Tag Archive | prompt: allbingo

After the Kinging, a commissioned continuation of the Aunt Family

Feb16

This is written to sauergeek‘s commissioned continuation of King(Maker) Cake and King for a Day, a story of the Aunt Family.
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Stone was cornered.

School started tomorrow, and he had never, ever, not since kindergarten, been so happy to be going back to school.

At the moment, he was cornered by his Great-Aunt Rosaria, who was, he had to admit, one of his favorite relatives – normally. Right now, he didn’t want to see another Family woman as long as he lived.

It had started with his mother, because nobody was going to argue her precedent, and then with his grandmother, because Eva was too polite to argue with her. And then Eva, Beryl and Chalce and even Amy, his sisters taking turns asking him questions that ranged from ridiculous (mostly Amy) to far too penetrating (Beryl),

Most of their family branch lived within three wide country blocks. The rest lived not all that far away, Uncle Hector and his wife Jennifer being the furthest at a thirty-minute drive by highway. Heck, there was even a very small cadet branch of the family, split three generations ago but growing with glacial slowness, living up on the lake in a nice row of cottages.

Stone was fairly certain he’d seen every woman over the age of twelve – some younger – and maybe a quarter of the men in both families. All he wanted to do was climb up in the tallest tree he could find and never come down.

“Come on.” Great-Aunt Rosaria offered him her hand. “You like Basil’s, right? The little diner down on the corner?”

Stone blushed. What he liked was Basil’s daughter Samantha, but he wasn’t going to admit that to his aunt, to any of his aunts. At least if Samantha was working, she wouldn’t look at him funny for being there with his old aunt. She seemed to get it – the family, the magic, the whole thing – without him ever have said a thing about it.

Rosaria patted his shoulder. “I thought so. Well, that’s a good thing, too. Healthy – at your age or any. So let’s take a little drive down there, shall we?”

“All right, Great-aunt Rosaria.” It’s not like he could say anything else.

It wasn’t until they were in Rosaria’s surprisingly new and surprisingly fast little Chevy coupe that she actually looked at him, the way only some of Stone’s female relatives could, and grinned. “Besides,” she said, out of nowhere, “If we’re out at Basil’s, nobody’s going to bother you about your little, ah, ‘accident’, now are they? You know the family doesn’t talk about such things in public, even if Basil spends so much time feeding us he’s practically family.”

Stone stared at her for a minute. “You’re rescuing me?” Or, at least, she thought she was rescuing him. “Why?”

“Well… let’s just say I have my reasons. Listen, young man. You were going to have the power whether or not you bit a rabbit. Heck, for all we know, Zenobia being who she was, she put that rabbit where it was just so that eventually you would bite it – but either way, Stone, you already had power.”

He looked out the window, shifting in the suddenly-uncomfortable seat. “I’m not supposed to.”

“Oh, the family has done many, many foolish things, but foremost among them is that ridiculous belief. You have power. You won’t be the Aunt, not with so many willing female candidates – and I’m sorry, but Beryl is just a stronger witch than you are – but that has never meant ‘without power’, any more than having children has meant it, or any other of a dozen things. It just means you aren’t the conduit of all the Family’s power.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Stone, dear, eventually I will tell you the story, how I learned how much malarkey and balderdash is involved in such family myths – but not today. Today, I imagine you don’t want anything to do with a batty old lady’s batty old theories.” She winked cheerfully at him.

He did not tell her to keep her eyes on the road, because Stone valued his life. But he did clutch to the armrest.

“Speaking of the power, that’s something to pay attention to. Notice the relatives to whom little inconveniences just don’t happen – and the ones who get more than their fair share. Notice the relatives who have too much good luck – there is such a thing, I promise you – and the ones who never seem to get a break.”

“So, like Jordan?” His younger cousin had never made any team, never been picked for anything, despite being a phenomenal athlete.

“Jordan is a lovely example, yes. When you get a chance to do so quietly – do you have a Tarot deck?”

“I have what Aunt Eva calls a cheater deck,” he admitted. He hadn’t even told his mother that.

“We ought to get you set up with a proper deck. We should have someone paint you one, I know a cousin of a cousin… but in the meantime, the cheater deck will do. Do a spread on Jordan, if you can — nearby but not in sight is best for this sort of thing.”

Stone took a moment to come up with a response. He stared out the window, watching the cows and the fields go by. “Aunt Rosaria… are you giving me homework?”

“It does sound that way, doesn’t it?” He couldn’t look at her right now, couldn’t, but her voice sounded amused.

“And you — you want to have someone paint me a real deck?” The family used hand-painted decks for almost all of their card divination, and painting the decks was a very specific skill — like Aunt Zenobia’s animals. Nobody else had made animals quite like hers, and most people didn’t try.

“Well, everyone knows you get better results with a hand-painted deck. You did know that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s just…”

“I won’t ask Eva to teach you — even though we both know she’s already been doing just that. She needs to train the next Aunt, and a back-up — don’t look at me like that, nephew.”

Stone had whipped around at the word “back-up.” “Beryl…”

“Easy now, Stone, easy.” Rosaria patted his leg in a manner that was supposed to be soothing, he thought and, much to his surprise, actually settled him down.

The power didn’t reside just in the Aunts, he reminded himself.

“My sister,” he complained, still not as calm as he imagined she’d like him to be.

“Your sister is a nice smart girl who can take care of herself. But she might take herself right into a baby or a marriage if your mother or your aunts and uncles don’t stop pushing her, and you know that as well as I do. Or, heaven and the stars forbid, there might be an accident. We need back-ups, Stone, and Evangaline needs to teach them. It’s just reasonable.”

Stone sighed. “Reasonable,” he agreed. “I don’t have to like it.”

“Of course not. Liking things is never required. But it helps. Like training you.”

“Training me? What?” He stared at Rosaria, momentarily distracted from the theoretical threat to his sister’s wellbeing. “I’m a boy.”

“I hadn’t noticed, back when I changed your diapers, or what with that little weed of a beard you have coming in,” Rosaria answered dryly. “You’re a boy, yes. And I’m old enough and crotchety enough that nobody but Evangaline is going to naysay me on this. And do you think she will?”

Stone swallowed. “I — I don’t think so? Aunt Eva likes me, I think.”

“As well she should. There is nothing wrong with you, young Stone, and there is a good deal right with you. So I am going to train you. That is,” and here Aunt Rosaria actually looked uncertain for a moment, “if that is what you want?”

Stone held out his hand and thought about the power flowing through it. He had a lot of it, he knew, and not just because he’d bitten that rabbit. And sometimes, when he wasn’t paying attention, it bubbled out in strange ways. “My mom,” he said slowly, “she said I had to hide the power, or I would end up in trouble. That sometimes the family kicked out people who had the power but weren’t the Aunt, or sometimes they, um, they took the power away —”

“That,” Rosaria cut him off sharply, “is a disgusting ritual and one that has only been used once in all the history of our family. However,” she added, suddenly far more softly, “I would ask your sister — Beryl, that is — to borrow her necklace someday. Or her cat. There are worse things the family can do to you than kick you out or bind your power, and they have done them all at one point or another.”

Stone found his hands clenching into fists. “I don’t like the necklace. I haven’t, right from the beginning. Something is wrong about it. Something is… Off.”

“There is, indeed, but it can’t hurt your sister nor you. He can’t hurt anyone anymore, that’s why he’s a necklace. But think about some of your less pleasant relatives-”

“Which flavor?” Shit, he wasn’t supposed to say things like that in front of Aunt Rosaria. That was the “kids” hanging out gossiping sort of chat, not the kind of thing you said to your great-aunt. He stared out the car window, wondering why it was taking so long to go down a quiet country road.

She snorted. “Not nosy, not smelly, and, at the moment, not a faker. No, I’m talking about the ones who feel like everything you do is their business and their say-so.” Her hands were on the wheel and she was driving. They were even going a reasonable speed. And yet he was pretty sure he’d already seen that cow twice.

“I thought you said not nosy.” Stone focused on the part that he had a chance of understanding.

Rosaria indulged him. “There’s nosy like your Aunt Tasha, who wants to know who you’re kissing and why. Then there’s nose like your Aunt — no, she’s your cousin. Stephanie. Who thinks she ought to be telling you who to kiss. And why.”

Stone gave that a moment of consideration. “So, we’re talking about people who want to run my life. More so than the rest of the family.” Damnit, he was doing it again. What was it about Aunt Rosaria that turned him into an idiot?

“Exactly.” She turned and beamed at him. There was that same cow again. Still chewing on the same plot of grass, too. “So. Think about them. Now imagine them with the power to, for instance, create another necklace like your sister’s.”

Stone swallowed. “They would be shutting up everyone they didn’t agree with. And they never agree with anyone.”

