Archive | July 2011

Notes on Dragon Size.

Jul14

kelkyag began asking some questions about dragon size in re. meeks‘ drawing of Diapering Dragons.

kelkyag:
How big are the adult dragons?

aldersprig:
Me, neither 🙂 Um. Large or huge but not gargantuan. Maybe that long (30+feet), but only because rather sinuous. Sort of a xbreed between western and eastern dragons. (like Trex, they probably grow into the legs, too)
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Table:_Creature_Size_and_Scale_(3.5e_Other)

kelkyag:
Hmm. Well, they appear to be small enough that if one licks a human, they can do so at least somewhat delicately, rather than a dragon’s tongue being bigger than a human. And drunken James (who could plausibly be close to full size?) passed out on the lawn is small enough that a broom handle is long enough to poke him in the ribs with (from a safe-from-accidental-clawing distance? Does that make his legs not more than, say, five feet long?), while talking to him at the same time, though a long flexible dragon neck could make the latter easy. I get the impression from that scene that carrying/rolling James home was not a feasible option, though that could be more about flaming or acidic hiccups than about size. And an offering of biscuits and gravy, presumably in reasonable human-home-cook quantities, is tempting, which suggests they don’t eat multiple whole cows at a sitting …

So, is that room big enough for the adults to fit into comfortably? Is the window high enough for them to see out of? Or is the window deliberately baby-scale (perhaps in a corner of an adult-scale room)? It looks like the little fellow could fit out of the open window if he tried, though I don’t know that he’s that agile yet.

Baby there is decidedly not sinuous yet, especially with those whomping huge back feet, but that, too, can be grown into. 🙂

aldersprig:
… I guess you’re just going to have to help me figure out what they look like! 😀

Hrmm. What if length vs. circumference is a function of age?

kelkyag:
Do they grow their whole lives, or do they reach some maximum size and then stop? Do they grow in stages (as with the color change(s)), with major molts in between (like poor Jimmy is going through, or wrapping up), or is it more continuous? Is adolescent Jimmy close to full size?

Could Jimmy, or one of the adults, carry Juniper, her whole family, more? In his claws or on his back? And still fly? Are their wings (and the skeletal structure they’re attached to) big enough for them to fly mundanely, or is there some magic/handwaving involved in that? If they fly mundanely, they’re going to need a huge breastbone/keel for the flight muscles to attach to, and it would make sense to keep everything else as light as possible — which could work with the length/circumference changes. Where do their wings sit/attach relative to their legs? It looks like Baby’s wings are no further forward than his front legs, and could be well behind them, depending on how they fold — and if he’s going to fly mundanely, his wings are going to grow a whole lot relative to the rest of him.

On the ground, do they usually walk on two legs (t-rex?) or four? Can/will they do the other, or is it impossible/undignified (if sufficiently sinuous, walking on two legs could get awkward)? If four, how do they routinely carry things around? If they’re outside/have space, do they prefer to walk or fly?

… I, umm, might think about things by asking questions, which does not work for everyone. Or I could try to ask more story-oriented questions. Juniper is imagining warrior-princess-and-dragon — does she think the “and dragon” is a fellow warrior or a faithful steed? How do they travel? Do her storybooks/imaginings usefully reflect real dragons, or is she going to run into some “but all the stories say …” issues?

aldersprig:
I actually work really well from questions, actually! (laughs at self… actually)

I think they grow in stages.
I think Jimmy is at, say, the middle of 5 stages (baby, child, teen, young adult, old adult).

Jimmy can carry Juniper on his back, and her dolly in his claws (not sure on that one)
Jimmy’s parents could carry both of Juniper’s parents on either of their backs and still fly.

They fly either mundanely or mostly-mundanely.

Perhaps they can’t fly until early adolescence?

Not sure about the two/four. Thinking four, and now I’m picturing a dragon carrying a baby in its jaw like a stork.

They enjoy flying, but locomote comfortably in cities by walking.

Juniper’s and-dragon fell in Telepathic Horse Who Fights when I was imagining the story. They travel by flying, and her imaginings are realistic, sometimes more than the stories, which can get a bit more fanciful.

C/P’ing this to my journal, if you don’t mind.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/78928.html. You can comment here or there.

Dark Corners

Jul14

For @Shutsumon’s prompt “The things that lurk in corners,” though I think it’s going to be part of a 2-parter. Addergoole Year Nine, more Ceinwen and Thornburn.

