TIMESKIP.

[vrykolakas]

THE BRUCOLAC COURT Unseelie. TITLE Baron of Srathmarbh, Black Omen. OCCUPATION Baron, drugs manufacturer, political thinker gods help him, Umibōzu captain. ABLE TO FAST-TRAVEL Yes; puca. RESIDENCE IN 2,701 Srathmarbh. RESIDENCE IN 2,702 Srathmarbh. MAJOR EVENTS PUBLICATION OF THE REDDENED HILL Being a Personal Account of the Battle of An Carn Ban... [ ✖ ] ADOPTION DISCUSSION "There is no one I would want to do it more." [ ✖ ] COMPLETION OF THE SRATHMARBH SPIRE Description [ ✖ ] PUBLICATION OF THE GOVERNOR A brief meditation on what and what not to do while holding public office. [ ✖ ] BIRTH OF SHAMASH Description [ ✖ ] BIRTH OF ISHTAR Description [ ✖ ] RESCUE OF CHILDREN Description [ ✖ ]

PLANS By the time the timeskip ends, the Brucolac will be in a more stable position, his spire complete and the surrounding lands a buzzing centre of construction and commerce. He will have two children in the care of Alyosha Hazan. SUMMARY OF KNOWN DETAILS Beebins; daring rescue of beebins; becoming reluctantly published; stuff stuff stuff; seeing a scifi film and being the biggest nerd; building a wee town & preparing for ports & shipyards; maybe hunting cloudwhales; tsk'ing unhappily at the cult of the fox TIMELINE OF EVENTS SPRING IN 2,701 (Mar, Apr, May) MARCH - Publication of the Brucolac's The Reddened Hill: The Unseelie Triumph of An Càrn Bàn. Anonymous, though rumour suggests it was one of the Barons. MARCH - A long talk with Alyosha about adoption. APRIL 5TH - The Srathmarbh Spire is completed and the name 'Srathmarbh' finally begins to catch on. Construction workers are encouraged to stay and continue building on the town proper. Whispers abound of future, grander plans (the Brucolac himself ensures these whispers circulate). Various grants and start-up loans are offered to would-be business-owners. APRIL - Hunting cloudwhales for their precious floaty bones. MAY - Publication of The Governor. Anonymous/under penname. MAY - A run-down rural farmhouse west of Mair is chosen for the location at which to base the Brucolac & Dasha's growing drugs business. MAY - Aileas an Seabhac requests that the Brucolac act as her diplomat to help smoothe over tensions between the vampires and the elves. MAY - Those fucking swans. The Brucolac will scoop up a few and be seen to pour what wealth is gained from them straight back into Srathmarbh. SUMMER IN 2,701 (Jun, Jul, Aug) JUNE - Two vampire entrepreneurs take advantage of the Brucolac's offered start-up loans and begin to create a printing press in Srathmarbh. JUNE - The Brucolac participates in the Treun summer tourney, in the Melee category! Yseult comes to watch; the rumours which have long abounded about the Brucolac's kept woman in Mair become noisier. The event ends terribly for them when, during the daytime, Yseult is attacked by copycats of the fox cult for her association with shardbearers. JULY - Perhaps it's the rich heat of the summer sun which the slakemoths respond to? Or the blood in the air. They wrap themselves up in cocoons and emerge terrible, but are manageable. Don't ask how. JULY - An attempt is made to feed one Mr Bones to the slakemoths. AUGUST - The Festival of Shadow. FALL IN 2,701 (Sept, Oct, Nov) EARLY SEPTEMBER - The Brucolac is affected by the scrambling of the translation enchantment; he speaks some stilted Drabbish, and a whole heap of languages from his world, which are all totally useless to him. Expect terrible handwriting and a lot of gestures. Also expect one great big universally-understandable I TOLD YOU SO. SEPTEMBER - The Srathmarbh press is complete and ready for business! Grants for teachers and educators, or literate people wishing to become teachers and educators, are refined and more widely publicised. SEPTEMBER 29TH - Birth of Shamash, son of Verla. OCTOBER 3RD - Birth of Ishtar, daughter of Yseult. OCTOBER 5TH? - By the grace of the Unseelie monarchs, the children are returned, delivered safely to the arms of Alyosha Hazan. OCTOBER 25TH - 30TH - Samhain! An excuse to be naked with loved ones. NOVEMBER - Some of the escaped criminals are former employees of Mr Bones, out for vengeance or perhaps out for gainful employment now that Mr Bones is no longer quite the force he was. The Brucolac puts out feelers to ascertain various situations and deal with them appropriately. WINTER IN 2,701/2,702 (Dec, Jan, Feb) DECEMBER - The Brucolac stays far away from the White Hart. No thanks. Srathmarbh will hold a fervent Yule celebration, which promises to become a tradition. JANUARY - Fuck, what do you mean the slakemoths bred? Oh fuck. FEBRUARY - Yseult causes controversy at the Ostara Festival by anonymously submitting a work named Blindeye, a great abstract mural of wild colours meant to be touched and stroked and stared at with unease. It is torched by a traditionalist. The Brucolac tries to use this to distract from possible re-emergence of elf/vampir tensions caused by the assassinations of elven artists. SPRING IN 2,702 (Mar, Apr) DATE - Description DATE - Description DATE - Description

