[Witches' Horses] Chevalier de Grammont
Title: planning
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; le Chevalier de Grammont, Sinclair
Prompt: 22C "perversity"
Word Count: 855
Notes: When asked for a spark, klgaffney provided "rain-wet and metallic-cold".
Timing-wise, this is after drawing lines, but well before they show up on Andreievich's radar.
She has never in her life been this close to a mass so much greater than she is, so very much at the mercy of machines and humans to maintain her health. The stones she'd grown up grazing among had not prepared her for this, not for the intense blue of a sky viewed from below, nor for the miserable feeling of having her outermost skin soaked by liquid ice falling out of a grayed sky.
She'd hacked into the gravity cradle holding her above the surface almost before she'd been settled into it, certainly before the human she allowed inside her was underneath her, running gloved hands across her belly and visually checking her over.
The water running over her tastes of dissolved minerals, lightly of acids, and a great deal of her own paint, streaking as the sealant layer dissolved under the onslaught. She looks awful--exactly as they'd planned it, but she looks awful, battered carthorse whipped through more than one ion storm in her time. Nevermind that she'd taken herself through that storm, allowed her reds and golds to scar over in gunmetal gray, and made the human paint her in a riot of clashing colours above that, to hide the fact that her red and gold and black would grow back over time, unconscious parts of her repairing the damage and restoring her to her healthy baseline.
It itches enormously.
Safely hidden under the curve of her belly, she's rearranged the cradle to funnel water up into her, inverted waterspout, and once inside she's running it through her distillery to strip out the compounds, saving the ones she might have use for and spitting the rest back out into the rain as powder.
By the time the human returns, as soaked as she is and just as unhappy about it, she's filled both fuel holds and started on cycling the emergency reserves that run through her like veins.
He stands under her nose for a while, staring in fascination at her waterspout, before he comes inside, drips all over her inner skin until she sucks all the water out of the atmosphere, pulls it from his skins and his hair, watches in mild fascination as his nose starts bleeding, then slides the moisture gradient back up to its normal setting.
Witches, he's perverse, because he only laughs when he wipes absently at his nose and streaks red thickly across the back of his hand. Looks up at the nearest of her eyes, "Thirsty, are you?"
"Not anymore," she replies, displays her current readings on the big mirror they installed--she'd had no need to share, before he made their bargain, so they'd had to find ways to let her show him what was going on, without letting him run wires into her, because they both know she's not above running current through such things.
He nods. "We'll repair the paint when the weather clears, then get off this rock. We've a cargo, and they're willing to pay extra if their goods don't get wet in transportation." Sliding a mouse out of his sleeve, he clicks it into the reader, and she automatically reaches out, copies its contents, and spreads it out to peer at.
"We're going to take fabrics from here to a terem?" she asks, pouring 'dubious' into her tone.
"No, we're going to be tragically lost in transit, reappearing as a shattered hulk in campfire stories," he flicks his hands, starts pacing a circuit that takes him past three of her eyes. "The reputation we're building demands we take light, small cargos, because you have modifications to your hooves that lets us outrun most raiders and outfight the ones we can't, and they cut into your cargo space. So, yes, we're running luxury fabrics from here to one of several terems."
"Did you steal me, or were you my test rider?" she inquires, half idle, compiling his words and cross referencing them to what she already had on the economic structure they're currently interacting with.
He grins widely, skin distorting around the eyepatch. "Do you have an opinion?"
"I rather like both," she replies, "with a secondary rumour that you killed someone in doing so."
"Which would explain why I'm the only one visibly around you. Nicely done. Now--are we looking for more crew, do we have one that doesn't leave you, or am I a possessive, selfish bastard who won't share a secret or who suspects anyone else involved might try stealing you?"
"Well, you are a possessive, selfish bastard." She flashes a woman's face, smiling, in the mirror, just long enough to register subconsciously. "But I'm inclined to give it a few months, then have a woman's voice start interacting with clients and traffic control, let the rumour spread that you've got at least one back-up."
He pauses in the circuit, looks thoughtful. "With you voicing the lady, of course. Variable accent?"
"You'd have to tell me how to identify accents." She'd research it on her own, of course. He won't give her his name, and she is not yet resigned to the one he's given her.
