Tag Archive | morepls

Hooked In

Mar10

This is written to sauergeek‘s commission and a request for more about how Beryl’s father got hooked into the family.
🎣
In high school, there had been a couple people — two in every year, three in the class that were freshmen when Mark was a senior — that were just a little bit different.

Not “didn’t follow the social conventions quite right” different, not “their accent says they didn’t grow up around here” different, but somehow just a little strange, despite conventional clothes and conventional haircuts.

To himself, Mark thought of them as “shiny” or, sometimes “sparkly,” but since none of his buddies seemed to notice — and none of the sparkly people seemed to notice him — he thought little more of it.

Then came college.

Freshman year, first semester, Survey of American Literature I. She sat down next to him and smiled, and Mark was hooked.

She wasn’t beautiful, he supposed. Amy Marconi, sitting behind her, looked like a model and smiled like she wanted to show him what was under her sweater. But this girl, she sparkled.

He introduced himself awkwardly, and she was kind about his clumsiness. He offered to study with her, and she accepted — if they did it as a group with her cousin and his girlfriend.

Well, that wasn’t too un-promising, so Mark agreed. Anything to spend a little more time around that sparkle.

It was three years and more than a hundred dates — study and otherwise — before he admitted that the sparkle had been what first caught his eye. By that point, he’d met her sister, her cousins, and her parents, and he had a pretty good idea that her family had the biggest concentration of sparkle on the Eastern Seaboard.

She’d smiled at him. It was a small thing, but he could see the way it lit up her mood behind the expression. “You can sense the — ah, the sparkle?”

He didn’t say can’t everyone? because by now he’d learned that most people were completely blind and obstinate when it came to such things. Instead, he said, “your Aunt Asta has a sparkle that defies belief, but yours is more mobile and, ah, multicolored, and your cousin Suzanne has some wild night-time fireflies.”

She’d stared for several minutes. For a moment, he thought that mentioning the cousin had been a bad idea. No girl wanted the guy she was dating to notice her cousins, after all, especially not one who liked to wear scandalous things the way Suzanne did.

“You know,” she said slowly, and he braced for impact, “this means I’m going to have to marry you.”

It was so out of the realm of anything that he’d been expecting that Mark stared at her with his mouth open for a minute, possibly as much as three minutes. At least she didn’t seem surprised. At least her smile was glittering with mischief and not with anger.

“I,” he cleared his throat. “I, ah.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I was hoping you’d say that. Well, I hadn’t asked, yet, and I’m not sure I’d really thought I had a chance, but I was hoping if I asked, you’d say yes, and—”

She kissed him, which blissfully saved him from having to say anything else.

“That kiss.” His wife was gone for the evening — a girls’-night-out with her sisters — which left Mark alone with his children; his youngest was at a sleepover, which left only the kids Mark felt he could be a little more honest with, and Chalcedony wasn’t really listening, which meant Mark was talking primarily to his two children who were brimming over with the sparkle.

“I mean, let’s be honest, the moment I met your mother, I was hooked.” His smile was crooked. He never minded being hooked, but sometimes he did feel a bit like a fish on a line. “The minute I realized people had sparkle, I was hooked. But when she kissed me…”

Beryl’s expression was thoughtful, like she’d never quite been kissed like that. Good, thought Mark, uncharitably. It was too early to lose her to some boy.

Stone, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to know what it felt like, and like he knew what it didn’t feel like.

Mark coughed. “So I was hooked when I met her. I was reeled in when she kissed me. But then I met the family…”

Even Chalcedony took part in the long groan. They all loved their family, of course they did. That didn’t mean they were ignorant of what their family was like, especially to outsiders, especially to men.

“Did they know?” Beryl leaned forward. “You have the sight. I mean, I think that’s what you said. You see the spark. Sparkle? I kind of like sparkle better. That’s not common, is it? I don’t know many people who can do it in the family…”

“I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t related to the family who could do it, besides me. Doesn’t mean there aren’t people who can. I mean, there’s plenty of people not related to us —”

“As far as we know.” Stone’s tone was dramatic. Then again, Stone’d had plenty of run-ins with the family lately.

“—not related to the family, as far as we know, who have some sort of power. It’s not all us — you. It just seems like it sometimes.”

“Sometimes it seems like they want us to believe that, or like the gr- like the older generation believes it, though,” Beryl offered.

“Well, the grannies like to have their story be the right one.” There was no use pretending that wasn’t the case. “And they do hold on to power. Sometimes I’ve wondered if they hold on to too much — but that’s a story for another day.” He didn’t need to be sharing family conspiracy theories with his kids. They had enough to worry about. “Anyway — no, the family aren’t the only ones with the power.”

