Category: Original Fiction

Original Fiction, The Tiered Tower

The Man in the Runic Kerchief

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Moderate Violence

Summary: A deal goes wrong on the yellow tier. We are introduced to a kitsune prince and his terrifying lover.

Short Tail tried to stand a little straighter as she entered the conference room at the end of the line. She did not want to make any mistakes on her first day of duty, particularly not as a guard of the illustrious Leopard family. She was still unsure as to how she, Short Tail, the runt of the parade, had made it this far, and she damn well didn’t want to disappoint, even if she was only serving as the guard for the youngest son, Leopard Paw, and according to all her squad mates, today’s meeting barely counted as guard work at all.

“Final meeting with the kitsune prince?” Sharp Fangs had smirked. “I think you’ll be fine.”

All the same, Short Tail was curious. There weren’t many kitsune on the yellow tier, and Bee of the Wolf family was one of the only ones coming from princely blood.

When they entered, he didn’t look like anything special. Seated at the head of the table and sprawling a little, feet up, he looked like any other troll prince, his dark hair gathered in small, beaded braids close to his head. There was something strange about the wide set of his eyes and the glitter of yellow in the depths of his irises, but Short Tail would never have noticed if she hadn’t already known. Far more striking—and simultaneously surprising—was his companion.

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Original Fiction, The Tiered Tower

New Beginnings

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Summary: A young kobold who has followed his wife to a distant Imperial posting brings his egg to the clan and discovers that he doesn’t understand as much about his new society as he thought he did.

A/N: Rated general audiences, no particular warnings.

Pale morning light caressed the creamy yellow shell of the egg, speckled with blue like Morning Daughter’s eyes. Third Son rearranged the little puffs of cotton warming their egg for the fourth or fifth time. “It’ll be all right,” he’d told Morning Daughter before he left their rooms at the far end of the compound, and she’d nodded bravely. It was the egg—it was harder than they’d thought it would be.

The rest of their move from the violet tier to the black had been difficult, but it was a good opportunity, and it hadn’t been more difficult than expected. There was the journey, which, thanks to some complications during the crossings, had taken nearly two weeks, and there was the tier itself—although this had made up for its cave-like qualities by turning out to be startlingly beautiful. Third Son had heard that the seasons on the lower tiers had more to do with location than with time, but he hadn’t really understood what that had meant until they had arrived in the middle of a raging snowstorm that gave way within a half hour’s walk to a warm, quiet spring-like day. There was also getting settled, half their furniture being lost somewhere on the green tier, and finding out just exactly how different a shared language could be.

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City of Storms, Original Fiction

The Ghost-Queller

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Blood and violence, dark themes, mild internalized homophobia

Summary: When Feithlyn moves from her tiny village to the big city to study veterinary medicine, she’s expecting some things to change. She is not expecting to become embroiled in a ghostly murder mystery, at the center of which stands an enigmatic figure known only as the ghost-queller. As Feithlyn’s world expands, she fights to keep her footing–and her life.

The bird cocked its head and tapped on the glass.

“Stop that! Shoo!” It wasn’t that Feithlyn didn’t like crows, it was just that the last few times she had turned her back, this one had managed to open the window and sneak inside, dropping feathers everywhere for her to clean up. Crows did not belong in a café, and if the owner found out, Feithlyn feared for her employment, which meant fearing for her tiny one-room apartment, which meant fearing she would have to complete her veterinary degree while homeless. Which sounded difficult.

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Original Fiction, Post-apocalyptic New Mexico

A Love Like Water

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Summary: Sheriff Solshemshesh and his sheriff-in-training Lekni try to stop a rash of violent deaths in the little desert town of Saplapelanka.

Rating: Teen and up

Warnings: Some violence

Notes: Genders: male, female, trine (third gender), quine (genderfluid).

Kimah was setting and the sun rising as Lekni set off at an exasperated trot southwards of Saplapelanka.  Someday, she thought, people would stop being idiots.  And someday, she would stop being the sheriff’s errand-runner and instead be able to delegate someone else to go lead those idiots back to the town.

She spotted the group before she’d gone three miles, squatting embarrassedly half-naked around a large campfire in the lee of a sand dune.  Lekni waved tiredly as she arrived.  “I did warn you,” she said irritably to the first of their group, a merchant named Peltlin, if she was remembering correctly. 

They scowled at her.  “The woman sounded like she knew what she was talkin’ about,” they muttered sulkily.

“Well, I’ve brought you shoes, blankets, and horses.  Courtesy of Sheriff Solshemshesh.  So you’ll be able to get back to town easily.”  She received a highly ungracious grunt that might have been a thanks and rolled her eyes.  “Do you need me to lead you back?”

“We’ll be fine,” Peltlin muttered.  A young woman patted their arm gently and gave Lekni a sudden smile.  “Don’t bother about my parent,” she said.  “They’re just frustrated at getting fooled.  Thank you for helpin’ us.”

Lekni felt her cheeks warm, like a fool.  “Let me know if there’s anythin’ else,” she mumbled, turning her horse back towards Saplapelanka.

She had plenty of time on the way back to curse the person who kept running this stupid con.  She could, she supposed, also have cursed Shem for constantly making her deal with it, but that seemed less fair.  After all, he was trying to train her to take his place someday, so she should be the one dealing with the routine annoyances.  And it wasn’t like he knew this was going to be happening.

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Original Fiction

The Story of Bragi and Iðunn

Mertiya (AdmirableMonster)

Rated: General

Summary: Before Bragi, the long-bearded god, came to Valhalla, he met a beautiful woman in a deep forest, who asked him to judge a contest between herself and her brothers.

A/N: This story is largely fanciful, based on a few tantalizing hints. First: the notion of a connection between Iðunn and the sons of Ivaldi is attested, and the description of the story of Kvasir is well-known. There have been previous suggestions of Bragi’s connection to Kvasir, but as far as I know, this is nothing more than speculation. I have made up most of this, though I have tried to make it sound Norse mythology-ish, at least.

Many thanks to kimikocha and Husband, for beta-ing!

For Bragi, first maker of poetry

When gods die, sometimes they return in new ways.  Kvasir was a god created from the spit of the Aesir and Vanir, or perhaps he was a man.  He was not an ordinary sort of fellow, at any rate, but he was murdered by two dwarfs who cut his throat to make mead from his blood and that was the end of his first story, or at least his part in it.  The story keeps going, and as he was a god of stories or of poetry or skaldishness, this shows you that he cannot have died the way a mortal might, to pass out of touch with this world.

In the rest of the story, it is told how Odin All-father made love to the giantess Gunnlod and stole the mead of Kvasir from Suttung her father to bring it back to the gods.  The mead of poetry was returned to them, but Kvasir himself returned in a different form, nine months later, when Gunnlod gave birth to Odin’s son Bragi, who is called first maker of poetry; and who could he be but another form of Kvasir, with a sobriquet like that?

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