Addergoole Year 21
Context notes: Addergoole Year 17 (2011-2012) is the year that the world fell apart; i.e., the “gods” returned from Ellehem and 90% of both humanity and fae died.
This story might add a little more context, as well.
Content warning: Unabashed patriotism.
Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
A sequel to a feral cat-girl and Here, Kitty, Kitty
“Easy, easy, shit, easy.” Luke almost lost his hold on the girl as she did her best to scramble out of his hands, over him, and onto the dog-boy. Or, at least, he was pretty sure that’s where she was going. Mike, on the other hand, shouted a Working so fast that his words blurred together and so loudly they might have heard it back at Addergoole, and the dog-boy fell asleep.
Almost abashed, Luke remembered he could do Workings, and, in a much quieter, much more soothing tone, did a Calm Down working on the cat-girl. “Easy, easy. Okay. There.” She was looking at him, sleepy now but definitely calm. “Okay. So, do you understand me?”
She shook her head no. Luke managed not to laugh in her face.
“Do you have a name?”
She had to think about that. After a moment, she offered “Cat.”
“Well, that’s a label, at least. Hello, Cat. I’m Luke.”
“Loooo-kuh,” she tried, and nodded. “Luke.” The second time, it sounded almost an echo of how he’d said it.
“This place, it’s not safe. There’s-”
“Bad things,” she agreed, and then a string of something that Luke only belatedly recognized as Japanese.
He peered at her. Blondish, maybe, under all the dirt. Had Leo passed through here recently? Would have to ask.
“Easy, easy. My Japanese is pretty rusty. If you come with us, we can find you a safe place to stay.”
“Dog?”
“He’s going to have to come too. Sorry.”
“Dog good,” she nodded. “Better than -” she hesitated, and then offered uncertainly, “-the bad things.”
“Well, that’s an endorsement all right. Come with me, then, Cat?”
She nodded. Hesitantly, Luke released one of her wrists.
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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
After Exclamation Points. Sword/Lady timeline, so maybe 50-75 years after the apocalypse, probably canon.
When Luke got back to Addergoole with Heraclea, Patronus, and the kids — Mike had shown up after two days with a teleporter and a clairvoyant, looking miffed and clearly trying to hide a worried expression — he sent Cynara a fruit basket full of the most exotic fruits Addergoole’s magical greenhouses could grow, a brief note telling her who he’d found, and what he’d rescued them from, and copies of all of Addergoole’s most recent survey maps of North America.
She sent him back one of the maps — Texas-area, he noted, where the third of her original “trouble spots” had been — with eight color-coded dots listed as “need rescue or help, soon; might be in trouble in the next year; they’re doing something hinkey, keep an eye on; and “you might want to deputize.”
Along with that was a list of three other people who might be interested in helping him rescue or check on alumni — all of them Addergoole grads and two of them people Luke had enjoyed teaching — along with their locations and a note that said if you don’t have a teleporter, I can loan you one.
Luke might have thought she was trying to keep him occupied, distracted even, but by the time he got her package, he had already gone to the second spot on her map.
Ehud had been at Addergoole twenty-five years ago, and prone to getting in trouble even then. Now, he looked as much abashed as relieved as Luke waded into the slave market and bought up his contract.
“Anyone else from Addergoole here?” he snarled. He hated slave markets, but this one was too far from Addergoole — on the edge of the Appalachians — for him to start making a point about taking it over.
“Um.” Ehud shifted. “No. But there’s a fae girl who’s never heard of it, and one from Doomsday. She’s super embarrassed,” he added, “but it makes her angry. And then she fights the slavers…”
“Right.” Luke was glad that Ehud had come cheap. “Show them to me.”
He sent Cya all three fae, once they’d been freed, cleaned up, and fed, a box of chocolates Maureen only made for special occasions, and, after a little shouting, a list of Addergoole students and their children, as comprehensive as they had.
She sent him back the list with several annotations, the Florida-quarter quadrant marked up — this time with names — and some very nice whisky.
She also sent a note: if you can’t kill the bad ones, the really bad ones, I know someone who deals in justice.
When he got back from Texas with his newly-recruited posse, he sent her (at Laurel’s suggestion) some samples of fiber plants they’d been working on, and a student of theirs who appeared very good at Finding with a note They need summer study. Teach them what you do?
