Archive | May 2011

Meeting, a further-further-further-further-further-etc-continuation

May16

The wind had finally died down. Sandy wasn’t sure what she’d have done if it kept up. Frozen to death, probably, or begun to lose skin and extremities to frostbite. Certainly she’d lost herself, but in the midst of downtown Rochester, how far could she have wandered? There were no cars on the street, not even a plow. The storm had come up suddenly – a light snowfall, the sort appropriate for Christmas Eve, had been picturesquely falling as she stepped out of the library to walk home. By the time she crossed Court by the Blue Cross building, the wind had picked up; by the time she reached Monroe, she couldn’t see a foot in front of her. She’d kept walking forward, figuring that holding still was risking being turned into a Popsicle. And now the wind had died down, and she could see… …nothing. Nothing but trees, and snow, and a lamp-post flickering its gaslight. She was SO going to be late for dinner.

Sandy took a deep breath, the thought of diner gnawing on her empty stomach. She’d gotten turned around. What could she do?

Well, all she could do was keep going forward or turn around and head back, since standing here would get her nowhere. The trees laden with snow looked like nothing she’d ever seen in the middle of the city before, even in its sparse parks. She turned slowly counter-clockwise, looking all around her. Tree-lined hills. Densely-packed pine forest. A narrow path, barely more than a deer track, through the trees. More forest, with a steep hillside in the distance. And the gaslight lantern again, looking fresh and new. Some sort of gentrification project, maybe?

The snow was thin, fluffy stuff, but it had settled in drifts nearly to her hips. Glad for the sensible boots and the nice synthetic pants, she waded forward. The lamppost, as she closed, held two signposts. The arrow pointing towards the cliffs read Away; the one further into the woods: Home.

Home sounded wonderful. Her feet were cold, her nose was frozen, and there were snowflakes crusted on her eyelashes. She wanted to be warm again, she wanted to eat dinner, and she wanted, more than any of that, to sit down.

She trudged into the woods, following the vague outline of a path under a canopy of creaking trees, thinking about Home. The half-a-house off in college-student housing that she shared with five other people was a home by sheer force of will – her bedroom was her sanctum, and no-one best bother with it – but she missed the feeling of a real home, something like she’d had in childhood, where she belonged. Somewhere in the back of her mind, her parents’ cozy house would always be Home.

She doubted a signpost had that level of distinction; she doubted it cared about her home at all. Gaslamps weren’t know for their empathy. With any luck, the path would lead her somewhere that could get her back to Rochester; that would have to suffice.

The snow lessened the deeper into the forest she got, the path clearing under the heavy roof of boughs overhead; many of them, Sandy noted in some confusion, still had a full head of leaves on them. That couldn’t be safe, if all the snow started to freeze. She sped up, hurrying from gaslight to gaslight down the smooth path, trying to ignore the gnawing rumbling pain in her stomach. Home, the sign had said; it had to be nearby, right? Maybe not her home, but someone’s home. As the impatient thought was born, the light ahead brightened and swelled, as if she was coming over the edge of a hill into a city. Her pace picked up, and up again as the lights brightened and she was certain she could make out the edges of buildings, and again, as she heard a train whistle. Civilization! She bounded down the hill, driven on by visions of a thick mocha latte drowned in whipped cream.

She skidded to a halt halfway down the hill, tripped, tumbled, and landed on her back in a snowdrift. “No, no, no.” She shook her head, staring at the grey, starless sky. If she didn’t move, she didn’t have to look down at the little Dickensian scene below, didn’t have to acknowledge what she’d seen. There was a train. If she didn’t move, she wouldn’t get to the train. And the snow down the back of her neck was melting into a thin trickle of unpleasant coldness.

She levered herself to her feet, refusing to look up at the village just yet. The path was nice, predictable, something normal in this middle of this mess. She put one foot in front of the other, trying not to worry that they’d burn her as a witch before she could get to the train.

At least, she mused, looking unwillingly up at the black-and-sepia-garbed villagers in their nineteenth-century-finery, if they burned her as a witch, she’d be warm.

Warmth. The place might look archaic, but she could hear the train. The train had to get her someplace warm, assuming she could afford a ticket. Sandy wondered, faintly, if they’d take Visa.

