Okay, fine, other!Anon already brought Sleipnir into things, so I might as well go where I was thinking about going. I am warning you I am bad with longfic and this wants to go there, though.
(keeping your title, because I couldn't possibly come up with a better one.)
(Also - yeah. This is going to need so many warnings.) ****
Hell's bells, can't a guy hang out with a buddy and bi-- complain about the women in his life anymore?
I was visiting Fix, in Summer. There was nothing major going on, but sometimes a person just needs a friend, you know? A friend who's nothing more than a friend, and isn't involved, and is just going to listen, and not try to, well, fix it for you. The Summer Knight is good at that.
So we were having a perfectly normal, perfectly friendly conversation between two guys. Though it wasn't just two guys; the Summer Court really likes its grottoes and groves, which aren't exactly what you'd call private, so a few other fae had wandered by. I guess I'm a tourist attraction or something. After awhile there were a couple of pixies of various sizes watching us with starstruck attention, some sort of dwarf-like creature in leather and furs who was occasionally grunting in assent while eating what looked like a turkey leg, and a slim woman with dark silver hair and a slight Welsh accent, in a blue denim smock, perched genteely on a tuffet and glaring at me.
Fix had introduced her in passing when she sat down, but I wasn't really paying attention. I figured her for some sort of minor Sidhe lady trying to curry favor with Summer. She wasn't trying very hard to curry favor with me, though. I was in the middle of a rant about my fairy godmother and she was looking like she wanted to burn a hole in me with her eyes.
I was pretty sure she couldn't though, so I ignored her. Fix was looking back and forth between us, nervously. "Ah, Harry--" he said finally, interrupting me.
"What?" I said. "Am I wrong about any of this? Please correct me."
Don't, Fix mouthed, but I'm not sure if it was directed at me or the Lady. Either way, neither of us listened.
"If the little Knight doesn't want to correct you, perhaps I can," the Lady said. "But first let me make sure I heard you correctly: you just described your godmother, who has never done anything but good for you, who was your mother's dearest and most devoted friend, who has sacrificed and sacrificed for you, who has risked her position and power for you, who has forgiven you repeatedly when you have acted most dishonorably and rudely toward her - you have described her as, and I quote, 'a bitch in heat.'"
She suddenly looked a lot more dangerous than a minor Sidhe. And she sounded like she might be a friend of Lea's. If I had any sense, I'd've backed down. But if you're reading this, you already know better than that. I leaned back on my hands, deliberately provocative. "Yeah," I drawled, pretending to think it over. "That sounds about right."
"And in the course of the last fifteen minutes, you have also used that very word to describe," she held up one slender white hand, ticking them off on her fingers, "Your best friend's wife, who offers you free guestright in your home despite the death you have brought there; the policewoman who helps you and supports you and would sacrifice even her own honor for you; the Queen of Air and Darkness, who treats with you almost an equal, out of nothing but fondness; the Lady of the White Court, who allies with you against her own interests; and, to top it off, your own half-brother."
What? I'd been having a bad month, okay? There's a reason I'd needed to go vent to Fix. "So I don't have the world's largest vocabulary. Want to sign me up for another correspondence course or something?"
"Oh, no," she said, consideringly, as she stood up, her hand still folded into a fist. "Correspondence courses are never truly effective, are they, young wizard? I think perhaps what you need is a more personal lesson."
At this point, even I was starting to think maybe I should have been a little bit more diplomatic. I almost raised my shield bracelet against her - I do know fairies well enough to know that "teach you a lesson" is always a bad sign - but I thought just in time that this was Fix's territory, and starting a magical fight would probably not be smart. I looked at him imploringly; he was already standing, moving between me and the lady.
"Ari, don't," he said, almost violently.
She narrowed his eyes at him. "Is he here under protection or invitation?"
Fix opened his mouth, and closed it. I was realizing right alongside him that no, technically, I wasn't. I was here under an open invitation and the favor of the Summer Lady, and I trusted her and Fix not to intentionally get me into any trouble, but magically and legally, that meant nothing. Having Summer fae do your dishes and wash your laundry and clean your dog's messes makes you get kind of complacent about that sort of thing.
"He's here as a friend of mine. And of the Summer Court," Fix said finally.
"Luckily," Ari said, "I do not owe allegiance to the Summer Court. Do you wish to challenge my right to redress an insult?"
Fix shook his head, dumbly. It belatedly dawned on me that it might have been Fix trying to curry favor, not Ari.
I raised my hands defensively, anyway. "Fix!" I protested.
"I'm sorry, Harry," he said, sounding miserable. "I can't stop her, she's Tuatha. But she can't do anything permanent to you. And I'll-- I'll talk to Lily, we'll see what we can do--"
"Move aside, Knight," Ari said, raising her hands, and I felt the burst of magic. It felt almost like Summer magic, but subtly different. Deeper, darker, colder. Not winter magic, either. And then the spell hit me. I was suddenly looking at them from a different perspective - lower down, wider, with everything oddly muted and flattened. And I felt really, really strange, like I simultaneously wanted to leap out of my skin and curl up in it, like there was something I really, really needed to be doing, right now, no matter what. I resisted the temptation to go running wildly off into Summer in search of it, and instead I looked up at Fix, whimpering pitifully.
"Harry, I can't." said Fix, still sounding like he was the one who'd been hit with some sort of major tranformation spell. He sniffed, blinked, and took two steps back from me, then he looked at Ari. I could smell the anger coming off of him. "Now what do you plan to do with him, Your Highness? Leave him here for me to deal with?"
