Rogue Sloth

New World Contention [AnnaWinters & Summer]

No worries! I haven't done much writing over the past few days because I've been really busy. Feel free to work on it when you can :)

~Bonsoir~

As they left his family behind, Vail glanced once back over his shoulder at his parents, who had already turned away from them to take solace in each other’s company. He knew they were still upset with him and with Victoria over their decision to be together, but he’d been hoping that they would at least set their disappointment aside while there were more pressing issues to take care of. Peter and Katherine were unwavering traditionalists. They believed in doing things a certain way and balked at the thought of allowing anyone or anything to disrupt their way of life.

For a long time, their beliefs had rubbed off on him too, but since he’d met and gotten to know Victoria, he’d realized that his family had some glaring flaws. They were inflexible. Centuries of falling into strict routine had made them blind to the possibility that there was more than one right way to do things. Their stubbornness had cost them dearly when Mikael had attacked, and now it was potentially going to cost them the affection of their future daughter in law. He exhaled softly as he turned away from them again. Disliking the tension between his parents and the woman he loved, he hoped they would come around eventually, but it was difficult to tell what would happen this early on.

“Well, it sounds like we’ll have plenty of that,” Vail mused when Victoria told him that she was hungry. It was interesting to him that she still craved solid food even though she had woken up as a vampire. Occasionally, he had a taste for something other than blood, but he would never equate it to genuine hunger. When he dined on the food and drink that sustained mortals, it was always by choice, since he didn’t need enough of the nutrients in it to consider it essential to his diet. Human meals just gave him a bit of a short-term energy boost.

Approaching the manor, he inhaled the strong aroma of blood and realized that their human hosts had prepared more than just a classic dinner for them to feast on that evening. He walked by Victoria’s side the rest of the way to the dining room and surveyed the banquet from the doorway. After eating nothing for the past week, the food and blood that had been set out for them all would be an exceptional meal to fill his empty stomach, and his mouth watered at just the thought of it. Even though he didn’t need human food to survive, he still appreciated the way the mortals cooked and seasoned it.

He joined Victoria on the far end of the table while the rest of the vampires who had been invited filled in the center. A few of his cousins eyes their own wine glasses hungrily, barely restraining themselves from downing the blood inside before everyone was seated. They had all fed recently, but they were still slaves to their nature. The pungent scent of blood in the air and the generous portions that had been provided to each of them was a test to the wills of the clan members with less self-control.

Vail’s only task was to make sure that none of his relatives attacked the humans in the room, and since his cousins were merely slavering over their drinks, he fixed his attention on Victoria, who seemed to have the opposite reaction to the glass in front of her. “If you still have an appetite for the food you ate when you were human, it may be too soon,” he suggested, resting a hand supportively on her leg. “We still don’t know exactly what your transformation is going to look like, so there’s no need to force it if you aren’t ready. The blood is just there for you as an option. Enjoy your dinner, and don’t feel obligated to finish your drink if you have no taste for it yet.”

New World Contention [AnnaWinters & Summer]

Sure, that works for me. Someone could show up the next morning to bring them where they need to go.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Been super busy recently and Murphy's law is still on the attack. This time, our flooring installer's dog had a seizure, so the project got postponed and we have only half a floor in our living room ^^; I haven't had the time or motivation to sit down and write, and today I have to prep for the book study my husband and I lead every Monday night. Hopefully I'll get something up tomorrow!

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

I’m thinking that he’ll actually turn his phone on soon because he’s got an incentive not to leave now that he found out about Matthew. Maybe while Iris is eating, he’ll do that and find all the messages from everyone who’s been trying to get ahold of him.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Had a small bout of writer's block for this one for some reason but I got past it :)

I have a feeling Iris isn't going to uphold her promise to Cas when Ethan threatens her later (if she agrees to it at all), haha

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

While he waited for Iris to gather her thoughts to answer his question, Caspian finished off the rest of his breakfast and set the empty plate back down on the coffee table. It turned out to be a good thing that he’d eaten before she spoke again too, because the reply she gave was enough to make him lose his appetite completely.

He turned to face her on the sofa, listening patiently to all she had to say. He did know that she’d suffered from nightmares before, since he’d learned about it when they had been stuck outside the capital. What he hadn’t known was the frequency with which she was afflicted by the bad dreams. A frown creased his forehead when she admitted that she hadn’t been sleeping very well at the Kinders’ house because of the nightmares. At the time, there hadn’t been an alternative place for her to go, but he was still a little discouraged to find out that the one solution they’d found, hiding her with Miles, hadn’t worked out as well as he’d hoped it would.