“But…” Stone’s dramatic tone was gone. Now he was speaking slowly and thoughtfully, picking out his words and working through his theory while he presented it. “You said Mom said she ‘had to marry you.’”

“That was just—” Mark shook his head. He tried not to lie to his kids, even when it was uncomfortable. “All right, I like to think that your mother would’ve married me anyway. But yes. I always did get the impression that there was a little familial pressure going on there.”

“So — they like to have people with the power marry in. And men who marry in, uh. People who marry in, really…”

“They can get railroaded, yeah.” There was no arguing that point.

“So maybe not everyone with power is in the family?” Stone looked mildly sick. “But they want everyone to be in the family?”

“That…” Mark spoke slowly, considering that from all angles. “That would make far too much sense.”
🐠

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Love Meme: Kai and Rozen, Autumn and Ink

Feb15

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

Here are [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s second and [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s first prompts. Kailani and Rozen are from Addergoole; Autumn from Stranded World.

Kai and Rozen
End of Year Five

Some days it felt like she hardly had time to think, like Conrad was too busy to even look at her, like nobody in the suite but her would look at Tolly’s child, because the boy was Tolly’s, even though he was hers.

Kai had the twins in a stroller and was walking down the halls. It was a week before graduation; she doubted anyone was going to try to attack her now. Besides, she still had Conrad collared, even if he was acting more like it was a collar now and less like a trophy.

She noticed someone sneaking up on her anyway. One of the Thorne Girls might’ve done something clever, like going around in circles until they were behind their stalker.

Kai wasn’t that sort of clever. She turned around so that the stroller was behind her.

“Rozen.” She found she was pleased but not too startled, and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Nobody ever does.” He smirked, proud of himself. “You’re looking good, Red. Motherhood suits you.”

“Yeah?” There was nobody around to yell at her for blushing, which was good, because she hadn’t figured out a Working to get around that yet. “Thank you.”

“I mean, it would suit you more if those were my brats, but hey. Take what you can get, hey?”

Kai rolled her eyes at him, but she was still smiling. “They’re not brats. And I think they’re happier with their mother having some free will.”

“Yeah, well.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath tickling her. “Some day you might feel differently.”

What she felt had nothing to do with it. She didn’t think she needed to say that, though. “Some day.”

He was leaving soon, after all, and it was a big world. She’d probably never see him again.

Autumn and Ink

Autumn would probably always remember the first time she’d put ink to her skin.

Winter was struggling to teach her, their mother was busy with Spring and Summer, and their father had been dead for two years. Autumn’s skills weren’t falling into line with Winter’s, with their mother’s, or even with what they could remember of their father, so she had gone on her own to a family friend and asked him to teach her.

Pastor Jim had taken a long look at the wide-eyed child and sighed. “All right. But we keep this between us and your mother, all right? We don’t need to tell the parishioners.”

“Church magic is church magic and Strand magic is Strand Magic.” Even then, Autumn understood that.

“Good. Now.” He’d called her mother, been very very polite and respectful – everyone was polite and respectful when it came to Autumn’s mother, but he was even more so. When he’d hung up the phone, he’d headed to the daycare section behind the church and come back with some washable Crayola markers. “Let’s see, shall we, if what works for me works for you.”

He drew a circle on the back of Autumn’s wrist, and suddenly, she understood so much more.

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“Finish It?” – Some Suggestions

May5

I’m trying to put together an all_bingo “Finish It” card here.

It was pointed out to me that I have far, far too many unfinished stories to sort through.

So I started looking through the second page of my more, please tag: here

This is just a few suggestions of things someone has said “more, please” to that I have not finished. I will add to it as I find time.

Stranded
Stranded in Winter – Autumn is stuck in town in winter
Space Accountant
A Reason – and Accidental, and bunking arrangements, etc (Genique got Married?)
Addergoole
Matchmaker, Matchmaker – Sabine didn’t intend to collar Holles. But…
About That… Fridmar in an unexpected possibly-romantic situation with a student? i.e., Lyn is not great at consistence.
Bracken, her first year
Deaths in the Faerie apocalypse, a side note
They Were Over – Forrester runs into her former Keeper
Together/Again twins!

Aunt Family
Then and Now – Radar and his kitten
The Strength – and other stories of Deborah

Random?
Romance was never this convenient to handle – Mark Faine, Mark Faine, Mark Faine. How many of him are there?
Falling From Grace – …not sure what to say about this one.
this one didn’t get a more please but it could use one.

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Deep in the Tesznerov Forest, a short vignette from an old Giraffe Call (random Fic)

Apr14

Written to [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt from 2014. here. New setting. Might be part of something else.

