Meta: Falling Star

This was my first serious foray back into original fiction after months and months of fan fiction. It's a very different process, because characterization and worldbuilding are about creation as opposed to adherence or clear alteration. In writing fanfiction (at least the way I do), the focus is more on building emotional connections between characters and having a well-paced adventure, so that's what I got to focus on.

Falling Star involved a lot of research on the late fourteenth century in Europe, and then throwing out or altering parts of it because magic. I wallow in description a lot: probably too much, for people who don't like historical detail, but it was a lot of fun to take the time to show that I had done the research. Lord of the Isles as a title is a bit of an exception, since in the real world, it's a Scottish title.

Titles for stories are usually a challenge for me, and I generally hate them after the fact, but I like this one, because it works on a couple levels. The body of the action takes place during a meteor shower, so under cover of what are often misnamed falling or shooting stars, with a lot of important bits deliberately staged at night (the introduction, the first real conversation with Arthur, finding out what Rigel had done). All of the characters except Eadweard are also named after stars: Vega for the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, Arthur as an Anglicization of Arcturus,  the brightest star in Bootes (and also to suggest that he's a good King by way of association with King Arthur), Rigel as the brightest star in Orion. I get a lot of mileage out of that one astronomy class I took in university. In hindsight, I'd have gone for something like Albireo (from the constellation Cygnus) for the King of Alba, because, while it might not suggest a common name for an English King like a modified version of Edward does, it sounds more like Alba and might further suggest that this is Alba rather than England, and things are different here.

Blog fiction: Falling Star

“Let me hold you, please.”

“We can’t. I’m promised to another.”

“Just for tonight?”

She kissed him, fierce and sorrowful. “I love you. Now go.”

As Rigel climbed out the window, a star fell in the distance, the first of a week-long meteor

shower.

Lyra leaned out after him. “Don’t pine for me. It has to be this way. I am securing an alliance, and Arthur is not a bad man, so I will be doing my best to be happy.”

Rigel paused on the trellis and met her eyes. The kitchen garden was a long way down. “Does that mean you won’t miss me? That you won’t long for me at all? That you’ll forget?”

She closed her eyes briefly and swallowed. When she opened them again, her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “No.”

Suddenly shame-faced in addition to despairing, Rigel looked away. “I hope he treats you as you deserve.”

Lyra closed the windows reluctantly and watched the moon through the leaded glass. By the time the waning gibbous moon had set, she would be married. She set her forehead on the cool, indifferent glass and prayed for it to stand still.

Fic: Victoria

For a city forty miles from the infamous Forks, WA, Victoria gets surprisingly little rain. This is because the Olympic mountains catch all of it for us; on a good day, one can stand in the sun on Dallas Road and watch the rain fall on Washington.

But Dallas Road is all the way out in James Bay, and just the view isn’t worth the 45-minute walk from city hall when one has the glory of downtown to explore. I walk down to Chinatown past the condemned apartment building and the charming self-contained Victoria house, past the construction pit that will be the parking lot for the swank shops going in at the bottom level of the redone Hudson Bay building. The chirping ‘walk’ sign signals me, the two business-women in pumps and skirts, and the meth-head waiting on the corner to cross. I duck into the old brick yarn shop on the corner and browse for a minute, enjoying the air-conditioning and half-heartedly contemplating Christmas presents. It’s July, but if I’m going to make anything, now’s the time to start. But the sheer range in the knitting store makes it hard to choose, and intimidating; what if they judge me for using the wrong kind of yarn for the pattern I’ll inevitably have to buy? They’ve always been nice to me, but I’ve heard rumors about what led to the local knitting societies splitting in two.

Most of the local arts scene is like that, though; the two straight literary magazines are only on speaking terms because of shared editorial staff; the University-managed one is much pickier, and charges more for each copy (but also gives away more free copies), and they can, because they get government sponsorship. The community issue has an acceptance rate of an obscene twenty percent because, without the government sponsorship, they don’t have nearly the advertising budget, and so rarely sell out a print run. And neither of the straight literary magazines so much as acknowledges the Science Fiction magazine unless it’s winning another award; genre fiction makes both editorial boards uneasy and faintly afraid. They are more comfortable with poetry, and would publish their magazines entirely as chapbooks if they weren’t so much work and there was some clear way to pay the bills. And if Munro’s, the largest independent bookstore in the city, whose facade looks somewhere between a Greek temple and a Georgian bank, carried chapbooks. But Munro’s hallowed halls only carry things which have been machine-bound, and so the literary magazines continue contracting with the printers.

The yarn store doesn’t hold me long - people are trouping in for some class or other. I continue towards the harbour and Chinatown, and pass the Chinese school and the Lee Club and the city-commissioned mural which faces the building with the aged and faded “7-up: the Un-cola” ad taking up the upper storey and a half.

I’m in luck; the Chinese bakery is still open. I go in and jostle with four other customers in the shopfront the size of my bathroom to get my hands - separated by medium of tongs - on pineapple buns and melon bread and an egg tart and a Korean barbecue roll. The barbecue roll is still warm, probably fresh from the kitchen in the back, where the owner bakes everything on display. I buy my goods in cash from the owner’s wife in a nearly silent transaction; I speak Mandarin, not Cantonese, which in hindsight seems a silly choice. At the time I was planning things that were utterly derailed by Nanna’s Alzheimers. As I put my change away she goes back to an animated conversation with an old Chinese woman sipping a Tim Horton’s coffee. When people around me are speaking a language I don’t understand, I always have a sneaking suspicion they’re talking about me. Which I know is silly, but, well, I’ve caught some of the French-speakers here at it a few times. The best part is the looks on their faces when I spew Parisian gutter-French at them in retaliation.

