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Archive | December 2013
Falling from Grace, a story for the Orig-fic Bingo
To ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “Grace” slot.
Um also oops I accidentally tripped and um a setting? <.<
It had become a bit of a thing among the teens, the dispossessed, and the disillusioned, those hiding out under bridges, under water, under rafters from the things that called themselves The Deities.
They called it the Fall from Grace, the kids did. It involved a small bottle of something sold on the black market as Angel’s Tears, a kystka-stylus, and the patience of saints. But these kids had patience, or at least they had desperation, which can serve in its stead.
The bottle of Angel’s Tears, applied carefully with the stylus, would burn the skin and then evaporate, leaving behind it perfect thin lines of scars. It did not burn everyone – that was the odd part – but it had become a rite of passage under-bridge and under-rafter, and those who had successfully scarred themselves showed off their patterns, elaborate and plain, swirling and sharp, as badges of honor.
It was, of course, illegal, forbidden by The Deities and their Voices. Angel’s Tears themselves were verboten, along with thousands of other substances, some of them seeming quite benign, but that did not stop the black market in them from moving product rapidly and constantly. Most of the forbidden items could be disposed of into a canal or a dumpster quickly, if a Deities’ Eyes happened to be passing by, and often they were.
The Deities’ Eyes did not swim, as far as the citizens of the city could determine. They did not swim, and they definitely did not dive. Nor did the Voices; nor did the Deities themselves. Thus, of course, swimming and diving, too, were outlawed.
Swimming did not leave a mark, and was itself a means of escape from capture. Bootlegging could be hidden. Falling from Grace…
Falling from Grace marked you permanently. It said to all who chose to see, here I am, the disenfranchised, the displaced, and I defy your laws. It said to anyone who chose to see you bare that you had stuck your chin up, gritted your teeth, and applied Angel’s Tears to your skin.
And it said that you were such that the caustic Grace of the Deities, their distilled essence, their sweat and spit and piss… all that Angel-effluvience that went into the thing called Tears… that the distilled Grace of the Deities burned your very skin.
It wasn’t so much Falling from Grace as jumping, but had become quite the thing in recent nights.
A kystka or kistka() is a stylus for applying heated wax to pysanky. As I pictured Angel’s Tears being viscous, it was the first tool that came to mind.
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Freedom, Orig-Fic, Stranded World
To Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills the “freedom” slot.
Autumn and Winter are characters in my Stranded World setting; this story is earlier in their lives than most of the stories.
“It’s about Freedom.” Autumn sat on the edge of the bridge, feet dangling over the edge, not so much looking at the water as looking at the reflections in it. Hers, wild-colored and wild-haired, and his, cool-hued and smooth-tressed. Even here, even ‘dressed down,’ he looked proper.
“Of course it is about freedom. Everything in life is.” Winter spoke in measured tones, careful tones.
“How can you say that?” She twisted to look at in properly now, him, the connections between them, the lines around his life. “When you are so tied up in strands, so smoothed-out and constrained?”
“How can you say you are free?” His voice was, of course, calm. “When you do not know where your next meal will come from, when you are uncertain where you will sleep at night, when you have no home?”
“This is the life I chose.” Autumn tried not to raise her voice too much. He was her brother. He was her big brother; he would always be her big brother.
“And this is the life I chose, Autumn.” He patted her shoulder. “You find your freedom on the open road, and I… find mine in an office. Are we not both free?”
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Linden-Flower Tea
This came about because of a box of tea my roommate just showed me. 😉
It helps to know that Mike is Mike VanderLinden, whose original use-name is Linden-Flower.
Shira is Professor Pelletier; Maureen is Lady Maureen Foxglove. All three are staff at Addergoole.
It had started as a dirty joke between Shira and Maureen, shared over their third or fourth beer one late night in Mau’s Tavern.
“Well,” Shira had been laughing, “if all else fails, there’s Linden Flower tea for what ails you.”
“Unless it’s lindens that ail you, of course.” Maureen had smirked over her beer and they had moved on to more tree metaphors.
Shira had forgotten the whole thing until Christmastime, when a box of linden-flower tea had shown up under her tree. Once that had been done, though, the gauntlet had been thrown and it was on.
