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[pikapeppa]

Solavellan smut: Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This

My part of another sweet and spicy trade with the insanely, ridiculously talented @elbenherzart. This is the first part of what will be a short three-part fic. 

~6650 words; read here on AO3 instead.

****************

Nare was combing her hair. 

She was humming to herself as she drew the comb through her hair – long auburn hair that fell in lustrous locks almost to the small of her back. Her hair was a deep, rich, copper-russet-amber that there was no good word for in the common tongue, and Solas could only imagine what it would feel like to twine his fingers in the long auburn strands. 

He smoothed out his bedroll and pretended not to watch as the comb made its hypnotic way along the length of her hair. He sat cross-legged on his bedroll and pulled out a small book about veilfire runes from his satchel, but before he could settle into the book – or try to, given the immense distraction he was facing – Nare spoke to him. 

“Are you sure you want to share a tent with me?” she said. “I talk in my sleep sometimes.”

He looked up to find her smiling. He set the book aside and tilted his head. “Interesting. Do you recall encountering any conversational spirits in your dreams?”

Her face softened with surprise. Then she snorted a laugh. “You’re teasing me. Well, if I wake you up saying all kinds of nonsense, just know you’ve been warned.”

He smiled at her, then picked up his book and opened it to the first page. A minute later – a minute during which he was completely preoccupied by the soft susurrus of her comb moving through the strands of her hair – he looked up at her once more. “I believe the fairer question is if you are certain you wish to share a tent with me,” he said. “You could have shared with Cassandra, if you preferred. Or had a tent to yourself. You are the Inquisitor; you’re entitled to a tent of your own.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind sharing with you.”

She wasn’t meeting his eye, however, and her cheeks were turning faintly pink. All at once, Solas was certain that she was thinking about the same thing as he: the kiss they had shared in the Fade not two weeks ago. 

That breathtaking, toe-curling, utterly unplanned kiss that left him completely desperate for her and completely panicked. 

He hadn’t meant to kiss her. He hadn’t kissed her, in fact; Nare had been the one to initiate the kiss, and if Solas was honest, he was still rather shocked that she’d done it, given how demure she usually was when they were alone.

But her usual modesty only made her boldness in the dream all the more alluring. Bold, yes: that was the word for the kiss she’d given him. Her fingers were firm on his cheek as she turned his face toward her, and her hands fisting in his collar were assertive. But his own response had been even bolder: pulling her against his chest, sliding his hand over the dip of her spine toward the curves of her bottom, pressing his thigh between her legs to make her gasp against his lips– 

His cock stirred in his breeches, and he hastily adjusted his position on his bedroll so she wouldn’t notice. I was too bold, he scolded himself. Returning her kiss had been far too bold. Stupid, even. Impulsive and ill-considered, like the behaviour of a new elgar’venathe just getting used to having a body. 

“Solas?”

He jolted from his heated reverie and met her gaze. She had stopped combing her hair, and she was looking at him. 

“Yes?” he said.

She hesitated, then dropped his gaze and ran the comb through her hair once more. “Oh, nothing. I just… was wondering what you were, um, thinking about.”

I was thinking about you, he thought. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, and it wasn’t just this moment with her lush waves of hair tumbling over her shoulders and down her slender back. It was the way her eyes widened when he described some of his forays in the Fade to her. It was the way she took such pleasure in stepping barefoot into a cool stream, as though she’d never felt anything so blissful as the water between her toes. It was the way she bit her lower lip when she was thinking or when she was nervous, making Solas think of how it would feel to have that lush lower lip of hers between his own teeth. 

It was that kiss in the Fade – that foolish, impulsive kiss that should never have happened. But now that it had, he couldn’t think logically about anything else. 

She was still waiting for a response. Solas tilted his head. “I was thinking that it has been many years since I’ve watched anyone dressing their hair,” he said. It wasn’t untrue, after all.

She raised her eyebrows. “Did you often used to watch women dressing their hair?”

Her tone was playful, and Solas allowed himself a smirk. “Women are not the only ones who dress their hair in an elaborate fashion,” he told her. His memory conjured some of the more ornate braids and styles that nobles used to wear back in Arlathan: hairstyles dressed with gems and shimmering filigree and feathers from the creatures that Andruil caught in her hunts. 

He shunted the bittersweet memory aside; it was neither here nor there. What was here was Nare, and she was grinning at him. 

“So you used to just watch people dressing their hair?” she said. “That’s a special sort of hobby.”

Her grin was cheeky, and Solas smiled faintly. “You misunderstand me,” he said. “I mean only to say that I… have not been in such close quarters with anyone else for some time.” He cleared his throat surreptitiously; that was more than he had intended to admit.

Her grin softened to a gentle smile, and she was quiet for a moment as she ran the comb through her hair. Then she lowered the comb once more. “Nice try, Solas. I know the truth.”

His heart jolted with alarm, but Nare wasn’t finished. “You’re watching me comb my hair because you’re envious, aren’t you?”

Without quite meaning to, he let out a little laugh. “Quite the opposite. My lack of hair allows me to keep cool in hotter climes.”

“A likely excuse,” Nare said playfully. “You wish you knew what it was like to have this much hair to comb, don’t you?”

He smiled more widely at her. “It is not an excuse, I assure you. And I am very competent at the dressing of hair.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you really?”

“I am, in fact,” he said. “I am a man of many talents.” 

The instant the words left his lips, he regretted them – especially when Nare’s ocean-blue eyes grew even wider. Fenedhis, he shouldn’t be flirting with her; he shouldn’t be indulging in the warm feeling that this suggestive banter was rousing in his chest. But flirting with Nare just felt so good. 

Not just flirting with her, in fact. Talking to her, walking alongside her, hearing her making decisions about the Inquisition, watching the thoughts as they flickered across her face like fireflies: everything about Nare felt good, a sort of good that he hadn’t felt in ages – if he’d ever really felt this good before. 

She chuckled; she was blushing now. “Well, I think you need to prove it,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. Now it was his turn to be surprised. “Excuse me?” he said.

She nibbled her lower lip, rousing an unwelcome and undeniably pleasant buzz of warmth low in his belly. Then held out the comb to him. “Prove it. Here, you comb my hair.”

He stared at the comb in her hand. He should say no. He shouldn’t be agreeing to touch her, precisely because the exact thing he wanted to do right now was touch her. He ought to politely decline; it was a mistake to get close to her.

He opened his mouth to say no. “All right,” he said instead. “You will have your proof.” He took the comb from her. 

She beamed at him, then turned around on her bedroll to face the side of the tent, and Solas shifted his position so that he was kneeling behind her. Carefully and gently, so as not to touch her neck, he lifted a tress of Nare’s hair. 

It was just as silky as it looked: a heavy curtain of russet strands that shone with warm golden highlights in the soft light of the alchemical lamp. Solas ran the comb carefully along the length of her hair, savouring the way it slid smoothly through his fingers, then lifted another lock and combed it carefully from root to tip. 

He lifted a third lock of hair, skimming her scalp with his fingertips in the process, and Nare gasped.

Solas stopped breathing. The gasp was miniscule: a tiny catching of her breath, so soft that he almost didn’t notice – soft enough that he would have failed to notice, were he not acutely aware of everything about her body right now. He was aware of the straightness of her spine, the slightly rapid rate of her breathing, the fact that he could detect no outline of a breastband or bustier through her light linen tunic. Thus, when Nare gasped at the grazing touch of his fingers on her scalp, he noticed. 

He exhaled slowly and silently as he combed the lock of hair. He reached for another tress, and against his better judgment, he stroked her scalp more firmly this time as he lifted it. 

She inhaled shakily, then shifted on her bedroll in a restless sort of way, and Solas’s unruly manhood straightened in his breeches. He silently cursed himself as he combed her hair, cursing his disobedient body and his disobedient hands as they touched her and his disobedient thoughts as they strayed to the idea of pressing his teeth into the tender nape of her neck. 

He ran the comb through her hair again. Then, almost absent-mindedly, almost as though he wasn’t in control of his own hands, he lifted another lock of hair and gently wound it around his fingers. 

He pulled her hair gently, very slowly and very gently, and Nare gasped again. It was a clear, sharp sound this time, and one that he couldn’t pretend not to notice, not when Nare immediately covered her mouth.

She likes when her hair is pulled. The thought rang through his mind, clearer and more compelling than the sweetest note of a song, and Solas swallowed hard and fought to keep his voice calm. “Did I hurt you?” he asked. His cock was pulsing, and his ears were feeling hot, and he was half-praying that she would tell him to give back her comb and get out of this tent. He was half-praying that she would tell him to stop, because it was becoming increasingly clear that he wouldn’t be able to stop of his own accord. 

“No,” she blurted, to his mixed delight and dismay. “No, it didn’t hurt. It– you, um…” She trailed off and took a breath. “You were right. You’re… good at this.”

“Thank you,” he murmured. “Would you like me to continue?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly. So Solas continued to comb her hair, running his fingernails lightly over her scalp and pulling gently at her hair before every sweep of the comb. With every pass of the comb, her spine became just a little more arched, and Solas’s impatient and foolish manhood grew harder and more insistent. 

By the time he had finished combing her hair, her head was tilted back to expose her throat and her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slow but deep. She was exquisite: poised like the absolute perfect picture of desire, like a flawless visual representation of what the word please looked like, and Solas was so busy berating himself and his own undisciplined cock for bringing them both to this terrible position that he almost couldn’t enjoy how beautiful she was.

Almost. 

He stared at her with a confusing mixture of smug satisfaction and self-loathing as he lowered the comb to his lap. “I am finished, Nare,” he said quietly. “Your hair is combed.”

She inhaled slowly and didn’t reply, and Solas forced himself to breathe through the ravenous roar of his impatient urges. He held out the comb to her. “Here,” he said. 

She turned around halfway and took the comb from his hand. “Thank you,” she said faintly. Then she pulled her hair over one shoulder and began to braid it. 

He stared wordlessly at the exposed line of her neck as it sloped into her shoulder. That perfect, smooth, pale line of her neck that his mouth was watering to taste… 

He exhaled slowly. Then he realized that her eyes were on his face.

He met her gaze, and the air stalled in his lungs once more. She was staring at him, staring at him more heatedly than anyone had looked at him in countless ages, and the longer he returned her stare, the more stunned he felt by her attention. She was bright and brilliant and beautiful and ripe, and so very incredibly young. 

Too bright and beautiful and young for the Dread Wolf to risk tearing apart. 

He bowed his head briefly, dropping her scorching gaze in the process. “Goodnight, Inquisitor,” he said.

For a telling and heartbreaking moment, her face fell. Then she smiled. “Goodnight, Solas,” she said. “Thank you for the, um, assistance.”

He nodded politely, then turned to his bedroll. He pulled off his outer tunic, leaving only the cooler sleeveless undershirt behind, then hastily slid into the bedroll and rolled onto his side facing away from her. 

For a long, excruciating minute, Nare was silent. Then he heard the soft shuffling sounds as she settled into her own bedroll. A moment later, the alchemical lamp went dark.

Solas opened his eyes. In the darkness of their shared tent, he could hear her quiet breathing: slow, deep breaths, the same as when he’d been combing her hair. 

The sort of slow, deep breathing that he was using himself to try and cool his own terrible urges.

He closed his eyes. I am not this man, he scolded himself. He was not the sort of man to wind his fingers so shamelessly in a woman’s hair. He was not the sort of man to pull that woman’s hair for the sheer pleasure of hearing her lustful breaths. He might once have been that man, once upon a time when he was young and new and impatient to feel everything that a body could possibly feel. But this was not Arlathan, and he was no longer a hot-headed fool. He was Solas now, a quiet and reclusive apostate. He was not the sort of man who flirted with a beautiful younger woman and gloried in her brilliant smile. And he was certainly not the sort of man who wrapped his fingers around his own throbbing cock the second he was presented with a beautiful woman that he couldn’t – shouldn’t – have. 

And yet, here he was: lying on his side in his bedroll with the most distracting pulse between his legs, and his own hand moving slowly over his belly to curl around his aching shaft. 

He squeezed his cock. A jolt of pleasure rippled up toward his throat, and he forced himself not to react. It is just to relieve the pressure, he thought. Just to keep himself reasonable and calm while sharing a tent with the Inquisitor. He certainly wasn’t going to bring himself to completion, not with Nare lying less than a meter away. Not with Nare lying there in her bedroll wearing only her leggings and her light linen shirt – the linen shirt that he knew was the only barrier hiding her skin from sight. Not when Nare was lying right there with her silken russet hair braided demurely on her pillow – beautiful russet hair that Solas wanted so badly to take in his fists… 

A tempting image suddenly appeared at the backs of his eyelids: Nare on her knees in front of him with her head tilted back, just like she was a few minutes ago. His own hand twined in her long thick hair, just like it was a few minutes ago. But instead of wearing her leggings and linen shirt, she was naked. 

A pulse of longing swelled in his throat and his chest and his cock. He slid his palm up along his shaft, and another wave of bliss fanned through his abdomen.

He pressed his lips together hard so he wouldn’t make a sound, then stroked himself again, but this time the pleasure was tainted by shame. That’s enough, he thought; this was just meant to lessen the pressure a bit, to calm himself enough to resume his role as the polite and mild-mannered man that Nare had come to expect during their travels together. 

But his heated thoughts wouldn’t leave him be. In the darkness of his closed eyelids, he could imagine her so clearly: her pale throat entrapped by his fingers, her knees spreading wider with every gentle tug of her hair, and her plump lips parting to whisper his name… 

He stroked his cock again and again, and the rush of pleasure was nearly enough to render him lightheaded. Then Nare sighed. 