She walked slowly now, keeping her eyes on the gaslights flickering down the street, the train station at the end of the road looking like something out of the miniature village set her roommate Cathleen had set up in the living room, the whole town having that posed-and-designed sense to it, right down to the spruce garlands.

The Victorian-clothed townsfolk didn’t seem inclined to burn her at the stake; they barely seemed aware of her existence. She hurried, still; she didn’t want to miss the train.

The ticket-seller at the station noticed her, at least. “One ticket, sir?”

Close enough. “One ticket, please.” She didn’t even care that there were no destinations listed on the board behind his head, just departure times.

“That’ll be one tech, sir.” He held out his hand.

Tech. Sir. There were at least two things wrong with that sentence, but she blamed the “sir” on the pants. “I’m sorry,” Sandy asked, wondering if the cold was ruining her hearing. “One what?”

The man looked impatient. “One tech, sir, or move aside.”

There was no-one behind her, no reason for him to get all that snippy with her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what a tech is.”

“Then you won’t be taking the train, now will you? Get out of the way and let the paying passengers through!”

“What… okay.” She melted under his glare and shuffled aside, defeated. She didn’t know where she was, and the train had been her last, however irrational, hope at getting home, or at least someplace warm and civilized. And she didn’t have any of the local currency. If she couldn’t buy a train ticket, she probably couldn’t buy a room or even any food.

“A tech,” piped a voice somewhere near her knee, “is just that. Technology.”

At this point, Sandy wasn’t sure things could get stranger, but she was still very slow about looking down towards the high-pitched voice. There was a good chance she was going insane, she realized, but that didn’t mean she had to go without a fight.

“Usually,” the voice continued, “something like a cell-yoo-lur phone works, although something as simple as a flashy-light will do. The more gizmo-like, the better.”

If her imaginary friend was going to keep talking, eventually she’d have to look. Slowly, Sandy looked downward, while trying to frame an intelligent question.

“Why?” is all she managed, and then, in a squeak that sounded completely undignified, “what?”

She rubbed her eyes, much to the amusement of the person (or thing) at her knee. It – probably he – was standing, smirking at her, wearing a little red wool cap, which he tipped at Sandy cheerfully.

“What’s the matter?” the creature teased, smiling with a mouth full of shark teeth. “Never seen a gnome before?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/43230.html. You can comment here or there.

Sketch Links

May15

[personal profile] meeks (meeksp) has declared that the most linked picture every month of her crowdfunded sketches will get more work, so I present to you the two she has done for me:

Ayla and Ioanna (Lj Link) at the end of a recent chapter of Addergoole.

Aaand, from my Rin & Girey series (see tag below), Rin contemplating, Girey in the backgroun (LJ Link).

I really enjoy [personal profile] meeks work (the icon, as mentioned, is also her work, as is YsabetWordsmith’s new icon). Comments (on her stuff, not here) and linkbacks are love, and if you link to her work from somewhere other than in LJ, please ping her and let her know.

She’s still doing scene illustrations, too, so if you’re an author/poet, drop in and give her a scene to illustrate

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/42605.html. You can comment here or there.

Poem: “The Changeling’s Return” (Signal Boost)

May11

Go read [info]ysabetwordsmith‘s  Poem: "The Changeling’s Return"

This poem came out of the May 3, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was selected in the generally sponsored poetry poll.  It was inspired by a prompt from [info]haikujaguar who related an anecdote about a transgender person using the changeling myth to retell their own story.  This is the heart of all storytelling, the power inherent in myths and folk tales — it lets us turn our own experiences into stories, making them easier to remember, to deal with, to incorporate into our lives.  Think about the stories you tell of your own life, and the family stories you pass down.  Then read this one, with its dual levels of meaning, the faerie and the transgender…

This poem really spoke to me, far more than I expected this theme to.  Wow. 
 


Worldbuilding: Population Bottlenecks, Founder Effect

May10

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posted an interesting discussion on population bottlenecks.

While the article is rather interesting (“North America was populated by no more than 70 people 14,000 years ago, claims stunning new DNA research”), I find the links to Minimum Viable Population and Population Bottleneck more interesting.

