[Witches' Horses] Chevalier de Grammont
Title: penny-ante bets
'Verse/characters: le Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont, Martin
Prompt: 14C "attraction"
Word Count: 356
Notes: So klgaffney gave me "a ridiculously cluttered workspace" for a spark; I actually used it twice. :) This is the other piece.
Martin came at her from one of the few blind spots in her current system, and she startled involuntarily, her gravity coils shuddering briefly in warning before she settled herself again.
He patted her wall with his free hand, the other occupied with a handle for the mesh bag holding a couple of tool cases neatly stacked together. "Easy, lady."
"Do you like having people appear out of nowhere right next to you?" she shot back, voice modulated for human stress and irritation. She was getting better at it--the two humans seemed more startled at how human she sounded, not how not.
He thought about it, then shrugged, lifting the bag with a half-visible bunching of muscle fibers to move it into her belly, and then to the workspace he'd designated for access to the wall he was working on at the moment. "Can't say I'd like that, no. My apologies."
"It's nothing," she automatically demurred, Russian words flowing easily across her inner network.
He smiled at the wall--and the eye embedded in it--"You're getting good at that."
"Thank you," she replied, then backslid considerably when he opened the top toolcase and she demanded "Human, how in the name of hydrogen atoms do you find anything in that mess?"
He paused, blinked, then glanced down into the box and laughed. "Kopek says it takes me less than five seconds to find anything you care to name in there."
She aimed three more eyes at the box, which was starting to overflow onto her deck plates, began colour-coding layers, forming an exploded map in her secondary backup as she did. "A kopek's worth of ice," she replied, and named the seven-sixteenths nebula wrench buried in the fourth compartment, hidden behind a layer of what appeared to be discarded food wrappers.
His hand dove unerringly for the tool, and careful analysis of the recording said that the tool actually twitched towards his hand before he touched it.
She spat the ice out from a conduit ungratefully, and tried to figure out if he'd somehow embedded carefully calibrated magnets in his fingertips while he set to work on the hole where her guns would be.
'Verse/characters: le Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont, Martin
Prompt: 14C "attraction"
Word Count: 356
Notes: So klgaffney gave me "a ridiculously cluttered workspace" for a spark; I actually used it twice. :) This is the other piece.
Martin came at her from one of the few blind spots in her current system, and she startled involuntarily, her gravity coils shuddering briefly in warning before she settled herself again.
He patted her wall with his free hand, the other occupied with a handle for the mesh bag holding a couple of tool cases neatly stacked together. "Easy, lady."
"Do you like having people appear out of nowhere right next to you?" she shot back, voice modulated for human stress and irritation. She was getting better at it--the two humans seemed more startled at how human she sounded, not how not.
He thought about it, then shrugged, lifting the bag with a half-visible bunching of muscle fibers to move it into her belly, and then to the workspace he'd designated for access to the wall he was working on at the moment. "Can't say I'd like that, no. My apologies."
"It's nothing," she automatically demurred, Russian words flowing easily across her inner network.
He smiled at the wall--and the eye embedded in it--"You're getting good at that."
"Thank you," she replied, then backslid considerably when he opened the top toolcase and she demanded "Human, how in the name of hydrogen atoms do you find anything in that mess?"
He paused, blinked, then glanced down into the box and laughed. "Kopek says it takes me less than five seconds to find anything you care to name in there."
She aimed three more eyes at the box, which was starting to overflow onto her deck plates, began colour-coding layers, forming an exploded map in her secondary backup as she did. "A kopek's worth of ice," she replied, and named the seven-sixteenths nebula wrench buried in the fourth compartment, hidden behind a layer of what appeared to be discarded food wrappers.
His hand dove unerringly for the tool, and careful analysis of the recording said that the tool actually twitched towards his hand before he touched it.
She spat the ice out from a conduit ungratefully, and tried to figure out if he'd somehow embedded carefully calibrated magnets in his fingertips while he set to work on the hole where her guns would be.