rix_scaedu

“The optimal settlement pattern is laid out in the Colonial Development Plan.”  The computer went on, “Variations to the Plan promote inefficiency.”

“It is inefficient to try to put a town in the middle of a swamp-ringed lake or halfway up a thousand metre escarpment,” retorted Emperor and Senior Active Administrator Genad, brushing back his agouti hair with one hand.  “We don’t have the resources to build the supports for one or the access to either.”

“Sites JL529 and JS845 are suboptimal building locations,” the Central Unit of the Colonial Development System noted.  “There are always potential issues when designating settlement locations without having actual terrain data that appear to have been ignored by the Plan’s developers.”

“Or they expected human intervention to make any necessary adjustments,” retorted Genad.  “Okay, accepting that we need population centres in both these localities but not necessarily on the precise designated points, based on all available data where would you recommend construction?”

“Calculating.”  After five minutes it announced, “The recommended alternate construction sites are JL529.36 and JS844.90.”

“So,” Genad consulted the map, “JL529.36 is the only really solid piece of lake shore and JS844.90 is at the base of the escarpment, near the waterfall.”

“Both locations are within parameters,” the Central Unit commented serenely.

“Is there enough space at JL529.36 for a provincial administrative hub?”  Genad tapped the map with his finger.

“The designated provincial area has a disproportionately high percentage of surface water and water-logged terrain types,” advised the Central Unit.  “If you were prepared to compromise the location of the settlement at JL527 to JL527.12, then it would be on a hill beside the junction of two potentially navigable rivers.  It would seem to be a location of future economic potential.”

“Agreed,” sighed Genad.  “Shift the provincial administrative centre to JL527.12.  Name the designated provincial area ‘Silverwater’ and pass the provincial plan to Population and Construction.”

“Done.”  The Central Unit was efficient.

“Very well,” Genad rolled his shoulders.  “What else needs to be decided in the JS space?”

I wrote this to aldersprig's fourth prompt.

Naturally I went to visit the hot goth chick in the hospital after her brother, the dumbass rally driver, tried to put their car through a tree.  I took flowers.  To avoid the obvious pitfalls with that I told the florist I wanted something with no pink, no red and no roses.  That got me something in orange, purple and leaves.  I recognised gladioli and carnations but had no idea what the rest of the flowers were.

It took care getting the arrangement to the hospital in the car and keeping it in one piece but I managed it.  When I got it to her room in orthopaedics I realised that perhaps the looks I’d been getting as I walked through the hospital hadn’t been due to my skin colour.  Her corner of the four bed room had a lot of flowers, most of them pink but with a significant number of black arrangements.  My orange, purple and green thing was the biggest of them all.

I caught her eye through a gap in the foliage, “I overdid it, huh?”

“In a nice way,” she agreed from the bed, her face makeup free, “but if I couldn’t see your hands I wouldn’t know it was you.  Put that down on the table and pull up a seat.”

I obeyed.  I thought she looked good, considering what I’d been fearing, but I was sure she was on painkillers given that her right leg was in traction.  “So, your lips aren’t really black.”  Lousy line, but it was better than anything else I could think of.

“And your skin really is green, so I’m not hallucinating.”  She smiled at me and that was good to see.  She beckoned me closer and I leaned in, “Before anybody else comes along, my brother swerved because there was a vij in the middle of the road.  We both know what that means.”  I sat back up.  I did know what it meant.  The vij is a small, off world creature, about the size of a terrier.  Off worlders use them for security because they’re vicious, territorial, focused pack feeders.  Vij were why I’d come up with the flamethrower.  A vij on the loose was unlikely to be alone or far from where it had come from.

“I’ll look into it on Sunday,” I promised her.  Sooner would have been better but getting to the site of her accident and back plus a few hours of bush bashing while I was there was going to be a full day trip.  I was working every day up until then, so Sunday was my only full free day.  The delay couldn’t be helped and I could check my equipment at night.

I stayed for about fifteen minutes then yielded my chair to one of her grandparents, made my goodbyes and left.