“Exactly. Now, as I was saying. There are any number of awful things that can happen, but I am old and crotchety and you are young and strong, and we are not going to let them happen to you. Not this time.” She glared at him for a moment, but Stone recognized the look. Sometimes Beryl had a similar expression. It meant her anger had nothing to do with him.

Still, he swallowed. “Yes, Aunt Rosaria.”

She patted his leg one more time. “Now, then. I might have put this off longer, but you’ve gone and chewed on one of Zenobia’s trinkets, and that means I have to hurry a bit about the training. The heavens and the demons alone know what she got up to, and I don’t want something sprouting out of you at school or some such.”

Stone twitched. There were family stories of things like that happening, but they were all rumors of something that happened in another time, somewhere far away, to someone’s distant cousin. “I don’t — yeah, no. That would be horrid.”

“Your school is a little more in the pocket of the family than is probably a good idea, but still, yes. So I’m going to train you, and anyone who has a problem with it can bring those problems to my door. And I expect you to tell them that, young man, in that so-diplomatic way I know you’re so good at.”

“…Yes, Aunt Rosaria.” They were finally turning off the back-road and onto the main road into town. Stone let out a breath quietly.

“And since I’m teaching you—” Aunt Rosaria sounded far too pleased with herself and a little amused. Stone held his breath again. “Yes, I’m giving you homework. Your cousin Jordan. Start with the Tree spread and then, if that doesn’t tell you enough, move on to some of the more esoteric spreads. And then, for good measure, do the same for your sister. Not Beryl, Chalcedony. Got it?”

Stone stared at her. He wasn’t any less cornered, he realized — maybe more so, because Aunt Rosaria was a bit terrifying — but he wasn’t stuck, and he wasn’t being told he had to control himself, or his magic, or anything. “Yes, ma’am.”

Hopefully, he’d actually get his diner visit out of this, but if not, he supposed the look on people like Stephanie’s face when they realized Great-Aunt Rosaria was teaching him would be compensation enough for a missed lunch.

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Far-Gone From the West, a continuation of Far Weston for Finish It Bingo

Dec30

After Far Weston, for my Third Finish It Bingo Card. I know this isn’t done yet, but it was a good place to post while I figure out what happens next..

Being a hunter was a dangerous occupation, more so in the edges of civilization, where the forest itself was likely to fight back if it didn’t like you, much less the animals, who were often bigger and stronger than those you’d get closer to Centon.

It was the sort of occupation that meant that Pyiata lived out in the woods for most of her life, stopping into the village that had raised her only when she had to – to sell meat and furs, to buy supplies, to see the annual service of the river, when her cousins and former neighbors would draw stones.

It was the sort of occupation that meant that she was more used to the company of small woodland creatures and the occasional wandering unicorn than she was other humans, and that she tended to notice when something went strange with the animals and missed things like a new Mayor or a new priest (she had once mistaken a new priest for the old for three years, assuming the old had simply put on a lot of weight at some point. Their village was prosperous, after all. Travelers from far away would stop there, because it was the last mark of civilization before the wilds and the hills. It was easier to get fat there than in many other places).

Pyiata had spent a good month hunting. She had smoked meats to sell and tanned hides to trade, a fresh gathering of wild ramps and some early apples that grew only in two particular clearings. It was time to go back to the village, to do her trading and make sure the mayor hadn’t gotten too fat.

There was a small problem, however. She stared at the wall, then took twenty paces back and looked around.

There was the forked tree where she’d hidden as a child. There was the very old wellhead, before the spring had moved. There was the foundation of the old granny’s house, the one that had burned down when Pyiata was just a child. She was in the right place.

But there was a city wall in the way.

Pyiata shifted her pack, rolled her shoulders, and made sure her weapons were both accessible and looking non-threatening. City people, she’d been told, could be weird about weapons. They could be weird about hunters, too, as if their meat didn’t come from things that’d had skin and hooves or paws at some point, too.

She paced the wall of the city. It was bigger than the village had been, but it would have to be. Cities were big things, huge, sometimes, encompassing people and Factories and – well, Pyiata’s idea of a city was fairly fuzzy, as she had never been to one, just seen the walls of Weston once or twice. But big; they were definitely big.

She reached the gate almost by accident. It was not where the old road through the village had been; that road was gone, covered over in rubble and plant-cuttings. The new road shot straight and silver towards Weston – too silver, so silver. Pyiata swallowed down bile. There weren’t that many unicorns, this far out. Where had they found them? How had they caught them?

But the new gate was guarded by strangers, two tall people in armor as shining as the road, with pikes. They looked askance at her. She looked right back at them.

“There was a village here,” she informed them.

“There is a city here,” the left-ward one replied, as if she were a bit slow. Pyiata was used to people speaking to her as if she were a little bit slow; she smiled widely at the guard the way she had at others who had annoyed her.

“There was a village here,” she repeated. “With a Mayor and a priest, grannies and granthers and young girls and young boys. There was a village here.” Something inside her kept her from saying it was my home “Where is the Mayor? Where are the priest and the granthers?”

“There’s a city here,” the rightmost guard told her. He was shifting backwards. He was unhappy. Even Pyiata could tell that. He was worried she was going to – what, yell? No, his eyes were on her weapon.

She held her hands out, empty, non-threatening. “I want to know where the village went, that’s all.”

“There isn’t a village here.” The leftmost guard spoke even more slowly. “This is Far Weston. It’s a city.”

She wasn’t going to get anywhere with this. Pyiata smacked her forehead, as if she had just remembered. “Right! A city, Far Weston! And I have things to sell. I have furs and smoked meat, I have sausages and hoof-cups, I have fine food and soft slippers. See?” She opened her bag and let the smells of the sausages waft out. “I have fine foods to sell in Far Weston.”

“Well, be out before sunset. They don’t like loiterers, vagabonds, in the city after dark. Market’s right through there.” The one that thought she was slow gestured inward. “Get on with you, then. Through there to the market.”

Pyiata knew markets, although this market was bigger and cleaner, shinier and flashier than the one in the Village had been. She set up next to a baker and chatted with the woman about the town and its priests, its factory and its shopkeeps.

She learned several important things, although she wasn’t sure what to make of any of them. People – the baker, the pie-maker on the other side, the weaver nearby – they would talk about any given part of the city being new – the priest had come in new. The factory was new and hiring new people. The mayor was newly-elected. But nobody would say that the city itself was new. Nobody would say anything about the village.

If Pyiata said something about the village, people would seem to ignore her, or look the other way, or suddenly be very interested in their produce or what the person across the street was doing. Nobody would speak to her directly about anything.

The houses where the village had been were new – and yet they looked very familiar. It was as if someone had taken Lothenna the carpenter’s house and redone it with new materials, a little bigger, a little shinier, with a bigger front porch. The same for Gello the tailor and Kvenner who took in washing: their houses were there, and, indeed, they were occupied by a carpenter, a tailor, and a washer, but they were bigger, brighter, the people inside a little cleaner, a little more respectable looking

Everyone looked through Pyiata if she didn’t speak directly to them. They looked at her wares – the tailor who was not Gello offered to buy the skins off of her, and, although she felt traitorous, she managed to make a good profit – and they noticed her passing, but they tried not to look her in the face.

She knew she smelled a bit; hunters usually did, although it wasn’t the sort of smell the animals minded. But people weren’t making the fine-people-smelling-a-working-person face; they weren’t making any face at all.

So the village was gone. It was gone, and yet people had noticed it enough to put new houses that looked like the old in its place. The people were gone — and the only clue Pyiata had that the new residents even knew that was the way they refused to talk about the old residents.

The old residents Her family. Her town.

Pyiata could track. She could follow a quarry for days if she had to. She could bring something down with one arrow from across a meadow or through a clearing in the forest.

She could not get answers from people, so she went looking for answers from the land.

The river had moved; she went looking there, first. She put out a line to give herself an excuse — and because smoked fish was a nice change from smoked meat, sometimes. And with her line tied, she wandered up and down the water, looking at the streambed.

They’d rerouted the river only about ten feet, into an old bed it had sat in, long ago. The new shift in the river, though, went right over where Old Unther’s cabin had been, old Unther who had taught Pyiata to hunt. There was no trace of the cabin itself, nothing but a cute little cabin-shaped gazebo perched on the edge of the river, nearby but not on the proper site, but in the shallows, Pyiata found Unther’s old knife and seven arrow-heads.

From that, she knew Unther had not had the chance to pack up. So she looked for signs of a struggle, because Unther’s place was too far from the village to have been covered up by the new city.

They had smoothed over the terrain. They had replaced Unther’s cabin with the ridiculous pretend-cabin gazebo, which looked as much like a real cabin as a child’s wooden sword looked like a soldier’s steel blade. But they had not replaced the old elm, the one which had stood in just the right place to shade Unther’s cabin without risking falling on it, nor the ivy that grew around its base.