While they don’t have a landing page yet, the Ceinwen/Thornburn story goes:

His (LJ Link)
I Hate You (LJ Link)
Keys (LJ Link)
(LJ Link)

And now Dark Corners:

When Professor Pelletier saw Ceinwen’s collar, she pursed her lips and asked one question: “Who?”

Ceinwen, who liked the Sciences Prrofessor, even if she was a little scary, gulped and answered: “Thornburn.”

That made the Professor frown in a strange way, and discarded answers flitted across her expression before she settled on a thoughtful “Well, it could be worse.”

Thinking of his friends, and the nasty things the one of them, Curry, had whispered, thinking of the electricity that had jolted her as she left her room Saturday night, Ceinwen couldn’t help but agree. Still, she was glad to have the professor confirm it. “I don’t like it,” she said anyway, because she didn’t.

“Neither do I, but you’ll do all right with him. Just shine your light on his dark moments, and you should be okay.”

“My light?” It wasn’t the strangest thing the Professor had said, but it ranked up there. And her knowing, pensive smile didn’t help much.

“You have a light that shines on the things that lurk in dark corners, Ceinwen. Aelgifu has something similar, but she was rather busy in her time here. Use it well, and it should see you, and all of us, through the rough times.”

She had no idea what the Professor was talking about; it sounded religious, which startled her a bit. Nobody here seemed the least bit faithful, for any definition of faith she’d ever encountered. She forgot about it, just trying to get through the day, trying not to think about Thornburn, foiled at every step by the collar he’d sealed around her neck.

The things that lurk in corners. That sounded like him, like his friends, like nasty Curry with the creepy look in his eyes. It sounded like most of the upperclassmen around here, truth be told. Creepy little monsters, waiting to jump out and bite when you least expected it.

The Professor’s words were still in the back of Ceinwen’s mind when she went to sleep that night, naked against the soft jersey of Thornburn’s pyjamas. Shine your light on his dark moments. What was that supposed to mean? So far, her captor had been dispassionate, cool, and collected. He acted as if owning another person was completely normal; of course, so did large portions of the school. But he hadn’t been mean, or violent, or angry. She hadn’t seen any darkness at all.

She drifted off to sleep, pondering what Pelletier had said. Darkness. The things lurking in the corners. What was she supposed to do, go around with a flashlight, poking it in dark places?

Dark places. The room around her came to vivid life in her dreamscape – taller, narrower, full of shadows. Everything locked away in chests and boxes, like the box Thornburn had put half of her stuff into. Everything covered with spiderwebs and dust. And in the corner…

No. She didn’t want to go there. She was his, awake; she didn’t want to be his in her dreams, too. She fled, finding that the door didn’t hold her, here.

Corners, everywhere. Bits of color and shining light, yes, but dark gritty corners, everywhere, tiny creatures skittering about. Like a basement, just like a basement. She flailed, heart pounding, reaching for the light switch.

White, shining trails of light poured out of her, twisting in spirals like a ribbon, drilling into the corners, illuminating everything, wrapping it all in streamers of golden brilliance. In one corner, a black waif of a shadow reached for the light, grabbed it, and stood, stretching, becoming a specter of sunlight herself. In another, the shadow and the person split, the shadow slipping further into the corner, the person (un-recognizable, just a silhouette of a thin boy) standing tall.

Shine your light on the things that lurk in corners.

She twisted, turning her light back homewards, pulled by the bond he’d imposed on her, pulled by the dark corners in her captor’s dreams.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/77895.html. You can comment here or there.

State of the Lyn!

Jul13

We’re this close to closing on the house, though this close seems to be a sort of half-life thing: we keep getting closer, and are still this close.

Summer is warrrrrm, but not nearly what my southerly friends are experiencing, so I won’t complain.

Mellow weekends lately; pricing appliances (the stove we want does not exist. Negotiating second choice) and watching movies (neither Green Lantern nor Transformers sucked. Could we see something that has more than that to recommend to it now?)

Knitting for family small-people went over well…

100_5804 by aldersprig
100_5804, a photo by aldersprig on Flickr.

Fishies! For Baby Cousin!

And weight loss seems to be stalling on me. Rrg. OTOH, I’m getting lots and lots of walking in! 🙂

SOoooo excited about the house *bounce!*

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/78104.html. You can comment here or there.

Keys, two variations, for jeriendhal’s prompt

Jul12

For jeriendhal‘s prompt “You mean it was supposed to have a key?” First, an Addergoole Year Nine – Ceinwen and Thornburn, then a Planners.

—
“There’s no lock.” Ceinwen sat in front of the mirror, staring at the plaque Thornburn had put around her neck. She’d known that when he sealed it there, but today, with classes just moments away, it seemed more real, more permanent.

