The April Giraffe Call is nearly upon us!
The Poll for April & March Giraffe Themes ended in a tie for April, so this is our run-off poll!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/319254.html. You can comment here or there.
For Friendly Anon’s commissioned prompt, after Up Shit Creek (LJ), Shit Keeps Coming (LJ), and Shit, Fan (LJ)
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ.
He knew how to use the sword. He’d been practicing since he was old enough to hold one, and with a wooden sword not all that different from this one – except his had been pine and then apple-wood, not, as he hoped this one was, rowan.
Knowing how to hold the thing probably saved his life, or at least his virtue. These creatures were nasty, violent, and far rougher and stronger than anything Pyry had ever seen, much less fought.
Desirée, on the other hand, was an astonishing fighter. If he hadn’t been busy ducking punches and swinging balls of thorns, Pyry would have been amazed. She ducked and wove and jumped, using the walls, the ceiling, the bar, and the floor all as landing surfaces, taking one troll’s head clean off with a long swing of a sickle-like blade and injuring the second one on the back swing. She was doing all right for herself until the third guy grabbed the chain of her weapon and yanked.
Pyry manged to avoid getting hit by her by tucking under the table, but it looked as if she was stunned. The rhino-like troll in front, the one whose arm she’d banged up, was going straight for her. He was going to hurt her. He was going to mess up Des’ lovely skin.
Pyry didn’t think, he charged, head down, sword held in a guard position. He plunged forward as fast as he could, determined to gore the troll before he got to Des.
His horn went into the thing’s chest as the creature grabbed his sword arm, wrenching his wrist and slamming his hand against the wall. But the horn was already in, piercing the thing’s heart. Pyry tossed his head, sending the horn deeper, and thought about piles of shit and piles of hay.
The man screamed. Screamed, screamed, and screamed some more. He grabbed Pyry, trying to dislodge him, but the horn appeared stuck, and his hands skidded off of Pyry’s skin.
He couldn’t see anything but the creature’s stinking shirt, but that began to smolder and smoke, and his forehead was getting uncomfortably warm. The thing kept slapping ineffectually at Pyry, kept swearing, kept screaming, backing up until he ran into something, then scrambling up onto the bar, pulling Pyry with him.
His screams slowed, turned into whimpers, and then from whimpers into tiny moans. “Gods,” he muttered, “thirteen fled gods. Save me. Save me…. shit.”
With a pop, Pyry’s horn pulled out, and he fell to the floor. His arm was broken, but he hauled his sword back into block position anyway.
He could have saved himself the trouble. Des and her opponent had both stopped, staring at the troll on the counter.
At the man on the counter, much smaller, much paler, swimming in his clothes, who had fallen into a position of prayer and was whispering over and over again “i’ll do better, I’ll do better. I’ll be good. I’ll follow the Law, Gods, please don’t forsake me.”
Pyry felt his mouth curl into a feral grin as he turned towards the blue one. “Your turn.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/319035.html. You can comment here or there.
For the meme I posted Wednesday night here and here (feel free to leave pairings now if you want; I’m having fun.
“Come on, man.” Rozen grabbed Baram by the arm. “Party tonight.”
“Party? It’s Tues…” He shut up, but not before he saw the look the bigger guy shot him. “Right. Party. Whose place?”
“Ardell’s. His Keptie seems to like cuddling with you.”
“No-one likes cuddling with me.”
“Hey, man, Annie’s not bad, and everyone knows you’re not as rough as you look.” Rozen punched his shoulder. “You’ll do fine. You always do.”
more here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/493490.html
(Year 2)
Shad and Meshach had Ib up against the wall and were doing their best to break every bone in his body one at a time. Every time he tried to get away, one of them muttered in his ear, and he found himself squirming in pain, his feet rooted to the ground.
“Say you’re hers and it’ll end,” the older of the two whispered. “All you gotta do is say you’re hers.”
“Luke ain’t gonna find you down here, and he hates you anyway, little bastard. Say you’re hers.”
“Trouble?” The rumbling voice was a new one – might be Baram. Ib couldn’t see.
“None of your concern, freak.”
Something happened. Ib was never sure what. But when he woke up, he was in the doctor’s office, Baram was looming in the doorway, and he didn’t belong to Liza.
(2040)
Agmund was hunting.
He’d been hunting for a long time. Other obligations kept getting in the way, but he came back to this one over and over again. This was his failure, this was his mistake. He would fix it.