I visited her twice more before Sunday between work, making sure my gear was good to go and the usual stuff you need to do to keep the household running and the fridge and cupboards stocked.  I ran into bits of her family both times and realised that I’d become known to them as ‘the young man with the flowers.’  I had been trying to avoid that.  I think the hot goth chick was vaguely amused but that may have been the medication she was on.

Sunday was a good day for a drive out to the State forest where the rally had been held.  Fine, sunny, not much wind and warm for winter.  Not so good for wearing the protective gear I needed with the flame thrower and for vij.  Fortunately it was winter so I wasn’t going to cook inside the stuff I needed to keep me safe.  I was able to leave the car where the helicopter had landed to medivac the hot goth chick and the dumbass rally driver, then it wasn’t far from there to the accident site.

Their car had been removed and all the debris cleared away.  The tree was still standing but missing a big piece of bark.  I wasn’t expecting to find vij tracks, but I did.  The vij or a vij or vij, plural had been back there after the accident and fuss were over.

I then tried to track it/them.  You may laugh at this point.  Bushcraft is not one of my skills.  I can identify trees as readily as I can flowers and we’ve already covered that.  On the other hand I do know what a vij’s foot looks like, it had rained during the week and I was starting off with clear footprints in the mud.  I followed the prints first towards the escarpment but they soon looped back across the road and continued into the trees.  It took me half an hour to lose the tracks.  So I listened.

There were birds, high in the trees, but none of the whuffle-whuffle sound I associate with vij.  At first.  Then I heard a human voice in a coaxing tone followed by a curious whuffle-whuffle.  In my experience vij are only curious about whether they can eat something.  I moved carefully in the direction of the sounds, well as carefully as someone with no bushcraft wearing what I was can.  I didn’t quite stumble loudly onto the scene but I’m sure it was close.  There was a woman with two kids about four or five.  She was crouching down between them with a piece of beef jerky in her bare hand, offering it to a vij and trying to get it to come closer.  When I arrived she was saying to the kids, “I don’t know what it is but it seems to be friendly.”  It was, of course, far too close to them for me to use the flamethrower even with the precision nozzle I’d fitted to it.

“Lady,” I had to do something, “drop the food on the ground and back away.  It’s getting ready to take your hand off.  Let’s hope its friends aren’t on their way.”

She turned her head to look at me and started to speak, “Who are-,” which is when the vij leapt at her because she’d broken eye contact.  For her head, mouth open and teeth bared.  The kids screamed.  This was one of the times I surprised myself – I covered the distance between us in nothing flat and booted the thing while it was in mid-air.  It hit the butt of a nice big tree and slid to the ground, sort of crumpled.

“That’s a vij,” I told the stunned woman.  “They’re vicious and they run in packs.  We need to get you, the kids and anyone you’re with out of here.  If that’s the only one there is, then this’ll be the first time I’ve ever seen one on its own.”

“Mummy!”  The older kid was pulling at her mother’s trousers and pointing at where the vij had fallen.  Two more vij had emerged from the bushes and were ripping into their fallen companion, devouring before it was quite dead.

“Time to leave,” I said firmly.  “No running ahead, no screaming.  We are not food.  We are walking away from the food.”  The mother led the way and I brought up the rear.  Now I knew they were there, every sound that wasn’t us had me checking for vij.

Fortunately it wasn’t far to their picnic site and car.  The father, both the kids looked more like him than her, was setting up a picnic.  His reaction was, “I thought you were going to be longer.”  Then, pointing at me, “Who’s he?”

“I was attacked by a strange animal and he rescued us.”  She sounded like she was almost crying.  “I just want to go home now.”

“They’re following us,” added the bigger kid solemnly.

The smaller one added, “They ate the one that tried to bite Mummy.”

“But the picnic!”  He had put a lot of work into setting everything up nicely on the rug and the food did look good.  Behind me I could hear rustling in the undergrowth.

“Pick it up in the blanket, put it in the boot of your car and get out of here,” I advised.  “I don’t think you have much time.”  The mother was already taking the kids to the car.  The noises in the undergrowth were getting a lot louder and the father’s expression as he glanced in that direction became worried.

