Hey, Rin-and-Girey readers – what do you want to see more of in their story?
I think I need at least three or four more stories along the road, and then one to three more as they move into Lannamer, since just crossing the bridge took two stories. But you tell me! What do you want to see?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/30803.html. You can comment here or there.
Gentlefolk, I am, today, stupidly excited by a number
That number being 155.4
Or, in other words, fifty pounds off!
I started in early February of last year, and I’m not really done yet. The winter was stupidly slow on weight loss; no walkies outside. But woo! When I started, I wasn’t sure I could do it. Now I am.
This is the beginning of a piece from way back on the B prompts. There’s a few I’ve got hanging out there unfinished, and I thought I’d start to share snippits
Lara woke slowly, fighting off a muzzy feeling, like a hangover without the pain. Her bed was warm and soft and comfortable, three things she didn’t remember her apartment being, the last time she’d been there. She felt like she was engulfed in feathers, which felt very nice, but seemed a little strange, nothing like her cheap polyfill comforter. And she was, under the blankets, completely nude.
She struggled into wakefulness. Where was she? She’d fallen asleep any number of places, some of them nude, but none of them had been this comfortable on waking. Or this fuzzy. She opened her eyes, hesitantly, bracing against the light.
And then blinked hard, again and again, and tugged the comforter up to her chin. She was in a library? It looked that way, at least. Books everywhere, dark wood shelves and spines of old leather like a literary rainbow, floors looking like marble, the whole thing reeking of age and expense and literary cachet. The place had to be huge. And here she was, naked in a pile of duvets. Naked and alone, in a very comfortable pile of duvets, with no clothes anywhere in sight. There wasn’t even anything she could use as clothes, except the blankets themselves; there were books, and a long gold chain trailing off across the floor, leading off in one direction between two bookcases, and in the other seeming to head into the duvets. Suddenly suspicious, Lara wiggled down to the foot of the makeshift bed, and grabbed the chain with both hands.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/30517.html. You can comment here or there.
Originally posted here in response to the lyrics prompt: “The more the light shines through me, I pretend to close my eyes / The more the dark consumes me, I pretend I’m burning, burning bright.”
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Tomorrow stepped onto the platform and faced herself, faced Yesterday. Sometimes it seemed as if her entire life was stepping onto this platform and taking her own hands. Sometimes, because of the nature of things, it _was_ that her entire life was stepping up here and holding her own hand.
She braced herself, although she told herself every day that she wouldn’t. She tensed, feeling herself stiffen across the platform, as the shift change took over her.
When the magic poured through her, there was no moving. There was no feeling, no sensation at all except the shift.
The light poured through her, shoved through her, roared through her. It blinded her, deafened her, made her nothing but a window, a portal to push through. She could not close her eyes, but in the tiny corner of her mind that was still hers, Tomorrow pretended to. The light rushed through her, and the world was lit.
And the dark engulfed her, froze her, took over her every cell. It devoured her, consumed her, until there was almost nothing left; she was vessel to hold it and nothing else, and she was dying of the cold. She couldn’t expel it, but with her tiny bit of self, Yesterday imagined she stood in the middle of a fire, finally warm.
The void passed out of her, and the day passed into Tomorrow.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/29817.html. You can comment here or there.
Three Word Wednesday is a once-weekly 3-word writing prompt.
This week’s three words were Loud, Persuasive, Riches.
The naming conventions of the Tuathans in Tir na Cali, where this story is set, are … weird. Suffice it to say, it’s okay that he’s both ap Gwydion and ó Gwydion.
The ap Gwydion boy was loud. Not surprising in a line who had bought their title and position with riches; most ap Gwydions were loud. This one was young, barely an adult (but he was an adult, old enough to be tried; that was important), spoiled rotten, and had no idea how much trouble he was in.
“You have no idea how much trouble you’re in,” he shouted at Sulleigh-who-he-believed-was-Susan. “I don’t know what you were thinking, spilling that tea all over my favorite shirt, but you’re going to pay!”
“I’m sor…”
“Shut up! No-one said you could speak.”
Sulleigh/Susan hid her smile by touching her forehead to the ground. She’d made him lose face in front of a woman he was hoping to marry and a man he was hoping to sleep with. She wasn’t surprised he was angry. If she had truly been what she was pretending to be, if she had even been embedded long-term in the position, she would have been nervous, close to terrified. Tyrion ap Talbot ó Gwydion was known, not just in the household but amongst his peers and the press, as a hothead with a violent temper. He’d already hit Sulleigh more than once, and she’d only been in his mother’s household for a week. For this embarrassment… yes. She dared peek, to see him going for the strap.
“Hold still,” he snarled, “or it will go badly.” That it was going to go badly even if she held still went without saying. She held still. She had to time this properly, and that meant she had to take a little abuse.
He pulled her pants down around her ankles with a rough tug. She listened for the sound she was waiting for, but no, not yet. They’d wait until…
… the strap landed on the back of her thighs with a loud thwap, bringing with it stinging pain. Sulleigh swallowed a whimper; under the noise of the next stroke, she heard the bodyguards walking away.
She let another two strokes land, whimpering under each one. She didn’t have to fake it; the ap Gwydion had a strong arm and practice in dealing out pain efficiently.
“Stop,” she gasped, and he stopped. She could tell by the grunt he made that he was surprised, and by the second grunt that he was offended when she stood and pulled her pants back on.
“Silence,” she commanded, before he could draw a breath to shout. “Did you know,” she added conversationally, “that your bodyguards leave when they hear you start beating the house slaves?”
His eyes grew wide, but the boy couldn’t say anything. Sulleigh continued. “They can’t stand to hear it. I can’t say I blame them. Now, you and I, Tyrion, are going to have a little conversation. But not here.” She opened the drawer he kept his toys in, and dropped a few choice items into a bag. “Don’t attack me,” she added, without turning to face him, and was rewarded with the sound of him stopping abruptly.
“We,” she continued, turning now to look at her erstwhile master, “are going to take a drive. You’re going to drag me out to the car like you did with Judy last week, and we’ll take a little trip.” He was scared now; his eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing like a fish. He shouldn’t have been all that surprised by the word-of-command trick; his mother had a variant of the same power. Perhaps no slave had dared use such things on him before. Of course, Sulleigh wasn’t really a slave.
If he was a little extra-rough in manhandling her out to his car, she couldn’t really blame him; if she kicked him in this shin while fighting him, well, could he blame her for that? Once he’d stuffed her in the back seat and started driving the direction she wanted, she let him talk again.
He was, of course, rather predictable. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded.
“You’ve been up to some pretty questionable stuff lately, Tyrion ap Gwydion, and my employers want to know exactly how questionable, and with exactly whom.”
She could tell, just from the set of his shoulders, that she’d hit the mark. “I’m not going to tell you anything, you bitch,” he quavered, torn between fear and anger.
“I assure you,” she smiled, “I can be very persuasive.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/29214.html. You can comment here or there.
From stryck comes this great
April First idea, so please
respond in haiku