Petrichor - a novel in "open beta" - [M/f, minigiant, post-apocalyptic dystopia, slavery, military setting]
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I am very particular about what I write, and even more particular about what I read, because - as a writer - there’s a certain emotional labor in having to read other people’s work. It can be exhausting; you’re expected to have a critique (or two); and you’re unable to dip below the current of the story and lose yourself to it because it’s altogether uninteresting.
I usually know within a sentence or two if something is worth reading.
This is it.
This is worth reading.
I love how you indoctrinate your audience in a sort of hyper-meta-critical nod of something that’s fearsomely alien but also unrelentingly familiar. We learn of this world in a very wide, instinctive way without being patronized. The pacing, the dialogue, the connective language that weave together elements of plot, narrative, and action are very well done.
I love the small but vital clues that I can excavate like a treasure-hunter. There are some anachronisms in some of the scenes, and outright contradictions (oil lamps coexist with lightbulbs) I think, much like an an extended conceit of how something obsolete (human) can coexist with something futuristic (lightbulb) which appears to be the driving force in this story. And this juxtaposition continues throughout in a way that isn’t frustrating: the mystery and the intrigue you have lain at our feet is arousing.
It’s slick. It’s provocative. It’s accessible without losing its center: an unapologetic dystopian cyber-punk war-drama that doesn’t feel like a caricature of the real thing.
I’m invested. I want to know what happens next.
After thought I often like to tease out what a writer’s subconscious passion is (aside from the obvious), in not the elements of the plot or the theme, even; but, I see a sort of affectionately-loaded attention placed on trees! How uniquely refreshing!
https://www.inkitt.com/ladynefalum
A dark romance series with an injection of giant-kink, vore-kink, legend and lore. -
@kisupure When I saw that there were new chapters, I was very excited, and oh my god, they were fantastic. You write some of the best tension scenes in macro fiction and I find myself rereading certain parts just to savor all of the emotions. I mentioned this before but one of the things that I enjoy the most about this story is the gradual humanization of the Anakim. They go from being faceless monsters to complex beings with surprising motivations. Really good stuff!
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CHAPTER 5
The Chain of Command must be maintained at all times. However, losses due to death, disease, or retirement are routine among Camps. In the event that an Officer is no longer able to fulfill the function of his duty for whatever reason, his replacement is found and installed at the discretion of the Commander, with the position going unfilled for no longer than two (2) consecutive weeks. In irregular circumstances, a temporary Officer may be used for a period up to, but not exceeding, 180 consecutive days.
- HDC Manual, Section 8 § 14
She hid herself again as the gunfire dissipated into the cool night air. After a few very long minutes, everything was still again. Everything except for her racing heart. Gray blinked, swallowed, touched her lips with a gloved finger. Did that all really happen? She tasted him on her, still, though the pheromone had wafted away. The only thing that felt real now was the chemical fear, and the deep ache in her side.
It took a moment to get her bearings, and when she did she left her hole to find the others. There would be injured. Immediately, she thought of Wesson, positioned with the other sappers so close to the attack.
It didn’t take long to run into two other corpsmen from Green Fox, but she was looking more for her friends. Finch would surely be found nearby, so Gray pressed on in the direction the redhead haddisappeared in, calling out her name. Beside a cluster of prickly brush, she found the sixth-year. Even in the darkness Gray could see the younger girl clutching at her arm and breathing shallow.
“Some party that was,” Finch panted.
Gray frowned when she carefully reached out and felt the sleeve of Finch’s shirt soaked through.
“C’mon,” Gray said, grabbing the younger girl’s fifteen–pound gun. “Gimme that. Can you walk?”
“Yeah… yeah. I can walk.”
“One of you get me a med kit and a goddamn light!”
One of the Green Foxers, she didn’t know his name, rummaged through his pack and produced a small box in one hand and then the beam of a flashlight was focused on Finch’s arm shortly after. It was bad.
Gray used her tac knife to cut off the sleeve of Finch’s shirt, and proceeded to clean the wound to the best of her ability. The ‘Nak bullet had only grazed her, but it took a chunk of flesh with it. One lucky inch was the only reason she still had an arm.
Gray tied off a tourniquet to help stop the bleeding, and put two little white pills into her friend’s mouth. They weren’t morphs or codys, but a standard-issue field medicine that would make you nauseous if you took too many.
“If you think you might puke, let me know. We’re gonna get you home one way or another, alright?”
Finch rose slowly to her feet. “I’m done for,” she whispered. “They’re gonna sew me up and leave me for the fucking coyotes like all the others.”
“No they’re not,” Gray hissed. “Now shut up and save your strength for the ruck, alright? Getting home is half the proof they’d need to keep you.”
Gray said it like she meant it, but she wasn’t sure. A different kind of fear knotted her stomach.
* * *
It didn’t take long to find a captain directing soldiers. He represented Blue Fox.
“Get back to the mouth of the canyon,” they were ordered. “And wait until sunrise. If the ‘Naks come back, I don’t want more than a hundred of us out here.”
“What about the injured?” A Green Foxer asked.
“I’ve got fifteen out looking now. To be frank, I don’t think we’re going to find many. You’re dismissed, corpsmen!”
In their exhaustion, not a word of disagreement was said as they turned and headed towards the dark silhouette of the mountains, east. Eventually they stumbled across Saiyeh and the others and continued as a group of seven.
It was slow going. Gray checked her watch for a third time: it was about 0300 hours, and they still had, by her count, almost four miles to go. A pack of coyotes yipped and yowled in the distance.
Finch, succumbing to the pain, was sweating badly. They took turns putting her good arm around their shoulders to keep her steady. Their destination was reached after two hours of this.
“They still dusted us,” somebody muttered, breaking the silence as they all settled down on a strip of soft sand. “We had the advantage and they still fucking dusted us.”
“Their line trailed more than we were expecting,” Gray muttered. “We could only blow up so much road, and half were still on their feet after the charges went.”
She’d been witness to so many defeats, big and small, that getting so upset seemed meaningless. What you did was leave the dead, pick up the living, and make sure to hit harder next time.
“My best friend died tonight.” Another corpsman paused to suck in a breath. “They didn’t even put a bullet in him. Just pulled out a knife and…”
Everyone was silent. He didn’t need to finish.
Gray couldn’t have mustered much of a response anyways. While her body was spent, her mind was buzzing. She couldn’t stop imagining that Anak’s face in the darkness. In a very real way, she’d looked on the face of death itself and survived. This meant that she’d kissed death, too. Gray licked her lip, tasting salt instead of smoke.
That’s when it occurred to her: the enormity of not just being kissed by an Anak, but that he desired it.
That he knew how.
Gray thought back to the mysterious Signy, and froze at what her mind was putting together. The knot in her stomach tightened.
She’d heard stories—rumors, really, or legends—about Anakim passing by civtowns and demanding favors from the local humans. Or abducting them. Though it was supposed to be that they were celibate, since no female ‘Nak had ever been known to exist and what was the point of giving a clone a sex drive? But if the same stuff that made them vicious, brutal soldiers is what made them men, and decidedly so, then it would follow that they’d have needs. Maybe very human needs.
“Something wrong?” someone asked.
Gray almost jumped. “Just… thinking. I heard the local sentinel call off the attack and I want to know why.”
“Christ.What fucking idiot would leave survivors after this?”
“An idiot that wants us to stick around.”
* * *
The sun was just skirting the horizon when the ragged group began to pick themselves up to leave. More survivors had trickled in over the last few hours of pre-dawn, and they numbered in the dozens now. But they paused as the latest group came up the ravine, probably two-hundred strong, with several limping or clutching at bloody bandages. There was one captain leading them, leaving another four unaccounted for.
“Any sign of a ninth-year sapper named Wesson?” Gray asked when people started sitting down to rest. “Wesson? Anybody?”
Most of the corpsmen were too exhausted to pay her much attention, but a few others exchanged looks and shrugged. Eventually someone spoke up. “Tall, blond guy, right? Slashed ear? There’s a salvage team combing the debris out there, mostly sappers. He could be with ‘em.”
That was a pretty big “could”, and Gray was nervous.
Another twenty minutes brought in a few dozen more corpsmen. There were two more captains among them.
“Did Captain Burke make it!” someone shouted over the crowd.
“Yeah, where’s our Brown captain!”
“And Hastings, too!”
“Brown and Red didn’t make it,” a ninth-year replied as he shoved tabs of cody at his injured downrank fellows like candy. “Green and Gold are still at the wreckage. There’s a lot to get through.”
“Fuck.”
Gray returned to her original group and sat down again. There was nothing she could do at this point but wait. She wanted a cody too.
The wounded, now led by ninth-years, eventually picked themselves up to head back to Fox. A few of the badly wounded could barely be coaxed to their feet—it was hard to look at them. Many were as good as dead.