A part of him wanted to assure her that his friend wouldn’t have cared if she had a nightmare around him, but it was in the past now, so there was no point in saying anything about it. Instead, he remained quiet and just nodded along as she kept talking.

She went on to tell him about her experience with Matthew, one of the interrogators that had been hired by the crown to question prisoners, and Cas clenched his jaw. It was frustrating enough to know that because of his father, she had been subjected to literal torture, but it sounded like Matthew had been crueler with her than he’d needed to be. Using Regis’s death to provoke her was low. The man was her father, and even though their relationship hadn’t been the healthiest, it was sick to use him against her like that. If he had been in the same position, he would have been horrified to find out that his father had died from the lips of a man who was trying to break his will and get him to confess to crimes he hadn’t committed.

Even worse, it seemed like Matthew had done more than just tell her the news that Regis had been executed. As Iris told him about the photograph she’d been shown of her own father’s mutilated corpse, the prince felt sick to his stomach. It was disgusting and sadistic and completely inhumane. It was no wonder that she couldn’t sleep at night after that. He couldn’t even imagine what it had been like to look at a picture of someone he cared about, bled out on the ground after they had been killed by the firing squad. And then on top of that, she’d been exposed to Aproveset. It was almost too much to take in.

For a moment, he didn’t say anything, stunned speechless by everything she had just opened up to him about. After a moment of silence, he leaned forward to wrap his arms around her in a tight embrace, pressing a hand to the back of her head as he pulled her into his shoulder. “I had no idea… I’m so sorry, Iris. You never should have had to go through any of that.” There had never been a time in his life that he’d wished he could turn back time more than he did in that instance. Unfortunately, that was impossible, but maybe there was still something that could be done in retribution. If he went back to his father, he could try his damnedest to get Matthew terminated immediately for abuse of power. The interrogator didn’t deserve his position if he was going to treat people that terribly.

For another moment, he fell quiet again and simply held her. As he gathered his own thoughts, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I know you try to handle everything on your own because you’ve had to take care of yourself for most of your life, but please don’t ever try to hide something like that from me again,” he whispered, pulling back just enough to meet her gaze sincerely. “Iris, you mean so much to me that I can’t even put it into words. If something happened to you, I don’t know what I would do… so please, even if you feel like it’s not a big deal or that you’ll be imposing on me somehow by asking for help… just do it. Talk to me. Tell someone else to talk to me if you can’t do it yourself. You don’t have to do anything alone anymore, because I want to be there for you. But if you don’t let me in, I can’t do that.”

Idly, he brushed a loose strand of her long hair behind her ear. “If Jacob hadn’t told me anything about what happened to you, you would probably be dead right now… Please, if you ever need anything, big or small, can you promise me you won’t try to hide it from me next time?”

New World Contention [AnnaWinters & Summer]

I'm happy to skip ahead to the next morning whenever you want to!

New World Contention [AnnaWinters & Summer]

Azdrei’in noticed that Artemis was very observant of each and every Lunvalgan that crossed her path. When the other warriors had stopped by to bring his bed, she watched them closely, and he watched her in return. He was interested in knowing what she thought of everything so far. She had been displaced from her home and surrounded by an environment that was entirely foreign to her. When he’d come down to the earth, he’d been fascinated by everything he’d found. All the new sights and smells and other sensations that he’d never experienced before had been mindboggling. Now, their roles had been reversed, except she was essentially at the mercy of his people. He wondered if she was excited or frightened or both.

After the others left, he smiled amusedly at the human’s comment. “We don’t have meat,” he told her, folding his arms over his chest while his suspended bed swung lightly underneath him. “We have something else. I don’t know how to say it… It is good for us like meat, but it was made on the spaceship.” The substitute was synthesized in a lab, created by scientists to replicate the nutrition that they would have gotten from consuming raw meat. However, now that he’d tasted the real thing, he found the alternative to be bland. It had hardly any flavor, and the texture was unnaturally spongey. It was passable, since it was their only option when they were in space, but it was a disappointing food source compared to fresh, warm, flavorful meat from the hides of real animals. His mouth watered at the thought of it, and he swallowed reflexively.

When Artemis handed him the device, he murmured a word of thanks and ran a quick history search to open the sources he’d found to study English. “I think I know,” he nodded at her explanation of something she called ‘synonyms.’ “I will learn more words soon. It just takes time.” He shifted his weight on his bed to swing his legs up on the mat, making himself more comfortable. Now that he’d made himself familiar with the English alphabet and collected a basic vocabulary, he expected that he would master the language quickly. The hardest part had been getting started. From here, it was just a memory game. He would continue to perfect his grammar and memorize as many words as he could, and hopefully by the time morning came, he would be able to communicate far more effectively than he could today.