The Forest of Tesznerov gave the impression of being a monolith of green and brown, a forbidding wall that slowed and even stopped progress.

But if you could get past the obstructions and into the forest itself, it was bright and sunny, with patches like meadows almost half an acre large. And if you got even further in, near the top of the hill called Thistle Mountain, you might encounter the Cheramia.

Oostely had been that – not lucky, to call it luck was an insult – skilled, the first in a century to get that far and (one hoped) live to tell about it. She perched on a stump and waited, listening, until a chermiach settled down in front of her.

It chirruped out a greeting. In return, Oostely bowed deeply and responded in her own tongue. The Cheramia were one of the truly foreign creatures to be found within the technical confines of the nation, but if she had to try to describe one, Oostely might do as her great-great-grandmother had done and say “a flying cat-snake with some sort of squirrel tail.” They might be as long as the distance between her ankle and hip, but they preferred to coil up like a spring, so they peeked at her through the fluff of their tail.

The chermiach whistle-popped a sound that could be a question, and then squeaked out what sounded like a human word. “Greeeeet,” it clucked.

“Greetings,” Oostely responded. She could not help but notice how sharp the chermiach’s teeth were, or how longs its claws were, or how close it was. But her great-great-grandmother had met one and lived to tell about it, so Oostely chirruped out what she hoped was the word for peace, and prayed it would work.


(the tip jar is a kitty for reasons)

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The Monarch

Dec28

She was, above all else, tired.

The rain was coming down again. It seemed like it always rained, these days. The monarch sipped her tea and stared out at the yard, where the ravens were dancing in the downpour. The ravens had always danced there. Soon, her son would visit, and she would have to have a long-postponed conversation with him. She found herself exhausted at the very thought.

It was the reduction that did it. When her children had ruled over the planet and her empire had stretched over continents, she had never felt tired. When the world itself had been much smaller and she’d had only her little island to rule over, she’d never felt tired.

She stood, although the form she was wearing now protested. She had not gotten this old in a very long time. It suited, however; the aging body’s exhaustion matched the tiredness she felt. She felt the rain in her joints and in her soul, and it never stopped raining.

It had been bright and shiny when she was young, shiny and small.

The world had grown, and she had grown with it; her empire had grown, and she had stretched herself over the planet, sending out children, sending out bits of herself to the New World, to India, to Africa, to Australia. Very little of that had come back; she found herself small again, small and old in a huge and juvenile world.

The monarch paced. This was the fortieth form she’d worn as Monarch, and the transitions grew harder every time. More people knew her with this face than had ever known any of her other faces – perhaps more people could recognize this face, this Elizabeth, than had known all of her other monarch faces together. Not just her face, but Charles’ face and mannerisms, and William’s and Harry’s.

She allowed herself a small smile. Leadership changes you. Thus they had been saying for centuries. People would notice that the new King shifted uneasily under the mantle of leadership. They would notice he seemed different – more somber, perhaps, or older. They would make up a story that suited.

The Queen chuckled to herself. There had been the time where they’d said she was a body-snatching demon, and tried to burn her at the stake. That had been awkward, to say the least. It had taken some fast talking and serious footwork to get out of that with a viable heir left to become.

And now… and now… Now she was laying plans and readying herself to move on to a new face, and the rain would not stop coming down. Something was wrong, seriously wrong.

“This is my country, damnit.” The Monarch punched her own leg, sensible frock and varicose veins be damned. “This is mine.” She raised her voice to shout for her secretary. “Anna! Anna, get in here.” The rain had been falling for three weeks straight. It was no more natural than the Monarch’s endless reign was. “We’re going to save my country.” Again.

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Lexember Day One: Rabbits

Dec3

clare_dragonfly asked for the Calenyen word for bunnies. So:

Lexember Day 3:

Bunnies, it must be bunnies♪

They have three variants on the rabbit on Reiassan:

The Kaler, a domesticated fur rabbit, small and generally friendly. Their fur comes in a wide variety of naturally-occurring colors and is well known to be good for baby clothes and underclothes.

The Zhyoobie, the wild version, which is about the size of a squirrel, eats plants one wants to keep, and nobody has yet made a Peter Rabbit book about. It’s known to make its nest in the remnants of other animals’ nests, and generally leaves a mess of wherever it nests.

The Natiel, a large hare, sometimes domesticated but often wild. These are the biggest of the rabbits, brought over by the Bitrani settlers, and named by them (nateo), but they do not thrive in the warm climates of southern Reiassan and have mostly migrated north.

