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Fictember Day 17: Breakaway

Prompt: Weal and Woe Character: Finch Setting: Changeling, the Lost Warnings: Violence

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Nothing in life came free.

That was a lesson which Finch learned extremely early in life. Even the wealthy, beautiful, and privileged had to pay the piper eventually. Sometimes that price came in the form of one's dignity. Other times, health.

For Finch, the price of living seemed to be a complete lack of belonging anywhere.

Her parents hardly seemed to know she existed. Finch had grown up as a latchkey kid of the 90's. With no siblings to watch over, and no supervision most days, Finch had grown up with the company of a fuzzy television picture, a half-broken bicycle, and a list of performed dares about a mile long.

Even on the weekends, the girl's parents had a single rule: go outside and play, and don't come inside until sundown. Neither of them cared about how their child was doing in school, too distracted and exhausted to ask. Honestly, when the time came around that Finch decided school just wasn't doing it anymore, she wasn't sure that her parents even noticed that she'd dropped out.

They probably didn't know she'd gone missing in the Hedge for a decade, either.

Lest anyone be mistaken, life in the Hedge hadn't been all freedom and roses, either. There had been roses, but only when it amused Lord Rhapsody to have Finch pull them up bare-handed. Finch might have resented her parents' lack of attention, but under the true fae's scrutiny she'd rather go back to that sad neglect.

It was better than the pain, day in and day out. Sometimes it came from picking up broken glasses after one of Lord Rhapsody's parties. Other nights, the pain came from acting as pyrotechnics for one of his shows. Finch remembered that agony all too well, her body bursting into sparks again and again only to reform and come apart in showers of sparkling agony.

She was shocked she could even feel pain anymore. Days blended into nights, blended into weeks, blended into months and years of the same thing. The price for being allowed to exist was raw, brutal pain.

All Finch had ever wanted was for someone to truly see her.

Now, all she wanted was to vanish.

At least she'd never had to kill her sense of hope.

The day she heard of some commotion coming from one of the other true fae's amusements, she made her move. A window exploded outward, flame roaring and dancing as Finch landed outside. She came up sprinting, the only thought in her head being to run. She came upon others, the escapees responsible for the commotion.

Teeth flashed white in a feral grin as she joined them, tossing searing flames into the group's wake in case of any stragglers after them. In return, they had fought at her side.

The price for loyalty was loyalty in turn. For once, an equal exchange.

#fictember #my writing #ritz writing #Maxine Finch #{changeling}#tabletop nonsense #better late than never

Fictember Day 14: Miles to Go

Prompt: Free Write Character: Finch, the rest of the Motley Setting: Changeling the Lost tabletop Warnings: None

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FInch had had just about enough of migraines.

The blazing, white-hot pain of it overtook her at the most inconvenient times of the day, visions assaulting her right in the middle of dealing with customers (who were a migraine in their own right most days). Several times as her shift wore on, Finch's vision would blur and a horrible pressure would sit at the base of her neck.

Finch concluded this must be a side effect of those damnable visions.

Then again, the Motley had been moving nonstop for a few days now. First there was the affair with Aiden's dream bastion, then Goldie had gotten herself bitten by some fangy bitch at the mall while searching for Caspian. Getting Caspian out of the Hedge had been another exhausting ordeal, and the struggle to get out had taken every last ounce of strength.

The fiery changeling wanted nothing more than a dark, quiet room...and maybe a nice, greasy cheeseburger. Alas, time and crappy work schedules waited for no one. Though she was running on fumes by the time the Motley retrieved memories from Caspian's own dreamscape, Finch couldn't go collapse just yet. Three hours of the work shift remained, and she only had ten minutes left on her lunch break.

A pathetic whine escaped as Finch laid her forehead flat against the nearest wall. Thank gods for the breakroom, or else she'd be doing this out in the food court somewhere and drawing curious looks from passers-by. If anyone made a comment about how strung out she looked, Finch might just set them on fire.

Hells, at this rate she might end up snapping at her Motley-mates. Shutting her eyes against the gripping pain in her skull, Finch took a few deep breaths and counted backwards from ten. What she needed was to find that Carter person. Even if he couldn't help prevent the visions from happening, maybe he could at least point her in the right direction or tell her where they were coming from.

Making up an excuse to visit the Autumn courtiers was going to be difficult, though. There were still too many loose threads to go yanking on another one just yet.

A voice drifted to Finch's ears. Grating, bitchy, and far too loud. Someone was asking for the manager. Well, Finch was no manager but she was going to have to manage this. Along with a thousand other things, it seemed.

She didn't get paid enough for this shit.

#fictember #my writing #ritz writing #Maxine Finch #tabletop nonsense

Fictember Day 8: Lost One

Prompt: Meander Character: Maxine Finch Setting: Changeling Tabletop setting Warnings: None

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When the Motley had initially escaped the Hedge, Finch had been mentally prepared for something altogether more grand. Perhaps the exhilaration of finally tearing themselves away from their unwanted life as a true fae's pet overrode their greater sense of reason. Some subconscious part of their mind seemed convinced that things would simply click neatly back into place and life would immediately go back to normal.

Reality was not so kind.

Time flowed differently in Arcadia. Finch always knew that, but to know they'd been away for an entire decade was...well, just a tiny bit world shattering.

Ten years was a long time for the average person. Time enough to have gone through not one but two presidential elections, seven iterations of cell phone models, and twenty-one solar eclipses.

Since Finch had been stolen into the Hedge, the local Dunkin Donuts had been replaced with a pretentious "culinary sensory experience" called Spoodles (wasn't that also some breed of dog?). It had gone under within the span of three years only to be replaced by a newer, far inferior Dunkin Donuts that didn't even carry the Boston Creme donuts anymore. Hideous vehicles marked the streets here and there, looking like a badly rendered video game vehicle, something taken straight out of the Twisted Metal series (of which there were apparently six new games since the last time Finch had been able to check). Everything seemed overall more...bland now. Beige and uniform and boring, and Finch sometimes wondered if they hadn't gone from the Hedge to Hell.

It was hard to know what to do.

Where did they go from here? What did they still have to learn in order to get properly caught up? Years in the Hedge had screwed up their sense of time, but had also altered their body and mind. With hair like fire and a touch which could heat metal, Finch couldn't go back to what they'd once known. Ten years was long enough for some of their old acquaintances to have passed away, or gotten married, or had babies or moved. Picking up where they'd left off? That was never an option in the first place.

Their only real comfort was knowing they weren't alone. Their Motley-mates shared in the struggle, each of them seeing this strange new world through eyes accustomed to the Hedge's horrors, and the horrors of the things their Keepers had made them do.

Until Finch could figure out a road to start down, all they could really do was wander and ruminate and take in the sights.

With any luck, it wouldn't take another decade to figure things out.

#fictember #my writing #ritz writing #Maxine Finch #{Out of the Hedge}