“No, there isn’t,” he agreed. He was giving her space this morning, letting her feel her way around this new relationship. What part of her wasn’t busy hating him appreciated the room.

“There’s no way to take it off,” she said, trying not to panic.

“No, there’s not. I will take it off you when I free you.”

She wrapped her hands both around the damned thing, tugging on it, even as the pulling pressed it against her windpipe. It wouldn’t budge. “Why isn’t there a lock? If there was a lock, there’d be a key!” She knew she sounded hysterical, and wasn’t sure she cared anymore.

He wrapped his hand around her wrists gently. “You mean it was supposed to have a key?” he teased.

“It was supposed to have a way out,” she whimpered.

—

Bauer was particularly proud of the work he’d done on the vaults.

Sure, Elder Jasmine had sent him here, to work with Elder Oliver, mostly to keep an eye on a man who was past his dotage and into “how is he still standing upright?” But Bauer was every bit as much a member of the Family as Jasmine and Oliver, albeit a bit (eighty years, in Oliver’s case) younger, and with fewer descendants by an order of magnitude or two. Even if he was here to spy, he couldn’t help but do his best work, too. Besides, the Family might need it. That was what this was all about, right? The Family, the world, might someday need this planning.

So he’d put everything he had into the security on the vaults, even if he had no idea what was in them (All of the elders were secretive, but Oliver took it to extremes. Bauer wasn’t sure he told his wife what he’d had for dinner). They were supposed to withstand a nearby nuclear blast, but none of that meant anything if squatters and other intruders could just waltz in. So Bauer made them secure. So secure he was pretty sure his own wife wouldn’t be able to make it in, if he hadn’t given her the back door (Family was Family, but a wife was a wife).

He worked with the contractors (a different team for each section, and a few pieces he did on his own), under minimal supervision from Oliver, who just wanted to be sure the vault doors were always closed, for eight months. They set up locks and labyrinths and puzzle traps, all designed to funnel the unwary back out somewhere far from the central vault. They encoded everything in Bauer’s own complex cipher, and then
finally he brought his aging boss to the front door of the new catacomb, where even the lock was encoded.

“Impressive,” the Elder creaked. “Sturdy, and the ciphers here look to be uncrackable without the key. So give me that for my office file, and we’ll call it a job well done.”

Bauer couldn’t help it. He grinned at his difficult uncle. “You mean it was supposed to have a key?”

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Trouble in Doubles – Facets of Dusk – from kc_obrien and elfling_eryn’

Jul12

From [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s request for Josie/Facets and [personal profile] elfling_eryn‘s prompt: “There’s only so much trouble you get into in a day…unless, of course, you have a clone or two at hand.”

Facets of Dusk, which needs a landing page.

Josie was holding on to Alexa’s hand this time, and they were both pretending that they just hadn’t gotten around to letting go, both pretending the other one needed the hand-holding. They’d gotten good at it, and in this world… this world, they both needed it.

It was like coming home, walking down the street in a neighborhood you’d known, and finding it blasted and destroyed by war. More than any other of the worlds Josie had seen, it looked like home. The signs were almost the same – hell, some of them were the same; there was the ruins of a Krispy Kreme, and she was pretty sure that was a FedEx office. The road names were mostly the same, or similar. If they turned that corner, they’d see one of the bars Cole thought they didn’t know he went to, or a bombed-out pit where it should be.

They turned the corner, because they were here to explore, and none of the instruments Peter was waving about, nor the charms Aerich was wielding, were suggesting danger. Josie’s senses were saying something different – saying Run. Leave. Flee. But she couldn’t pinpoint it, and she didn’t want to let down the team by panicking too soon. She held tighter to Alexa, which was good, and not just for the comfort the other woman gave her.

Because when they turned the corner, Alexa stared back at her. Alexa harder, dirtier, dressed in scavenged clothing that doesn’t fit perfectly, but nonetheless Alexa.

Josie backpedalled, swallowing a gulp of panic, reaching for the center of her calm and not quite finding it, scrabbling until she backed right into Peter.

“Easy, easy…” He hadn’t seen the Alexa clone yet, but he set his hand on her shoulder, trying for calming, she supposed. She could feel from the way his fingers tightened when he realized what she was panicking about. And then it got worse.

By that point, Alexa was looking at herself cautiously, the two of them so very calm about it. The dirtier version whistled sharply and, from a doorway to a mostly-standing building (that would have been Cole’s bar, back home), stepped… Josie.