There she found tracks, a peel of bark missing from the tree, and half of one of Unther’s arrows. Someone had fought not to be moved. Someone had struggled mightily, and, from the looks of it, lost.

But Unther had blazed the tree the way he’d taught her too — messily, of course, but he’d taken the fight to the tree. So she knew they’d headed west.

West. Interesting. There was nothing West but strange lands and strangers, as far as she knew. Nothing there but where-tinkers-came-from and where-traders-sometimes-went, and that’s where they’d dragged Unther.

It was enough to start with. Pyiata circled the strange new city and headed West.

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King for a Day, a commissioned continuation of the Aunt Family

Dec27

This is written to sauergeek‘s commissioned continuation of King(Maker) Cake, a story of the Aunt Family. There’s more to be told on this story, but this is where this piece wanted to end.

“Damnit,” Stone swore, and immediately wanted to swear again, because you didn’t use words like that in front of the family adults. “My…” He meant to say my tooth, but as he fished the piece of metal out of the muffin, he started to feel strange. “… ooooh.”

He realized everyone was looking at him, and his survival instincts, which appeared to have been taking a nap up to this point, finally kicked in. He looked at his nearest male cousin — Geoffrey, who had the advantage of being just about as phlegmatic as family men were supposed to be — and muttered, “tell ’em I went out for a walk if they ask. Picking walnuts or something?”

Geoffrey eyed the little gold rabbit in Stone’s hand and nodded. “Walnuts. They’re in the back,” he offered in a mutter.

Stone wanted to retort that he knew where the walnuts were, thank you, but it had been years since he’d run around his grandmother’s back yard picking walnuts or cherries or mulberries. It wasn’t so much that he grew up as his sisters had, and Stone found Grandma Ardella incredibly uncomfortable without Beryl or Chalce to act as a buffer.

And now he had to pick some walnuts. He slipped out the side door, the one they weren’t supposed to use, and made sure it was firmly closed behind him, and slipped down past a row of trees, so he couldn’t be seen from the house. He would go get walnuts, but first, he had to figure out what he’d just bitten.

The tiny figure was the size of one joint of his thumb, but the work on it was incredibly fine. He brought it up close to his face to really look at it — a rabbit, it looked like, on a curled leaf, its ears up. You could almost see its nose wiggle.

Stone turned it over. There, on the underside of the leaf, were two things: the world’s tiniest ladybug, cast in the same bronze as the rabbit, and an etched signature. Z, it said, in a wide florid letter.

Stone ran his tongue over his teeth. He hadn’t knocked anything loose, at least not anything in his mouth. What were they thinking, putting something this heavy in the cakes?

Considering the way his head was swimming, the more important question was what were they thinking, putting something this magical in the cakes?

The Z probably meant it was Aunt Zenobia’s charm. If it wasn’t — if it was some granny or some far-older Aunt or some cousin — Stone was a little worried, because at least Aunt Zenobia had lived in the Aunt House within creaky-but-living memory. Anyone else, any relative he couldn’t bring to mind, that could be tricky. The stars and the earth-core alone knew what it could do, if it was one of the really old Aunts.

Okay, Rabbit. Brass. He had to focus, because he had to figure out exactly what they were going to do when they found out. Aunt Zenobia — figure it had been Zenobia for now — had been working with animals, he knew that. Something with little glass figures like that stupid creepy play they’d read in English, the one with the metaphors held up like road signs.

Stone hadn’t pointed out to anyone, yet, how growing up in a family of witches meant that you paid close attention to the way things were said, or how that translated to his straight-A’s in English. It wasn’t that he thought his English teacher wouldn’t understand — it was that he was afraid Mr. Bonner would.

There were already enough rumours about his family going around. The last thing Stone needed was to make them worse by telling the one teacher who already seemed aware of what the world could really be like.

Rabbit. Brass. His tooth had stopped hurting. Stone ran his tongue over all his teeth, just in case he’d missed something. Nope, nothing hurting, nothing seemed like it was chipped or turned into a swan or anything.

But his head still felt like it was swimming. Right. Rabbits. Rabbits were all about, what, abundance? They’d done a unit on that in English class and poor Mr. Bonner hadn’t been able to stop blushing. Then again, when Ruth Decker kept glancing over at Stone, he’d been having a little trouble with the blushing, too.

Fertility, please, don’t let it be a fertility charm. He’d never hear the end of it. Sons might not be under the same pressure to marry that daughters were (Quick! before they became the Aunt!), but his mother wasn’t blind, and neither was Aunt Eva. They might try to push him into three-kids-before-nineteen just in hopes that it would kill the spark in him.

The spark, oh, no. Stone sat down on a nearby boulder and felt inside of him. He didn’t have cards or a scrying bowl or even a pen and paper out here, nothing to use as a focus.

The rabbit was warm in his hand. Stone fished a piece of leather thong out of his pocket and threaded it between the rabbit and the leaf. That let him dangle the little charm in front of him, where he could stare at it and feel for his magic.

The spark, the family called it. Boys weren’t supposed to have it, but Stone knew he wasn’t the only one. Social pressure might work that way, but genetics didn’t, not usually.

He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to do anything big, just, say, make the grass grow a little. It might be wintertime, but the snow had all melted a few days ago (the way it often did when the family needed to travel), and he could see the whole lawn spread out around him. A little bit of growth on the lawn would be small enough to escape notice. He didn’t want to call attention to what he was doing, after all, especially not here. Here, he risked get caught out by all the women in the house that wanted him to be snugly married and safely powerless. And as long as you didn’t get carried away, making the grass grow was one of the safer pieces of magic.

As long as you don’t get carried away might very well be Aunt Eva’s motto. He’d heard it at least once a visit since he started going over there with his sister and cousins.

He felt the life of the grass under him, felt the way it was all joined together, and called on it, just a spark, just a suggestion of power.

The spark seemed to catch a bit of tinder. It wooshed through him like a wildfire, wooshed out just as hot, just as fast, and every piece of grass in the lawn grew four inches.

“No, No.” Stone pushed at the grass, urging it with both hands, palms-down. Too much, too much The grass subsided, bright green, far too vibrant, but only maybe a quarter-inch longer than it had started out. “Phew.” He looked around the yard.

The daffodils were blooming. It was Christmas, and all the daffodils were in bloom.

He looked down at the rabbit. It looked like it was blooming a bit.

“Abundance, hunh,” he muttered. He could hear the front door opening. And the back door. And the side door.

And a window upstairs.

There was no hiding this. Stone put his face in his hands and waited for the storm.

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Shifting, a continuation (finish-ation) of Addergoole yr17

Dec14

After Shades, for my Third Finish It Bingo Card. Addergoole Year 17.

“Why don’t you ever get angry?”

It had been three days since Abrelle’s hair had started tinging blue, three days where both she and Kevin had tried to pretend that nothing had changed, three days where she desperately wished that his Change involved changing colors, or that she had any skill with Hugr, emotions. She knew what she was feeling. He knew what she was feeling; he could read it in her hair. But he hadn’t given her any clue what he was feeling, and that was driving her a little bonkers (which, it appeared, was a weird shade of chartreuse, in small stripes).

He’d picked another fight, and she was in the process of buckling him up in a series of straps, mummifying him with leather. She’d done it so many times already (and it was only November!) that she hardly had to think about it: grab collar, hook the apparatus into position, grab arms, start buckling. She hadn’t even been focusing on him; she was still halfway in the book she’d been reading for VanderLinden’s Lit class.

She blinked at him, finished the next strap, and considered the the question. “Thinking,” she told him, so he didn’t think she was ignoring him. She moved down him, smoothing his fingers against his sides with a gentle petting motion before buckling the strap around his upper thighs.

He usually took until she got to his knees to settle down, but this time he was calm already. “Take your time.”

“My Keeper,” she said slowly, as she buckled the strap above his knees… “Sit down, here, that’s good, thank you. My Keeper, he liked to bait me. And then he would tell me things like ‘no, a good ladylike Kept doesn’t lose her temper.'”

“Didn’t know you very well, did he?” He pressed his ankles together while she got the last strap buckled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She swung his legs up onto the bed and straightened him out, making sure everything was laying smoothly.

“I mean…” He wriggled against the straps, now that they were all in place. “You’re not exactly ladylike. That sounds like someone who drinks tea with their pinkie up and doesn’t want to break a nail. I’ve seen you in combat training. If you really wanted to, you wouldn’t need orders to hold me still. Or straps.” He wriggled a little more. “But, I mean, he’s gone. And you still don’t get mad, no matter what I do.”

“That’s… not exactly right.”

“Your hair doesn’t ever change, well, it does now, but still, you don’t ever really express anything, you just take it all and then you tie me up and… I calm down and you don’t do anything.” He paused. “Wait. Wait, are you saying you are mad at me? Shit, shit-shit, shit!” He started pulling more intently against the restraints, actually trying to get out.