It was past noon when they’d finally reached the first guard station at the edge of camp. A few of them were sent in to fetch medics and litters, and they were quickly received by a dozen medical staff who rushed the wounded into the big white tent, Finch among them.
“She’s gonna be OK, right?” Gray asked, following the medic who had taken a first peek at her friend’s arm.
“She’ll live, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied, knowing full well that was *not *what she was asking. “Come back in a few hours and I’ll tell you if she’ll be able to aim a kicker ever again.”
With that, he hefted another gurney up off the ground with the help of a second medic, and they disappeared inside. Gray ran a hand, crusty with dried blood, through her matted hair, and thought of the spare few fridays she had stowed away under her mattress.
But first, Harper. She had to find Harper.
* * *
Spending two fridays with the wireman didn’t help much, but they killed as much uneasy time as they could. In the Manual’s short annex on psychiatric hygiene, it was recommended that corpsmen who were MIA should be assumed dead until proven otherwise. It was necessary to move on as quickly as possible. Harper himself was struggling with the guilt of not having been sent out at all, stationed at the comm instead, and said little. Swallowing grief down whole to maintain the famed Corps stoicism was a common sight, and Harper was doing his best. Gray put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sentiment is the enemy of survival,” she said, quoting the mythical figure of General Pierce, the Corps’ first commander and leader of some of the Disruption’s greatest battles. It was painful advice, and a number of younger corpsmen took offense to it. But as the years trudged on, Gray only found it more and more salient. Others usually did too. Life was hard, and the Corps made no promise to anyone that it would ever get better. There was something approaching beauty in that kind of honesty.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
Gray threw back her shine. “Look, I know you were shaking sheets together, it’s harder than you want to admit.”
“Just… don’t.”
Gray eyed him. “I had Graham,” she said, letting the name linger in the air for a second. It had been, what, four years? “And don’t forget, Finch is my fuckin’ friend too.”
Harper looked down at his drink and scowled. “Well we’re two of us down, anyways.”
Gray sighed hard. She refused to believe that Wesson was dead. He was good at this, the whole marching and shooting and taking orders thing; he didn’t survive nine and a half years with the Corps for nothing right? Munez was the statistic, not Wesson, he couldn’t be.
“I’m sure he’s having the time of his life sorting through ‘Nak trash. It’s Finch I’m worried about,” she said stiffly, giving the three–fingered salute to the wireman as she rose. “I’ll see you outside.”
She didn’t really know what to do with herself. It was a bright and sunny Southland afternoon, a few clouds dragging long streaks across the sky. She should have slept.
Gray thought about planes—she’d heard them described once as big flying cars—and wondered what the skies looked like when they were full of ‘em. Did they flap around in clusters like birds? Did they need to track along some kind of road through the air like vehicles did? Were they loud? Quiet? Did the ‘Naks ever use them? She stopped, feeling that she was wasting her own time. Planes didn’t exist now any more than elevators did, or swimming pools, or internets. They accomplished so little for being such a burden on resources. Casualties of the Disruption, just like people.
Gray decided to trek over to Burke’s office and glance at the board. See if there was anything for her to do. Of course there wasn’t; the schedule was old, and the captain was dead. What was the Protocol for this? Gray struggled to remember, suddenly feeling uneasy at not knowing what her duties were, or if her time was her own, how much of it she had.
It would be weeks before Alpine could reshuffle the camps and send Fox replacement officers; in the meantime, they’d have to get somebody else to do the job.
Glancing around at the half-empty tent city, Gray decided that she needed to put some distance between herself and the others for a while, so she started walking. When she was finally surrounded by nothing butsteep slopes and dry brush, Gray let out the breath she’d been holding.
Her fatigues were filthy and suddenly stifling. With dirty fingers she undid the buttons to her shirt and tore it off to expose her shoulders and beige compression top. A few scars marked the skin of her sturdy arms, tanned as they were compared to her much paler collar bones – some from her wasteland childhood, others from combat. She lifted the hem of her shirt to glance at her side, which still hurt. That was only a few weeks ago, wasn’t it? Seemed like ages already.
The breeze and the sun felt good on her skin, and her boots came off too. Then after her boots, her pants. A minute later and she was laying on a patch of coarse sand to stare up at the clouds in some meager shade. She sucked in a full breath and found she could do so with less pain.
Gray’s mind drifted from one thing to another, but it eventually circled back to that brown figure in the dust with those blue eyes; the man almost twice her height and her lie as big as Fox itself.
It circled back around to that kiss.
“You’re fucked, you know that?” She frowned and closed her eyes. “Right fucked.”
Gray dozed off without realizing it. She woke up in the shadow of the canyon, and her watch told her that she’d been asleep for almost two hours. It was time to head back. As she shimmied her pants back on, she decided that kiss had saved them all. She still felt sorry for what she did to Kessler, but she had to. The idiot youngyear left her no choice. If he hadn’t shown up and panicked, then she might’ve been able to… to what?
* * *
Gray returned to camp, deciding that she couldn’t put off seeing Finch any longer. The med tent was such a miserable place, and she didn’t yet want to know what the sixth-year’s outlook was.
She ducked into the structure, passing the partition to the third bed on the left. Half covered by a cool, white sheet, Finch rested her head on a pillow and stared upwards. Her eyes were sharp, if distant—Gray’s heart sank, knowing that they hadn’t given her any morph.
“Hey.”
“They’re giving me four weeks.”
Four weeks. That was generous for a sixth-year.
“We’ll get a sider back in your hand in four weeks. How’s the arm?”
“Going to leave a nasty scar.”
“Nastier than Cooper’s?”
Finch looked away and cracked a faint smile.
That’s when Gray knelt down and touched Finch’s good arm. “You’re not getting released, alright? I promise. Harper and I are gonna make sure you make it back out there in one piece.”
The sixth-year nodded stiffly.
“You want anything to eat?”
“Just wanna sleep.”
“Would a little shine help?”
Finch gave her friend a telling look, and Gray nodded.
“I’ll be right back.”
She bee-lined for Harrison’s tent, and when she was inside a small commotion had picked up. Though she couldn’t tell what it was, it sounded like it was coming from the quad. She wished the two corpsmen ahead of her in line would hurry up.
“One please, sir,” Gray said to the enormous, bearded officer.
Unceremoniously, he grabbed her friday and stuffed it away into a lockbox under the counter before holding a cup to to large keg behind him. The alcohol looked deceptively like water at the bottom of the metal tumbler, but already she could smell the difference. It would go down scalding.
But Gray collided with a body as she rounded the corner outside, and Finch’s “medicine” went splashing to the ground.
“No!” she hissed, watching helplessly as the liquor sank into the fabric of her fatigues. “Goddammit, you—“
But when she looked up, there was a familiar face there.
“Wesson!” Gray cried, throwing herself at him. “Wesson, you’re alive!”
“I… yeah, yeah I’m alive.”
He blinked like he’d lost a lot more than one night’s sleep.
“…Are you OK?”
“OK? Couldn’t be better. I’m, uh… getting promoted.”
* * *
“Weson’s what?”
“He’s getting his promo.”
“He’s going to lead brown toon?”
“I… I don’t know. I just… here.” Gray handed over the shine and Finch threw it back. “I’ll see what he has to say, but I don’t think he knows much himself and the man looks like he needs to sleep for a week anyways.”
“So do you.”
“I think something happened to him out there. He had this look in his eye.”
“…So do you.”
Gray snorted, turning away to hide the redness creeping up her cheeks. “Since when did you care what people’s eyes are doing?"
Just then, a medic stormed through the partition, and the corpsmen hanging around injured friends paused their conversations. He tapped a pencil against his clipboard.
“Alright, alright, everyone out! Y’all smell like shit, and its hot enough in here without the extra bodies crowding around. Come back tomorrow!”
Gray was suddenly glad for the order to vacate. Finch laughed bitterly as she left.
* * *
Wesson sat on a crate, nursing his own cup of shine as Gray and Harper were enjoying seconds. He’d given them all his last remaining fridays, because officers didn’t need them. Officers were paid.
“It all happened so fast,” he said, sounding breathless just from recalling the fight. “We… we were ducked down when the charges went off, and barely had any time to get our bearings before you all started shooting over our heads. The ‘Naks didn’t even realize most of us were there. They rushed right by, heading for the rest of the corpsmen.
“I took a few down, their backs aren’t armored at all. But as soon as they saw muzzle flash, they were on us. I was all ready to get out and join you, but I twisted my foot, fell, and hit my head. Next thing I know, sun’s coming up.”
Wesson turned his head so they could see the purple lump above his ear. No wonder he looked like he couldn’t even remember his enlistment number.
“Holy shit.” Harper shook his head in disbelief. “Of all the times to forget your helmet!”
“Some blue foxer found me, sorted me out, and once I got some water I was told to get to work with salvage. The captain only wanted ninth-years.”
Wesson took a drink and sighed. His tired eyes had been fixed on the ground this entire time.
“And?”
“Huh?”
“What’d you find?”
