rix_scaedu

This was written because ysabetwordsmith ponsored a paid extension to one of her pieces and I wanted to write this one too.  It follows on from Christmas Is About Family.

It was half past seven on Christmas Eve when Gideon’s Mum called out, “Gideon, Ljars is pulling up out the front!  Are you ready?”

“Yep, just about.”  He emerged from his room, having relocked his wardrobe.  He was dressed in soft leather, the pieces sufficiently matching that it looked like it might be a uniform.  He also looked warm, and he was still carrying his hat and gloves.

“You’re a bit overdressed, aren’t you?”  That was Uncle Steve.

“Work clothes,” Gideon shrugged.  “I’ll need them later, it does get cold.  I’ll be back late so no-one wait up for me, I’ve got a key.” He kissed his mother good bye and headed out the door.

It was barely closed behind him when Judy turned and called out, “Maddox, Miranda, kids!  There’s something out here I want you to see before it goes.”

Miranda came fastest and Maddox wasn’t that far behind her.  Judy twitched open the lounge room curtains and gave them a clear view of Gideon climbing up beside the driver of a sleigh pulled by six reindeer.

“Wow!”  That was Miranda and she leaned closer to the window to get a better look.

The blue haired sleigh driver gave a shake of his reins and the equipage moved off, the hooves of the reindeer laying down surface ice for the forged runners behind them.  Then, as the sleigh approached the intersection, it rose in the air, clearing house on the far side of the intersection with feet to spare.  Judy enjoyed hearing the sounds, or the silence rather, of shock.  “They’re off to beat the bounds for tonight,” she said with a note of satisfaction.

At the same time Ljars the ice elf and Gideon’s boss was asking, “Have you told your mother yet what her Christmas decorations actually are?”

“I thought I’d let her enjoy them for Christmas and not tell her about them until after my cousins have left,” Gideon admitted.  “Rory and Dan can get a bit carried away.  They don’t need to know that the house is covered in throwing blades.”

“Point,” Ljars acknowledged.  “Sometimes ignorance can be bliss.”

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's prompt " From the Elf setting: someone hates Christmas and gives a valid reason."  This is shortly after Gambit Number Threeand is followed by Gideon's Work.

This year there’d been a chance the bushfires would keep them away so Gideon didn’t start clearing his chest of drawers until late and the wardrobe wasn’t locked until the first car was turning into the driveway.  Dan and Rory always shared his room and when they were all eight he’d discovered Dan wearing his clothes.  He’d lost two pairs of non-embarassing undies that year and ever since everything of his went into the lockable wardrobe before they arrived.  Even, since the year Rory broke his new skateboard before he’d had a second ride on it, his presents straight after they’d been opened.

This year the arrivals had stories of passing through burnt-out bushland with drifts of sooty snow but the pictures hadn’t turned out well because they hadn’t been able to stop their cars.  Rory’s sister Miranda had insisted, to her brother’s derision, that one of the people at a check point they’d gone through had been pointy eared.  Uncle Steve and Aunty Karen didn’t laugh but Gideon could tell they thought she was mistaken or making it up but Gideon’s Mum just said what Gideon thought was obvious, “He was probably an elf then, sweetie.  Did you see what colour his hair or eyes were?”

“No,” said Miranda.  “He had a hood and sunglasses on.”

“Pity,” said Gideon’s Mum, “they would have told us what sort of elf he was.”

“Judy,” said Aunty Karen, “don’t encourage her.”

“She was being observant,” replied Gideon’s Mum with what he thought was admirable restraint.  “There are quite a few elves around here these days, since the elf took over.  Along with giants, trolls and a few dwarves.  Most of them seem to be quite responsible people.”

When Uncle Peter, Aunty Kim and their family arrived, Dan’s little brother Maddox, who’d gone from dorky to wearing black in the year since they’d seen him, went round the house looking at the decorations.  After a while he wandered back into the kitchen and asked, “Aunt Judy, what are the snowflakes made of?  They’re really cold to touch.”

“Forged ice it says on the packet,” Gideon’s Mum told him.  “They come in packs of fifty.  I got three packs and no two are the same.”

“What’s forged ice?”  Maddox’ attention was caught.  “What else do you make from it?”