He couldn’t. But Abrelle sat down and pulled him until his head was on her lap anyway. She stroked his hair and petted him until he stopped swearing.

He looked up at her, frowning, lip-bitten. “I don’t know what to think. If you’re mad and you don’t show it, how am I supposed to know anything you’re thinking. How’m I supposed to know if I do something wrong?”

Rather than answering the difficult question, Abrelle raised her eyebrows at him and smirked. “I think I’ve been pretty clear when you do something wrong.”

“Well, yeah, but if you showed anything, then I’d know before I hit the “go sit in the corner and be quiet” spot. Or, you know, know if you were angry instead of just wondering if you thought something was a bad habit you ought to nip in the bud.”

“Is there a – no, you’re right, of course there’s a difference.” She’d been Kept, after all.

“Yeah. See? So… why don’t you get angry? I mean, why don’t you show anything? Your hair doesn’t even flicker.”

“I…” Abrelle stroked his hair for a little while. “You cannot tell anyone. You cannot even hint at it, you can’t whisper about it, I’d rather you didn’t think about it much while you were out in classes but I won’t make that an order unless you want me to.” Thought orders had messed her up more than anything her Keeper had done to her; she tried very hard not to do those to Kevin. “Okay?”

He stilled and looked up at her, forehead furrowed. “It’s serious. And you don’t want – what, no, not other students. The staff to know.” He chewed on his lip. “Is it okay? Is it hurting you? If you’re in pain somehow or damaging yourself, you can’t tell me not to tell the staff, that’s horrid.”

She pet his hair soothingly. He had the softest hair. He’d changed shampoos a week into being Kept, when it’d started to be clear how much time she’d spend running her hands through his hair. She definitely liked the feel of the new stuff better, and was very pleased that he’d made the change, presumably for her.

She took a minute to find her words. “It’s not something that’s damaging me. It’s not hurting me. But it might cause problems with some of the staff, and I don’t want… I’m not ready to deal with that.”

He looked thoughtful. “How about… you tell me, and if I think it’s something to worry about, then you come up with a time when you’re ready to deal with it and the staff-problems?” He wriggled cutely in her lap and gave her a wide-eyed and innocent expression. “I want to know, I really do. But I don’t want to be stuck not being able to help you.”

“I’m surprised you care.”

“I Belong to you,” he pointed out. “That comes with a bit of caring.”

“Oh.” She thought she might be disappointed. She wasn’t sure what that said.

“Hey. Hey.” He wriggled in her lap until she looked at him. “Hey, your hair’s doing a thing. Come on, I was teasing, or, you know, not being entirely honest. I, uh. We butt heads, but I like you, okay? I mean… really like you.”

“Like you said, you Belong to me.”

“No, no. I mean, yes. Yours. But come on.” He squirmed demonstratively. “You get me. And, uh. I like it when we just sit around and talk and stuff. And there’s stuff. I like that, too.”

She wanted to say you’re not making any sense but he was. And he was smiling. Oh, her hair must be doing something.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a good color. So… you like me and I like you and if that involves a lot of bondage, well, I’m actually not complaining about that… .but you’re going to tell me your secret now?” He gave her the hopeful wide-eyed look again.

She sighed. “Okay. I need one of my arms back, though.” She slid her left arm out from under him and fished out the necklace living down in her cleavage. “So. My Keeper. He didn’t like displays of emotion, didn’t really like emotion, especially not negative emotions. And I was… very emotional. I was very unhappy in the collar and I really didn’t like him. I still don’t like him.”

“Urgh.” He wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like an asshole.”

Abrelle snorted. “YOu’ll get no argument from me on that point. Except maybe that you’re not using a strong enough word. ANyway… he didn’t like emotions, and, well. You might have noticed the Keeping makes emotions, and… being ‘human’ makes emotions, and being pregnant….” she sighed and waited for him to stop the whole-body nose-wrinkle sort of disgust expression he always made when kids came up. “THat makes emotions, too. And being in trouble for having emotions…”

“Just makes things worse. Is he still here?”

“No. No, he graduated last year. Besides,” she tapped his nose gently, “he’s not your revenge, dear. He’s mine. So… I had, have, a friend who is very good with magical items, and I had her made something — because I wasn’t allowed to do WOrkings, and, even if I was, I’m awful at the Emotions word — something to shift my emotions. Not destroy them, just take the emotions and offe them as a shift to vision, a color, like my hair. THen I could decide if I wanted to feel them or not.”

“Hunh.” He considered. “So… the blue?”

“Well, at first it was supposed to be just negative emotions. But what we did was slide the thing in my bra for a week and have it read everything I was feeling, and then extrapolate from there what it should block and what colors it should show. Love… I wasn’t feeling any love at the time, let’s say that. ” She stroked his hair, waiting for the horror or disgust or confusion.

You are feeling worried, suggested the greenish-blue haze over her vision. Suppress? Allow?

Allow she decided. The trinket would probably not last much longer anyway. She was going to have to get used to her emotions before they all came flooding back.

“Your hair’s a funny… a couple funny colors.” He twitched in his bonds. “So… your friend made you a magical item that, uh, it shuts off your emotions? You get to decide what you’re going to feel and what you’re not?”

“I did.”

“Do you, um. Do you want me to be like that?”

She didn’t need his hair to turn colors to tell her he was worried, too. “Do I look like a giant asshole?” she asked, possibly more sharply than she’d intended. Having the emotions back did strange things to her speaking.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “No. No, ma’am. It’s just… uh. You haven’t been Kept in ages, years, right?”

“Since my first year,” she agreed.

“And you’re still wearing it. I mean, it looks like you’re starting to let stuff through? But if you’re still wearing it, when you obviously don’t have to care what your Keeper thinks anymore…” He looked away and struggled at the straps a little bit. “I just thought,” he muttered to her knee, “maybe you preferred things that way? Quiet? Calm.”

She stroked his hair and considered his words. “I like you the way you are. I like… well.” She ducked her head and found herself smiling, “the excuse to tie you up.”

“But you’re…” He was flushed but a smile was creeping in at his lips, “you’re still wearing it? So you like me, uh, excitable?”

“I like you the way you are,” she repeated. “And I really do like this.” She tugged on the strap around his arms.

His flush darkened and he looked away. “I like it too,” he muttered, “but I’d like it better if, uh. If you responded.”

“If I respond,” Abrelle picked her way through the words carefully, “it’s going to get loud. And I might say things I don’t mean.”

“I say things I don’t mean all the time! And sometimes I say things I do mean but wouldn’t say if I wasn’t shouting.”

“I know.” She stroked his hair. She could tell from the way he was struggling that tying him up wasn’t going to do it this time, or, at least, it wasn’t going to be enough on its own. “I’m just warning you. It’s going to get pretty shouty in here.”

“Well, then, so I won’t be alone shouting.” He hesitated. “And, uh. So I’ll know I got a reaction, maybe I won’t have to shout quite so much, too.”

“Hrrm.” She smiled crookedly at him and caught his hand, squeezing his fingers. “But I’m still going to tie you up, you know.”

“Well, yeah. I mean. That part’s fun, although…”

“Although?”

“I mean,” He shrugged jerkily against the straps. “You’ve got me all tied up, but, I mean, I…” He shook his head.

“Tell me,” Abrell ordered. Her vision suggested guilt, and she tolt it she didn’t want to bother with that right now. She could indulge in guilt later, when she’d figured out if something was going wrong with her Kept.

“Urgh,” he complained, and then, quickly, ‘I just wondered why you kept my clothes on all the time? I mean,” he spoke a little more slowly, the pressure of the order clearly off, “you get me all tied up, you could do anything you wanted to me. I Belong to you, you can do anything you want to me. And it’s not like you’re afraid I’m not gonna say if I don’t like something.”

Abrelle shut her mouth. That had been almost exactly what she’d been going to say.

He could tell, too. “Look, you’re not… your Keeper, and I trust you.” He twitched at the straps. “When I ask you — like, okay, the once I asked you to untie me, you, well, you untied me. I trust you,” he repeated. “I wish, you know, I could tell when you were angry, ‘cause then the bond gets all loud in my head making up options, but, uh, really, I wish if you were gonna tie me up so much, maybe you would do something with me once you’d gotten me tied up?” He wriggled in what Abrelle thought was supposed to be an enticing manner but mostly looked adorable.

Abrelle let the affectionate amusement wash through her and chuckled at him. “All right. But I’m going to warn you…”

“It’s going to be wild?” He smirked playfully. “You warned me about that already. Shouting, oh no. However will I survive?”

She rolled him onto his side so that he was off of her lap, catching him before he could roll too far away, and leaned down, very deliberately, and bit his earlobe. “My temper isn’t the only thing that’s gotten repressed over the last couple years,” she murmured into his ear, “and it’s not just going to be shouting that’s going to get wild.”