He’d taken the open drink containers off the blanket and put them down beside the blanket very precisely as if he was protesting having to do this at all.  Whatever he saw made him grab the four corners of the blanket and run for the car.  I turned in place, thumbing on the flamethrower as I did.  There was a wave of vij, maybe eight across and at least three deep coming towards us.  I ran the flame across them from side to side three times to make sure I killed them all, wishing the whole time that I’d brought the wide angled nozzle.

When I turned back to the car, having turned off the flamethrower, the father was throwing the picnic blanket and its contents onto the floor of the back seat and closing the door.  It made sense to me, the back door were faster to open than the boot and the kids were in booster seats so their feet weren’t down there anyway.  I got there as he was closing his own door.  He said, “Thank you.  Was that all of them?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “so I’m going to look around for a while longer.  I suggest you go straight home.  If you see one on the road in front of you, don’t swerve, just go straight over the little bugger.”

“Who are you?”  That was from the mother.

“Lady, I’m a bloke wandering around a State forest with a flame thrower.  I don’t want anyone to know who I am!”  Both adults almost smiled at that and then they went.

When I was sure they were safely off down the road I went back to looking.  I found more vij and I found where they were coming from.  Then I called a police detective I’d become acquainted with.  This little compound out in the middle of nowhere had been done over in a professional, off world hit.  These days I know what the burn scar of an energy weapon on concrete looks like and this place had them.  Whoever had been running the place, and from the carapaces they must have been Iththuuk, had been killed and then the freed vij had cleaned up the bodies.  If this place had been run by Iththuuk, then it was probably about drugs.  Drugs are their thing and they don’t mind dealing in recreational, although their main interest is in antifungals.  Murder and drugs is police business so they were interested, thank you very much.

I didn’t go inside the buildings, I tried not to go inside what was left of the compound but I kept killing vij until the police arrived.  There were three egg sacs, one of them days away from hatching.  The vij problem could have been much worse.

That should have been the end of it for me but the picnic family spoke to a reporter, I have no idea why.  It must have been a slow news day because it made front page, down the bottom, of the broadsheet newspaper and then the family were on one of the evening current affairs programs.  Something about ‘Terror in the Forest.’  They had an artist’s impression from their descriptions of my protective suit and the flamethrower.  Frankly, I wish I had the money to make them look that good in reality.  The whole thing didn’t disappear from the news for weeks.

The hot goth chick thinks it’s funny.  Like she says, from all the carry-on you’d think I was some sort of superhero.

At least they didn’t find out I’m green.

I wrote this to lilfluff's third prompt.

It was the Saturday morning of the school fete.

Elvira Madden, the kindergarten teacher, was enjoying a well-deserved Devonshire tea at the stall in the undercover area normally occupied by the canteen lines.  This morning she’d helped judge an art contest for the primary years, wrangled several lost children who wouldn’t be her students until next year and then applied antiseptic and bandaids to a Year One boy who’d been showing off on the monkey bars to his little brothers.  The scones, made by a grandmother who’d won prizes, were delicious due to the grandmother’s skill and her use of an edible recipe and not the prize winning one.

She was in a happy state of jam, cream, scones and tea when she became aware that someone had come up to her table.  At five year old height was the happy, round face of her student Joe Grimolochin and beside him was his tall, handsome, olive-skinned father.  Elvira was immediately convinced that she must have cream on the end of her nose.  “Good morning Miss Madden,” Tybalt Grimolochin’s voice had bypassed her brain and attacked her knees, “Joe and I were wondering if you would like to come and watch the sack races with us.”

Elvira was about to reply when a cry went up from another table of, “My mouse, my mouse!”  She turned in time to catch a streak moving along the ground, heading for cover in the grass beyond the concrete.  It swerved to avoid the people at her table but Tybalt Grimolochin was a sudden blur as he lunged forward and scooped the streak off the ground with his hands.  He brought his hands up level to his face and Elvira caught a glimpse of a small brown animal just as its owner dashed up to him.

“Please, may I have my mouse back?”  She was a brown haired Year Five girl in a denim jacket with big pockets.

“Of course,” he carefully lowered the mouse to her level and placed it in her waiting hands, “but perhaps you should not have brought her with you today.”

“Thank you.  She was fine in my pocket until my brother tried to shove his DS in there too.”  She looked at the mouse quivering in her hands.  “She’s so scared, poor thing.”

