Archive | July 2, 2012

Contemplating the Gods, a story of Reiassan’s history for the Giraffe Call

Jul2

For [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Set approx 750 years before the Rin & Girey novella

Ektatkya studied the holy book. The Tabersi had, she’d discovered, a lot of gods. Lots and lots of them, herds of them, packs of them. No wonder they needed so many priests. No person with a field and herd to attend to could keep track of all of these.

And they’d left so many of the Tabersi priests behind. The tribes had their own, of course, priests and god-chasers, gods (but not that many. Not enough to needs books, just enough for a statue here, a carving there, a token off a saddle somewhere else). But this was a new land, and they were no longer going to be the goat-tribes. They were no longer going to be a different people from the Tabersi.

For that to happen, both peoples had to change. And a place to start would be these books. She looked up at the Tabersi priest; he looked at her solemnly.

“Can it be done?”

“Of course it can be done. The question is, will you pay the price?”

“The price?” He was offended. Of course he was. The Tabersi’s god-chasers were not the same as the tribes’. They had Position. They had Status.

“Both will have to move. Your god-people must let someone else rule. Ours must learn to stand forward in the town, not at the back edge of the encampment.” The tribes-people who were here had been living in Tabersi cities and towns for generations, but they still acted like, thought like, nomads. That would need to change, too. This was not the warm pastureland of their home.

“Let someone else rule?” He nodded, slowly and reluctantly. “Yes. I see. To take a role that will not seem so strange to your people. And the gods?”

She would not rip pages out of a book. They had too few left. But she made the gesture as if to. “You need less. We need more. We take these, and make them less-and-more.” She flapped one hand negligently. “Make prayers a dirt-grubber can remember.”

“And still fancy enough for a money-counter?” The priest’s expression had changed. Ektatkya knew this one; it was that of someone seeing a challenge. “It will take time. But we can do it.”

“We must do it.” She nodded, but she was smiling as well. “The peace demands it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/365239.html. You can comment here or there.

In The Tower, Continued

Jul2

After In the Tower

Amanda liked her room. She didn’t know why, sometimes, her Aunt Tanta warned her against wanting to leave. She had everything she ever needed here, and it was warm, and safe, and comfortable – but most of all, safe.

She watched the television, and it told her about wars and rapes and murders. None of that happened here, in her tower. Nothing bad could happen to her at all, here in her castle. She was the protected princess. She was the safest maiden of them all. And she had everything she wanted.

Aunt Tanta told her she’d been found on the doorstep, a foundling. She told Amanda she was special, for she alone of the five children in the towers had been given Tanta’s personal care and personal visits. She alone had been bottle-fed by the ancient woman, she alone met with her for tea three times a week, rain, snow, or sunshine, summer and winter.

Amanda called herself, Amandianna, Princess of the Southermost Tower. She wrote long and involved stories about herself, about Amandianna, which involved a miniature horse and adventures in and around the tower, being wrested from it by force only to find a way to return, being pulled out into the world and fighting her way safe, back here, to her tower, to her safety, to the dragon who protected them.

—

Fred had been trying to send messages to the other towers.

Nothing else had worked so far, and he’d been trying for 584 hash-mark group-of-five days plus three.

He’d been growing out his hair for most of that eight years, thinking of the Rapunzel stories his sister had loved, back when he had a family. (He still didn’t have a beard to grow out. He wondered if that would grow faster). His hair dragged on the floor, now, when he didn’t braid it, but the tower was a lot taller than that.

Ripped sheets had just ended up with him not having a bed for a week, after an unseen hand had plucked him back into the tower from halfway down. Messages in balloons vanished into the wind and never came back.

He’d tried to take the dumbwaiter apart for the rope, but they’d just left him all alone and foodless for two days while they replaced and repaired it. “They:” the invisible keepers. He assumed they weren’t machines, but he wasn’t certain. He’d asked for seeds and started growing linen, but his rope had vanished overnight. They hadn’t stopped him from practicing climbing up and down the stairwell walls, but a fall on a slippery patch of rock (Moss, damn it) had left him with a broken ankle (set by maybe-robots while he was unconscious) and second-guessing that plan.

So now he was sending letters in schoolbooks, written in the margins of the boring sections, slipped between the pages, anywhere he could. How long have you been here? Why do you think they want us? Have you ever seen a person, since you got here?

Sometimes he just wrote I’m lonely. What about you?

He wrote one every day, and then did his homework, assigned the same way food was delivered, by dumbwaiter, read a book, ran up and down the stairs, maybe played some games, drew the few out his window, and then wrote another letter. The TV showed him a world so far away, so long ago, it might as well be another planet. The letters, at least, seemed like they might contact someone.