Solas froze. When ten tense seconds ticked by and there was no further sound from Nare, aside from the slow and gentle breathing of sleep, he released his manhood and rolled quietly onto his back. 

He rested his head on his arms – all the better to keep his hands where he could control them – then opened his eyes. The tent was dark, but his eyesight was keen even so, and he could clearly see the shape of her cheek and the curves of her eyelashes. He could clearly see the shape of her braid traversing her pillow to coil over her shoulder, and he could clearly see the slow rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, and–

And a rush of shame curdled in his belly. He shouldn’t be staring at her like this. He was Solas, the quiet apostate who was trying to stay incognito, and Nare was the infamous Inquisitor. He was old and timeworn and saddled with ulterior motives, and Nare was young and determined and free of guile. 

He was the Dread Wolf, and Nare was bright and beautiful and so obvious in her wish for him to take her that it made his heart ache. 

He turned his face away from her and breathed slowly, then forced himself to count the ins and outs of his own ragged breaths until the throbbing of his cock ebbed down to an even pulse. Eventually he fell into a restless sort of half-sleep, a suspended state between waking and sleeping, but the thoughts of Nare only felt stronger here; they flowed incessantly through his half-conscious mind like a current of heated desire and heavy regret, and with his guard down and his muscles starting to relax with the softness of sleep, his firmly-shunted wants began to whisper more insistently in his ear.

He didn’t want to just be the mild-mannered apostate who talked to Nare about the Fade and bade her a polite goodnight at the end of the day. He didn’t want to lie so chastely beside her in the isolation of their separate bedrolls. He wanted to be the man who fisted his fingers in the fiery mass of her hair and who slid his hand over the smoothness of her belly to feel the slippery heat between her legs. He wanted to be the man that Nare desired so strongly that she was driven to kiss him in the Fade, despite her usual demure demeanour.

And once again, he was reliving that kiss, reliving the glory of that unexpected and unplanned moment when her lips were pulling at his own and her fingers were gripping his vest and his knee was nudging her thighs apart… 

Here in the Fade, the memories were melding with fantasies and thoughts. In this blissful melding of memory and imagination, Nare was rolling her hips against his thigh, and his cock was growing harder and more insistent with her every thrust, and she was naked: naked and flushed with her rosy-tipped breasts and her rosy lips parted and panting. Her hands were sliding down his chest and over the ridge in his breeches, and both of them were breathing together in the kiss, and she was saying his name, breathing his own name against his lips: Solas. Solas...

Her hand was stroking his cock. Her fingers were skimming his cheek. Desperate and riled, he turned his face toward her touch. “Nare,” he breathed.

“Solas?” 

He hummed an affirmative and lifted his hips toward her coaxing hand. Her thumb was drifting across his lips, and he darted his tongue out to taste her, drawing a shuddery sort of gasp from her throat. 

Her gasp, her pleasured and pleading gasp: it was such a blissful sound, the finest sound he’d yet heard in this staid and static world. He hummed with satisfaction and thrust into her hand again, but… 

But it wasn’t her hand he was pressing his cock into. 

He opened his eyes. The hand stroking his cock was his own. And Nare wasn’t naked and riding his thigh; she was wearing her leggings and her light linen shirt, and she was kneeling on the ground beside him. 

He froze – completely froze as though he’d been struck by a curse. But before he could speak or move or feel anything other than a numb sort of horror, Nare was leaning over him and stroking his cheek.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she whispered hurriedly. “I – I’m so sorry to wake you, I just–”

“Nare,” he croaked. He hauled his hand out of his breeches and sat up halfway. “I didn’t intend – my apologies. If you’ll excuse–” 

She gripped his collar and kissed him. 

A rush of heat roared through his entire body from his ears through his throbbing cock and straight down to his toes. He parted his lips on sheer instinct, but before he could taste her with his tongue, she pulled away and covered her mouth with both hands. 

“Shit,” she squeaked. “Creators, I – I’m sorry. You were sleeping, I shouldn’t have – oh gods…”

He stared stupidly at her. Her voice was distinctly breathless, and that look was on her face once more, that open and eager and wide-eyed look of wanting, and his mind was muddied with sleep and with the howling desire that was pulsing through his blood. 

Without any further thought, without any further logic or reasoning or shame, he cupped the back of her neck in one palm and pulled her into a kiss. 

She moaned into his mouth and clasped his wrist. Her other hand was stroking his face, and then she was shifting her body as they kissed, stretching out beside him and pressing her groin against his thigh, and it was all so much like his dream. Her fingers on his face, her kiss, the eager way she was riding against his leg: it was all so uncannily like his dream that it nearly felt surreal. 

She sat up and peeled her shirt off, and another dizzying rush of lust roared through his limbs and his cock. He stared at her, at the bare rounded curves of her breasts and the crowning glory of her budded nipples, and in the dark and the quiet of the night, he started to wonder if… if perhaps this was a dream. Perhaps he was still asleep, drifting in that lightheaded limbo between the static world and the Fade. Here in the darkness of the tent, who could say he wasn’t enjoying a particularly vivid dream? In the darkness provided by these canvas walls, who could say that he wasn’t still asleep? 

He skimmed his thumb along the curve of her breast, and she let out a little moan. Then her fingers were gripping his free hand, pulling his hand over his own belly toward his breeches… 

His breath hitched with excitement. Then Nare leaned over him and licked his lower lip. “Please,” she whispered. “Keep going.” 

Without thinking, without question, he slid his hand into his breeches and took his shaft in a tight grip. He stroked himself and groaned, and Nare stretched out beside him once more and pressed her groin against his leg through the bedroll.

“Come here, Nare,” he gasped. He fumbled with the bedding that covered his lower half. “Come closer…” 

She hastily peeled back the covers and slid into his bedroll. When she was lying halfway on top of him in the bedroll, he slid his fingers up along the nape of her neck into her hair. 

He curled his fingers in her hair and pulled, and she craned her head back. “Solas!” she whined.

He didn’t reply; he was too busy feasting on her exposed throat. His tongue was tracing the tendons in her neck, and his lips and teeth were drawing little tiny mewls of pleasure from her throat with every nip and kiss, and all the while he was stroking himself, sliding his eager fist along his pulsing length. With every pounding beat of his heart, his conviction in the dream grew greater: of course this was a dream, an aimless and wonderful wander through the Fade, because this was who he wanted to be. He wasn’t just the polite apostate who provided guidance to the Inquisitor when she asked, and he wasn’t the weary ancient rebel whose duty hung around his shoulders like a yoke; he was young and bold and lustful just like Nare, and in this moment, with her exquisite half-bare body stretched out beside him and rubbing against his hip, he felt every bit as hungry as the wolf that they accused him of being. 

She stroked his neck and chest. “Please,” she whined. “Please, I want to see…”

Bolstered by the impunity of the dream, he ducked his head and took her nipple in his mouth. When she was whimpering and thrusting against his hip, he pulled away. 

“What do you want to see, Nare?” he panted.

Her reply was immediate. “I want to see you touching yourself,” she said.

He ran his tongue over her nipple. “Why?” he asked.

She arched her spine and inhaled shakily. “B-because I… I want to see when you finish.”

His cock jerked at her words, and he ran his palm along his length as though to soothe it. “Why do you want to see that?” he asked.

“Because I want to lick you clean,” she blurted.

Her words sent another spike of excitement through his belly. He exhaled shakily and tightened his grip on his cock. “Tell me again,” he gritted. “Tell me what you wish to do.”

“I want to lick you clean after you come,” she panted. “I want to taste you.”

He gasped in a breath and stroked himself more quickly. His climax was so close, rising slowly but surely like the first hazy glow of sunrise at the edge of the horizon, and her words were bringing him ever closer to the glory of that rise… 

“Again, Nare,” he groaned. “Say it again.”

“I want to taste you!” she whined. She pulled his tunic up to expose his belly and ran her fingers below his navel. “I want to see you come right here so I can lick it off. I want that, Solas, I want it so much…”

His climax suddenly struck, surging through his abdomen and pulsing through his cock in hot spurts that painted his belly exactly as Nare had wanted. He gasped and jerked, his fist tightening convulsively around his shaft as he rode the dizzying wave of his peak, and as the pleasure ratcheted through his body, he realized with an odd rush of unreality that this was his first orgasm in thousands of years. 

Or it would be, if this were not a dream.

It is a dream, he told himself firmly. It had to be a dream; that was the only way he would do something this bold and impulsive and irresponsible. 

He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut until his pleasure ebbed from a blinding flash down to a pleasant glow. When he opened his eyes again, it was to find Nare bending over his body. 

She licked his belly, taking his seed on her tongue exactly as she’d said she would, and Solas watched blissfully as she lapped carefully at his skin. When every drop of his seed was gone, he reached down and lifted her chin. 

“Come here so I can kiss you,” he said. 

Her eyes widened. “But I just… I thought men didn’t like the, um, taste.”

He coaxed her closer with his fingers on her chin. “I want the taste of your tongue,” he said. “To taste your hunger, and the hunger you had when you tasted me.”

She smiled at him – that brilliant smile that haunted his dreams and his waking hours alike – then lowered her lips to his. Her kiss was gentle and soft, but Solas parted his lips to coax hers wider, then stroked her tongue with his own. 

Her breath caught in a tiny gasp, and he slid his fingers into her hair and pulled her closer to deepen the kiss. Her tongue was hot and smooth and flavoured with the faint bitterness of his seed, and he hungrily licked her tongue and nipped her lips until she was clenching her fingers on his chest and whimpering into his mouth. 

He gently pulled her hair, and she mewled before tilting her head back into his fist. He pulled a little harder still, forcing her to lie back in his bedroll so he was stretched over her instead.

She mewled again and gasped for breath, then gasped once more when he grazed her throat with his teeth. He lapped hungrily at the salt of her skin, then lifted himself on one elbow so he could study her. She was flat on her back and lifting her hips in desperation, and even in the darkness, – the darkness of this dream, he reminded himself doggedly – he could see that some of her moisture had seeped through her smallclothes to darken her leggings.

“Solas,” she begged. She reached up and clasped his neck. “Solas, please…” 

He forced his eyes back to her face. She was staring at him, pinning him with those pleading eyes, and she was so beautiful and bright and lustful and… and she deserved so much more than he could give her. She was begging him with her words and her body and her heart in her big blue eyes, and he didn’t dare give her what she was asking for. It would be far too selfish.

But he also couldn’t back away now, because he was far too selfish.

He kissed her again, coaxing her lips open to tangle his tongue with hers, then pried her fingers away from his neck and guided her hand down over her belly.

He broke their kiss and pressed his lips to her ear. “It is my turn to watch now,” he whispered. 

She nodded eagerly and shoved her leggings and smallclothes down to her knees, and Solas’s greedy gaze flicked to the apex of her thighs. Already her fingers were slipping into her cleft, dipping low to find her slickness and spread it over her fragrant flesh, and he watched with a feral sort of hunger as she swirled her fingers between her legs.  

He pushed her leggings down lower, then smoothed one palm along the inside of her thigh. She mewled again and spread her knees even wider, just as he’d hoped, and he stared shamelessly as she began to pet herself more eagerly still. Her fingers weren’t the only eager parts of her body, however; her whole body was shifting and moving, hips rising to rock against her left hand while her right hand clenched convulsively against her collarbone, her thighs sliding apart smoothly as he continued to stroke her tender inner thigh, and her breasts, rising and falling rapidly as she fought for breath…

Without tearing his eyes away from the juncture of her thighs, he lowered his mouth to her breast and suckled her nipple, and she jolted again and let out a pleasured little sob. He lapped at her nipple, then planted a line of kisses along the tense line of her throat until his lips were at her ear once more. 

“It is a pleasure to watch you, Nare,” he whispered. “And I suspect you will be reaching your pleasure soon.”

She gasped and jerked her hips. “Yes,” she breathed.

“There is something I want to do when you come. Shall I tell you what it is?”

“Please!” she begged. “I – tell me…”

He brushed her earlobe with his lips. “I want to lick your fingers clean.” 

She dragged in a tremulous breath, and Solas continued to murmur in her ear. “You have tasted me. I would have the privilege of tasting you in kind.”

She nodded hastily. “Yes!” she blurted. “Yes, of course, I…” She broke off with a moan. “Solas, I’m close…” 

He chuckled softly. “Take your time, Nare. There is no rush.”

She nodded and whimpered and rubbed her fingers between her legs. A few breathless heartbeats later, she gasped in a sharp breath, and Solas pulled her hair.

She cried out – or she would have, had he not muffled her by sealing his lips over hers. 

Her free hand rose to clasp his neck. She was moaning still, moaning with the pleasure that was causing her to thrust wantonly against her own hand, and when Solas dipped his tongue into her mouth to silence her, she clenched her nails against his neck and suckled his tongue. 

He grunted, surprised and pleased by her aggressive kiss. Her hips were rising still to meet her own hand, and his tongue was tied by her voracious kiss, and when she finally released his tongue, he wasn’t ready to pull away.

He kissed her again, tugging at her lips with his teeth and lips alike and lapping at her tongue, and she kissed him back just as hungrily. By the time she had settled from the ebbing of her orgasm, they were both panting against each other’s lips. 

Solas stroked her cheek and kissed her one more time: a soft and gentle press of the lips. Then he lifted her hand from between her legs and ran his tongue along the length of her slick index finger.