Tybalt Grimolochin nodded in agreement.  “Yes, I’m afraid I have that effect on mice.”

“Why?”  She looked up in interest.

“Because I’m really a cat.”

She giggled, “But that’s silly,” and went back to her mother, smiling.

I have writen this to siege's second prompt.

It was a dream, he knew that.  Specifically it was a dream of summer.  The air was warm, the grass soft under his back and high above him he could see the wyverns circling on the thermals.  He pulled one hand out from behind his head, it was a child’s hand still so this was…a memory.  Why was he dreaming of this?

He sat up because he was unlikely to learn anything just lying here and gazing at the sky, pleasant as that was.  This was definitely a memory because he was back in Kartesholm and he must be under ten because Shrenger’s barn hadn’t yet succumbed to the hay fire.  Fler Forest, the source of the thermals, glistened dark and green under the summer sun, unbroken from here to Immerkald.  It was a clear, bright summer’s day like so many he remembered from his childhood, with the beginning of a heat haze on the southern horizon.

He stiffened.  That wasn’t a heat haze that was smoke.  For it to be looking like that the smoke had to be blowing towards him and so much smoke, the fire must be enormous.  Why did he not remember a fire that big?  Wait a minute, he could see dots moving high in the sky above and behind the smoke but they were too far away to see what they were.

This was a dream.  He could have anything he wanted or needed.  He felt a familiar weight in his hands and looked down to see his spyglass.  Just what he needed.  He lifted it to his eye with a grin, his boyhood self would have loved to have had this.

Through the spyglass the dots resolved into ridden dragons dumping water from supply canvases, presumably onto the flames below but not descending low enough to get burnt.

He woke up.  The begemmed and enchanted armour he was wearing winked in the candle light but its imperative voice was silent for the moment.  “Water dumping by dragons from a height.  The dragons stay high enough not to get burnt and use the canvases we use for carrying supplies.”

“We could do that,” agreed his own dragon from behind his head.

“Well?”  That silent challenge was from him to the normally incessant voice inside his head.

“You were right,” it agreed, reluctantly and slightly chastened.  “This time focussing solely on the mission has endangered the mission.  We should have turned aside days ago to deal with this fire.  I shall try to be more flexible in future,” it paused, “and to pay more attention to your opinions.”

“Thank you.”

I wrote this to lilfluff's second prompt.  This is is set in the same world as my Solstice stories, my Samella Clyde stories and the Terrencians in general.  It occurs twenty to twenty-five years after the Solstice stories, their equivalent of our period. 

Timing is everything.  A century earlier and it would have been considered the wonder of the age but now, when the atmospheric barrier had been breached more than a generation ago, the wonder was not in, “What?” but in, “Whose?”

It descended slowly through the atmosphere, its shape and size reminiscent of an airship designed for the cruise trade.  Its journey to the surface was watched by the entire planet and dissected in minute detail.  Its original heading was the southern Atlantic Ocean and everyone wondered if the crew were aquatic, then it changed course and landed on the western coastal strip of Africa.

It came to rest, in fact, near the shore in the lightly inhabited southern reaches of the Kongo Empire.  The Mwene, being a sensible and experienced man, sent a diplomatic party backed by the military to greet the arrivals.  The University of Kinshasa archaeologists already at the site hurriedly taped off the interesting areas in the hope of dissuading people from parking anywhere they wanted.

The diplomatic delegation, including a number of foreign diplomats such as Archduke Josef the Terrencian Ambassador, and their supporting military contingent arrived five minutes after the space vessel landed.  The leader, a kinsman of the Mwene, used the half an hour before any further sign of life to compose himself.  His attendants and the foreign diplomats did the same.  Much further away the Kongoese Airforces were using the same time preparing to sortie if required.

Finally the largest, most ornate portal on the vessel opened and a ramp descended from underneath it to the ground.  From inside a group of five beings descended the ramp, carefully aligned in a V-formation with the most richly dressed of them in the centre and at the front.  That being carried a staff with a coloured crystal globe set in its head.  The military looked at that globe and narrowed their eyes in recognition.

