someone made of marble? She looked less ashy, at least.

“Lay down, lay down. You’re injured.” Paramedic training won for Marie again.

The elf shook her head. “Had worse. A promise.” She looked around, her eyes settling on every one of us. She looked so young. Then again, their ancient ones sometimes did. “You twelve. I swear I mean you no harm, and will do you no intentional harm, save in active self-defense.” She fell back to the floor with a small thump.

Marie tugged a blanket up to the girl’s hips, and began bandaging the hole the arrow and Kingfisher had left. “It would have waited,” she muttered, but the girl was back beyond listening.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/839925.html. You can comment here or there.

Deep Deep Down in Kitty Town

Oct6

The hood over Rrrina’s head smelled of menthol and nothing else, the world around her was muffled and her ears pinned against her head, and she was bound. Usually, when she ended up in this position, someone wanted to do something a bit naughty to her. This time… well, she wasn’t ruling it out, but she thought that “naughty” might be in a completely different context than she was used to.

And she was being carried again, carried by a skin-job, a leopard in a man’s body. This had to be the weirdest her life had been in – in – maybe in ever.

She was too turned around to have any sense of direction, the menthol in the hood made it impossible to navigate by scent, and her porter kept bouncing her, making it very hard to count steps. Had he stolen her? That’s what he’d said. But stealing slaves was – it was bad, very bad. And her head felt funny. Something in the menthol? Something… this was bad.

Rrrina came to on a cushion, in a warm place that felt like sunshine. Three sets of training came into play, and she opened her eyes only halfway while letting her other senses take inventory.

The cushion was comfortable, soft, and warm. The heat was too omnidirectional to be sunlight, but maybe a sun lamp? It was bright but not unbearably so, and the light seemed to be coming from above. Her nose was still clogged, but, even so, she could smell other cats.

She opened her eyes. The floor, the fixtures – all white. In front of her, a lab-coat person. Her eyes opened further. A lab-coat-wearing feline, jaguar spots, now that was new. Her captor was there, too, shedding out of his overalls. He met Rrrina’s gaze and smiled. It looked wrong, too feline in his human face

“Good, you’re awake. Welcome to the Feline Rebellion.”

After Down in Kitty Town, Entering Kitty Town, and Kit Town Maybe.

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Cat’s In the… Attic, a continuation of the Aunt Family for the Giraffe Call (@anke)

Sep10

This is [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned continuation of Cats & Grannies.

“Oh, hello, dear. And you brought a… a cat. Oh, you brought That Cat.” Aunt Beatrix was attempting to sound friendly. Mostly she sounded that she was terrified and stressed.

Beryl smiled as nicely as she could manage. She’d wanted to bring Chalce or Stone along, or, better yet, Mom, but Chalce had been busy, Radar was getting weird about Stone, and Mom sometimes forgot she wasn’t a Grandmother yet, so she might not endorse Beryl learning verboten information.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Beatrix. But Radar gets up to trouble if I leave him alone, and I heard that you might have some family records in your attic.”

“Aah, Evangaline finally noticed things were missing, did the girl? Come in, I suppose, as long as your cat there doesn’t get up to any trouble.”

“You hear that, Radar?” Beryl stared at the cat for a moment. “No trouble. You be nice to Aunt Beatrix.”

“Oh, no, not you, too, sweetie.” Beatrix tch’d. “Well, come in. The papers are up in the attic, like you said. They’re all boxed up. Carron and Katherine boxed everything up, before… Before.”

Before before? Beryl would have to ask Radar or Mom when she was alone. “Thank you, Aunt Beatrix. How have the cats… been?”

“Well, with That One out of the way, they’ve been… better. They’re still Family cats, and why I ended up with them this time around, I really don’t know. But they like the park you built them.”

“The park? Ah, the cat run.” That had been quite a bit of work, half of it Beryl and half of it Stone. “I’m glad they like it.”

“It does keep them quiet. Well, come on, you and That Cat. The attic is this way. Although I’ve managed to keep the cats out of there, up ‘till now.”

“Ha.”

The noise was stifled, a little snort of dry amusement, but Beatrix still heard it. She stared at Radar for a moment, then shook her head as if clearing it. “I never should have – well, that’s for another time. Come on, girl. ‘twere well it were done quickly.”

“Coming.” Aunt Bea was… different. Clearer-headed, and yet somehow she sounded even more insane. Well, she was family, after all.