His cheeks turned pink — and his thin pants did nothing to hide the other signs of his sudden interest. “Oh no,” he repeated, but his voice was shaky and almost eager. “Wild, oh, no. However will I survive?”

Abrelle caught sight of her hair, which was turning deep blue and purple in vivid stripes. She slid the emotion-catcher out of her bra and left it on the nightstand timer. “Let’s find out, hrrm?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1212016.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Finish It: Scheffenon

Oct27

This is written for my third Finish It! Bingo Card, coming after R is for Rituals and Linguistic Tricks.

If Eliška Konvalinka had been male and still an Informer, she would have found some friendly person and asked them to show her how to tie the complicated head-scarf she’d – he’d – seen here and there throughout the crowds. If she’d guessed right, the person she asked would have a tie to the people with those scarves, who spoke in a strange language when speaking to each other and who held themselves apart from the rest of Scheffenon.

Since she was firstly an Informer, she repeated the teaching poem of Scheffenon to herself several times, taking notes of the parts that might relate, and then she spent the evenings of two weeks in the library, reading up on all of the strange histories of Scheffenon.

What she learned about the people whose men wore head-scarves and whose language had trilled r’s and susurration in their s’s could have filled, were she a small-fingered woman, a thimble. She learned far more about the Cornesc-speaking people, who made up most of the population of Scheffenon (and, it seemed, almost all of the city’s government, their rich, and their powerful); she learned how they had come south to Scheffenon – south, to a city so far north parts of its harbor froze in the winter – back before the Empire had reached this far, and how they had taken a small fishing town and turned it into the jewel of the Northern Sea that it was now. Scheffenon, she learned, was not a Cornesc word, but one from the people who had been here before.

What she learned about the statues – the nerieds and the octopi and such – was that nobody liked to write about them, nobody liked to talk about them, and that the one Informer who had asked too many questions of local government officials had simply vanished.

Informers did that; it was a hazard of the profession. Normally, that would trigger several more Informers to be sent to the vanished location en masse, but in the case of Scheffenon, the powers-that-be had sent a single Informer with the instruction “be careful.”

Eliška learned one more thing of interest – although the majority of the people in Scheffenon spoke Cornesc and had been doing so for centuries, they were most definitely not of the original Western Torvaldic ethnic and religious group which had given birth to the language, and the very oldest records here showed an abrupt and complete switch from some unknown language to Cornesc. And Cornesc, itself, was a heavily idiomatic, strangely-inflected relative of other West Torvaldic languages, spoken nowhere else at all in the Empire.

She saved that piece of information in a series of carefully encrypted notes. Scheffenon had a long and very cold winter, and she could spend that time doing some linguistic study of the West Torvaldic languages. Now, the weather was as warm as it was going to get, and Eliška had some more hands-on research to do.

She had no man in a head-scarf to ask the aid of, but she’d noticed that one of the maids at the Informers’ Embassy wore her hair with three parts and kept a sheathed knife on a necklace just under her Embassy uniform. It would have to do.

She waited until the maid was cleaning her room, something the girl did once every week. “Excuse me.” Eliška used her most careful Cornesc, that sounded uncertain. “I want to go out on the street, to meet some people, but all the clothes I have with me, they’re mostly from down in the far South, and they make me stand out. And my hair, I last learned how to do anything with it in the Capital, and I keep seeing these three-parted braids which look fascinating…”

The maid’s hand went to her hair. “The three-part, it is…” She started to say something, stopped, and tried again. “If you want to look like you belong here in Scheffenon, the three-parted braid is not the way to go. The women here, the Scheffenonan women, they don’t do that.”

“But you do.” Eliška feigned ignorance well. Feigning ignorance was an entire series of classes in the Informer curriculum. “And I’ve seen other women, and they look as if they belong here…”

“There are women that do. There will always be women who wear the three-part, here in Scheffenon. But it’s not the way to look like you belong.”

Eliška pretended to parse that. “So it’s, mmm, oh. Like, in my home city, there is a small group of people, I don’t think we make up more than one in a hundred, and that number has been dwindling.” She ducked her head, as if embarrassed that she had been one of the ones to make it dwindle more. “There tends to be a lot of outward migration. But our people, when we’re home – even when I go home, we wear the pilezcth, it’s a type of scarf that covers your head and your shoulders, all the way down to your elbows, men and women both. You can tell where in the city someone comes from by the weave in their pilezcth and the way they tie it, here, and here,” she touched her temples and her right shoulder.

It was all true, of course. The best stories came from truth – something there were also classes on in the Informer training. But it had the advantage of also getting the reaction she was aiming for.

“Like that, I think. There aren’t that many of us who still wear the three-part, who still keep the old ways. The Scheffenonan, there are more of them every year, like little fish that don’t fear the shark.” She clucked quietly. “But you, you are an Informer and you want to know everything?”

“It’s my job to know everything.” That hadn’t been the direction Eliška had been expecting from this conversation.

“Then I will take you to a place, a family place. They’ll show you the three-braid and some other things, things that help, when knowing this city.” The maid considered Eliška for a moment. “The skirt you wore when you left yesterday? Would you wear that with your family-scarf?”

“It came from my mother,” Eliška admitted with a small smile. “It seemed like it would fit, here in Scheffenon.”

“It’s a good choice. Wear that and a family scarf, so that they understand that you, too, know what traditions are like.” The maid’s smile was a little too knowing. “You know quite a bit, but the trick is to convince others that you know it, too.”

Eliška smiled back at the maid, but she was beginning to wonder exactly who was gathering information on whom. “When would you like to take me to meet these people?”

“The day after tomorrow, in the afternoon. You have your meetings in the morning, yes?”

“Yes.” Eliška managed not to stop smiling. The main, of course the maid would know the habits of the people she cleaned for, and that was all that was. Of course.

The Fedder’s-Day afternoon found Eliška putting on clothes she hadn’t worn, except in training classes, since the joined the ranks of the Informers. She folded and wrapped her head-scarf carefully, the three end folds hanging over her left ear, the pleats in the front telling anyone who could read them the block and street she’d grown up on. The skirt was of a kind, but seen much more commonly around the empire: fitted at the waist with a wide, sturdy waistband, then with plenty of walking room around the knees and ankles. The blouse was sturdy and work-worthy, and the vest fitted and matching the skirt. She looked, she thought, like any of a thousand different groups of working-women, except the scarf. The scarf, like a language, narrowed things down.

The maid met her at her chamber door, dressed not in her Embassy uniform but in a vest like Eliška’s and a narrower, heavier skirt. It was a split skirt, Eliška realized, trading width for mobility in separate legs. “Good,” she declared, on looking over Eliška. “You look more like a person now, and less like the Empire.”

But she was the Empire, Eliška wanted to protest. She was always the Empire, everywhere she went, whatever she was wearing.

“I’m HenÞer, by the way. The Scheffenonan around here, they call me Hennie, they don’t like that sound in the middle.”

“HenÞer,” Eliška tried. “It’s a lovely name. Do you want me to call you that or Hennie?”

HenÞer was looking at her sidelong; Eliška thought she might have won this round. “You have a way with language, you Informers. The one before you was good, too. But she didn’t notice the hair.”

“We each have our own strengths. It’s why we rotate out so frequently.” It was part of why they rotated out, but she was not so far gone as to give away all of the Informers’ secrets. “Shall we go?”

“Of course.” HenÞer led Eliška through back-alleys and cobbled lanes that had been bypassed by wider, smoother roads. Once she led her up two flights of stairs, through a sort of mid-building courtyard, and down the other side into a more conventional courtyard.

Eliška noticed, among other things in their unconventional route, that in a city full of oceanic statues, mosaics and friezes, there was very little of that sort – almost none – along their route. One sad God-of-the-Sea eyed them from a bulletin board; HenÞer averted her eyes and did not pass near it.

There was – well, this was beyond “more to this than met the eye;” this was into “something rotten in Scheffenon” territory and verging close on “choose when the Empire must interfere, and choose it carefully.” Eliška was not certain yet what was going on; that would take more time. But she was now certain something was definitely happening.

That was for another time. Today, she followed HenÞer into a cheese shop, stopping politely to smell the pleasantly funky odors permeating the narrow store, and then out the back door into another courtyard.

In this courtyard, seven women and five men sat, the women working at embroiders and carving, the men working at knitting and small paintings. They were as Eliška had noted in other places – the women with their three-parted hairdos, the men with the headscarves.

Suddenly, in a way she had not in the streets, Eliška felt out of place. She called on every bit of her Informer training: she shifted her posture to act as an interested bystander; she looked around, cataloging the unusual things about the courtyard (The artwork was all geometric; in a small space crowded with design, every pattern was made up of interlocking shapes. There were planters everywhere, and fountains, and in all of this there was not a single depiction of marine life, or any life at all); she smiled.