I hurry past the tattoo parlor next door, where I can see some aging biker getting something on his bicep, and round the corner to Chinatown proper. It’s the second-oldest Chinatown in North America, and some locals will argue that it’s really the oldest, since San Francisco burned down in 1906 and therefore shouldn’t count anymore. Dragon Alley, which used to be one of the main housing projects in Chinatown, has been turned into upscale shops. It was first designed as a way to pack as many Chinese immigrants into one place as possible, according to the plaque on one wall, but it’s been ‘reclaimed’ by designer dog treats, an exclusive hair studio, and what I’ve heard is an upscale brothel, which has a lovely little water feature in front of it.

But Dragon Alley leads away from my destination, so after I’ve bought Ramune at the crowded Asian grocery store I jaywalk across the main drag of Chinatown (a sleepy two-lane cobbled street) and turn down what looks like a dingy access passage. It opens quickly into Fan Tan alley, the spinster sister of Dragon Alley. There are two resale shops, a used record store, and Triple Spiral, a shop that sells mostly jewelry and Tarot cards. All of the shopfronts are painted bright colors, even though the shopfronts themselves are just the strips of wood outlining windows and doors in the red brick of the colossal building they are all carved out of.

I could cut over to Wharf Street here, avoid all the foot traffic of the end of the work day, but I head to Government Street instead. It’s Thursday, which means that the chalk artist whose name I’ve never learned will have recreated another masterpiece on the sidewalk. I’ve only recognized two so far - Girl With A Pearl Earring and Mona Lisa - but they’re gorgeous, and I love that we have someone here who can do that. He’s done a detail from Waterhouse, this week. I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and juggle my bakery box to dig out a notebook and pen. I want to look up the full painting when I get home (I, unlike everyone even on this island out of time, don’t have a smartphone). I garner a couple annoyed looks from passerby forced to step around me, but other people are slowing to look at the chalk, too.

Past the gargantuan Bay building, which dominates arguably between one and four city blocks, depending how you divvy up the warren of downtown into “blocks,” it’s an easy slope downhill to the Inner Harbour. Darth Vader, a local violinist, is just packing up for the day at his corner across from Visitor Information. I smile at him as I go past, though I can’t see whether he smiles back behind the mask. There’s always some kind of knot of tourists in front of Visitor Information, and I slip through them on my way to the stairs. The stairs hug the seawall on the way down, and are wide and shallow and a little uneven, since they’ve been part of the promenade for something like a century. As usual there’s a mix of homeless artists under patio umbrellas obviously nicked from the seafood grill just up the stairs and around the corner and professionals doing caricatures and selling art cards from small tables. I meander down the promenade to the dock for the bum boats, those tiny little water taxis roughly the size of minivans. If it weren’t for the ocean kayakers, they’d be the smallest thing on the Inner Harbour.

Jeremy finishes his shift, and the bum boat tours for the day, in about twenty minutes, so I park on one of the oversized steps of the promenade, tucking my skirt around me. A quick glance at the Visitor Information clock tower affirms that, yes, I haven’t been able to magically skip ten minutes in the walk down the stairs. I open the bakery box and dig out one of the melon breads to pick at while I wait for him. It’s a far cry from the high tea being served above me and across the street at the Empress Hotel; iconic finger sandwiches in a formal English garden that now hosts a statue of Emily Carr, our homegrown leading light in art. I did tea there once, when I was visiting Nanna a few years ago. When Nanna would think of things like that, and still had the wherewithal to plan them. We’d done a tour of the Legislature, too; the center of government that also served as building-shaped art framing a third of the harbour. The Empress, by the same architect in the same sweeping and gothic style, makes up the center third. And on the left as you entered the harbour is Visitor Information with its useful but entirely unimpressive Art Deco clock tower.

Jeremy is finally done, and I rise to meet him, brushing off the back of my skirt. I snag his arm, and we walk companionably back to his condo in James Bay for dinner and my own personal escape from the obligations that lurk in the heart of downtown.

Blog fiction hiatus

You may have noticed the lack of fiction updates the past couple of weeks. Their lack is partly because doing any more of them will involve either more trawling through my ancient archives or writing new flash fiction. Writing new flash fiction is currently on hold because I'm nearing the end of a project I've been working on since roughly the spring of 2010, and am really excited to finish.

It's also because I'm moving. In two weeks time I'll be on a bus headed from Seattle to Minneapolis as the middle and longest leg of my trip from Victoria to Madison. I'm moving for a multitude of reasons, and aside from my own abhorrence of moving and lack of car, it's been a fairly straightforward process: I'm still going to be doing webwork for the same bike store I work in now. The only thing that will change is no customers and I can work in my pajamas. I am going from living with my mom, where I've been staying since the end of my lease, to living with my best friend who is already doing things like unpacking the boxes I've mailed and crocheting me my very own blanket. My EMR license is viable for reciprocity, so I don't need to take classes again, just do NREMT exams and local jurisprudence, all of which I can set up there.

Regular Wednesday blog posts will continue for the duration, as I have them scheduled pretty well in advance, so the only difference should be the lack of fiction posts. 