“Blades,” offered Gideon, “sleigh runners.  That sort of thing.”

Dan burst back into the room at that point, “Hey, Gid,” he ignored the conversation that was already going on.  “Who’s getting the bed this year?”

“I am,” said Gideon coldly, “and if I find either of you in it when I get back from work tonight, I’m dumping you on the floor.”

“You have to work tonight?”  Rory was eating something already.  “That sucks.”

“And tomorrow night,” Gideon added.  “Like I said, if I come home and find one of you in my bed, either night, I’m dumping you on the floor.”

“But Gid,” protested Dan, “you always get the bed!”

“You always come here and sleep in my room,” Gideon levelled back.

The rest of them could see Dan rock back on his mental heels, “Uh, we do, don’t we?”

“You might like to keep that in mind, this year,” finished Gideon.

“Um, yeah.”

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's second prompt.

Andy was on his way home.  He still had a few HSC exams to go and he was studying, really, he’d just gone for a walk to clear his head and get some exercise.  The late afternoon was turning to early evening as he passed a house where a group of kids were saying “Trick or treat!” to the person who’d just opened the door.  It was, in his opinion, a silly attempt to import an American custom.  That particular bunch of kids weren’t even dressed up in costumes, they were just going around to people’s houses and knocking on doors to ask for lollies.  Just because they did it on American TV shows didn’t make it a good idea to do it here.  It was just plainly the wrong season for the day of the dead for a start.

There was also the issue of what the Elf might think of it.  The Elf had taken over this city, the biggest city in the country, by making it snow where snow didn’t belong and things were different now.  It wasn’t clear where he stood on stuff like that.  There were a few new rules, most of which didn’t affect Andy or people like him but one of the ones that did had gotten his sister a job.  If you were registered for unemployment benefits you had to take a job if he gave you one.  Sally was working on a nightly food truck now that catered for the homeless near the city centre.  She swore blind that one of the guys she worked with was a troll.  Apparently he dealt with any ‘trouble’.  Working all hours of the night in dodgy places, Andy was glad she had someone to deal with any ‘trouble.’ 

The two girls his own age seemed to come out of nowhere.  They were giggling and talking to each other in a language he didn’t understand as their hands plucked at his clothes.  They laughed more as he tried to swat their hands away.  A group who seemed to be their friends were around them now, preventing him from walking away, and they were laughing too.

Finally he snapped at them, “Lay off it will you two?  This isn’t funny.”

There was something short and sharp said by a man in the language the girls were using and the two girls stopped grabbing at him.  The group around them parted to let in a tall man who was probably the same age as Andy’s father.  When he spoke it was in English but it was the voice that had stopped the girls, “You can see them?”

That seemed an odd question.  “Well, yeah.”  Andy was putting his clothes back where they ought to be and snatched his handkerchief back from the girl with the longer hair.  “It’s not like they and the rest of your friends are invisible.”

“What is your name, young man, and what do you do?”  The man had a neatly trimmed, greying beard and a vaguely European accent.

“Andy Spencer and I’m doing my HSC.  Why do you ask?”  Andy was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable.

“That’s the big end of secondary school exam isn’t it?”  When Andy nodded, the stranger produced his wallet and pulled out a card which he handed to Andy.  It proclaimed him to be Petr Turchanikov of Team Four.  The address was a few streets over in a light industrial area.  “I work for the Elf.  Come and see me when your exams are over, we have a lot to say to each other.”

“Okaaaay.”  Andy wasn’t quite sure that he wanted to follow this up.

“Andias, no it would be Andrew here, wouldn’t it?  Andrew,” the man sounded extremely firm, “come by the end of the second week in November or I will send someone to get you.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”  Turchanikov was almost smiling.  “Now go home, you should be inside before it gets dark.  Tonight you should stay home and inside.  If you must leave the house, do not leave the property, do you understand?”

“Uh, no?”  This was a little weird.

“You will after we have our little chat at the end of your exams, now if you will excuse us, we must be going.”  The man nodded and the group moved on.  The last Andy saw of them was one of the girls looking back and waving at him, her hand passing through a garden shrub that intruded onto the footpath.

Suddenly he really felt like going home.

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's second prompt.

