Kylie and Daven, intro story [Floating World]

So it turns out that every time I do a NaNo, I get another universe. Actually every time I hear a new song/read a new book/have an interesting dream/come across a concept/breathe I get another universe, so perhaps this should not come as a total surprise. Anyway, here is a story from a world made up of countries and towns floating in mid-air.

“I’m going on that ship.”

Daven was standing on the dock of Aurn Harbor, looking out to sea without much interest, when Kylie made her pronouncement. He looked up. She was balanced on the dock-ropes, standing on two thin braids of cotton with her skirts hiked up to her knees and her eyes fixed on the mainmast of the Swimming Eagle, the fastest ship to dock in Aurn.

He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and eyed her skeptically. “Girls on a ship are bad luck.”

She gave him a look of disgust worthy of the Empress. “I am not a girl. I am a woman. And I’m a better sailor than any three boys you can name.”

“Maybe we know that, but the crew doesn’t, and sailors are a superstitious lot.”

She smirked, then, and looked dangerous, despite her frilly blouse and pink skirts. “It’ll be much worse for them not to have me.”

Daven thought she was probably right.

*****

She was. Daven hasn’t seen her in seven months: twice the amount of time of a standard voyage. The day she left, he sent her off with a kiss and a promise to be waiting. He’s waiting now, on the docks of Aurn Harbor, though the sun’s burning hot and the air’s filled with the stench of a thousand sweating sailors and a thousand thousand dead fish.

The ship she set out on – not the Eagle, despite her protests, but a smaller one called the Areomaid – is supposed to dock today. He doesn’t hold out much hope she’ll actually be on it, but he did promise.

*****

She came to his house three months later, and the first thing she sad to him was, “Told you I was going to sky.”

“You told me you were going on the Eagle.”

Kylie flipped her hands back and forth, signifying the utter irrelevance she attached to that fact. “Eagle, ‘Maid, it’s all the same air. Like my outfit?”

“It’s not very regulation, is it?”

She laughed and turned so he could get a full view. She was wearing an old green skirt, hacked off at the knee, over men’s trousers and leather boots half a size too big for her. Her formerly-white shirt was tucked in with a myriad of leather belts, at least one of which was meant to hold a sword.

“Areomaid isn’t as strict about all that. It’s not like I signed on with those stuffy bastards in the Queen’s Guard – oh, sorry,” she said with a smirk. Daven sighed. She’d been mocking him ever since she’d found out that he’d decided to enlist in the elite corps.

“At least I don’t look like an explosion in a tanner’s, oh great captain,” he drawled.

“Hah! That was almost snappy. Another six weeks and we’ll have you up to clever!” she declared. He rolled his eyes at her.

She sat on his table and looked him in the eye. “Look, I’m leaving tomorrow at sunrise, all right? I want you to be there.” She fidgeted with her hair, as if the effort of being serious was frustrating her.

“I’ll be on the docks by sunrise, then,” he said. She burst forth from her perch and nearly knocked him over hugging him. “Relax, woman! Damn.”

“Psst, Daven. I’ve got a secret,” she whispered in his ear, after she’d gotten him pinned to the bed.

“Oh really?” he asked. “Is this like when you told me there was pirate treasure at the bottom of Lock Lake? Because that was kind of painful.”

“Noooo, it’s actually true this time.” She pushed herself off of him so there was enough distance to look in his eyes. “Want to know?”

He actually kind of did, so he didn’t say anything, just smiled at her until she got impatient.

“I’m going to marry you. When I get back,” she said.

He was stunned momentarily while she giggled at his expression. “You’re right, that was a secret,” he managed, eventually.

“And it’s absolutely true,” she assured him.

“I don’t even get to say yes or no?” he asked, pulling her down to lie beside him again.

“You know what your answer would’ve been,” she said, and he had to admit she was right.

*****

So of course he’d been on the docks, and she’d left him, and he’s been in the Guard for seven months and she’s been at sea, and now he’s snuck out when he’s supposed to be drilling to see her come back. So she’d better be here this time.