Aunt Bea’s house was almost as old as Aunt Evangaline’s. The family liked to hold on to property. The family liked to hold on to everything, to be fair. The stairs were tight and narrow, old wooden stairs covered with at least three archival layers of carpeting. (Beryl and Chalce had vacuumed and washed those carpets, back before Thanksgiving. The stained floral pattern of the bottom layer still haunted her.) But Aunt Bea hopped up them as quickly as Beryl did. Age – age, in the family, seemed like it had more to do with getting stronger than with getting frail.

“I moved these boxes up here when Asta – when she had her little spell, although I figure you probably don’t remember that. It just seemed like some things ought to stay safe. And then That Cat moved in, and I forgot right about the papers, you know? Everything got a little fuzzy, if you’ll pardon me saying so.”

A little fuzzy would explain a lot. Beryl shot Radar a glare; he endeavored to look completely innocent, going so far as to start grooming himself.

“I, ah, I can understand that. Is that,” Beryl gambled a bit, “the spot in the guest room at Aunt Eva’s That We Don’t Talk About Period?” The spot was black with char, and the rug did not like to stay over it.

Aunt Beatrix snorted out a laugh. “That’s not your Aunt Eva. Is that your mother, then, Hadelai?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You were, I think, just a small baby, although that might have been your sister, one of your sisters. We never did figure out what happened, but we think it has something to do with Asta being a weak vessel.”

Beryl had already learned the trick with the grannies: keep listening & you learn a lot more than if you ask questions. She made a noise that she’d learned sounded like she agreed – she’d picked it up from Aunt Rosaria – while making a mental note to ask Radar about weak vessels when they were alone.

“And well, she decided that the family had, I suppose, too much power, as if such a thing was possible, and she started… trying to eliminate it. But you know as well as I do, child, that power does not like to be threatened.”

The same could be said for the family. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, it was quite a mess, and I’m rather surprised the backlash didn’t kill Asta.”

“That… that sounds like quite a mess.” And quite a backlash, if it had left a spot so tainted that no rug would cover it.

“Well, Asta was always a bit daft. I told Rosaria and Margaret, I did, that – well, here are the boxes.” Aunt Beatrix looked a bit guilty as she gave Beryl a little push. “And don’t worry your head about that stuff about Asta. She’s gone now, and can’t do any harm to anyone, not even herself.”

“Thank you, Aunt Beatrix.” Aunt Bea might be a little silly, but she was still a Grannie, and there was no going around her once she’d decided Beryl didn’t need to know something. “Are they safe to move, or should I look over them here and-” at the last minute Beryl remembered that she was supposed to be getting these boxes for Aunt Eva – “take notes for Aunt Evangaline?”

“Oh, they should be inert by now. And if not, I trust that you’re a clever girl. Just be careful of dust. They’ve been sitting here quite a while, and they were sitting there even longer.”

“Thanks, Aunt Bea.” Beryl studied the pile of boxes – three deep, three tall, three wide. The one in the center would probably be the proper one, if family tradition held. “I think I’ll move them a bit at a time, if you don’t mind the intrusion?”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all, dear, don’t mind at all. But I wouldn’t mind some of Hadelai’s lemon bars, either.”

Beryl smiled. “Thanks again.” Looked like she was reading old papers and making lemon bars this weekend. Having a normal dating life had never really been in her cards, she supposed. “I’ll get started right away.”

Next: Family Secrets & Cat Secrets

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There Are Always Choices

Sep2

After And We Are Not Monsters.

The girl called Rohanna did not take well to the collar.

Viatrix had sympathy for that. Nobody in their house had ever taken well to submission and, to the girl, they were the enemy. They had stolen her from her crew at hawthorn-point.

What she did not have was tolerance. “No.” She knew she was getting sharp, and could not manage to soften her tone. “No, what did I say?”

Rohanna snarled. “If I washed the floor I didn’t have to wash the dishes.”

“Try again, little mage.”

“Don’t call me that!” Rohanna swung back from Via’s hand. “If I cleaned the floor… well… I didn’t have to wash the dishes.”

“Better.” This time, Via caught Rohanna’s collar. “So. Floor again, or dishes. Your choice.”

~

The boy – not a boy, the Kept – named Kavan didn’t know quite what to do with, about, or for Baram.

It was mutual. Baram found that the slender fae with the fragile-looking body brought out memories, and he’d never been very comfortable with the sort of memories he was getting now. He found that the not-kid brought out a protective urge, and for the first time that he could functionally remember, the urge was meet, right, and by the Law. And he found that the little Kept frustrated the living shit out of him, in large part by being terrified.

