NaNo days three through six
Again, completely unedited, not in chronological order.
Working Title: Hiding Places
Genre: Sci-fi/fantasy
Major characters so far: 14
Caffeinated beverages consumed: 19
Word count: 6009/50000 (I'm behind, as usual. D: Not as bad as last year, though.)
Caitlyn dropped her hands, gasping.
Keiran turned, looking at her over his shoulder just long enough to take in the way her hands trembled.
“Take a break,” he told her, turning back to his task.
Caitlyn sucked in deeps breaths and frowned at his back. She didn’t need to quit. Just a quick breather, a few seconds, and she’d be ready to continue. She rubbed her hands against her skirts, wiping of sweat and trying to restore some of the feeling. Her fingers had stopped cramping nearly an hour ago, but the tingles that replaced them were a bit unnerving.
She watched the twists and bunches of the fabric across Kerian’s back as he continued to work steadily. With his sleeves tied back like her own, she could see the flex of the tired muscles in his forearms, the glow of his light-nets picking up the sheen of sweat on his skin, emphasizing every sweeping movement and minute twitch. After sweating profusely for hours, they both stank horribly.
She swept a few sweaty strands of hair back from her forehead with the back of her wrist and stepped forward to join him.
Keiran’s brows were already drawn together in concentration, his mouth set in a grim line, but he still managed to give the impression of frowning at her. “Take a few more minutes. I can hold this a little longer on my own.”
Cait shook her head. Waiting a moment to pick up his rhythm again, she plucked at her own shadowy strands, woven in and under his overlaying web of light, picking them out one by one until both her hands were fully occupied again. There was pressure from the Northwest quarter- she made a few adjustments, pulling threads to shift some of the woven magic to where it was needed.
As soon as she’d made the adjustments, the pressure shifted, coming in from two different angles. She moved to compensate, then did it again. And again. Kieran didn’t mention leaving to her again.
“You were right,” Cait murmured.
“What?”
“To send them away.”
He said nothing, merely ducking his head a bit.
A particularly strong explosion hit their nets, the magical bubble of protection over their sector buckling inward with the impact before sliding back into shape. Keiran hissed, swaying on his feet. Cait doubled over, fists clenching in her nets, riding out the backlash.
It left her reeling. That had been the strongest impact yet, easily more powerful than the comparatively minor potshots they’d been fending of since before dawn. “Kieran…”
He met her eyes.
Cait squared her jaw.
She threw herself into her magic, feeling the shadows envelop her, welcoming her, Kieran a bright, balancing light beside her. She moved within the complex weave of her nets, protecting, concealing, reinforcing, as her brother’s light shone above her, covering her movements, fighting back.
She couldn’t even feel the worrying tingle in her fingers anymore- her hands had gone completely numb.
“Chase! So good to see you!” Toby’s mother greeted him with the same honest welcome she’d met him with the first day he stumbled through her door. Of course, at the time, the honest worry had been far more prevalent in her expression and actions, but the welcome had been there then, too.
“Hey, Mrs. Ramsing.”
“Tobias,” she addressed her son as he came in behind Chase, tugging at his veil until it pulled free of his face, hanging loosely around his neck, “peel these for me, would you? Chase, you can help.”
It wasn’t a request, but somehow Chase didn’t resent her presumption in the slightest. She could ask him to muck out every one of their stables without help and probably make him feel as though she were doing him the favor in the process.
If she and Erin ever met, he was doomed.
She turned, and Chase finally realized she had a spear strapped across her back. She turned back around holding two bowls- one filled with fruit, the other empty- and caught his expression. She smiled a bit but didn’t say anything, handing the full bowl to him and waving him towards the door. Chase frowned, opening his mouth to ask about it, but Toby jostled his shoulder, giving him a significant look as he accepted the other bowl from his mother and preceded Chase through the door from the kitchen to the main room.
Toby sat on one of the hammock-chairs scattered about the room. He pulled his sword from his belt as he did so, but laid it across his lap instead of placing it on one of the weapon racks that lined the walls.
“Ever since that Nomad came around, we’re being careful,” Toby explained.
Considering the walls of every room in the house were lined with bladed weapons of varying functions and sizes and that Toby considered a sword to be an integral part of his outdoor wardrobe, Chase wasn’t sure he wanted to know what else ‘careful’ might equate.