He wasn’t at all surprised when her next package included a contract on behalf of the Finder. He didn’t think twice before he signed it — though he did ask Drake to read it over first.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1305780.html. You can comment here or there.
Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
A sequel to a feral cat-girl
Mike was far less help than Luke had hoped he’d be. Mostly, Mike was standing off to one side, laughing. “Luke, only you could go looking for students and find a feral tiger.”
“She’s not one of ours. At least, I don’t recognize her and she looks a little too old to be one we were supposed to get.” Luke shifted his grip as the catgirl tried to bite him. “I don’t think she has rabies but I don’t really want to find out the hard way, and I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Have you tried talking to her?” Mike smirked from his safe position out of harm’s way. “I know that’s not really your specialty….”
“You try talking to her. I think she thinks I’m dinner.”
“You know, I think some chatting would do you good. Just say hi to her, Luke.”
“Mike!“
“Just a couple words, then I’ll help.”
Luke sighed. “Hello, kitty.” He felt stupid. She was snarling at him more like a cat than a person. Right, what would he say to an unhappy animal? “Easy, there. I don’t want to hurt you.” He mellowed his voice. “I don’t. I have some food back in the van, actually, if you’re hungry.” She wasn’t over-thin, but if she was wild, she was probably hungry. “And fresh water. Do you understand? Water.”
She’d stilled and was staring at him. He didn’t know if she followed anything he said, but she seemed to be relaxing.
Then, suddenly, she stared over his shoulder. Her ears went back and she hissed.
Luke turned, half-losing his grip on the girl as he did so, just as what was clearly a dog-boy leapt on Mike.
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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1305115.html. You can comment here or there.
Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
Explanation: (Cal you can skip this part you were there)
Okay, here goes.
So: This is in the Lady/Sword timeline after Cya releases Carew and Leo releases Jeska (in late spring/early summer). Cya doesn’t Keep someone – a very notable even – because she has Plans.
These Plans are, OOC, part of the merging of the timelines. IC, they’ll show up soon enough.
Luke gets antsy, the way he does when Boom starts doing something different, and comes to visit to ask them about it.
In the course of that visit, Cya gets a little tetchy, and not just the purposeful level of tetchy she was doing to prod Luke (see: plans).
She gets a map of the former US and Finds with her power the five places where Addergoole alum actually need Luke’s intervention. She highlights them and tells him exactly what the map is for.
Luke, of course, is going to go look, because what else do you do when faced with that? Not go try to save the students you taught who might be at risk?
And yes, Cya is up to something. But this is Cya. She is always up to something.
I wonder what she and Xanatos would do if faced with each other?
Luke was paying attention.
He had been paying more and more attention for the last decade, but now he felt like he/ was coming out of a fog. He was looking at students, he was asking them questions and actually getting answers; he was asking other teachers questions and getting some very interesting answers.
Last year he had stopped two cases of potential abuse before they’d gotten that far, and when Regine had argued with him, he had raised his eyebrows and waited, an expression he was pretty sure he’d picked up from Cya.
From the grumbling way that Regine had handled that one – he’d brought Mike in on that, too, because one of the abusers had been one of Mike’s Students – she’d seen a resemblance, too.
He was paying attention, but the map Cynara had handed him had still thrown him for a loop. Those are your five Addergoole alum most in need of your intervention or the intervention of the school as a whole, she’d said, and pointed at a map, one, two, three, four, five.
He looked at the first one. It was around a place he was pretty sure wasn’t a town anymore. The last time he’d been there – had to be at least a generation ago now – it had been a wasteland, a ghost town with half the buildings crumbled, the skeletons of the dead still where they’d fallen.
That first one felt pretty intense, like exclamation points. I’d look at that one first. She’d said it casually. She wielded a power that could find anything like some people wielded minor telekinesis. Luke still wasn’t sure whether he ought to be running away, attacking, or asking for more help.
He looked at the map one more time and took flight. There was someone who needed help, with exclamation points. He was going to go help.
He flew off having left Mike a note as to where he’d gone and why. If he didn’t come back, someone would need to clean up the mess, he supposed. It was a strange thought for him, if he didn’t make it back. Those weren’t thoughts he often – ever! – had. Not in centuries.
It could be a trap. He didn’t think it was. He was pretty sure that traps weren’t Cynara’s style, or, if they were, they wouldn’t come with paper trails.