Linden scented oil. Linden sachets. Little linden-leaf-embroidered towels. “Good for what ails you.”
“Unless the lindens are ailing you.” Not that Mike was ever what actually ailed them, Maureen and Shira. They had their weaknesses, neither would deny it, but vain and vapid Daeva were not on either’s list.
After a while, it creeped into Shira’s everyday vocabulary. She had a student who was having some issues with body image, and, in speaking to Caitrin, suggested the boy might want some linden-flower tea for what ailed him. Another year, she suggested it to Laurel, when she and Wysteria were having a falling-out in their invisible relationship. Once, she even said it to a student.
“I don’t know. It’s just the whole idea is a little nerve-wracking. I get all the urges, but then I start getting scared and over-thinking everything…”
“Have you considered some linden-flower tea?” In Shira’s defense, it had been a long week. She covered it quickly, segueing into something else before coming back to the suggestion more directly.
But in all those years, it never occurred to her – and possibly not to Maureen, either – that the target of their joke was aware of it.
Until she found a box of tea under her tree again that Christmas, with a note attached:
Don’t bother with the infusion, come straight to the solution. ~M~
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Auction Item: Student Cameo
The student and friends stepped out from between the buildings just as Tairiekie was walking by. “…but then there was that problem in Philosophy. I think the instructor hates me.”
From the uniform, they were in [INSERT HERE] House, and from the cut of it, they weren’t a new student.
“Come on, [NAME HERE], you’re blowing it out of proportion. Instructor Pelnyen doesn’t hate you. He’s just…”
“Instructor Pelnyen,” the third of the group filled in.
“See?” Tairiekie murmured to Enrie. “It’s not just me.”
Or maybe [NAME HERE] is having trouble with Art class, or maybe they’re fighting with another student. Maybe they’re homesick.
You tell me! Bid here to name and describe this characer.
My naming rights auction – main post here is still going strong. Don’t you want to be a part of my world?
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Lost in Translation, Orig-Fic, Addergoole
To Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt to my orig-fic card. This fills, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lost in Translation square.
Summer, Between Years 9 & 10 of the Addergoole School
“You’d think this would be easy.” Shira Pelletier stared at the document in front of her.
“No.” Feu Drake shook his head. “No. Some might think this is easy, but I would not be one of them again.”
“You’re doing it again.” She glanced up at him, not yet irritated but willing to sound it.
“Of course I am ‘doing it again.’ I am not certain you would ever be reasonable to expect something else of me, j-“
“If the next sound out of your mouth is a jae, you’re doing this on your own, Drake.” Now, now she was becoming actually irate.
“You are rather younger than I am.” He managed to make the statement of fact sound like a reproach. Shira was un-reproached.
“And does that mean that I am your junior?”
She caught the faintest twitch that meant she’d either amused the man or caught him by surprise. “You posit a curious question… Shira.”
“See? I knew you could use my use-name if you tried hard enough.” She allowed herself to be mollified, because if she kept this up much longer, it would no longer be sparring and be something far more like flirtation. (Maybe. With Feu Drake, it was hard to tell even when he was naked. Clothed and poring over ancient papers, there was almost no option short of a Working to get a certain answer). “This part of this piece makes no sense.”
“Are you sure it’s not you?”
“I am certain it’s not me, Feu Drake.” She pushed the sheet over to him – a piece of gold pressed thin as paper and inlaid with the ancient script of Old Tongue, Idu a’Iduþin. “This part here, the prophecy. ‘The mother who cares not?'”
Drake frowned. “‘The mother who…’ yes, ‘who gives no caring for her children but simply births them as the mice do.’ An odd way to phrase that.”
As the mice do. Shira sighed. “Oh. Well, it can’t be one of ours, can it?”
“I don’t see why not. Addergoole was prophesied in at least three different texts.”
Shira looked back at the words. “‘Shall…’ but something is missing, isn’t it?”
“Lost.” Drake picked up a leather-bound book and passed it to Shira. “But here’s a Greek translation. You think it’s one of your Students?”
As the mice do. “Let’s just say, I’m hoping it’s a mistake of translation.”