Ari shook her head, looking delighted with herself. "Of course not, Knight. That wouldn't be fair, would it? No, I think I'll send him -- home. Perhaps he will find a way to be more-- comfortable there."
I feel sorry about what I'm doing to Mouse here, since it wasn't his fault Harry's a misogynistic asshole. But then, he was awfully rude to Lea too. :P
(also, I should note that this is set sometime after Dead Beat, and rapidly goes AU...)
***
I was the farthest possible thing from comfortable, even as I felt my balance twist into sudden vertigo and found myself landing on the floor of my own apartment, all four paws braced against the landing. I had four paws. Shit. I was beginning to get an inkling of what Ari, whoever she actually was, thought was a properly ironic lesson, and I didn't like it at all. All those years of avoiding Lea, and and I run into the same thing at random on a friendly visit.
I smelled Mouse, waking up from where he'd been curled up on my bed. I figured it was Mouse, anyway. All my brain was telling me was male dog! male dog! male dog! slightly hysterically. He came galumphing into the main room, barking - which was weird on several levels, because Mouse almost never barks, and this was an odd sort of half-bark, half-howl, half-whimper.
He was talking, too. Now, Mouse is a very smart dog, and he's a little bit magic himself, but I can't usually hear him talk. Now I could hear him saying, "Who is it? How did you get in? Did Harry send you?" and then he got through the door, saw me, and stopped so fast that he skidded several inches backward on an old Turkish rug. "Oh god, Harry?" he said.
I turned around so I was facing away from him and flipped my tail up, all friendly-like. I'm not sure why I did it; I guess it was the body's instincts taking over.
"No, no, no," Mouse said, crouching down and covering his eyes with a paw. "Don't do that, Harry, I can't -- what happened?"
I turned around and cocked my head at him. "Pissed off somebody in Faerie," I tried to say, but it came out as a sort of muffled growl. If he could talk, why couldn't I? I started walking closer to him, since he didn't seem inclined to move from where he was. Something was up with him, too. Had that fairy bi-- woman done something to him too? Anyway, as fucked up as the situation was, it would be nice to be able to relate to him on his own level. Curl up together, maybe. He was so big and strong.
"No, don't. STOP, Harry," Mouse said. There was something about the way he said it that made me obey without thinking. I sat. "Okay, okay, think, Mouse," he said out loud. He sounded - young. When a dog was the size of a small dinosaur it was sometimes hard to remember that in dog time, he was barely out of his teen years. "Harry, you need to go down to your lab, and get in your summoning circle, and stay there. I have enough magic in me that if you raise the circle it should be able to keep me out, so as long as you don't--" he gulped, and a shiver ran through him, all those gorgeous muscles under his fur rippling. "Harry, go. NOW."
I didn't want to go. I wanted to lean up against Mouse and feel all that silky fur against my fur. And the part of me that thought there was something I needed to be doing was shouting at me that Mouse was the answer. But at the same time, something in the dog-instincts said that Mouse was to be obeyed without question. And my better wisdom - the part of me that I don't listen to nearly enough - said that Mouse had never steered me wrong, and if he thought I needed to be in the summoning circle, I should probably listen.
I dragged myself over to the trapdoor that led to the sub-basement, reluctantly, but I went. I tried to open the latch that held the trapdoor down, but my paws were too big and clumsy, and I wasn't used to them. I pawed at it, frustrated, then tried with my nose. Frustrated was a good word. I was very frustrated right then. And Mouse was whimpering softly to himself from just a few yards away.
I heard a thump behind me, and crouched down, defensively, as I looked toward it. Mister had leapt down from somewhere, probably the top of one of my bookselves. He stalked over to me, and I bared my teeth at him, trying to hold back a snarl. He just looked at me superciliously, flipped open the latch with one dexterous paw, shouldered his way under the door, and slipped down the ladder. Oh. I hadn't known Mister could do that.
I had the presence of mind to catch the door before it shut all the way, and push at it with my head. I must have been a fairly large dog, then - not Mouse's size, maybe, but close, because the trapdoor easily flipped the rest of the way open once I had the leverage for it. I trotted over to the summoning circle and sat down in it. Now that there was most of a floor between me and Mouse, I must have been thinking a little more clearly, because I managed to push out the necessary will to raise the power of the circle. It was harder than it should have been, though. I didn't seem to have access to my wizard's power in this form, and that weird urgency was still buzzing under skin, making it hard to concentrate. But anybody can raise a circle if they know what they're doing, it's the most basic magic of all, and with my dog senses I could feel the protection go up around me.
Once that was done, I gave myself a few seconds to take stock. My lab was my lab, same as ever, and I was starting to get used to the dog eyesight. It was fascinating to the dog's sense of smell, though. I could pick out dozens of different highly aromatic potions ingredients, and a fizzy, acrid smell that must have been magic itself, and a slight tinge of lingering sulfur under that. I also smelled cat. Mister had climbed up onto the shelf with the romance novels and was batting at Bob's skull. I tried to tell him to stop that, but it came out as a rumbling growl again. Mister hissed at me and went back to bothering the skull, but Bob didn't seem to be in the mood to wake up.