World-building-wise, when discussing the exodus that landed people on Reiassan (as well as in contemplating the blue-haired McAliens in Vas’ World), I’ve had to keep in mind such concepts to be sure the populations are viable. But the Founder Effect gives me some fun grist for my mill…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/42137.html. You can comment here or there.

Being Alone

May10

Sometime in September, I posted Two by Two, a fae apoc story set in a travelling show. clare_dragonfly asked:

“As usual though I want more context 😉 Why did Anaca allow herself to be caught? (Or if she didn’t want to, how did they catch her?)”

This is a partial answer to this, from Anaca’s point of view.

***

I’d gotten used to hiding, but I never really got used to being alone.

When my Change had come, I’d been just past my fourteenth birthday, and the world had been mad with wild gods in the skies. My bones had twisted, my thumbs vanished, my tail grew, while I hid in my closet and tried not to scream. When it was over, I looked something like a rabbit, and something like a deer, and only like a human in the silhouette.

A long time past, that, and, that time, my family and I had managed to flee before the lynch mob came to get me. Anything strange was suspect, and I was definitely strange.

I learned to Mask from a travelling biker gang not long afterwards, bikers who mostly didn’t bother, in that age, to hide their horns and tusks. That helped some; it helped hide me from the strangers who were afraid of all things fae. But it didn’t help the real problems. My parents were not fae, and neither were my siblings, and, though they tried to hide it, they were as afraid of the monster in their midst as the strangers we were hiding from were. I ran off in the middle of the night with the bikers, and tried to pretend it didn’t hurt.

So’jers like that had no real place for a teenaged girl who’d barely Changed, so I didn’t stay with them for very long. I bounced from group to group, hiding where I could, helping when I was able, and learning from those who would teach me.

It got harder and harder as time passed. Sometimes, the Mask, the glamour that hid my appearance from humankind, would flicker on me, and sometimes it failed completely. I couldn’t risk spending time in the company of humans, or at least not much time at once, so I found groups of fae that I could live or travel with. But, as the decades passed, those groups got rarer and rarer, and the so’jers were no better company for a fifty-year-old preybeast than they had been for a fourteen-year-old.

I had been living in the Appalachian forest for what I was pretty sure was ten or eleven years, in an area where humans rarely travelled. It was one of those places they called a “twisted zone,” where the magic thrown around during the God Wars had changed the landscape and the animals. Other fae would come through sometimes, but humans found the places scary, and their legends told them that they, too, could be changed, by the air or the water or just contact with the strange creatures there. It made for a lonely existence, but I’d grown a bit tired of running, and here, I’d been able to settle down.

I had a nice set-up, a cave that was dry all year round, with some scavenged furniture from a few falling-down houses. My Change had made me an herbivore, and so I had a nice garden, spread out enough that it didn’t look like a sign of habitation. The weather never got cold enough to really need clothes, and I never saw anyone, so I’d stopped bothering with clothes. It was a comfortable life, if wild, but it was lonely.

I guess I’m really not built for the solitude. When people came through, I’d hide in the trees and watch them, listening to their conversations, imagining talking to them, wondering what it would be like to travel with them. I’d follow them to the edge of my territory, sometimes sleeping nearby just to feel like I was near people again.

When the ringmaster came through, with his cart for catching strange creatures and his bright, chipper, twin companions, they didn’t even have to put forth any effort to catch me. I hate to admit it, but I fell right into their trap.

And sitting there, struggling with the net, hissing and spitting like a wild thing, I have to admit… somewhere in the back of my mind, I was relieved.

***

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/41847.html. You can comment here or there.

15 minute ficlet: Hey you Kids get off my lawn!

May9

Originally posted here in response (well, it was supposed to be in response) to the prompt: “The fight’s begun, but not yet won / And I won’t become one more casualty.”

Fae Apoc, Apoc era.

There was a wounded godling in Nila’s back yard. This close to the city, you got the fights overhead sometimes, the wild aerial battles that looked like something out of a pre-gods movie. Sometimes you got debris falling nearby, telephone poles in the road, the occasional falling corpse or near-corpse, so Nila always kept the kids inside, just like when they’d lived out in tornado country. The way she figured it, godling fights came somewhere between act-of-god and natural disaster. You didn’t get in the way, you just tried to ride it out and clean up the damages afterwards.