“jae” is a diminutive honorific; the prefix for those who outrank you is sa’, and for equals you simply skip the honorific.
Shira Pelletier and Feu Drake are professors in the Addergoole School.
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Octi/OTPi… a sillyfic
… Okay, this started when I tweeted “I stuck half of my OTP in a box to make it happen,” and a friend misread it as “half of my OTP’s”… which led to the idea of like 8 people in a box.
It’s silly. 😉
“This… is awkward.” The man in the frontmost of the box wriggled, trying to get an elbow out of his kidney. That led to the girl pressed against him to shift in ways that might have been distracting, if it weren’t for the other six people in the box.
Well, to be fair, two of the other six people were also very distracting, as was the hand braced very high on his thigh. He didn’t want to think much about whose hand that was. He was trying not to think about those wandering fingers at all.
“Awkward hardly covers it.” The gorgeous redhead next to him – as opposed to the gorgeous redhead pressed up against him – shifted, almost getting her elbow out of his kidney. “Who are you people, anyway?”
“That’s a very good question.” The man in the back of the box’s face lit up in a series of LED-like lights. “A better one might be ‘where are we?'”
“That’s a very good question.” The man next to him lit up some sort of device. “Any answers?”
“The box is hawthorne.” The man in the frontmost only knew one other person here, and that was the redhead pressed against him. She had been muttering under her breath for quite a while. “It is made out of hawthorn and it has no opening.”
“So… someone put us in a wooden box. We can get out of that. That’s not even a problem.” The man with the strange handheld device poked his friend… friend? Whatever. “Blast us a hole.”
“Wait!” The man in the front of the box shifted. “If you send splinters into here… it could kill us.”
“So what do we do?” The second redhead shifted. “I don’t have room to kick properly, and I’m not carrying any of my weapons.”
Somewhere in the box, a mechanical whirring started. “Perhaps… we drill ourselves out.”
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Auction Item: Head of Mechanics House
The Head of the Mechanics’ and Engineers’ House stood at the front of the hall; it was the first day of classes, and Gaikvya was standing in a crowd with Pizhraa and Kelmoor, her teammates, staring at the person on the dais.
“Welcome to Mechanics and Engineering.” [NAME HERE]’s voice boomed across the hall. “Where you will learn the basic building blocks of not only the world, but of society itself.”
Gaikvya put a hand over her mouth. [NAME HERE] was impressive, true, but every Head of House today had sad something similar.
Of course, she was in this House, so she was a little more favorably inclined towards [NAME HERE].
Tell me all about [NAME HERE]! Bid here to name and describe this characer.
My naming rights auction – main post here is still going strong. Don’t you want to be a part of my world?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/617149.html. You can comment here or there.
Auction Item: Any House (Former Name)
“Who’s that?” Topzetryien pointed at the painting on the wall; the stairs of the dormitory tower were lined with portraits, but several were larger than others. This one, this one had a place of honor and a frame a handspan wide, gilded and trimmed and carved in scrolls and faces.
“Oh, [NAME HERE]?” Dimyezze was in her fifth year at Edally and had appointed herself tour guide for the first-year students. “The Tower was named for [HIM/HER] originally, back in the day when it was just towers. Sometimes you’ll still catch people calling the House [NAME] House.”
“What did [NAME HERE] do?”
What did [NAME HERE] do? You tell me! Bid here or here.
My naming rights auction – main post here is still going strong. Don’t you want to be a part of my world?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/616825.html. You can comment here or there.
Auction Item: Mechanics and Engineering Hall
“Good old [NAME HERE] Hall.” Tairiekie’s father thumped the thick stone of the building. “Heavy stone, loose roof, isn’t that what they say, Dairdo?”
“It’s what they say. But you know it isn’t true, Biem.” Tairiekie’s mother shook her head. “The roof is as secure as any other building, Taikie, and don’t let your father tell you differently.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tairikie ran her hands over the stone. It even felt old. “Who was [NAME HERE?]”
Who was [NAME HERE] (read in robotic voice, a la Futurama), anyway?
Bid here to tell me all about them!
My naming rights auction – main post here is still going strong. Don’t you want to be a part of my world?
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