Tag Archive | yr6

Character building: Rand (a drabble)

This story contains allusions to non-consensual everything


End of Year Five.

Rand didn’t go out to Maureen’s much, but the day the Second Cohort left, he found himself leaning on the fence with a bunch of other dads, trying to pick his kid out of the tumbling toddlers. She’d be blonde, probably. That didn’t narrow it down all that much. Maybe about, what, a year old now? How big were one-year-olds?

A hand slapped across his back. He didn’t need to turn to know who it was. He’d always know her touch.

“Cheer up, kiddo.” Acacia was laughing at him. She spent a lot of time laughing, she always had. “You’ve got two more years left. You’ll find someone who holds still long enough.”

Rand bristled. “It was just-“

“Or,” she continued, that way she had of talking right over him, “it’s not like you don’t know what to do to make them hold still. I thought we taught you that much, at least.”

And she was gone, leaving Rand staring off into the Village at her ponytail. Following after her, the way he always seemed to.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/982649.html. You can comment here or there.

A Poll! Addergoole Year Six!

A Poll! For…. reasons.
Please pick 3 Addergoole Sixth Cohort Characters.

Characters with an * are other people’s characters. I won’t say you can’t vote on them but I have varying levels of not-complete comfort writing them.

If you need more than three characters, you can leave up to three more in the comments.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/970271.html. You can comment here or there.

The Beast We Become

To [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.
Set in Year 6 of the Addergoole School, about halfway through the year.

Aelgifu (Ayla) and Callista (as well as the mentioned others) are Addergoole characters.

“You can’t ignore it forever, you know.”

When Ioanna said it, she was gentle. Callista hadn’t gotten the feeling of being gentle yet, so it came out, like so much of what she said, rough and raspy and cutting right to the bone.

There was no question what Callista thought Aelgifu was ignoring. For one, she was waving at Ayla with all six arms. For another, they’d been talking about this on and off for the six months since they’d crewed up.

“I’m very good at Masking.” It wasn’t quite an answer, but she didn’t want to give an answer.

“Can’t Mask your brain, little jackalope.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?” Callista leaned forward, mid-arms resting on her thighs. “I’m a spider, you’re a jackalope, your pretty girlfriend is a face-changer, and your brother is an antelope. It’s just the way things are.” Her smile twisted into something nasty and fierce. “And Ib is a demon.”

“Ib is a demon.” There was no argument there. “But a jackalope is a mythical creature.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it before she’d closed her mouth. Callista rattled out another laugh.

“Look around you, sweetheart. We’re all mythological here.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/786589.html. You can comment here or there.