aldersprig: (Reynard)
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Last posted about a year ago~



Reynard was swaying. He wasn’t sure when it had started, but he realized, as the woman’s — Elle’s — his owner’s hand landed on his shoulder that he had been leaning to one side, muttering.

“When’s the last time you ate?” She sounded angry. Reynard didn’t look up at her; if he had, he was pretty sure he’d have fallen over.
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aldersprig: (Reynard)
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The hallway was a strange off-green that looked naggingly familiar to Reynard. When they passed the second display case, this one showing off a variety of long-dead cell phones, he began to understand where they were. When they passed a fire door, both doors wedged open with pieces of wood, he was certain.

"You took over an elementary school?" That explained the chalkboard...

"Actually, we buried it. It had survived the collapse almost entirely intact."

"Buried?" Reynard looked around at the soft, indirect light that infused the place. "But the - the classroom we were in, there was a view."

"It's a really neat Working. One of my crew did it in a lot of the windows; it keeps it from feeling tight and claustrophobic down here."
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aldersprig: (Reynard)
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The woman named Elle - who, it seemed, owned him now - was slowly cutting hawthorn off of Reynard.

His life had not gotten surreal so much as it had gone back to a weird sort of reality.

“You were taught by Professor Valerian?” he tried. “And...” he spoke slowly. “You remember me.”

“You were several years ahead of me. I’m not surprised you don’t remember me.” She patted the top of his head idly. There were no hawthorn branches there, at least. “You may have spent a lot of time in other henhouses, but you didn’t ever, as far as I know, directly poach.”

Poach. Very carefully, he tilted his head so he could look her in the face. “You were Kept.”

“Isn’t everyone?”
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aldersprig: (KinkBingo2)
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"My name is Elle." The woman had the wire cutters far too close to parts of Reynard that he was very, very fond of. He could feel the cold metal against his skin, and was a bit too much of a coward to look at what she was doing. Not that he could move his head in that direction, anyway... "You are in New Buffalo. I suppose Joshua passed on the news to Addergoole East, and when you ran afoul of Lady Storm and her - mmm - her man - well, here you are." The clippers moved, and Reynard's left leg was suddenly free. "Please try not to move too much until I'm done. You're all over hawthorn, and you could hurt yourself."

Reynard held still. It had been, he thought, years - almost a decade - since he'd been Kept, but he thought the words had the feel of an order around the edges, even softened by please and try.

She had said several important things, if only the clippers and the shifting and prickling of the hawthorn wasn't distracting him. "Elle?" he tried. "Is that -"

"That's the name my father gave me. I can't say he was the best at the whole thing." The clippers moved upwards, over Reynard's belly.

"Well, my father named me Fox." He tried to shrug, and found he wasn't really moving at all. Well, that might answer that. "And your Mentor...?" If she remembered him from Addergoole...

"Professor Valerian named me the Stone Gardener." She patted his thigh with her leather-clad hands. "And I earned it, much like you earned your Name... Fox."
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“And that’s how I ended up Belonging to a terrifying mass of muscle, ma’am.” Reynard did his best to make a bow, although the bonds of probably-hawthorn restricted his movement enough to make it only a twitch. "How I ended up Belonging to a -" he coughed. "Forgive me, ma'am, to a beautiful woman like yourself is another story."

The woman studied him for a minute. She seemed neither be offended by the compliment nor complimented by it - for the life of him, Reynard couldn't read a single emotion off of her face. He was out of practice working without magic.

"That is a very interesting story." She spoke slowly. Shit, was she - differently abled? He'd never belonged to anyone slow before. "I even believe most of it." She pursed her lips. "It definitely sounds like you."

That again. And he couldn't remember her at all. He coughed, and went for a completely non-committal "Ma'am?"

"It will do for now, at least." She picked up a pair of wire cutters from her table of tools.

"Ma'am?" This time, Reynard knew his voice went high-pitched. The things you could do with wire cutters... "Ma'am, I..."

"Shhh. You belong to me, Reynard called Fox in the Henhouse. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to torture you." He wasn't entirely clear if the repetition was clarification or reassurance. He wasn't reassured, either way.