Toby handed him one of the two pairing knives that he’d carried in from the kitchen and claimed one of the fruits from Chase’s bowl, calmly setting about the business of peeling it.
Chase shrugged out of his jacket, letting it slide down to the hammock netting behind him. He hesitated over his gloves. Getting them sticky with juice would be a pain, but…
He pulled off the left one and stuffed it in a pocket then just sat, fiddling with the straps of the right one.
“We’ve all seen it,” Toby reminded him without looking up, voice the epitome of casual statement of fact. He was already on his second fruit.
Chase made an uncomfortable face at his hand. Toby had a point, though. Glancing up through his bangs to make sure his friend wasn’t watching, Chase yanked the glove off hurriedly, stuffing it in his pocket and snatching up the first fruit his fingers came across so he wouldn’t have to look at the scars.
“I never got the girls back to their place,” he blurted, just to fill the silence, then snapped his mouth shut again when he remembered that he hadn’t wanted to bring that topic up.
Toby only nodded, dropping his second fruit into the bowl and picking up a third.
“I tried,” Chase added morosely, watching a trickle of juice find one of the dips the scars had left across his hand, trailing along the crevice of darkened skin.
“Are they safe?” Toby asked, still not looking at him.
Chase wiped the juice off on his pants. “Yeah. They’re with Titian.” That was as safe as he knew how to make them.
By the time he remembered that he was carrying underage passengers who probably shouldn’t be exposed to coarse language, Chase had already run through a fair number of the English curses he knew ad was starting on Chinese.
Chase hopped into the cockpit, settling into his seat with a comfortable bounce to find the perfect spot he’d worn into the seat. He buckled himself in, slapping the cockpit lock without having to look, feet finding the rudder pedals easily.
His hands slipped into the steering columns, sinking in nearly to the elbow before his fingers encountered the handles within. Chase found his grip and felt Moukin come alive around him. Systems booted, triggered by his presence, displays flickering to life, engines sending a subtle vibration through the cockpit. To Chase, it said, “I’m ready. Are you? Then what are we waiting for?”
Moukin smelled of recycled air and old, unwashed upholstery. Chase sucked in a lungful of it and let it out on a laugh. “Let’s do this.”
He put pressure on the steering columns, leaning just so, and felt something else connect, something he’d given up on trying to explain. Erin accepted that he didn’t understand the logistics of opening the Corridors enough to really explain the process, but he’d been unable to sate her curiosity on what it felt like to do so. It was just too weird. When he opened up to that niggling at the back of his mind, he could swear he was communicating with something alive.
Chase hoped to hell there was no one in the Corridors around their place. No trains were scheduled to leave or arrive right now, but you could never be totally sure. Which is why it was illegal to access them through anything but a Gate, and why they always had to have permission to do so. That, and only Nomads dropped in and out of the Corridors uninvited. Nomads and Chase.
Mac was standing clear. Erin wasn’t even here; what she didn’t see, she probably wouldn’t get in much trouble for.
Chase found that spot that Moukin almost seemed to talk through. He reached, extending through his arms, his wings. Out and out, the workshop fading around him as he became aware of the second world waiting just beyond this one. It was waiting out there, a huge expanse that could be his to explore. All he had to do was open the door…
He probed, pushing at the veil between himself and the other world, pressing as the barrier before him seemed to grow thinner. Let us in, Moukin and he insisted. We want in. He pushed in increasing frustration, kicked angrily, pushed again, and finally felt something give. The second world came wide open and he jumped forward, felt the bliss of acceleration, his hold on the door tenuous at best. It was already wavering shut around him; he dropped it the second they were through, feeling the tickle at his thrusters as it slammed shut on his metaphorical heels. The euphoria faded back as his human eyes brought the world back into focus.
The space around him was colorful and ghostly. He could see the things beyond, back int eh other world, but they were unimportant; pale and faded, blurring by too quickly to have seen them even if he were interested in really looking. Above him, a whole new plain spread away, speckled with stars and rivers, ebbs and flows made of magic itself. He didn’t care about the world below him, but he did have a destination firmly fixed in his mind, and it wasn’t up.
The river split. Chase took the left- hand fork without thinking about it. The route was set in their computer; all they had to do was let the human limbs direct the technological wings.