They stared at each other, both of them breathing raggedly, uncertainly, both of them reaching for their Alexas, although her doppelganger had no Peter, no team watching her carefully (not true. The team was watching both of them, all four of them, but the clone-Alexa and clone-Josie had no other friends with them).

“No.” Even the voice sounded the same, the high, reedy panic Josie was trying to swallow. “No.” She glared at her Alexa angrily. “No. I know you’re a clone, but I’m not.”

Clone!Alexa shook her head. “Well, are you a twin, then? And if so, menina, your other half is totally screwing you. These guys look like they took a bath today.” Her diction was nothing like Alexa’s – lyrical, laid-back. Clone!Josie, on the other hand, sounded a lot like her.

“I’m not a twin. Not a clone.” She was, Josie noted clinically, starting to really panic. “I don’t know who she is but she’s an imposter.”

That just made Clone!Alexa bark out a laugh, one that Real!Alexa shared. “Come on, who do you think would want to be us? Up there in the shining places, maybe, but down here on the street?”

Josie was listening in awe. Behind her, Cole muttered to Aerich, “did you know this could happen?”

Instead of an answer, Aerich murmured back “Saints forefend we meet another of you. Can you imagine how much trouble two of you could get into?”

“Or more.” Xenia offered helpfully. “Since they have clones.”

Josie ignored them and stepped forward, offering a hand to Clone!Josie. “Hello,” she greeted her, using the calm tone of voice she knew helped her when she was freaking out. “So, ah, which would be better? A clone, or traveler from another world?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/77073.html. You can comment here or there.

The Pay Was Good

Jul11

From kc_obrien‘s prompt: “Can I get a short piece from another perspective of some of the internees/guards in the community featured in Discovery Channel/Invisibles (LJ Link)?

***

The pay was good.

That’s what Dylan told himself when he took the job. It was good pay, better than anything else a washout jock had right to expect. It let him support Kaylee and their baby girl and, a year later, their baby boy, and it was out in the middle of nowhere – just about the safest place to be, if it weren’t for the monsters they were guarding.

Not that they looked like monsters, or acted like monsters, or quacked like ducks in any way. Sure, they looked a little funny, and had a little bit of magic here and there, but that was like calling housecats dangerous because they bore a faint resemblance to tigers.

But the pay was really good. Dylan reminded himself of that when his fellow guards made rude cracks, the sort of stuff that, if it had been any ethnicity and not faeries, El-hee-may as they called themselves, would have gotten them fired, sued, and blacklisted. He reminded himself of new shoes on his baby girl’s feet and the little cottage Kaylee loved so much when a squirmy kid with scales like a snake’s bit him and his hand swelled up for a day and a half.

The day that the teenaged girl with the goaty bits came crying to him (because he was the nice guard) because three of the other assholes had gotten her in a corner and threatened to do worse if she told, he went home and held his family tight for hours, and wondered if any amount of money could really be worth it.

The paychecks stopped coming a week later.

***

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Old Friends? Rin & Girey/Reiassan, from fayanora’s prompt

Jul11

From fayanora‘s prompt “An unexpected ‘Hello.'”

From Rin & Girey/Reiassan, after In Context (available in Tales for the Sugar Cat).

Speaking of context, the important thing to know here is: Rin’s nation has won the war over Girey’s, and she is bringing him home as her captive across the length of her country. Girey was the prince of the defeated nation, and is in enforced incognito (Girey is a very common name in their country) as the son of a dead Duke.

Rin & Girey have a landing page (LJ Link

Karak and Noni were generous, friendly hosts, and it took Rin little time at all to relax into their company. They’d fought together, after all, Karak and her, and she’d known Noni since they were children (even if, like Rin, the name Noni wore now wasn’t the one she’d worn then).

Even Girey started to relax. He still complained about the colors, but, some of what had to be his royal manners kicking in, not in front of their hosts, and less and less so she found the most muted Callanthe silks she could to dress him in, and a tailor that could actually fit the clothes to him. If his qitari buttoned on the left, well, it would be a while before he figured that one out, and he could complain then. In the meantime, it suited some small petty part of Rin’s soul to keep him in the dark, his clothes marking him as unskilled, if affluent, labor.

And, despite his complaints, he was paying close attention to the crowds as they shopped. There was a shift in his shoulders and his tone of voice since they got to Ossulund, the feeling that he was trying to act of be someone different. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea of Rin having friends, especially male friends that weren’t him. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was jealous.

“Geer?” The voice, high-pitched, excessively feminine, and loud, came from across the marketplace. Rin turned before her prisoner did, uncomfortably curious. “Girey? Geer, hello!”