He lights another cigarette as some ship he’s never heard of before lands and the crew starts throwing ropes in to dock. He’s not looking for her there, of course, so when he hears…

“Daven! Aren’t ye gonna at least wish me safe landin’?”

…He drops the cigarette and stares.

She’s hanging off the rigging like she was born there, looking down at him. He wouldn’t have recognized her had it not been for the grin. Her hair’s lighter and longer, with beads and bits braided into it; her clothing’s all been replaced with items of stained brocade and water-crushed velvet; her skin’s tanned and worn and she’s gotten a few small scars on her cheek.

But her smile’s the same, and her voice, though accented, is the same, and she jumps off the ship and lands on him like a ton of bricks in exactly the same way as she always has.

He doesn’t fall over this time – the Guard’s taught him that much. He catches her and kisses her instead. She tastes like saltwater and rum.

“I don’t need to if you’re going to land like that,” he tells her. She laughs at him.

“’Ave ye seen my ship? She’s gorgeous, ain’t she?” she asks. “Well, she ain’t mine as yet, but she’s gonna be, you wait.” Halfway through her sentence she slips back into her old voice, which sounds odd coming out of her new face.

“She’s lovely, yes,” Daven says. He knows nothing about ships but this one doesn’t look like much, especially next to the Navy’s Eliza II docked next to it.

“You haven’t got a clue, actually, and she looks ruddy awful,” Kylie informs him with a wink. “We’ll have her shipshape in no time flat, though. She’s the Kelvin, and she’s a lot faster than she looks, S’truth. But look, I’ve got things to do up there – I’ll meet you here in a half hour, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, but jumps onto one of the docking ropes and walks up it casually.

He’s got half an hour. Right. He doesn’t think that’s enough time to come to terms with the fact that his fiancée has become a pirate.

*****

“So what got into you, anyway? That Kelvin is no Navy ship. You deserted!” he rails at her, forty-five minutes later, after they’ve gotten back to his house and he’s served her tea. She glowers at him defiantly from over her porcelain cup.

“Yes, I did. What of it? The captain of the Areomaid was disgusting,” she tells him. “Not to mention the crew all thought that there was only one purpose for a woman onboard – the only other women I saw in four months were dock whores. The rations were awful, punishment random and extreme, and eventually, I’d had it.” She puts her cup down and looks up, daring him to comment. He glares right back and takes another drag – he’s been chain-smoking since she landed. Too much stress.

“You’re still not supposed to desert. It’s kind of punishable by death. By hanging. Which is unpleasant. I shouldn’t even be talking to you right now, I should be reporting you –“ he stops at her look, waving his hands “–Not that I’m going to, but you know, these are the things you force me to think about when -”

“All right, then, come off with me and you won’t have to anymore,” she says. He stops midsentence and midflail, stares at her, changes his hand gesture into something that he hopes expresses the level of oh you have got to be kidding me that her offer has induced in him.

She correctly interprets his expression, and says, “Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about what’s going to happen when you go back to camp today,” in the sort of eminently reasonable tone that one would use to talk about, perhaps, choosing class schedules. Not deserting and going pirate.

“I’m not going to sail under a pirate flag! I don’t sail at all, anyway, and stop giving me that smirk,” he says, in response to her sparkling expression. “It’s impossible.”

“You’re no fun, you know that?” she says. “I wanted a pirate wedding.”

He nearly swallows his cigarette.

“That was a joke, Daven. You really wouldn’t?” she says. He knows those puppydog eyes are practiced and they don’t look half so sweet with kohl smeared around them, but dammit, he’s weakening.

“I’m sorry, Kylie, but I’m not marrying a pirate. I’m not becoming a pirate. It’s not what I’d expected when you got back,” he says. It is, of course, the wrong thing to say. She stands up.

“Please accept my deepest apologies for not bein’ the same li’l girl you been pining after,” she says, as sarcastically as he’s ever heard her.

“That’s not what I meant, Kylie, come on,” he says.