Every one of the hallways looked the same. Long, plain, straight. Utterly lacking ornamentation of any kind. Nomad practicality.
He hadn’t seen a soul for at least five minutes, but he wasn’t fooled into thinking that someone didn’t know exactly where he was. Nomad paranoia.
And he knew that should he get anywhere near a classified area- or the hangar- a guard or an officer would appear like magic to herd him away. Nomad caution.
Chase was well and sick of Nomad sensibilities.
“I need to get something out of my ship.”
Rue frowned at the datapad he was studying. “There is extra clothing for you in your closet if you have dirtied everything you had with you.”
“S’not that. I need to get my homework.”
Rue blinked rapidly at the datapad, suddenly discovering he’d lost his spot.
“Homework?”
“Yeah. You do know what homework is, right? You know, like, school and all?”
“I was not aware you were still receiving a formal education.”
“I’m sixteen. Why wouldn’t I be in school?”
“I was under the impression that you were also working two jobs. That is generally not
the living pattern of someone who is receiving a full time education.”
Chase was once again a bit disturbed by the fact that his uncle seemed to know all the minor details of his life when he’d only ever met the man once before. He pushed down his growing discomfort, but didn’t quite care enough to bothering hiding the growing ire in his voice.
“It’s called home school. Like normal school, at home, complete with homework. If I’m stuck here at least I can get that done.”
Rue smiled a bit. “You must be truly bored if you are requesting access to work. I was under the impression most human boys your age go to great length to avoid such things.”
Chase threw up his hands. “You know what? Forget it.” He slapped his hands against his sides, ready to make a huffy exit.
Rue shook his head, standing. “No. There is no reason for your being here to interrupt your education.”
Chase contemplated the best way to make a jab about his being here interrupting every other aspect of his life, so why not that one, but his uncle continued.
“I will accompany you to the hangar, but you will not be retrieving this homework yourself.”
“What? Hey, I’m not letting someone else paw through my ship.”
“Technically, it is not your ship. You are very lucky no one has brought charges against you for stealing from the Nomad people.”
“Hey! It was slated for scrap, anyway!”
“It was and is the property of the Nomad military, regardless of what you did to make it flight worthy. As I said, you are very lucky my commanding officer understood the circumstances under which the ship was stolen-”
“Stolen!”
“Yes, stolen.”
Rue opened the door and stood there, clearly waiting for Chase to go first. He set his feet stubbornly.
“Forget it. I don’t want anyone poking around in my ship.”
“Chase. Please do not test my patience.”
Chase turned his back and sat on the couch, deliberately sprawling as much as possible.
He heard Rue sigh and step away from the door, letting it shut. The room fell into a tense, uncomfortable silence.
“Very well,” Rue finally said, “If you do not wish to leave, you will not mind remaining in these rooms for the next week.”
Chase jerked forward as though he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod. “What?”
Rue was picking his datapad up, sitting back down in his chair. “Everything you need to function is contained within these rooms. Of course, there is very little for you to occupy your attention with, which may pose a bit of a problem if you are already so bored you wish to do homework, but you have made it abundantly clear that such things are not my concern.”
“Fine,” Chase growled, pushing himself stiffly to his feet. Rue made a show of being completely absorbed in his reading. “Alright,” Chase said, more a whine now than a growl. “You’ve made your point, okay? Alright.”
Rue raised his eyes without moving his head.
“What?” Chase complained. “If you’re waiting for me to say sorry, you can forget it. You’re the one who’s being a-”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
Chase shut his mouth, glaring. They watched each other in stony silence.
Rue set the datapad back down, movements carefully controlled. “And once you have what you want?”
Chase waited in confusion for his uncle to continue. Rue folded his hands together and propped his chin on them, watching Chase quietly. His expression turned disappointed at Chase’s continued silence. Chase bristled. He didn’t need to take this kind of crap from this man. Rue extended a hand when Chase began to turn away. Chase jerked his arm back when Rue would have touched him, but he didn’t move otherwise. Rue withdrew his hand, using it to rub at his forehead.
“Once you have what you want, what is to stop this kind of behavior from coming up again?”
“You’re not my father or my guardian. Don’t bother acting like you are.”
Rue had stopped moving and was just sitting there, watching Chase again, his expression unreadable.