The new arrivals were humans with skin the colour of darkest honey when you look at it in a glass jar.  Their hair was black and shorn short on all of them except for one of the two women whose head was covered in tiny, tight plaits.  They were all six feet tall or more and their clothing was richly coloured, although at this distance it was impossible to tell what the fabric was.

The leader spoke and only training prevented a visible reaction from the diplomats.  They all had some grounding in classical languages and so recognised Atlantean when they heard it.  Those who’d had a Classical education, like Archduke Josef and the Mwene’s kinsman, understood exactly what he said, “Bow down, you servile scum, before your betters of the master race.  We, the flower of the Atlantean people, await the attendance of your governor.”

I wrote this to ellenmillion's first prompt.

You can’t buy it easily, they took it off the shelves.  if you have a need, if you have a prescription, you can get it.

But so many hoops to jump through.  Why do you want it?  What harm might you do?  Is that balanced by the need?

So you get a prescription, a countersigned prescription because a doctor’s word alone isn’t good enough, then you go to one of the designated shops to queue at the special counter up the back.

Most of the others in the queue will be there for extreme, overwhelming precursors to other emotions, usually love, lust or serenity.  Those are the biggies, of course, an industry lives off all the grades of precursor for those emotions.  Even at the back counter your purchase will come in branded packaging carefully designed to tie in with the rest of the range and help increase brand recognition.  There are a those emotions that no-one wants to admit they pander to.  Hate, rage and disinterest.  Brown paper and cellophane.

Disinterest vareies though, depending on the latest fad and majority reaction to it.  Buesson’s has a disinterest range with their standard packaging trope but you only see it on the shelves when something ugly is going on like the punchdrunking craze or that Apocalyptic cult thing a few years ago.

As I as saying, sometimes you pass the prescription over the counter and they don’t have the stock, “No call for it.”  Sometimes they have the stock but it’s out of date.  This one time the assistant behind the counter showed me what was growing out of it, it had been so long since anyone had even looked at it.  Neither of us wanted to try those mushrooms.

Finally, you have your prescription filled with something edible, take it home, cook it and eat.  After you’ve put a warning notice on your door, of course.  The rush you get from that surge of emotion!

Anger food deserves better packaging, honestly.

Oh, me?  Someone fed me too much disinterest specifics years ago.  Almost killed my adrenals.  It’s anger food or nothing.

kelkyag

“What are we doing?”  Rensa thought that Yannic was being deliberately mysterious for the fun of it.  Having been married to him for almost a week, and after living with him for that time, she could believe that he was capable of that.  She hadn’t had much choice in marrying him of course but Kiriel had and, all in all, Rensa was of the opinion that on that point Kiriel’s head had been firmly screwed onto her shoulders.  Yannic, well being married to Yannic seemed to be rather nice.  But he was still being mysterious.  “Where are you taking me?”

“You could say we’re helping Bannoc win a bet,” he smiled at her conspiratorially.  “We just have to collect my mother and aunt, and then we can be on our way.”

“Are they expecting us?”  Rensa was hoping Tyrren and her sister knew more about this than she did.

“No.  If they’re expecting us, they might not co-operate.  The less the three of you know…,” he trailed off deliberately.

“You’re teasing me!”

“It’s the expression you get just as you realise that,” he smiled then added, “and I’ve told you what that makes me think.”  She dimpled and there was a private moment of warm looks and smiles.  “Parents.  Must collect parents!”  He led her in the direction of the guest rooms again.

“Parents, plural?  Is this something about Mirren?”  Rensa was trotting to keep up, Yannic had longer legs and was much fitter.

“I’ve said enough, come on.”  He hurried along and she couldn’t get anything more out of him until they reached the guest quarters.  There he frankly smoodged his mother and aunt into coming with them and led on towards the public rooms of the palace.

“I know you’re up to something,” his mother shook her head, “and I’m only coming to find out what it is, you understand?”

“Just as long as you come,” was all he said.

When Yannic opened the door Tyrren’s comment was, “Oh?”

Her sister followed her into the room and asked, “Where’s Mirren?  She must be the only one not here.”  Rensa and Yannic followed them into one of the reception rooms.  All of Yannic’s family was there plus a number of Yannic’s friends including brave Kolloc of the fussy plans who was wearing a close coms headset.  In the centre of the room was a pantu rug, the registration book on its stand and a Registrar.