Poem: Snowglare

Aurora’d e’entide
--as close to dark as it gets this far north--
any perceived brightness a mere matter of snowglare
light-starved crystals glittering with all their might
that the dim shimmer might pass for luminosity
and draw all attention

Fic: Crazy Fairies

Warren shoveled dirt over the body until the soil came up a few inches below the rest of the flowerbed, then filled the rest with topsoil. Later, his sister would plant flowers. He couldn’t, as the blood still on his hands would be bad for the tiny plants. When the last topsoil was in place, Warren hurried inside to shower. He never felt really cleansed of a kill until he’d soaked himself in scalding water. It wasn’t in the least a moralistic thing, but the scent of the homeless crazies they picked up (after assuring that they had no friends who could be coherent to the garda) tended to be rank, and cling. But they were so good for the flowers, who never minded the smell.

x.x.x.x.x

Cait dragged another box up the narrow, steep stairs behind the new shop. It was her job to take things up to the ‘house’ part of the row house while her parents set up the butcher shop. She’d no idea why her brother got out of helping, as he had vacation coming up from the Garda, and ought to use at least some of it to help with the move. Returning to the van, she grabbed another box, then turned and bumped into someone. “Oh!”
Warren took the box and smiled. “Sorry to give you a fright. I’m your neighbor just across the passageway, Warren Blithe.”
Cait smiled at the charming man. “Cait Hurley. So you’re the florist?”
“My sister, actually. I mostly just do the heavy lifting. Speaking of which, give you a hand with the boxes?”
Cait glanced down at the box he held and considered the stupidity of letting a stranger into her new home, the looked up and smiled. “Sure. Just follow me up the stairs.”
Warren and Cait carried up the rest of the boxes and wrestled up the chesterfield together by the time the other Hurleys had finished setting up the butcher shop for the day. Warren stretched a hand out to Mr. Hurley as he came in the door. “Hello, Mr. Hurley. Warren Blithe from next door, just thought I’d come over to help you move in.”
“Well, Blithe, happy for the help. Cait, why don’t you run down to the chippie we passed and pick up some for everyone.”
Warren smiled and offered. “I can show you to one just down the street.”
Cait returned his smile, a little shyly. “That’d be great.”
x.x.x.x.x

When the butcher shop opened, Warren and his sister Shannon were the first customers. When they closed the shop up for the day, the five of them went to the Indian restaurant a few blocks over for curry.
Warren spent the weeks insinuating himself further into Hurleys and Cait’s life. She was an amazing girl, and Warren found himself interested in her mind as well as her other charms. So he took her out for coffee, for a night at the pub, to the local football match. And felt himself slipping, getting too involved.
Involvement with humans was discouraged on any deep level, as it became tempting to tell them things that threatened everyone. But Warren told himself he wasn’t that involved, even as he fell.
He found himself thinking of her all the time, though tried to contain it when contemplation of her during fertilizer acquisition ended with a disturbing mental image of himself slitting her throat.

x.x.x.x.x

He really shouldn’t. But that didn’t stop Warren from leaning in, tasting her. Then it had to be more than just a taste, because she was so damn sweet. Then he had her back pressed the wall of the passageway, and she was clutching his neck, and she made a little noise in her throat, and he felt himself tumble. A golden glow spread between them, and Cait broke the kiss. “What’s the glow?”
Warren looked down, then squarely met her eyes, searching them. A pure soul, pale as ice, but so much warmer, Cait didn’t have any part in his world, where a social misstep could lead to bloodshed and a political mistake to eternal exile. Maybe that was why he loved her. “It’s my heart.”
Still pressed close to him, Cait looked at him, and in a small voice, said, “Most people’s hearts’ don’t glow.”
Telling a human that he was fey, with it’s attached sentence, should be the toughest decision of his life. But with Cait, somehow it wasn’t a decision at all, and so the words spilled out, “I’m not human. I’m Fey. And I love you.”
She looked him straight in the eyes, looking for truth, and he dropped his glamour. His gray eyes shone brightly silver, the dark hair reflected blue, and horns shimmered on the top of his head.
Cait took all of this in, and fainted.
Warren carried her inside his house, to be greeted by Shannon leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. “You know I can’t protect you from Fob on this one, right?”
As she referenced the local Fey lord, Warren felt a chill go down his spine. If Fob found out, it would get really ugly. Though he couldn’t harm Cait; no Fey could legally harm a love match, even if they were only human. Warren didn’t look at Blithe as he responded, “I know.”

x.x.x.x.x

Cait regained consciousness quickly, and Shannon made herself scarce. Cait looked at Warren, then around the room, then back at Warren. She didn’t say anything. The silence stretched out, until Warren, who should have been well used to tense silences, broke.
“Um.”
“I love you, too.” The words spilled from Cait’s lips softly.
He read her face, her words, and the constriction on his chest eased. “What about . . . the other stuff?”
“It was . . . a shock. Um. Really. But it doesn’t matter.”
Warren cocked a brow at her. “Most people tend to balk at interspecies relationships.”
“Ew. So totally don’t condone bestiality.” Cait smiled at him.
Warren let out a soft laugh, and kissed her again.

x.x.x.x.x

Fob sat on a bench at the corner of the park reading the Globe and Mail. Warren crossed to the other side of the street and hunched his shoulders to try to avoid notice.
“Come here.”
Warren flinched as the words reached him, then turned and crossed the street to Fob, not bothering to look at the traffic he barely avoided being run over by.
As Warren sat, Fob turned a page, but didn’t look up from his paper. “So, you told her.”
“Yes.” Warren didn’t question how Fob knew. You never questioned Fob, and he always knew.
“Well, since you’re so fond of spilling secrets, you’ll continue spilling them until the day you die, but no one will believe you, because you’ll be drunk and crazy and say ‘ma ma ma millennium hand and shrimp’ every second sentence.”
That didn’t seem such a terrible curse. Warren could control that. Actually it was a bit of a funny curse. Seeing the words ‘millennium hand and shrimp’ hanging in the air was actually quite hilarious, and Warren slouched over trying to contain his laughter. “Ma ma ma millennium hand and shrimp? That’s fabulous.”
His words didn’t come out as expected, the words crooked and the letters hanging drunkenly off each other. In dawning horror, he watched them bounce off each other and recombine incoherently.