“Oh, uh…” He took another drink then frowned, realizing his cup was empty. “Nothing, really. The usual. Guns, ammo. Looted the bodies. Acquisition’s packing it all up now.”
That was indeed the usual. There wasn’t much to loot from a ‘Nak, most of them rarely had anything approaching personal possessions. Some of the gear was personalized in some way, either from embellishment or repair, but Protocol demanded that all “raw materials” were to be sent back to Alpine for processing, including body armor. Camps were allowed to keep half of the munitions spoils.
“What was in the trucks?”
Wesson frowned, looking troubled. “Nothing. There was nothing.”
As Gray watched him, Harper continued. “So what happens now? Are they sending you away?”
“I don’t think so. I think I’m filling Burke’s shoes until the Freedom Ceremony, then I’ll get transferred in the big shuffle.”
Camp Fox currently had fewer than a hundred ninth-years, but Wesson was still the logical choice for promo. He could recite the Manual line by line, the officers liked him, and he never strayed from Protocol. Moreover, he was one of the few who wanted to stay: the Corps was more than just a way out of bondship for him, it was his life.
“Anyways,” Wesson said, glancing at his watch, “They’re gonna ring the dinner bell soon. You guys should go get in line. I’m gonna head back to my cot and get some…”
But dirt crunched behind Gray and she turned to see the commander himself, flanked by a clerk and two captains. The seventh-year instinctively made herself smaller in their presence.
“Wesson?” said Hitch.
He snapped up. “Yes, sir?”
“You’ll come with us.”
“I-I was about to go lay down, sir, my head’s killing me.”
“We’ll get you a cody and a cold pack, son. You can sleep later. There’s a lot of work to do now.”
Wesson’s eyes flicked between Gray and Harper as he stood up.
“I’ll see you around,” he said. “Save me something to eat.”
“Don’t bother,” Hitch replied, eyeing the corpsmen squatting on the ground as he clapped a hand on Wesson’s shoulder. “You’re having an officer’s meal tonight. Hsen, go get his effects. He’ll be moved from the platoon tent as well.”
Hsen, the clerk, dipped his head. “Yes, sir.”
As the group disappeared down the road, Gray heard Hitch ask Wesson how he was feeling.
The pair of remaining corpsmen exchanged looks, mouths open. They sat like that for a beat, processing what they’d just seen.
“Another cup?”
“Fuckin’… yeah. I need another cup.”
http:/sizekink.com
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@kisupure Nice misdirect with the opening Manual excerpt. I was partially expecting Gray to be promoted.
Also surprised that Gray reported the sentinel’s calling off the pursuit. It doesn’t incriminate her in any way, but it does put a spotlight on his loyalties.
Did . . . Gray rub one out after her stroll and before her nap?
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@nephilim Thank you so much! This is high praise
I’m really glad it’s coming together, it was a calico-quilt mess for a long time. Committing it to internet paper has helped me solidify a lot of ideas, and I was worried that it would still suffer from its hodge-podginess… but my worries are evidently unfounded!
Balancing the worldbuilding and “newspeak” of it all has been a real challenge, as I’ve gone off the deep end of that sort of thing for other projects before and its easy to lose sight of the story. I realized that this needs to be “just enough” - just different enough, just futuristic enough, just awful enough to carry the reader over into this feasible-if-you-squint version of our own timeline.
And I’m excited you discovered my weak spot for desert plant life!
@Nyx Thank you SO MUCH Nyx. I was told by someone else on another platform that the way I write is still very “purple”, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that… I guess I like to take a scalpel to my characters’ inner lives and that’s considered egregiously descriptive in the normal lit world. Oh well, I’m lucky that kink readers like that sort of thing! (I’ve started calling it “stylistic overwhelm”.) And hope you enjoy more weirdness coming from characters on both sides of the war here soon.
@Olo You keep calling stuff JUST before it happens LOL. Next chapter she’ll get a minute to herself…
And yeah, Gray’s turning out to be little jumpy. She doesn’t want anything to be about her. She’ll be uncomfortable being the protagonist of her own story for a little while longer.
http:/sizekink.com
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@kisupure said in Petrichor - a novel in "open beta" - [M/f, minigiant, post-apocalyptic dystopia, slavery, military setting]:
@Nyx Thank you SO MUCH Nyx. I was told by someone else on another platform that the way I write is still very “purple”,
Christ. I must be maroon or something, then.
No; I love how you slice, dice, dissect the characters’ inner worlds. Don’t stop it. Don’t ever stop it. It’s a talent that’s woefully overlooked, I think. Too many people get praise for the heavy logistics of moving set pieces in a story (like Snyder); I would rather see their inner world, because painting that fearsomely, but believably, whilst still providing peripheral story and ongoing narrative without missing a beat? That’s talent.
I enjoy Gray and her inner musings. Don’t stop. I mean, entire literary empires have been erected on the inner-world premise ('hem, George RR Martin has entered the chat. And so does Stephen King of his older works, to be fair, we’re talking Lisey’s-Story-era).
Forget those idiots. They don’t know what they’re talking about.
However;
I’m going to use that from now on: “stylistic overwhelm.” Love it. -
[[OK, last chapter for a couple weeks. This was a lot of work but I was on a roll - half of it is entirely new material worked into an old scene, so my brain is complete mush now.]]
CHAPTER 6
The rank of Captain is reserved for Officers who lead a Corps Platoon or Division. A Platoon consists of 150-200 fighting corpsmen and their support, who are designated within each Camp by color. A Division refers to any self-contained department necessary for the functioning of a Corps Camp, such as Hospitality, Medical, or Utilities. Divisions may also refer to combat specialization groups, such as Scouting or Communications. See Annex I for a complete list of Divisions and Sub-Divisions.
—HDC Manual, Section 2 § 2
Normally, the Corps would begin picking out potential officers in the months before candidates got their freedom, always transferring the newly promoted to an unfamiliar camp if there was an opening, or if an officer was planning to retire from the corps to return to civvie life.
The benefits for Wesson were worth coveting: provisional freedom without a mark, and promotion to the captain’s office complete with all the rights and privileges of the upranked. There was no pomp for him or the ninth-year from red toon that was also being promoted, just a lot of paperwork, a few symbolic aptitude tests, and an oath-taking ceremony in the commander’s tent. He even got a new uniform. Well, newer.
“So no more philandering with us enlisted, eh?” a fifth-year teased at a gathering behind Harrison’s the next evening in his honor.
Like enlisteds with outsiders, officers were discouraged from getting cozy with their subordinates. Meals were to be taken separately, quarters relocated to the captain’s barracks, and outside of the occasional drink, Wesson would be spending as little free time as possible with the downrank from now on. And this was the last time that he would be allowed to enjoy the company of so many enlisted all at once… so many friends.
Wesson shrugged, a bittersweet smile on his face. The liquor was getting to him.
“It’s part of the price we’ll all have to pay to get our freedom,” he sagely declared. Then, he held up his drink. “To the Corps! May she never run low on lead!”
“To the Corps!” a good twenty voices echoed back.
Gray didn’t say anything when she raised her cup, and when she glanced beside her to Finch with her arm in a sling, the redhead didn’t either. She’d only been allowed to stay one night in the med tent, but from what Finch told her, she didn’t want more than that anyway. It was depressing as hell and too many injured were talking and moaning in their sleep.
“He looks a lot better today,” Gray said, watching Wesson talk to a few others.
“He looks tore,” Finch said flatly.
Gray frowned. “He almost had his head busted open out there.”
“We he definitely isn’t shellshocked. In fact, it seems like he’s enjoying himself. Look.”
Gray looked, and realized it was true. The difference was like night and day. It was as he’d never hit his head at all, and she wondered if it hadn’t been something else that made him seem so distracted. Or maybe speaking to Hitch gave him the confidence to believe that he could fulfill his new role. Being told you were getting a promo after a fight like that was enough to sucker punch anybody. Still, Gray suddenly didn’t like how he was taking up space.
Wesson was engrossed in conversation, but he began to point their way. A moment later he was crossing the distance, talking loudly.
“…And in fact, the first thing I’m gonna do, right now, is come right on over here and say to her, ‘Gray, I want you to work for me’.”
Wesson’s bright eyes were locked onto her. He was always a few inches taller but suddenly the seventh-year felt as if he was as big as a ‘Nak as he stood close, putting his arm around her shoulder. He waited for her answer with a grin. Others hooted, hollered, and clapped.
Gray looked up at him, unable to hide the expression on her face. “Wh–what? You want me to be your clerk?” she said, easing herself away from him. “Do I look like a filing cabinet to you?”
His smile widened and he turned to the others. “If you’ll excuse us,” he called out, “I need a moment to speak with my new assistant.”
With that he ushered them both away, and she noticed that his sparkling smile quickly disappeared.
“C’mon Gray,” he said once they were out of sight. “I’m an officer now, I can pull strings.”