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; le Chevalier de Grammont, Sinclair
Prompt: 22C "perversity"
Word Count: 855
Notes: When asked for a spark, klgaffney provided "rain-wet and metallic-cold".
Timing-wise, this is after drawing lines, but well before they show up on Andreievich's radar.
She has never in her life been this close to a mass so much greater than she is, so very much at the mercy of machines and humans to maintain her health. The stones she'd grown up grazing among had not prepared her for this, not for the intense blue of a sky viewed from below, nor for the miserable feeling of having her outermost skin soaked by liquid ice falling out of a grayed sky.
She'd hacked into the gravity cradle holding her above the surface almost before she'd been settled into it, certainly before the human she allowed inside her was underneath her, running gloved hands across her belly and visually checking her over.
The water running over her tastes of dissolved minerals, lightly of acids, and a great deal of her own paint, streaking as the sealant layer dissolved under the onslaught. She looks awful--exactly as they'd planned it, but she looks awful, battered carthorse whipped through more than one ion storm in her time. Nevermind that she'd taken herself through that storm, allowed her reds and golds to scar over in gunmetal gray, and made the human paint her in a riot of clashing colours above that, to hide the fact that her red and gold and black would grow back over time, unconscious parts of her repairing the damage and restoring her to her healthy baseline.
It itches enormously.
Safely hidden under the curve of her belly, she's rearranged the cradle to funnel water up into her, inverted waterspout, and once inside she's running it through her distillery to strip out the compounds, saving the ones she might have use for and spitting the rest back out into the rain as powder.
By the time the human returns, as soaked as she is and just as unhappy about it, she's filled both fuel holds and started on cycling the emergency reserves that run through her like veins.
He stands under her nose for a while, staring in fascination at her waterspout, before he comes inside, drips all over her inner skin until she sucks all the water out of the atmosphere, pulls it from his skins and his hair, watches in mild fascination as his nose starts bleeding, then slides the moisture gradient back up to its normal setting.
Witches, he's perverse, because he only laughs when he wipes absently at his nose and streaks red thickly across the back of his hand. Looks up at the nearest of her eyes, "Thirsty, are you?"
"Not anymore," she replies, displays her current readings on the big mirror they installed--she'd had no need to share, before he made their bargain, so they'd had to find ways to let her show him what was going on, without letting him run wires into her, because they both know she's not above running current through such things.
He nods. "We'll repair the paint when the weather clears, then get off this rock. We've a cargo, and they're willing to pay extra if their goods don't get wet in transportation." Sliding a mouse out of his sleeve, he clicks it into the reader, and she automatically reaches out, copies its contents, and spreads it out to peer at.
"We're going to take fabrics from here to a terem?" she asks, pouring 'dubious' into her tone.
"No, we're going to be tragically lost in transit, reappearing as a shattered hulk in campfire stories," he flicks his hands, starts pacing a circuit that takes him past three of her eyes. "The reputation we're building demands we take light, small cargos, because you have modifications to your hooves that lets us outrun most raiders and outfight the ones we can't, and they cut into your cargo space. So, yes, we're running luxury fabrics from here to one of several terems."
"Did you steal me, or were you my test rider?" she inquires, half idle, compiling his words and cross referencing them to what she already had on the economic structure they're currently interacting with.
He grins widely, skin distorting around the eyepatch. "Do you have an opinion?"
"I rather like both," she replies, "with a secondary rumour that you killed someone in doing so."
"Which would explain why I'm the only one visibly around you. Nicely done. Now--are we looking for more crew, do we have one that doesn't leave you, or am I a possessive, selfish bastard who won't share a secret or who suspects anyone else involved might try stealing you?"
"Well, you are a possessive, selfish bastard." She flashes a woman's face, smiling, in the mirror, just long enough to register subconsciously. "But I'm inclined to give it a few months, then have a woman's voice start interacting with clients and traffic control, let the rumour spread that you've got at least one back-up."
He pauses in the circuit, looks thoughtful. "With you voicing the lady, of course. Variable accent?"
"You'd have to tell me how to identify accents." She'd research it on her own, of course. He won't give her his name, and she is not yet resigned to the one he's given her.