“Your choice,” he repeated. Again. “My bed or the couch-bed.”

“Whatever my master wants.” Kavan stared at the ground

“Your master. Wants you to choose.”

~

The one called Ardell could be made to see sense.

The other one, the one named Delaney, was rabid. She hissed, spat and swore, none of it in any way useful. It seemed she knew the Boss, and wanted the Boss to help them. Everything else was irrelevant.

So Jaelie spoke to Ardell. “The Boss is busy, cleaning up after the people you led here.”

“I knew you could handle them.” The man was insufferably smug. “I knew Baram could handle them. He’s as tough as a truck.”

“Tougher. But you brought them to our door, and that causes problems.”

Delaney said something. Jaelie watched Ardell. “So. We’re gonna need oaths, or we’re gonna need to take information from your mind. Your choice.”

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Cats and Grandmas, a story(beginning) of Beryl and Radar for the Giraffe Call

Sep1

To eseme‘s prompt

The Grandmothers, as Aunt Eva tended to call them, had been on Beryl’s case recently about The Cat.

They didn’t all have the Spark, they didn’t all know first-hand what The Damned Cat was, but they all knew, and they all seemed to think that, since Beryl could talk to (or hear) the Cat, then it was her sacred duty to do whatever it was they wanted her to do about the Cat.

She’s stopped listening after a while, and when that had gotten her full-name-scolded (and reminded that she was not currently the Aunt, no matter what the cards seemed to hold, and would thus be respectful, thank-you-very-much), she had tried dodging questions.

When that hadn’t worked, she’d decided to take the problem to the source and ask Radar and Lam what she should do.

Lam was, predictably, no help at all. “Bite them.” The tiny Siamese kitten groomed herself between answers. “Then growl and hiss until they go away.”

Radar, more surprisingly, gave the matter some thought. “They want to know what I am, and why Lam exists, yes?”

“What you want, yes, and ‘why you made Lam.'” Beryl petted Radar behind the ear, where he best liked being petted. “They don’t listen when I say that you didn’t make her.”

“They wouldn’t want to. It means someone else is doing something they’ve forgotten how to do.” The orange tabby (today, at least, he was an orange tabby) sighed, an angry huff. “Well, child-kitten, I suppose we’re going to have to go into the attic.”

“Aunt Eva’s attic?” Aunt Eva’s attic was a terrifying place.

“No.” At least this time, he didn’t sound as if she was being stupid. “Aunt Bea’s attic. I’d suggest you bring gloves.”

Next: Cat’s in the… Attic

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And We Are Not Monsters

Aug19

First in this story: Unwelcome Guests
Previous: The Clean-Up

1016 words, to Rix’s commissioned continuation.

“Come.” Viatrix led the her new Kept into the back yard, murmuring what she thought of as “Addergoole Standard Kept Rules” as she went.

She didn’t look at the girl until they reached the stone circle that, in some other owner’s time, had been a back patio and outdoor kitchen. She didn’t need to; the way the orders were spun, there was little the girl could do.

When she reached the center of the circle, then, she turned. “Kneel.” A Word awoke the fire in the grill. “Give me your wrists.”

Her Kept did as she was told, although she was clearly fighting it. “Mistress… bitch.” She forced the word out with a snarl.

Viatrix found herself grinning. “Yes. Both of those. What name are you called?”

“They Called me Red Mage, but my father named me Rohanna.” She held her wrists out, but her hands were trembling. “What are you going to do to me…. you bitch?”

The swearing was twisted out of her mouth, forced out around heavy breathing and eyes that were wider than they ought to be. Via grabbed both wrists in one hand.

“You’re Mine for the next year. I want to be sure you don’t forget it.”

She could see the moment the girl’s eyes landed on her own wrists, on brand she had never bothered to heal. “You…”

“We’ve all done our time.” She muttered a Working that would shut off the pain, and made the branding in one quick motion. “And we are not monsters.”

~
“This way.” Baram led the boy into the house, pausing only to knock the safe-knock on the basement door. Aly wouldn’t thank him if he didn’t let her out of there as soon as possible. She was almost as good with kids as he was.

“My room.” He had the biggest room in the house, the biggest bed. It was, after all, his cave. “Yours, for six months.”

The boy fell to his knees again, his hands tucked behind his back this time. “Sir.”

It reminded Baram, uncomfortably, of the people in the trap-basement, of the time at school. “Get – no-.” He sat down on his bed with a thump. “I don’t need you kneeling. I don’t need you sirring me.”