Once the dokk alfar half breeds were out of the way, the Tupenes was easy to pick up.  He was in the hotel and the bounty hunters had known it because of some interesting little talismans they were carrying.  Maired had pounced on them and carried them off for investigation.  She was distinctly heard to say, “Now that’s interesting.”

The Tupenes was deposited in the same lockup as his kinsmen and the bounty hunters were in the hands of the regular police who had many questions about the shorter one’s collection of useful items.  Gwaiva had stayed well out of the way once Hladvic and Mannix had bundled up the bounty hunters but she’d also had Vasa, Brise and a sympathetic female police sergeant help her check herself for anything they might have managed to tag her with.

Back in the base, over coffee and freshly baked biscuits, Gwaiva regained her equilibrium.  “I’ve never offered myself up on a plate to a bounty hunter before,” she commented as she hesitated over a choice between honey creams, something flavoured with rosewater and chocolate coconut roughs, “and if this is what it feels like I don’t think I’ll do it again, thank you.”

“I was wondering,” Bolt sat down with his own mug of coffee and picked up a honey cream biscuit, “why those two bounty hunters have such dark skin.  Humans with dark skin, like mine, have ancestors from the tropics but all the elven kindred come from the high northern hemisphere and most of them from northern Europe.  It doesn’t make sense.”

“Ah,” Gwaiva selected a rosewater thing and sat back.  “That was explained to me when I was a child.  You’ve probably been told that you have black skin, right?”

“Yes, quite a number of times.”  He ate half the biscuit and washed it down with coffee.

“You don’t of course.  Very few humans do and most of those who do are carrying a tan.  Your skin tones are based on melanin and the intensity of the colour is the result of a sensible multigenerational response to specific light stimuli.”  She ate a bite from her biscuit and went on, “The skin tones of the elven kindreds are based on their elements.  The two base-stock kindreds from which all other elves diverged are the ljos alfar and the dokk alfar.  The element of the ljos alfar is light, thus they have light skin, yellow to white hair and pale eyes.  The element of the dokk alfar is darkness or the absence of light thus their skin, hair and eyes come in shades of black.”

“So you have blue hair not because it’s the dominant gene but because you’re half ice elf?”  Bolt ate the other half of his biscuit.

“Yes, and my skin is pale and not pale blue because I’m half ljos alfar.  Essentially, I have two elements.”  She grinned and finished off her own biscuit before reaching for another.  “Sometimes I think those bounty placing jarls might be afraid of something.”

I wrote this in response to ysabetwordsmith's first prompt and to lilfluff's second prompt which were the same!  I don't think either of them will mind that I added their word counts together then put in a bit more.

They were tracking Tupenes members.  There were already eight in custody ranging from an elderly gentleman who’d been carefully separated from his neat, brown, leather work bag and the contents of his pockets to a stroppy, goth-like teenager in purple and black striped stockings.  The connection between them was indeed family so Maired and her equivalents in the other teams were able to construct spells that used genetic details to trace the blood line connections of each one.  Gwaiva and Dennis were checking live CCTV to pinpoint a free Tupenes whose general location had been identified through magic.

“Wait,” said Gwaiva as Dennis went to flick to the next set of screens, “can we zoom in on this pair?”  She was pointing at two men on a screen that was currently showing a laneway alongside a prominent hotel.

“Sure.”  Dennis clicked a few times with his mouse.  “I don’t think either of them is our guy, though.  One’s too big, the other’s too short.”

“I don’t think either of them is him,” she paused as the picture resharpened on the screen, “but they’re dokk alfar breeds and probably trouble.  We need to report this.”

A short time later the rest of the team was clustered in the computer room looking at the two part dokk alfar, still live, still waiting in their laneway.

“They haven’t moved since we found them,” commented Gwaiva.

“That Tupenes scion hasn’t moved either,” added Maired, a bowl half-filled with liquid in front of her.

Einar squinted at the screen.  “I know who the big one is.  He’s half ice giant, name of Olafur Sigrithursson.  He’s a, what’s the word in English?”  He said a word that sounded vaguely Scandinavian or Germanic.

“Bounty hunter.”  Gwaiva and Calhoun supplied the missing translation simultaneously.

