Archive | January 2012

Scrounging for History, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@Inventrix)

Jan22

For The [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt

Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“I don’t know what we’re looking for,” Amalie complained, as they made their way over the rocky terrain. They’d left the wagons, with the rest of the company, on the last smooth place they’d found, the old road still standing, the encroached trees making it a deep, dark tunnel.

“Same thing as always,” Dor answered, as he always did. “Food. Livestock someone let wander. Plants we can eat. A lot of this area was settled and then abandoned, when the bandits moved in. Come on, Ama, you know this.”

“But why is it always us?”

“Okay,” Karida inserted tiredly, “that’s just a stupid question. Amalie, if you can’t come up with a new song, work on the tune to this one. It’s gone flat.” Turned to look at her cousins, she missed seeing the low outcropping until her shins barked against it. “Blasted returned gods!” She kicked the rock again angrily, then looked at it. Not rock, but a wall. “Like Dor was saying, settlements, see? Here’s a foundation.”

“That doens’t look like anything I’ve seen before.” Dor crouched down next to her feet, studying the remnant of a wall, tracing the lines with his fingers. “Is there anyone else around, Ama?”

With a swallowed grumble, their youngest cousin whispered the Working that would tell her if they were being observed. “Far away,” she answered after a moment. “Over that way,” she gestured out in front of them. “Ten, fifteen minutes’ walking, maybe longer. They’re faint. Maybe three of them, maybe five.”

“Should be safe.” He traced the wall while Karida walked along it, seeking a corner. She could hear him, as she found a stairway, murmuring “Idu eperu… hunh. This is some sort of formed rock, like the roads.”

Turning the corner brought Karida around the tall stand of trees that had grown up inside the foundation. She caught her breath, looking at the crumbled buildings, the trees and vines taking over, and, in the distance, the monoliths still standing. “It’s a lot more than that,” she murmured. “We’re going to need the whole company for this one.”

Next is: Digging through History (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/241018.html. You can comment here or there.

Teasers for the Friendly Neighborhood Anonymous Prompt/Donor

Jan22

So Anonymous knows I’m working on their commissions from the December call. 😉

Porter stared at the strange girl who had so tidily taken control of their lives – Arundel’s more than his, certainly, but still. Then it hit him. “Right. Come on, Arun.” He dropped to his knees and got a shoulder under his friend’s arm. “Stand up, that’s it.”

“Ow,” Arundel complained weakly.

“Yeah, I know. Those look like they’re gonna hurt worse than a tail and my ears did. But you gotta stand up.”

“Stand up,” Sylvia echoed, and with a muffled whimper, Arundel made it to his feet. “That’s better.” She slid herself under his other arm.

Flying, Arundel was learning, was hard work, and exhausting. Even though Mr. Hawk told him that it wasn’t all in the muscles – “If you were doing this all with physical strength, you’d never get off the ground. Your flight is as much a part of your magic as, well, whatever you innate power is going to be,” – there was certainly a lot of something going on with his body, moving these new, strange, massive wings, keeping himself going.

And, of course, there was the falling. He wasn’t, he discovered, frightened of falling, but it hurt, and he liked to avoid the pain…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/240572.html. You can comment here or there.

Wordcount Update, Two weeks

Jan22

Week before Last:
Rin/Girey – Goal-1000, actual – 1359
Addergoole Bonus – Goal – 750, actual – 0
Calinovel – Goal-1000, actual -1002
Addergoole main – goal-750, actual -1051.5
Blog non-Giraffe goal-600, actual-400
Giraffe – goal – 4700, actual-6435
Short for submission – goal, actual-0
Total goal – 9600, actual – 10247.5

Last week:
Rin/Girey – Goal-700, actual – 340
Addergoole Bonus – Goal – 500, actual – 0
Calinovel – Goal-800, actual -691
Addergoole main – goal-750, actual -584
Blog non-Giraffe goal-0, actual-269
Giraffe – goal – 6250, actual-8732
Short for submission – goal 600, actual-803
Total goal – 9600, actual – 10247.5
Total goal – 9600, actual – 11419

Submissions 2012 goal 2, actual 2

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/240263.html. You can comment here or there.

Encyclopedia Draconis – A Survey of Reproduction Methods in Dragons Next Door – Dragons

Jan21

This is the comment perk from the December Giraffe Call, a setting piece on Dragons next Door.

A Survey of Reproduction Methods

When humanity lived apart from the other sentient races of earth, and spent most of its time encountering creatures only on its particular branch of the evolutionary tree, the study of reproduction was a much simpler, more limited thing.