The matron of the group walked over to them with the posture and stride of a soldier. “HenÞer. This is the Informer?”

“This is the Imperial Informer. Mother, Eliška, daughter of…”

“Iva,” Eliška put in.

“-Iva. Eliška na Iva, my mother, Trishka daughter of Henshker.”

Eliksa inclined her head politely. “I think you for the honor of this meeting.”

“We thank the Empire for noticing us. And, i believe, I can thank the Empire for noticing many things in your vision.”

“I am trained to notice things, Dame Trishka.”

“Training is one thing. Your eyes, your eyes are another. You see us, and I do not believe you saw us in the mirror. You see Scheffenon. You see the locked and the jailers.”

Eliška repeated the terms back, carefully. The woman was speaking Cornesc, but those weren’t words she’d expected to hear. “The locked and the jailers?” There were many things those terms could mean. Was she looking at a civil war in Scheffenon?

“The locked,” Trishka repeated, “and the jailers, those who lock, those things that lock.”

There was something about her eyes, the color of the sea on a cloudy day, the way they seemed to bore into Eliška. She swallowed as she considered the question.

That was all it took. “The locked,” she repeated, and this time she understood. “Yes, I see. And those – and that – which locks them.” The statues, and the friezes, and the mosaics. They were… “They’re locks. They’re bindings, we knew that. The fountains… oh, by the breast of the holiest mother, they’re chains. Not just the fountains; the whole of Scheffenon is, is’t it?” They’d know there were bindings, were locks. But what had been locked… They were locking up the water – no, not just the sea. They were locking up all in their reach of the sea. “How awful,” Eliška breathed.

HenÞer and her mother shared a look. “She sees,” HenÞer murmured. “She does.”

“Indeed.” Triska’s gaze bored into Eliška. “But what will do with the sight?”

This was not a question, Eliška realized; it was a challenge. It was a test, possibly her final test.

Elika raised her chin.

“The people of Scheffenon hold secrets close
But the answers are written on their walls & their shores,” she recited.
“The Scheffenon people have locked up the water;
bound up the sea and locked the magic it holds.
The people who conquered, they conquered and conquered
And conquer yet still with their fountains and concourses..”

The poem went on, and she spun it as she went. Triska and HenÞer nodded along.

Eliška took another breath.

“The city of Scheffenon serves as a lock
Every street is a tumbler, every fountain a hasp
The Keys to the Scheffenon lock must be found
To unlock the children of the water here bound.”

She met eyes with Triska and then with HenÞer. Both women nodded.

“I’ll contact my office tonight. But if something fails me in that time… you’ve heard the words. You can repeat them to any Informer, and they will understand. All right?”

“She sees,” Triska repeated quietly. “And she speaks.” She touched Eliška’s headdress with light fingers. “It may be too late. Locks rust closed, after time, and old passageways are replaced by new. But we thank you, nevertheless. For the seeing.”

“Go now,” HenÞer murmured. “Go now and see, as I go, as I see.”

It was the Informer’s private good-bye, what they said to each other when they didn’t know if they’d meet again. Eliška swallowed, feeling that there was still more she wasn’t seeing.

“Go now,” she finished the ritual, “and learn, as I go, as I learn.”

She had a feeling she would either not be in in Sheffenon for long – or she would be here forever.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1192359.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Worldbuilding Bingo – ‘Verse now called Arlend, Card 2

Oct18

To fill a bingo on card one of my Worldbuilding Bingo Card: Culturebuilding. Fashion – Body Types, Housing Arrangements, Fashion – Clothes, Entertainment

In my new world for my YA paro-drama, different characters (although my protag appears in discussion)

“Come on, Shekie, you’re going to be late.” Miagreth burst into the older-girls’ bedroom, her Daybreak-finest twirling as she did a couple pirouettes. For a couple years, it had looked like Miggie was going to be in the Home Office dance corps, but she’d been shoved out in favor of a General’s daughter and a Corporal’s niece. Their family line was not military-oriented, so Miggie was left dancing for fun and entering reports for a cigarette manufacturer for her vocation. She tugged on her cousin’s arm. “You look fine. The dress is beautiful. Come on.”

“I don’t know.” Shekleen twirled around three times in front of the mirror, frowning. “I think it makes me look flat.”

“Oh, nonsense.” Miagreth squeezed Shekleen’s small breasts. “You have plenty, and you’ll grow into the rest. Just wear something really tight at the waist like this and poof the shirt up a little more, like that. There.” She moved around Shekleen, tugging and fussing and arranging. “You look beautiful. Just because Peyy Redhouse has,” her hands described round in the front and round in the hips with hourglass like-gestures, “and she’s sticking them in everyone’s face like she’s been..”

“It’s not Peyy,” Shekleen demurred. She adjusted a few of Miagreth’s changes and looked at herself again. “It’s Onnal. He’s…”

“Tch. You don’t want to end up with an entertainer, anyway. A boxer? They don’t last past their thirties, Shekie. Sure, he’s handsome right now and he looks like he could pick up a cow, but think about after someone breaks that nose… or he gets hit in the head too hard… or he breaks a leg and can’t run those miles every day. And if he’s telling you that you need to rounden up, well, he needs to ante up, doesn’t he? First baby will get those things nice and round.”

“He’s waiting till he has a good run of fights,” Shekleen offered weakly. “But I think he’s going to start going after Avy from the mill-run anyway. He’s been eyeing after her for a while.”

“Well, then what do you care if he thinks you need more rounding? It’s Daybreak. We’re going to go eat until we want to puke, and then we’re going to wait twenty minutes and eat some more. Come on.” Miagreth grabbed Shekleen’s hand and dragged her outside. “The dancers are just about to start, and the drummers are already going.”

The Square was crowded cheek-to-jowl, everyone in their Daybreak Specials. Shekleen looked around for Onnel, but there would be boxing demonstrations, so he’d be preparing for that.

There was Avy, of course, prepping with the dancers. Their little town wasn’t big enough for one of the professional troupes, but their amateur, second-hobby dancers were pretty impressive. Shekleen couldn’t dance. She hadn’t managed to pass even the hobbyist test. Miagreth had, but then she’d had a bad fall during combat training, and that had been it for her dancing.

Avy had the sort of chest and hips Shekleen wanted, wide in the stance, round in the bottom, and with plenty of breast over impressive pectoral muscles. Of course, she spent her days hauling grain and tinkering with the mill for her family’s business. Shekie’s family ran the local fabric mill, which meant a lot of fine work leaning over a loom and less heavy lifting at all.

“There he is!” Shekleen grabbed Miagreth’s arm and tugged. “Come on, I see Onnel.”

“You don’t really want to go after Onnel right now, do you?” Miagreth dragged her feet. “For one, I see Tibor over there, and I’ve been meaning to talk to him for ages. Look at that hair.” She made a soft noise of approval.

Shekleen shook her head. “Come on, Miggie, Tibor, really?” She might have unreasonable taste in men, but Miagreth’s was no better. “Where would you live? He lives in this little apartment over the grocery shop with his mother and his mother’s mother. You don’t want to try to raise a family in that. And you’re not going to get a three or a four and live with their family, not with… well.” Miagreth really did like Tibor, but…

“It’s not like he’s ugly,” Miagreth countered, a little too loudly. She dropped her voice. “And nobody really knows why his father Disappeared. And you know full well that’s why his mother didn’t remarry, and why she doesn’t live with her other family. And why they only have one kid.”

“I know. You know. But how does any of that help you?” Shekleen moved through the crowd to the demonstration rings. In the first one, two boys they knew from school were oiled up and ready to show off their wrestling skills. “Your family’s place doesn’t have room for anyone else, and there’s no place left to build on.” Miagreth was the baby of her family, and three of her older brothers had moved their spouses into the family house already. “His family place doesn’t have any room… and neither of you are in one of those really money-making careers.”

Miagreth frowned. “We could do an apartment, you know. A little place, just until we had a bit more money.”

“Babies cost money, Miggie.” Shekleen sighed. Her friend wanted to dream of happiness, that was all. “I bet the two of you could pull it off, though. It would be hard work, but Tibor does work hard.”

“He does. He really is trying to fix the mess his father got them in.” Miagreth sighed deeply and melodramatically. “Getting himself vanished like that. I mean, it’s just inconsiderate to the family.” She shook her head, in a perfect if unconscious imitation of her maternal grandmother.

“And to you, of course,” Shekleen teased, although it was unkind. “Oh, there’s the boxing ring. Let’s go see what On… oh.”

“Oh?” Miagreth pushed up behind her. “…Oh.”