“It’s not an honourable profession among my people but according to my mother and grandmother, he’s a good son.”

“That’s mixed signals,” commented Calhoun.  “Your lot are usually clear cut in their character opinions.”

“He and his mother come from two villages over from mine,” Einar explained.  “When she had a half dokk alfar baby her family turned her out in shame.  It would have been different, of course, if his father had been an ice giant.  Since he started working he’s given her all or most of his money.  Now she has the soundest house in their village, a fine goat herd, the best hogs and two good cows.  I suppose he is a good son.”  He sounded surprised.

“If they’re together, then his partner is what?”  Vasa was looking at the shorter one.  “He’s got a lot of kit hanging off that belt.  Tools, hand cuffs, mace and what sort of grenade is that?”

“Stun grenade.”  That was Mannix.  “A sidearm too.  I’ve never seen that make before.”

“He might be a second generation half breed,” offered Gwaiva.  “Both parents half dokk alfar with svart alfar on one side and dvergr on the other.  That would explain the all the things and his height.”  She blushed.  “I was always told that the dokk alfar were indiscriminate breeders.”

Hladvic interrupted.  “Could they be after the Tupenes too?  Someone might have offered a reward that could have out them on his tail.”

“They might interfere with us capturing him then.”  Amanda made her decision.  “I’ll clear their detainment with the chain of command.  We might want to start our sweep by checking out that hotel.”

“You’ll need a distraction for them.”  Gwaiva hesitated then added, “Use me.”

“What?”  Dennis looked stunned, the two former soldiers and Amanda were surprised while Einar nodded in understanding.

“One of the differences between the ljos and dokk alfar is their opinions on interbreeding with other races,” explained Gwaiva.  “The dokk alfar are enthusiastic about it while the ljos alfar reject it.  I’m careful not to attract ljos alfar attention but some of their more rigid, wealthy jarls have standing bounties on ljos alfar half breeds.  What I am is fairly obvious.”  She looked at the screen and shivered.

“They hurt you, they’re dead,” offered Calhoun.

“Collect them, please,” instructed Amanda putting down a handset, “as well as the Tupenes.”

“I have some protections you can use,” added Maired.

An hour later the two bounty hunters were surprised when what appeared to be a blue haired girl in her late teens talking busily on her mobile phone walked into their laneway.  Ankle socks left a lot of the pale skinned, shapely legs bare until they reached the short kilt in grey and electric blue.  The white, short sleeved shirt hanging over the kilt should have had two more buttons done up at the top.  The two men looked at her in increasing surprise as she ignored them completely until she was almost on top of them.  Barely a foot in front of them she tore her attention away from the phone and said, “Excuse me, there’s not a problem is there?  Could I please get past?”

The shorter one stepped back and answered, “Of course, please,” gesturing for her walk through.

“Thanks.”  She flashed a lovely smile at him as she put the phone back up to the ear nearest him and started past the pair.

The taller one stiffened as a perfect elven ear with three silver rings in the lobe tried to sweep by and put a hand on her shoulder, “Wait-.”  He stopped at the click near his left ear.

Hladvic sounded as dead as an ice plain behind his weapon.  “Don’t hurt my friend.”

This is in response to ysabetwordsmith's first prompt.

“Amanda?”  Bolt claimed the administrator’s attention with grace, his voice carrying no trace of the concern that was producing the creases around his eyes and on his forehead in his darkened by sun to deep caramel skin.

“Yes?”  She took in the uncharacteristic expression on his face, laid her pen aside and asked, “What’s the problem?”  She gestured to one of the chairs facing her desk.

“I maintain an email address for professional purposes,” he sat gracefully, hands folded in his lap, long legs crossed at the ankles in front of him, “and I have received an approach of interest to our employer.”

Amanda raised an eyebrow.  “Isn’t this conversation a breach of professional etiquette?”

“I’m taking the Elf’s money, so it is in my interests to protect his interests.”  Bolt smiled briefly.  “Also, I have no wish to be considered a potential traitor.”

Amanda nodded, understanding in her honey-coloured eyes.  “If you give me the details, I’ll pass the information on.”

As she picked up the pen there was a knock on the door.  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” it was Calhoun, “but I need to discuss a matter of business.”