I also smelled male dog. It was all over the apartment, marking it as Mouse's territory alongside Mister's marks. There was something about that scent which made it impossible for me to ignore, and it got even stronger as Mouse carefully walked down the ladder after me. I whined at him and stood up, wagging my tail.
"Stay in the circle, Harry," he told me through gritted teeth, and I sat back down again. I could tell that these obey-the-Alpha dog instincts were going to get annoying, fast. On the other hand, it's not like I'd been very good at saying 'no' to Mouse before, either.
He trotted carefully up to the circle and tried to put one paw across it, then sighed when it blocked him out, and moved as far away from me as he could and stay in the lab. He got up on his hind legs, leaning against one of my shelves of potions ingredients, and used one paw to knock a jar over, so that it spilled on him.
It was about a liter of garlic powder, that I'd gotten ready for working on anti-Black Court stuff, and it landed all over him, covering him in a dust of strongly-smelling power. He sneezed, hard. I sneezed, too, and even Mister gave a fastidious little snit. It stank, to a dog's senses. It covered up nearly all the other scents in the room, the potion supplies, the sulfur, cat, and even the male-dog smell. Well, most of the male-dog smell. My nose started stuffing up a little.
Mouse shook himself, throwing up another cloud of dust, and said, "Okay, that's taken care of. What next?"
Mister hissed at him, and he lumbered over, under Bob's shelf. "Good idea, Mister. He won't wake up?"
Mister gave him a look that communicated an infinity of scorn at anyone who would have to ask such an obvious question, then jumped down from the shelf to land beside Mouse.
Mouse bumped him with a shoulder, friendly-like, and said, "Fine, then." He peeled back his lips and growled, a long, low, rolling growl, almost subsonic, that I'd never heard before. Possibly I'd never been able to hear it before.
In respone Bob's eyes flickered and then came on. "Mouse, I told you," he said testily, "Stop doing that, it feels like--" and then stopped, taking in the situation. "Harry?" he said, wonderingly. "Oh shit."
Mouse, Mouse, Mouse. How are you so awesome and badass!?
Mister doesn't talk? Or is he just not deigning to talk to the canids?
I wonder what sort of lasting repercussions (other than the prompted) that Harry's going to have to put up with after this, in terms of senses and affinities...
"Harry," Bob said, "And I want you to know that I say this in the spirit of pure observation, with no pejorative meaning intended, but, you appear to be a bitch in heat."
Oh. I sank back on my haunches as several things slotted in to place. That weird urgent unsettled feeling that had been hanging over me since the transformation turned out to be, filtered through the wrong species and apparently also the wrong gender, just that I was horny as hell. And as soon as I realized it, it got a lot harder to ignore. It felt like the White Court mojo that makes you think about nothing but sex, now, need, but without the undercurrents of wrongness and artificiality that you get from a succubus. This was coming from inside me, and it was all-natural. Female dogs, it turned out, got the pure stream of what the White Court was just trying to mimic.
I whined, high in my throat. I couldn't help myself. This may have been the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to me, and believe me, there are a lot of candidates on that list. But I still wanted, and even under the strong scent of garlic, I could feel Mouse's pheromones calling to me.
"Can't he talk?" Bob asked brightly.
Of course I can't, I'm a dog, I tried to say, but it came out as "Grow ruffra ra gra rrarr ra growf," or something like that.
Mister managed to convey with nothing but a twist of his head and a flick of his tail that he was shocked someone as fundamentally impaired as me had even managed to walk, much less talk.
"He hasn't yet," Mouse said, tilting his head, worried. "I thought it might be part of whatever spell is on him."
"Hmm. No, I don't think that's it," Bob said. "Harry, you're trying to talk with your mouth, but your throat isn't built for talking any more. You're thinking about it too much. Try just saying something without thinking about it. You should be able to communicate just like Mouse is."
Have you ever tried to do something without thinking about it while thinking about not thinking about it? It's even harder than it sounds. But not thinking about things is actually a surprisingly useful skill for a wizard, so with just a little bit of mental contortionism, I managed it, sinking myself into the dog's senses just enough to manage to say, "This sucks, Bob," without my tongue or my teeth trying to get in the way.
"Oh, Stars and Stones, thank you," Mouse said, sounding almost as relieved as I was.
"Not very likely, Harry," Bob said gleefully. "While animals can get up to an amazing variety of positions, oral sex isn't a usual part of canine--"
"Bob," I said, growling, "Shut up."
"What happened, Harry?" Mouse asked.
I gave them the short version of what had happened on my visit to Fix - the strange possibly-not-Sidhe woman, the abortive argument, Fix's protestations, the spell. Halfway through Mister started purring smugly, which I think was his version of laughing at me.
When I finished, Mouse rubbed his paw along his muzzle again, then sent another cloud of garlic dust up. We needed the booster; I was starting to get used to the garlic, and I'd almost gotten distracted from my storytelling a few times. Mouse has very deep and sensitive eyes. I started trying to remember where my bottle of peppermint extract was, and if it was somewhere that a very clever dog and cat could retrieve it from, if the garlic stopped working entirely. I wasn't sure I'd have the willpower to stay in the circle.
And I was fairly sure Mouse wouldn't have the willpower to stay away if I left it: he was lying alongside the copper ring, the hair of his belly pressed right against the ward, as close as he could get. "Harry, why do these things happen to you?" he asked plaintively.
Bob was bouncing the skull so hard I was afraid he'd fall off his shelf, so I gave him permission to talk again.
"Harry, you're an idiot sometimes," he said solemnly.