Meshach had been his Student. Meshach had done this to his daughter. Everything since then – what Ardell had done, what being cy’Valerian had done, what being abandoned by the Thornes had done – came back to Fridmar’s failure as a Mentor and a father.
And now he would resolve that issue.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/318974.html. You can comment here or there.
“And then I said… pow! That’s what I’m going to do!”
“Excuse me, miss. We’re the hand gesture police. I’m afraid that’s an illegal gesture.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me. That? That’s nothing but…”
“Miss, miss, please stop. I’m willing to let you off with a warning, but you’ve got to keep your body language in check.”
“My body language, not just my hand gestures now? What’s this world coming to?”
“Anne, just drop it, please. You’ve always been a bit… exuberant. Especially on Mondays.”
“Illegal touching, Miss, do you have a signed consent form?”
“What, wait, what?”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/318640.html. You can comment here or there.
The March Giraffe Continuation Poll is here – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/317893.html
Please feel free to vote in the comments if you don’t have a DW account.
The poll will remain open until this story comes up in my task list (it’s currently one of five, so it will come up between now and the end of tomorrow).
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/318267.html. You can comment here or there.
The summary for (most of)these stories is LINK
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/317893.html. You can comment here or there.
For ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kelkyag‘s commissioned prompt.
The Aunt Family has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ.
“Were you taught about the archetypes?”
It wasn’t the question Evangaline had been expecting; it segued out of left field while she was still pondering the implications of someone leaving their family, of a son leaving the family.
“The tarot?” she offered, while she tried to remember things Asta and the others had mentioned to her. The archetypes, the archetypes… “No, no, not the tarot, but sometimes it seems similar. Something about the stories? Aunt Asta mentioned them, but she didn’t…”
“No, she wouldn’t have. I don’t believe she had the skill of seeing the stories. I wonder if you will.”
“I… don’t know. When Aunt Asta taught me about them, I had dreams…” Only Rosaria could make Eva feel this way, like she was being measured and judged against an invisible ruler. She shrugged, trying to shake off the elementary-school feeling. “In the Wizard of Oz, the way at the end Dorothy say ‘and you were there, and you, and you? That’s what it was like. Crazy dreams, with Uncle Arges as the Scarecrow.”
She gestured hurriedly with her free hand. “I don’t mean really the scarecrow. I mean, a sidekick, following another guy around. They were younger than I knew him, my age at the time, so late teens. I think I’d seen a picture of him at that age recently, one of the family shots? But this was much more vivid.”
“The Sidekick.” Rosaria made her “thinking” noise. “That would be Argie at that age. I don’t have the paintings with me, nor could you give them a proper look while you were driving, but the Sidekick is one of the archetypes we see a lot in our family. The Buddy. The support. That was Argie to Willard, every inch of the way. It’s what’s so tragic about the whole thing.”
More: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/534069.html
The whole story: http://lynthornealder.com/fiction/aunt-family
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/317663.html. You can comment here or there.
For the meme I posted Wednesday night here and here
I chewed over the Pratchett one for a while. Fanfic makes me nervous to write.
Having a big brother was sometimes a pain. He would mess up her hair and steal her dinner and pick her up and swing her when she was trying to be serious.
But when she looked at the mean girls the day after her ride with Jimmy in the parking lot, and not a single one of them would say so much as Boo to her – except to tell her they thought her shoes were poker, which meant cool this week – Junie thought having an older brother, having Jin for an older brother – was the most awesome thing ever.
Dear Mom, and Dad…
Carrot turned and looked at Angua, sleeping across his bed. The moon was new tonight, and she was sprawled in human form, but he could see, in her lines, the wolf she was sometimes. He thought about her running beside him, about the way she looked when she came in sweaty and filthy after a day Defending the Peace. He thought about the rare moments when she was out of uniform and not wearing fur. He thought about the moment when he thought that, perhaps, she had died.
He looked back at the paper, and thought about trying to put all that into words.
I am, in Love.
Ambrus was asleep, and Regine was not.
This was a common occurrence; she slept very little, and found often that a tlacatl Working would do her far better than actual sleep. She did not, as a rule, enjoy her dreams.
She did enjoy his, however. She enjoyed most of how her Kept’s brain worked, but his dreams, his mind unfettered and free to do as it would, were a fascinating place full of vivid, if unlikely, magic and sensuality.
She wondered, sometimes, watching his dreams, what it said that she enjoyed his unfettered mind the most.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/317370.html. You can comment here or there.