“Sir?” The boy’s eyes went wide & he slapped both hands over his mouth. His “sorry” was muffled, what showed of his expression terrified.

Baram growled. “Come here… shit.” The boy was skittering over without getting to his feet. “Fine. Damnit.” He looked down at the boy, who looked terrified. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The boy glanced up, swallowed, and looked back down at the floor. “Sir?”

“I didn’t take you to hurt you. I took you to hurt them.”

“Sir?” This time, it was a squeak. Baram grumbled. Words were hard. Orders were harder.

He scooped the boy into his lap instead, and, as if he was touching a newborn, ran his fingers down the boy’s back. “You have a name?”

“Lots – lots of names, sir.”

“One of those, hunh?” It was an effort to remember how to be gentle, to be that careful. Baram’s girls were so tough, so thick-skinned. He set one hand over the boy’s hip. “My name is Baram.” Start with the simple things. “This is my house. The girls – they work for me.”

The boy looked at him, and swallowed. “The Black ‘Blazers called me Tommy. But… but my mother called me Kavan and my Mentor called me Wild Eyes.” He ducked his head suddenly. “Sir.”

“I can call you Kavan.” He patted the boy’s back. “So, you’re an adult?”

A snort of laughter, surprised, escaped before Kavan slapped both hands over his mouth. “Oh gods. Sir… sorry. Yes. Yes, I’m an adult. Nearly fifty.”

Baram barked out a laugh. “Older than me. So, old enough to understand.”

Another swallow, and a peek through those fingers. “Sir?”

“That there are monsters in the world.”

“Yes, yes sir.” There was no where for Kavan to go, perched on Baram’s lap and trapped, Baram’s hand on his hip holding him there. But he looked like he was trying to shrink away to nothingness.

He wasn’t a child. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t fragile, did it?

“And there are people who aren’t monsters.” He tried to sound gentle. It was hard; he had to sound like he was whispering, mostly. “And we are not monsters.”

~

“There are things you need to know about us.” Jaelie sat perched on the top stair of the trap-basement, Aloysius standing guard behind her. Their “guests” couldn’t make it out of the trap, not the way it was set up, but that was no reason to be incautious.

“Do I like I give a shit about your things?” The woman, Delaney, was snarling, fierce like a wild thing. Jaelie was glad she’d gone into the trap calmly, because fighting her would have been interesting. “Let us the fuck out of here and let us talk to Baram.”

“If the boss doesn’t want to talk to you, there’s nothing I can do about it. There are things you need to know about us.”

It wasn’t the first time Jaelie had given a speech like this one.

“I told you, I don’t give a-”

“Del.” The other one, Ardell, was soft and slick of voice. “Please continue, jae-”

“I’m called Briar Rose, sa’Diamondback. The things you need to know start with this: we are not on the side of angels.”

The woman, who had fallen silent for a moment, burst into laughter, fake and bubbly. “Who is, these days? I didn’t see them coming down for the war.”

Jaelie grinned, not because it was funny, but because the woman hadn’t realized she was in trouble yet. “We’re not on the side of devils, either. We’re on our side.” She met the man’s eyes, because he seemed to be paying attention.

He nodded slowly. “That’s the first thing to know. What’s the second?”

Now Jaelie was grinning. “That we are not monsters… and this isn’t where the monsters live.”

Next: There Are Always Choices.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/781908.html. You can comment here or there.

The Dead Gods Come Visiting, a story-bit of the FaeApoc

Aug10

This story is set in the late apoc of fae apoc, and follows
Mourning Lost Gods and
The Destruction of the Gods.

We’d gotten – not comfortable – but okay with the quiet, even in the few weeks it had been. We’d started to become accustomed to the lack of aerial fights, to the lack of strange semi-human people attacking us, to the way the world stayed the same – ruined, barely habitable, but the same – from day to day.

And then this half-dead… elf limped into our shelter. She was muttering under her breath, things we could barely tell were magic, and she was bleeding from at least seventeen places. Her stone-like skin was cracked, split, and burned, and underneath, she was bleeding red like the rest of us.

We froze. I froze, at least. Around me, the others shifted, reaching for weapons we no longer kept at hand. The god was barely over five foot tall, a tiny girl, but we had been less terrified of muscle-bound bikers with shotguns.

I saw the minute she noticed us, her tiger’s-eye eyes going wide. She ducked her head in what, in a human, I would have thought was an apology.

“I saw your fire,” she croaked. “I…”

And then she fell over. Sticking from her back was an arrow shaft; they hadn’t even bothered to strip all of the thorns off of the hawthorn before shooting it.