"Ma'am?" This time it was a whisper. He didn't have much choice.

She started clipping, far too near parts of him he was very fond of. "When I've got you out of this, we can talk living arrangements."

Well, at least that meant he was probably going to live.

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aldersprig: (KinkBingo2)
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This to Rix's commission


Reynard loved telling stories. He had, in more than one town, earned his supper (and, more often than not, a place in a bed or three) telling tales - fairy tales, sometimes, tales of the days that had been, horror stories of the war.

He told them all the same, fiction and truth - he told them as prettily as possible, made them as engaging as he could, and embellished where he needed to to make the story flow.

He thought, perhaps, in this situation, he ought to keep the embellishment to a minimum. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make the story interesting.

After all, he wanted this woman to like him, didn’t he?Read more... )

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aldersprig: a woman's wrists in handcuffs (cuffs)
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The woman - the woman it appeared Reynard might belong to - was staring at him. Her eyebrows were raised in clear doubt, and her expression was nothing he'd call a smile, no matter how generously he wanted to color the truth.

He shifted again. He knew that was a bad idea; every time he did it, another thorn pricked him. But he couldn't help it. He'd never been all that good at sitting still.

"It's not that exciting of a story." It was a weak protest, in part because he was pressing against the orders and suggestions she'd put on him, in part because his brain was fogged and his thoughts were moving slower than molasses.

But it was a protest because of those things, too, and so he stalled for time while he tried to come up with a plausible coloring of events he barely remembered.

She gave him three heartbeats to believe he'd gotten a break. "At the moment, fox-boy, it is the most important story of your life, because it determines what happens next. Considering your current situation, I'd tell it carefully, concisely, and well if I were you."

Was there a single woman who'd graduated Addergoole with a sense of humor?

Well, if he'd gone through Addergoole as a girl, he might not have, either. Reynard shrugged, despite the prickling of poison in his arms, and gifted his probably-Owner with the best smile he could muster up.

"Yes, ma'am. It was something like this..." He dropped his voice, and tried for the storytelling cadences he'd learned from his Mentor.
    Know, oh Mistress (he began), that I am not an evil man, not as aught but the book people would have you believe.

    (The woman leaned back, and something that could have been a smile crossed her lips.)

    But I was Named truly, and truly I lived up to my Name, ever since the day that the school released me...
aldersprig: a close up of an alder leaf (Leaf)
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Reynard's brain felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton. His short-term memory - and, he was pretty sure, some of his long-term - was foggy, muddled, or just plain gone. And what he could remember - well, wasn't the best set of memories.

He was fairly certain the woman sitting in front of him wouldn't take any of that for an answer. What was more, although she hadn't given him a direct order, he could feel the pressure of the bond on him.

That was strange. But he wouldn't get any answers until he gave her what she wanted. If then.

He cleared his throat, and found that that too hurt.

"I was - I was...I guess I was being a 'fox in the henhouse.' If you remember my name, you know I'm not..." He was being kind of pitiful. He swallowed against the pain and tried again. "I was having fun. Seducing a double handful of pretty people." The memory brought a nostalgic smile to his lips. "Balancing as many secrets as I could and getting as many of them in bed with me at once at the same time. I was having a blast."

He risked a look at her face, and was a bit relieved to find that she was smirking at him.

"I remember that about you."

"I - I'm glad?" He wished he could remember her.

"Not a bad thing, being remembered. Go on."

And now that, that was an order. Reynard swallowed again. "Turns out I was somewhere someone else was making a home and she, she didn't like what I was doing. Called me out, her and her beast." He twitched his hands to make a gesture, only then remembering he was bound. "Fuck, ow! Big guy." He smirked sideways. "Did it right and fair, too. Next thing I know I'm on my knees and this gorgeous redhead is whispering in my ear, you can be mine or you can be his." He shrugged.

"Next thing I know, I wake up here with your knife pointing at me."
aldersprig: (flower aldersprig)
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Reynard had, in his past, been in sticky situations. He'd earned his Name fairly - if humorously - and being caught in unfortunate circumstances had been a large part of earning that Name.