But now the damn thing was flopped over like a dying fish, half in her carefully-tended koi pond, half in the flower garden that bordered it. Its wing was torn half-off, and it was bleeding into the pond and twitching, making more damage with every spasm.

“Damnit,” she muttered, peeking out between the shutters at it. “Get up, move on. Get off my yard.” But it wasn’t getting up. If whoever it had been fighting came down here to finish it off, there was going to be a giant battle in her backyard, and her garden would be torn to shreds. She needed the damn godling out of there before it was found.

She grabbed her weapons from the cabinet, sheathed them all except the broom, and shrugged into the reinforced leather biker-jacket. It had been a gift on her eighteenth birthday (that and a Kevlar baby sling); it looked like bravado rather than armor and could stop a bullet and slow down a small godling. This monster looked down and out, but she’d learned before the gods came back never to think that a wounded animal wasn’t dangerous.

She strode out to the pond, ignoring the old ache in her left hip and walking like she owned the place (since, after all, she did). “You,” she said firmly, when she was within easy earshot. “Out of my pond.”

It twisted, its broken wing flapping pitifully, and stared at her, a skinny girl carrying a broom. “Human,” it hissed. He hissed; up close, the thing was clearly male, and, if the part of him not covered in blood was any indication, not all that bad looking.

“Close, but no cigar.” She poked him in an open wound with the rowan broomstick, and was gratified by its hiss of pain.

“What do you want, little human,” he grumbled, shying away from the wood that was poison to his kind. His left ankle was twisted badly, and there was a bone sticking out of his right leg.

“Get out of my pond,” she reiterated.

He barked a laugh at her. “You are in the presence of a god and you worry about your fish?”

“I am in the presence of a fucked-up elf-fairy-alien, and it’s my goddamned yard. Get out of my pond or I’ll move you.”

“Little human…” Whatever else he’d planned to say was cut off by a rowan broomstick to the mouth. Nila played baseball on the weekend to keep her swing in shape; he toppled back into the pool, grabbing at his jaw.

“I keep telling you…” She grabbed his less-injured leg above the twisted ankle and dragged him out of her pond, trying to damage the flower bed as little as possible. “I’m not human.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/41291.html. You can comment here or there.

15-minute ficlet: Walking With Him

May9

Originally posted to 15-minute ficlets in response to the prompt “brand.”

*

Shuna held still while the tattoo artist worked the ink into her beck and back, ignoring, or trying to, her mother’s hovering disapproval.

“Shune-loon,” she began again, resorting to childish nicknames, “it’s a…”

“I know what it is,” she cut her off, the pain pricking along her spine making her shorter than was prudent with Mother Dearest.

Her mother plowed ahead anyway. “It’s a brand, Shuna. It’s marking you as his in permanent ink wrapped around your neck. It’s a collar you can’t take off. Couldn’t you just get a butterfly or something?”

“Hold still, please,” the tattooist murmured, cutting off her frustrated exclamation. She made herself relax, her forehead resting on the face pillow, and tried not to wonder what her mother was up to. She couldn’t even see her feet anymore.

It was the tattoo artist who spoke again, a few minutes later, sounding apologetic. “This glyph, miss, are you sure this is the one you want?”

She knew without looking which one was in question. “That’s his Name,” she murmured in response. “And that’s where it goes.”

“His Name?” The capital N suggested the concept wasn’t new. “That…”

“You see why I worry,” Shuna’s mother put in. “A Name like that and she wants to mark herself as his?”

“Mmmn. I see. But it’s her choice, isn’t it?” There was a challenge in the question that made Shuna smile.

“It is,” her mother agreed grudgingly. “But this isn’t how I brought her up.”

“I hear that a lot, here.” The needle was still working, avoiding the central glyph as the artist continued the pattern down her spine and around the sides of her neck.

“And what do you say, then?”

“I say…” Shuna fought not to jump as the needle hit the skin at the center of her neck, beginning the glyph, “that parents set children’s feet on a road, but it’s up to them where they walk it.”

“Even with him?” Her mother’s voice was getting hysterical as the inevitable was etched into her.

“Even with Death, yes.”

*

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/41186.html. You can comment here or there.