This is not the first time I’ve shamelessly named things in Calenyen for people, as much as the language allows. The Zhyoobie and the Natiel are named after people I know/have known in other parts of my life.

Lots of days left to go! Stop in and give me something to word about!

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The Portal Closed, a beginning/introduction/Prelude

Nov10

“It’s all your fault!”

They were fourteen – except Ralph, who had always been the baby of the group and was just turning thirteen – when the portal into Ombrion stopped opening for them.

They had known it was coming. Only children could enter Ombrion through the portals. And for the past year, the openings had been rarer and rarer. Two months had passed when the four of them huddled around the door in the old abandoned school library and called out toVerdana, who had guided them. They lit the candles, even though they knew the candles weren’t necessary. They wished on the fullness of the moon, all of it the way they had the first time.

The gates stayed closed. Verdana did not answer. And to all of them, the gates felt more sealed, more dead, than they ever had before.

“It’s got to be you.” Clarence glared at Barbara. “With your…” He flapped his hand in vague disgust.

She sneered back at him, uninterested in his squeamishness. “What about you? With your voice changing, with all the squeaking through the calling there?”

“Maybe it’s Ralph…” Clarence flopped against the old wooden doors that had, until so recently, been their portal to Ombrion. “No. They’re just done with us.”

They’d been seven and eight the first time, full of the books they were reading and playing make-believe, no matter what the other students said about growing up, when they’d first opened the portal. They’d tumbled through the door again and again, only to come back with only a few minutes, a few hours having passed.

Until now. No matter how many times they grew up in Ombrion, today they’d grown up too much in America.

“Maybe if we…” Ralph moved the candles despondently. “I can’t believe that’s it. Just – ‘thanks for saving us, go back to your world now and be teenagers.'”

Barbara put her face in her hands. “I can’t believe Verdana just abandoned us. I mean.” She held up her hand, because Clarence liked to poke at everything lately. “I can believe it, I know, she always told us she would. But it makes me angry.”

“Guys…” Diane had said nothing at all, which was, for Diane, not that uncommon. But she was staring off into the shadows with a look that had, once, presaged her saving an entire nation. “The way I see it, we have a few options.”

The rest of them settled in to listen. Of the many things they had learned over their decades in Ombrion, “listen to Diane” had been one of the first lessons.

She ticked off on her fingers. “We can sit here and complain. We can go out there and live our lives. Come on, how many teenagers have the experience we have? I tried; I don’t have the muscle memory but I have all the knowledge of swordcraft, for example. It would give us a leg up, whatever we decided to do.”

She paused, and despite the fact that dramatic pauses were far more Ralph’s purview than Diane’s, they all leaned forward. “Or we can do one better. We can find magic here. We can find other portals.”

“The portal’s closed.” Clarence’s voice was harsh and angry.

“This portal is closed. Only this one. What did Verdana say? The portal led to that world, and always has. Oh, what was it?” She closed her eyes.

Barbara picked it up. She’d had nightmares about that part. “‘I shudder to think about what would have happened, if you four had found some other door, some world that ‘needed’ you for some far more nefarious purpose.”

The words hung in the air, but it was Ralph who picked them up. “There are other worlds.” The conclusion was inescapable.

“There are other words.” Clarence breathed it out slowly. “And we aren’t the children we were, back then.”

“If you count experience,” Diane added dryly, “we’re ancients. And I do count experience. You guys remember that debate club debacle last year.”

They’d been disqualified, Barbara and Clarence. The teachers had been certain they’d gotten outside coaching. In a sense, they had – in the small room behind the throne room, in Ombrion, before the ambassadors from Fregoran visited.

Barbara nodded slowly. “Let’s do it. Let’s find another portal. Let’s find all the portals.”

If the portals needed people, let it be them, who already knew how to live two lives at once. If they needed soldiers, generals, diplomats, let it be them.

She had no desire to spend her entire life remembering what it was like to be a Warrior Queen.

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A Storm Brewing Over the Skies of … Setting

Nov9

“My Father is going to hear about this!”

He knew how he sounded. He knew exactly what they thought when he turned his back and stomped off.

The sycophants, they would think his father, yes. And his mother. They have the power, and that much power might rub off on us.

The Other Side, The Enemy, they would think what a prissy little ponce. But they would know that his father and mother had power that they weren’t ready, yet, to cross.

And the ones that didn’t care either way, the ones who were very determinedly Team No Hat, they would think what a loud little bitch and go on looking for power in some other way, some way that didn’t mean being For or Against the Young Dragon’s family.

He watched that all flicker across their faces, even as he wished he could cram the words back down his own throat. My father will hear about this. What stupid child said things like that?