“I ain’t gonna ask what you did mean. Don’t much care, either. I’ll be goin’ now,” she says, and matches actions to words by heading for the door.

“Kylie, please. I just can’t, all right? I don’t like you being out there either,” he says. “Marry me and stay here. Stay home. Please.”

She looks at him for a long moment. “Damn you, Daven, you made a liar of me again.”

He grabs her before she can turn fully to the door, because he knows he’ll never see her again if he doesn’t fix this, right now and right here.

“Kylie. I know – I’m being stupid, I’m sorry. Just wait, please? For just a second.” For long enough for him to get this out, so he can get his stupid brain to send the correct words to his stupid mouth.

She pauses and turns back to him, but has her hand on the doorknob and a closed expression on her face.

“All right, I know better than to ask you to stay here, I’m sorry,” he says, yet again. “But – I can’t go either. You know that, right?”

“Aye, I know,” she tells him.

“So I’ll wait for you, okay? Just make sure you come back.”

There’s a long, long moment of silence, where she looks up at him, and he looks down at her, and her eyes go from hard to soft to teary. She blinks, a few times, and shakes her head.

“You know I always have to,” she says, and finally leaves. But not before standing on tiptoes to press her lips to his.

Kylie and Daven, growing up [Floating World]

Sorry for the spam, but you know how it is. More Kylie and Daven - Kylie is probably going to show up a lot more, Daven may not.

You come down twice a week and ask about the Dawn Flash, which nearly never comes into port. It’s been six years, now, since the last time. Before that it was two, and before that, three and a half.

You wake on a grey-skied chilling morning and you know, just on instinct, that you have to go down today. You go to put on the shirt she saw you in last time, but something in you makes you reach for more stable, more standard clothes. Thick canvas and rivets, hobnailed boots, a herder’s uniform. You want to run to the docks but you turn out the horses and move the sheep first.

The Dawn Flash is there when you reach it and the dockworkers, who know you well by now, give you congratulations and admire her lines. She’s a beautiful ship, all sleek and elegant in fresh, white wood without a nest on it. You know little of ships and care nothing for its speed or maneuverability, too concerned with searching its deck for your wife.

She sees you before you see her, and shouts down to you. You grin and wave back. She’s always been beautiful just like her ship, sleek, wild, whipped thin by the wind. No lord or master but herself, captain of her ship and constant wanderer, she’s nearly gone feral. The wind flashes in her eyes, evident in every bit of silver around her wrists or in her hair, the wild smile she gives you.

She jumps from the prow of the ship and you catch her like a mountain in the path of a storm. You kiss her, and she kisses right back, tasting like rum and salt and the metallic tang of snow. You haven’t smiled in a year and a half and your face hurts, but now you’ve started, you can’t stop.

“I was starting to worry you wouldn’t be back,” you say, teasing but honest. She shrugs.

“It weren’t so long for us, we got stranded in some slow time. I ha’en’t aged but a year and eight months since last I saw you,” she tells you. You’ve heard of slow time but it sounds like a skies story to you, the kind of thing sailors tell after too much beer. You tell her so.

“So maybe it is, maybe it ain’t, I just know it were real. You ha’en’t e’er heard time’s all to do with where you are?”

You shake your head, and make to step off the docks; but she lets her feet touch ground, just barely. “You know I can’t.” It’s only here, on the docks, that you can meet her, at this place between air and land. She won’t come closer to stone and you can’t set foot onto sky.

“It’s not much of a marriage, is it?” you ask her, for the seventh time, because you have this same conversation every time she docks.

“Nay, it is, Daven. I love you – you know, don’t ya?” she says, and once again, you reassure her, and repeat the words back. They’re true. Your love for her spirals high as the skies and that does not change, even if you’re both on opposite ends of the world.

“I have to unload her,” she says, nodding to the Dawn, “but stay, or come back tonight.”

“Of course,” you say, and she kisses you again and leaves you to sit on a barrel and chain-smoke while she flits around the rigging, shouting orders to her crew.