"Thanks," I told him. "I hadn't realized. Do you have anything helpful to add, or are you just going to mock me some more?"
"Well, as for this Ari woman. It would be helpful if you remembered anything about her appearance that didn't involve her relative attractiveness, but have you ever read the Four Branches of the Mabinogi?" he asked me.
"Yeah, but it's been awhile," I told him. Justin had made us study at least a little about most world mythologies, trying to give us the basics, I eventually realized, without telling anything we could use to be dangerous. I'd kept it up, but I'd never seen a reason to go back to the Welsh. I racked my brain, trying to figure out what Ari might have to do with it. Ari-- Ari -- "Arianrhod?" I said finally, incredulous. "You think that was actually Arianrhod?" I desperately racked my brains for everything I knew about Arianrhod. She didn't deal with mortals much anymore, that I'd heard of. Welsh goddess, daughter of Dôn, sister of Gwydion. "Oh fuck," I said. "Gwydion and Gilfaethwy."
"I think so, Harry," Bob said, nodding the skull a little bit.
"I am so screwed," I said. "Literally."
"Unless we figure out something really creative, then yes, probably."
"I don't know the Mabinogi," Mouse said. "Who's Arianrhod?"
"She's a Celtic goddess," Bob said. "Handles the moon, sorcery, motherhood, and running water. Think Hecate, only prettier and slightly more vindictive."
"You pissed off a Goddess, Harry?" Mouse asked. Even Mister looked slightly impressed.
I hunkered down into myself, embarrassed. "I thought the Celtic pantheon were pretty much retired. Don't hear much about them these days, except Gwydion and Govannon among the neopagan types. And Brigit, sometimes, but she's mostly Christian these days."
"They deal more with the Sidhe folk than with humans. Actually the Fae you've been dealing with are descended from them - sort of. When their religion faded, some of their people wanted to stay closer to the mortal world, so they settled in the faerie lands, and gave up a lot of their power along the way. They're the people who became the Aes Sidhe or the Daoine Sidhe or the Daoine Maithe - the fairy folk. Mostly Winter Court. Maeve and Mab and Lea are right out of that lot. But real gods and goddesses? The Children of Danu, the Tuatha de Danaan? They're every bit as powerful as they ever were. They tend to keep an eye on the Sidhe, though. Act protective when they feel like it, just kibitz when they don't, which is more often."
"Like the Calaquendi and the Moriquendi," I said.
"Yeah, sure, if you insist on putting everything in terms of Tolkien, Harry. Or you could just say that Arianrhod and her brothers are still capable of scaring the shit out of Mab."
"So what did Arianrhod do to Harry?"
I met Bob's eyes, and then looked away. "The most well-preserved story about Arianrhod and her brothers," I said, "well, it's kind of a long and complicated story. But when their Uncle Math decided that Gwydion and Gilfaethwy needed to be punished for something, he turned them into a succession of male and female animals, and left them stuck that way until they'd, um, reproduced. I think it was supposed to humiliate them. And, um, maybe teach them a little bit of compassion for women?"
"Oh," Mouse said, rolling over. "So you were being your usual self, and Arianrhod decided to try out the old family curse on you."
I lashed my tail at him. "Yes, but Gwydion and Gilfaethwy deserved it," I snarled.
Mouse gave me a far-too-knowing look. "So if we know what the spell is, and who cast it, how do we get it off him?"
"We don't," Bob said. I glared at him. "No, seriously, Harry, we don't. I can't do much without someone to be my hands, Mouse and Mister are smart but they're not wizards, and if I guess right, you can only manage the most basic of magic. Arianrhod's used to dealing with sorcerers, she'd be an idiot if she left you access to your powers."
He was right, but I didn't want to admit it. My lips curled up. "So we get help."
"Who? She's a goddess, Harry. No mortal spellslinger is going to be able to dent it. And the Faerie Courts wouldn't be able to do anything with it, even if they were willing to try. You'd have to get someone else who's capable of throwing around divine power, someone you can reach without any magic of your own, and who do we know in Chicago who has those kinds of connections?"
I'm pretty sure Bob meant it as a rhetorical question, but the minute he said it, we all knew the answer. Nobody said it, but Mister managed do to a spot-on impression of a small, green-eyed, very smug tiger.
"You mean Michael, right? He can use his Warrior of God thing to help me out?"
"Mmm. Maybe," Bob said. "But the Christian God's never really been in to that sort of thing. Actually the only other European pantheon that has a history of transforming men into female animals is the Norse."
And I didn't know for sure, no, but I had an acquaintance in Chicago with a history of gathering power to himself. And a very muscular, very Nordic bodyguard-slash-consultant who tended to move around in a suspicious cloud of Wagner.
I am so blown away. When I prompted this (er, OP. hi!) I'd totally been whaaaat? and laughing at my mis-brain and thinking it was pure silliness. But you are rocking the house, and I'm swooning. Lady Gregory was probably my most-read author when I was 8. I've read beyond her translations, of course, but. Yeah. Gold stars, all around.
Oh my. I'd put off reading this fic because the idea of the prompt rather scared me off, but I am SO GLAD I got over myself and read this, because it is FANTASTIC and also utterly hysterical.
Also I cannot get over the fact that there's actual mythological precedent. Somehow I always manage to forget JUST HOW CRACKY mythology can be.
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timeasmymeasure
Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (1/?)