He counted to three silently. Dragons did not take things back. Dragons did not ever concede that the power of the family wasn’t all-important and all-encompassing. “Unless…”

Dragons did not say unless. They didn’t bargain.

He met her eyes. Her. The Enemy. The born daughter of everything his family stood against. “Unless, daughter of the Leviathan, you’d care to settle this right here?” He lifted his left hand in a post of magic and challenge.

She watched his hand as if it were a strange object. A beat passed. Another A third. “Don’t be foolish, young dragon. The leviathan do not duel.”

She left him hanging just long enough that he was ready to gather up his pride and stomp off again. And then she smiled.

She smiled, daughter of the sea and all things cold and unforgiving, daughter of the Leviathan. “But if you’d like… Taranis… we might settle this over a deck of cards and a pint of beer.”

The Leviathan and the Dragon did not drink together. The son of the dragon raised his eyebrows in perfectly patrician surprise.

“Let’s,” he agreed, surprising not only the crowed that surrounded them, that always surrounded them when they fought, but himself and perhaps the daughter of the Leviathan as well. “Tomorrow at 8, at the Crooked Rooster.” He picked out of the crowd one of those who determinedly didn’t care. “Perry of the Lion. Bring a deck of cards, would you?”

It got a laugh. And when he looked back at Levina of the Leviathan, she was grinning at him.

The son of the Dragon decided his father didn’t need to hear about this one just yet.

If this sounds like a certain school with a certain blonde bratchild and some other certain people just a bit here and there, I blame this version of Fall Out Boy’s Centuries and what happens when you let youtube have its head after that.

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A Rescue In Hand

Apr24

Previous: Probably a Rescue
First: A Rescue, of Sorts
see also:
A Proof, Of Sorts

For the “Do up whatever story/stories suit your fancy or for whomever most wants/needs ’em.” commission and the poll here.

Daxton’s rescuer really had thought of everything. She’d packed a change of clothing for him, as well as scissors to trim his scraggly hair and a razor for his beard. When they rode away from the cabin, he was as clean, as well-dressed and as smooth-shaven as he had been on the day the Red Queen’s agents had taken him.

He was skinnier, by quite a bit, but he had a full stomach for the first time in ages. And he was a lot more nervous than he had been, right up until the moment the Red Queen’s people had grabbed him.

“You could ruin me, you know.” It wasn’t the most cheerful conversation for your prospective wife, but then again, most prospective wives didn’t pull one out of a dungeon owned by a wildly powerful despot.

“If I’d wanted to ruin you, I would have left you in the dungeon.”

“Blackmail?”

“Wedding.” The mercenary woman shrugged. “I gain nothing by blackmailing you. Nothing but – down!” She had her short horse-bow out and was wheeling her horse around before Daxton could do anything but duck. But duck he did – he hadn’t survived as long as he had by ignoring the people paid to protect him.

Heartbeats passed, his and the horse’s, Daxton’s nose in the roan mane. He could hear the mercenary’s horse shifting restlessly, and see the way the woman’s calf stretched as she stood in her saddle. Then she settled down. “False alarm. Sorry.”

Daxton rose slowly to a sitting position. “No need to be sorry.”

“If you’re going to keep being this reasonable,” she teases, “I’m going to think I got a ringer. Do your family keep doubles around?”

“We’re not nearly that important. Well…” Daxton shrugged. “I thought we weren’t that important. It’s not as if my parents are King and Queen, just Duke and Duchess. It’s not as if I’m heir.”

“And yet your parents sent mercenary after mercenary after you.”

“Put up a reward, you mean. They didn’t actually send anyone, did they?”

“It’s quite a reward.”

It was. If his parents followed through… “I don’t even know your name.”

She barked out a laugh. “I imagine you’d find out at the vowing-in, if not before. Esharina nic Myodoc. Esha.”

It seemed the thing to do, so Daxton bowed from his saddle. “A pleasure to meet you, Esharina nic Myodoc. I look forward to showing you the hospitality of the Ducal Estate at our earliest convienc-”

“Down.” Her voice never changed from a conversational tone, but Daxton ducked anyway. Three arrows whanged over his head in quick succession. “Ride, your graceiness. Ride.”

Some time later, Daxton might think to ask about “your gracieness.” At the moment, however, all he thought about was riding. They would ride, and then the mercenary would wheel around and fire another arrow past his ear. They’d ride more, and another arrow would whing past. Again and again, until finally Esharina let their sweating, lathered horses come to a walk.

“That was either the last of them, or they’ve stopped follo-” She followed Daxton’s gaze to her shoulder, where a broken-off arrow waggled with her every move. “What?”