Kolloc said something into his mouth piece and a few moments later the door on the opposite side of the room opened and Bannoc and Mirren entered with Mirren saying, “And why are you wearing that earpiece?  Are you-.”  She stopped as she realised they weren’t alone.  “What?”

“You said that if I got your family together and organised everything we could get betrothed now.”

Mirren’s face worked for a moment and a tear leaked down her face.  “I didn’t believe,” the tears were streaming down her face now, “I didn’t believe,” then she threw her arms around the puzzled Bannoc and buried her face in his chest, “that you really meant it.”

He put his arms around her and looked confused.

“I’ve done a number of designs, Your Majesty.”  The formal greetings were over so now the engineer-architect could speak more directly to his client.  “Based on my site survey, there are several possible routes and I’ve done proposals for all of them.”  He laid the plans on the table.

“But I haven’t told you what I want the passage for,” objected His Imperial and Royal Majesty Johann III.

“Frankly, Your Majesty, I don’t want to know.”  Laszlo Tosoky indicated the plans, “So I covered multiple possibilities for each route and I haven’t kept copies.  I will certainly discuss the options but I prefer not to know which you choose.”

“Indeed?”  The Terrencian Emperor raised an indolent eyebrow.  “Why?”

“Your Majesty doesn’t need me after the design phase.”  Laszlo paused delicately then went on, “There is a history of architects who’ve done ‘minor’ work on Imperial fortresses and palaces dropping out of sight afterwards, never to be seen again.”  He sighed.  “I prefer not to be seen as a security threat, Your Majesty, because I prefer to live.”

“An admirable ambition.”  The Imperial gaze was suddenly much sharper and then a beringed hand gestured at the plans, “Let us survey the possibilities you envision for the site, Master Tosoky.”  The two men spent an hour going over the diagrams, the Emperor asking surprisingly astute questions and making notations in the margins.

Satisfied, Johann III used a bellpull to summon a secretary.  To that helpful gentleman the Emperor said genially, “Ah, Spangler, Master Tosoky and I have finished our business.  Please make arrangements to receive his account and then show him out – I believe he will appreciate the Cathedral exit.”

The secretary and the engineer-architect bowed themselves out of the Imperial presence, dealt with business, then the meticulously neat Spangler led a nervous Laszlo Tosoky through the architectural glories of the Ecclesiastical Hall to the grand entrance facing the Cathedral across the square.

While the engineer-architect was still being shown out the Emperor summoned another secretary who in turn fetched a delightful specimen of mature womanhood, fashionably dressed, femininely athletic and buxom.  “Fraulein Metsch,” the Emperor’s acknowledgement was businesslike as she curtseyed, “I’ve called you here about Tosoky the architect.”

“Sire,” she stood, equally businesslike.  “You want me to dispose of him?”

“By no means,” the Emperor waved the suggestion away dismissively.  “I think you should marry him.”

“Sire?”  Theresia Metsch looked surprised.

“You deserve to be putting down roots,” he smiled at her.  “Master Tosoky is respected in his field and seems a decent man.  Surprisingly astute too, you would produce interesting children.”

“Sire?”

“I believe I should stand godfather to at least your first.”

I wrote this to siege's first prompt.

It moved, a swift flowing darkness through the patches of short purple-grey heath that brushed its belly then it was a shadow under the trees, but it was no shadow.

Sir Roden no longer felt that he was dressed for the occasion.  A unicorn hunt was supposed to be a pleasant way to spend the afternoon with a few friends and a lady, enjoying the outdoors in good weather and fine company.  You had a nice picnic lunch and afternoon snack packed for you, chose a good spot and with a judicious choice of bait, preferably someone’s wife or a widow, you could be guaranteed not to see a unicorn the whole afternoon.  In the absence of unicorn you could enjoy good conversation, polite dalliance or, if your designated bait was a wealthy widow, actual courtship.  The last thing anyone wanted at one of these affairs was a unicorn because then you’d have to deal with it and if you did, even if the king hadn’t let it quietly be known that he was in the market for more unicorn horn, keeping the horn was practically an act of lese-majesty.