As the magical races, the hidden peoples, and the Secret Ones came out from the shadows and began interacting more and more frequently with humanity, in some situations living next door to them, shopping in the same places, and going to the same schools, human scientists became, as humans are wont to do, curious. Working with the scholars of many of the older races (once they discovered that many of these races had scholars, which took some time), the human leads at Johns Talbot University have begun this Survey of Reproduction Methods.

Part One: Dragons

Possibly the most interesting of the non-human reproduction methods, the dragons, dracon sapiens, have developed a system depending entirely on a second species.

This symbiotic relationship took a great deal of time to explain to scientists of Johns Talbot, who at first believed that the dragons they were speaking with were talking in euphemism – “the stork does it,” is, after all, too close to the human myth we tell our children.

Dragons are, it appears, mono-sexual; all dragons have the same reproductive equipment, both having the ability to lay an egg and the ability to lay the smaller fertilizing seed. It appears that, according to some fossil record recently found, there may have been a time when these two could combine on their own.

The dragons do not speak of such a time, nor do they know how it came to be that their seed and egg would not join on their own. However, the process of fertilization is very well known to them, and that, they are willing to speak of.

A bonded pair of dragons will agree to have a child. One of them will lay an egg, placing it in a specially-prepared bed of gravel (in nesting places outside of their ancestral lands, they will have this particular type and color (coral-red) gravel trucked in for their egg beds). The egg is about the size and shape of an emu egg, although the shell is very thin. The other will place a much smaller seed-egg in the same bed.

Left to their own devices, neither will ripen or join. But with the assistance of a creature they call a stork, which is about one and a half times the size of the storks normally known to humankind and only nominally similar in appearance, the two become one and ripen. The stork places both egg and seed in its brood pouch (similar to a seahorse’s), along with its own eggs. An enzyme in the eggshell reacts with an enzyme in the pouch, and both the stork’s eggs and the dragon’s come to maturity.

Needless to say, the dragons protect the storks fiercely, sheltering them and treating them as sacred animals. Woe to the predator who attacks one!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239954.html. You can comment here or there.

What do you want to know about my settings? [DragonsNextDoor, Stranded, Reiassan]

Jan21

Okay! So the next thing on my list of things to write this weekend is a setting piece.

Dragons next Door won the setting-piece poll (Dreamwidth) by a landslide, 7 to 4 vote each for the 2 runners-up.

So I’ll be writting a page of Encyclopedia Draconica this evening.

And then a piece of Encyclopedia Stranded Or Reiassan.

What would you like to know about these settings?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239831.html. You can comment here or there.

Tea with /HER/, a continuation for the Giraffe Call, Tir na Cali (@DaHob)

Jan21

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of yesterday’s installement: Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

In today’s installment, our plucky protagonist and her slave get names!

“I should hope he does. I don’t act with the intent of being forgotten.”

I chewed on my lip, and then, immediately, stopped myself. That was a girl’s habit, a childish trait. He’d helped me break myself of it – why was it coming up now? I could see in her eyes that she’d noticed, however, and judged me for it.

“You are, I’d agree, quite unforgettable.” The audacious words were out of my mouth; again, my voice was working without having asked my common sense what I should do. That wasn’t her power, was it? I struggled to recall, and couldn’t. If so, what a masterful use!

But she was smiling. “You have some spark in you, don’t you? I like that.” She gestured, cutting off my objection: she’d snuffed the spark out of him long before she’d discarded him. “Slaves are slaves. A woman who will be ruling part of my territory, that’s a different matter. Do you think we can get along, Treanna?”

“I believe we can work together, your Ladyship.” There, now my brain and my vocal chords were working together. “I believe I can serve very well under you.” Wait, what? Was I flirting with my liege lady? I hated her! I didn’t want to flirt with her!

But her smile was growing. “I believe you would. However, as you’ve noted, when someone serves under me, there is rather less of them to enjoy when I am done. That’s why I sold him, you know.”

“I’m sorry?” I blinked, trying to change gears. What was she doing to me, this Ice Queen? “You sold Michael because…”

“There is a length of time one can serve under me. I kept him longer than I’d intended; he serves so beautifully, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and he is, himself, so flawless.”

Except the brand. But for her, that, too, could have been part of his perfection. “He is a beautiful man, and a wonderful servant,” I agreed, perhaps more warmly than I should have – but I was in love with him, so painfully so. “But he will not love me.”

“Not will not,” she sighed. “Cannot. I had hoped that, with enough time away, he might recover, but I’m not sure he will. Will he let you remove the brand?”

It should have been illegal, but he might have consented. Probably had consented. And would not consent to me having it smoothed from his skin. “No, your Ladyship.”