Annas and Maria [Floating World]

I shall probably never again invent a new twist on anything. Ah well. Enjoy the vampirism.

“Don’t be an idiot. You can’t go out here at night.”

Annas sighs and closes the curtain, looking back at Maria as the shaft of moonlight disappears. “I’ll be all right. I’m not so marked that anyone will notice…”

“It’s not even that. This town gets dangerous after darkup, especially…” she stops; it’s hard for her to say it, even after Annas has told her so many times that,

“It’s Darks, Maria. You may as well learn to use the word. And of course it’s that; what else would it be?” Annas leans against the windowframe, pushing back into the curtains.

It’s dark in here except for the dying fire and the two candles on the mantel; though the moon is bright, the curtains are velvet and the room is done in ebony and dark brick.

In the daylight, it’s a rundown place, full of cobwebs and termite holes and the scuff marks and dirt of age. In the dark, it suits Maria immensely.

“I just can’t see how you can say that about yourself. I mean, you’re less dark, I guess, now, than you were before you were…” Annas can guess that she’s twisting her fingers, a common nervous habit of hers.

“Turned, Maria. And no, I’m not, really. I can’t see you right now, you know that?” Maria’s gasp is distressing, and Annas knows how she feels. It had been a struggle to admit that about herself, and she has the stubbed toes and skinned knees to prove it.

“You can’t see in the dark?” Maria asks, and Annas nods – Maria can still see her, at least.

“But I tried yesterday – I can see in the daytime. It didn’t even hurt, that much,” she says, remembering the feeling of sun on her face. She’d never felt that much warmth, or seen that much light all at once, before, and it’d been absolutely terrifying, but, well…

“You went out in the sun?” Maria’s appalled tone is what Annas had expected, but it still stings, just a bit. It’s all but blasphemy to talk about daywalking.

“Yeah. It, you know, it wasn’t all that bad.” She pushes further into the curtains, letting them cover her more completely. The thick velvet – the only thing in this part of the house that’s new, because true blackout curtains are a necessary part of life – was comfortable this time last week. Now it feels suffocating, which is a new and unpleasant experience.

Maria’s crossed the room in less than the time it takes to blink and is running her hands over Annas’s arms and face. “Are you sure you’re not injured? No burns?” Maria’s father died from sun exposure, so Annas isn’t surprised that she’s worried, but she doesn’t need to worry about that. Not anymore.

“I’m all right. That, at least, heals fast. But it leaves my skin darker – I guess that’s where we got the name,” she says.

Maria’s hands are cold on hers, which she’s never noticed before, and Maria is most likely just as shocked by how warm Annas is. Her hands, almost of their own accord, move to Annas’s wrists, then her throat, and finally come to rest over her heart.

“It’s beating. You have a heartbeat. But that means you’re not…” she doesn’t finish the sentence, so Annas does it for her.

“Not dead. I know. I’m alive now. Like bait. That’s what Darks are – bait that used to be vampire. That’s what I am.” It’s the first time she’s actually said it, and it’s not quite the release she’d hoped it would be.

Annas has always been stronger than Maria, but now her friend has her wrists in what feels like an unbreakable grip. “Annas, you shouldn’t have come here,” she says, her voice lower and closer than Annas had hoped.

“Just because I’m alive doesn’t mean you have to eat me,” she says, and hopes to high heaven she’s telling the truth.

Maria shakes her head and steps back. “You’re absolutely right, of course. I’m sorry. It’s just so weird. Who else knows?”

“Just you and my parents,” Annas says. “I’m going to have to leave – I can’t stay on this rock. There’s too many of us – of you – and not enough bait for me to stay alive.”

“So if you die again, you stay that way? Blood won’t bring you back?”

Annas shakes her head, her thumb pressing into the brand-new pulse point on her wrist. “Nope. I have to make the stuff myself now, I gather. So if that process stops, so do I.”

“And there’s no way to turn you back.”

“None whatsoever. Darksblood is powerful stuff.” She’s done so much research, but there really is no way to turn a Dark back into what she was before.