It wasn’t Ava, and Shekleen wondered if, somewhere, Ava was making the same frustrated trying-not-to-cry face that she herself was making right now. Ava, she could have stood; Ava had the same carefully-patched hand-me-downs as Shekleen, and though she had more curves, she had the same slightly pinched look they all got in a lean year. Ava was someone she knew, someone she’d grown up with, someone she could compete with fair and square.

This girl had the Main-Office look, her dress cut in the latest fashion, the skirt long, full in the back and over ample, well-fed hips, the jacket tight in the waist and open over her broad chest. She’d had her hair curled and twisted up into an elaborate up-do with ribbons of cloth woven through it, and the dyes in the whole thing were bright, vibrant, standing out against the faded look of the rest of the town. “She’s beautiful,” Shekleen muttered jealously.

“And rich,” Miagreth agreed quietly. “Look at that. I saw it in the latest Conscientious Citizen Monthly, well, a smaller version of it. That extra fold of cloth at the back, think of how much fabric that uses.”

“I could make those ribbons. I could take some of my spare pay and buy the materials from the mill, and make myself something like that. Do you think my hair would look nice, curled up like that?”

“I think,” Miagreth offered, in a voice that suggested she was trying to be kind, “that without changing the dress, too, it’s going to be like hanging ribbons on a goat, Shekie. The goat will look fancy, but it’s still going to look like a goat.”

Shekleen couldn’t even bring herself to be offended. “It’s not fair.”

“It’s not.” Miagreth stood up a little straighter. “You’ve given Onnel so much attention, and look at him, ignoring you for some silly Main-Office sort of lady. Come on.” She tugged on Sheckleen’s arm. “I’ve got someone I want you to meet, He’s a troubadour, Shekie, an honest-to-goodness singer, and we got him here, in our little town, for Daybreak. And you know what? Troubadours can keep singing as long as they live, they don’t have to worry about broken bones or twisted ankles. And they take their family travelling with them sometimes, all over the country. Come on, Shekie,” she tugged again. “This one won’t care about Main-office ribbons or how much fabric’s in your skirt. Come onnnn!”

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Child of the Unburnt Ash

Oct12

After Æ is for Ash, for the Finish It! Bingo Round Two.

This came out super-weird, in part because Æ is for Ash seemed like a complete story to me as was. So it’s… tangential? Sort of? Also, it didn’t want to end.

The Unburnt Tree, it was said, guarded all within Corthwin and protected them from harm, mindful or accidental.

It was a bit poetic, of course. The tree – and the younger ash trees grown from its seeds – did not protect the entire city. People still died. Small fires still burned sometimes, in the city. Buildings fell and fists were raised in anger.

(There were cities whose gods were less wooden and slow, where those things no longer happened. Those cities were terrifying places to visit, and those who could leave did so posthaste).

But, poetic license or not, every child was brought before the giant ash, the Unburnt Tree, to give and receive blessings. Children who for one reason or another were considered especially at risk were given names calling one the ash, thus to invoke even more of its protection.

Æscleah had been brought before the tree, a skinny, sickly, weak and early-born child, when she was just a week old. Her parents and family had hoped to forestall the illness they were certain would kill her, so they had fed to her a paste made of the Unburnt Tree’s seeds, and for a week, they had left her cradle in the roots of the tree, feeding her but otherwise leaving her to the ash’s care.

She had thrived, against all hope, beyond all prayers. She had grown chubby, that week hugged by the Unburnt tree. She had gained color and strength, although she remained a quiet child, not prone to crying. And she had, after her rough start, an amazingly robust and lively childhood.

And yet… (Because even gods who do not terrify with their overbearing control are still gods, are still beyond the ken of mankind) …she remained quiet, this child of a boisterous family. She remained still when others were excited, calm when others cried. She reacted, true, but she reacted slowly and with deliberation.

People whispered. Many children had been set in the Unburnt Tree’s protection; many had been named after the Ash. Many had been blessed — and of all those many, only Æscleah had been so very firmly marked.

“She’s a changeling,” whispered people who had never seen a true change-child.

“She’s cursed,” muttered people who were new to the city, or who were uncertain about the ring of ash trees now growing up around Corthwin.

The tree-minders looked on her, when she was finally brought before them, and shook their heads, not recognizing what was before them. “She is a child,” they declared. “Nothing more, and nothing less. Treat her as a child, and nothing more… and nothing less.”

And so Æscleah’s family did their best. She was not their only child, not by far, and they treated her the same as any other child. When she did her chores, they praised her; when she wandered off to the ring of unburnt ash unbidden and un-permissioned, they punished her.

And she wandered, punishment or not, permission or not, more and more as she grew quicker and quicker with her chores and her schoolwork. If she was missing, she would be in the crook of the Unburnt Tree, or tending the ground or the branches of one of the small scions, or weeding the beds of companion plants surrounding the trees surrounding the city.

As she grew older, the punishments grew harsher and Æscleah’s disobedience grew larger. She would skip all of her chores for a week, only to do them without fail for two weeks. She would vanish for days and nights on end, only to reappear as if no time had passed at all. And she seemed to mind not any punishment her parents or her teachers meted out.

Desperate to curtail her behaviour, Æscleah’s parents finally locked her in an interior room, a room of stone, far from the Unburnt Ash, far from the sun and the sky. “Do your chores,” they told her, “and you may be in the sun for five minutes. Do your siblings’ chores as well, and you may spend an additional five minutes outside.”

This worked for two weeks, as Æscleah grew wanner and quieter, as she seemed to wilt and wither, as a wind whipped up around the Unburnt Ash and its saplings. On the evening of the fifteenth day, Æscleah went outside for her allotted five minutes of sun – and vanished.

Her mother had been watching her. Her little brother had been playing with her. Her father had been by the gate. Nobody had seen her leave. Nobody in the streets had seen her pass. And the tree-minders who watched the Unburnt tree claimed that no, this time, they hadn’t seen her pass.

Nobody could find her. For hours they searched, and then for days, and then for weeks. When two weeks and a day had passed, when her parents had given up hope, thinking that Æshleah had gone to some other city, run away to join the circus, come afoul of some cretin not afraid of ash trees or their vengeance, when they had lain flowers in the bone-yard for her and said their words, then and only then did the Unburnt Ash reveal her.

She stepped from the tree as if she had been inside it, her hair gone white-grey and her skin seeming a bit green. She ignored the tree-minders. She ignored her parents. She spoke with a voice that was not her own to the people who stood by the gate. “Fetch the mayor.”

People muttered, and people complained. Her parents spoke strongly to her. Æshleah ignored them all to look at one young tree-minder, not that much older than she was. “Fetch the mayor,” she told the tree-minder. “Now.”

The tree-minder, who was used to the look of old people ignoring what was in front of them, who herself had been given to the Unburnt Ash as a child, who was not so stupid and willful as her elders thought she was, she ran for the mayor. She ran the whole way, and when she reached said notable, neither explained nor cajoled.

“The Unburnt Tree wants you,” she told him, and dragged him until he, not wishing his dignity to be quite that insulted, came along with her.

There, in the middle of people shouting at her and untouched by all of them, Æshleah stared at the mayor. “This is what I say. Once in a generation, you will give me a voice. You have given me a voice, and this body is it. Once in every generation, you will do as I say.”

Even the most recalcitrant people fell quiet now. The voice was not Æshleah’s. The words were neither Æshleah’s nor anyone else they had ever heard.

The mayor ahemed and coughed. “To whom am I speaking?” Because it did not due to assume, in the Empire. Cities had faltered and died over less.

“I am the Unburnt. I am all those that will not burn. I am the protection of the city. And, for that, I have my price.

The city was silent. Everything had its price. Ever god demanded something. They had been lucky for so long.

But still… they had been lucky for so long.

“What price would you have?” the Mayor asked. The Mayor had not been elected to rock the boat. The Mayor was quite good at not rocking any boats, Empiric or sylvan or otherwise.

“Every generation, you will give me a voice. And this voice… This voice you will mind, when the time comes.” Æshleah, or the body that had been Æshleah , sat down. “I cannot protect you if you do not listen.”

“Protect us from what?” someone in the crowd complained. And “what about the girl?” someone else shouted. It opened up a flood of questions. Æshleah’s body looked here and there, seeming to make eye contact with every single person who shouted a question.

When the crowd silenced again, she answered. “All those who are given to me have a little of me in them. This one required the most healing, and thus has always been mostly me. She is here, your Ash-Meadow-Daughter, the same as she has always been: a sprite within my will. Nothing has changed except your sight and your hearing.

“And your hearing must change more!” Her voice rose to a shout. “Or I cannot protect you. The fire is coming. There is flame even I fear. There are storms even I cannot stand. It is all coming, and you will need to listen.”