We spent a few minutes arguing. Quite a few of us wanted to dump her off the roof or, preferably, another roof, further away. A couple wanted to cut her head off, just to be sure that she stayed dead.

But Marie and Donald, who had been a paramedic and a school nurse before the world ended, they checked her pulse and found her still among the living, and that made everything more complicated. We didn’t so much talk about it as we shared a twelve-pointed look.

Then Kingfisher pulled out his filleting knife.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/839925.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/768781.html. You can comment here or there.

Through the Door

Aug1

After Gone Rummaging

If asked, I would have said I stepped through the door on a whim, on a fancy – it’s a pretty door, so let’s see what’s on the other side.

I would have said I hadn’t expected anything to happen. It’s a door frame standing on its own, in the back of a garage sale in the back of an old yard.

I wouldn’t exactly have been lying, although I wouldn’t exactly have been telling the truth. Certainly, I picked up the silver letter opener on a similar whim as I stepped through; this could come in handy.

In handy where, why, you ask?

Why, on the other side of the Door, of course.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/760496.html. You can comment here or there.

Kicking out unwelcome guests

Jun25

This is a continuation of Unwelcome Guests, Part the Third for my “More Please” tag.

The girls knew what to do. They had fought to defend their property – their home – before. Hell, they had been fighters long before they met Baram.

The trees knew what to do, but Baram didn’t think too hard about that. He let them grab the woman in the lead, while he went for the guy that was probably their tank. Shit, shit, the second bitch was a fireball-thrower; he moved the tank between him and the thin, ashen girl and kept hitting.

It was a quick fight, Jaelie and Via hitting from the walls, shooting rowan bullets and hawthorn arrows, the trees doing their share of damage, and Baram in the middle of the fight like some sort of bull in a china shop.

The bikers were fae, but they weren’t organized, and they weren’t all that good at being fae – except the ashen one he’d thought was a bitch, the fireball thrower. Baram took her down hard, broke her jaw and pinned her wrists with a hawthorn arrow.

By then, the tree had the leader and her probably-second-in-command, and everyone else except her maybe-a-seer-boy were down. He looked between the three of them, then decided sitting down with his hands on his neck was a good idea.

Baram grunted. “You okay?”

“We’re fine, boss. They’re not all that good at this.”

“No teamwork.” He toed the fireball-thrower. “This one’s interesting, though.”

“So’s the boy.”

“We’re not keeping them.”

“He might be useful.”

“Another… shit, he fainted. Okay.” He walked over to the tree and poked the leader in the stomach. Her eyes and stomach were about all that was visible… that had to hurt. “You.”

She grunted incoherently. Baram poked her again.

“You take your people and you leave. We’re keeping one – or two -”

“-as the fee for having the stupid gall to attack us,” Jaelie filled in.

The tank, who wasn’t quite dead, it seemed, spoke up. “What about our target?”

“Never here.” Baram added a kick to punctuate it. “Got it?”

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Old Stories and old Fates, a continuation of Fairy Town (More-please)

Jun16

This comes after The Church in the Park and is written to a more-please request.

It is part of my Fairy Town setting.

Some things could only be written in blood and etched in stone.

Some fates could only be erased with sacrifice, changed with pain, altered with devotion and the strongest of emotions: love, terror, aw.

Some stories could be moved from their place in the Book of Life, but only if one had the proper needle, the proper sinew, the proper glue to settle them in their new place.

Bishop Macnamilla knew these things, more than most and definitely more than a man of faith in any other city might know. He knew where the tools could be found, for those things that had tools. And he knew what elements were needed, when it was not something one could change with tools.

There were things he had not learned, however – stories that had been taught to him wrong, pages that had been left out of his book.

All of those things that he had not learned were coming to a head.

It took the fae very little time to find him, a Bishop, a Man of Faith standing at the Godsplace. They slunk and skittered, snuck and slipped up to him, whispering to each other, whispering to him.

Is this the one that killed so many? Is this the one who shed so much blood?

Is this the one come back to us? Does he know where he is? Does he know what that is?

Does he know? It this him? The whispers swirled around the Bishop like a storm, brushing against him, ruffling his clothes but never quite getting through. It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now but the task in front of him.

Does he know? He did not, not the way the faeries meant it. But he knew this spot – this stone that looked as if it were a table, the stones that looked like a doorway. He knew the crosses set in the ground around it.

And he knew that if he shed the right blood onto the stone, the world would change forever.

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