Fic: Fairy Tale

“Will you play a game with me?”

He doesn’t look up: not even scantily-clad nymphs can distract the King of Hell from his quarterly reports. “You’re confusing me with Death. I only gamble.”

“Not chess, you silly. Poker, I was thinking, or blackjack. We could make the stakes interesting.” She walks her fingers up his shoulder.

“I prefer to gamble for souls. Why would I be interested in playing a game with you?”

She spins away from him, lifting her hair and flicking it back to draw the eye to the smooth line of her spine, exposed but for ivy and scraps of silk. Her head turns so that it is perfectly framed in the arch of her raised arm, and she lifts long lashes to meet his gaze. “I’ll let you name your own stakes.”

The Devil sets down his paperwork, precisely in the middle of the blotter. He sets his paperweight on the upper left corner, and its empty sockets leer at her exactly the way he is too controlled to. “What do you want?”

“I want the chance to win your powers for a night.”

“Which powers?”

She flits back to his desk and leans over the front of it, giving him a clear view down the front of a dress that never hid much. “All of them, silly. Why play for anything less?”

“If I win, Orphne, I want you for a month.” He says it low, trying for nonchalance. He is rarely denied, rarer still for very long, but nymphs cannot be coerced and are not easy prey for his brand of temptation.

Her grin is sharp, because she knows the power she holds. “Okay.” She produces a deck of cards from - somewhere, he doesn’t want to think where, and shuffles. “One hand, then, and aces are wild. Since it’s your realm, I’ll deal. That work for you?”

“Your terms are acceptable.” He smoothes one already-smooth lapel and gestures at the immaculate liquor cabinet behind him. “Can I pour you a drink?”

“Oh, this won’t last long.” She deals a card to him facedown, then one to herself, then him, then deals herself a face-up Queen of Hearts. She sets the deck aside and checks her facedown card, the looks up at him expectantly.

He looks at his cards, then says, “Hit me.”

She obliges with a five. The Devil smiles, and turns over his cards: the Ace of Spades, of course, and another five. “Twenty-one,” he says.

She flips her other card, and it is the Ace of Hearts. “Too bad.”

“Of course. Fetch the gold goblet, will you?”

“This? Really?” She holds up a battered cup with old dull carvings on it.

“I’m fond of wordplay. What better than real blood from the Sangreal?” He takes the cup and slices his left forefinger with his thumbnail. Blood rushes out, and then it stops when the cup is half full.

Orphne takes the cup and drains it in one go, her throat working around it. He watches her intently, particularly when she licks her lips after. Her dress fades from green to blood-dark and she smiles. "Well, things to do, places to be. Thanks for the game."

She’s gone in a flare of smoke and a whiff of brimstone. Lucifer puts his head down on his desk and wishes that light wouldn’t chase away the shadows of self-deceit.

**
The shortest night of the year holds a greater number of secrets than any but the longest. Festival frivolity lifts the veil between worlds and the veil between proper and improper, and all may pass freely back and forth with no thought to consequences come the dawn.

They all wear masks, but it’s easy to recognize many from familiar postures and voices. An unfamiliar woman in a black dress wends her way through the crowd to the officer in conspicuous uniform and unmasked face. “When do you go off-duty?”

“Midnight is shift change, ma’am.”

“I’ll meet you here at five after.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t say that he should find his wife at the end of his shift, but watches her as she walks away.

A cask of mead is unearthed in the beer tent, and, in a gesture of unanticipated magnanimity the local brewer gives glasses of it away. Beer sales drop, but that’s okay, as the cask of mead never seems to run dry.

The perfumed summer air grows thick with temptation.

A thin woman in well-tailored clothes goes back for a second hot dog, and a fifth. After the seventh, she vomits neatly and wipes her mouth with a well-practiced hand and goes back for an eighth.

Two brothers joyfully get into a fist-fight before they are carted off by police officers who tighten the cuffs just barely overtight.

The brewer is distracted from serving by counting the money-box.

In full knowledge of the fact that her husband is not here, a woman approaches her best friend's handsome husband, the one she wishes she'd married because he is so very wonderful.

The Mayor watches from his chair in the beer tent and can't bring himself to do more than drink more mead.

Orphne pulls a little harder on her new powers, puzzled that there are not more couples sanctifying the forest. She can see the cusp of wanting in them all, and tugs harder to pull them over.

Another fist fight breaks out, and there is a flash of subdued light beside her. “We're all tempted by different things, my darling little cheater.”

She sets her jaw. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Lucifer slides one finger under the strap of her dress and glides it up her shoulder. “You are accustomed to a particular kind of wanting. But there are seven cardinal sins, not one, my pet. For example, it is the very definition of pride to think you can deceive the King of Hell with a simple glamour on a card to disguise a ten as an ace.”