Cynara, he reminded himself, was Feu Drake’s Student. He’d had more than a few concerns over cy’Drake over the years, and some of them had been justified.
He still didn’t think it was a trap.
He Worked the air and the forces around him, folded his wings tight against his back, and shot through the air quickly. This was too far away. He should have used a teleporter. He should have used a car. Something.
He flew, fast and arrow-like, zooming through the air, not looking at the scenery more than he had to to orient himself.
He landed at sunset, an easy three hours’ normal flight away, strapped himself high up in a tree, ate three of Laurel’s energy bars, and slept until dawn.
The next day he pushed himself, feeling the pressure of Cya’s pretty intense, like exclamation points.
He saw the place come into sight an hour after he started flying. It looked even more of a wasteland than it had the last time he passed it. The roads, such as they were, leading into it had been marked with yellow and orange paint in a skull and crossbones. There were at least three teams that he knew of that did something similar: Warning, this place is dangerous. Sometimes it meant this place hates fae.
He circled out of easy arrow- or gunshot range, looking for something, anything. The place was overgrown with vines, twisting around all the buildings. In some cases, they’d actually pulled the buildings down.
“Here! Help!” The voice was thin, barely audible. It could be a trap. Luke swooped down anyway.
“Here!” A second voice joined the first. Luke homed in on the voices, found them in a broken-roofed former house. He recognized one of the right away. Heraclea. There was no mistaking that height or that magenta hair. .
He perched on the broken edge of the roof and looked down at them. They were both tangled in vines, looking pale and far too thin. Patronus, that was the other one. Of course. If Heraclea was here… He’d been so proud of them, staying together after graduation. “Don’t you have Huamu?” he demanded. Not that either of them looked in any shape to do any Workings right now.
“Don’t let them touch you,” Heraclea warned. “They’re… not exactly Huamu. They’re not exactly they.“
“They’re uh. Some sort of fae. And neither of us are great at the whole flesh thing, but there’s definitely a mind.”
“Where’s the kids?” Luke’s heart was in his throat. Had he taken too long to get here?
“I think- I think there’s a nursery.” Heraclea’s voice was tight. “They’re too little, we think. Too little to be good eating. Luke, if you can’t get us, get them.”
“Where’s the mind?” he demanded. “Is it sensing me, here?”
Patronus muttered a long Working that left him even more ashen and faint-looking. “The mind, it’s in – it’s the Town Hall, I think. And it only knows what it touches. It’s blind, but it can sense wind currents. Luke, it’s huge.”
Luke set his jaw. “Then I’d better surprise it. Hold on, kids. I’ll get you out of there.”
He rose up into the air and circled. There was the Town Hall, and now that he looked, he could see that the vines all got bigger as they went in that direction. there wasn’t a hole in the roof in this one, though. He circled twice before finding a place to land, on the edge of the fountain facing the town hall.
He ate another energy bar, saving the last two for the kids, and stared at the building. He was going to have to do this quickly, not give the thing a chance to react.
He ran over the Workings four times in his head, holding perfectly still, and then shot them off as quietly and as quickly as he had ever spoken. The first one cut off every vine leading out of the building, Destroyed a long stretch of the plant-flesh and froze the outer end of the stumps. The second one found everything that counted as Tlacatl – flesh of makers, humans and fae – in the town. The children were not in the building with the monster; they were several buildings away.
The third one wrapped every Tlacatl being not the monster in a force shield, while the fourth Working ripped through the building the monster’s core was in, pulling every bit of heat out of it and freezing the thing solid.
Luke walked in – strolled in, if he was being honest, and found the being that looked almost human, if bloated, green, gigantic, and frozen – at the heart of it. He took aim with his rowan sword and cut the thing’s head off.
After that, it was a matter of collecting the kids – not just Patronus’ and Heraclea’s three, either; there were seven pre-pubescent children being fed on some sort of plant nectar, freeing Patronus and Heraclea, and burning the rest of the plant-monster until there was nothing but ash left.
Exclamation points, he thought to himself, and took a long hard look at the other four points on Cya’s map.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1304545.html. You can comment here or there.
Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
So ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anke is doing #faepril over on tumblr (see here) so I decided to write some fae descriptions. Here’s Luke wrangling a wild catgirl.