“You have an arrow sticking out of you.” He said it slowly, in case it turned out he was somehow wrong.

“We’re a half-hour hard ride back to the Ducal estate. I’ll be fine that long.” Esha seemed entirely too casual about the whole thing.

“You don’t want me to – I don’t know, pull it out or something?” Daxton found his hands flailing and used both to grab the saddle horn.

“Not unless you have hidden talents as a medic that I don’t know about. You can help me bind it, and we’ll be good for the rest of the ride.”

With her left arm bound, she wouldn’t be able to shoot. “Give me the bow, then.”

“You can shoot?”

“I’ve hunted. I’m not a warrior, but I can hit a target.” He nudged his cooperative mount as close to hers as he could manage.

“There’s rags in my left saddlebag. They should work.”

He wasn’t surprised that a merc kept clean, wrapped rags close to hand. You had to survive long enough to get to a healer, after all. He bound her arm to her side, following her directions, and wrapped around the arrow, to keep it still. It was nerve-wracking work, all the worse with his spine itching, trying not to look behind him every two seconds. Finally Daxton let out his breath. “That should hold until we get home. Bow?”

Still she hesitated. “A merc’s weapons…”

“I will hold them as carefully as I would hold your honor. After all,” he smiled gently at her, “I may soon hold that, too, and you, mine.”

She was startled into a weak chuckle. “Nobles. I wouldn’t have put it that way. But…” She swayed a bit in her saddle. “Let’s ride. Put the pointy bit into anyone who attacks us.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He checked over the bow to be sure he knew how to use it. It was a different sort than he’d handled before, more compact, more efficient. Of course, mercenaries generally had to be more efficient than “nobles.” Content he could manage the piece, he let it rest against his thigh. “Let’s ride.”

They were close to home now, close enough for all of Daxton’s worries to come back. Esharina was right; there was a chance that Daxton’s father wouldn’t follow through with his offer. He was usually a fair and honest man – but had he anticipated getting a merc for a good-daughter, even if he had posted the offer? Had he expected to get Daxton back at all? What were they riding into? Before the Red Queen had taken him, there had been talk of marrying Daxton to the Dowager Duchess of the Blue Mountains, whose duchy bordered theirs. It would secure the border – but the Dowager Duchess had outlived three husbands and four sons and was not yet forty.

“Heads up!” Esha’s snapped warning brought Daxton out of his worries. He could see the Ducal estate on the horizon – and off to the left, he could see riders coming towards them. “Friends of yours?” He readied the bow anyway.

She squinted into the distance. “They – yes. They’re flying the troupe’s colors. Please don’t shoot my friends.”

Daxton didn’t lower the bow. “I won’t shoot your friends,” he answered, carefully. Someone had snatched him from the middle of his father’s lands and thrown him in the Red Queen’s dungeon. Now that he was free, he found he had no interest in going back and less interest in dying.

Esha made a small noise. “If they’re not friends, I’m in no shape to fight,” she warned.

“If they’re not friends, I think we can try running again. If we head straight for my parents’ estate, that’ll run us into the orchards quickly. It’s hard to shoot through trees at a running target.”

She made another noise. Daxton glanced over at her. The mercenary’s face was gray, her lips pushed together tightly. They had to hurry. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she passed out. And he really didn’t want her to die. “You,” she spoke slowly, “are more interesting than I thought you were.”

“That’s the goal.” He looked between her and the quickly-approaching riders. “Ready to run?”

“I’m sure I can manage a couple hundred yards.” She straightened her spine. “If I have to. Daxton, if I can’t trust my troupe—”

“I hope we can. I really hope we can. But I—I’m not feeling particularly trusting right now, sorry.”

“No, no need to be sorry. But – oh!” She straightened a bit further and her color improved. “It’s Senner and Karron. We’re safe. If I can’t trust them, the world’s gone upside down.”

Daxton lowered the crossbow, even as he was considering: Esha being able to trust them and him being able to trust them were two different things.

They road towards their visitors, and their visitors rode towards them. When they were a hundred feet away, the stouter of the two shouted “Esh!” and urged her mount into a canter. Esh’s horse danced for a couple steps before settling down to a walk again; Daxton kept his hands on the crossbow and watched the newcomers carefully.

They had no eyes at all for him, not at first. “Esh, Esharina, shit, how bad is it?” The stouter woman – that had to be Senner, Captain of the mercenary troop. The leaner one – that would be Karron, then – was young, barely old enough to be wearing armor at all, but she already had three gold earrings and an elaborate silver hair-piece. “Esh, what happened?”

“Give me some space to talk, Senner.” Esha sounded like herself – as far as Daxton could tell, at least, cheerfully snappish. “They came after us. Probably the Red Queen’s people, but I didn’t stop to ask for their particulars.”