Date: 2011-02-09 07:25 pm (UTC)(keeping your title, because I couldn't possibly come up with a better one.)
(Also - yeah. This is going to need so many warnings.)
****
Hell's bells, can't a guy hang out with a buddy and bi-- complain about the women in his life anymore?
I was visiting Fix, in Summer. There was nothing major going on, but sometimes a person just needs a friend, you know? A friend who's nothing more than a friend, and isn't involved, and is just going to listen, and not try to, well, fix it for you. The Summer Knight is good at that.
So we were having a perfectly normal, perfectly friendly conversation between two guys. Though it wasn't just two guys; the Summer Court really likes its grottoes and groves, which aren't exactly what you'd call private, so a few other fae had wandered by. I guess I'm a tourist attraction or something. After awhile there were a couple of pixies of various sizes watching us with starstruck attention, some sort of dwarf-like creature in leather and furs who was occasionally grunting in assent while eating what looked like a turkey leg, and a slim woman with dark silver hair and a slight Welsh accent, in a blue denim smock, perched genteely on a tuffet and glaring at me.
Fix had introduced her in passing when she sat down, but I wasn't really paying attention. I figured her for some sort of minor Sidhe lady trying to curry favor with Summer. She wasn't trying very hard to curry favor with me, though. I was in the middle of a rant about my fairy godmother and she was looking like she wanted to burn a hole in me with her eyes.
I was pretty sure she couldn't though, so I ignored her. Fix was looking back and forth between us, nervously. "Ah, Harry--" he said finally, interrupting me.
"What?" I said. "Am I wrong about any of this? Please correct me."
Don't, Fix mouthed, but I'm not sure if it was directed at me or the Lady. Either way, neither of us listened.
"If the little Knight doesn't want to correct you, perhaps I can," the Lady said. "But first let me make sure I heard you correctly: you just described your godmother, who has never done anything but good for you, who was your mother's dearest and most devoted friend, who has sacrificed and sacrificed for you, who has risked her position and power for you, who has forgiven you repeatedly when you have acted most dishonorably and rudely toward her - you have described her as, and I quote, 'a bitch in heat.'"
She suddenly looked a lot more dangerous than a minor Sidhe. And she sounded like she might be a friend of Lea's. If I had any sense, I'd've backed down. But if you're reading this, you already know better than that. I leaned back on my hands, deliberately provocative. "Yeah," I drawled, pretending to think it over. "That sounds about right."
"And in the course of the last fifteen minutes, you have also used that very word to describe," she held up one slender white hand, ticking them off on her fingers, "Your best friend's wife, who offers you free guestright in your home despite the death you have brought there; the policewoman who helps you and supports you and would sacrifice even her own honor for you; the Queen of Air and Darkness, who treats with you almost an equal, out of nothing but fondness; the Lady of the White Court, who allies with you against her own interests; and, to top it off, your own half-brother."
What? I'd been having a bad month, okay? There's a reason I'd needed to go vent to Fix. "So I don't have the world's largest vocabulary. Want to sign me up for another correspondence course or something?"
"Oh, no," she said, consideringly, as she stood up, her hand still folded into a fist. "Correspondence courses are never truly effective, are they, young wizard? I think perhaps what you need is a more personal lesson."
At this point, even I was starting to think maybe I should have been a little bit more diplomatic. I almost raised my shield bracelet against her - I do know fairies well enough to know that "teach you a lesson" is always a bad sign - but I thought just in time that this was Fix's territory, and starting a magical fight would probably not be smart. I looked at him imploringly; he was already standing, moving between me and the lady.
"Ari, don't," he said, almost violently.
She narrowed his eyes at him. "Is he here under protection or invitation?"
Fix opened his mouth, and closed it. I was realizing right alongside him that no, technically, I wasn't. I was here under an open invitation and the favor of the Summer Lady, and I trusted her and Fix not to intentionally get me into any trouble, but magically and legally, that meant nothing. Having Summer fae do your dishes and wash your laundry and clean your dog's messes makes you get kind of complacent about that sort of thing.
"He's here as a friend of mine. And of the Summer Court," Fix said finally.
"Luckily," Ari said, "I do not owe allegiance to the Summer Court. Do you wish to challenge my right to redress an insult?"
Fix shook his head, dumbly. It belatedly dawned on me that it might have been Fix trying to curry favor, not Ari.
I raised my hands defensively, anyway. "Fix!" I protested.
"I'm sorry, Harry," he said, sounding miserable. "I can't stop her, she's Tuatha. But she can't do anything permanent to you. And I'll-- I'll talk to Lily, we'll see what we can do--"
"Move aside, Knight," Ari said, raising her hands, and I felt the burst of magic. It felt almost like Summer magic, but subtly different. Deeper, darker, colder. Not winter magic, either. And then the spell hit me. I was suddenly looking at them from a different perspective - lower down, wider, with everything oddly muted and flattened. And I felt really, really strange, like I simultaneously wanted to leap out of my skin and curl up in it, like there was something I really, really needed to be doing, right now, no matter what. I resisted the temptation to go running wildly off into Summer in search of it, and instead I looked up at Fix, whimpering pitifully.
"Harry, I can't." said Fix, still sounding like he was the one who'd been hit with some sort of major tranformation spell. He sniffed, blinked, and took two steps back from me, then he looked at Ari. I could smell the anger coming off of him. "Now what do you plan to do with him, Your Highness? Leave him here for me to deal with?"