She gasped, but he barely heard it, distracted as he was by her flavour: she was musky and primal and fresher than the finest apples in Arlathan, and a rush of saliva flooded his mouth. He greedily took her shining fingers into his mouth and sucked them clean, then lifted his head to look at her.

Fenedhis, that look on her face: it was tempting and beautiful and real – so real and tangible and clear. And all at once, his cloud of lust-driven denial crumbled apart. This was not a dream; this was not a foray into the comfortable and malleable world of the Fade. This was tangible and solid, an event that he had allowed to happen and could not shape or bend or alter to his will, and now that it was done, he… he did not know what to do. 

He breathed hard as he stared at Nare. He stared into the deep and lucid pools of her eyes, these eyes that he was coming to adore more with every passing day, and with every beat of his heart, a cold sort of uncertainty tempered the roaring heat that had prompted him to fall into this tryst in the first place.

He shouldn’t have done this. He shouldn’t have encouraged her. What had he done? 

A slow and lovely smile curled the corners of her lips. “A man of many talents, hm?” she whispered. Then she broke into quiet giggles. 

He smiled at her, helpless at the sound of her laughter. “No talent was involved here, Nare. I did nothing. You pleasured yourself.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “With your help,” she said. “You did the, um…” She cleared her throat. “I really liked when you, um… pulled. My hair.” She dropped her gaze and nibbled her lower lip.

Ah, her shyness returns, he thought. But his fond amusement was diluted by the ache in his chest. This was the last moment when he could make the excuse that he had done nothing. Like their kiss in the Fade, Nare had initiated this tryst, and he could use this fact to back out of this liaison. To preserve them both from the pain that he knew was going to come.

No, he chastised himself. Take responsibility for your actions. Any pain that came from this tryst would be his fault alone. She was blameless in this. Once again, Solas was at fault.

Once again, Solas had made a mistake. 

“Solas?” Nare whispered.

He snapped out of his melancholy. She was gazing at him with a shy sort of hope.

“Yes, Nare?” he said.

She nervously licked her lips. “What does this mean?” she asked. “Are we… do you, um…” She broke off and swallowed hard. “What does it, um, mean?”

The pain in his chest swelled. What did this mean? It meant far too much to him – far more than it should. Nare was the first person who had caught his eye in thousands of years. She was the first person who had desired him in longer than he could recall. She was the first Dalish elf who had listened to him without dismissing him outright, and when he closed his eyes at night, her smile was the one that traced itself on the canvas of his closed eyelids. With every passing day in her company, every day he spent walking by her side and hearing her thoughtful voice and watching her make decisions for the good of her people, Nare meant more and more.

She couldn’t mean this much. He couldn’t allow her to mean this much. But he couldn’t say that to her, not with her lounging naked in his bedroll with her heart in her eyes looking like his every unattainable dream come true.

He skimmed his knuckles over her cheek. “This means that you will be very tired in the morning,” he said. “And I suspect the others will be too, unless you took the time to cast a spell of silence that I was unaware of.”

She burst out a laugh and covered her mouth, and Solas smiled as she laughed into her hand. He pulled the edge of the bedroll up to cover them both. “We should try and get some rest,” he said. 

She smiled. “You don’t mind if stay in your bedroll with you?”

She looked so hopeful and happy, and it broke his heart. He swallowed hard, then kissed her forehead. “I don’t mind,” he murmured. “Sleep well, Nare.”

She snuggled against his chest. “You too,” she whispered. “Sweet dreams. Enjoy the Fade.”

He smirked at her cheeky tone, then closed his eyes. I always do, he thought. But for the first time, this staid and waking world held more appeal than the Fade, because she was here. Nare belonged to this world, this tranquil world where magic required so much effort and spirits were reviled. 

For the first time, Solas would rather be here than in the Fade.  And that thought scared him more than he could say. 

[gigilberry-wips]

Ch. 15. Hiccup’s POV: Late November

Media: Fanfiction

Rating: General

Warnings: No Warnings Apply

Fandoms: Harry Potter - J.K Rowling, Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons/The Big Four, How to Train Your Dragon, The Book of Life

Characters: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Joao (The Book of Life), Original Male Character(s), Original Sibling(s) of Joao (The Book of Life)

Tags: Hogwarts AU, kid!fic, Boarding School, Fantasy Elements, Fluff, Magic, Slice of Life

Word count: 4,740 words

Chapters:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

AO3 Link

Summary:

Hiccup gets a practical experience in the magic of music.

.°○.♢.○°.

Something that no one in the castle talked about was the fact that there were no rules stating whether or not students were allowed into the Hogwarts kitchens. This was mainly due to the kitchens residing in the domain of the castle’s Imāris’, and as such they were the ones who decided who or what was and was not allowed.

Despite how vast and airy the kitchens were, it didn’t really do much to help Hiccup and his nose when standing right next to the stove. Trying to subtly wipe said nose didn’t work either when he was surrounded by kitchen underlings all tittering at him.

“Shameless, the lot of you. Absolutely shameless,” the hare in charge of them chided. He stirred the steaming pot with a deft paw, his other keeping a firm grip on the huge, copper handle. “As if none of you ever started out as a greenling. Some human young just can’t handle their spices and that’s all that needs to be said about it.”

“It says here that this is a sweet dish,” said a larger than average mouse, peeking over the shoulder of a larger than average weasel, who held the witch’s travel diary.

“Even so, it’s none of your places to judge.”

“Can I have my book back now?” Hiccup asked. The weasel stuck her tongue out at him.

“We’re almost done, young master, don’t you fret.” The hare turned back to smile at him.

He made a series of sharp clicking noises that sent several of the underlings into disarray, until one of them emerged from the fray with a huge sampling bowl and held it up for the hare to ladle a large portion of the food into.

“Taste test!” The underling screamed. The others converged upon them. Hiccup was promptly shunted out of the group and just barely caught a nearby counter before he could faceplant the floor.

Somewhere in the confusion they all ended up getting their shares and eagerly barked, chirruped, squeaked, and hissed their opinions. Over a month of hearing it did not make it any easier to understand or get used to.

Hiccup was still in the middle of unraveling the chatter when several of the creatures reached their paws up and unleashed thin strands of magic that lifted the pot off of the stove and sent it floating away, the herd of them all running alongside it to most likely cart it off to depths unknown. The only ones who stayed behind were the weasel and the hare.

And also a different field mouse, who came sprinting over to them waving a sheet of paper. “Done!” he squeaked, giving it to the weasel.

“Finally. I’ve been waiting here for ages. We have things to do, you know,” she complained.

“Ha! As if you didn’t enjoy the watching.”

The weasel rolled her eyes, not bothering to knock the mouse off of where he’d climbed onto her shoulder. “Oh, stuff it. We still need to get this into the books. Onwards!” The weasel dashed off.

She made it a few steps away before skidding to a halt. “Oh, right. Here, catch!” She spun around just long enough to pelt the book in Hiccup’s direction. Hiccup had to stand and watch it go sailing through the air while his heart made the terrible decision to pull the blood from his veins.

Somehow, he caught his book before it met an untimely end. The hare chuckled.

Hiccup shot him a glower. The hare answered it with a grin that said, ‘you could’ve caught that with magic if you’d wanted to, you know’. Which, true, but still—that didn’t mean he had to be happy about the rough handling. His poor book was tattered enough; it deserved better.

But saying all that would’ve made him sound fussy. Instead, Hiccup made the very mature decision to hug his book close and pout. The hare laughed.

“Oh, come now, don’t be like that! They do like you, really. And we owe you debt for bringing another recipe to us. Speaking of—I should get on with repaying that.”

He made as if to go, but turned around to point at Hiccup. “Don’t move. And do not touch anything. I mean it. You,” the hare waved to a beaver, “could you keep an eye on him? I’ll send someone along soon, promise, just make sure he stays away from anything important. And the knives. Especially the knives.”

The beaver, cutting vegetables with a big, shiny knife, cast Hiccup a bland look and went back to ignoring him. Hiccup scooted onto a table stool, ducking his head. The pout did not leave his face.

Really, they were making a bigger deal of it all than they needed to. The knife incident was one time. And it happened weeks ago. Didn’t they have more important things to worry about than remembering that? He couldn’t have been the only clumsy student to ever walk into the kitchens. He hadn’t even hurt himself that time. Much.

Back when Hiccup had just started taking his books seriously, he’d gotten the idea to test out some of the recipes he’d found. If he knew what made them then he might as well taste them, right? The dishes couldn’t have been bad, surely, not if they’d made it into a published housekeeping book and a travel diary full of survival things. Maybe he’d even learn something useful, like how to feed himself since he’d never really tried that.

(Or rather, for his own safety, no one had let him.)

The moment he’d stepped into the kitchens, the Imāris’ there had immediately dragged him inside and started fussing over him, piling him with food and chiding him for being so small and scrawny because clearly the reason for that was his own silly fault for not being kind enough to his health, why look at your complexion child, shame on you for not coming sooner, could’ve easily caught your death ages ago and then where would you be?

And then he’d finally gotten a word in over all that and showed them his book.

If he’d thought they were loud before, that was when the whole room exploded.

They absolutely adored the recipes. He learnt very quickly that the Imāris’ were always looking for new recipes to try. Those students and adults who came to them with concerns of different diets, or were from different cultural backgrounds, or were simply missing food from home and wanted to make them themselves were especially welcomed for the new knowledge they brought.

Even if Imāris’ already knew how to make whatever it was, they still thought it excellent practice for the newer kitchen staff to try them out, too, and exercise their magical skills. Or the students could do it themselves, or show the staff how something cooking-related was done. Except in Hiccup’s case, where everyone quickly found out that neither proved to be good for anyone’s health.

They were still very friendly about it, mistakes, minor disasters, and near-death incidents aside. And it was clear they liked him—why else would so many of them crowd around him (they said it was to keep him from getting his hands where they shouldn’t be, but did that really mean seven chipmunks had to be hanging off of him all at once?) or talk with him so openly or fill his pockets with snacks whether he asked for them or not?

…But the way some of the younger ones liked to rib him made him wonder if that was simply how they were or if it had something to do with it being him.

A heavy set of steps interrupted the start of a good sulk, and a portly raccoon came into view.

Out of all the Imāris’ there, this one was one of the higher ups. One could tell that from the shape of her thumbs, the piercing in her ear, and the low hum of magical energy surrounding her that Hiccup felt through his own and saw dancing in her eyes. Her head came up to about Hiccup’s chest, and the frilly green apron she normally wore contrasted sharply against her dark fur.

Miss Treaky was one of several assistant head cooks whom he often met, mainly due to her usually being the one on hand whenever he wandered in. By then she knew the sight of him well enough that the smile she sent him was knowing and full of teeth.

“Afternoon, young master. Everything going well here?” she asked.

“Well enough, Miss Treaky, thank you.”

“Are the young’uns treating you nice? Being polite?”

Hiccup shrugged, and of course she knew what that meant because she chuckled. “Good, good, ‘least they left you in one piece. Now then, I believe you requested a parcel.” She glanced down at a smaller mammal next to her, paws on her hips. “Pip? Would you like to do the honours?”

‘Pip’ turned out to be a knee-hight red squirrel in a loose, white smock that Hiccup saw absolutely none of on first glance thanks to the large basket balanced on his head, covered by a red-and-white gingham cloth. It wasn’t until Hiccup carefully took it that the squirrel stood up properly and bobbed a quick bow. “At your service, young master.”

“…er, thank you?” Hiccup sent a questioning look to Miss Treaky, who in turn nudged Pip’s shoulder.

“Pip here is getting to where his magic needs more using. From now on he will be required to serve you. Call his name and he will appear. Be it for food, cleaning up, fetching, or general assistance, he will help you.”

Hiccup was already shaking his head before she was half done. “Oh, no no no, you really don’t have to—I don’t need—”

Miss Treaky held up a paw. “Do not mistake me. This is mainly for him. He will be helping you and three other children while also carrying out his regular duties. That at least should be enough magical exposure to keep his growth steady—isn’t that right, Pip?” Pip meekly nodded. “Exactly. So no more with your stiff paws and avoiding your own magic, yes? You will serve your magelings and I can finally make more space for the newer trainees.”

She shook her head despairingly. “Honestly. It’s like they multiply every year. Keep getting more of them than I know what to do with, hurrumph.” She went on grumbling under her breath. Pip, meanwhile, seemed to study Hiccup, his face open and curious.

…Well. Hiccup couldn’t really say anything against that, now could he? If it was simply a requirement for the Imāris, if it something they needed to go through, and not some kind of special treatment for him or punishment for the creature, then that at least made things a little less uncomfortable for both of them. Probably. At least for Hiccup it did.

Mouth twisting awkwardly, Hiccup attempted a bow. He nearly capsized himself from the heavy basket. “I’m… glad to have you, Pip. Thank you.”

Pip nodded once. Then he spun in place and blinked out of sight.

Hiccup was quickly ushered out of the kitchens right after—he could almost swear he felt the beaver watching him go—with cheerful instructions to come back with more recipes whenever he wished. (“Or if your just hungry. Stars know you need it, luv,” Miss Treaky said, patting his cheek.)

The basket smelled good. A peek inside showed it held the assorted biscuits he’d asked for. Which meant that instead of letting it fall with the travel diary into his drawstring pouch, he’d have to lug it by hand, lest the whole lot tip over onto his things or the biscuits get jostled or damaged or met with some other untimely fate. He could only hope that his arms held out long enough. A foolish hope, really, given his destination was the Music Room.

The Music Room wasn’t in the building with the kitchens and dorms but in the building with the classrooms. Up until a few days before he hadn’t even known there was a Music Room, let alone a music club.