She squinted at him, that blond hair and tanned face beginning to look a little too charismatic. “What makes you think I want to file paperwork and run errands for you all day? You could’ve asked me first.”
He took a quick glance around and gave her shoulder an authoritative squeeze. “I care about you guys,” he said. “You, Harper, and Finch. And if I can use this promotion to help make your lives easier for a while, then I will. And I didn’t ask because they don’t want me to. I’m supposed to tell you what to do and you’re supposed to do it.”
Gray’s lips became a fine line. Coming from any other captain, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. She would be saying “yes, sir” and “thank you, sir” for the opportunity to be a good corpsman. She’d be grateful for being seen as valuable. Clerk work was clean, and it was quiet; you slept in a tent attached to the captain’s office, and being one more step removed from the fighting ranks of corpsmen put you one step closer to the outside world. The things you learned better prepared you to deal with civtown.
But Gray still didn’t want it. She didn’t want the strange, special treatment. And nobody liked the clerks anyways. They were odd, and rude, and smoked so much they could barely ruck.
“I know I bitch about it, but I actually like scouting. I don’t want to be transferred to records, even if it is easier work.”
He gave her a look she had never seen outside of battle, slate eyes suddenly cold. There was an edge to his voice as he spoke, and his hand held firm to her shoulder.
“I can keep you safe, Gray.”
“Is this… is this an us thing?” she blurted. “Are you trying to win me back or something?“
“It’s not. I promise.” Wesson chewed his lip and thought for a moment. “This last fight made me realize just how awful it is to lose people this late in the game. It’s just… it’s more dangerous out there than any of us realize. But I suddenly have the power to protect you now.”
Gray swallowed.
“What about Finch?”
“Finch will get her chance, don’t worry. I could always try setting her up with hospitality.”
Hospitality was where the wastelanders were, and officers from Alpine: clean men and women in clean uniforms, decked with colorful ribbons and polished metal.
But keeping visitors fed, watered, and entertained during their visits was a secretive task. The Manual said it was “distracting” work for the average corpsman because of the gossip, the rumors, the foreign culture of the outsiders. Most were not fit for it.
And if Gray knew Finch, she wasn’t fit for it either.
“That’s even worse than records,” she said.
Wesson threw up his arms. “Who cares! If she wants to live to kill another ‘Nak then she’ll need to get away from the front anyways. She doesn’t stand a chance right now.”
“Then make her work the office!”
He shook his head. “No, we make a better team. I want you in there. She knows card games, she’ll do much better keeping outsiders happy.”
“With all due respect, I don’t want her waiting on outsiders any more than I want to wait on you, sir.”
The Manual recommended prefacing opinions with those words to avoid coming across as insubordinate. But Wesson knew inter-rank protocol just as much as she did, and his silence told her that she should have kept her mouth shut.
He straightened.
“I’ve always told you to watch what you say after you’ve had too much shine. It’s going to get you into trouble one of these days,” he said, turning away. “Think about my offer, Gray. Don’t be stupid.”
* * *
She laid on her cot and stared at the flapping canvas above her head. The night was almost warm enough to roll up the sides to let air in through the bug netting, but the beads of sweat on the nape of her neck had nothing to do with the approaching summer heat.
“Captain Wesson,” she mumbled to herself. “Yes sir, captain Wesson sir.”
Gray groaned and turned over onto her good side.
The next afternoon, she checked the board for Wesson’s first duty roster. Juggling the schedules of 200 corpsmen would be the first thing he’d learn to do. Glancing at the other names, it didn’t look half-bad for a first try. In fact, it probably took him all night. But as she found her name, neatly typed on its own row, her stare turned to gawking, and her gawking soon turned to indignation.
S M T W T F S [SS12C]---------------------------------------[SS12A]“SS” stood for “solitary sentry”, the number designated her blind, and the letter told her when she was to ruck out. This wasn’t a duty roster, this was a sentence. A week up in a tree. These shifts were supposed to be three days long, and the most she had ever heard of was five.
The asshole did this on purpose.
Gray stormed away from Captain Wesson’s new office, and back to her toon tent.
“Did you see the board?” she said, walking in on Finch on her cot as Harper dabbed a clean rag on her wound.
“No,” Finch snorted. “Why would I? I got four weeks off.”
“Hardly. They’ll have to give you something to do starting next week,” Harper said.
Gray ignored them. “Is this was he always wanted? To order people around? I feel like I don’t know the guy anymore.”
Harper shrugged. “He wanted promo, you knew that.”
“He’s got me on seven days of solitary. Seven!”
Finch chuckled. “You’re always going to lose in a fight with an officer.”
“Piss off, this isn’t funny.”
Gray sat down on a cot and rubbed her face.
“It’s whatever, Gray. You guys got into an argument, you probably said something dumb, and he’s doing something dumb to get back at you. Be glad it’s just sentry and that he’s—ow!” Finch hissed as Harper helped her arm back into the sling. “Be glad he’s not making you scrub toilets for a week.”
Gray sighed. Maybe Finch was right. Maybe she was blowing this out of proportion and being unable to say ‘Captain Wesson’ with a straight face was her problem.
“Any of you miss Burke?” Harper said.
“Didn’t really know her.”
“The officers don’t really want *any *of us to know them, do they?”
Gray scoffed. “I wouldn’t either, if I were them. We’re numbers until we get our freedom.” A pause. “Maybe he just needs some time.”
A man tapped on the flap before letting himself inside. It was one of Burke’s old staff. “Finch? Fifth-year?”
“That’s me.”
He handed her a folded piece of paper and ducked out.
Finch’s eyes narrowed as she opened and read the note.
“Holy fuck, I’m going to be Wesson’s new help,” she said, dumbfounded. “It’s been approved by Hitch and everything already. I’ll be transferred to records when my arm’s healed.”
Harper stood up and grabbed the paper from her. Gray winced, remembering their argument.
“He’s trying to help you out.”
“Jesus Christ, Gray, this isn’t a week of sentry, this is for the rest of the season! And when we get a real captain in there, they might even keep me!”
“It’s either this, or you risk release,” Harper said. “Think of it this way, he just saved you from a death sentence.”
“Yeah, and saved a bunch of fuckin’ ‘Naks too. I’m gonna be one of the last people to go out on a ruck, now.”
“In forty-seven months you get your freedom and that’s all that matters. You can kill as many of ‘em as you want when you’re out of here.” Gray was trying very hard to scold the younger corpsman into being thankful, but it was a hard sell.
“That’s all that matters, huh?” Finch set her jaw and stared at the ground. “I’m not like you. Not like any of you. I’m not here for promo, and I’m not here to get out. All I want is revenge, and up until now, the Corps made that easy for me.”
“Yeah, well, it’s looking like the only person getting what they want around here is Wesson.” Gray stood up to leave. Finch was awful to be around when she was in a bad mood. “I’ll see you in a fucking week.”
* * *
After a 4-minute shower, 1900 hours rolled around and it was time to hit the trail. Scowling, Gray signed off on the board and rucked out from there to her post without saying a single word to anyone, the captain included. At this point, part of her was looking forward to getting away.
“What is wrong with him?” she muttered. “Why does it feel like he’s taking this personally?”
But underneath her indignation there was hurt, she realized. Did she feel like Wesson had somehow cheated the system to get out early? Maybe he did—the Corps wasn’t without its petty corruption. Sometimes you heard about protection contracts being paid off with warm bodies instead of goods or money. The money, too, worried her. Would he flaunt it, or would he try to pretend like it didn’t matter? He could even spend it out in civtown if he wanted. Because he was allowed to leave on errands now, too. Or maybe that was a privilege reserved for true freemen. She didn’t know. She almost didn’t care.
As she reached her post and began the climb up into the tree, Gray pondered the Corps in the abstract. Just what *was *it? And what did it do to people?
The Western Human Defense Corps, as the militia was once more formally called, was a machine at its heart. Its moving parts were made of muscle, and it was lubricated by the sweat of its corpsmen. Its ranks were filled with bonds brought in from the wastes; some of them runaways, like her, and some by purchase. And they were brought together for a single purpose: to keep the enemy at bay, an enemy that didn’t discriminate against any human.
The Corps prided itself on offering its enlistees more than just survival training; it offered dignity, and a chance for you to leave a stronger, smarter person than you were when you arrived. It was like a still, turning mash into shine.
Unfortunately, a lot of mash went into making even a just little shine.
Wesson wasn’t under any delusion that this was a hard life, but he leaned heavily on the mythology of the Corps—General Piece, the Manual, the early victories of the Disruption—while Gray and many others did not. For her, the Corps was a means to an end. In twenty-eight months she’d be packing up her bags and heading out to civtown where she could decide who to work for. That was all the freedom she ever wanted.
As she took a swig of water, Gray’s thoughts turned back to that sentinel again. His apocryphal existence was in diametric opposition to the life of a Corps officer. The sentinel lived and worked alone, something Gray could barely fathom. No rosters, no drills, nobody breathing down his neck telling him when to eat or sleep or shit. Unlike Wesson, whose confidence came from knowing people, the sentinel stood alone.