Ari shook her head, looking delighted with herself. "Of course not, Knight. That wouldn't be fair, would it? No, I think I'll send him -- home. Perhaps he will find a way to be more-- comfortable there."
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (1/?)
Date: 2011-02-09 09:21 pm (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (1/?)
Date: 2011-02-09 11:55 pm (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (1/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 12:00 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (1/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:08 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-09 11:54 pm (UTC)***
I was the farthest possible thing from comfortable, even as I felt my balance twist into sudden vertigo and found myself landing on the floor of my own apartment, all four paws braced against the landing. I had four paws. Shit. I was beginning to get an inkling of what Ari, whoever she actually was, thought was a properly ironic lesson, and I didn't like it at all. All those years of avoiding Lea, and and I run into the same thing at random on a friendly visit.
I smelled Mouse, waking up from where he'd been curled up on my bed. I figured it was Mouse, anyway. All my brain was telling me was male dog! male dog! male dog! slightly hysterically. He came galumphing into the main room, barking - which was weird on several levels, because Mouse almost never barks, and this was an odd sort of half-bark, half-howl, half-whimper.
He was talking, too. Now, Mouse is a very smart dog, and he's a little bit magic himself, but I can't usually hear him talk. Now I could hear him saying, "Who is it? How did you get in? Did Harry send you?" and then he got through the door, saw me, and stopped so fast that he skidded several inches backward on an old Turkish rug. "Oh god, Harry?" he said.
I turned around so I was facing away from him and flipped my tail up, all friendly-like. I'm not sure why I did it; I guess it was the body's instincts taking over.
"No, no, no," Mouse said, crouching down and covering his eyes with a paw. "Don't do that, Harry, I can't -- what happened?"
I turned around and cocked my head at him. "Pissed off somebody in Faerie," I tried to say, but it came out as a sort of muffled growl. If he could talk, why couldn't I? I started walking closer to him, since he didn't seem inclined to move from where he was. Something was up with him, too. Had that fairy bi-- woman done something to him too? Anyway, as fucked up as the situation was, it would be nice to be able to relate to him on his own level. Curl up together, maybe. He was so big and strong.
"No, don't. STOP, Harry," Mouse said. There was something about the way he said it that made me obey without thinking. I sat. "Okay, okay, think, Mouse," he said out loud. He sounded - young. When a dog was the size of a small dinosaur it was sometimes hard to remember that in dog time, he was barely out of his teen years. "Harry, you need to go down to your lab, and get in your summoning circle, and stay there. I have enough magic in me that if you raise the circle it should be able to keep me out, so as long as you don't--" he gulped, and a shiver ran through him, all those gorgeous muscles under his fur rippling. "Harry, go. NOW."
I didn't want to go. I wanted to lean up against Mouse and feel all that silky fur against my fur. And the part of me that thought there was something I needed to be doing was shouting at me that Mouse was the answer. But at the same time, something in the dog-instincts said that Mouse was to be obeyed without question. And my better wisdom - the part of me that I don't listen to nearly enough - said that Mouse had never steered me wrong, and if he thought I needed to be in the summoning circle, I should probably listen.
I dragged myself over to the trapdoor that led to the sub-basement, reluctantly, but I went. I tried to open the latch that held the trapdoor down, but my paws were too big and clumsy, and I wasn't used to them. I pawed at it, frustrated, then tried with my nose. Frustrated was a good word. I was very frustrated right then. And Mouse was whimpering softly to himself from just a few yards away.
I heard a thump behind me, and crouched down, defensively, as I looked toward it. Mister had leapt down from somewhere, probably the top of one of my bookselves. He stalked over to me, and I bared my teeth at him, trying to hold back a snarl. He just looked at me superciliously, flipped open the latch with one dexterous paw, shouldered his way under the door, and slipped down the ladder. Oh. I hadn't known Mister could do that.
I had the presence of mind to catch the door before it shut all the way, and push at it with my head. I must have been a fairly large dog, then - not Mouse's size, maybe, but close, because the trapdoor easily flipped the rest of the way open once I had the leverage for it. I trotted over to the summoning circle and sat down in it. Now that there was most of a floor between me and Mouse, I must have been thinking a little more clearly, because I managed to push out the necessary will to raise the power of the circle. It was harder than it should have been, though. I didn't seem to have access to my wizard's power in this form, and that weird urgency was still buzzing under skin, making it hard to concentrate. But anybody can raise a circle if they know what they're doing, it's the most basic magic of all, and with my dog senses I could feel the protection go up around me.
Once that was done, I gave myself a few seconds to take stock. My lab was my lab, same as ever, and I was starting to get used to the dog eyesight. It was fascinating to the dog's sense of smell, though. I could pick out dozens of different highly aromatic potions ingredients, and a fizzy, acrid smell that must have been magic itself, and a slight tinge of lingering sulfur under that. I also smelled cat. Mister had climbed up onto the shelf with the romance novels and was batting at Bob's skull. I tried to tell him to stop that, but it came out as a rumbling growl again. Mister hissed at me and went back to bothering the skull, but Bob didn't seem to be in the mood to wake up.
I also smelled male dog. It was all over the apartment, marking it as Mouse's territory alongside Mister's marks. There was something about that scent which made it impossible for me to ignore, and it got even stronger as Mouse carefully walked down the ladder after me. I whined at him and stood up, wagging my tail.