“My sister’s in it,” his roommate Joao had said, after rescuing Hiccup from a slightly-more-alive-than-expected plant in their common room.

Exactly why did their common room have plants in it? Because they were useful, was one answer. Many of them could easily count as free potion ingredients. Or free food, since all of the common rooms apparently had snack cupboards for general use and fireplaces big enough for more than just room heating.

The one Hiccup went with was that it was because they fit the hobbit aesthetic the place seemed to be going for and everyone just went along with it. Whether it was due to their House founder’s choice to make it like that was neither here nor there, since it didn’t stop Hiccup from scuttling as far away from the plant as he could get, which meant he bumped against the beanbag his other roommate lounged in.

The boy’s name was Daniel Beaulieu. There was only one reason he remembered that.

On the first day of school, Daniel sat next to Hiccup and talked to him. He smiled at him—not in a mean way, that promised something bad was about to happen, but a smile that was exactly what a smile should be. He was nice.

Kids his age didn’t do that. They either laughed at him or ignored him. The fact that it was possible for someone to do different nearly shocked him out of his skin.

It was, by far, the most surreal experience of Hiccup’s life. Dragons and magic and everything else included. It was weird. It was still weird, months later, when the other boy continued to be chatty and friendly for reasons Hiccup did not know.

There was also that Daniel looked different from anyone Hiccup knew. Growing up in a tiny village in the far north of nowhere important meant that there wasn’t much in the way of human variety. It was the first time he was in the presence of someone like Daniel, someone with such deeply brown hands and close-cropped, curly black hair. If it weren’t for foreign movies and TV shows and posters, he wondered if it would’ve come as more of a shock. He wondered how the other kids from his village were dealing with it.

After that first conversation, either Daniel caught on that half of what he’d said had gone floating past Hiccup’s ears and didn’t mind or else he thought Hiccup was just quiet and reserved.

Which he was. Kind of. But mostly he was really confused.

(A part of Hiccup also had the sudden urge to reach out and hold the other boy’s hand, just to see if it felt different, like he was really there and not some kind of newfangled TV projection that simply looked solid, but. Well. That was. That was creepy.

Hiccup took a moment to feel properly creeped out before he chased the thought out of his head)

The novelty wore off eventually. The confusion didn’t. Hiccup grew a little more used to Daniel’s company, feeling more comfortable looking him in the eye and actually paying attention, once the strangeness became the normal. Hiccup still didn’t talk that much. He didn’t really know what was allowed when one had a friendly roommate. Or a roommate friend.

…Was it a friendship? Was this how friendships worked? It’s not like Hiccup had ever brought it up, though if he did he’d probably mess that up too.

So he just…didn’t. He listened. He answered sometimes. That seemed to be enough.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he needed to do more than that with Nessi taking an immediate liking to the other boy. Amazing the way those two got along. Hiccup had never seen her so taken with someone, not even Gobber who’d given her to him.

As soon as Hiccup bumped into the beanbag, Nessi hopped out of Hiccup’s hair and into the waiting hand of her second best human friend.

“Say, did you ever mention why you named her Nessi?” Daniel asked, one of his fingers stroking over her back.

No, he didn’t. And the reason he had felt a bit silly, come to think of it. “It just sounded nice, I guess.” Hiccup shrugged, looking away. “I’m sorry, weren’t we talking about something else?” he asked Joao.

“Yeah, about the music club.”

“What do they do there? What’s it like in there, do you know?”

“It’s…well. It’s magical.”

The look Hiccup gave him could’ve dried fresh cement. Joao sniggered.

“Okay, okay, I know, that doesn’t really explain it. But it is. It’s hard to describe, but there’s just this…something. About the way magic and music work together. There’s always a lot happening in that room.”

All the more reason to give it a visit. It’s not like Hiccup couldn’t after hearing that.

There were still so many things he didn’t know. He’d been at school for weeks, and yet none of his classes had even mentioned this branch of magic. How did people even go about fitting magic and music together? What was it supposed to do? Where was it used?

Could this new magic answer any of his questions? He’d have to find out.

The room took several wrong turns and asking around to find, as per usual with the castle. The end of his current corridor held a large painting of a sunlit forest one wall and a statue of a dancing, dainty creature across from it, a lute balanced on a hip and one of the legs missing. Directly before him stood a set of ornately carved, honey-coloured doors that gently arched to the ceiling.

…He couldn't hear any music coming from within.

Then again, it's not like he'd find any other doors that looked like that. The directions had been very specific.

Hiccup hadn't landed more than one knock before the door easily swung open. He gripped the basket tighter.

“…Hello? Is this the Music Roo-aaAAAH!”

A sound unlike any other literally blew him off of his feet.

Suddenly his shoes were off the ground and the floor was a lot further than it should've been everything was spinning gravity didn't make sense and oh gods he was going to die he was going to—

A strong pair of arms caught him. Through the cacophony of noise came the sound of laughter.

It took a minute for Hiccup to realise he'd squeezed his eyes shut.

He opened them. Warm brown eyes greeted his own.

Said eyes belonged to a girl with a light brown face and frizzy, chestnut hair. She smiled a wide, beaming smile down at him.

“Hello! Welcome to the Music Club! Sorry about that.”

Hiccup came to the second realisation of the day that he was cradled in her arms. His face heated. She set him down and he stumbled backwards, the somehow still intact basket clutched desperately to his chest.

“I—I—I—um, I…thanks. Sorry. Um.”

She laughed, waving him off. "It's fine, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. If anything I should be apologising. My name is Sophia, by the way. Sophia Costa, fourth year."

She stuck out her hand. The yellow band of her school jumper came close to his fingers. How hadn’t he remembered seeing her in the dorms before?

Hiccup took his hand back. “I'm…my name is Hiccup. Haddock. Hiccup the Third, I guess. You can call me Hiccup. First year.”

“Hiccup? Are you Joao's roommate?”

“I guess? Not many other Hiccup’s around, right?” He joked, awkwardly.

For some reason, she chuckled. “I'm his sister. He talks about you. I'm happy to meet you.”

“Same to you. Could I ask you—wait, before then, do you know where did that sound…?” Hiccup took his first look around.

The room was large and bright, the vaulted ceiling high enough to house several clear-paned windows. Most of the students were gathered in the centre of the room but a few others milled about in small groups.

All of this were things he noticed somewhere in the back of his head, the part that made observations like that. The rest of his focus was instead snatched up by the truly gargantuan instrument that towered over everything.

Instrument. That’s what his brain called it. It didn’t sound right. “Instrument” normally meant something like a flute, or a drum, or at the very least a lyre like the people back home could play. It meant something that made sense.

Calling this an “instrument” would be like calling a dragon the size of a modest continent, with wings, flames, talons, and deadly venomous darts, a “wee lil’ beastie, hardly bites”.

Metal and wood wrapped around each other like swatches of ribbon, held in place by a dizzying array of strings and levers and gears and things that should not be poking out there. Or defying the laws of gravity like that.

Not that that seemed to stop anyone. Students climbed all over it, pulled and pushed parts of it, chatted with each other on it. One person clambered right into it, disappearing almost all the way to their shoes.

The strangest thing about the whole affair was that, if one only focused on small sections, then there was some kind of…sense in it. Within the big instrument were smaller instruments. One bit of it looked like a harp. Another held a bunch of giant spoon-things. Several trumpet horns sprouted out from the top.

“…That’s…wow…”

“I know, right? Didn’t know she could make people fly, but there you have it.”

“…What is it?”

“We don't know yet. We were starting up the first test run just now, and then you walked in. She’s a right piece of work, isn’t she? Incredible”

“That’s one way to put it…” Hiccup mumbled. It wasn't as quiet as he'd thought because she snorted, and Hiccup pretended he didn’t feel as embarrassed about that as he did.

But looking away from her meant looking at the giant instrument. Which led back to his mission. He’d gone to the music club for a reason. The least he could do was see it through.

Hiccup squared his shoulders. “I have some questions.”

“Ask away.”

“Do the instruments here often do that?”

“Not unless you want them to. I mean, they could, technically,” she made a teetering hand-gesture, “but when you really get down to it, most of it depends on what you want to happen and then actually making sure to channel the right magic into the instrument to make that thing happen.”

“Also, if your next question is, ‘do you have to play the music here to make something happen’ then the answer is no. You take a sound—any sound, really. A pencil, a string, a tin can, your voice—but that’s traditional—or maybe it’s easier, I don’t know, you put magic into it, and something will happen, wherever you are. What that something is depends on you and how you play the sound.”

Hiccup chewed over that. “…So playing music…is like casting a spell?”

That…sounded incredibly corny, said out loud like that. There books and movies that had lines like that. He’d heard songs in the muggle village that sang all about that.

“In its own way, yes. But it’s different, too, you see.” Sophia grinned, and shrugged. “…It's like—you know how a part of magic is about communication, right?”

He nodded, trying to ignore the sudden parade of radio jingles happily marching between his ears.

“Well, take that concept and make it into a conversation. That’s what it’s like. With music, it's not just about communicating only one thing. What you usually get is a continuous stream of many different meanings and changing emotions, and you have to be able to combine all that and the magic you're using. And you have to be very, very sure about what you’re trying to do before you go putting magic into it. Music is a powerful thing, you know.”

If it could fulfill Hiccup’s non-existent dreams of being a human pigeon, then it certainly was.

And this was music magic from students not much older than him. Untrained students, testing the magic out for fun. Just what kind of things would it do in the hands of someone who knew exactly what they wanted done and could do it?

Suddenly a lot of doors opened in his head. Doors that led to countless corridors for hundreds of rooms, all of which could have connecting rooms and alcoves and attachments and even balconies. More than could reasonably fit into a single building. Or a handful of notes-books.

That alone was enough to summon a headache. As if he hadn’t already assigned permanent mental lodgings to other such headaches and stresses and worrying and the rest of that circus. And yes, he's the one who'd agreed to this, and no, he didn't have to go this far on what was at that point a couple dozen personal projects that wouldn't do anything for his studies at all.

But he couldn't just drop everything and leave it like that, not when he'd already decided to see this through. Whatever "this" was, at that point.

…Well, then. Fine. It was fine. He'd deal with it. It’s what he was good at.

But getting back to the point.

This “music magic” was quiet…wilful, in a way. Certainly, something that needed a lot of control, and a good deal of power. More power meant more possibilities. Ones that didn’t just end in cute, fun things like unwanted flying lessons.

Hiccup shivered.

“By the way, what's that you have there?”

What did he have—? Oh, right. His basket. He’d forgotten about that. Clearing his throat, Hiccup hoisted it up. “I. I brought something. Snacks, for everyone. Should I—?”

“Oooh! Did you? How nice! Here, let me see that.” She plucked the basket out of his aching arms, easy as you please, and uncovered it. “OI! Everyone! Snack break!”

The noises stopped.

The room stilled.

Then suddenly everyone was on them like ants.

There was no way to appreciate how many people there were in a room quite like all of them descending upon him all at once. Someone stepped on his foot. Someone else gave his hair a hard ruffle. An elbow dug into his shoulder blades. It was a lot.

The biscuits went down spectacularly, their praises making phantom aches in his ears long after they’d passed. Just as well that he’d brought so many of them; the basket made a grand total of three rounds before he saw it again. Hiccup left the music club with requests to visit again and bring more treats with him.

It was to his great shock that he, much, much later in the evening, found three sugar biscuits still nestled within the cloth.

Hiccup dug out a spare handkerchief and carefully wrapped them. From a nearby table came a series of chitters.

He glanced over to meet the disapproving gaze of Nessi.

“It’s fine, I have other snacks, too. Don’t worry.” She made the equivalent of a scold and Hiccup rolled his eyes. “Yes, ma, I hear you. I won’t miss supper again. I swear it on your tail. Happy?”

She flickered her tongue out. He held his arm up to her.

Without hesitation, Nessi swept up his sleeves until she was level with his face. She bumped her nose against his.

“I knew you still loved me. Thank you.”

After checking on a few more things, Hiccup made his way to what was soon becoming his favorite secret passage into the library. The lanterns were already lit when he got there.

In one hand, Hiccup held his wand. In the other, one of the two “misbehaving” books. This one was a faded, splotchy grey that could have once been yellow or green or blue. No visible title marked it, not on the cover, the spine, or the back. The pages held no words.

He didn’t have hope of making any headway that evening. But at least now he knew something of what he was working with. Hopefully, it would be enough to start the search for answers.

Hiccup opened the book and the air filled with music.

.°○.♢.○°.

A/N:

I need everyone to know that Daniel is based off of this boy. I didn't expect I'd get to introduce him so soon but he's such a good child and I love him so much and the fact that he's a side character is wasted potential. 😭

[space-blue]

Portrait of an Artist in Love

9th competition win. It's a love letter to the world of Love Death + Robot's "Good Hunting" episode.

There is a motto within our guild:

'Your client is your Art.'

It dictates our rules, weaves itself into our practices, shapes our pride, and though our clients are made to understand its impact, the phrase itself is not spoken to outsiders. It is a tenet, a pillar of our teachings, an invisible chain around our wrists. A chain I wonder if inspector Merig has come to tug.

'You are a popular biomata craftsman and a respected guild member, Dr. Parahi,' he says, clearly fishing for a reaction. 'A true artist among steamwrights, I'm told.'

'Inspector, what is this visit about?'

'Just a few questions, if you please. Are you aware of the series of murders that have happened in the Kublai and Kodenshi districts?'

I smile tightly. So, this is about her after all.

'I do read the papers. Even if I didn't, the guild keeps us appraised of such... events as might disturb our work.'

'When did you first become aware of the killings?'

'After the one that happened at the Proctor's party. Since that was only a district over, everyone here was made aware of the case. No one knew then that it was serial.'

'We still don't know for sure,' the inspector says, pulling photographs out of a battered folder, 'but they all have a few things in common.'

He pushes the glossy black and white photographs forward. I find myself oddly surprised. The content might be gruesome, but the police department has a talented photographer on their payroll. All the bodies are angled to showcase the gaping injuries. They lay sprawled in pools of grey, blood diluted in hydrofill, I suppose.

'They were all either augmented or full biomata. They are all missing parts. A lot of parts.'

'Oh, please. Are you suggesting a guild member is behind this? Me, even? No self respecting craftsman would destroy someone else's work like that. Particularly not in such a barbaric fashion.'

'No, rest assured,' inspector Merig says, placating, 'we've already sorted things with your guild concerning alibis. At least in your case.'

Nothing in our code states that we should not try to help the police. There is, however, no incentive for me to volunteer information, and so I stare at him in expectant silence.

'Do you ever work on automata, Dr. Parahi?'

'Never. All of my work is meant for live grafting.'

I wave a hand to encompass the atelier space all around us. The copper and ivory limbs showcased at the forefront all are to exhibit taste and designs. The hands made of tantalum, titanium and tungsten, laid out on the cabinet to our left, are where the craftsmanship is on display. It is all a front, a showroom, as it were, despite the small workbench. That one is for clients in need of repairs or simple cosmetics. There is no automata on display or in use. It would constitute false advertisement in such a curated room.

'Would one be able to craft an automata out of parts taken from such victims?'

I feel a shiver run down my spine at the question. Surely, the real one will soon follow. It takes some effort to maintain the appearance of nonchalance, to not trigger the whirring of my knee joints with an anxious shift, to ignore the weight of the stare of my ancestors, perched in their gilded frames on the wall at my back. Six generations of steamwrights silently judging the last practising scion of their house, readying his lies.

'Of course,' I say, inclining my head with a smile, a show of scholarly indulgence. 'Depending on what they wanted to build. If needed, you could smelt and reforge to fit–well, depending on the material. The only thing you cannot transfer or reuse are the tubing and the cores. The engine needs are completely different, and automata don't require hydrofill. Anyone savvy enough can do this. It is not even considered guild work.'

'What about building biomata with them?'

Here it is... And what can I say? It is another tenet of ours that you should never deny a client the components they bring you. Our work is... a communion, a shared vision. A concept I highly doubt officer Merig would ever understand or appreciate. I look at him studiously as I mull over my answer, though there is nothing of interest to look at. He is what is derogatorily referred to in the milieu as a "meatbag". There is no Art to him. Not even a glimmer of cosmetic copper-gold, ivory or amber, not a whisper of inner mechanism, no murmur of churning steam.

'Obviously it can be done,' I answer, keeping up with the affable professor persona. 'People often inherit parts from deceased relatives and have legacy work done to integrate them. This would not be very different, except the guild is usually involved in the original disassembling process.'

'Could you tell the parts were taken by force, if someone presented them to you?'

'Not necessarily,' I reply, lying through my teeth. In for a copper, in for a silver: 'There are shunts that can be activated to section off limbs cleanly. If these were used, the limb would look as neat as if I'd taken it off the donor myself.'

I tap a ringed finger at one of the photographs, one of the more gruesome ones, as one of the parts removed was the insulation polysheet around the steam core.

'Providing materials has always been a popular way to offset the cost of the operations for our clients. However some of these parts you simply can't smelt or play pretend with. Anyone within the guild would know and call the police. This looks more like trophies to me, it's so pointless otherwise.'

Inspector Merig strokes his bearded chin. Though he appears to be considering my point, his lack of surprise makes me think the idea is not new to him.

'Could someone be out there,' he asks, 'someone not from the guild, enhancing themselves, or someone else, with the parts taken from the killings?'

I smile indulgently at this.

'Inspector Merig. Surely you realise setting a steam core engine inside a living being is nothing like automata work? You need to be a talented surgeon for the client to even survive. The creation of a biomata is Art in its truest form, combining medicine, metallurgy, jewellery, design, engineering, fine tuning more precise than clockwork, and the mastery of the gods' greatest gift: steam. Most of the processes involved are guild secrets too. If someone is out there trying to fiddle with an existing biomata without the proper training...' I tap my chin, thinking, hoping to sell it. 'It's possible... At least they could try. But the guild would take it about just as well as if the imperial botanists heard someone was growing Telura on their roof garden.'

Inspector Merig snorts at the comparison.

'Still, why come to me? Surely all of this could have been explained to you at the guildhall?'

'You came highly recommended. Most popular in the district, I was told.' Merig waves his gloved hand to encompass the shop and its shining collection of limbs and skeletal constructs. 'Certainly looks like it to me.'

There is a certain quality to the man's expression. The way his jaw is set, the tension around his eyes. It is a cousin to the apprehension I see in so many faces lying down on my workbench. A sort of uncertainty. It occurs to me then that maybe Inspector Meatbag here has been given a case in which he will forever be out of his depth. Maybe it's a test, maybe it's a punishment. All it means for me is opportunity.

'Ah, you want help identifying the makers of the missing pieces?'

'Yes. I hope you might also be able to tell me if you've seen any such parts in recent months.'

'I certainly can do that,' I offer, 'but the best person to consult remains the creator of the parts themselves.'

'That might not be possible. You see, all the parts we could trace back to a steamwright led back to a certain Dr. Asiheu, who has been missing for some time.'

'Wait a second... You mean several of the victims were clients of the same steamwright?'

Inspector Merig nods gravely as he spreads more pictures of close-ups on the table and takes notes as I systematically fail to remember ever seeing anything relevant, but offer several names for him to go and consult. It is my honest opinion that the woman first killed in Kodenshi had her work done by someone from the Eastern branch. By the time the Inspector rises again, shakes my hand and heads out with promises of 'being in touch', I am mentally exhausted. I lean against the locked door and lowered blinds, catching up on breath I've never run out of. In the darkened shop I make my way back to the table. I push the lever, one my grand-father so distastefully hid in the branch of a candelabra, and watch the slab of carved stone shift to reveal the staircase to the actual workshop, the one with my tools, the operating workbench and steam reactor.

I can almost feel it at my wrists, the invisible pull Linia has on me, my greatest work of Art.

She lays sprawled on the workbench, like a sultry painter's muse. We have another saying, more informal, that states that a client is never closer to perfection than when the world starts to doubt their humanity. She unfurls herself, titanium plates slithering over carved mother-of-pearl, tantalum rib cage pressing darkly against translucent syndermis, revealing the hydropump's viscous throbbing and the soft glow of her steam core, nestled under her heart. I reach out, brushing strands of hair back from her angular face, fingers gliding over the grooves and embossments etched as verdant jungle ferns across the planes of her brass temples.

'You heard.'

'I did,’ she murmurs against my palm. ‘They’ll never find Asiheu... But it seems I now own you as much as you own me.'

'You owned me from the start,' I say, chiding, and watch her eyes crease in her characteristic smile, the very same she gave me when she first came to me, a mangled toy with very little figure left to her, and figure, in steamwright lingo, refers to meat. Hers was a jigsaw of swollen, septic flesh, patch-worked with steel junk. She had no left arm, her jaw springs were slack and rusting, her hydropump was overheating her innards... She was a mess, a mockery of the Art. A malicious garage job.

'Who did this to you?' I asked.

She'd smiled with her eyes alone–blue eyes like windows into fields of ice that never thawed–arced into cold crescents. She lifted a sack and laid it across the counter between us, the mouth of it parting to reveal the bronze glimmer of joints, rubber fingertips and polycarbon tendons. I'd sealed my fate right then, by hastily gathering up the strings of the bag and reaching to the lever that would lock the atelier's door.

'Come. We can talk once I've given you some first aid.'

I'd seen the blood on the metal-composite fingers. I knew then, and every time thereafter, but she'd offered herself to me in full–this monster, this killer–to be my creation, if only I would make her perfect with the spoils of her vendetta.

And I was ever the perfectionist...

~~ September 2020 – Theme : Steampunk

[edmundstanley]

RGA – The Best Fuel tank Lightning Protection System

 In any U.S. geographical area, lightning storms occur as few as five times or as many as 100 times per year.  Lightning and static issues have resulted in the loss of many oil production sites. Modern upstream oil production locations include technologies that are constantly changing at a rapid rate.

Statics show that 95% of rim seal fires of an FRT are a result of a lightning strike. By design to ensure ease of movement of the floating roof within the tank shell, there exists a gap between the tank shell and the edge of the floating roof. This eliminates friction, guarantees ease of movement but creates issues in the same areas when lightning strikes.  

Recent design enhancements in fuel tank lightning protection by LEC called a Retractable Grounding Array (RGA) is provides protection with a self-retracting conductor. The RGA retracts and extends based on the roof level thereby maintaining the shortest electrical connection possible and prevents the issue associated with the use of long cables. It is made of multiple weaved strands of low resistance tinned copper wire and is typically installed on the tank shell and connected to the edge of the roof.

Fuel tank lightning protection involves a three-step process:

Protection of the structure

This employs our RGA system which is designed to reduce the incidence of direct strikes to the protected structure.

Grounding/Bonding

The purpose of bonding is to bring all the steel equipment to the same electrical potential. While grounding is done to ensure that the current escapes to the earth properly. Bonding in conjunction with grounding is highly important to create a safe working environment.

Surge Suppression

Our SPDs are installed on sub-panels, so that when a transient originating on one circuit travels back to its sub distribution panel, this device limits it before it can be redistributed onto other circuits within the panel, including circuits feeding your sensitive equipment. 

Benefits of RGA – The best fuel tank lightning protection system

Effective: Permanent, reliable, low-impedance bond prevents fires triggered by lightning currents

Economical: Low initial cost and exceptional return on investment

Easy-to-Install: 2-hour install on new and existing tanks

Durable: Engineered for years of durability and reliable performance in corrosive environments

Low-Maintenance: Requires virtually no upkeep as compared to shunts

Award Winning: Winner of the E & P Innovation Award

Lightning protection is an indispensable part of the oil depot safety system. LEC systems protect your oil and gas field assets from damage caused by lightning strikes and static discharge. Our experienced engineering team works alongside your operations and engineering team to develop a customized plan that prevents the ignition from lightning strikes and static discharge.   

[loversandantiheroes]

Like Blood Running Warm - Part 2

Author’s Note: So this is largely the result of my attempt at Nano participation, which is honestly pretty paltry.  Thanks to @longjackets, @nikkidee, @kingandcrook, and @veradune for the beta help - sorry I tried to flag you all down on a mutual hell week!  There’s a lack of musical references in this chapter.  My apologies, I promise there’ll be more in chapter 3.

Summary: A snowstorm strands a group of bus passengers at a near-derelict station overnight near the Colorado border.   One of them just can’t seem to get warm.

Rating: M probably for the sake of blood and swearing and bodily harm.

Warnings: Angst by the bucket, Terminal Illness, Simm!Master being…Simm!Master and thus a walking dumpster fire, Actual Blood and Vampirism, Implied Harassment, Light Body Horror (no really, it got an “ew” from all the betas).

Word Count: 5314

AO3 Link: here

Previous Chapter: 1

- 1:28am

The sudden darkness was dizzying, and John shuffled off-balance. The quiet mutterings and conversations around him twisting into startled cries and yelps. Someone screamed. Blackpool’s hand clamped down almost painfully on his, and the dark brown of her irises gave a dull flash in the darkness. The first real thread of fear wound itself around his chest, drawing tight.

Well good job, old man, he thought, wheezing, either you’re delirious or you’ve flipped your fucking lid.

The maglite twisted in his hands, sliding back into the ring at his belt and pinching two of his fingers with it. He jerked it free, cursing, and clicked it on. Faces turned to the light like moths, wide and blank and fretful.

“It’s alright,” he said, trying to pretend he couldn’t hear the reedy rattle and whine in his own voice. “It’s alright. Lines go down every winter. Probably the only thing they account for around here. There’s a generator in the back.”

John leaned over the front desk, letting loose an unpleasant hitching cough as the pressure got to be too much. It was like his lungs itched. He searched blindly in the cubby under the desk, listening to the clatter as more than a few things were jostled loose and clattered to the floor. Finally, his hand seized on a thick, rubberized, plastic handle and hauled up a heavy torch lantern. He clicked it on and handed it to London.

“Point it up,” he said, gesturing to the ceiling. “Diffuses the light, should keep you from burning any retinas.”

“Yes boss,” she said with a little salute. She was smiling, but the beam of light from the lantern jittered and shook across the acoustic tiles.

John clucked his tongue, pointing at Masters. “You, give me a hand in back.” He stifled another ragged cough with his jacket sleeve. Inhale three, exhale two. Not far out enough to make it rattle. Come on, you old fuck, get it under control.

Masters gave him a look that was all puckered forehead and pursed, scowly mouth, but when John dragged on his coat and made for the Employee’s Only door, Masters followed.

“Should be through here,” John said, shining his torch down the narrow hall. To his left was a storeroom; to his right the back office, break room, and the driver’s office, which was furnished with a cot and a couch. At the far end was a heavy door that led to the sheltered storage compartment.

“Not quite sure what you need me for,” Masters said, and for the first time, John heard a faint trace of Northern England in the man’s accent. Not the caricature he’d used on Blackpool; this was real, but faint and faded. Stateside awhile then, maybe. “Starting up a generator isn’t exactly a team exercise. Push button, pull cord. It’s usually pretty fucking simple.”

“Maybe,” John agreed. “But the way things are going tonight, I’d rather not make any assumptions. And besides,” He turned, pointed the beam of the torch at Master’s chest and watched him squint. “I really don’t trust you.”

“I...excuse me?”

“You’re new to this route, yeah?” John turned away and heard the shuffle and squeak of the man’s shoes as he stumbled a little in the dark.

“Yeah.”

“Fairly new myself,” John said. “Only been working here a few months. But you get used to people, y’know? At least a few of them. This stop’s rubbish. Most of the big stuff goes straight through to Denver. We get little outbound trips or layovers and a few little stops and changeovers, like your one.”

“You gonna get to a point, old man?” Masters regarded him strangely in the glow of the torch, head tilted, eyes narrowed.

“My point is you’ve had this route for one night, and there’s already two women walked off that bus that cannot wait to get away from you, can barely stand to look at you, and as far as I’m concerned that tells me everything I need to know.”

“Bullshit,” Masters said, weak light bouncing off his teeth as he bared them in a nasty grin.

“Oh, I doubt that.” John felt his pulse pick up, drumming fretfully in his throat. He gestured to the badge on Masters’ chest. “New route, old ID. I’d be willing to put down a fair chunk of my last paycheck you got shunted off your old route for the same thing you’re trying to get up to now. Probably even the one before that. Must have friends in Admin somewhere, but if they’ve stuck you all the way out here, I’d say you’re probably on your last legs. Been getting too handsy or too mouthy.”

“I don’t think you know anything. I think you just want to play white knight for your little girlfriend back there so you can try and get in her panties before the roads clear, provided you can get that withered old pecker to stand up on its own. What about it, Granddad? That thing even raised its head since Y2K?”

“This is your last shot, am I right?” John carried on, unblinking, patient. “Last run before they drop you for good, before somebody can press charges and make it shit for the whole company instead of just you.”

Masters blinked, his grin faltering and falling into a sneer.

John stepped forward, eyes boring down on the shorter man. “Ah. There it is. Thought so. Now, alas, my scrapping days are a bit behind me. So as much as it’d do my heart good to chib your perverted little ratface back through your arsehole, I’m afraid that’s not really an option. But I promise you, if you so much as breathe at those ladies wrong, I will be on the phone to human resources first thing come daylight, and I will do my level best to make sure there are charges filed against you. Are we clear?”

Master’s lip was twitching. He looked fit to spit nails if he was given half a chance. “Crystal,” he snapped.

“Wonderful.” John made for the heavy door, twisting the handle. The door crackled, gave a fraction, a thin whistle of cold wind coming through the infinitesimal gap, and stopped. It wasn’t iced over, not properly. The outer storage was sheltered, but it was cold enough it had frosted up the gap in the door frame just enough to stick fast.

“Damn. Gimme a hand here, door’s stuck.”

Masters socked his shoulder against the door.

“On three,” John said. The itching in his chest was maddening. He zipped his coat all the way up, ducking his head to cover his mouth and nose with the collar, puffing in what little warmish air he could.

“Three!” Masters lunged suddenly, driving his shoulder into the door.

John yelped as the door popped open with a loud crack, sending him spilling down the short steps to the concrete floor, flashlight tumbling from his grip, scraping skin from the heels of his hands and twisting his left knee painfully beneath him. The storage room was sheltered but not heated, and the pavement was icy cold. The first lungful of cold air hit his lungs like ice water, and he coughed it back up, pins and needles pricking up and down his arms and chest as he rocked and wheezed.

Masters stood over him, regarding his current state with mild distaste. “Ooh, sorry about that, Granddad. Guess I got a little over-eager.” He squatted, knees popping. “Y’know I gotta tell you, friend. You don’t look so good.”

John could feel his face turning purple, as much from humiliation as from strain. Brokedown old fool, you can’t even protect yourself let alone anyone else. There was a horrible tearing sensation in his chest, and he groaned and hocked up some horrible mass of spongy tissue that did not feel like phlegm. He spat into the darkness, wiping his mouth judiciously without sparing a glance to whatever had torn itself loose.

Masters tutted. “In point of fact, you’re in just about the sorriest state I’ve seen anybody who wasn’t rattling the chain ‘round the pearly gates.” The man rocked back on his heels, chuckling.

“I’m good enough,” John grated and pulled himself up, hanging onto the door handle for purchase. His knee throbbed but just barely took his weight. A hot flush surged through him. The first sharp little beads of sweat formed across his forehead, stinging in the cold. Not good. Not good at all.

John waited. A taste of copper lingered in the back of his throat. His stomach knotted. He balled his fists but did not raise them, shifting his weight to his good foot.

“If you mean to try it, be my guest,” he said. Every word hurt, like his chest was full of knives. “Have at. Then you can have a jolly old time explaining to the day manager why you took the half-dead porter out into the cold for a few rounds. I mean, provided I don’t just keel over after one hit, right? Come on. Give those chains a good rattle, mate.”

The glee drained away from Masters’ face, leaving only that ratty, pinched look of disdain. The prick didn’t want a fight, especially one that might leave a half-frozen corpse in the storage shed of his employers. “Well, well,” he said bitterly. “Spunky old fuck, aren’t you?”

John pointed to the far corner. “Generator,” he snarled.

“Yeah, yeah. Right. Generator.”

Only when Masters had backpedaled a good five feet did John bend to retrieve the flashlight. The generator was shored up behind a plywood and chainlink partition, latched but not locked. The beast itself wasn’t quite as old as the rest of the building would’ve left him to believe, but it was hardly new. It was, at least, fairly well maintained by the looks of everything. The fuel tank was nearly full with diesel, and the exhaust hose still had a solid seal. Small mercies, finally. Master had been right about one thing: this was not a two man job. The generator had a simple on/off switch and a pull cord. Flip one, pull the other.

John flipped the switch. He took a deep breath, hiding his mouth and nose under the collar of his coat again, and pulled the cord. The generator belched fitfully, then roared, sending up little wafts of exhaust and steam into the cold. The open doorway filled with thin light as the electrics kicked on.

“Right. In,” John said, jabbing the maglite at the open door. “And I meant what I said. I don’t much care what happens to me, doesn’t matter much at the end of the day. But you leave them alone.”

“Yes sir,” Masters sneered.

- 1:59am

“Blimey, you look like death, you alright?” London jogged up as John came limping in, rubbing her palms nervously on the legs of her jeans.

John shook his head dismissively. “Back door was stuck, took a tumble, I’ll be fine. Everyone alright here?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re good. Susan had to use the ladies, Clara went with, so I gave them the torch. They’ve been gone for a few though. Clara’s been looking kinda pale, probably just nerves or bad cafeteria nosh.”

“I’ll go check on them.”

London blinked. “I mean, that’s sweet, sort of, but it is a ladies’ room. Fairly certain you’re not a lady. I can do it.”

“I didn’t say I was going to just walk in. There’s this fantastic thing that got invented a while back called knocking. People do it on doors, I hear. Wild stuff, thought I’d give it a shot.” He spared a glance at Masters, who had found himself a spot on a bench in the far corner and was fanning through the pages of some expired magazine.

“Here,” he said, an idea striking him. He pulled the keys from his belt, found the strange, fat, round one, and held it out to her. “Vending machine. Bottom of the panel. Be sure you lift up when you try to open, it sticks.”

“You sure? Won’t you get in trouble?”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh I’ll definitely get in trouble. They’ll whinge and moan and take twenty dollars in junk food out of my next paycheck. To hell with ‘em. You lot could use a pick me up.”

“Sweet!”

The bathrooms were down a narrow hallway next to a janitorial closet and a pay phone. John raised his hand to knock, then froze. A grunt came from inside, followed by a thud. In his mind he saw Blackpool dropping like a stone to the stone tiled floor and any sense of propriety immediately fled. He threw the door open and staggered in, preparing himself for anything.

It wasn’t Blackpool that had fallen. Susan, the older blonde, lay half-propped against the tiled wall under the electric hand dryer. Her eyes were rolled up to the whites, lids fluttering, mouth ajar. It was the sort of vacant, ecstatic look John had only ever associated with either good drugs or good sex. Blackpool bent over her, stroking her hair gently, face buried in the blonde woman’s neck.

“B-Blackpool?”

Her head snapped up. A thin line of blood trickled from one corner of her mouth. Her eyes had gone a bright, burnished gold like wedding bands around wide, blown pupils. “Fuck. Glasgow,” she said, almost mournfully. Her canines were too long, too sharp, bone-white spindles glinting bloody in the greasy fluorescent lights. “Please don’t be scared.”

Please don’t be scared. It was more than a request. He felt it hit the center of his brain, the flow of adrenaline suddenly ceasing. The scream he felt bubbling up died off in his throat. He was not calm, but his fear had been stopped wholesale. The shock of it, after everything, was too much. His knees gave, and he collapsed in a tangled heap.

Blackpool watched him fall, pained, as if she hadn’t meant to use whatever power she’d thrown at him. “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. Give me one moment. I can explain. I promise you. Please. Just let me explain.”

She stuck her thumb in her mouth, and John heard an unpleasant crunch of as one of those fangs punched through the skin. She squeezed until the blood ran, then swiped it across the neat punctures on Susan’s neck. They closed almost instantly, and Blackpool bent to lick away the remains.

“This, this isn’t, this can’t be. You can’t be…”

And then she was beside him, cold hands cupping his face. He squeezed his eyes shut. Sharp nails scraped against the sides of his scalp. He breathed her in, a bouquet of bloody lilac and dark chocolate like a grim valentine, and beneath it something darker, wilder, older. Here at last was death, not inside him but above him, with feral teeth and bloody breath. The first tears, hot and stinging, started to fall. In the absence of his fear he was left with a cold, bone-deep emptiness, a ragged hole where the fear had been. He marked the shape of it with mild interest, noted where it sat, the odd frayed ends where it connected to him. It was a queer sensation, this detachment, but the separation brought with it it’s own horrible realization: in this manner or any other, he was afraid to die.

Her thumbs traced the hollows of his face. “Glasgow. Doctor. Look at me. Please.”

Cautiously he opened his eyes. The gold in her eyes was fading slowly back to warm brown, fangs receding. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her hands fell away, and whatever control she had imposed on him fell with it. She slumped away from him, wild patches of roses blooming in her cheeks.

“I didn’t want you to see that,” she said.

“Tell me I’m delirious, Blackpool,” he whispered. “Do that. Please. Tell me I’m crazy. Anything.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re not.”

“This is real?”

“Yes.”

John passed a hand over his face. “You’re a vampire. Vampires are real and you’re one of them.”

“Yes.”

“Right. Okay.” A long beat. Then: “Is she dead? Did you kill her?”

“No,” Blackpool said immediately. “I don’t do that. I won't do that. I took no more than I needed. She would’ve given up more in the back of a Red Cross van. She’ll only be out for a few minutes.”

John’s laugh sounded horrible to his own ears, something mad and hyena-like, high and wheezing and verging on hysterical. “Then we should get her out of here. Quickly, before someone else comes to check.”

Blackpool stared blankly at him. “What?”

“Would you rather leave her on the lavatory floor?”

“No, I just… You’re going to help me? You saw what I did, and you’re going to help me?” she asked disbelievingly.

“For the moment, yes. I’m going to help you. And then I’m going to put the kettle on, and you and I are going to sit down and you are going to explain this to me, because right now I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“And what about the rest of them? What will you tell them?”

“What will you tell them?” he asked, too sharply. “I found you in here with her after she’d collapsed. If anyone needs a story here it’s you.”

“She fainted,” Blackpool said without hesitation. She didn’t even blink. “Clocked her head on the tiles.”

“Fine. Good enough. There are cots in the back in the driver’s room. We can lay her down there. Help me get her up.”

He moved to get up, but his knee buckled, and he slid back to the floor, stifling a yelp.

“What happened, what’s wrong?” She was leaning towards him cautiously, hands out.

“I…” he considered, reconsidered, shook his head. “Door to the back was frozen shut. We got it open, but I took a spill. It’s fine, I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, so you keep telling me.” That concern was back, her mouth set, brow furrowed. Carefully, she laid a hand on his knee, feeling him wince away from the touch. Reflexively, she put her other hand to his chest, meaning to hold him still or calm him, he wasn’t sure which, but then she stopped dead.

The hand on his chest slid down, twisted, curled around his ribs. Her face fell. She could feel it. Somehow she could. He’d found her not five minutes ago feeding on the blood of some upper middle class housewife in a public bathroom and now here she was on her knees beside him with pain and pity in her eyes, fingers finding in seconds what it had taken sixteen hours in an ER and a CT scan for the doctors to find. “Oh God. Glasgow-”

“Don’t,” he said, his heart in his throat, strangling the word. “Not now.”

She swallowed hard. “Alright. Alright, I won’t. But your knee will not hold up you and her both, and you’re running a fever. It’s not bad, not yet. I can help, a little, if you’ll trust me to.”

John found his mouth too dry to speak. The initial shock was fading, and the fear he’d felt for that brief moment still had not returned to take its place. Behind Blackpool on the tiles, Susan had taken to snoring gently. The banality of it was jarring, clattering up against the still-fresh image of the grotesquerie he had stumbled in on. It was getting harder and harder to believe he had seen what he had seen. Monsters, in his limited experience, were not meant to be merciful.

What, then, did that make her?

He asked, “What did you have in mind?”

She held up her right hand in offering. Blood still trickled slowly from her thumb. “It won’t change you, not like me,” she added reassuringly. The hand on his side squeezed gently. “And I’m sorry, but it won’t cure you. But it will help for a time.”

Heaven help me. This night cannot get any stranger.

He nodded dumbly. “Alright.”

John opened his mouth and waited, thinking distantly of kneeling before a priest for communion. Blackpool slid her thumb into his mouth, three neat droplets of blood collecting on his tongue. Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

The effect was almost instantaneous. The pain in his leg vanished, the stiffness in his joints, too. The prickling flush of the building fever faded, leaving in its stead a low, pleasant hum. He felt good. He felt fantastic, actually, the hum building into something warm and sweet that made a small shiver trickle down his spine. Instinctively, he moved forward, wanting more, but Blackpool pulled her bloodied thumb back and held him fast.

“No. That’s enough.”

John blinked, hearing his breathing come a little too quick and ragged. “Sorry,” he said stupidly.

“It’s ok. I should’ve warned you first.” She rocked back onto her feet. “Can you stand?”

He laughed. “I think I could run the Boston Marathon right now. What the hell are you made of, morphine and adderall?”

“And slugs and snails and puppydog tails.” She smiled and offered him a hand.

For the first time in maybe fifteen years, John’s back and knees gave no protest as he stood. Three drops, he marveled. Better than Vicodin.

Susan gave a snorting groan and half-rolled onto her side, sliding down a little further toward the floor with her blonde hair trailing sticking to the tiles, trailing above her in a little fan. She was mumbling, a train of words lost in a slur of sleep, the only thing John could make out sounded suspiciously like “pancakes”.

Lifting her was astonishingly easy, as if she weighed nothing at all. Carrying her out proved to be far more awkward. Blackpool was so damned short and John so tall that Susan hung askew between their shoulders like a sagging laundry line. In his present state, John felt he could’ve hoisted her one-armed on his own, but everyone had seen him limp in from the back, and this didn’t need to seem any stranger than it already was. John managed to use his elbow to pry the door open just far enough to jam one bony hip through and shove it the rest of the way.

“Oi!” he called out, surprised at the strength of his own voice. “London! We could use a little help!”

The squeak of her shoes echoed down the hall. London gasped when she rounded the corner, her jog turning into a sprint. “Oh my god, what happened? Is she okay?”

“I dunno she just passed out,” Blackpool said as they hobbled her out to the hallway. “One minute we were drying our hands and talking about wanting breakfast and next thing I know she’s just collapsed.”

Oh, she was good. John kept his eyes judiciously forward, jerking his head in the vague direction of the back offices. “There’s a cot in the driver’s break room, give us a hand with the doors, yeah?”

“Yeah! Of course, yeah, doors, I can do doors,” Bill said, jogging along nervously beside them.

There was a small outcry when they cleared the lounge as the other passengers got a look at the unconscious woman.

“She’s alright,” John said in his best reassuringly authoritative tone. “Just a little fainting spell, nothing to worry about.”

“Pancakes,” Susan grumbled.

“Hey, you’re comin’ round,” Blackpool said, giving the woman a hopeful pat.

“I want pancakes. There’s nooo pancakes,” Susan whined, head lolling. “I-wanna-speak-to-your-manager.”

“Does anybody know, did she eat anything in Cheyenne?” London asked loudly, pushing open the door to the back offices. A few folk shrugged. “Might be low blood sugar. Moira, my foster mum, she gets it all the time, goes a little too long between meals and gets all wobbly.  Passed out in Sainsbury's once on a display full of kievs.”

The driver’s room was small, walls painted the same ancient off-green as the rest of the place. A long faded brown couch sat catty-cornered next to a big boxy television with at least half of its plastic buttons snapped off. Three cots were lined up in the back, past a round chipped formica table under a row of tall, narrow windows. London scooted past them, shoving peeling vinyl chairs out of the way, and waved them to one of the green cots.

“Alright, ease her down,” John said, slipping the woman from his shoulders. “Get her feet please.”

London stooped and grabbed Susan’s fleece-lined Uggs. “So what do we do? I mean we can’t get a doctor in.”

John bent, feeling around on the woman’s wrist, counting beats and watching the second hand on the yellowed clock face on the wall tick by. “Damned if I know,” he said. “No medical bracelet, anyway, so. Pulse seems good, at least, but if she knocked her head on the way down she’s gonna have a hell of a headache when she comes around.”

He turned to London, who was chewing fretfully on her nails. “Can you stay here, keep an eye on her?”

“Yeah, yeah of course.”

“If she wakes up, make sure she stays put, don’t let her up. I’ll get another round of tea and coffee started and bring you a handful of nibbles out of the machine. Hopefully, it is just one too many missed meals.”

London tucked herself onto the cot next to Susan, hands around her knees.

- 2:20am

John left a stack of foil-wrapped Mrs. Field’s cookies and two styrofoam cups of tea with London. She seemed grateful, piling up the foil packets on the TV tray someone had turned into an erstwhile cot-side table and starting immediately on her tea, but her face was strained and the flesh under her eyes was beginning to bulge and sag.

“You ok?” he asked, nudging her shoulder gently.

“Yeah,” she said, an easy and automatic lie. He tipped his head, a wordless question, and she sighed. “No. I mean, it’s stupid. Don’t mind me.”

“If you’re not alright, you’re not alright,” John said, sitting carefully on the last empty cot. “It’s been a weird night. You’re allowed to not be alright all the time.”

“I just, I’ve had this bad feeling all day, and it just keeps getting worse. Like, I’m just about the least intuitive person you’ll ever meet. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you that. Night out on a pub crawl, I tried to ask the number of this gorgeous girl, and it wasn’t until we actually left that pub that my friends bothered to point out that the girl’s boyfriend was sitting next to her the whole time. Something could be staring me right in the face waving a little flag and I’d never see it. But…” She trailed off picking at the rim of the styrofoam cup.

“But?” he asked. The tiniest push.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered, as if afraid someone would hear, “or is gonna be wrong. I feel like, like I’m standing on a diving board, and there’s no water in the pool. Just right at the edge of something awful. I can feel it in my stomach, snaking around. The longer this day goes on, and the more happens, the worse it gets. And I keep trying to ignore it because it’s stupid, you know? Queen of the Oblivious suddenly turns anxiety-psychic. That’s just not a thing.”

John leaned forward on his elbows. “You’re scared.”

She laughed. “Yeah, Dumbo. I’m scared. Properly bricking it.”

“Me too,” he said gently.

London looked at him, all at once stricken and relieved, and burst into tears.

“I just wanna go home to my girlfriend,” she said between hitching sobs. “We had a fight before I left on holiday. Heather, she was supposed to come with me, and then she couldn’t, and I said something stupid, and she said something stupid, and we were both just so bloody stupid. I haven’t even been able to phone her since I left. Too bloody chicken. And today I woke up cold and miserable in a cheap motel with mouse-eaten sheets, and the very first thought in my head was: I’m never gonna see her again. And the last thing she’s going to remember of us is me slamming the door.”

After everything that had happened that night, somehow this was the worst. London was a sweet girl, bright and sharp and funny, and seeing her crumble in some grubby little back office hurt in some fundamental fashion John couldn’t quite name. He wanted to comfort her, but Christ, he was terrible at comfort anymore. The part of him he’d swung open so easily to admit others had all but rusted shut with grief and disuse.

John dropped to a crouch and tugged one of her hands into his. “There is nothing wrong with scared, London,” he said, willing his voice to softness. “Scared keeps you from sticking forks in light sockets or playing tag with traffic. And scared is how you know when something matters to you. Really matters. Because you don’t fear losing the things that have no value to you.”

The shaking in her shoulders was easing, but only just. “It’s not just that.”

“What is it? What is it that has you so sure you’re not going to make it home?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Like I said I just, I felt it, soon as I woke up. It’s stupid, I know.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid. I think you’re a long way from home and things have gone spectacularly pear-shaped. But I think there’s more to it than you’re telling me.” Her hand gave a little jerk. “Is it about the driver?”

London all but shrank into herself, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“That’s a yes, then,” John said.

“Leave it. Please.”

John took a deep breath, all at once too angry to marvel at just how deep and easily he could breathe for the moment. “Alright.” He thought to say more, to promise her protection, safety, to try for a warm, roguish smile and tell her that if Masters meant to get at her he’d have to go through him first, but the incident in the storage room was still too fresh. He was no protector, even if he wanted to be.

Instead, he said: “You ever seen the sun come up over the snow in Colorado?”

London shook her head, sniffling. He gave her hand a squeeze.

“Well,” he said, glancing up at the clock. “In about three hours, you’re going to. And by then the plows will be out, and they’ll dig out this little dungheap of a station so you can get on the next bus to Denver. Yeah? And you’ll call your girlfriend on the bus out and find out she’s probably already forgiven you for the thing you haven’t forgiven yourself for.”

She let out a dry bark that was half sob and half laughter.

“You’re gonna be ok.”

That got a smile through a fresh fall of tears. “Thank you,” she muttered.

He gave her hand one last squeeze. “Drink your tea. I’m just around the corner, alright?”

She nodded, scrubbing at her face with the sleeves of her jumper.

As John turned to leave, he found the doorway occupied. Blackpool stood leaning with her shoulder against the frame, looking at him with a teary sort of disbelief, as though he were the creature spun up from a storybook and not her.

“I’m starting to wonder if you’re real,” she said.

He propped open the door to the break room with his elbow. “So sayeth the vampire,” he muttered softly.

“It’s easy to believe in monsters,” she said earnestly. “After awhile it gets harder to believe in kindness.”

[siva3155]

300+ TOP TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION Objective Questions and Answers

TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION Multiple Choice Questions :-