Bolt looked over at the doorway where the slightly shorter, bearded man stood.  “You too?” he asked.

“My agent has received an approach,” Calhoun agreed.  “The interested parties made it clear who their intended target is.  I should add, for this audience alone, that my agent is unaware that I’m on the Elf’s payroll.”

“Please, come in and sit down too,” Amanda indicated another chair.  “I’ll need to get the details from both of you.”

“Certainly.”  Calhoun was all urbanity and his face showed none of Bolt’s concern, but his movements and pose spoke of action ready to be released when needed.  “Once, could be just of those things.  Twice, could be coincidence.  If there’s a third, perhaps Jung in Three or la Sare in Four, then we have a pattern.”

“Agreed,” that was Bolt.

Amanda’s, “You’re right,” was simultaneous.  Then she added, “After I’ve passed on your information we’ll have to work out who else they might ask.”

I was trying to write this episode before my Prompt Request but ysabetwordsmith's second prompt told me what the antagonists were doing, which is why this is way over the stated length.

Amanda began her working morning by giving Maired a guided tour of the facility, satisfying her need to know about power conduits, the emergency sprinklers and the water and waste pipes.  The early morning gym users were having breakfast and Gavin was cleaning up in the gym.  Dennis and Gwaiva had taken their coffee and retreated to the computer room to “look over the early morning feeds.”

“You know,” commented Mannix, “I don’t know what she thinks but I don’t think he’s moved beyond, ‘Gwaiva speaks tech!’  Does anyone think he realises she’s an attractive girl?”

“Einar Haraldsson,” Cheryl’s screech from the balcony outside Einar’s bedroom cut off any answer.  “What is this mess?  I can’t vacuum your floor if everything you own is on it!”  The blond, seven foot tall frost giant put down his fork with a guilty expression and hurried up to his room while the others watched, slightly surprised at his reaction.  As he went in his door Cheryl added crisply, “If that’s dirty washing, it’s not going to take itself to the laundry!”

Later, back at the table to finish his breakfast Einar explained to Calhoun, “But she is scarier than my mother – she’s smaller so all that fierceness is more concentrated!”

Brise was listening to someone else.  “I find the construction of this team interesting,” Maired told her quietly as they sipped their tea.  “The choice of archetypes as well as the skill sets.  There’s someone missing, of course.”

“That’s a conversation for another day,” Amanda said briskly to her as she emerged from the computer room.  “There’s a job on.  This is what you get paid for, people.”

Inside the computer room a large screen took up most of one wall from seated eye height up.  From it a mature man of military bearing, his background a computer room like their own spoke, “Our city has been infiltrated by a group of interest.”

The picture on the screen split in two, one half still showing the speaker and the other showing security footage of five men, each carrying a black case, leaving the arrivals area of the international airport.  The camera view switched to the external taxi rank where, despite being part of a group, each man took a separate taxi.  Then the picture switched to one still of one man taken from a video sequence they’d just seen.  “Your task is to apprehend this man.  The others have each been assigned to one of the other teams with Team Three held in reserve.  It is preferred that you do not cause him permanent damage.”

“He’s a Knight of the Sun,” pointed out Bolt quietly.  “They’re all Knights of the Sun.  You can tell by that shrunken cloak brooch they’re wearing as a badge.”

“So they’re agents of the Lord of the Summer Isle?”  That was from Brise who looked as if her own words made her a very unhappy blonde quarter-harpy.

“Not necessarily,” Bolt was still quiet and considered.  “According to the briefing I got when I first ran into them, they support him but have been known to act proactively and independently on his behalf.  Third parties have occasionally taken steps to rein in their...militancy.”

“Yes,” agreed their onscreen briefer, “they could well be acting without the Lord of the Summer Isle’s knowledge.  Whatever they’re up to, we need them gathered in as soon as possible.  Particularly if they don’t want to be.  Fortunately we have your target’s initial destination from the taxi company.”

Emerging from the briefing ten minutes later, Calhoun commented to Amanda, “So there are five other teams like ours.  Who’s in them?”  That was followed, almost as a throw away line, by, “Why six teams?”

“Six like the sides of a snow flake,” said Cheryl as she went past with a bucket of cleaning equipment and promptly flushed bright red.