“Where are you going to go?” Maria is farther away now, probably sitting on the couch, trying to get away from the smell of Annas’s blood.

Annas shrugs. “I thought maybe Yigeron? There’s enough people in and out of there that I won’t be too stand-out, at least.” She would’ve been a week ago, because the children of the Dragon all have beauty and grace beyond any other people – and she is noticing that so much more these days, with her clumsy living reflexes and her useless eyes – but now she’s boring by anyone’s standards, and if she can stop tripping over herself she won’t attract any attention.

“Yigeron’s tropical, isn’t it? You’ll be… oh, I guess you won’t. Sorry.”

Yeah, she’ll be better off away from here. “I’m going now. I promise not to get eaten on the way to the dock,” she says. She wants to be there before darkdown so she can get on the first ship leaving. She just wanted to say goodbye before she left.

“All right, then,” Maria says, slowly. “Goodbye, then. I guess.”

“Yeah, that’s it. ‘Bye. I’ll come back to visit sometime,” she says. She’s lying. She turns the doorknob and takes a step into the street; Maria moves to the door without apparently covering the intervening space.

“I’ll hold you to that. At least write me a letter. Not in blood.” That’s always been kind of an in-joke ever since Annas wrote with her dinner instead of drinking it when she was about twelve.

“Not even someone else’s?” she asks lightly. Maria’s laugh is a touch strained.

“I thought Darks had rules about that,” she says. Annas deliberates.

“Bait does, but I don’t think Darks do,” she says. “We’re a bit off, you see. Think we used to be dragon-children.” Her fangs haven’t changed, and the grin she gives is all the more worrying for coming from an otherwise normal face. “Maybe I’ll send you a nice Mainland boy. I hear they’re delicious down there.”

The laugh this time is genuine, and Annas pulls her cloak around her and sets off.

in our stars [Angels Zodiac canon]

It seems that I need to split my canon off from my fanfic, because I often decide later that old fics are out of character. Therefore retcons whee! But this? This is canon. Caution: may contain plot.

Kaos is out flying patrol when she all but slams into Fury’s floating castle. She spins backward, orienting herself to it. It’s both larger and darker than it was when it was still part of Mars. Fury is no longer what she was, and her home shows that. Even the aura – Kaos can hardly see the place.

She doubles back, because the first thing she should do is tell the Lady Leo that she’s found her sister. She doesn’t get far, though. Before she can get far enough away to teleport, something big and black and sharp runs into her and she has to spin on a wing-tip and get her feet on the castle, so that the stars are ‘up’.

The castle walls, old as the planets, are a dull ache through the soles of her boots. She stays down anyway, quietly bringing her staff to bear – she’ll take the discomfort for the cover offered by the decorations.

The big black sharp thing is one of Fury’s ravens, Kaos doesn’t know which. Doesn’t matter. It will have recognized her and that it’ll be wanting to take her to its master. She isn’t planning on going. She has no idea what Fury is capable of.

Behind her, something twitches on the edge of her perception. A wing and a shadow – the other raven. The distraction is just enough that the first one is able to dive toward her before she can attack. She swings her staff half-circle and uses the momentum to get out of its way, but it catches her on the leg. Broken.

It’ll heal but she can’t touch down. The other comes up beneath her in the half-second it takes her to assess the injury and flies straight into the blade of her staff. It screams, and feathers fly everywhere as it disappears.

It’ll have gone right back to Fury, but she can’t worry about that right now, there’s the first one to worry about and it’s on her all of a sudden and just as she brings her foot down on its wing, the shadows of the castle itself come out for her and her wings get fouled up in their blackness. She struggles, but it’s useless. Fury is a lot older than she is.

“Kaos,” she hears, and freezes, trying impossibly to hide her aura. Fury strides up the side of the castle with heels clicking, wearing a completely impractical dress of black silk and lace. Of course, she doesn’t need to be practical. This is her territory, and Kaos has just trespassed. If Fury wants her dead, she has very little choice in the matter.

“I wonder if you came here deliberately. But then you won’t tell me, will you?”