She whirls to glare at him. “Why'd you even let me go through with it, then?”

He shrugs. “Why not? It does me no harm to let you try to preserve your forest. I thought we might even participate, given our deal and the fact that I'm here already.”

She takes his hand and leads him into the woods, anger radiating from every pore.

No matter how you rig the game, the Devil always gets his due.

Fic: Purpose

I am reasonably certain they don’t know what I’m for.

This isn’t because they’re ignorant in general, but more likely because their parents - maybe grandparents, it’s been such a long time since I was out of the box - only used me when they were throwing me at their own parents and shouting about Birmingham. It took years for the stench of pot and politics to fade from the lining.

Then, I measured the passage of time in Christmases and Thanksgivings and Easters, when we’d all be taken out and put to use. I was sometimes horrifically employed on - of all things - pickles, but at least I got fresh air and scrubbing.

Now I measure the passage of time in Vinyl Cafe Christmas specials coming faintly from next door. The walls are thin, and the neighbour’s hearing is going, so I can hear Stuart McLean almost clearly.

The world is changing.

They bring out our case in the middle of summer for some kind of dinner party, and it’s almost like our first owners’ weekly formal dinner parties. But now they are puzzling over why the knives are different sizes, not able to tell which are dinner knives and which are butter knives. The spoons cringe, and the fish forks swear like sailors as they are deemed dessert forks.

I am passed over as “I don’t know, some kind of fish fork?”

I would that I could snarl at them. I have served judges and mafia kingpins and celebrities. Even men who died as petty criminals had more awareness of the way things worked.

The box closes with me still in it, and I am in the closet with a few serving spoons and the dessert forks while the dinner progresses. The serving spoons complain in their ponderous way until I threaten to scratch them.

Dubstep wubs through the apartment, shivering up through the box to rattle us. I liked it better when live jazz threaded through a room after dinner, when the marmoreal elegance of the lady of the house hadn’t been replaced by workman’s trousers. I must grudgingly concede that the CBC has improved their programming over the years, but that is the only thing, I think.

The sounds fade with time, and then the dishwasher starts.

The box opens, and there is light and air and the lingering smell of chicken. The knives are placed again amongst us. They are mottled faintly black and blue, an unhealthy shimmer all over them. Collective horrified silence greets them.

The box goes back in the closet, the damage they’ve wreaked hidden and ignored. Time passes.

The closet is emptied, contents sorted into piles to be packed, sold, donated, and trashed. A susurration of horror passes between us. We’ve been with the family for years and years, but these miscreants and wastrels - well, at least we end up in the pile to be sold. At least they recognize that we are worth something.

I am shaking in rage as we are loaded into their car. Three - or was it four? - unbroken generations of service, and we’re not even being offered to siblings. We are taken to a consignment store as if we were never of any importance at all.

A sticker is slapped on the exterior of the box, which has grown dry since the days it was oiled at least once a month. I wonder how we’ve been valued.

Not much, not near enough, since we are there for only a day. The car that takes us to our new home is quiet and well climate-controlled. We are put in a drawer, and I expect that to be the end of it.

Mere hours later, the box opens, and a man reaches in with hands that smell of silver polish. The spoons are immediately in love, but I withhold judgement. I doubt he’ll know what I’m for, either.

Then we’re back in the box and the drawer is closed.

There is no neighbour with CBC here, and thus no entertainment nor way to tell time. It doesn’t feel like long, though, before the box is opening again.

The butter knives are first out, and he doesn’t hesitate at all to pick them apart from the dinner knives. Then the soup spoons and salad forks and dinner forks. The fish forks are left in their partition, and I anticipate that I will be as well.

There are sounds of a table being set, and so it seems this will be the end of it, until the hands return. The snobby cheese knives with the mother-of-pearl handles are extracted, and then slim fingers return for me.

I anticipate some manner of indignity, like antipasto or relish. Bundled with those awful knives, we approach a kitchen island laid out with amuse-bouches, amongst them - [i]oh[/i]. He intends to put me to my true use. I will have purpose again. I do not care how long I will have to wait between uses, because here, here I am fully myself.

I sink into the dish of olives with a satisfied sigh.

Fic: Flight

It’s ten past midnight and the moons are high and bright, washing everything in faint blue-silver. It had been mid-afternoon, and it looks like it still is where the curve of South America is distantly illuminated.

I haven’t dreamt this place in years, and this doesn’t feel like a dream. Everything’s too solid, and I’m still wearing the clothes I was when I laid down for my nap. If I knew this was where I’d end up, I’d have dressed better today. It’s always been a contingency plan that, if I knew I were going to another world, I’d dress as much as I could like local nobility. Arriving alone here instead of accompanied by a prince, it would have stood me in good stead.

Basic check: I exist, and am the same species I was before I went to sleep. I am on Gaea, I gather from the sky. I am alone, and on a gently pitched roof. Where am I in intermediate terms? The night air is humid and cool without being cold, so probably a temperate zone. There are imminent mountains in a rough semicircle around the sprawl of buildings, and the lights cut in too clean a line on the side away from the mountains. Asturia, then.

It’s been too long since I watched the series. All I remember are allusions to Venice and a great number of blonde princesses. Merchant cities, though, those I can deal with. Better here than the heart of the evil empire, since totalitarian ideology and I don’t tend to get along.