She sighed again, deeper. “Well, then, sadly, there is our answer. He doesn’t fail to love you, Treanna, because you are not a beautiful young lady – although you are very young – but because he cannot stop loving me.”

“Can’t you stop it?” I almost wailed. Later, I’d remember this with mortification and humiliation, but being around the Ice Queen opened all of your stops, eliminated all of your self-control. “Can’t you make him love me?”

She shook her head slowly, looking almost sympathetic. I hadn’t thought she had an emotion like sympathy in her. “No. No, I cannot. But I can tell you this. In a year, you will look at him, and you will know that, as much as you love him, you can’t keep him anymore. You can’t look at that face, that face that knows all of your youthful silliness, any longer.” She held up a hand. “I know this, Treanna, because, believe it or not, I was nineteen once, myself. And when this happens… come to me again, and we will talk.” She sipped her tea, her eyes smirking at me. “I’ll enjoy it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239537.html. You can comment here or there.

Kirkevaren

Jan21

For flofx‘s prompt, with information from this site.

I do not know how to protect my church from this.

I have been protecting this land for centuries, since they buried me at the front gate of the church-yard. I have warned them of trouble, frightened off vandals, and, on more than one occasion, reminded the good people of the town that there were things beyond the mundane.

I was a lamb, once. Once long before this existence. I can remember, vaguely, the warmth of my mother, the green of the grass, the sweetness of milk. And then there was the dirt, and then this life, this non-life existence, protecting this land.

I was the first buried here, or at least, the first buried in the hallowed ground here. Others who came before me, animals and human, were chased off, pushed off, by the blessing of the land, only their physical remains staying to sweeten the ground and grow the daisies. But others came, human and animal, some lingering, some moving on quickly.

They are all gone, too, every one of them. Nothing but a chipmunk has been buried in my ground in more years than I have ways to count. The people don’t come as often, either, nor as many, to pay homage to the dead, to remember those that have gone. It is harder and harder to make them know me, to chase off thieves and vandals.

And now… now this problem is bigger than I am. Now, this land which has only me and the old priest to protect it is being encroached upon. The city has gotten bigger and bigger, growing from a small town to a behemoth. It has pushed at the edges before, toppling the old stone wall, but always before we could hold it back, him and I. Always before there were others to help.

Now they would dig up the church-yard, they have already begun to dig, to move the remains to cold crypts, to make room for their new building. Now they would take the land from me, and me from the land, and what will i do? Guard a landfill? I am too much of this place to leave it. I am too proud to let them ruin my churchyard.

They say, those who buried me, that one must be buried alive to serve this way. And they have dug such a deep hole, there by the first of the graves. If they could see me, if they could be frightened enough by me…

…then the priest and I would have another to protect the land with us.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/238941.html. You can comment here or there.

Tea with /Her/, a (teaser of a) story of Tir na Cali for the Giraffe Call (@dahob)

Jan20

For @DaHob’s prompt, based on a Cali idea.

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

When the Countess called me in for tea, I didn’t know what to think.

I knew why, of course. My mother was ailing, young as she was, and I was her heir. I would be the Countess’s loyal Baroness soon enough, and I was (so I had been told a thousand times), young for the position. She needed to get the measure of me.

The problem was, I had the measure of her already. I had the feel of her hand and the chains she left on a mind – not in person, she wasn’t the sort of liege to do that to her vassals – but in proxy, in the slave who was mine, who had once been hers. I had it in the brand on his hip that I couldn’t avoid, every time I touched him, and the marks in his mind, the way that, even after she’d set him aside, he still loved her.

I went, of course. You do not turn down an invitation from a Countess unless you’re the Queen herself. I put on the proper clothes and the proper smile, mouthed the proper words, and spoke business of her for a while.

But it made me twitch, when I heard phrases from her lips that I’d first heard from his, or, worse, when I found myself echoing one of her phrases, because I’d picked it up from him. He’d been with me for five years, my first sex slave, my first Companion, my first “grown-up” slave, fresh from the market where she’d sold him, the Ice Queen, my Countess. He’s seen every woe and misery, every triumph, held me while I cried and celebrated with me when I succeeded. He knew all my secrets, and all my buttons. And he was still in love with her.

“He remembers you, you know.”

I didn’t realize at first that I’d said it. It was in the middle of a conversation on something banal, trade rights, I think. Important, but not what was on my mind. Nor hers, I think, because she didn’t ask “who,” merely raised an eyebrow, one perfect, impossible eyebrow.

“I should hope he does. I don’t act with the intent of being forgotten.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/238721.html. You can comment here or there.