Kaos shakes her head and returns her mind to the somewhat futile task of getting her wings free.

“That’s okay, I’m sure I can talk for both of us.” Fury leans forward. “I want to know why you’re still on Leo’s side.”

Kaos ignores her, or tries to. She’s heard this argument a hundred times before and she doesn’t intend to start paying attention to it now, but Fury is very attention-getting. Especially when her shadows are pressing Kaos against her castle wall, and she’s about two inches from Kaos’s face.

“My sister is dangerous to us. She’s irrational. Uncaring. Despotic, even. Haven’t you noticed? How did you get those scars, Kaos? How have you died, the last three times? Don’t bother answering, I know.”

Kaos died, an uncountable number of times, doing her duty. The last time her body was two hundred and three and she threw herself in the path of an oncoming fire spell. The time before last her body was ninety-eight and the last thing she remembers is grabbing the cut ends of a thread that was supposed to have magic running through it. Three lives ago… she doesn’t remember. Oh, she knows, but that memory is gone along with everything before it.

Her face hasn’t moved, she’s sure, but Fury smiles when Kaos gets to that bit of her mental narrative. “You gave up your entire memory for her. You, and Destiny, and Wild, gave up a total of two and a half thousand years’ worth of built-up power and memory for a supernova that would close the gap between our universe and a parasite universe.” Fury’s face grows sharp, her eyes looking at something even Kaos can’t see. “Do you know why? It was on her say-so.”

“If she ordered it, it was necessary,” Kaos says.

Fury snorts. “No. No it wasn’t. She’s had her memory for more than eight thousand years. Right from the start. If she’d done it, it would have only been her who died. She asked you to do what she wouldn’t dream of doing.”

“I am loyal to the Lioness,” Kaos repeats.

“You didn’t get reincarnated for eighty years after that. You were lucky. Wild came back sixteen years ago as a wolf. A wolf! Her soul was so weak that she became an animal. And who knows how long it’ll be before Destiny returns to us,” Fury says. Her voice rises in pitch, her aura stabbing out wildly. “Your loyalty is to a woman who thinks you’re disposable!”

Kaos fixes her eyes on a point out in space and says nothing.

“You shut down when you’re out-argued. I had more respect for your stars, Virgo.” Bitterness, mostly, tinges Fury’s tone.

“I knew this, Aries,” Kaos replies.

“Then why haven’t you joined me yet?” Fury asks, but she’s defeated. The shadows start sliding away from her, letting her wings free to move. She tests them, preparing to fly off.

“Leo is the one to lead us. It’s in our stars.”

“You of all people know how mutable the stars are.” Yes, she sounds bitter. Not angry, but resigned, and her aura stops spiking, coiling in on itself like a snake.

“Those haven’t changed.” Kaos spreads her wings and takes to the sky again.

“Everything changes, Kaos. Everything,” Fury says, but Kaos barely hears her.

this is how a star's made [Angels Zodiac canon]

Yep, this happened.

Once, Wild and Kaos are drifting aimlessly through Neptune’s atmosphere, still wired from a sparring match. Kaos is always a little more open, less of the hardened warrior, at these times.

Kaos tells her that they once died together – the two of them, and Destiny, who hasn’t come back to them yet. Wild doesn’t remember it. She only remembers her time as a wolf.

Kaos has had a few lifetimes since then, and she tells Wild the story.

There was a tear, a break in this universe, she says. The kind of distortion that a black hole produces, with nothing at the center – true nothing, emptiness that shouldn’t be able to exist, she adds, and shudders when she says it. It had to be repaired, but it would take a great deal of power – three lives’ worth of power. The Lioness made the choice: Virgo, Aquarius, and Pisces did the honors. Together, they gave their memories up, and their powers with them.

“That is that star,” she says, and points upward, to a brilliant point of light just sunward of Orion. “Our lives.”

Wild contemplates the star. “Was is worth it?”

With no hesitation, Kaos answers, “Yes.”

Wild is unable to be so sure.