I kid you not, this showed up on the random Ellehemaei generator.
She wasn’t so much hiding as she was stalking him, Luke realized. He kept getting flashes of her from the corner of his eye – she’d left her Mask down so he could see the catlike ears, the long lashing tail, both striped in a ginger almost the same color as her hair, which fell in wild curls to both sides of her face. He could see the muscles working in her arms as she swung down from a tree branch to land on a roof, but then he lost sight of her for a moment before catching her behind a building, tail lashing, far too much of her dark-tanned honey-brown skin showing. Was she wearing clothes?
It took him several minutes of waiting patiently, sitting in the center of what had been a quaint little town some time ago, before he realized she was actually blinking out of existence. Then she blinked in front of him and he moved, fast as he ever had, and managed to catch her, gently, one hand on each wrist and stiff-arming.
She snarled, teeth like a big cat’s, all sharp and dangerous and – oh, one was broken, that had to hurt, and struggled, but it seemed like she couldn’t flash away when he had her held and she wasn’t stronger than him, no matter how strong she was.
Of course, now he had the tiger by the tail, as it was. “Mike,” Luke bellowed – at this point he wasn’t going to spook this little wild fae any more than he already had. “A hand?”
Here, kitty, kitty: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1305115.html
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1303593.html. You can comment here or there.
Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
anke is doing #faepril over on tumblr (see here) so I decided to write some fae descriptions. Here's Luke wrangling a wild catgirl. (this one comes before Luke’s Homework (http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1285682.html) and after Luke Tries to Apologize..
“Stop looming, Birdbrain, you’re going to curdle the paint.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Neither does you lingering by the door like you’re trying to figure out ‘goth’ decades too late.”
“Thanks,” Luke muttered. “I figured out goth just fine.”
“Really? Now that I have to hear. Not now, though. What brings you here melting the finish on my doorframe?”
Luke actually found himself glancing at the doorframe — no. He was not quite that palpable about his discomfort. “I wanted to know if I could borrow a couple of your Students.”
“Luke, darling, if you want to get laid, there are less stressful ways, you know.”
“NOt for that!” He flapped irritably at Mike, who looked innocently back at him.
“No? I can’t imagine you sleeping with your own Students. ALl boys again this year, aren’t they?”
His wings twitched, but he didn’t let them flap. “Doug like the women warriors.”
“Mmm-hrmm. Quite a bit, from the looks of him & Ana — all right, all right.” Mike put up both hands in mock-surrender. “What do you want to borrow my Students for?”
“Couple things. Wanna ask some people about being Kept.”
“Well, that’s an interesting line of inquisition from you, Hawk.” She pointedly didn’t mention that she’d been Kept, of course.
“Yeah. Been… uh. I’ve been thinking.”
“You said. And I said I’d noticed.” She smirked at him. “So. Questions. And…?”
“And I want to take a field trip, and I want some other points of view.”
“You really have been thinking.”
“I said that.” He pulled his wings in tighter.
“Yeah, but… all right. Yes. As long as they’re willing, you have my permission. Who were you thinking?”
His wings didn’t get any less tight. “Denny.”
“…Denny?” Mike giggled. “Oh, definitely. I’d pay to see that. Do tell me what you learn, won’t you?”
“…of course. Thank you.” Luke fled before his pride could be damaged any further.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1291012.html. You can comment here or there.
Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
(this one comes before yesterdays’ Luke’s Homework (http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1285682.html) story. That’s what I get for writing before we finish the RP…)
“I’ve been thinking.” As intros went, leaning in the doorway of Mike’s office with his feet still planted on the hallway floor, it left something to be desired. But he had been, and that had been the best he could come up with.
“I can tell.” Mike smirked up at him. “Come in, feather-brain. Keep doing that and we’ll have an audience in no time.”
Luke came in, closing the door behind him. “It’s summer,” he muttered, before letting himself get back to the topic. “You can tell?”
“Your wings twitch when you’re thinking.”
Luke spread his wings, catching himself after only a hand-spread, and pulled them back in close. “They twitch a lot.”
“But not so much when you’re not talking to people. What’s on your mind, Hunting-Hawk?”
There was something formal about the way Mike used his Name. Luke fought to keep his wings still and his voice level.
None of that mattered if Mike decided to read his emotions, but Mike usually avoided that.