( codes by whambam )

Comments

[vrykolakas]

A snicker was all the response the Brucolac gave to the clerk's discomfort, not releasing his hold on Alyosha's waist as they strode to the screen door.

"Xenomorph. Sounds thrilling. What ideas might it give us?"

[fairyfoes]

The clerk only shook his head as they left him, and Alyosha had to suppress a laugh, reaching forward to pull the door open for them both. "Ahhh, he means a rite of passage for the Station youth. Theatre's dark and isolated-feeling, the brave ones sit in the back and dip their toes very shallowly into exhibitionism with their lovers."

Her eyes twitched to the title of the film, backlit above the door. "This one isn't the sort of story to encourage it, alas," she almost sighed, and drew him in. The opening credits were already playing.

[vrykolakas]

He tensed a little in surprise at the music and the noise, having forgotten that she had said those were included in the images. One hell of a phonograph record—he took a sniff—yes, no orchestra. All recorded. Fascinating.

"Come then," he said, whisking her swiftly through the seats, towards—of course—the back. And why not? Best to keep one's options open. "What are these—names? Some kind of memorial? Are they important?"

[fairyfoes]

He chose the back, and the pallor of her grin cut the darkness like a knife. She squeezed his hand, followed. Slid into the seat beside him, nudging up the arm between them with an elbow.

"Actors and staff," she whispered, "Far as I can tell! Investors too, likely."

[vrykolakas]

"Ah, so not part of the story." The arm out of the way, he shifted to get comfortable, wrapping his arm about her shoulders and tucking her close. She smelt of metal and clean woodsmoke; he inhaled for the pleasure of tasting it, felt himself relax where he hadn't realised he had been tense.

[fairyfoes]

A poor-lense blurred image of a planet drifted across the screen in muted colours; the score was haunting, even familiar as it was to her. She tucked against him and under his arm like a falcon against its mate, eyes forward, so rapt that she had gone very still, half-hugging him as if expecting to be frightened.

A field of stars wheeled slowly as the music quieted; scenes of the enormous ship panned, its interior dead and silent. Lighting slowly at some invisible signal. Computer screens flickered to life and poured out information to no one.

[vrykolakas]

The stars provoked a sharp inhalation, the Brucolac sitting up straighter. They were brighter, clearer than any heliograph he'd ever seen. He tensed at the progression from planet to stars to screens, one hand at his mouth. Nonplussed, briefly, before he understood how he was supposed to link each sight to the next, a silent observer to it all. For a moment, presented with the stars, he tried to make sense of them, see if he recognised any of their configurations—from his world, from this—but there was nothing in the shapes they spelt out that he could read. And the ship... His fingers squeezed Alyosha's shoulder tight. Was that the kind of thing she had been born on? A silent and lonely metal creature, driving through blackness?

"Fuck me pink," he muttered, rapt; delighted and apprehensive.

[fairyfoes]

She exhaled a breath of laughter, relaxed against him a little, eyes mirrors to all she saw, "This would be set sometime during the Terraforming Age; ships were primitive, and there were no faster-than-light engines. So, it would take decades for ships to travel from one place to another, and decades more to return. Crews would sleep most of the journey in pods— like those there, see how they're waking now that the ship has received signal?— which would slow their bodily cycles to such a crawl that they wouldn't even age..." Her explanation drifted off as the very small crew began to interact.