“The Red Queen’s…” Senner turned to look at Daxton. “By the mountain’s tits, that is young lord Daxton!”

Daxton found himself blushing, a situation only worsened by the way Karron was whooping. “Esha’s getting marrr-eeed, Esha’s getting marrrr-eeeed,” she crowed, like children at play.

“Maybe.” Esha’s voice was soft. “But I got him out, at least.”

“That you did, Esh, that you did.” Senner’s smile took in both of them, a small, proud thing. “And a job well done. Now let’s get you back two back to His and Her Grace, so you can claim your reward. And then, Swordslady, we’re taking that arrow out of you properly. Come on, let’s ride!”

And they rode towards home, the sun setting to their left.

If you want more of this story – and this one could go on for a while!! – drop a tip in, ah, the tip handcuffs:

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Where It All Began – the Zeroth Cohort in Addergoole

Mar20

Written to Kuro_Neko’s commission. The 0th Cohort were a test year before the First Cohort of Addergoole, and, as documented in Addergoole: Year Nine, many things went wrong. This is where things started going south.

“And for your homework tonight, class, be sure to read Chapters Seven and Eight of the History of the Americas text. And start thinking about your mid-term projects – yes, Nyla?”

Nyla’s hand was up. That didn’t seem like a good idea to her. Her hand was up and her lips were moving and how had she let herself get talked into this?

Oh, that was right. Because Professor Valerian liked her. Because she was the one with the leaf-green eyes and the forest-green hair and the tree-professor thought she was cute.

Nyla missed juvie.

She coughed. “Professor Valerian? We heard a rumor that this school has some unusual graduation requirements.”

We heard a rumor was code for Aine slipped through the wall and read the Director’s confidential documents. But it was a rumor now.

The professor frowned over her glasses at Nyla. “That information was to be shared with each of you from your Mentors.”

Which Valerian really wanted to be, for Nyla. Could trees impregnate other trees? How did this fae thing work, anyway?

“So that means the graduation requirements are real?”

“That’s something you’d need to discuss with your Mentor, should you get around to choosing one.”

“Professor?” Nyla was smiling. Why was she smiling? Why was this fun? It shouldn’t be fun… “Have you noticed that neither of us have said what these ‘graduation requirements’ are? For all I know, you’re talking about a GPA of 3.75.”

The class murmured. Addergoole was tough. A 3.75 might be harder than the requirements Nyla was actually talking about.

Professor Valerian’s smile was awfully sharp. Trees didn’t have teeth, no. But, Nyla was realizing, they could have thorns. And they might move slowly, but they could crush rocks nonetheless. “I did notice that, Nyla. Why do you think that might be?”

“Well, on your part, there’s always the chance that the thing I think it is really isn’t what it is – and we’re really talking about that 3.75. Or you don’t know that I know, and you’re avoiding telling me something I’m just hinting around the edges of.”

“You’re doing well so far.”

When had this become a school problem? Well, they were in school and she was asking a teacher. Around her, the rest of the small class sat quiet. For a moment, Nyla hated them all. “And as for me – I seem to have a hard time getting the words out, truth be told.” She pieced it together slowly. “The rumors are all sideways, too.”

“And why do you think that might be?” Now, Valerian’s eyes swept across the room. “Juniper, yes?”

Juniper could have asked the question. Juniper was a tree-girl even more than Nyla was. But noooo, it had to be the juvie-hall girl, ‘cause Nyla was brave.

Nyla’s head was spitting from forcing out the question, and they still didn’t have an answer.

“Is it some sort of aversion?” Juniper rolled her shoulders and took in a long, loud breath. “Like – ah. We don’t call home. That sort of thing?”

“And why do you think there would be that sort of aversion?”

It was Caiside, pretty, pretty Caiside, who answered. “Because someone thinks we’ll freak out – or our parents will freak out.”

What was the professor doing? Nyla looked around the room again, at the slowly dawning comprehension on all her classmate’s faces. It was Melantha that spoke up this time. “So it’s true. This is – this is some sort of breeding school.”

Everyone let out a collective breath. It had been said. Someone had put the words in the open. And Professor Valerian had her lips pressed together very tightly, which had to be saying something.

“Then why bother with classes?” Zetta had risen half out of her chair, her hands clenched into fists. “Why bother with all this, with training, with magic, with the Law, if it’s all for nothing? If this is just to get us knocked up and waddling around with faerie babies?”