Strong. Clever.
Handsome.
She found herself sighing wistfully, then laughed. Gray knew better than to romanticize that kind of life. He was probably often hungry and thirsty, and half–nuts from the isolation. If the Anakim were as social as the humans they were modeled after, she guessed that loneliness could eat away at them just the same.
But hunger and thirst was freedom too, wasn’t it? She contrasted the sentinel’s hard, rugged face in the dust with Wesson’s newfound authority, washed and fed. Gray knew which face she preferred.
She knew who was the better kisser, too.
There was a faint throb between her legs and she wiggled a little to release some of the tension with a sigh. Noncommittally, Gray thought about those hands again and their bruising strength. She recalled those lips, that tongue, thought about what it would have been like to be flipped over then and there, with bullets flying over their heads in the dark, to have a neat hole ripped in the seat of her pants and…
Gray’s breathing quickened, heart picking up. Her fingers hovered over her fly, half undone. She was remembering now how small she felt, too, how the pheromone made her feel like he could kill her with a word. But he did no such thing. His word had saved them.
The contrast was bewildering. Intoxicating.
Removed from the moment itself, she could reflect on it from the safety of the now. Relive it in any way she wanted. This was her tiny sliver of freedom, and not a soul would know. She could fantasize about the sentinel. She would fantasize about the sentinel.
Gray undid the rest of the buttons and kicked off her pants, they needed some repair anyways. Then feeling strangely electrified, she slipped her fingers under the hem of her underwear and brushed along her straining bud. Only now did she realize that she was soaking wet.
Take that, Wesson.
* * *
She sat and pulled a long beige thread through one pant leg, pulling a hole shut as the sky above slowly turned to pinks and purples. Long shadows crept across the valley, a few easy kliks away from Fox, and for a long while Gray was almost at ease. The floorboards of her blind radiated warmth even as the sun began to disappear behind the rolling valley wall, its top hairy with scrub taller than a human.
A few crickets picked up their song, and off in the distance Gray spotted a doe and her adolescent faun picking their way through the brush. For a few minutes she watched them, their heads dipping down every few seconds then snapping back up, enormous ears swiveling.
Most other corpsmen hated the color brown—they hated it like they hated the dust and the heat, and her toon was was the butt of most jokes for its color. But the desert had taught Gray that brown could be elegant, even beautiful. As she considered the deer, common but rarely noticed, considered their strong, lean, silent bodies moving through the landscape, there seemed to be no more regal a color on earth than the heathery brown of their fur.
Suddenly, the deer stood at attention, ears pointing to the corpsman’s 3 o’clock. Gray had heard nothing, but flattened herself and trained her ears too. Soon, a single rock tumbled down the hillside nearby and the deer disappeared up the canyon with a decisive rustle of underbrush.
It was probably an animal, but Gray grabbed her gun anyways, foregoing the pair of binos. Blood began beat in her ears. She was hoping that it was something innocuous. A hare, maybe. Or a bird. Hell, she’d even take a cougar over the other available options.
She laid on her belly for a few long minutes, listening with every nerve ending in her body. A moment later and there was another sound: the faint scrape of a twig against something—fabric—again at her 3. Steadying her breath, Gray decided to cup her mouth to throw one of the standard bird calls, but there was no reply. This was not a corpsman.
Judging by the faintness of the sound, Gray assumed human. A lost wastelander maybe, or a brig looking to relieve a lone “corpy” of their gear. It happened, and with surprising regularity. Sentries would be sent out, and their body found later near their post, stripped naked and half-eaten by coyotes. Just as she was going through the rough calculations of her chances given the weapons the attacker was likely to have, another clue appeared in the form of a scent.
Not pheromone, but tobacco smoke.
So, a cocky fucker, then. But the sound of boots in the dirt below the blind drained her of color in an instant.
The only way he’d creep that close was if he knew she was there, and knew she was alone. A dozen scenarios roared through her mind, most of them ending badly. But some of them didn’t. The thick, breathless pause had her preparing for confrontation. Where was he standing? How many seconds did she have? Could she land a successful first shot before this attacker filled the floorboards full of holes?
“I know you’re up there,” said the familiar voice.
It was… him.
His voice was raw granite. Rough and stony, like the arroyos and dusty canyons he stalked in service to the Anakim. In her mind she saw his blue eyes again looking back at her over the long barrel of his rifle, and she let out her captive breath. It was loud enough for him to hear.
Gray stood up on shaky feet and neared the edge of the platform where she could climb down the knotted rope. She didn’t dare look at him until her bare feet met solid ground, after which she raised her eyes, heart pounding. She waited for the pheromone to creep into her nostrils and begin clawing at the back of her mind, but it never did. Maybe she wasn’t close enough?
Her gaze paused at his belly – she was at eye-level with the frayed webbing of his belt – and let that sink in for a moment before following the rest of him upward to his face. His helmet was off, and his kicker lazily hung from a broad shoulder. If it was ever his intention to kill her, then it definitely wasn’t now.
“How did you to come here?” she said quietly, trying to hide the distant unease in her voice. Gray didn’t want to creep any closer to him for a number of reasons.
“Doesn’t take me long to figure out what goes on in my territory,” he said quietly, cooly.
He was so matter–of–fact, and that sent a little shiver down her spine. What else did he know? How long had he been watching her? She took an unconscious step back, fingering the rope as though that were somehow an exit route. He frowned and took a long drag of the tiny cigarette between his fingers. Quarter of an inch disappeared in a bright red cherry before her eyes. Gray realized that it was one of those human-sized sticks that she’d seen him smoking earlier, and she could tell by the tightness of the roll that there was no way he could have done it himself—not with fingers that size.
“You think I’m here to kill you.”
She swallowed, and her rosy thoughts from earlier couldn’t have seemed further away. He was here now, in the flesh. Something she had never expected.
“This is a war. Why would I think otherwise?”
The idea seemed funny to him, and he snorted. “I dunno, you tell me.”
All was still as they stared each other down for a long while, reading body language, doing math, gauging motives. It was so quiet that Gray almost started when he let his boomer drop to the dirt, then the cigarette, before slowly taking a knee. Gray held onto the rope, fearing that she would lose her balance.
“Why are you here?” she whispered, suddenly feeling uncomfortable that he emitted no pheromone. It was almost… wrong.
He chuckled and looked away, and she saw now that there were some strands of silver in his dark hair, catching the early evening light.
“Testing my mettle, I guess. Wanted to see how close to you I could get.” His eyes flicked back to her. “Made it pretty far, you have to admit.”
The giant waited like that for a few more seconds. Either the sentinel was confident that she wasn’t a risk to him, or he was very, very stupid. If this was a common ‘Nak soldier, Gray would have assumed the latter. But this wasn’t a common ‘Nak soldier.
“Will it make you feel better if I answered your question?”
“I don’t remember asking you a question.”
“No, but I can tell you want to. And the answer is yes, I’m suppressing.”
Gray frowned. “Suppressing what? What are you talking about?”
The massive man removed his glove and tossed it to her. Startled, she caught it out of instinct and when she realized what he was trying to do, she held it, eyes hard as she waited for the squeeze.
“Go on, it won’t do anything.”
Trepidly, she did. But all she could smell was the scent of leather, dirt, and… him.
Gray was confounded. “It’s not affecting me.”
He cocked a brow at her. “You want it to?”
Those words sent an intense fluttering through her belly. The little corpsman swallowed and tossed the glove back to him.
“Suppression, huh?”
“I can choose to make you scared,” was his only explanation. “If it suits my needs. And to tell you the truth, corpsman, I have other plans.”
Plans like what? The corpsman swallowed.What was unfolding between them now, in this valley, was not something she could have ever even dreamed up. In fact, she still wasn’t sure if it was really happening. Such encounters never happened. Ever. Or if they did, no one lived to talk about them.
“Why’d you kiss me?”
Her question seemed to catch him off-guard. Not too much, though. He was probably genetically designed to conceal his emotions.
“Never know when you’re going to catch lead,” he said flatly.
Evidently, that’s all Gray needed to hear.
Because frankly, that would have been her answer too. So just for now, until the very first wisp of danger, she decided she would trust him. When she let go of the rope and stepped closer, his hands went to her back to bring her in the rest of the way. It was slower this time, but there was still that spark of need that drove him to kiss her without hesitation.
Even his mouth was big, she dimly noted. Her bare skin grazed the rough fabric of his pants and her fingers instinctively went to his immense shoulders for purchase. His mouth parted to reveal teeth that nipped at her lip and a tongue that wanted in. When she opened for him, he rumbled faintly, exploring wantonly and crushing her to him as though he was starved for contact. Maybe he was.
Eventually Gray broke away to catch her breath. She was panting, and the flutter in her belly had grown into a burning ember.