He glanced up from the screen when she asked him about her food. Understanding that she had brought along a tool to heat up her meals, he nodded and indicated a smoke detector in the ceiling. “I think it is fine if you are smart about it. Just keep it far away from that because it will call other people here. They will think we are not safe.”

While she cooked her dinner, he laid back on his bed with one knee up and his other leg crossed perpendicular across it. With a pillow tucked comfortably under his head, he skimmed through the virtual page he’d pulled up on Artemis’s device, reading new sentences in English and quietly reciting unfamiliar words. They would be meeting with the Om’phaers tomorrow, so he needed to learn as much as he could before that time. He paid particular attention to vocabulary he came across that had to do with medicine and science, since that was going to be the focus of their discussion. Even by his own people’s standards, he was a rapid learner, so he was confident that he would be prepared. He just needed to put in the work to reach his goal.

He focused on studying the language until the human’s voice distracted him, and he turned his head to look at her. “I hope you can help too,” he said idly, taking notice of her tension. “But don’t worry. Even if your help is not enough, we will soon have the whole planet to use. I think we will find something there that will also help. We will not let the problem kill us.”

New World Contention [AnnaWinters & Summer]

Azdrei’in leaned against the wall and folded his arms loosely across his chest while Artemis walked about the room. Even though he had volunteered to share her quarters with her, there was a part of him that was uncomfortable with the knowledge that they would be sleeping in the same space. It wasn’t that he believed he was in danger. He trusted that she wouldn’t suddenly attack him while he slept, but he felt strange because she was a female. They didn’t belong to the same species—this was something he reminded himself of consistently—but for some reason, it was impossible for him to look at her like he had the other animals on her planet. She was undeniably similar to a Lunvalgan female, and because of that, he had an attraction to her that made their temporary living situation feel more intimate than it should have.

“You will see more of space,” he assured her, letting his gaze wander to the windowless walls. “There are places to look out in the spaceship. They are just not here.” A thought made him brighten slightly and he turned back to her. “Seeing Earth is good.” Beautiful, breathtaking, or incredible would have been better words, but he didn’t know them in English, so instead, he projected the emotions that those words elicited as a substitute. “You will like it,” he assured her confidently. They had already seen part of her planet on their way to the mothership, but they had been too close to the surface to get a good look at it. From the larger craft, drifting at a distance, they could see far more, and he was eager to see her reaction to looking down on the planet she called home.

When Artemis spoke about how his kind was nonviolent, Azdrei’in said nothing. He wouldn’t have called his people nonviolent, personally. They were predators by nature and equipped with all the biological tools to hunt and kill. However, their violence was directed more properly than the human race’s was. Instead of using their weapons to fight each other, they mostly spilled blood to survive. They ate other creatures when they were hungry and defended themselves from threats. When it came to interpersonal squabbles, their leaders were quick to mediate and shut down conflicts before they could escalate to the point of physical violence. The heavy-handed leadership combined with the hive-like mentality of their people was what kept the peace among them. Perhaps when he became more fluent in her language, he would explain it to her more thoroughly.

He looked down at the video playing on the human’s device when she showed it to him. “I can teach you,” he told her idly in response to her request to learn his language. “We might be here for a long time. When we are in this room, I will give you more words to learn.” That would be a perfect distraction for him too, so he would have something to think about other than the fact that he was sleeping in the same room as a female human that he found inexplicably attractive.

In the next moment, the pocket door slid open as two male Lunvalgans entered the room carting his bed from his old quarters. Azdrei’in looked up and stepped away from the wall he’d been lounging against. “Bring it over here, thank you,” he instructed them with a gesture toward the side of the space opposite of where Artemis’s bed hung.

The two nodded and placed the mat on the floor. They took the furled cords that were attached to the edges and unwound them, lifting them up to the ceiling to hang the bed magnetically to the metal canopy over their heads. Since they shuffled rooms around so often, it was easier to make the furniture as portable as possible, so it wasn’t a hassle to move it from one space to another. Suspending it was an easy solution to meet the need.

Once they were done, he thanked the two again, and they left, leaving him alone with Artemis once more. Azdrei’in stepped over to his newly added bed and sat on the edge. The mat bowed slightly under his weight and swung backwards by its cords, but it supported him just as well as the bed in her hideout had. “Do you need food?” he asked, beckoning her to come closer. “You brought food from Earth, yes? I don’t know if the food here is good for you.”