“Actually, from what I know of the elf, that could be exactly it,” replied Maired thoughtfully.  She gave Cheryl a look that was sharp but not at all unfriendly.

They caught up with their prey on the northern side of the inner harbour.  The solidly built, olive skinned man tried to throw his black case into the water when they cornered him, cursing solidly in Spanish, Latin and something unfamiliar when Brise caught it before it hit the water, trailing her feet through the water as the down beat of her wings took her and the case up again.

Hladvic, Gwaiva and Maired agreed that the case wasn’t trapped so Hladvic carefully opened it while Einar and Calhoun restrained the prisoner who was struggling to variations of, “I am Tabnit, Knight of the Sun.  Unhand me, ingrate peasants!” Inside the case was divided into six compartments.  Three were empty.  The remaining three compartments each held a dark, round object with a runic-looking script incised into it.”

“Those are magical,” announced Maired.  “Let me have a better look.”  The other two made room for her as she knelt down beside the open case.  The small-boned woman muttered something under her breath as she held her open hand over the three objects.  “Well, these three aren’t active.”  She carefully picked one up to look at it more carefully.  “It looks like, no, it is a hunting lure.”

“That doesn’t sound very sporting,” Mannix and Brise were standing watch to keep the public away while Vasa was bringing up the van, but Mannix was close enough to hear Maired and comment.

“They’re not,” agreed the wizard, “they’re for when you’re starving or you’re after a dangerous predator.  I’ve seen them used on man-eaters in Africa and Siberia.  This is unusual though.”  She tapped a portion of the writing.  “This script picked up some Egyptian influence so proper nouns and names go in cartouches.  Normally it would just have deer or wolf or tiger here.  This has a name.”

Tabnit the prisoner froze at her words.

“Oh?”  Calhoun pulled out a knife as he regarded his suddenly still prisoner with a professional eye.

“Slivvas?”  Maired paused, and then shook her head.  “I don’t know it.”

“The sea serpent?”  That was Einar, shocked.

“It’s supposed to frozen in ice at the far end of-,” Gwaiva whipped out her mobile phone and pressed a button.  “Dennis, I need you to look for anything about big chunks of ice breaking off the Antarctic ice shelves.  Probably no further back than when the elf took over the city.  I’ll wait on the line.”

“Sea serpent?”  Mannix was cautious.

“A creature long enough to wrap itself around a frost giant long ship and smash it to pieces,” explained Einar grimly, tightening his grip on the prisoner, “and still be longer than the ship it was attacking.”

“So maybe not a danger to modern ocean-going ships but dangerous to pleasure craft, fishing boats, dhows and that sort of thing?”  That was Mannix, extrapolating.

“It used to raid coastal villages,” added Gwaiva and Einar nodded in agreement.  “That’s why the ice elves co-operated with the frost giants to trap it.”

“And they’re calling it here?”  Brice’s waving indicated the city and suburbs around them.

Tabnit had begun to smirk as they’d begun to realise what he’d been doing, “You’ll never find-.”  He froze again as Calhoun’s knife slit his jacket and shirt up his back from behind.

“Hold still and I may not cut the skin when I do the pants, you bastard,” Calhoun was snarling, urbanity gone.  “Let’s see what else you’re carrying, right now.  Sorry ladies, but he lost all right to public privacy when he started planting a weapon of mass destruction.”

It was a long afternoon and a long evening before all of the Knights of the Sun and their toys were rounded up.  Two of Knights were in hospital after resisting apprehension, two no longer had their own clothing and one had been delivered into centralised detention hogtied to a pole. 

None of the Knights had co-operated in the recovery of the lures and one was too concussed to be coherent no matter what he wanted to do.  Each of the lures could be held in an adult human hand and they had had to track down seventeen of them.  Magic had helped as had knowing where each man had been found and where he’d been dropped off by his taxi but they’d still needed emu parades and divers to cover the territory.  It was nearly midnight when the last lure was recovered from a grease trap behind a suburban shopping centre three suburbs inland from either the harbour or the coast.

Tom the cook had supper waiting for the team when they returned to the base and Gavin was awake to help them stow their equipment before they cleaned up and ate.  Cheryl, who was sleeping, would have noted that there was no snoring to be heard.