The air was tense; it was clear the messages the ship had received were unexpected, unable to be translated, and caused division, seeds of dissent. Long silences were set to the background of the ship's sterility. The ship's computer was 'Mother', called so either affectionately or resentfully by the crew, and an outward pan revealed their destination: a planetoid dark enough to seem threatening, spinning slowly, the suggestion of surface-storms blurred in its shadows.

[vrykolakas]

"Sleeping ships drifting through a sea of stars. All that black silence. Aly. What I'd give to—..."

He leaned forwards, rapt, and stared with hungry fascination. With a sudden stab he realised he was staring into an alien past. Some farworld fantasy. His fingers tightened at her shoulder.

"I've spent all my life travelling," he murmured to her, not taking his eyes from the screen. "I never expected to get this far away."

[fairyfoes]

She squeezed his knee, suppressing laughter into a broad, delighted grin. "Does it really feel so far away?" What's different, what the same? She watched his face for a long moment, elated, before tucking herself close again, watching safety-suited crew members explore alien architecture. Their hushed voices drew her in, made her clench here and there in sympathetic fear.

[vrykolakas]

"It's the dream of someone from another damn world," he whispered back to her, unable quite to put into words what was so strange about that when he sat with her held tight to him, each of them multiversal flotsam and jetsam.

It was so quiet. The Drabwurld was, as worlds went, quiet enough, should you find the right place. No hum of chatter, no machinery, no smoke belching into the air. Thaumaturgy here needed no circuitry. It was so alien to Armada's constance sea-mutter and city-churn that it had disturbed him at first. He wasn't surprised to find himself happier in Srathmarbh, with the howl of the sea and the clamour of construction. But the film showed a silence wide and lonely as the depths of the sea. He could almost remember silences like that. Desert silences, the hush of no one knowing or caring where you were, or if you lived or died, as you picked your way alone across the world.

Slowly, he leant back, and let the film play out before him, eyes lit with hungry awe. He hissed at tense moments, shuddered and gnawed his lower lip, barely blinked; he flicked his tongue in the air, shifted in his seat, gripped her tighter.

Aly had to know when the first scare scene was coming up. He, of course, was entirely oblivious, more interested in staring at the setting and tiny details of the characters' costumes than paying attention to the plot.

[fairyfoes]

The dream of someone from another world.

She wrapped herself in the quiet and thought on this, only half-seeing the familiar images. Thinking of dreams, and other worlds; what did he dream of? what did he remember, what were the shapes and colours and textures of his world? Her imagination conjured images like a forest of brightly-coloured sails, fleet, synthetic-hulled skiffs hunting—

But a sound made her re-focus, and she leaned vaguely forward. The music faded in a moment she recalled well (it had made her shriek the first time, and muffle the same sound in her hands the second). She watched the Brucolac from the edge of her vision, making certain to time it. Turned her face toward him, innocuously— and in concert with the first of the movie's many later scares flicked out the tines of her tongue, touching them against the worlds of his ear, hissing in such close proximity just to startle him better.

[vrykolakas]

He all but screeched, snatching at Alyosha and then shoving her away, his yell interrupted by laughter. Mortified and adrenalin-giddy at the same time.

"Fuck you," he groaned, "fuck you, fuck you, fuck your mother's mother's mother's...uterine replicator—" Laughing again, breathless and nearly soundless, covering his eyes with his hand, his shoulders shaking.

[fairyfoes]

His shove cast her half into the seat on her opposite side, laughing so wildly that she didn't immediately right herself.

"Your face!" She crowed, righting herself in an inelegant thrash, kissing his shoulder (not at all apologetic) and giving his waist a squeeze. At a loud shush from another member of the audience seated far closer to the front, she pitched her voice to a whisper,

"Worth it."

[vrykolakas]

"Witch, fucking harridan," he hissed, sounding as wrathful as any puca but hugging her close, chest still shaking with laughter. "If this were my godsdamn ship I'd have you lashed raw." His lips found her brow, then he tipped her face up to kiss her.