Suddenly, the voice changed. It sounded like a girl again, like Æshleah again. “But you won’t, will you?” She shook her head. “Because that’s how people are. Very well. When you’re ready to listen, come to the tree, and it will be explained.” She stepped into the arms of the Unburnt Ash, and was gone.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1185420.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Finish It! Second Bingo Card

Oct12

I’m filling this in slowly from the below list, but this is my second [community profile] allbingo card for the “Finish It” challenge.

8 (II) 11 (V) 35 (V) 23 (V) 29 (V) Daxton and Esha (III)
5 (V) 6 (VI) 4 (IV) 13 (I) 15 (III) After the Night (II)
34 (IV) 17 (V) 7 (I) 28 (IV) 22 (IV) Lies, Damned Lies… (II)
27 (III) 31: The Silver Road (I) 3 (III) 14 or 26 (IV) 36 (III) Child of the Unburnt Ash(VI)
32 (II) 9 (III) 18 (VI) 16 (IV) 24 (VI) 19: A Discovery in Depth (I)
30 (VI) 12 (VI) 2 (II) 1 (I) 25 (I) Hidden History, Misplaced Beads (II)

working on completed next Partial Finish

At any point, I may sub out one of these for another suggested one or something else I need to finish.

The numbers (those that remain) correspond to the list below. This was arranged from the [community profile] allbingo public card, your suggestions, and Random.org’s list randomizer.

The Roman numerals are another way of getting a bingo – do, say, all of the (I) instead of a line or a square or such.

see links here – http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1197753.html

1 An Argument of Magic.
2 Shenanigans. (There are multiple snippets without immediate followups, but it’s mostly all one thread.)
3 Willard: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/543285.html
4 The Portal Closed.
5 Duty.
6 The Cat’s Paw.

7 You’d Better Watch Out.
8 Rodegard — and Esedora.

9 Road Map To….
10 Space Accountant: A Reason – and Accidental, and bunking arrangements, etc (Genique got Married?) – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1092113.html
11 Fated.
12 The Hazards of Magic.

13 Fifty Years.
14 Over the Wall left off in the middle of the discussion, just as it was taking (yet another) interesting turn.
15 Tilden: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/525842.html
16 Where Do Unicorns Come From?.
17 The Strength.
18 Aetheric Cleansing.
19 Discovery.

20 Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue.
21 Strange Favors http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/453665.html
22 Rin and Girey, and more Rin, with research.
23 Clarisse: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/565158.html
24 Unicorn-Chaste.
25 Heroes (and earlier branches).
26 Change.

27 Exhaustion.

28 How The Family Does things — at resting point/chapter break, but there could be more.
29 Boy Trouble, which is rather skew from the previous.
30 Trash and Treasures.

31 The Silver Road.
32 Far Weston.

33 Æ is for Ash.
34 Skill and Dreams.
35 In the Attic.

36 Rumors about the Family.

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Worldbuilding Bingo – ‘Verse in Need of a Name, Card 1

Oct3

To fill a bingo on card one of my Worldbuilding Bingo Card: Oppression & rebellion, road systems, luxuries, calendar.

In my new world for my YA paro-drama, different characters.

Aemula hated going up into the mountains, especially this time of year. The roads were shit, since they didn’t head anywhere “useful”, just up to the isolated villages and the hillfolk who ran them. The rain made everything even worse, until her vehicle was squooshing through mud and chugging along at a pace slightly slower than her walking speed.

They always sent her up after the last of the Spring celebrations were over, so everyone in the hills felt slighted by the government – again. They sent her up with announcements, rulings, and trinkets, and expected her to come back with glowing reports, convinced citizenry, and quality trade goods.

Aemula hated it, but she went up because nobody else in the Remote Territories office could get anything back at all. At least when she talked to the hillfolk, they sent her back still able to file a report. They’d send up old Teb Ghrory from accounting one year and he’d come back missing a hand and four teeth: hunting accident. Everyone in the tiny village of Lakeview stuck to the same story, and Teb hadn’t been talking at the time, so no punishments had been laid down.

Aemula knew why she came back with all her teeth and both hands. Everyone in the Remote Territories office knew, just like they knew why she was working Remote Territories in the first place.

The country was scattered with these little pockets of rural living, places that the Main Office couldn’t quite force out of their homes and couldn’t quite bring into line with the rest of the nation while they were — like the name said — so remote. The hillfolk weren’t Aemula’s people, but it wasn’t like the fisherfolk were any more friendly to outsiders — or any easier to get to.

She had spent weeks with the mechanics at the Main Office, trying to get them to understand what she needed. They were the best possible mechanics that the country could put out. They were well-trained, brilliant, and very skilled. And over ninety percent of their time was spent dealing with the main roads and the Main Office vehicles that traveled them.

The main roads and the back roads might as well have belonged to two different nations. The main roads were smooth, maintained, and all the latest technology went into keeping them clear and easy to travel. The back roads were gravel and old, old asphalt, pitted and potholed, up-kept only enough that a government vehicle could get through if it absolutely needed to. But it needed bigger tires, suspension of some sort, and a system of gears that most Main Office vehicles just never had a use for. Once she’d explained, one of the mechanics had hugged her. It turned out that they really did enjoy a challenge.

It didn’t mean she hated going into the mountains in the wet of early spring any less, but at least she could get up there in relative comfort and — more importantly, even to Aemula — safety. This vehicle wouldn’t roll, it wouldn’t get stuck in exactly the wrong spot, it would not run out of fuel on the top of a mountain, and it was bulletproof and very nearly flame-proof.

The last two might be the most important. Spring visits to the mountains had more than one reason to be awful, and the roads weren’t even the biggest reason. The lowlands and the central towns were in the middle of Daybreak, their celebration of survival and winter’s-past indulgence.

It would be all over the airwaves, it would be on the bulletins, and it would be in the fireworks set off in the lowland cities. Even up in the lowlands, they wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

And instead of sending her up there with spices and new fabric, salt and fresh fruit and rare imported candies, the Main Office would – like they did every year – send Aemula to the mountain people with trinkets. Cheap recycled-metal statues of the Leader. Storybooks for the children telling them all about the glories of the Testing and the wonders that could be found down in the main cities. Honey-candies that any granny could make, impressed with the Main Office seal, with”clever” saying printed on their waxed paper wrappings.

It was no wonder they tended to send Main office agents back missing limbs, missing teeth, or just missing entirely. It was no wonder they liked to steal the Main Office vehicles and then claim that they’d fallen off a cliff somewhere. There were a lot of cliffs around the highlands, after all, and some of them were unmarked and just off the edge of the road.

Aemula gritted her teeth and maneuvered her vehicle around yet another hole in the road. She was only a half-hour or so from the first town on her circuit, and the sky was clear at the moment. She needed to focus on her presentation. She needed to focus on her bright smile and the sarcastic edge, on her fisher-folk drawl she spent most of the year carefully scrubbing away.

“Hey, all youes,” she murmured. “The Main Office, well, you know how it is. They pass out candy and I get to count heads. So let’s get the candy part done and then I can show you what else I managed to bring in.”

The contraband was illegal, by nature. But there were more than a couple reasons the Remote Territories head honchos kept sending her out here to the hillfolk, and it wasn’t just because she could survive the walk out, if her vehicle vanished.

next card: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1188156.html

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Worldbuilding Bingo~

Oct3

I’m doing this, from [community profile] allbingo, because of [personal profile] inventrix and [personal profile] clare_dragonfly

The goal is to write one story using a bingo on each card.

I think what I’m going to do is start with the first card with new-world-for-YA-stuff and then as I go, maybe also do stories for other worlds: Expectant Wood, Things Unspoken, Fae Apoc, Reiassan. ”

As always, open to suggestions!

Worldbuilding

Exports Oppression & rebellion Mineral resources Building materials
Sun(s) Road system Safety precautions Nations
Mountains Luxuries Axial tilt Political factions
Arctic circle Calendar Furniture Ranks & titles

Culturebuilding

Art Subcultures Fashion – Home Decor Entertainment
Work and Vacation Currency and Commerce Fashion – Clothes Timekeeping and Punctuality
Education Housing Arrangements City Layout Gender Identity and Roles
Fashion – Body Types Access to Technology Healthcare Daily Worship

Group Dynamics

Group Purpose Leaders Failures Loyalty
Group Cohesiveness Generations Former Members Conflict Resolution Style
Challenges Role Fluidity / Rigidity Sense of Group Identity Rivalries
Acquiring New Members Common Arguments Alliances and Cliques Diversity / Homogeneity

Characterbuilding

Sexuality Honesty / Duplicity Integrity / Hypocrisy Social Role
Work / Career / Vocation Mentors / Inspirational Figures Kinesthetic / Physical Intelligence Hot-Button Topics
Living Arrangements Response to Stress Verbal / Linguistic Intelligence Musical / Rhythmic / Harmonic Intelligence
Influential Past Events Past Traumas Interests Education

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1171922.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable