#wip: brassian saga fic

[notasapleasure]

Sunday six

So this saga thing is happening still. It's uhhhh not very Star Warsy YET, but it will be. Probably.

I tried, as before, to keep an eye out for Cassian, but the little sod must have slipped away as soon as things got messy. I didn't find him until sometime afterwards, when I was bloodied and bruised and had had to provide several betting men with my word that I would take part in the wrestling at the summer assembly. Cassian had the good grace to appear sheepish when he saw me - I had a black eye coming up and if I touched my nose it started bleeding again immediately. "What herb should I take for this, then?" I asked him, ruffling his hair because I knew it annoyed him and it was about the only revenge I could take. Cassian scoffed and produced a leather skin of strong, over-wintered mead.

I know I KNOW first person narrative it's like I don't actually want anyone to read my stuff hahaha. ha. 🙃 please give it a chance? I won't post until it's done, if it's done, when it will be a whole ass epic.

[notasapleasure]

Sneak peek: Brassian (Andor) saga AU

Soooo. I thought I'd post the first three chapters here and let everyone just have a say, if they want? I will answer questions on whatever you like, no really, you want an essay, I can give you an essay.

I think probably the key thing is like...in this setting the essential community aspect of Ferrix can't be the Icelandic community as a whole, because to make it a story just about the Norwegian 'empire' coming in would mean either making it the usual 'noble viking pagan vs. xian creep missionaries' story (YAWN) or setting it later, like, several centuries later, which takes it away from the genre I'm playing with most, which can still include monsters and zombies and far-flung adventures at foreign courts. So Brasso and Cassian are outsiders in the Icelandic farming community, as are all the people you'd associate with them in terms of the good guys on Ferrix - Salman and his family (smiths), Bix and her family (wise-women), Maarva and Clem (well. you'll see.). The Ferrix community is the group of weirdos who don't quite fit in. <3

In terms of the kinds of weirdos they are, well, I'm building a lot of it on specific examples from the sagas and tweaking details here and there. Ask me about any of it that piques your curiosity, please!

Thanks to @notfromcold for tagging me in the last sentence meme. This is somewhat more than a last sentence, but hey!

Also - it's first person, because Brasso decided it was going to be first person. And probably needs CW for period/setting typical bigotry and abusive parenting at the least - the trope of the coal-biter (a lazy son who disappoints his good viking parents before growing into a hero in his teens) is a common saga trope, but I've combined it with the 'son of the slave woman' trope (in a way that isn't 'wow I'm secretly a prince'), so Brasso's family isn't the nicest. It's emerged from various collective fanons I think, around his dad maybe/probably being a jerk and him having approximately a million sisters. Also from the saga stuff you can ask about if you want.

The Saga of the Coal-biter and the Skraeling

1. Coal-Biter

I was born the year they discovered Vinland the Good. My father was pleased - at long last he had a son to take his name. He had such high hopes for trade with the new land, and for me. His wife would have liked me more if I'd been hers, but she agreed to raise me alongside her brood of daughters nonetheless, and she was not unkind.

My sisters doted on me and scolded me by turns like the seething flock of geese in the yard - I would be their beloved plaything one moment and a hassle, a cuckoo to be resented, the next. Of course, I didn't know what a cuckoo was as a child, and my mother grew up far beyond the lands where they are found, so I only learned about these birds whose oversized young take over a nest and transplant the sitting chicks when I first travelled to Norway. But it was the same for me, nonetheless - I was disproportionate in that little house filled with fine, willowy people. I grew strong and broad, tall and dark, and my step-mother said I was of the people of Thrall, not like her children, born to the line of Snoer and Erna. Bearing that in mind, I could have done worse than be named as I am - Brastr, from my size and manner, became the more familiar Brasso.

At least, this is what my sisters liked to call me - my father found it babyish and inappropriate. I was still too young to know when his pride turned into scorn, but as I grew and grew, and remained perplexed by his obsession with 'going viking' or great deeds of a 'manly' ilk, he began to curse me and say I would never amount to anything. He would have disowned me, I'm sure, only he had paid handsomely for Sigurd, the priest of Thor, to confirm I was his when I was born, and then he had shown me off to all his peers at the public assembly, as my step-mother later told me. It would have been embarrassing for him to have gone back on such a confident announcement, I suppose.

So he called me Coal-biter. He came in from the yard one morning and, with frost-cold hands, claimed he was trying to wipe the dirt off my cheeks.

"I asked you to sharpen those knives for me boy, and you've spent the morning rolling about in the ash instead!"

I was sitting by the central hearth, away from the draught of the door, close to the good light so I could see what I was doing as I worked. He was right, I had not sharpened his knives. Truth be told, I did one and then realised how good it would be for whittling the small piece of driftwood I'd salvaged from the beach. I used the beautifully clean new blade to follow the contours of the wood, feeling the layers of it soften when I peeled then back as the callus on my thumb hardened. I still didn't know what shape lay within the salvage - something twisty and cunning. A fox, maybe? - but my father stopped me from finding out. He slapped it from my hands into the fire, and the knife landed in amongst the embers too - its bone handle was engulfed by clean new flames.

My cheeks burning - from the cold of his fingers, from the shame I felt whenever he wiped my face like that, from the anger at losing my project - I glared into the features of this old man who had once been a fearsome pirate and warrior. He didn't scare me, not even then, and I think that's why he came to hate me so much.

"Ash-boy! Coal-biter!" he barked, pinching my cheek and slapping my forehead. "You sit here in the dust all day with the women, getting under their feet while they do the work they need to do. Your skin is filthy with it, your hair is black as soot!"

I made some meagre complaint - "That's just its colour. You liked my mother's black hair!"

Naturally it got me another slap to the face.

"Pick it up," my father seethed, pointing to the metal blade glowing among the flames.

I shook my head and set my jaw. He loved to make impossible demands and I had learned to just ignore them.

He repeated himself, his green eyes bulging, his beard yellow from fire smoke, his mouth stinking from his rotten teeth.

"I already sharpened that one," I told him, reaching for the next knife and the whetstone.

I don't know how the stalemate might have ended - with him forcing my hand into the flames, with me stabbing him with the blunt old blade? - had my eldest sister not stepped in with the tongs and plucked the blade from the fire. She said nothing to either of us, but dropped the ember-red knife onto one of the flat stones they used for kneading bread and walked back to her weaving with a sigh.

Oh, our father would bawl and hollar at her too, but he wouldn't lay a hand on her, not when he hoped to find her a husband at the next local assembly. He left me to sharpen the knives, but he only ever called me Coal-biter after that.

A nickname like that spreads - he didn't spread it himself, that would be too shameful as well, but the serving men and women knew that gossip like that could get them an extra measure of cheese or milk or meat when they were on an errand to the nearby farms.

Have you heard about old Ásbjörn's son? He's a Coal-biter they say, yes - slow to speak, disobedient, spends his whole time lazing about the hearth, never does the jobs he's asked to do. No doubt it's down to his mother - what did Ásbjörn expect from such a creature? He might as well have fucked his horse.

I've heard them say it - I've pointed out that it takes a certain kind of imagination to come up with fucking a horse as an alternative to a serving woman, and asked them how they came to know so much about it. There's not much point picking on the servants though - I can let them take their entertainment where they find it.

So what if I was called Coal-biter? I preferred working at the fire to working out in the fields with Ásbjörn - the fire transforms things, it takes matter and makes it something else, turning wood to charcoal and rock to metal. In the fields it's damp and windy. You have to ride to get there, and I outgrew these little horses before I reached my teens. I feel top heavy on them, exposed and awkward.

I started spending time at Pakkur's forge whenever possible - he taught me how the fire worked, but I didn't really want its mysteries explaining. Instead I made myself useful scavenging old iron for Pakkur to reforge: I pulled the clinkers from wrecked boats and scoured the assembly grounds for lost items. It's amazing what the great and good leave behind after their courts are done and the silver has been exchanged - I've found brooches and pins, coins and buckles. Even a sword knop once - it had a little gold on it, Pakkur said, so we pierced it and looped a thong of leather through the back and I gave it to my step-mother to wear around her neck.

Maybe I should have given it to my birth mother, but I didn't think she'd be allowed to keep it. We don't have slaves anymore in Iceland - you hear that a lot. But when, like my mother, that's what you were before you were brought here, the freedom doesn't mean much. She's a servant, she could maybe be a servant in another household, but even now she doesn't like to speak the language - unless it's to complain about the cold - and she doesn't socialise with the others. I know so little about her - only that she was brought to this place that is so far from her home and so different to it, and the anger she holds in her heart about this isn't dimmed even when we exchange brief, shy smiles across the yard.

What could I do? It's my step-mother who was equipped to deflect my father's attention away from my work at Pakkur's, it's my step-mother who made sure I was dressed well and fed well. I knew she would appreciate the necklace, too - she learned that her position was in no way threatened by me or my mother now, and it meant she felt able to pity me somewhat. So when my father threatened to hand the farm over to his son-in-law she persuaded him to wait.

It was a kind gesture, though I didn't want the farm - I didn't really want any of it. I dreamed of worlds beyond my homeland where there were other things to do, things that weren't farming or feuding. Where I could go to the places called towns and see new faces on every turn, not the same old cast of petty smallholders.

2. Skraeling

Speaking of new faces, I was a teen when Maarva and Clem returned from Greenland with their curious cargo. It gave the whole island something new to talk about.

How should I describe Maarva and Clem? I hadn't known them terribly well before, they left Iceland first when I was young, excited by the prospects of the new land Leif Eiríksson had discovered.

As a kid I heard the rumour that Maarva had been a chieftain's daughter - somewhere remote and peculiar and filled with giants, like Gotland - and she'd certainly been married before Clem, but I imagine she'd have been terribly young. She'd travelled, so probably her first husband had been a trader in the east. At the summer assembly she used to tell us stories of elephants and lions, giant gold-hoarding ants and men with dogs' heads. She said she'd seen it all.

At some point she must have been widowed and left reliant on the mercy of a Norse colony far away, east and south, down near the centre of the known world. It was here she'd met Clem.

With his deep black skin, Clem was an enigma to most of us - he spoke Norse well, but saved his words for Maarva by and large. He was handy with the law, which he memorised as soon as he got here, and a fast friend of Pakkur's. He valued the old and the new equally, because in our society all was novel to him. He found our gods quaint and never tried to explain his own. He wasn't quick to violence, but the first guy who called him blámaðr to his face lost his leg below the knee in the duel that followed. After that, everyone was just happy to call him Clem.

Clem didn't tell stories of exotic animals or ferocious gladiators, but sometimes, in a wistful moment, he would describe stranger wonders: great round buildings shining inside beneath gold ceilings, like each one had a sun captured in the rafters. Lands where sweet fruit grew to the size of your fist, not like the fingernail-sized blueberries we foraged for, and where the air was as warm as our hot springs but scented with exotic flowers and perfumes rather than sulphur. Regular days and nights, good weather and plentiful food - it all sounded as absurd as Maarva's cynocephali and Blemmyes. I don't know that any of us believed Clem and Maarva's stories - few of the adults took this odd couple entirely seriously, and we tacitly picked up on that. But I've since seen those things Clem described, and I've ridden an elephant just as Maarva told me was possible. There was more of the world on their little farm, it turned out, than on the whole of my island home.

And there was even more of it when they came back from Greenland.

The stories had been coming back about skraelings for years, and we all knew them and repeated them and embellished them:

Don't play at the harbour, I heard a skraeling stowed away and it lives in the rocks and eats children!

They have one giant foot and they hop from stone to stone! They use them to crush grapes as big as your head and make wine that doesn't give you a hangover!

Their eyes are big and black like a seal's and if you look into them you'll fall under their spell!

Well. That last one might have been true.

Maarva and Clem brought back a skraeling child, or so we all supposed. When he finally chose to tell his story it went beyond the borders of even our knowledge of the world and our imaginative capacities. But for the first while, he was a skraeling to us, a boy rescued from his own land following some kind of disagreement at a trading meet.

Maarva's version of the story was all breeze and bluster; Clem's was cagey and lacking in detail. But what I first heard from our servants when they came back with timber bought and cut from Maarva's woodland, was this:

Our settlers had travelled from Greenland to Leif's trading outpost in Vinland. The skraelingar came with cloth, hide and food to swap for iron. On the occasion Maarva and Clem went with a party to trade, someone had resolved to swindle someone and soon blows were exchanged - no two people agreed on which side started it. The locals used flying rocks and sharp stone arrows with deadly precision, but they had no swords, and even those who weren't proud of it didn't deny that the Norse colonists had the upper hand.

In the telling, our servants claimed it was a blood-bath - the children who heard the story had nightmares for weeks. With relish, the servants described a boy abandoned amidst the carnage, sitting bewildered among dead bodies, too astonished to flee or fight back. Maarva had taken pity on him and adopted the child rather than leave him to starve in the forests of Vinland.

Later, when I was cynical enough to reconsider the context for Maarva's pity, I also heard a version where she single-handedly drove the skraelingar out of the camp. Something about beating a sword against her bare breasts, advancing upon the enemy and nearly tripping over the boy who had been knocked unconscious by one of the flying weapons. I was never brave enough to ask her about that take on events.

They called the boy Andar, claiming he stopped breathing when they found him and that Clem returned his breath, andar, to him. The boy soon made it clear he already had a name and it was Cassian. The nickname Kass - locked box - was a compromise he made with reluctant Norse tongues, but Clem was careful always to articulate the full word, and Maarva did try, when she remembered.

Cassian brought trouble to the Norse settlement in Greenland. He had not asked to be adopted or rescued, and presumably saw his new situation in a rather different light to how it was intended. Apparently, he made such a noise with his screaming and fighting that livestock miscarried and milk turned. The other colonists said he was a curse and he was the source of skraeling magic that was going to bring about their ruin. Maarva and Clem stood by him, but when, in an inarticulate fury, the boy smashed up a boat and an outhouse, they had no choice but to move away - or face the harsh vengeance of their neighbours.

So Maarva, Clem and Kass the skraeling came back to Iceland, and the unwary among us fell under a spell.

3. Tern

As a teen I'd grown tall, but hadn't yet fully broadened out, and I felt like there was nowhere on the island I could hide - I towered over most of the scrubby birch trees and spindly rowans, and no matter how poor the summer weather was, my skin darkened like roasted rye under the long hours of daylight. I was still a Coal-biter to the other boys, to my father and his friends, but when my sisters had visitors the women would gather behind their looms and giggle at me, whispering things behind their long white fingers. It made me uneasy, and I didn't know why, so despite the weather I resigned myself to staying in the outfields with the sheep, or I combed the rocky river beds for lost fish hooks I could take to Pakkur.

Pakkur was dark, maybe like me, though he claimed not to know where his family came from before settling in Iceland. He preferred to say that black was the colour of the forge: it was fitting that his hair and beard should be charcoal black and steely silver, and of course his skin tanned like leather in the blast of the furnace. He said it was a sign I should learn the craft too, but I never did respond well to anyone suggesting a path for me.

I was capable of all I had been tasked with, but it all somehow felt hopeless. I didn't understand where it was meant to lead. Wandering the riverbeds took me away from future concerns - farms and families and all sorts of distasteful responsibilities - where all I did was let my eyes comb over the different coloured rocks, seeking a tell-tale anomaly in the texture or tone that would bring my attention to a lost twist of iron.

During one such meditation I had wandered far from my father's lands, meandering inland through the lava-fields that ringed Clem and Maarva's farm. Maarva Kerski had a great big wolfhound called Bí, and when I heard barking I flinched, assuming I was about to be scolded for trespassing.

I knew Bí couldn't outrun me anymore - he'd been an old dog when they'd left for Greenland with him, and no one had expected him to return with them. But he still had a bark that could cause landslides - and maybe I had finally learned a guilty conscience from my father's strict lessons. I stood still as a tree in the middle of the stony beach and scanned the grey, craggy landscape for a grey, craggy dog.

When I finally spotted him, Bí wasn't even looking at me. I saw his long tail wag urgently by his shaky legs. He was poised at the edge of the lava field, facing into the uneven terrain with single-minded intent. Again he barked, and I saw when he did that a bird rose up from the rocks with a scream. It hovered momentarily and Bí barked again, and then the bird dove with fury and the small yell that followed was muffled by the breeze.

Without hesitation, I struck out towards Bí, eyeing up the furious bird as cautiously as he did. It was summer, and the terns had been nesting along the river. I knew the spots they used and I knew how to deflect their attention when I was egg-hunting. I also knew when it was better to avoid these areas because the eggs had hatched and the adults would defend their chicks like a hail of spearheads.

Someone in the lava field had not known about this, apparently. The tern dived again, and again I heard a miserable cry.

By now I think I'd guessed who it was, and I pitied the stranger who had come to this land full of murderous birds and abrasive, treacherous rocks. Until then I hadn't seen the boy. I'd heard all the stories and listened with weary exasperation - at least they'd found someone more peculiar than me or my mother to gossip about. I wasn't introspective enough to draw a deliberate parallel between this abducted boy and my mother's own past, but maybe I linked them subconsciously.

"Where is he, Bí?" I stumbled over the crumbly boulders until I could see what Bí could see. Curled  in a crevasse, arms over his head, was the boy I had heard called Kass. It was too far to see if he was injured or trapped, but the tern attacked him so relentlessly I could see he wasn't going to get up even if he could.

I pulled my sheepskin vest up over my head and shoulders, thinking of Maarva's story about the Blemmyes whose faces were in the middle of their chests. Had she told the story to the boy? Is that what he'd make of this tall, brown-skinned stranger stumbling headlessly towards him?

Slowly, carefully, I picked my way over the rocks, taking care not to step on fresh moss that would slip away under my weight, or to rely on thin, brittle spires of lava that would disintegrate if touched. No one in their right mind came out in a lava field, ever - where had Kass even been going?

As I drew near, I proved a more alarming prospect for the tern, and it changed tack to dive at me. I cursed as I felt its weight on my vest, its beak plucking at the sheep's wool, wings battering my hands and head. I shook it off and it came again, catching the skin of my hands with its claws or its beak.

"Bugger off!" I snarled, and when I was next able to concentrate I saw the boy Kass staring up at me with those dangerous big eyes the stories had warned us about. He was a handful of years younger than me I guessed, with sallow skin like mine and round, deep irises of a brown so dark it seemed black when I first looked. There was blood on his face, but the cuts were on his arms. His trousers had torn and his knees and palms were grazed, but he still looked like he might run rather than go anywhere I told him to. One small hand tightened on a fistful of gravel and stones and I stood still and shrugged beneath my ridiculous shield. Getting a handful of grit in the face for my heroics wasn't exactly what I'd bargained on. The tern battered me again, and again I flapped around to drive it off.

To my surprise, the boy's distant, fearful expression shifted slightly - like a glacier in the weeks before it calves, when something is about to slip. His lips twitched and he laughed. He pointed to his neck and said something in a strange, melodious language and laughed again.

"No, I don't have a neck," I said, with less good humour than I should have. "The terns pecked it away. Are you coming, or not?"

His eyes narrowed mistrustfully again, and to my surprise he repeated some of my words: "Coming? Not with you." He shook his head.

"Back to your home," I said in exasperation, expecting another collision with an angry bird at any moment. "To Maarva and Clem." There was a bark from behind, and I belatedly added, "To Bí!"

He winced, and I knew to expect the tern again, so I mostly deflected its blow this time. Kass studied me with more seriousness than I think anyone in my life had shown me to that point.

"Home," he said gloomily, and then reeled off a list of words that might have been synonyms - or curses. "Coming to Bí, ok," he finally stood up and brushed the dirt from his clothes, and I slipped off my vest and held it out to him, squinting up at the sky nervously as I did.

"Wear it - it's thick, their beak doesn't go through the leather."

His skinny arm dipped with the weight of it when he took it, but he held on and looked up at me piercingly. "Me..." he swung it over his head as I'd worn it. "But you?"

I shrugged again and waved my arms for good measure as the tern circled. It gave an angry shriek and swooped close to my hand, but not close enough for me to knock it away.

Kass watched and then beckoned me down to his level with a gesture.

I didn't follow at first, but when I finally crouched down, trying to explain that the bird would attack anyway, he put his foot on my leg without asking and scaled me like I was one of my father's horses, wrapping his wiry limbs about my neck and chest and making sure the sheepskin covered both our heads.

"Hup!" he laughed in my ear, and I had to laugh too as I got to my feet. He didn't weigh much back then and I was already strong, so I hooked my arms under his knees and hoisted him to a more comfortable position before beginning to pick a way back to Bí at the edge of the lava field.

That was my first lesson in how he got away with so much - he'd do what he wanted without asking, and be so utterly charming (not to mention right) that you couldn't be mad about it after the fact.

When we reached Bí the boy made no effort to get down but laughed delightedly as the old dog barked and bounced stiffly about my feet. He shouted "Hup!" again and I had to indulge him like I indulged my nieces and nephews - I broke into a lumbering run across the riverbed, moving quickly enough to make Kass shriek with happiness but not so quickly that Bí was left behind. We staggered and giggled our way like that back to Maarva and Clem's homefield, and I set him down to check the cuts the tern had given him. Bí circled around and then flopped in a dusty patch of earth in the doorway, his pink tongue lolling and his tail patting happily against the ground.

A house-keeper came out with a paste to clean the scratches and grazes Kass had suffered, and he turned sullen and wooden-faced until I took the stuff from her and she went inside with a sigh. He was a stoic patient, watching me flick grit out of the frayed skin of his knees and palms and not flinching at all (I noticed his eyes well up, but pretended not have seen it). By way of distraction, I gestured to myself with the rag. "Brasso. That's me. I live over there," I flailed an arm in an unhelpful manner. "Ásbjörn's farm," I added, out of grudging, cultivated habit.

His eyes flicked to the horizon and then he tried the word out: "Brasso." It was refreshing to hear my name spoken without reprimand or warning, and the pronunciation gave him no trouble.

I wasn't as cosmopolitan as this young thing, though. He pulled his grazed hand from my grip and pointed firmly at his sternum, holding my eyes with determination. "Cassian," he said.

It had an unfamiliar cadence, and it took me a few tries - "Kass-een. Kassa-en. Kass. Í. An. Cassian."

It was worth the embarrassment of getting my tongue tangled when he beamed and nodded at my eventual success.

Clem rode into the homefield while the boy was still laughing at my pronunciation, and the first I knew of this was the way Cassian's face stilled again and he turned silent and watchful. It didn't have the same sullenness as when the house-keeper had come out, though, rather it seemed a silence of waiting, of respectful curiosity.

"Hullo, made a friend have you, Cassian?" Clem dismounted and wandered over to us, his horse trailing after. He was tall, but he nevertheless always looked regal on the little horses. "You're Ásbjörn's son, aren't you?"

I stood and blurted out, "That's what he paid the priest to say, yes sir." I wasn't always so good at keeping my mouth shut in my teenage years - I was too accustomed to winding up my father, because it was so easy to do.

Clem just blinked politely. "Brastr, isn't it?"

To both our surprise, Cassian got up and stood between us. "Brasso," he corrected Clem.

Before I could explain that it was just a nickname, Clem opened his palms in apology. "Brasso. Of Harkastadur."

I nodded, wary of Clem's gentle expression and his scrupulously polite accent. I supposed he expected me to explain myself, so I shuffled and glanced at Cassian. "The terns were attacking him. I heard Bí barking and went to help."

Clem did not ask me how I came to be on his land, he just looked at Cassian and sighed. "Did you try to run away across the lava field again?"

The boy dipped his chin and scowled. Something possessed me to intervene, and I said quickly: "He was just by the river. The nests are well hidden this year. I guess...they don't have terns in Vinland?"

Clem smiled generously at my clumsy attempt to cover for a boy who probably didn't even realise that's what was happening. "They do have terns in Vinland. Leif's 'lucky' camp was plagued with them in the first year. Some artisan made a bunting of their corpses and we had to endure the smell of wind-dried sea-bird all summer."

I did what I did with my father and doubled down on a stubborn expression that defied the reality presenting itself to me. Unlike my father, it made Clem laugh and shake his head ruefully. "Look, as you're here and you helped Cassian out, I have some scrap iron you can take for Pakkur."

I glanced at Cassian, who studied me with renewed curiosity, perhaps wondering how I had managed to deflect a scolding he figured he was due.

"At least I know if he makes it across the lava field next time he'll find someone who'll take care of him," Clem said softly, noticing some frisson of hesitation.

I nodded dumbly, offered Cassian a little wave and followed Clem to the back of the longhouse. I was halfway home before I realised I'd left my sheepskin vest behind.

[notasapleasure]

Sunday six

I am writing Saga AU part 2, I am I am I am! Lots of background and set-up to get through, but I think that's ok, part 1 started slowly too :')

And there's still plenty of opportunities for awkward idiots to totally misunderstand each other. As an example of the kind of thing I mean, I give you a time when I was in an Icelandic class with a friend, and the teacher told us that in the '90s the chat-up lines were no better than 'já eða nei?' (yes or no?) and my friend leaned over and whispered something, and, being deaf,* and not really catching his accent, I made him repeat it like five times until I realised he was saying 'já eða nei'. I snorted at his joke, carried on taking grammar notes, and only several years later went '.....WAIT a second. He was making a pass??' So I know first hand about such idiocy.

*Not like. Diagnosed actually deaf. But sometimes I really just don't catch words

What better time to have an awkward conversation about your friend's unacceptable behaviour than at a horse fight?

Cassian studied me. He couldn't hold my eyes for long, though, and turned back to the horses with a sigh, drawing his arms tighter about him. He said nothing for a while so I faced the match again too, and grimaced at the matted, bloody coats of the horses, their white rolling eyes and the blood-pink froth around their foaming mouths. Finally a winner was declared and Cassian grunted in disapproval - he must have bet on the loser. He didn't face me, and spat at the ground, but the words he muttered brought a confused warmth to my cheeks nonetheless: "Think this place could do with a few more like you, actually." It was spoken so quietly, so reluctantly, that I didn't fully parse it until we'd walked over to Cavo's cart to join the crowds gathering for refreshments.

[notasapleasure]

Sunday sentences

It's not Sunday. It's more than six anythings. But here's a little bit of saga AU because I did mean to post something yesterday but didn't have time before I went out...

Cassian plonked himself down next to me and wordlessly communicated his first demand: I peeled a thin slice of meat from my meal and passed it to him held between my thumb and the knife blade.

His expressions are hard to describe - much as I'd known he wanted a slice of smoked lamb without him saying anything, I knew that he smiled even though his lips didn't move.

He chewed on the meat I'd given him and eyed me, but remained silent.

Finally I gave in with a sigh and asked him if he was avoiding anyone in particular.

He worked at the inside of his lip with his teeth and wrapped his arms around his knees. "I might have got Clem in trouble. Some guy's been complaining about me riding his horses. I didn't even do anything! The horse was fine when I left it."

I cocked an eyebrow, but Cassian swore on some word I didn't know but presumed had significance to him.

"Sounds unfair," I conceded.

"It is," he looked at me darkly and I gave him another slice of meat. "Clem paid this guy compensation. I don't get it, I didn't do anything!"

"The horse was injured?"

"It was fine when I left it," Cassian repeated flatly.

I didn't challenge him - it didn't much matter if that were true or not. If Clem had paid up then he'd publically taken the blame anyway, and would have hoped that was the end of it.

"Is Clem mad?"

Cassian shook his head at his knees. "Maarva is." He worked his jaw angrily, but didn't elaborate. Instead he turned to me again, a puzzled frown on his face. "Is it true? What they're saying about you?"

I gave a hollow snort and gazed down at the fires again. "Which bit?"

[notasapleasure]

unluckily for you you are mutuals with the guy who sees an ask meme and sends you

🌀Post the fic summary for a fic you haven't written/published yet. It can be hypothetical or something you really plan on releasing...

❄️Share a snippet from a WIP of your choosing.

🌤️Share your favorite piece of dialogue from your WIP. 🌧️Share something angsty from your WIP.

🌈 Share something soft/fluffy from your WIP.

💧Share something romantic/hot from your WIP, or just something sweet if it's gen.

🌩️ Share something funny/cracky from your WIP.

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

🌪️Sum up a WIP with a few fic tropes/Ao3 tags.

Absolute clown-face o'clock here, as I forgot this meme was in the queue - but thanks for the ALL THE ASKS ask!! I'm gonna do the saga au because that's the only place my head is these days, though when I finish part 1 I PROMISE I will get to work on chapter 4 of Counting on You.

🌀 Brassian saga au, aka 'The Saga of The Coal-Biter and The Skraeling'. A prequel AU set in late tenth century Iceland. Brasso is the illegitimate son of an old viking and a slave woman who grows up with a heap of [legitimate] sisters, paternal expectations he has no interest in meeting, social expectations he has no interest in meeting, and a growth spurt that only adds to those expectations and the problems they cause. When the neighbours - adventurous merchants Maarva and Clem - return from the colony in Greenland in semi-disgrace with a 'skraeling' child they 'adopted', Brasso makes friends with the new boy, and Cassian identifies him as a fellow outsider.

As a prequel it focuses on Brasso's own coming-of-age travailles, but within this he learns that the feuds of the previous generation can't be ignored, and that once a feud starts there's no one who's safe. When the violence touches Cassian's family too, Brasso's going to have to make a decision about the strange prophecy the Christian witch Máiri Caleen gave him and figure out a way to reconcile himself to being a hero.

❄️ 🌤️ "You could have challenged him to a duel for that," Cassian stood back and eyed me.

"And had my arse handed to me - at the end of a sword, rather than unarmed. Do you want me to get run through, Cassian?"

He folded his arms and shrugged tightly. "I think you'd win."

"I'm grateful for your confidence," I said testily. I'd realised that he was annoyed with me personally about something, but I hadn't the faintest idea what it could be, and it didn't negate his pleasure in my victory. Still, it was an undercurrent in our conversation, in the reproachful shadow behind his expression, and he was disinclined to tell me what it was, so I didn't ask.

"Do you think this is who you have to be?" he finally blurted, stepping forwards again so he didn't need to raise his voice.

Mystified, I dabbed at my nose and raised my brows. "A winner?"

He had this thing where you could see his teeth working at the inside of his lower lip, and he did it whenever he encountered something challenging - regardless of whether it was a challenge to relish or one that made him seethe. In the case of the latter it preceded a smile like a sharp blade, a baring of his teeth really, and a darkening of his eyes. "Fuck you. The one who rolls over and takes it," he said it so quietly I had to lean in to hear him, and I heard the genuine vitriol in his words. Just like so many others I'd heard speak like that on this island.

"That's not what that was, Cassian," I told him coldly. I continued to bend forward so I could keep his eyes on me, and with just as much repressed anger and certainty as he'd spoken with, I added "Here, where everyone expected me to respond like you said, taking that kind of shit means acting the same way they would. I don't do that. I'm not like them, and they should know it by now. You should know it."

As always when I stood up to him, his chin jutted in surprise and his eyes slipped away from mine.

"You sound like Clem," he said eventually, through a sulking pout.

🌧️ Ok, I´ll let you in on an angsty secret in this viking story: there´s a bodycount :)) so far we've had three murders, one execution, one died-of-sheer-rage, a bunch of haunted-to-deaths, two paranormal killings and there's at least three more murders to come!

🌈 in honour of the rainbow the softness I will let you in on is that Brasso gets a number of boyfriends (even if he's not very good at keeping them).

💧None of the boyfriends are Cassian (yet), but I'm aiming to give them something that's genuinely weirder and longer-lasting and turns into proper 'no one else in the whole known world gets me like you do'. Which I think is hot. But also there is fucking, don't worry.

🌩️oh man...I'm so bad at guessing at what's funny, even when I know there are things I've tried to make funny. There's quite a lot of Vetch, which is kind of cracky I guess? And Cavo is an ale-seller who is always drunk on his own wares. Actually what am I saying, the whole concept of this is cracky as all fuck!!

☔I would so love to maintain my enthusiasm for this AU setting to make it through the two other stories I want to add, one which starts more at the beginning of Andor S1 and ends up with mercenary shenanigans and shapeshifting in Norway, and the second which explains why Brasso is telling his story from a Byzantine dungeon and how he helped Cassian not be in the same dungeon.

Basically it would follow a few trends from medieval saga genres, from the honour/feud-based 'family saga' setting in Iceland, to the legendary/heroic sagas full of wrathful kings, long-distance skiing, bear-fights and large scale battles, to the 'romantic/chivalric' saga setting with mercenary activity in Russia and Byzantium, magic and strange beasts, feats and quests.

🌪️AU - medieval, AU - viking, friends to lovers, slowburn, like REALLY slow burn, idiots in love, pining, intricate rituals, friends who slay together stay together, coming-of-age, canon prequel AU, misunderstandings, dreams and prophecies, (eventually) best friends with benefits.

Also here is the link to the four hour VIBES playlist again, because I am so proud of it :')

For other rancid and self-obsessed vibes check my tags 'saga au' and 'brassian saga au'. xoxox

[notasapleasure]

Working on saga au part 2!!!!

I love to torture Brasso :))

[notasapleasure]

WIP ask meme

@stripedroseandsketchpads tagged me in this. And oh my god. If you think there are Too Many Words in the fic I publish, you should see my poor notes app. Here is a sneak peek of its contents. I haven't edited for brevity/those I'm actively working on, these are just all the unfinished files I could find. Some I don't intend to do any more with, others I'd really like to pick up again. The only ones being actively worked on right now are the Andor Saga AU and the first one on the list for Andor.

I put ALL the Lymond I could find in mainly for @oughtaagh who has been leaving the most lovely comments on my Lymond fics that I have totally failed to respond to. I'm sorry! I will cycle back round to Lymond one day, it's inevitable <3

Tagging uh.... @distressednoise, @r0b0tb0y, @faceofpoe, @donnaimmaculata, @batri-jopa, @elwenyere, @notabuddhist and anyone else who wants to say I tagged them! Also sorry if you'd already been tagged, I'm not keeping up with the dash very well at the moment!

Anyway please send me asks/comments/cease and desist orders about these. xxx

ANDOR

C: We decided we were thirsty, and you wanted to go to Cavo's. As yet untitled Brassian alternative scene - what if instead of a great collaborative cover story this was a great collaborative fuck? Almost(?) finished?

Saga AU pt 2. This actually does have a working title of 'The Bear and the Berserk' but this doc is just a short bullet point list of plot things for a specific part of the fic.

Cassian pov. It's a Cassian pov chapter! For...drumroll...the first chapter of the Saga AU pt 2! The rest is going to be back to Brasso FPN. The file actually includes a rough first draft of chapter 2, as well.

"You're up early this morning," Bix says lightly. A follow-up chapter to Only Ever Just One Night started back when I had epic plans for continuing this, bringing in Cinta and Vel and Luthen, whumping the hell out of Brasso, and having Cassian rescue him. This is just one scene of awkward conversation with tea though.

Oh god it developed Plot. Related to the previous chapter - a bullet-pointed list of things that might have happened in this fic I Wil Not Write (not least as I'd rather just see what happens in S2 first anyway).

AND THEN WE DANCED

It was a sunny day in Batumi... Patchy few paragraphs of the next chapter of Inchoate.

Plannnnns (again). Plans for how Inchoate would/will continue.

THE LYMOND CHRONICLES

Canon-verse/other AUs

Multiple pieces of follow-up to The next man with a ladder, Danny/Jerott post-canon: It was dark when they rode into the port town... [Chapter 3, basically done, plus most of Chapter 4 but it devolves into broken paragraphs at the end]. "I'm going to the other bed," Danny said in a voice like someone was standing on his throat... [??? there's loads of this written! This is the file where they Get Down To It] Stitch the scenes together [a few paragraphs in which I hoped to make a logical leap from Chapter 4 to fucking, but seemingly never quite got there].

Lymondar saga draft. Actually two files of the abortive first effort at writing a saga AU. I was trying much harder to write in saga style and playing with lacunae in a way that was fun for me but exceedingly nerdy. I think I found the idea more fun than the execution, too.

St Seb. Remember ages ago when I was writing a post-canon 'Jerott gets shot full of arrows and has to admit his feelings because he thinks he's gonna die' fic? This is the file! Some bullet points and some text, some of which I even posted as Sunday sixes way back when iirc.

Fait prosperer qui n'est à croire vain. Fuck me, there's LOADS of this. Pawn in Frankincense/Ringed Castle AU where Marthe steals Lymond's ride with Kiaya Khatun and persuades her they should take over Russia together. Meanwhile Francis is left with Jerott. Hahaha. It kept getting longer because Francis kept trying to escape and I kept finding ways to drag him back, but the 'and now kiss!!' with the two of them behaving in character was just not coming easily.

Francis Crawford's Holistic Inquisition Agency. I wrote this??? One chapter of a Lymond/Dirk Gently AU, where Francis is obviously Dirk and Jerott is a furious/bemused Todd.

She tried every instrument, she redrew every chart. A few short chapters, never finished, of Marthe wrestling with her role in canon and her fate as assigned by La Dame. A couple more paragraphs of a similar sort of thing in Volos.

Malta. Half-arsed few paragraphs of wondering how Jerott would cope with meeting a fellow Knight being imprisoned for sodomy.

Band AU (my 1980s rock band AU for the series, see also @theartistknownaslymond)

Au of an Au. What if, after the Battle of the Bands at Solway, Jerott went to stay at the Edinburgh townhouse for a while and he and Francis got to collaborating in the shed? There's quite a lot of this and it's quite fluffy.

Out out out! The band celebrate Thatcher's downfall. Happy epilogues for everyone! However it's an epic task trying to do all the characters justice, so I was trying to write it as vignettes to match each song on the playlist. Six-ish are written. And earlier draft with plan for characters intercting is in Ding dong the witch is dead.

Jerott/Marthe - four times it just about worked, one time it really didn't. What it says on the tin? aka you just know Jerott has said 'Francis' instead of Marthe at least once when he comes. Only the beginning of the first time exists in this chapter, but I think I explored the idea elsewhere, whenever I dig up that file...

DWTH missing scene. Jerott/OC missing scene from Don't wake the house. Not finished, probably not going to be finished. I think I have enough Jerott smut on the go.

Workshop. Patchy draft of pre-canon Jerott and GRM 'therapy' session in which GRM learns about Francis Crawford and what a hold he has on the boy he thought of as his own plaything. GRM doesn't like sharing.

F/P. Draft of a fluffy kiss prompt someone (@erinaceina? @notfromcold?) sent for Francis/Philippa. Post-canon pregnant Philippa and worried Francis written when it was too hot in summer. It's probably complete enough to post tbh! hmu if you want it posting.

Jerott behaving badly (again). Somehow this ended up in the 'comfortember' section of the notepad, which...no? Maybe it was intended to be originally, but it grew a life of its own. Post-canon, post split-up with the OC, pre-getting together with Danny. Joining the mile high club and regretting it, then ending up crashing at Joleta's (who he meets coincidentally at the airport, NOT who he's screwing in the airplane loo!!). It's meant to end up cathartic, but didn't get finished :') I'm actually really pleased with what I have - post-canon Joleta is so much fun to write!

Somewhere (Google Drive?? an actual Word doc??) there is also loads and loads and LOADS of Pawn in Frankincense band AU around Baron Morgan's place (the Aga Morat), featuring fucked-up Francis/Morgan, fucked up Marthe/Kiaya, fucked up Francis/Kiaya, and bewildered cold turkey Jerott. There's also some Jerott/Marthe from later on.

Other

Crossover. A sequel to my ATWD fic I will shake mountains, where Merab and Irakli encounter celebrity diners in the restaurant they work in: respected musician Francis Crawford and friends take the boys for a drink and share queer/artistic inspiration/history with them. There's quite a lot written but I couldn't quite manage to finish it off.

St Mary's. Another ATWD/Lymond crossover, placing Merab and Irakli among the mercenaries of St Mary's. Mostly bullet points.

3m. Furious that there was no fic for the film Three Months I decided to jot down a scene I wanted to see afterwards. I wrote four lines and cannot remember what my plan was at all.