What do I have with me? No shoes, which I’ll need to correct. I do have my messenger bag, though, and that makes me grin. I emptied it recently, so not a ton of supplies, but unless something has gone terribly wrong, I have all the tools I need.

I have always wanted to fly.

To further this cause, I look for an easy way down, then check the drop from the edge of the roof. It makes me swallow hard. I swing my bag over my shoulder and strap it tight and then let myself over the edge feet-first. Once my hips are over the edge, the gap feels huge, but I let myself down until I am holding by my fingertips. I let go, because I don’t have the upper body strength to go back now. Air rushes up past me, and then everything hurts and I roll a few feet across the cobblestones.

I pick myself up and dust myself off and look around. I’d landed on a tavern. Bar or club is a too thoroughly modern way to refer to it, I confirm as I sashay into the smoky, convivial darkness. A hand grabs my ass, and I whirl elbow-first. The man I elbow in the head has disconcertingly mole-like features. “There was no need to do that!”

“I did not give you permission to touch me,” I say.

A man dripping smug and money drapes an arm around the smaller man’s shoulders. “Have you offended the lady already, Mole-man?”

His eyes are sharp on mine, but I’m not reading him as a threat. I crinkle the corners of my eyes and lift the corners of my lips. “I might have overreacted. I’m not from around here.”

“A tourist! And what brings you to our fair shores?” He lets the mole-man duck away to his beer, and I congratulate myself on finding a guide to the city. Next on my list: shoes, then secure accommodation. Then trouble.

“I’m from the Mystic Moon. This just happens to be where I landed.”

“I see. Then we should give you a warm Gaean welcome to celebrate your visit.”

He gestures to the barkeeper and moments later a waiter brings over something that smells of alcohol and honey. I’ve joined him at his table, with him as buffer between me and the mole-man. “So what do you know of the wonders of Gaea?”

“I’d love to see a guymelef in action. We don’t have them on the Mystic Moon.”

He takes my hand and kisses the knuckles. “I will see what I can do. It is likely nothing can be done until the morning, though. How can I keep you entertained until then?” He makes eyes at me over the hand he’s still clasping.

I smile crookedly at him. “It would be wonderful if you could explain the origins of the music the band is playing. Maybe show me how one dances here?”

He leads me awkwardly through a few dances. After the first few, either I pick up on the steps or I’ve had enough to drink, as they’re no longer awkward. It helps that someone sees my lack and hands me a pair of worn red dancing slippers.

I keep dancing - with other partners, once I know the steps. As the night’s drawing to the time when people are usually retiring to someone’s bed, I drift back to the gentleman who’s bought my drinks. I have nowhere to go, and novelty apparently amuses him.

“A seaside market town must have a market at dawn.”

“Of course, my lady. Mostly fishmongers and those who sell to the later tradesmen, but I would be most happy to show it to you.”

“Can we go now and walk along the waterfront?”

“Of course, my lady. I would benefit greatly from a few hours sleep, though, if you wouldn’t mind. We could then see the later market, which has many attractions other than raw fish. Have you anywhere to go?”

“No.”

There’s a pause.

“My room has a chaise. Hardly fit accommodations for a visitor from the Mystic Moon, but it has grown rather late to make appropriate arrangements.”

I nod, and find myself catnapping on a brocade-upholstered chaise longue under the light of strange stars.

When I wake, the morning sun is casting long shadows. I have no frame of reference for how early it is. I know I’m up before my companion: I always am.

I dig in my bag for my hairbrush and rebraid my hair. I could almost leave it down, but if I get into all the trouble I want, loose hair will just get in the way. I read for a bit as the sun rises higher.

Eventually, he emerges, fresh-scrubbed and clean-shaven, and looks surprised that I’m awake.

“Can we go now?” I ask.

“Yes, my lady. Let me just get a runner to take these messages out.” He ducks his head into the hall and shouts for a boy with big sad beagle eyes and a swooshing tail and hands him the messages and some coins.

We set off for the market, and the city is different in daylight: smaller and dirtier. Seagulls turn overhead. The market is interesting, and reminds me of the one outside Leeds except with more fish. As we meander the stalls, runners periodically approach my companion with missives that he reads and replies to with quick scrawls on the page.

I am aware of his eyes on me, but I’ll get what I want out of this, so it’s okay.

The Earth trinkets I see sprinkled in with Gaean merchandise are few and far between, but they’re here. A Mickey Mouse watch with a blank digital face being sold as a bracelet. A MetroPass with sixty-three cents still on it billed as a holy relic. I have him buy me coffee and something like baklava and eat it as I walk before sucking the honey off my fingers.

The sun is waxing noon when he grabs my arm. “My Lady, we’ve been invited to the Palace for luncheon and a demonstration of guymelefs. We should probably proceed there directly.”

“Sure.”

The walk to the Palace doesn’t take long once we pick up the pace from a lazy stroll. Once there, the guards usher us in without so much as an introduction. The dining room we’re escorted to is open and airy and occupied by a squat round king and what looks like a dehydrated weasel but turns out to be my companion’s father, another merchant prince.

“Ah, our visitor from the Mystic Moon! Tell me your name, child.” The King is expansive in his welcome.

I hesitate a moment. I don’t remember name magic here. “You may call me Eileen.”

“Lady Eileen, you must come sit by me and tell me all about the Mystic Moon. It’s a shame the Fanelian King had business outside the city: he’s been on a state visit after his own encounter with a girl from the Mystic Moon. They say she had magic powers of divination. Is that true of all of you?”

I sit, and a footman pushes in my chair for me. I wish vaguely for a long skirt to smooth rather than practical black pants. I smile at him, not bothering to let it reach my eyes. “I have a tarot deck with me. Would you like to judge for yourself?”

“After lunch, I would be delighted.”

The older of the merchant princes has a voice like oil. “Such a rarity! I am sure most of Gaea would be entranced to meet someone from the Mystic Moon.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” I say, warning flags going up.

He has a smile I’d like to punch. “We must try to persuade you, then.”

The sheer volume of guards stationed around the room suddenly strikes me as menacing and claustrophobic. But overt displays of force wouldn’t do them any good: as far as they know, I’m completely in their power with or without ostentatious armed guards. It’s overkill if it’s meant to contain me, and silliness if this is standard.

Lunch is served, and we converse over our plates. The weasel only references putting me on display once more before his son sends him a sharp look. I ask them to explain Gaea’s geography just to have a concrete topic.

When lunch is over and the table cleared except for our glasses, I dig out my cards. It’s a mini pack, wrapped in a plastic bag because the box is ragged and the cards fall out. I shuffle three times before proffering the deck to the King. “Would you cut the deck, please?”

He lifts part of the deck away and I tuck it in at the bottom before laying out the Celtic Cross spread. I look up the cards in the little guide that came with the pack as I go. My memory is shoddy, and intuition rather than perfect memorization is what lets me spin the narrative.

“Let’s see - you’re in the middle of unexpected events, with new enterprises and new gains on the horizon. This leads to eventual success and financial gain, coming from a disastrous affair in the recent past and chaos and failure before. In the immediate future, though, you are going to make a very foolish choice.” I glance ahead in the reading, already suspicious of what it will hold. Oops, yeah, there’s the Queen of Swords. As if I needed confirmation.

“Greed is a motivating factor, but will be countered by a woman. The financial victory will be hollow and unsatisfying, and you’ll feel alone.”

I smooth my face before I meet the King’s eyes. He looks mildly perturbed but thoughtful. “Most interesting. Now, Dryden informs me that you are fascinated with our guymelefs, so I have put together a display for you.”

It occurs to me as we all rise and follow the King that I am as tall or taller than most of the people here, including the guards. We pass through courtyards and airy hallways to an amphitheatre with arched entryways the size of McMansions. There are chairs set up on either side of the throne, and on the opposite side Escaflowne observes the proceedings from a plinth built into the edge of the gladiatorial pit.

We seat ourselves, and two mecha that look like pirates assembled from spare parts emerge and go through a staged sort of duel. The one with a bullwhip as thick around at the widest part as my wait disarms the one with the cutlass, then turns and bows to the King. As he rises, he reaches forward and grabs me, chair and all.

I’m frozen. I can’t even scream, because this is a wholly unexpected tack. As I rise in the air, the chair falls far, far down to splinter on the sand, and I close my eyes and cling to his metal thumb. I really, really hate heights. The next few minutes are not going to be fun at all.

He turns his hand to cup me in his palm and brings me close to the faceplate and leers. “Handing you over to Myden in a cage is going to get me a bag full of gold, girlie.”

I fumble in my bag while maintaining eye contact and grab a packet of Emergen-C. They’ve got the little indents where you’re supposed to tear, so it’s easy to glare at him while I rip it open.

“I know exactly what I’m worth, and you were underpaid.” I toss the contents of the packet at his eyes and slide free of the guymelef’s hand as it convulses reflexively.

I don’t have time to climb down carefully, but I will likely break a lot of bones that I am quite attached to if I freefall from this height. I wish I’d put on my mountain biking gloves. They’d protect my hands, at least. I grab the edge of one of the plates on his arm and swing myself more towards the guymelef’s torso. I realize that I’m letting out a litany of giddy swearing only as it stops when I slam into its torso chest-first.

Someone near the King is roaring outrage, but I have no time for any of them, because there’s really not that much in a packet of Emergen-C and he’s going to grab me again in a minute. I’m still falling, but the ground is approaching way too quickly. I manage to land in an instructor-approved fall position, and no white-hot spikes of agony rear up to tell me I did it wrong.

I run windedly for Escaflowne.

It’s supposed to only respond to the blood of a Fanelian king, but fuck that noise: I’m PK. I dig in my bag for my fork with a hand that’s already shaking. There are steps up the side of the plinth where Escaflowne sits, and I take them two at a time. The pilot of the guymelef has realized where I am, and he’s coming for me. I reach Escaflowne’s thigh and run atop it to where the energy core sits dormantly red.

I take a deep breath. I look behind me. I stab myself in the base of my thumb with a questionably clean fork. Tears well in my eyes and I squeak a bit, but I jam the fork in my pocket and stick my bloody hand over the energy core. It lights gold-purple, which is probably not a good sign, but the cockpit opens.

Go me.

I slide in and put my bag in my lap and grab for the controls. The cockpit closes up with me in it, and I worry for a moment that it’ll crush me to death. But it rises as I will it and the sword swings with my arm and there is lots of shouted panic.

The bullwhip falls to the ground, severed near the hand. I don’t want to keep fighting, though. I want to disengage and go see what this thing can do.

I duck into the guymelef-sized doorway that seems to face the sea most directly. It opens to a hangar where unmanned guymelefs who have not earned pride of place sit waiting, but the far door is lit like freedom. It opens to a cliffside road, but I head straight out over the cliff.

Once in freefall, Escaflowne stretches and rearranges. Plates slide and the leg controls retract and it reshapes itself around me until I am riding the dragon out over the sea. The afternoon sun sparkles on the ocean and I am free, free, free above it.

I throw my head back and laugh, then direct my attention to steering with my abused hands.

The first hour is like the first hour sailing: hyper-awareness of the controls and nervousness that I’ll end up in the water under a great lot of machinery. From the second hour on I’m trying to remember if anyone but Fanelia and Zaibach had flying guymelefs, and contemplating how likely anyone is to have anti-aircraft guns. But I’m contemplating while driving a mostly-mechanical [i]dragon[/i], so I’m pretty okay with that.

As the sun sets, I head up towards the mountains. I want to keep watching the sunset as long as I can, and if I can gain elevation at the right pace I could maybe drag it out for hours. It’s getting chilly and the trees are thinning and I’m thinking this may be as long a sunset as I can manage when Escaflowne goes into a dead drop.

A scream boils up and I try desperately to regain control, but Escaflowne is headed straight down into trees. I brace for impact, in full awareness that I am probably going to die.

Escaflowne hits the ground and rolls and I am flung clear.

I lay very still and stare up. Slowly, and listening for crepitus, I turn to look at Escaflowne. It’s mecha-shaped again, kneeling in front of - I squint - a kid in a red tank top with floppy hair all over his face. I turn again to stare straight up.

Booted footsteps approach and there’s a sching of steel, and a sword is levelled at my throat.

“What were you doing with the Escaflowne?”

“Hello, your Majesty. I was escaping Asturia.”

“I see,” says Van Fanel, King of Fanelia and hero of my favourite cartoon. “How did you pilot the Escaflowne?”

I proffer my still-bloody hand. It’s not all that much bloodier than the rest of me, which is annoying, but the tine-marks are still clearly visible. This shirt is probably a write-off. He looks at my hand, then puts his sword away. “Interesting. Come sit by the fire.”

He asks no questions beyond, “Would you like some?” as he offers me a skewer of some kind of barbecued meat.

I volunteer, after a while, because he should probably know that Escaflowne recognized its true master when it crashed me here. I also don’t want him to think I’m an absurdly awful pilot, because it’d be nice if I could take it out again, this time with permission.

In the flickering firelight, eventually I drift to sleep on the ground.

*

I wake in sunlight, and determine quickly that I’m on the roof of my condo building.

Back in the real world, I take the inside elevator back down to my floor.

Fic: April

Light and sound and fizzy fruity blood. She laughed as the room span, and drank again. It was a good night.

**

She didn’t recognize the room. April sat up, clutching her head and half-closing her eyes against the light and the hangover. The night before was a swirl of colorful drinks and bright lights and loud bass and cologne.

It occurred to her to check for another occupant in the bed.

There wasn’t one.

And she wasn’t naked, surprisingly. She was wearing a man’s dress shirt and her own panties. No bra, no sign of her dress.

Water. Definitely the first priority. It felt like something small and disease-ridden had crawled into her mouth and drowned in all those fruity drinks.

The room didn’t quite look like a hotel - everything was stark white and air, and all that shaded the windows were thin drapes, not a black-out curtain in sight. It was also bigger than most single rooms, a white-leather seating arrangement grouped on some kind of shaggy area rug across an uncomfortably wide stretch of tile. April walked to the windows and pulled apart the drapes, determined to orient herself in the city by the skyline. This was her city, she knew the views, she’d designed the billboards on a lot of the roofs. April stared out over the balcony to the city, a bit perturbed that she was noticeably higher than everything else. With the buildings she didn’t see, that meant she was in Valdez Tower, near the top. Not a hotel, then. She’d broken one of her cardinal rules and gone home with someone.

She wondered what had happened, unease settling into her stomach and making the queasiness of her hangover worse. April resumed the hunt for water, making her way to one of the two white doors near the seating area. The other opened, admitting a tall lean predator with a breakfast tray. His gaze flicked up to her, and he set the tray down on a table and dusted his hands together. “Oh, good, I’d hoped you were awake. I wanted to discuss those marketing strategies you brought up last night in more detail.”

April was still asleep. Had to be. Anthony Valdez had just brought her a breakfast tray. Two glasses of juice: at least some of it was meant for her. “You realize I was completely trashed, right?”

“Oh, yes. Have a seat. I brought Tylenol.” He folded his long frame into one of the white leather chairs.

“You realize I was completely trashed and I work for a direct competitor, right?” What the hell had gone on? She woke up with her clothes mostly gone in the bedroom of Chicago’s Most Eligible Bad Boy (really, there were polls), and she’d spent the night talking marketing strategy? What was wrong with her? What was wrong with him? What had she been drinking?

“You said you’d quit for a chance to be my publicist. Of course, you also said you’d be happy to get paid in alcohol and wings, so I wanted to make sure you were still solid on it this morning.” He quirked a smile at her, the mocking edge to it slight but there.

She must have been really, really trashed. She hadn’t blacked out since college, and had never been that gone. Why had she been drinking that hard? “Where’d my dress go?”

“You threw up on it. I sent it out for cleaning along with my pants, which you also managed to hit.”

April winced. “Sorry.”

He seemed almost to be enjoying himself, or at least her discomfort. “Not a problem, especially if you can deliver as a publicist. Still think I can up condo sales by volunteering for Habitat for Humanity shirtless?”