But he had not been, as far as he knew, in any situation quite as as uncomfortable, quite as strange, as this one. He tested his bonds again; the prick of thorns into his wrists reminded him quickly why he wasn't doing that.

"They Named me Fox in the Henhouse." He picked every word carefully - not as weapons, the way he did when he was on a hunt, but as shields. "My Mentor did."

"VanderLinden." The woman smirked at him. Reynard didn't like that smile. "I remember how you earned it."

He swallowed. "Ah?" He wiggled again, and, again, remembered why he wasn't doing that.

She flicked her hand to the side, dismissing the train of thought. "So, how did you end up in a crate on my doorstep?"

"Ah." He twitched again. "I..." He swallowed quietly. There had been a town, and some pretty girls, some pretty boys, and then...

Reynard shook his head, trying to clear it. "I pissed off the wrong people."

"I guessed that." She pulled a letter out of her pocket and read. "'This statue is making a mess of my garden, but I know you go for this sort of thing.' And then on the inside package, 'there's a fox making trouble in all my henhouses; do you have a fox coop?'"

"I wasn't..." He swallowed. "I didn't think I was making that much trouble.... Oh!" The memory forced its way to the front of his mind. "Damn. Ow."

The woman slid into a chair and leaned her chin in her hands. "I'm listening."

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aldersprig: (flower aldersprig)
Introduction here

Reynard swallowed hard. "Ah...?"

The woman ignored his question, as was her right. "What's your name?" She was pulling a pair of leather gloves from her back pocket and sliding them on. He found her fingers facinating. Of course, she currently held his life in them. That was understandably interesting.

Reynard knew this answer. "Whatever you wish it to be, mistress."

She made a noise like a laugh, and he found himself looking to her face. It wasn't beautiful, he thought, but she still took his breath away. Pointed chin, high cheekbones, and a mass of dark hair, all of it framing the most sardonic smile Reynard had ever seen. "Somebody taught you your lines. Was it recently, before they put you in the box? Or was it back before?"

Box? He tried to look around, and found that, while moving his head was surprisingly painful, it was, in actuality, possible.

He saw a room, bare of almost everything except a big chalkboard and three big windows - the view was of a wheatfield, and behind that a stone wall. He saw the woman, and a small table, full of tools that made his heart drop out of his chest. And he saw the remains of a crate, if his guess was any good, most of it to the left of him.

Box? He looked up at the woman, whose expression suggested that, while she was waiting patiently, she wasn't going to be patient about things much longer.

She wanted his name. And she wanted to know who had trained him.

"I pay attention, mistress." With luck, that would be enough. "And, ah, they called me Reynard, when I was free."

"Reynard." She took one of his ears - fox ears, of course, or his name would have simply been ridiculous, and his Name as well. "I remember you. They called you Fox in the Henhouse."

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aldersprig: (Aldersprig Leaves Raining)
Reynard woke to the point of a blade.

It was pointing, very, ah, pointedly, right between his eyes, and it was very clearly wood. He found it held his attention very... sharply.

The blade moved, although not in a way that he found at all comforting; it shifted from eye-crossingly close to his nose to ball-tighteningly close to his throat.

"The next word out of your mouth...." The voice warred for his attention with the blade. It was what had been called a whisky voice, throaty and husky. Definitely female, though. "...had better be yes."

Reynard swallowed, forcing his throat against the blade. Bad idea. He shifted - tried to shift. Something pricked into his wrists, which were, it appeared, tied behind his back.

Ah, it was all coming back to him. Yes, she had him in a very... tight... position.

"You Belong to me."

Yes, yes, that had been what he'd thought she'd say. He swallowed, reminding himself forcefully of the blade at his throat. "Yes."

He waited for the air pop, for the feeling of falling. It didn't come.

Still, the blade stopped poking him. He tried, hard, to bring his vision into focus.

She was putting the blade away. She was sheathing the blade, on her belt. That might be important later. Reynard swallowed. "Ah...?"

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