"Stay in the circle, Harry," he told me through gritted teeth, and I sat back down again. I could tell that these obey-the-Alpha dog instincts were going to get annoying, fast. On the other hand, it's not like I'd been very good at saying 'no' to Mouse before, either.
He trotted carefully up to the circle and tried to put one paw across it, then sighed when it blocked him out, and moved as far away from me as he could and stay in the lab. He got up on his hind legs, leaning against one of my shelves of potions ingredients, and used one paw to knock a jar over, so that it spilled on him.
It was about a liter of garlic powder, that I'd gotten ready for working on anti-Black Court stuff, and it landed all over him, covering him in a dust of strongly-smelling power. He sneezed, hard. I sneezed, too, and even Mister gave a fastidious little snit. It stank, to a dog's senses. It covered up nearly all the other scents in the room, the potion supplies, the sulfur, cat, and even the male-dog smell. Well, most of the male-dog smell. My nose started stuffing up a little.
Mouse shook himself, throwing up another cloud of dust, and said, "Okay, that's taken care of. What next?"
Mister hissed at him, and he lumbered over, under Bob's shelf. "Good idea, Mister. He won't wake up?"
Mister gave him a look that communicated an infinity of scorn at anyone who would have to ask such an obvious question, then jumped down from the shelf to land beside Mouse.
Mouse bumped him with a shoulder, friendly-like, and said, "Fine, then." He peeled back his lips and growled, a long, low, rolling growl, almost subsonic, that I'd never heard before. Possibly I'd never been able to hear it before.
In respone Bob's eyes flickered and then came on. "Mouse, I told you," he said testily, "Stop doing that, it feels like--" and then stopped, taking in the situation. "Harry?" he said, wonderingly. "Oh shit."
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-09 11:59 pm (UTC)Ahahaha, Mister is so badass.
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 12:20 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 12:01 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 12:19 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:24 am (UTC)Mister doesn't talk? Or is he just not deigning to talk to the canids?
I wonder what sort of lasting repercussions (other than the prompted) that Harry's going to have to put up with after this, in terms of senses and affinities...
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:26 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 02:27 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (2/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 04:05 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:29 am (UTC)Oh. I sank back on my haunches as several things slotted in to place. That weird urgent unsettled feeling that had been hanging over me since the transformation turned out to be, filtered through the wrong species and apparently also the wrong gender, just that I was horny as hell. And as soon as I realized it, it got a lot harder to ignore. It felt like the White Court mojo that makes you think about nothing but sex, now, need, but without the undercurrents of wrongness and artificiality that you get from a succubus. This was coming from inside me, and it was all-natural. Female dogs, it turned out, got the pure stream of what the White Court was just trying to mimic.
I whined, high in my throat. I couldn't help myself. This may have been the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to me, and believe me, there are a lot of candidates on that list. But I still wanted, and even under the strong scent of garlic, I could feel Mouse's pheromones calling to me.
"Can't he talk?" Bob asked brightly.
Of course I can't, I'm a dog, I tried to say, but it came out as "Grow ruffra ra gra rrarr ra growf," or something like that.
Mister managed to convey with nothing but a twist of his head and a flick of his tail that he was shocked someone as fundamentally impaired as me had even managed to walk, much less talk.
"He hasn't yet," Mouse said, tilting his head, worried. "I thought it might be part of whatever spell is on him."
"Hmm. No, I don't think that's it," Bob said. "Harry, you're trying to talk with your mouth, but your throat isn't built for talking any more. You're thinking about it too much. Try just saying something without thinking about it. You should be able to communicate just like Mouse is."
Have you ever tried to do something without thinking about it while thinking about not thinking about it? It's even harder than it sounds. But not thinking about things is actually a surprisingly useful skill for a wizard, so with just a little bit of mental contortionism, I managed it, sinking myself into the dog's senses just enough to manage to say, "This sucks, Bob," without my tongue or my teeth trying to get in the way.
"Oh, Stars and Stones, thank you," Mouse said, sounding almost as relieved as I was.
"Not very likely, Harry," Bob said gleefully. "While animals can get up to an amazing variety of positions, oral sex isn't a usual part of canine--"
"Bob," I said, growling, "Shut up."
"What happened, Harry?" Mouse asked.
I gave them the short version of what had happened on my visit to Fix - the strange possibly-not-Sidhe woman, the abortive argument, Fix's protestations, the spell. Halfway through Mister started purring smugly, which I think was his version of laughing at me.
When I finished, Mouse rubbed his paw along his muzzle again, then sent another cloud of garlic dust up. We needed the booster; I was starting to get used to the garlic, and I'd almost gotten distracted from my storytelling a few times. Mouse has very deep and sensitive eyes. I started trying to remember where my bottle of peppermint extract was, and if it was somewhere that a very clever dog and cat could retrieve it from, if the garlic stopped working entirely. I wasn't sure I'd have the willpower to stay in the circle.
And I was fairly sure Mouse wouldn't have the willpower to stay away if I left it: he was lying alongside the copper ring, the hair of his belly pressed right against the ward, as close as he could get. "Harry, why do these things happen to you?" he asked plaintively.
Bob was bouncing the skull so hard I was afraid he'd fall off his shelf, so I gave him permission to talk again.
"Harry, you're an idiot sometimes," he said solemnly.
"Thanks," I told him. "I hadn't realized. Do you have anything helpful to add, or are you just going to mock me some more?"