“What the hell are we doing?” she whispered, sobering up.
He ran his fingers through the rough chop of her chin–length hair and he studied her mouth. His eyes were dark, and it wasn’t because of the creeping dusk.
“To be honest, I have no fucking idea.”
Gray realized that this was the most refreshing thing she’d heard anyone say in a long time. Everyone else she knew seemed to be constantly laboring under the pretense of purpose, of some grand vision for either themselves or the Corps. Everyone knew what they were doing, no one was lost. No one was trying to figure things out.
He seemed to sense her defenses melting away, and so the massive soldier pressed his mouth to hers again. The kiss grew sloppier. His hand moved steadily down to her ass, and he gripped both cheeks with those five big fingers. There were more fingers in her hair, raking her scalp, and for a moment they were all hot breath and flushed skin. When the giant pressed her hips into his, though, she felt something through the fabric—something large and firm, straining against the confines of his pant leg. Gray’s eyes shot open as shegasped into his mouth. The Anak broke and pulled away.
“Fuck,” she hissed, eyes wide as she met his wanton gaze. “You’re… that’s…“
He gave her a little smirk and Gray found herself being guided onto her back in the dirt beside his gun. Gray let him, for some reason—this seemed like the natural progression, and the animal impiety of it electrified her. She listened to the deep, heavy breaths that rushed out of his nostrils. His teeth found the nape of her neck a moment later, and she shivered as the rough gusset at his knee brushed against her calf.
She arched into him, even though he still wore so much. What would Wesson say? The human soldier came back to herself one last time, remembering where and what she was – what he was.
Wesson wouldn’t say anything, and you know it. He’d put you up against a wall and blow your fucking brains out.
Panting, Gray put a hand to the Anak’s chest to stop him.
“I-I don’t think this is a good time,” she said quietly, and was distantly amazed when he didn’t ignore her, even with his need as clear as day. The giant fell back onto his heels.
He nodded with disappointment. “Sorry, I get it. You have your obligations.”
“It’s not that,” she blurted. But she had to pause and search for an answer that didn’t involve Wesson. “I just don’t like doing this in the open. Not with… you know.”
“You realize I’m the scariest thing in these hills, right?”
Gray chuckled weakly. “I meant privacy.”
"You want me to find you later?”
She swallowed hard and wracked her addled brain for a safe answer. Was there a safe answer? “We… have storage further up the canyon, closer to the wellhead.”
The Anak gave a smug look. “Two corpsmen patrol that route, and it takes 30 minutes to complete the circuit. But most of them take their time, sometimes dragging it out to an hour.”
The implication was obvious, and Gray was a little less sure of herself. He knew a lot about Fox already, and they had been here for less than a month.
The human considered the Anak for a long moment, trying to get a bead on him.
Quietly, she said: “You could kill a lot of people if you wanted to.”
“I could.”
But you won’t?
She licked her dry lips. “I’ll have the time after I get back. Saturday night.”
“It’ll be easier after dark,” he said, and a little shiver passed through her at the sheer audacity of his confidence. If other ‘Naks were this sure they could slip behind Corps lines and infiltrate a camp without being seen, then…?
“I’ll be there at 2200.”
He reached out to palm the back of her neck. “2200,” he murmured.
Gray closed the meager distance between them, feeling alive. Her naked leg faintly brushed against the spot on his thigh where she’d felt him before, and was greeted by its shape again, slowly softening. Gray licked her lips when she thought about what it might look like. What it might feel like.
“Why the hell do I trust you,” she said into one of his dirty shoulder straps, her voice its own kind of husky.
“Be careful,” he replied, not giving her what she was looking for. “Trust’ll get a human hurt around here.”
“Is that a warning or a threat?”
“Both.”
With that he stood up again, boomer in hand, and looked down at her. Fuck, he was big. Gray tried to avoid letting her eyes fall on the bulge in his pants, practically right in front of her face, but he saw her steal a glance and chuckled.
Then he put himself back together: helmet on his head, cloth around his neck loosened up to let some of the cool evening air in, rifle slung up on his shoulder, and soon another human-rolled cigarette was in his mouth and he was striking at a lighter from behind a cupped hand. He gave her a three–fingered salute, the one they used in the Corps, and disappeared into the brush as expertly as he came. Gray was left reeling, but at least she finally had another partial answer to the question of how he moved so quietly: he aimed his footfalls for rock instead of gravel, padding like a stalking predator. But that was a small distraction from the enormity of what just transpired. When he was gone, she let out a few deep breaths.
“Holy shit,” Gray whispered to herself, repeating it several times as she stared at the ground where he’d stood. Out of the corner of her eye she spied the half-smoked cigarette that he’d dropped earlier, and pocketed it without thinking.
http:/sizekink.com
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@kisupure said in Petrichor - a novel in "open beta" - [M/f, minigiant, post-apocalyptic dystopia, slavery, military setting]:
The enlisted/officer divide is a staple of military fiction, but what was once rooted in static social classes became more permeable with the rise of “professional” soldiers and recruitment. With the Disruption sending us back to serfdom, however, a battlefield commission is less a promotion than an ennobling.
Corpsmen are still enslaved, as Finch’s lack of good choices demonstrates. Captains leading armed bondsmen aren’t quite overseers or feudal lords, but the 'Naks and harsh environment seem to provide the rest of the discipline necessary to keep the corpsmen loyal. Until now, that is.
Still, Gray suddenly didn’t like how [Wesson] was taking up space.
Not as much space as some do…
animal impiety
Nice.
As far as I can tell, you haven’t disturbed the conventional wisdom that there are no female Anakim, but you have allowed that it might not be possible to engineer an humanoid effectively for combat without giving it a libido. I don’t suppose I have to remind you how non-neutered adult human males have historically behaved in prolonged single-sex environments.
What does fear pheromone smell like to other 'Naks? Pleasant? Noxious? Undetectable? Is suppression against orders?
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@Nyx Thank you SO MUCH Nyx. I was told by someone else on another platform that the way I write is still very “purple”, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that… I guess I like to take a scalpel to my characters’ inner lives and that’s considered egregiously descriptive in the normal lit world. Oh well, I’m lucky that kink readers like that sort of thing! (I’ve started calling it “stylistic overwhelm”.) And hope you enjoy more weirdness coming from characters on both sides of the war here soon.
I don’t think that your prose is purple at all…in fact, your style is one of the things that I like about your stories (besides the very large men, of course
). It flows well and it’s easy to immerse myself in your writing, and I would eagerly read any non-size fiction that you wrote. And honestly, I wish that more writers spent time on their characters’ inner lives. That’s part of the thrill for me as a reader, experiencing a character’s emotions and how they react to both mundane events and life-altering ones.As for Chapter 6, I like how more mysteries were introduced, including the human-sized cigarettes (and whether there are humans living with or working with the Anakim). The fact that the sentinel is touch-starved was surprisingly heartbreaking, and I realized that both he and Gray are sort of outsiders. Gray seems to want to rebel in her own ways, including pocketing the cigarette and agreeing to a rendezvous with the sentinel, and I have to wonder if this behavior will eventually get her into deep trouble.
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@olo Definitely was envisioning a very real, very large military/paramilitary organization that formed to pick up the slack of the failing nation-state, and as things continued to get worse, it descended into a self-contained feudal society. I like the military metaphor a lot (water is wet!) but I like it because unlike a lot of sci fi tropes we have it now. And it’s already just an extreme form of the social stratification we are all forced into living already.
Haven’t decided how it smells yet! For humans, it’s basically an invisible scent, only really detectable by its effects. For the anakim though, it might just be a bit musky.
I don’t suppose I have to remind you how non-neutered adult human males have historically behaved in prolonged single-sex environments
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@nyx @nephilim re: ““purple”” prose, I’ve done some brushing up on the term and I’m reminded now that it’s a very over-used and misunderstood criticism in the amateur writing world lol. (I remember when many fandoms all kind of discovered the term back in the late 90’s and early 00’s and suddenly everyone was either doing it on purpose or clutching their pearls over it lol).
Like, I’ll say this: Ender’s Game is one of my favorite books, but boy did Card do a poor job of conveying Ender’s anguish in a lot of scenes. Neuromancer, as much of a slog that was for me, was WAY better in the emotional detail department. Even Tom fucking Clancy is decent. (Nephilim, I can’t say I’ve read any Stephen King! Maybe I should get on it…)
But thank you Nyx, that’s heartening to hear. I’ve heard from a couple people who want me to change the writing style to “appeal” to a broader audience, and I’m just like… to what end? How broad of an audience is this ever going to get lmao?
http:/sizekink.com
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@kisupure said in Petrichor - a novel in "open beta" - [M/f, minigiant, post-apocalyptic dystopia, slavery, military setting]:
I’ve heard from a couple people who want me to change the writing style to “appeal” to a broader audience
Here?
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@olo NO no, haha. AO3 tbh, though that’s no surprise at all.