It was a good question. The classes were challenging – they were way more in-depth than anything Nyla had had back home, but that could’ve been because of juvie – the magic lessons were exciting, and the combat training was really, really hard. But if this was meant to be a place to make babies…

Professor Valerian coughed. “It may be hard to believe right now, but being parents and being scholars, or being parents and being warriors, these things are not mutually exclusive. Everything in this school is meant to educate you, not to placate you.”

“Except the aversions keeping us from talking about this stuff.” Zetta was on her feet and away from her chair now. “Except the lying to us about it. How is it supposed to happen? Is there some sort of lust Working in the walls, too?”

Professor Valerian looked amused. Amused. Nyla was beginning to feel as irritated as Zetta looked. “Generally, no lust Workings are needed when you have a number of active teenagers in an enclosed space.”

“What happens…” Caiside’s voice was very quiet, but everyone listened. “What happens if we do not have these children?”

Professor Valerian coughed uncomfortably. “I am not given to understand that that’s an option.”

That hung in the air for a moment. Nyla stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the tile. “Well, then.” It was better than Fuck this shit. She walked out of the room, uncertain where she was going.

~

There was no way out of Addergoole. Nyla had tried. Luke had come to get her for class, and she had explained in short words why that wasn’t happening. He’d stared at her for a moment, giving the uncomfortable impression that he was living up to his Name, then nodded curtly. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow wouldn’t be any better than today, but she could deal with it then. Tonight, tonight she was going to sit in her room and eat cookie dough ice cream and sulk about the unfairness of the world.

“Top-notch education,” she muttered. “Bucolic location. They’ll get you into college even with your arrest record.”

“Are you talking to yourself, Nyla?” Caiside leaned on her door-frame. “You skipped afternoon classes.”

“I was angry.” She glared at him, as if daring him to challenge that. He held up both hands in surrender.

“I am, too.”

You couldn’t tell to look at him. Then again, about all you could tell about Caiside looking at him as that he was beautiful.

And that he was not moving from her doorway. “Come on in,” she offered. “Grab a spoon, if you want. Do you even like girls?”

He blushed! He did even that beautifully. “Why do you ask?”

Nyla raked her eyes up and down Caiside‘s fashionable, pretty form. “Do you really not know?”

His blush darkened, and now, now he managed to step inside her threshold. “Yeah, I’ve heard it before. But I don’t think it matters who I ‘like’, does it? I still need to provide the same children everyone else does.”

Nyla resisted telling him that the way he talked did nothing to quiet thoughts about his interest in boys, girls, or possibly sheep. She stabbed the ice cream with her spoon instead. “Man, the one thing, one thing I could say about myself is that at least I wasn’t a teen mother.”

“Well… how old are you?” Caiside sank gracefully into Nyla’s arm chair.

“Sixteen. Why?”

“Well, if you waited until the very end, you could have a child at twenty – but that’s only one of them, of course. You’d have to stay an extra year, I suppose.”

“There’s also the matter of the rest of my life, you know? This place pays for college; it’s right in the letters. Only way I was ever going to get into a school like that. And then… bang. It’s like it was all some stupid joke.” She ate a mouthful of ice cream and passed it to Caiside.

He reached one ridiculously long arm into her silverware drawer and grabbed a spoon for himself. “On the upside, I suppose, there is the fae thing.”

“But they tell us that’s genetic. I mean, we would have been… oh. Oh, oh, fuck them.” Nyla put her face in her hands. “Oh, fuck them sideways.”

Caiside glanced at the open door. “Are you sure…?”

“What are they going to do?” Her voice was getting louder and she didn’t really care. “Lock me up in a prison until I produce genetic material for them? Oh, wait. They already did them. This is fucking eugenics, Cass. They want pretty fae babies, and they brought pretty fae kids to do it. And then – then what? I mean, maybe we won’t even have to worry about raising the kids, maybe they’ll keep them. Maybe they’re going to raise our kids in tubes or something. I mean, then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything except two pregnancies before I’m twenty and… and…” She caught a sob before it entirely escaped. “And being a prisoner,” she added, far more quietly.

“They say… didn’t they say that our parents enrolled us? That our parents knew where they were sending us? When they started teaching us magic, they said something like that.” Caiside‘s voice was still quiet, but Nyla thought she heard a storm beneath it.

“You can’t mean our parents…” Then again, Nyla’s parents had let her go to juvie without a second thought. “Shit. No help there, then. I mean, even if the mind control let us call them.”

“You sound as if you’re in some distress.” The melodic voice in the doorway made them both jump.

“Ah…” Casside was blushing. “Professor Kairos. Ah. I’m sorry…”

“There’s no need. You two are not the only ones distressed by the arrangements, you understand. Perhaps, if I could come in, I might be able to help you.”

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