1. By which of the following systems electric power may be transmitted ? (a) Overhead system (b) Underground system (c) Both (a) and (b) (d) None of the above Ans: c 2. are the conductors, which connect the consumer's terminals to the distribution (a) Distributors (b) Service mains (c) Feeders (d) None of the above Ans: b 3. The underground system cannot be operated above (a) 440 V (b) 11 kV (c) 33 kV (d) 66 kV Ans: d 4. Overhead system can be designed for operation up to (a) 11 kV (b) 33 kV (c) 66 kV (d) 400 kV Ans: c 5. If variable part of annual cost on account of interest and depreciation on the capital outlay is equal to the annual cost of electrical energy wasted in the conductors, the total annual cost will be minimum and the corresponding size of conductor will be most economical. This statement is known as (a) Kelvin's law (b) Ohm's law (c) Kirchhoffs law (d) Faraday's law (e) none of the above Ans: a 6. The wooden poles well impregnated with creosite oil or any preservative compound have life (a) from 2 to 5 years (b) 10 to 15 years (c) 25 to 30 years (d) 60 to 70 years Ans: c 7. Which of the following materials is not used for transmission and distribution of electrical power ? (a) Copper (b) Aluminium (c) Steel (d) Tungsten Ans: d 8. Galvanised steel wire is generally used as (a) stay wire (b) earth wire (c) structural components (d) all of the above Ans: d 9. The usual spans with R.C.C. poles are (a) 40—50 meters (b) 60—100 meters (c) 80—100 meters (d) 300—500 meters Ans: c 10. The corona is considerably affected by which of the following ? (a) Size of the conductor (b) Shape of the conductor (c) Surface condition of the conductor (d) All of the above Ans: d 11. Which of the following are the constants of the transmission lines ? (a) Resistance (b) Inductance (c) Capacitance (d) All of the above Ans: d 12. 310 km line is considered as (a) a long line (b) a medium line (c) a short line (d) any of the above Ans: a 13. The phenomenon qf rise in voltage at the receiving end of the open-circuited or lightly loaded line is called the (a) Seeback effect (b) Ferranti effect (c) Raman effect (d) none of the above Ans: b 14. The square root of the ratio of line impedance and shunt admittance is called the (a) surge impedance of the line (b) conductance of the line (c) regulation of the line (d) none of the above Ans: a 15. Which of the following is the demerit of a 'constant voltage transmission system' ? (a) Increase of short-circuit current of the system (b) Availability of steady voltage at all loads at the line terminals (c) Possibility of better protection for the line due to possible use of higher terminal reactants (d) Improvement of power factor at times of moderate and heavy loads (e) Possibility of carrying increased power for a given conductor size in case of long-distance heavy power transmission Ans: a 16. Low voltage cables are meant for use up to (a)l.lkV (b)3.3kV (c)6.6kV (d)llkV Ans: e 17. The operating voltage of high voltage cables is up to (a)l.lkV (b)3.3kV (c)6.6kV (d)llkV Ans: d 18. The operating voltage of supertension cables is up to (a) 3.3 kV (b) 6.6 kV (c) 11 kV (d) 33 kV Ans: d 19. The operating voltage of extra high tension cables is upto (a) 6.6 kV (b) 11 kV (c) 33 kV (d) 66 kV (e) 132 kV Ans: d 20. Which of the following methods is used for laying of underground cables ? (a) Direct laying (b) Draw-in-system (c) Solid system (d) All of the above Ans: d 21. Which of the following is the source of heat generation in the cables ? (a) Dielectric losses in cable insulation (b) losses in the conductor (c) Losses in the metallic sheathings and armourings (d) All of the above Ans: 22. Due to which of the following reasons the cables should not be operated too hot ? (a) The oil may loose its viscosity and it may start drawing off from higher levels (b) Expansion of the oil may cause the sheath to burst (c) Unequal expansion may create voids in the insulation which will lead to ionization (d) The thermal instability may rise due to the rapid increase of dielectric losses with temperature (e) All of the above Ans: e 23. Which of the following D.C. distribution system is the simplest and lowest in first cost ? (a) Radial system (b) Ring system (c) Inter-connected system (d) None of the above Ans: a 24. A booster is a (a) series wound generator (b) shunt wound generator (c) synchronous generator (d) none of the above Ans: a 25. Besides a method of trial and error, which of the following methods is employed for solution of network problems in interconnected system ? (a) Circulating current method (b) Thevenin's theorem (c) Superposition of currents (d) Direct application of Kirehhoffs laws (e) All of the above Ans: e 26. Which of the following faults is most likely to occur in cables ? (a) Cross or short-circuit fault (b) Open circuit fault (c) Breakdown of cable insulation (d) All of the above Ans: 27. The cause of damage to the lead sheath of a cable is (a) crystallisation of the lead through vibration (b) chemical action on the lead when buried in the earth (c) mechanical damage (d) all of the above Ans: 28. The voltage of the single phase supply to residential consumers is (a) 110 V (b) 210 V (c) 230 V (d) 400 V Ans: c 29. Most of the high voltage transmission lines in India are (a) underground (b) overhead (c) either of the above (d) none of the above Ans: b 30. The distributors for residential areas are (a) single phase (b) three-phase three wire (c) three-phase four wire (d) none of the above Ans: c 31. The conductors of the overhead lines are (a) solid (b) stranded (c) both solid and stranded (d) none of the above Ans: 32. High voltage transmission lines use (a) suspension insulators (b) pin insulators (c) both (a) and (b) (d) none of the above Ans: a 33. Multicore cables generally use (a) square conductors (b) circular conductors (c) rectangular conductors (d) sector-shaped conductors (e) none of the above Ans: d 34. Distribution lines in India generally use (a) wooden poles (b) R.C.C. poles (c) steel towers (d) none of the above Ans: b 35. The material commonly used for insulation in high voltage cables is (a) lead (b) paper (c) rubber (d) none of the above Ans: b 36. The loads on distributors systems are generally (a) balanced (b) unbalanced (c) either of the above (d) none of the above Ans: b 37. The power factor of industrial loads is generally (a) unity (b) lagging (c) leading (d) zero Ans: b 38. Overhead lines generally use (a) copper conductors (b) all aluminium conductors (c) A.C.S.R. conductors (d) none of these Ans: c 39. In transmission lines the cross-arms are made of (a) copper (b) wood (c) R.C.C. (d) steel Ans: d 40. The material generally used for armour of high voltage cables is (a) aluminium (b) steel (c) brass (d) copper Ans: b 41. Transmission line insulators are made of (a) glass (b) porcelain (c) iron (d) P.V.C. Ans: 42. The material commonly used for sheaths of underground cables is (a) lead (b) rubber (c) copper (d) iron Ans: a 43. The minimum clearance between the ground and a 220 kV line is about (a) 4.3 m (b) 5.5 m (c) 7.0 m (d) 10.5 m Ans: c 44. The spacing between phase conductors of a 220 kV line is approximately equal to (a) 2 m (b) 3.5 m (c) 6 m (d) 8.5 m Ans: c 45. Large industrial consumers are supplied electrical energy at (a) 400 V (b) 11 kV (c) 66 kV (d) 400 kV Ans: c 46. In a D.C. 3-wire distribution system, balancer fields are cross-connected in order to (a) boost the generated voltage (b) balance loads on both sides of the neutral (c) make both machine^ run as unloaded motors (d) equalize voltages on the positive and negative outers Ans: 47. In a D.C. 3-wire distributor using balancers and having unequal loads on the two sides (a) both balancers run as generators (b) both balancers run as motors (c) balancer connected to lightly- loaded side runs as a motor (d) balancer connected to heavily- loaded side runs as a motor Ans: 48. Transmitted power remaining the same, if supply voltage of a D.C. 2-wire feeder is increased 100 percent, saving in copper is (a) 25 percent (b) 50 percent (c) 75 percent (d) 100 percent Ans: b 49. A uniformly-loaded D.C. distributor is fed at both ends with equal voltages. As compared to a similar distributor fed at one end only, the drop at the middle point is (a) one-fourth (b) one-third (c) one-half (d) twice (e) none of the above Ans: a 50. As compared to a 2-wire D.C. distributor, a 3-wire distributor with same maximum voltage to earth uses only (a) 31.25 percent of copper (b) 33.3 percent of copper (c) 66.7 percent of copper (d) 125 percent of copper Ans: a 51. Which of the following is usually not the generating voltage ? (a) 6.6 kV (b) 8.8 kV (c) 11 kV (d) 13.2 kV Ans: b 52. For an overhead line, the surge impedance is taken as (a) 20-30 ohms (b) 70—80 ohms (c) 100—200 ohms (d) 500—1000 ohms (e) none of the above Ans: c 53. The presence of ozone due to corona is harmful because it (a) reduces power factor (b) corrodes the material (c) gives odour (d) transfer energy to the ground (e) none of the above Ans: b 54. A feeder, in a transmission system, feeds power to (a) distributors (b) generating stations (c) service mains (d) all of the above Ans: a 55. The power transmitted will be maximum when (a) corona losses are minimum (b) reactance is high (c) sending end voltage is more (d) receiving end voltage is more Ans: c 56. A 3-phase 4 wire system is commonly used on (a) primary transmission (b) secondary transmission (c) primary distribution (d) secondary distribution Ans: d 57. Which of the following materials is used for overhead transmission lines ? (a) Steel cored aluminium (b) Galvanised steel (c) Cadmium copper (d) Any of the above Ans: d 58. Which of the following is not a constituent for making porcelain insulators ? (a) Quartz (b) Kaolin (c) Felspar (d) Silica Ans: d 59. There is a greater possibility of occurence of corona during (a) dry weather (b) winter (c) summer heat (d) humid weather (e) none of the above Ans: d 60. Which of the following relays is used on long transmission lines ? (a) Impedance relay (b) Mho's relay (c) Reactance relay (d) None of the above Ans: b 61. The steel used in steel cored conductors is usually (a) alloy steel (b) stainless steel (c) mild steel (d) high speed steel (e) all of the above Ans: c 62. Which of the following distribution systems is more reliable ? (a) Radial system (b) Tree system (c) Ring main system (d) All are equally reliable Ans: c 63. Which of the following characteristics should the line supports for transmission lines possess ? (a) Low cost (b) High mechanical strength (c) Longer life (d) All of the above Ans: d 64. Transmission voltage of ll kV is normally used for distances upto (a) 20—25 km (b) 40—50 km (c) 60—70 km (d) 80—100 km Ans: a 65. Which of the following regulations is considered best? (a) 50% (b) 20% (c) 10% (d) 2% Ans: d 66. Skin effect is proportional to (a) (conductor diameter) (b) (conductor diameter) (c) (conductor diameter) (d) (conductor diameter) (e) none of the above Ans: c 67. A conductor, due to sag between two supports, takes the form of (a) semi-circle (b) triangle (c) ellipse (d) catenary Ans: d 68. In AC.S.R. conductors, the insulation between aluminium and steel conductors is (a) insulin (b) bitumen (c) varnish (d) no insulation is required Ans: d 69. Which of the following bus-bar schemes has the lowest cost ? (a) Ring bus-bar scheme (b) Single bus-bar scheme (c) Breaker and a half scheme (d) Main and transfer scheme Ans: b 70. Owing to skin effect (a) current flows through the half cross-section of the conductor (b) portion of the conductor near the surface carries more current and core of the conductor carries less current (c) portion of the conductor near the surface carries less current and core of the conductor carries more cur¬rent (d) any of the above (e) none of the above Ans: b 71. By which of the following methods string efficiency can be improved ? (a) Using a guard ring (b) Grading the insulator (c) Using long cross arm (d) Any of the above (e) None of the above Ans: d 72. In aluminium conductors, steel core is provided to (a) compensate for skin effect (b) neutralise proximity effect (c) reduce line inductance (d) increase the tensile strength Ans: d 73. By which of the following a bus-bar is rated ? (a) Current only (b) Current and voltage (c) Current, voltage and frequency (d) Current, voltage, frequency and short time current Ans: d 74. A circuit is disconnected by isolators when (a) line is energized (b) there is no current in the line (c) line is on full load (d) circuit breaker is not open Ans: b 75. For which of the following equipment current rating is not necessary ? (a) Circuit breakers (b) Isolators (c) Load break switch (d) Circuit breakers and load break switches Ans: b 76. In a substation the following equipment is not installed (a) exciters (b) series capacitors (c) shunt reactors (d) voltatre transformers Ans: a 77. jCorona usually occurs when the electrostatic stress in air around the conductor exceeds (a) 6.6 kV (r.m.s. value)/cm (b) 11 kV (r.m.s. value)/cm (c) 22 kV (maximum value)/cm (d) 30 kV (maximum value)/cm Ans: d 78. The voltage drop, for constant voltage transmission is compensated by installing (a) inductors (b) capacitors (c) synchronous motors (d) all of above (e) none of the above Ans: c 79. The use of strain type insulators is made where the conductors are (a) dead ended (b) at intermediate anchor towers (c) any of the above (d) none of the above Ans: c 80. The current drawn by the line due to corona losses is (a) non-sinusoidal (b) sinusoidal (c) triangular (d) square Ans: a 81. Pin type insulators are generally not used for voltages beyond (a) 1 kV (b) 11 kV (c) 22 kV (d) 33 kV Ans: d 82. Aluminium has a specific gravity of (a) 1.5 (b) 2.7 (c) 4.2 (d) 7.8 Ans: b 83. For transmission of power over a distance of 200 km, the transmission voltage should be (a) 132 kV (b) 66 kV (c) 33 kV (d) 11 kV Ans: a 84. For aluminium, as compared to copper, all the following factors have higher values except (a) specific volume (6) electrical conductivity (c) co-efficient of linear expansion (d) resistance per unit length for same cross-section Ans: b 85. Which of the following equipment, for regulating the voltage in distribution feeder, will be most economical ? (a) Static condenser (b) Synchronous condenser (c) Tap changing transformer (d) Booster transformer Ans: d 86. In a tap changing transformer, the tappings are provided on (a) primary winding (b) secondary winding (c) high voltage winding (d) any of the above Ans: c 87. Constant voltage transmission entails the following disadvantage (a) large conductor area is required for same power transmission (b) short-circuit current of the system is increased (c) either of the above (d) none of the above Ans: b 88. On which of the following factors skin effect depends ? (a) Frequency of the current (b) Size of the conductor (c) Resistivity of the conductor material (d) All of the above Ans: d 89. The effect of corona can be detected by (a) presence of ozone detected by odour (b) hissing sound (c) faint luminous glow of bluish colour (d) all of the above Ans: d 90. For transmission of power over a distance of 500 km, the transmission voltage should be in the range (a) 150 to 220 kV (b) 100 to 120 kV (c) 60 to 100 kV (d) 20 to 50 kV Ans: a 91. In the analysis of which of the following lines shunt capacitance is neglected ? (a) Short transmission lines (b) Medium transmission lines (c) Long transmission lines (d) Medium as well as long transmission lines Ans: a 92. When the interconnector between two stations has large reactance (a) the transfer of power will take place with voltage fluctuation and noise (b) the transfer of power will take place with least loss (c) the stations will fall out of step be¬cause of large angular displacement between the stations (d) none of the above Ans: c 93. The frequency of voltage generated, in case of generators, can be increased by (a) using reactors (b) increasing the load (c) adjusting the governor (d) reducing the terminal voltage (e) none of the above Ans: c 94. When an alternator connected to the bus-bar is shut down the bus-bar voltage will (a) fall (b) rise (c) remain unchanged (d) none of the above Ans: c 95. The angular displacement between two interconnected stations is mainly due to (a) armature reactance of both alternators (b) reactance of the interconnector (c) synchronous reactance of both the alternators (d) all of the above Ans: a 96. Electro-mechanical voltage regulators are generally used in (a) reactors (b) generators (c) transformers (d) all of the above Ans: b 97. Series capacitors on transmission lines are of little use when the load VAR requirement is (a) large (b) small (b) fluctuating (d) any of the above Ans: b 98. The voltage regulation in magnetic amplifier type voltage regulator is effected by (a) electromagnetic induction (b) varying the resistance (c) varying the reactance (d) variable transformer Ans: c 99. When a conductor carries more current on the surface as compared to core, it is due to (a) permeability variation (b) corona (c) skin effect (d) unsymmetrical fault (e) none of the above Ans: c 100. The following system is not generally used (a) 1-phase 3 wire (b) 1-phase 4 wire (c) 3-phase 3 wire (d) 3-phase 4 wire Ans: a 101. The skin effect of a conductor will reduce as the (a) resistivity of conductor material increases (b) permeability of conductor material increases (c) diameter increases (d) frequency increases Ans: a 110. When a live conductor of public electric supply breaks down and touches the earth which of the following will happen ? (a) Current will flow to earth (b) Supply voltage will drop (c) Supply voltage will increase (d) No current will flow in the conductor (e) None of the above Ans: a TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION Mcqs Interview Questions Pdf :: Read the full article

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Braided Connectors | Bajeria Industries

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BAJERIA - Copper Braided/Braid Flexible Jumpers | Connectors | Shunts | Fuse |  TINNED |  ROPE , COPPER STRANDED FLEXIBLE | JUMPER | CONNECTOR | WIRE

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BAJERIA - Copper Braided Flexible Connectors | Jumpers | Shunts | Fuse | TAPE | STRAP  , COPPER STRANDED | CONNECTOR | FLEXIBLE

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