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CHAPTER 7
(No Manual excerpt for this chapter yet either. Also, this is essentially a first draft, virgin writing. I’d cannibalized only a couple general dialogue ideas from previous drafts, but this is a version 1.0. It will need work.)
It was five more days up in that tree, climbing down only to relieve herself or grab something she dropped. The only other person she spoke to was the corpsman who came to deliver her water.
By the end, Gray felt like her skin was crawling and she couldn’t wait to get back to camp. A shower, a hot meal, and a bit of shine would do her some good. At 2000 hours she was relieved by a replacement, whoever it was signaling their approach by bird-call.
“Hey-hey, you’re still alive up there!” came a familiar voice. His name was Clark. He was a fifth-year, short but sturdy.
“Just barely,” she grunted back.
The seventh-year threw her pack to Clark’s feet before making her way down the rope.
The young man smiled. “Don’t worry, the smell of a Corps camp in this heat will wake you up.”
She snorted. “Might actually finish me off.”
“You look pretty ripe yourself.”
“Ripe as a peach, thanks.”
While she didn’t know the corpsman well, he was part of Brown Fox too, and thus eligible for the same posts and duties as she and her friends were. He probably would have interacted with Wesson in his new role as acting officer by now. “How’s the captain’s mood been lately?”
Clark knew what she was referring to.
“I heard you two weren’t seeing eye to eye the other night,” he admitted. “I guess that’s why they force the new promos into transferring camps; makes it easier to bark at the boots if you don’t know any of ‘em personally.”
He sighed, pulling out a tinder stick—a cheap cigarette cut with dry grass and shredded paper—to light up. Its harsh smell had long since stopped smelling bad to her, but was nothing compared to the Anak’s rich, earthy tobacco. Clark shrugged.
“You put him in a bad mood for a few days, not gonna lie. But I think he’s had time to cool off. You’re lucky he hasn’t quite got the hang of things yet, or he might’ve given you something worse. Officers learn all sorts of dirty tricks, don’t they?”
That much was true. If Burke had survived the attack, there was a few things she could have done to Kessler for pulling that pin, even without sending him to retraining. She could have erased a year from his service record, forcing him to repeat it; cut off a chunk of his ear; or, more likely, is that she would have sent him on one of the more distant patrol circuits and hoped he just didn’t make it back.
Gray just sighed. “I tell you, serving under a friend fucking sucks, Clark.”
He offered up the stick.
“No thanks, I prefer shine.”
They stood in silence for a minute, looking out over the landscape, all pinks and golds. But it was time to go. She hefted up her gear.
“Well, I guess all I can do is count down the days until this year’s release, when he’ll be replaced by some promo from some other camp who won’t know a damn thing about me.”
Clark nodded, they both knew the way things were. “Can only be one of two things in this shithole,” he muttered around the somestick hanging out of his mouth. “You’re either bound, or free. Still, I’d rather Wesson be tellin’ me what to do instead of some warlord out there in the waste.”
That, she had to admit, was difficult to disagree with.
* * *
When she’d staggered back to Fox, both exhausted and buzzing with restless energy, the first thing she did was grab her punch card and make a beeline for brown toon’s showers.
The wooden structure was freestanding and sheltered by a tarp. There were six stalls per toon tent, each one giving only just enough privacy to wash up, though it wasn’t uncommon to see two (or three) pairs of legs from underneath the partitions, and it wasn’t uncommon to be stuck washing up right next to some of those legs. All you could really do was avoid eye contact. It’s not like you had long in there while the water was running.
It was a relatively simple outfit: a reservoir painted black and baking in the sun all day provided hot water. Every corpsman was assigned a punch card monthly, which allotted them a total of 45 minutes showering time, to spend however they damn well pleased. Some corpsmen preferred to spend ten minutes once a week, but others, like Gray, hated the grime, and preferred short showers as often as possible. The machine that read the punch cards and doled out the water was one of the more complex things that Camp Fox had, but water was so scarce a resource that its strict regulation was worth the hassle.
As she slid the sturdy card into the slot to be read and marked by the machine, Gray thought about the sentinel. She thought about his face, those cutting eyes. She thought about the hot, slick muscle of his tongue.
For the first time, she thought about what something like that might actually do to her.
Gray licked her lips as she stripped and turned on the stream of water.
* * *
It was late by the time she was done, and the breeze felt almost too cold when it hit her wet hair; but cold was a luxurious feeling, and she relished it. Gray had traded an old friday for shine, which she nursed from on top of a metal drum within view of Wesson’s tent. It glowed with a faint light from inside. Eventually, this light was snuffed out, and soon after Wesson emerged, holding the flap open for none other than Finch.
Gray’s eyes narrowed and she took another long sip of the burning, musty, alcohol. The pair paused outside the tent for a moment, not noticing her in the shadows, and she caught the end of a conversation.
“…Friday, alright? 2200, I’ll come get you.”
Finch nodded. “My arm won’t be a problem?”
“Naw, naw. You won’t be playing any games, just sort of… you know.”
There was a thick pause and Gray frowned.
Wesson clapped a hand on Finch’s good arm. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. I don’t want you nervous.”
“Sure thing, ah… sir.”
Gray gulped down the last of the hooch in her cup and slid off the drum. Her frown deepened into a scowl by the time she stormed back to Harrison’s to toss the empty cup into the washing bin with a hollow clank.
Outside, a voice caught her attention. “Hey!” it shouted angrily. “It’s you, that seventh-year brownie!”
She turned to find a pair coming up the path. They were faces she knew, though Gray couldn’t put names to them.
“Yeah?” she said, not sure what insult she’d be defending herself from. “What do you want?”
The one man got right up into her face, and one look at the marks on his collar told her he was a youngyear. “You’re the one that got Kessler in hot, steaming shit, aren’t you?”
She scoffed, and loudly. Didn’t they know anything? They weren’t going to win this.
“Get dusted, he’s the one who pulled that pin. And Burke’s dead, so what does it matter? The reprimand didn’t even make it to his fucking file.”
The young man’s eyes grew deadly serious and Gray’s skin prickled as she instinctively shored up her SA—her situational awareness—just in case she needed to put some distance between them.
“He knew what he saw,” the corpsman said.
Gray swallowed, narrowed her eyes at them both. “So do I. Now be glad I never told Captain Wesson what happened.”
The seventh-year got one last look at the pair as she turned to leave.
“This ain’t over!”
“Yes, it is.” At least, Gray hoped it was. “Now leave me alone, I’ve been in a tree all goddamn week and I’d like to get some sleep.”
* * *
Exercises woke Gray up early the next day. She’d been dreaming about him, those hands, those arms. She was waiting for him up in the dark, narrow canyon, stars wheeling overhead, and there he was. He bent to kiss her. Their passion deepened, and against her thigh was something firm and hot. But when she reached for it, all her fingers touched was metal. Her nostrils were suddenly filled with the faint cloying musk of the pheromone, and consumed with fear, all she could do was stare as he lifted away, capturing her lips in his one more time, before burying a bullet in her chest.
The report of small arms fire wasn’t a particularly regular sound around a Corps camp, and even the most distant pops and bangs were still enough to wake her up. Five years of sentry trained her to sleep light. This was both a blessing and a curse. She wrote off the dream as an early-morning blurring of sleep and waking reality, but her heart was still pounding, and Gray was left wondering why in the hell she felt so alive.
She put her clothes on, rubbed her face down with a cloth, laced up her boots, and headed out to the mess for coffee.
What Gray and all the other corpsmen called coffee might not actually have been coffee, but it’s all any of them knew. It was a dark, burnt, sludgy sort of drink, and it helped you wake up a little. Interestingly, unlike water, a corpsman could have as much coffee as he wanted. Commander Hitch drank so much of it that his teeth were quite yellow. Gray didn’t drink that much of it, she didn’t like the shakes it gave her after a few cups.
Today was her day off, and she knew as much without even being told—it’s what she was due after such a stretch of shifts by writ of the Manual—and it was exactly the thing she needed. After watching the sun come up over the distant mountains, she went to kill a little more time at the toon board before seeing if Finch or Harper was awake. What Wesson was up to was no longer any of her business.
Squinting in the hard morning light, Gray scanned down the pages pinned to the wood, neatly typed in black and white, and saw nothing but “TBD” beside her name.
TBD. What was TBD again?
Gray’s eyes settled on Wesson’s office, knowing he’d have at least one copy of the Manual in there, but she didn’t want to sneak in to look at it. She was supposed to know what the acronym meant.
With a growl, Gray quickly returned to her tent, reaching for a box under her cot where she kept her Manual. When she took it out, looking at it for the first time in a few months, she couldn’t help the sigh. The Manual was more than just a brick of a book three fingers thick, more than the dust collecting on its fragile, cracking cover, it was the law, harsh and unforgiving, that governed her life. And over the years, she had learned to trust that law.
