Alder's Grove

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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.
( Read more... )

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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?”
( Read more... )

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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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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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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."

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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