"Well, as for this Ari woman. It would be helpful if you remembered anything about her appearance that didn't involve her relative attractiveness, but have you ever read the Four Branches of the Mabinogi?" he asked me.
"Yeah, but it's been awhile," I told him. Justin had made us study at least a little about most world mythologies, trying to give us the basics, I eventually realized, without telling anything we could use to be dangerous. I'd kept it up, but I'd never seen a reason to go back to the Welsh. I racked my brain, trying to figure out what Ari might have to do with it. Ari-- Ari -- "Arianrhod?" I said finally, incredulous. "You think that was actually Arianrhod?" I desperately racked my brains for everything I knew about Arianrhod. She didn't deal with mortals much anymore, that I'd heard of. Welsh goddess, daughter of Dôn, sister of Gwydion. "Oh fuck," I said. "Gwydion and Gilfaethwy."
"I think so, Harry," Bob said, nodding the skull a little bit.
"I am so screwed," I said. "Literally."
"Unless we figure out something really creative, then yes, probably."
"I don't know the Mabinogi," Mouse said. "Who's Arianrhod?"
"She's a Celtic goddess," Bob said. "Handles the moon, sorcery, motherhood, and running water. Think Hecate, only prettier and slightly more vindictive."
"You pissed off a Goddess, Harry?" Mouse asked. Even Mister looked slightly impressed.
I hunkered down into myself, embarrassed. "I thought the Celtic pantheon were pretty much retired. Don't hear much about them these days, except Gwydion and Govannon among the neopagan types. And Brigit, sometimes, but she's mostly Christian these days."
"They deal more with the Sidhe folk than with humans. Actually the Fae you've been dealing with are descended from them - sort of. When their religion faded, some of their people wanted to stay closer to the mortal world, so they settled in the faerie lands, and gave up a lot of their power along the way. They're the people who became the Aes Sidhe or the Daoine Sidhe or the Daoine Maithe - the fairy folk. Mostly Winter Court. Maeve and Mab and Lea are right out of that lot. But real gods and goddesses? The Children of Danu, the Tuatha de Danaan? They're every bit as powerful as they ever were. They tend to keep an eye on the Sidhe, though. Act protective when they feel like it, just kibitz when they don't, which is more often."
"Like the Calaquendi and the Moriquendi," I said.
"Yeah, sure, if you insist on putting everything in terms of Tolkien, Harry. Or you could just say that Arianrhod and her brothers are still capable of scaring the shit out of Mab."
"So what did Arianrhod do to Harry?"
I met Bob's eyes, and then looked away. "The most well-preserved story about Arianrhod and her brothers," I said, "well, it's kind of a long and complicated story. But when their Uncle Math decided that Gwydion and Gilfaethwy needed to be punished for something, he turned them into a succession of male and female animals, and left them stuck that way until they'd, um, reproduced. I think it was supposed to humiliate them. And, um, maybe teach them a little bit of compassion for women?"
"Oh," Mouse said, rolling over. "So you were being your usual self, and Arianrhod decided to try out the old family curse on you."
I lashed my tail at him. "Yes, but Gwydion and Gilfaethwy deserved it," I snarled.
Mouse gave me a far-too-knowing look. "So if we know what the spell is, and who cast it, how do we get it off him?"
"We don't," Bob said. I glared at him. "No, seriously, Harry, we don't. I can't do much without someone to be my hands, Mouse and Mister are smart but they're not wizards, and if I guess right, you can only manage the most basic of magic. Arianrhod's used to dealing with sorcerers, she'd be an idiot if she left you access to your powers."
He was right, but I didn't want to admit it. My lips curled up. "So we get help."
"Who? She's a goddess, Harry. No mortal spellslinger is going to be able to dent it. And the Faerie Courts wouldn't be able to do anything with it, even if they were willing to try. You'd have to get someone else who's capable of throwing around divine power, someone you can reach without any magic of your own, and who do we know in Chicago who has those kinds of connections?"
I'm pretty sure Bob meant it as a rhetorical question, but the minute he said it, we all knew the answer. Nobody said it, but Mister managed do to a spot-on impression of a small, green-eyed, very smug tiger.
"You mean Michael, right? He can use his Warrior of God thing to help me out?"
"Mmm. Maybe," Bob said. "But the Christian God's never really been in to that sort of thing. Actually the only other European pantheon that has a history of transforming men into female animals is the Norse."
And I didn't know for sure, no, but I had an acquaintance in Chicago with a history of gathering power to himself. And a very muscular, very Nordic bodyguard-slash-consultant who tended to move around in a suspicious cloud of Wagner.
"Fuck my life," I said.
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:35 am (UTC)(Harry love this is why people keep telling you not to be rude to people bigger then you are.)
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:36 am (UTC)"I am so screwed," I said. "Literally."
Yup. Sorry, Harry.
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 06:01 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 06:46 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:44 am (UTC)Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:46 am (UTC)I don't know why, but out of everything, this made me lol XD
there there Harry, it'll get better. maybe.
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:53 am (UTC)Also, if this is headed where it seems to, god, that's gonna be so uncomfortable between Mouse and Harry afterward...
<3 <3 <3
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 06:50 am (UTC)Also I cannot get over the fact that there's actual mythological precedent. Somehow I always manage to forget JUST HOW CRACKY mythology can be.
Re: Fill: Harry gets his bitch on (3/?)
Date: 2011-02-10 05:10 pm (UTC)