“I owe you an apology.” He let it hang in the air just long enough to know he had Mike’s attention, and then continued quickly, before the Daeva could blow it off with a joke. “For the time when I Kept you.”
“You really have been thinking. Luca, that was lifetimes ago. Centuries ago.”
“You always said I was a bit slow, didn’t you?”
“But Luca…” Mike sounded nearly plaintive. “What for? You got my bacon out of the fire. Not the first time, not remotely the last time.”
Luca was worse than Hunting-Hawk. Luke took a couple breaths. “Because I was an idiot, and I got all messed up about – about you being a Daeva. And it meant I didn’t Keep you as well as I could have.”
“Oh, that.” Mike flapped a hand at him. “Come on, I figured it out a long time ago. Back then, I just didn’t know you’d been raised by Mara and humans. It makes everything make so much more sense. Besides,” Mike grinned at him, “if I got upset every time you were an idiot, I’d always be mad at you.”
“Damnit, Treesap, can’t you take anything seriously?” He didn’t mean to bellow, but he was feeling like everything fit wrong, and Mike just kept smiling at him.
And now the smile got a little sickly around the edges. “No, Feathers. Because if I take it seriously I’ll weep, and then you’ll bellow, and we’ll both be miserable, and that’s not what either of us want. You’re sorry. I hear you. But I don’t know why, and I don’t know what it means.”
“What it…” Luke sat down – there were always backless stools in Mike’s office, even though Mike’s Students almost never had wings – with a heavy thump. “It means I was a moron to push you away.”
“You were a Mara. I mean, I know it’s nearly the same word for a reason, but it’s not like I expect any different. Look, Luca.” Mike leaned forward, chin in hands, elbows on knees. “I accept your apology. I mean, it’s nice you finally realized you were kind of a jerk. But I’m not kidding. You saved my life that time. You’ve saved my life loads. And I appreciate that more than I’m worried about you being sort of, uh, brusque and unwilling as a Keeper all those years ago.”
“But…” Luke sighed. This was not what he’d expected, not at all.
“Think some more,” Mike advised. Somehow, Luke couldn’t even take offense from it. “When you figure out what you want, let me know.”
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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
So. This came about because of a roleplay conversation between Leo and Luke, sometime… a couple few decades after Coverleaf is built, so in like the 70s, 80s cohorts, IIRC.
But I think it’ll happen in any timeline eventually, once Luke realizes how many assumptions he’s been working on.
“I want you to tell me about being Kept.” Luke had, although he’d deny it if ever asked, practiced that line until it no longer sounded stupid. “What you remember the most, what you hated, anything you liked.”
The student — Denny, a boy born for cy’Linden if there ever had been one, never mind that his mother was cy’Valerian and his father sy’Ginger — raised his eyebrows at LUke. “Do I have to?”
“Your Mentor asked you to cooperate,” Luke reminded him. He would notlet himself get baited. The cy’Linden kids knew how easy it was, and it was practically a sport for them.
Denny had to be thinking the same thing. “Is this punishment for… that thing with the water balloons?”
Despite himself, Luke smiled. The thing with the water balloons had actually been pretty clever. “No. If it helps, you can think of it as homework.”
“…from the gym teacher?” Denny’s body language was far stiller than his facial expressions, which had been made for the stage.
(was there theatre anywhere? DId Cloverleaf have theatre? He should find out… later.)
“Would you rather run laps?” Luke let it be a growl. Denny’s shoulders suggested that he was getting more nervous the more Luke failed to rise to any of his bait.
It worked. Denny looked at him as if he’d asked something particularly foolish. “Well, yeah. Of course.”
“I’d rather be running laps,” Luke admitted. It had the benefit of being completely true. “But this is homework for me, too.”
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Mirrored from Alder's Grove Fiction.
chanter_greenie's first prompt.inventrix for editing.inventrix: Only a Flesh Woundinventrix: House Arrestinventrix: Keeping Up Appearancesinventrix: Reversalinventrix: All According to Plan...? inventrix: Uncomfortable Developmentsinventrix: Chain of Commandinventrix: (no subject)inventrix' Chain of Commandinventrix - /directly/ after Chessboard.inventrix, most notably this one, which comes directly before the story below. inventrix, and now I'm going to need a TOC for this.
timeasmymeasure