For Friendly Anon’s commissioned continuation of Twelve Roses and One
She’d heard the story her whole life. The rosebushes, the crazy Aunt that nobody wanted to admit was theirs, the twelve pink blossoms that got brighter for each daughter, the “true gift” they were supposed to receive on their sixteenth birthday.
She knew, too, that her parents had planned on stopping at four kids, or stopping after Harold, or stopping at any point that wasn’t almost-to-thirteen-children. She was fairly certain the gift had power… and she had known from a very young age that one ignore fairy gifts at one’s own peril.
So it was no surprise to her, or to the next three sisters down, when, on the dawn of her birthday, Alicia walked out to the rosebush and snipped the rose that her parents had always called “her rose.”
Her parents had been dithering. They were worried about what a “true gift” would be. They were concerned that there would be sort of booby trap. They were, she was pretty sure, concerned they might end up with a hundred and sixty-nine grandchildren spaced over thirty-something years.
None of that mattered. Alicia had decided as soon as she was old enough to remember making decisions that she would do what Aunt Edith had bade. She had planned to go out there, laid out the pruning shears…
..and then woke in the kitchen, silver blade in one hand and the rose in the other, as she placed it in the vase.
“Well.” Brandy, Celia, and Darla were watching her. “Did I…”
“Yup.” Darla looked a little spooked. “Do you remember…”
“Nothing.” She frowned at the flower. “I wonder what’s going to happen now.”
She watched the flower – they all did, including their rather-miffed parents – every day, staring for the first signs of roots. She ran her fingers over the stem every night before bed, wondering what was coming. It seemed as if she was waiting, holding her breath, like her birthday had been delayed for a flower.
The day her mother found out she was pregnant again, two months after Alicia’s birthday, the rose suddenly popped out roots all over the place.
“Of course,” Mom muttered, and pulled out a lovely pot and a bag of potting soil. “Come on, Alicia. Let’s get her planted.”
The rose went into the dirt like it was helping, grabbing at the dirt, sinking in as if relieved, even if Mom was glaring at it. They were all staring at it, Alicia, Dad, all ten of her sisters and her spoiled little brother. Waiting. Holding their breaths.
“What do you think…?” Ida whispered, but just at that moment, Alicia knew.
“Oh…” She reached out and let the thorns, the two thorns this rose had kept, near the bloom, pierce her fingers.
“Alicia!” Mom had gone from angry to horrified. “What have I told you about fairy gifts?”
“It’s okay, Mom.” Everything was going… well, not everything. But enough was going to be okay. “I understand now. I see it all now.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/317092.html. You can comment here or there.
For the meme I posted last night here and here
“I love you, man.”
Porter had been drinking. At least, Arundel hoped he’d been drinking – there’d been a dance. There were lots of things at Addergoole and more things at Addergoole dances that could make someone slur and wobble like that.
“I know you do.” Sylvia was already back in the suite; Arundel had gone looking for his friend.
“That girl, she said I should love her, but I said, don’t be silly. I’m not into… you know.”
“I know, buddy.” Yep, something other than booze. He’d have to tell Sylvia the succubi were trying again.
“But you’re my best friend.”
“Always will be. Here, open a Door?”
Later, he thought perhaps that hadn’t been the best thing to ask a soused and besotted Porter.
“It’s the Bond, you know.”
“I know.” She was humoring him, he was sure of it. He didn’t remember her doing that when they were younger. “The Bond re-writes your brain pathways and rewards and punishes behavior based on a very limited set of parameters. It can imitate love rather effectively.”
“I’m not in love with you. I want to fuck you, always have. I want to see what it takes to make you scream.”
“But you don’t love me.” She shrugged, and turned, finally, from her project to look at him directly. “This information is important to me why?”
Fifty years ago, he would have thought it was an exasperating side effect of her charming naivete. Now… now she was smirking at him. She knew he was full of shit.
“I wouldn’t want you to get your hopes up.” He wouldn’t want to get his own hopes up, either, would he?
Girey swung the toddler up in the air and back down to the ground like he’d been handling small children his whole life. “And wheeeeee! There goes the little child-one, there she goes.” He’d thickened his accent to a nearly incomprehensible mix of Bitrani grammar with Callenian vocabulary, and the children loved it, and him.
Rin scooped up one too small to know what was going on, and studied her captive, hiding her smile behind the baby. He was wonderful with children. He was, when he made the effort, generally wonderful with people.
Now if only she could get him to be wonderful with her.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/316702.html. You can comment here or there.