There wasn’t supposed to be a unicorn.

Sir Gervais had been returning from a few minutes privacy among the trees when it had run him through from behind.  They’d abandoned the picnic and run for the horses, and it had run Sir Rollo down then pigrooted on top of him.  While Sir Rollo was being ripped apart by those sharp hooves, Sir Roden had been able to get Lady Elaine up on her horse while Sir Marcel had untied it.  When their attacker had screamed in that almost horse-like sound, Lady Elaine had stayed on her horse as it bolted.  Sir Alan had been mounting his steed and Sir Roden had last seen him clinging to his stirrup by hand, like a footman gaining a boost into battle with the knights’ charge.  The other horses had broken free too leaving the last two knights afoot and too close to the enemy.  Sir Roden and Sir Marcel had separated so that it couldn’t come after them both at once.

Sir Roden had heard a man scream in the distance a while ago.

Now he was hiding behind a tree.  All the armour, weapons and other gear he would have chosen to wear in a fight for his life against an enemy armed with a bone spear were back at the manor.  He had a sword and a knife, but they weren’t the tools he would have chosen for this job.

There was a sound like a horse’s snicker from the other side of the tree.  Sir Roden didn’t think it would be a horse.  He wondered whether it could put that spike of its through the tree.  He feared the answer.

I wrote this to lilfluff's first prompt.

They came quietly.  They asked politely and then accepted any refusals with apparent good grace.  They got jobs.  They enrolled in classes.  They socialised but not with each other.  There weren’t many of them.  They weren’t concentrated in any one place.  They didn’t appear to be of the same race or species or polity.  Most of them didn’t speak the language of the place they were in when they arrived.  They asked questions, they made friends and adopted the manners of the places in which they were.  If they communicated with each other it was privately, via telephone or some technology of their own that filled the same niche.  They didn’t explain why they were there and camouflaged as they were by the diplomats, military and technical liaisons and a few tour groups, no-one asked.

The University had acquired an alien student.  Ahletuiegeh Lahni’s species sat somewhere between the batrachia and reptiles, as far as anyone could tell.  Her, they’d decided the correct English pronoun was ‘her’ after research into the gender of ‘uyitreckh’ stated on her application form, careful avoidance of any faculty members who wanted to interview or examine her was disappointing.  However, as the Research Ethics Committee pointed out, a student could not be compelled to be a subject in any research project.

Ali, as her classmates came to call her, usually sat up the back during lectures making copious notes in her native script.  If called upon to contribute, she did so but otherwise remained quiet and observant.  She occasionally sat in on other classes, usually classes attended by students from her own subjects.  Like every other student she tried variety of extracurricular activities but only maintained a few, mainly those she shared with classmates.

None of this seemed odd to anyone, well hardly anyone, so when Larry Bergmont, the Art Faculty’s permanent student (it was unclear how he’d managed to be a fulltime undergraduate for over a decade and the Faculty considered suggestions he had tenure in bad taste), started watching her he was warned about stalking by several people.

Matters came to a head in Method in Anthropology, a class in which Bergmont was a student and which Ali had chosen to audit that day.  The professor had reached the, “Any questions?” point when Bergmont put up his hand.

“Professor, in anthropology, what’s the professional etiquette when you realise that you are the subject of a study?”

“I don’t understand the context of the question, Larry.”  Professor Arbuckle had been speaking on the subject of documenting cultural contamination.

“Perhaps Eenih Ahletuiegeh,” Bergamont turned to the visitor at the back of the room, “could give us her views?”

“Eenih?”  Professor Arbuckle asked perplexedly as Ali gathered her notebooks and began to stand.

“Apparently it’s a sort of associate lecturer,” explained Bergmont over his shoulder, “at least, that’s what I understood from the précis of her second doctorate I found through the tech literature portal.”

“Second doctorate?”  Professor Arbuckle’s repeat of the phrase was quite faint but his voice quickly returned to its normal volume as he went on, “Perhaps,” and he carefully followed Bergmont’s pronunciation, “Eenih Ahletuiegeh and I should consult the Ethics Faculty Sub-Committee.  Immediately.”