[fairyfoes]

She hummed against his mouth, too pleased, kissed him eagerly and hard. "Pillow talk," she accused, leaning into the crook of his arm again, pinching his side lightly between thumb and forefinger, "You know I'd just beg for more stripes 'til I was half-flayed."

[vrykolakas]

"That—that—is not helping me concentrate," he hissed back at her, nipping at her bottom lip and crushing his mouth to hers as if trying to chide her through the kiss. But it was too clumsy and feeling an embrace to even hint at real reproach, and he broke off laughing, a breathless whisper. "Once I've a ship, I'll have you flushed and whining against every godsdamn mast, bend you so far over the rail it's just my grip between you and the deep," he was nuzzling at her ear, "but now I've lost fucking track of what's meant to be happening," a complaint he swiftly complicated by flicking his tongue down her collar in a sudden, lewd movement, tines tickling her sternum.

[fairyfoes]

No chiding could penetrate her toe-curled, breath-hitched satisfaction, and Alyosha gasped, tried to suck the taste from his mouth. She made a wanting sound, a soft mewl that was barely more than vibrations in her throat, shivering against the slickness of his tongue where it touched her skin. Reflexively, her hands clenched around fistfuls of his clothing, tugging him toward her, flicking her tongue against his lower lip, needful, wanting, the gestural equivalent of a 'please, please, please' begged against his mouth.

"Lost track, have you?" She all but hissed, disbelieving, half challenge, half invitation, eyes flashing in the dark.

[vrykolakas]

He whipped his tongue out from her collar and tracked wet kisses from her ear to her mouth, sinking back into his seat and pulling her close so that she was leaning over him. "You doubt me?" His touches turned langurous and gentle, his hands stroking up her sides. "You think I've got reserves of sensibility enough to withstand you, you godsdamn battering ram of a woman?" He sighed, a sound close to purring, and reached up to the back of her neck to find the hollow at the base of her skull. His fingertips dragged through the thick, soft dark hair which was just growing out long enough to whorl in inconvenient cowslicks. Before he spoke, he snapped his teeth at her in a snake-quick mock threat, and grinned. "I'm out of fucking practice. —Were you serious about this being an adolescent courtship ritual?"

[fairyfoes]

"Sly fucker that you are," she teased, "I won't be tricked into underestimating your capabilities." A trick of tone made it invitation and innuendo.

He snapped, she hissed, and tried to smother her throaty laughter against his chest and neck, where it sounded more like some large beast's rumble of contentment and vibrated down through his bones. He'd pulled her half-into his lap, and she twisted in her seat to better face him than the coldly floating images on the screen, slithering the rest of the way like a possessive cat, leaning into his hand with palpable pressure. The tapetum lucidum glinted behind her eyes.

Alyosha reprimanded him by pricking his throat with the points of her teeth, not even enough to film the white of them with blood, laughter subsided enough to say, "Out of practice; was it ever something you needed practice for?" She flicked her tongue like a lash and tsked dramatically.

"Of course I was serious." But now she was regretting having not spun a more colourful story at his expense.

[vrykolakas]

Toes curling in his boots, the Brucolac gave a pleased shudder, gripping her waist with the hand not at the nape of her neck and hauling her body flush to his. He leant his head to once side, letting her nip and worry at his neck to her heart's content.

"Not the act itself," he said, a strain of wicked, teasing humour audible in his voice, "one gets to a certain age and stops worrying about how and what if and so on, but the fumblings and forays around it? The etiquette? The multitasking? You ask a lot—of a creaking old corpse."

All mock self-deprecating, while his fingers dug deeper into the knots of muscle at the base of her skull, and his other hand dropped from her waist to spread out on her thigh.

[fairyfoes]

She draped over him light as a garment, bit his neck hard when he bared it to her; once, twice, and then relented, pressing her face into the crook where his neck met his shoulder and closing her eyes. His gravel-rough voice vibrated through her, and she was still, her pleasure almost a palpable thing.

"I do," she hummed against his skin, unrepentant, body slackening still further under his ministrations. She arched and bowed towards them subtly. Her hands smoothed up his chest.

Warmly, "And here you are, reinforcing the behavior." She tsked at him while her thumbs, both cool, glided up the sides of his own neck, massaging slowly.