Eating before falling into bed, Mannix commented, “It worries me that their first reaction to what the elf is doing, and I admit I don’t understand the ins and outs of these Accords yet, is a weapon of mass destruction.”

“They are loyal fanatics,” Bolt shrugged as he ate.

“They started with a weapon of mass destruction,” clarified Hladvic, “so where do they go next?”

Maired was the last of the team to move in.  She was a tiny boned and tiny bodied woman whose short, black hair sat flat against her head.  She was quick and deft in her movements, reminding Amanda of a bird and thus bringing to mind, somehow, an impression of black feathers.  She appeared younger than the others too, inhabiting a semi-youthful aspect of middle age.

She had more luggage than any of the other team members.  Camphorwood chests, packing cases of books and milk crates of laboratory glassware were carried into the workroom that had been built for her.

“So, you’re a scientist,” observed Cheryl as she carried a blue milk crate of test tubes and beakers to its designated bench.

“No,” Maired corrected, “I’m a wizard.”

“Oh, you’re a Wiccan then, with a coven and-,”

“I’m not actually.”  The older woman’s correction was almost absent minded as she considered the work space and what she wanted to fit in it.  “Wicca is a valid belief system and religion, but it’s not mine.”  She smiled at Cheryl.  “At this stage of our relationship, all I think you need to know about that aspect of my life is that I’m vehemently opposed to human sacrifice.”

“Oh, okay.”  Cheryl suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable.  She didn’t think anyone had ever looked at her as keenly as Maired was looking at her now.

“If I were you, dear,” Maired went on, “I’d look at replacing that ring with a better quality metal as soon as I could.”  It seemed for a moment as if she was about to say something else but she stopped.

“It is cheap and nasty, isn’t it,” Cheryl agreed.  “It looked cool when I first got it, particularly ‘cause people looked at it and not at the rest of me.”  She looked down her solid girth.  “Trouble is, now it’s aged a bit it looks like a bit of tat and so do I.”  Realising that she’d just said something unanswerable and perhaps shared too much, she added, “I’ll just go get the next crate, shall I?”

“Thank you.”  Maired returned her attention to the room and Cheryl left to make good on her word.

After being alone for a few moments, Maired turned her head to look after Cheryl.  “So, what does he have in mind, our employer?  What does he expect the sum of our parts to be?”  Her eyes brightened with interest.

When Amanda first opened the door to her, she thought Gwaiva was a punk.  It was the ears that changed her mind.  Head hugging, shapely and pointed ears under an electric aqua, mohawk-upsweep of hair.  It was a measure of how far Amanda’s world had expanded that her next reaction was, “You’re an elf!”

“Yes, is that a problem?”  Gwaiva raised one of her delicate blue eyebrows.

“No, not at all.  You’re on the list.”  Amanda stood aside and held the door open.  “I’ve never seen an elf before and I never expected one to be so – striking or so modern.”

“I’m half ljos alfar and half ice elf,” Gwaiva said as if that explained everything while she came in through the door.  “Tradition as a way to make a living was never going to cut it, not when my family can’t live among either group.  Technology seemed the way to go.”  She patted the laptop bag slung over one shoulder and took the time to shift the weight of her heavy-looking back pack a little.  “I’m supposed to meet someone called Dennis?”

“I’m Dennis.”  Their resident computer geek had emerged from his lair and was beaming at the new arrival like an enthusiastic, slightly pimpled and pedantic puppy.  “You must be Gwaiva.  I thought your icon must be a photo.  Do you want to come into the computer room and get yourself set up?”

Gwaiva stepped forward and shook hands with him.  “Yes please.  You’ll organise passwords and access?”

“It’s really got very little to do with me.”  Dennis was gabbling excitedly, “Come and see.  The biometric interface is-.”  At that point they went into the computer room and the door closed behind them.

Cheryl walked over to Amanda, broom in hand, and both of them gazed for a moment at the door behind which the elf in the schoolgirl-kilt with the electric blue stripes was doing computer things with Dennis.

“He’s been trying to show that stuff off to someone ever since it was installed,” commented Cheryl.  “I never thought it would be someone so, well like her.”

“I know,” agreed Amanda.  “I know.”