Our Pens, Your Pennies

ENTIRELY SPECULATIVE. Takes place the summer after the 46th year of the Addergoole school. 847 words. Playing with an idea for an alternate ending for this character.

It was odd, walking through the world now. She’d spent years – decades – underground, in a reform camp-made-training ground. A band of Ellehemaei had decided that the only way to win the car the returned gods had started was to heal those that had been broken – by force, if necessary. It was them that had kidnapped her from her makeshift camp. Them that had sent one of their own off, bearing her face – her name – her memories.

Them that had arranged for her death, to minimize the number of people looking for her.

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In response (long-awaited) to “I.D.” 260 words.

Silas held his breath, watching. Waiting.

He just wasn’t sure he knew what he was waiting for.

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Year 31 of the Addergoole School. Viewpoint: Oriax, a 28th Cohort student. 647 words.

Oriax didn’t want to relive his first year of Addergoole. If he’d been any better at Abatu Intinn, he’s make himself forget it. But he didn’t have the verb, no matter how well he knew the noun.

He could known your mind, but not erase it. Someday he’d find a verb he could say that would make Her face leave him. …Along with the rest of the year.

“Damn it. Damn Her.” Oriax laid back in his bed – the first night alone since he’d released Asherah. She’d gotten what she wanted – closer to the water dragon weakling he’d Kept before – so her “ploy” was of no further use to him.

He didn’t want to be near Her anymore than he had to, anyway.

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Year 31 of the Addergoole School. Viewpoint: Pachua, a first-year Student. 775 words.

Being sent away from home wasn’t as bad as he’d wished. It meant he was further from his father.

Getting to the school – the underground bunker with everything too fancy – was weird.

The students were too friendly. The teachers all seemed just a shade off. The lit teacher was too pretty to be a boy and too butch to be a woman. The gym teacher – and his…shadow – reminded him of his father. All of it got his anxiety on edge, more than he was happy with.

And then all the lights had gone off.

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Some time very far after the apoc. Viewpoint: Gabriele. 711 words.

The end of the world had come and gone.

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Set after the previous on-going series of Luke and Mystral drabbles, but not by terribly long. Viewpont: Mystral. Eventually I’ll write someone else. 686 words.

They’d been determined.

Despite every care – and with all three of them putting up a hell of a fight – the Oncoming Storm was no match for twenty people, unprepared. They’d taken her and the children, keeping a burlap sack over her head as they traveled. She’d been sick from the drugs they’d laced into her blood – head foggy and unable to Work with a gag in her mouth.

She couldn’t hear her children anymore. Where were her children?

Where was Luke?

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After “Finale”. 362 words.

It took her a moment to realize Luke was speaking. She watched the Working take effect, stitching him up. Somewhere, somewhat irrationally, she was frustrated at her own inability to do that Working with any fluency.

She shook it off.

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After “Mutts”. 325 words.

<Come in this way. Watch for traps.>

She moved silently, following the map Luke gave her. She unsheathed her blades before her feet touched the floor of her house.

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After “Fire”. 330 words.

She should have guessed, in the end.

A slave ring. Of course.

There was no fire in the eyes of the woman before him. She was a child of ice, after all, on both sides of the family and through more than one generation.

But she could give him his fire.

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After “Identity”. 224 words.

Silas himself was starting to almost feel bad for the boy.

…Almost.

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