And then, thirty-five hashmarks later, a poetry book arrived with a note in the margins.

I was here for twelve hundred days when I lost count. I’m lonely, too.

Next: In the Tower, Continued

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/365052.html. You can comment here or there.

Goat-riders, Stone-riders, a story of Reiassan for the Jun Giraffe Call (@lilfluff)

Jul2

For [personal profile] lilfluff‘s prompt. Reiassan has three seasons: wet, hot, and cold. A dohdehr is essentially a large domesticated weasel.

Lannamer in the short hot season was stinky, crowded, and loud. People lived atop each other in stacked apartments, hardly reaching the land or the síra, hardly spending time with the goats that had been their ancestral cornerstone, with the animals they’d lived beside and with.

Epyena was sick of it. She was tired of the constant politicking and the constant noise, the people everywhere and no place for the gods. She needed to get out of the business-and-Army hustle and bustle, before she became just another cog in the endless machine. She was moving to the mountains.

She got together three of her like-minded compatriots, two cousins and a child of industry from her days at University, spent half of her family-gifted stipend on land and goats, and headed East. They would raise goats and ride them, raise dohdehr and hunt them, raise the short-season crops their ancestors had raised and eat like true goat-riders, and not soft stone-riders.

That was the plan, at least. They moved in the end of the hot season, so there was no planting to be done until the next rainy time. The house on the land was old, decrepit, the roof half fallen-in; they pitched tents inside the walls, making jokes about living the true life of goat-riders. Until the goats started eating the tent-walls.

Then it was time to repair the roof of the stables, a skill none of them had gone to college for, and the roof of the house, even harder. Engineering was a nice theory, but it didn’t do as well getting tiles on the roof.

The day the dohdehr ran off with what little they’d managed for dinner, Epyena broke down crying. Her goat-rider ancestors, she feared, had been horribly stupid. Only the stone-riding made any sense.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/364714.html. You can comment here or there.

Building the Wedding-House, a story of Steam!Callenia for the Giraffe Call

Jul2

To fflox‘s prompt

Soon after Every Gift

The rebuild of their wedding-house was almost complete, which was good, since their wedding was less than a week away. All that was left were the final pieces of the roof.

The problem was, given the tight space of the street, even expanded, and the neighbors to three sides who had had enough of construction, thank you very much, a conventional crane was out of the question. Ropes and pulleys would work, and, indeed, were working, but even with a five-pulley system, the going was slow, hard, and painful. But they were doing it, Katyebah and Larzhal, with the help of a few of their closest friends.

And then Larzhal’s uncle Bantas showed up with a… device, at the same time that Katybah’s aunt Gelah showed up with some sort of contraption, one of them snorting steam and the other one farting smoke, glittering brass and solid iron, both making noises like a boiler that had seen better days.

“Dueling devices?” Katyebah was joking, although she wasn’t sure it was actually a jest. “Larzhal…”

“It’s all right, my lovely Katye.” He kissed her forehead, cheerfully helpful in that manner nobody else would have been allowed to be. “They can’t do much…”

“To our home?” She did not shout, because she did not want to upset the neighbors any further, but it was close.

“How long do your Aunt Gelah’s machines normally work for?”

“Perhaps an hour. Your uncle’s?”

“Perhaps two. So we ask them to take turns.” Larzhal smiled. “Three hours ought to finish the roof, and I’ll call a carter to help them get everything home when they’re done.”

“I knew I was marrying you for a reason.” She kissed him, in full sight of the next-door neighbor. Perhaps they would be gifted with curtains for their wedding.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/364365.html. You can comment here or there.

Yay, a bingo card :-)

Jul2

It’s [community profile] kink_bingo time again!

kink bingo card image cardset1-338.jpg || row 1: | bodies and body parts | rough body play | tattoos / tattooing | breathplay | double penetration || row 2: | painplay (other) | enemas | penance / punishment | vanilla kink | suspension || row 3: | mechanical / technological | bodily secretions | wildcard (icon #50 contains: nippleplay / tit torture, electricity) | in public | exposure / exhibitionism || row 4: | roleplay | masters doms slaves and subs | caning | prostitution / sex work | collars || row 5: | whipping / flogging | drugs / aphrodisiacs | spaces scenes and settings | humiliation (situational) | class fantasies

bodies and body parts rough body play tattoos / tattooing breathplay double penetration
painplay (other) enemas penance / punishment vanilla kink suspension
mechanical / technological bodily secretions wildcard in public exposure / exhibitionism
roleplay masters doms slaves and subs caning prostitution / sex work collars
whipping / flogging drugs / aphrodisiacs spaces scenes and settings humiliation (situational) class fantasies

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/364228.html. You can comment here or there.