Now, he turned, though he glanced at Rin and their hosts first, and now all four of them were looking at the woman who was, despite the decorative shackles tinkling on her wrists, waving wildly at them.

“Friend of yours?” Rin murmured softly. If she had been, what she was, now, was a soldier’s war trophy, lovely and fragile in her tight, left-buttoned silk qitari and delicate house slippers, her blonde hair pinned in curls over her head. A decoration.

Girey’s shoulders were tense as he turned back to the belts they were looking at. “She must have the wrong Girey,” he muttered.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/76482.html. You can comment here or there.

Fiction/Reality juxtaposition

Jul11

Via Candlemark & Gleam’s twitter feed…

Minimalist, Futuristic Library, although my experience with libraries locally makes me question their shock at OMG! Books!

This library reminds me in part of The Planner’s Library, seen in this icon by [personal profile] meeks.

Original article has more pictures & details.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/76184.html. You can comment here or there.

Final Exams – TĂ­r na Cali – from Wyld_Dandelyon’s prompt

Jul11

From Wyld_Dandelyon‘s prompt: “Final Exams.”

This comes after Frying Pan, Fire (LJ Link).

Despite rather constant warning from their teachers: “Don’t bond. Don’t get to close. You will be sold when school is over, and it is exceedingly unlikely you will be sold to the same household,” they had gotten close.

They had been picked up on the same run, Steve, Carl, Debbie, Jill, Jakub, and Seth, and before they’d come to the school, they’d already spent several days together in a cell just big enough for the six of them. By the time their final exams rolled around, they were close enough to know what the others were thinking.

Not that it was hard, right now; they were all thinking variations on the same thing: What happens next? What happens if I don’t do well? What happens if I do do well? Is this really happening to me?

They knew, in theory, what came next: either they passed their exams, or they were sent to work camps. They’d even had a field trip to the fields, to see what it would be like. To scare them into obedience, Seth assumed; the work camps were pretty much exactly what American propaganda said being a slave in California was like: hard, constant, dehumanizing labor.

If they did well, they had been assured they would be placed well in high-ranking households. It rankled, or at least it bugged Seth – they never talked about this part, as it sounded too much like sedition, and sedition had, they’d learned fast, painful consequences – to be working hard to get a position licking someone’s boots. But better licking boots than picking grapes.

“I’m worried about the titles and terms of address in Civics,” he admitted. They were crowded into the dorm room he shared with Carl and Jakub, trying to cram for exams.

“Sommelier and barrista testing,” Steve muttered. “I can never tell the reds apart, and that whipped cream trick…”

“Law,” Jill murmured. “The little nitty gritty laws that change with every Barony.”

“We’ll done fine.” That was Carl, who had nothing to worry about. “Chin up, and just try to sleep tonight. We’ll all do fine.”

“And then what?” Steve muttered. For that, Carl didn’t have an answer. None of them did.

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First Planting

Jul10

From clare_dragonfly‘s prompt: “Fae-apoc: the first planting.” Fae Apoc, clearly. Hob, I swear I got Dree from your name. (It’s actually Adriana Moreau, “dark one/little dark.” Um, she’s a bit dark. 😉

***

Dree surveyed the ruins of the city with a critical eye. Most of the people had left when the gods started fighting overhead. Of those who hadn’t, most had trucked out when the power plant had gone offline, or when the food stopped coming in. Dree and her small crew had lasted through that by building their fence up the moment trouble started, boarding up their windows when things got really bad, and moving into a nearby apartment building when the fires ruined their old neighborhood.

The winter had been hard, and they’d done their share of covert cheating to keep alive. The building hadn’t originally had a chimney, but who was left that knew that? A city of over a million now had maybe three hundred inhabitants, a good third of those refugees from larger nearby cities who hadn’t made it any further. They knew each other, their tiny conclave, only by what they chose to share, and, in Dree’s case, as in many others, that was precious little.

They’d made it through the winter on willpower, burnt furniture, and canned goods, but now the frost was gone, and something you could call spring was here. The yard near the apartment building had been a museum, once, and, inside, some art, mostly statues, still remained. But what mattered to them right now was the long stretch of ground which had been unplowed, mowed, fertilized, and well-tended for over a century.

They peeled off the sod, Dree and her crew and their team of fellow refugees, plowed up the lush, fertile soil, and planted scrounged seed after seed, watering with hoses and cans stolen from the houses of the dead and gone, muttering Workings when there were no humans to see.

Like the seeds, they had landed in a small corner of hospitable land in the midst of a burned-out wasteland. Like the seeds, they would grow and flourish. Like the seeds, they would live.

***

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