“Alright, appendix eye-vee…”
She flipped to the very back of the book, running her finger along a reference table printed with very small letters. There: TBD.
“To be determined; undecided.”
Gray frowned. Undecided? She stared at the page a moment longer before shoving the book away again and all but kicking the box under her cot. She knew now that this was a coded message: come talk to me. That’s an order.
“For fuck’s sake,” Gray hissed.
* * *
Finch was just sitting up in her cot when Gray came around, peeking her head in. She nodded her good morning to the other waking corpsmen, and turned to her friend.
“Oh, you’re back,” Finch mumbled, yawning. “Easy shift?”
“Uh, sure. Listen, meet me in the mess in five?”
“I haven’t even made it to the latrines yet.”
“Well get in line and I’ll grab you a coffee.”
Finch snorted. “Yes, sir.”
Back in the big mess tent, Gray filled two cups and thought about what she was actually going to say. She wanted to know what happened while she was gone, what happened last night. She found an empty table in the corner and waited, now sipping nervously.
When the redhead finally sat down almost 10 minutes later, Gray started with something inoffensive.
“How’s the arm?”
Finch flexed her fingers and was able to make a loose fist with a wince. “Still ugly. I won’t even try to hold a sider until next week. Harper says I should wait at least a month before I can even try shooting. The recoil is going to hurt like a bitch.”
“That’s more time than they said originally. Wesson pulled through for you after all, then?”
Finch looked at her coffee in an uncharacteristic moment of thought. “We talked and I see where he’s coming from now.” She shrugged with one shoulder. “He found a use for me while I heal and so… I get to stay. That’s about it.”
Gray bought some time by fiddling with her half-empty cup. “Has he said anything about me?”
“He doesn’t see why you won’t let him help you too.”
“But that’s the thing, Finch. I’m not injured. I don’t need his help.”
“To him, it’s just a matter of time.”
“We’re all gonna die someday. Is he trying to protect me from that, too?”
Finch continued looking at her coffee. “He knows stuff now.”
“Like what?”
“He can’t say. But there’s been things explained to him, he says. You just need to trust him.”
Gray rolled her eyes. “I know how this place works. It’s not complicated, and that’s the beauty of it. Corpsmen get hurt out here, and sometimes they die. If you’re lucky, you make your ten years like Wesson did. And I’m happy for him, really. But he…”
She had to stop herself there.
“The point is, I trust the Corps as much as I need to. We’re not fuckin’ Moonies. I don’t see Hitch wearing a crown.”
Finch snorted.
“You know what I think?” Gray continued. “I think he’s mad that I’m not tripping over myself to get back in his cot.”
“Oh come on. Really?”
“Really. Did you see the duty roster?”
“He had me take a look while he was writing it, but…”
“I’m TBD. He’s making this weird on purpose, Finch. Can’t you see what he’s doing?”
“He’s not doing anything. In another couple months I’ll be out on patrols shooting ‘Naks again. He said so himself. You just need to lighten up a little.”
Gray frowned, and after a minute, she decided to switch gears.
“What’s going on Friday?”
It was Finch’s turn to frown.
“Nothing. And how did you know?”
“Word gets around,” Gray muttered.
“It’s cards, OK? That’s it.”
“Just you and Wesson?”
“Basically.”
Finch checked her watch then and stood.
“I gotta head to the med tent for a bit,” she said. “Wesson should be in by now, if you want to talk to him.”
“Guess I’d better.”
They both rose and left, but Gray took a moment outside to let out the breath she’d been holding.
What the fuck happened here while she was away? All it took was a week and Wesson had managed to… to do something to Finch. The fifth-year just lied through her teeth for him. How could she?
Sure, Gray had lied once too. But this was different. It had to be.
Up ahead, behind the brown-gray mountains, not quite majestic but still good in their mountain-ness, a thick tower of clouds gathered. Was it a storm? She wondered if Fox would see any squalls this year, or if the dry spell would last through autumn. Tensions ran high through the summer season as everyone anxiously waited for the catharsis of rain. And you could feel it coming. The sudden rush of wind, the weight in the air. The smell. It’s like rain had a pheromone too: one that calmed the nerves and made everything feel new again.
Off to her left was brown toon’s office. Eyes on her boots, Gray went over to see if the captain was in.
She didn’t have any words planned, but the anger and unease churned. Like the sound of ‘Nak boots on gravel, though, the sight of another officer standing with Wesson had her stop dead in her tracks and think of nothing else but survival.
“Sirs,” Gray mumbled, clasping her hands neatly behind her back.
The officer, one of Black Fox’s support staff, shot her a look and made sure to finish speaking.
“So just remember, form C22 needs two requisitions for filing, D22 needs three, because you go to the head of records for that one. Make sense?”
“Yeah,” Wesson said, nodding curtly. “Yeah, OK, I get it now. Thanks for the help, Devora.”
“You’re in for poker tonight, right?”
“Oh, you can count on it!”
The man from Black Fox circled around to the tent flap. Gray dutifully stepped aside, and nodded at his leave. As soon as the canvas fell back into place, she sucked in a breath. Wesson finally looked at her.
“First off, perfect, thank you. Those guys love it when I look like I have my shit together.” He chuckled and straightened a few stacks of papers. “What d’you need, Gray?”
Fuck, it was like holding in a full bladder.
“If you need to talk, you know where to fucking find me,” she hissed.
“Hey, whoa, what?”
“The board, Wesson. What are you mad about? Last week, or three years ago?”
“Four years ago,” he corrected.
If it weren’t for the conversation, he’d have looked every bit as comfortable behind that desk as any other officer. Even the dark rings under his eyes from the late nights he was spending here were worn like a badge of pride.
“Where’s my schedule?”
“You have a couple options, I just wanted to see which one you’d prefer.”
Gray narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re playing with me. Give me whatever, sir.”
“So my friend doesn’t want my help at all.”
For some reason those words hit her particularly hard.
“I’m a sentry. Give me sentry.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want something easier?” Wesson thumbed through some papers on the desk, possibly for effect. “There’s laundry this week, a patrol circuit…”
What was he doing? His words were plain, but they were slippery, muddy, hiding things. Is this how he talked to Finch for a whole week? He made this seem so strangely urgent, like she was running out of time.
Running out of time to get used to his new power over her life.
“This is your last chance, Gray.” Wesson rose from the desk and put his hands down on it. “Stay close to me and you’ll make it. And I can’t keep arguing with you like this… someone’s going to find out and then they’ll expect me to give you the lash for it.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You have no idea how hard this has been for me, G. They’ve been putting me through my paces so I’d have to prove myself with extra work, and now they expect me to host the visiting wastelanders this weekend. They’re an important cartel and it’s my job to impress them.”
Gray’s heart sank as she put 1-and-1 together. And her face hardened.
“Whatever sob story you told to Finch, won’t work on me.”
“Alright, fine. You came in here to get your schedule. Here you go, how does another six days of solitary at blind 14 sound?”
Blind 14 was… to the northeast, on a rocky hill. Blazing hot in the late afternoon.
She clenched her jaw as she spoke. “Great.”
“Yeah? Alright, you can have it next week too.”
“Perfect. Am I dismissed, sir?”
“I still need to debrief you.” The young captain reached into a drawer for a form. He filled it out.
“Did you, at any time during your shift, leave your post.”
“No, sir.”
“Did you, at any time during your shift, see, hear, or otherwise notice any suspicious activity in your vicinity?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you interact with any civilian human during your shift?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you fire any shots?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you willingly submit your weapon to a bullet count?”
“Yes, sir.”
He scribbled down one final note at the end of the page, and tucked it away again.
“That’ll be all, corpsman,” Wesson said. “Kim will be inspecting your weapon at the armory.”
Gray drew her lips into a fine line; if you hadn’t fired a weapon, the question was a formality. She’d never been subjected to one otherwise.
“Enjoy the rest of your Saturday,” he said cooly. Then, reaching into a drawer, produced a white slip stamped with blue. “Have a drink on me.”
Gray snatched the friday out of his hand, crumpling it up into her fist and said nothing more as she left. Outside, she reeled, hands trembling.
What just happened?
Who was that man behind the desk? He looked like Wesson, sounded like Wesson; it seemed like an impostor wearing his skin. Or maybe she had it all backwards. Maybe this was the real Wesson, and the corpsman she’d come to know for the past seven years—the corpsman she’d almost fallen in love with, laid herself bare for—had been the lie.
But all of that needed to be stowed, because if nothing else, Wesson had just done her an immense favor: he’d reminded her that it was Saturday.
http:/sizekink.com
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@kisupure said in Petrichor - a novel in "open beta" - [M/f, minigiant, post-apocalyptic dystopia, slavery, military setting]:
What was he doing? His words were plain, but they were slippery, muddy, hiding things. Is this how he talked to Finch for a whole week? He made this seem so strangely urgent, like she was running out of time.
Like the pheromone, she can detect the foreboding but she cannot see the cause.
