Archive | February 10, 2014

Stranded in Winter, a story of Stranded World (ha) for the Giraffe Call

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] moonwolf‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call, with a side order of [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt here

Warning: cliffhanger.

Autumn (and Winter, et al) are from Stranded World.

Winter – the season, not her brother – left Autumn stuck in one place, this year not just in a single town, the way she often spent the colder times, but stuck in the town’s tiny inn, the snow actually pressing the doors shut.

She’d spent the first day sitting in the tavern down stairs, drawing, playing online when the spotty wi-fi was working, and working on her very messy accounting. The second day she’d spent half hiding in her room, and the other half helping the also-stuck cook-and-owner clean the kitchen top to bottom. The third day, when it was clear that the snow really wasn’t going to let up, they’d both crawled out a second-story window, jumped off the porch, and started shoveling their way down to the ground.

When they’d gotten the door clear and most of the inn’s sidewalk, and after they’d taken a break for cider and cheese, they dug across the street to the Library. The Librarian, eighty years old if she was a day, had been subsisting on biscuits and tea. She was so grateful for the rescue that she let Autumn check out whatever she wanted, on the theory that it wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.

The inn-cook, no older than Autumn, had said, over and over again, that this was the worst winter he could remember. When the Librarian said it, too, it pricked Autumn’s curiosity.

She read ancient newspapers while munching on onions rings and chicken wings, helped the inn-cook shovel to the grocery and then to the grocer’s house, read until she fell asleep, and read over breakfast. When she and the inn-cook had re-cleared paths that had gotten a foot of snow overnight, she headed up to the highest place she could reach – the Library’s cupola – and started looking. Looking.

She drew the patterns she wanted on her arms: the weather, which was generally mild, with inches, not feet, falling at once. The people, who were generally stoic and tended not to leave town much (except Autumn, and others like her, who came and went with the seasons). The anomaly, snow past her hips and still falling.

And when she was done, her arms and chest bare to the frigid air and covered in snowflake patterns, she opened her sight to the Strands.

And fell down, nearly blinded. “Oh.“

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663858.html. You can comment here or there.

Stranded in Winter

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] moonwolf‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call, with a side order of [personal profile] librarygeek‘s prompt here

Warning: cliffhanger.

Autumn (and Winter, et al) are from Stranded World.

Winter – the season, not her brother – left Autumn stuck in one place, this year not just in a single town, the way she often spent the colder times, but stuck in the town’s tiny inn, the snow actually pressing the doors shut.

She’d spent the first day sitting in the tavern down stairs, drawing, playing online when the spotty wi-fi was working, and working on her very messy accounting. The second day she’d spent half hiding in her room, and the other half helping the also-stuck cook-and-owner clean the kitchen top to bottom. The third day, when it was clear that the snow really wasn’t going to let up, they’d both crawled out a second-story window, jumped off the porch, and started shoveling their way down to the ground.

When they’d gotten the door clear and most of the inn’s sidewalk, and after they’d taken a break for cider and cheese, they dug across the street to the Library. The Librarian, eighty years old if she was a day, had been subsisting on biscuits and tea. She was so grateful for the rescue that she let Autumn check out whatever she wanted, on the theory that it wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.

The inn-cook, no older than Autumn, had said, over and over again, that this was the worst winter he could remember. When the Librarian said it, too, it pricked Autumn’s curiosity.

She read ancient newspapers while munching on onions rings and chicken wings, helped the inn-cook shovel to the grocery and then to the grocer’s house, read until she fell asleep, and read over breakfast. When she and the inn-cook had re-cleared paths that had gotten a foot of snow overnight, she headed up to the highest place she could reach – the Library’s cupola – and started looking. Looking.

She drew the patterns she wanted on her arms: the weather, which was generally mild, with inches, not feet, falling at once. The people, who were generally stoic and tended not to leave town much (except Autumn, and others like her, who came and went with the seasons). The anomaly, snow past her hips and still falling.

And when she was done, her arms and chest bare to the frigid air and covered in snowflake patterns, she opened her sight to the Strands.

And fell down, nearly blinded. “Oh.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663858.html. You can comment here or there.

February: World-Building Month

Feb10

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The eighth question comes from Kelkyag and is for Dragons Next Door

How do dweomers originate?

There are probably as many theories of the origin of dweomers as there are dweomers – and possibly more than that, as many of the other races have opinions on these not-quite-human-more-than-humans.

What is known is: They rarely but occasionally appear to spontaneously generate; cases where two normal humans give birth to a dweomer are almost entirely the result of one or both humans lying or being misinformed about their own genetics.

There have been dweomers around as long as, say, Dragons and Centaurs and the like have been known – which is to say, at least as long as history has been written, and the dragons have very long histories. Dweomers are crossfertile with humans, they look like humans, they can generally pass as humans as long as blood or genetic tests are not involved, but they are not, in actuality, human.

(If you look at the science of this too hard, I will remind you that this world involves tiny-humanoids in two categories, as well as centaurs and dragons. <3)

One of the favorite theories is that humans themselves are the anomaly: the world grew up with dragons and ogres, centaurs and elkin and such, but at some point humans fell into this world from an alternate reality. They found dragons eggs to be immensely irresistible, and found clever ways to hunt them; they found centaurs to be very tempting mounts, and quickly managed to enslave some.

(This, of course, being a tale told around fires, especially non-human fires, does not say how the humans did such).

The short answer is: the question isn’t so much how did dweomers originate, as how did humans originate.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663767.html. You can comment here or there.

Beginning of a character-bloodline-profile

Feb10

Mostly for my own entertainment

Joachim
Wiki Page

Joachim is Kept his first year by a boy, Yisachar, which isn’t all that bad but leaves him sort of flailing around his second year.

He’s got a crew, mostly for hanging-out purposes and because it’s what you do, but he doesn’t stay close to them. They’re friends, not FRIENDS.

His third year, he ends up making a deal with a Cohort-mate, Kandace, for his first kid (her second). They have a son, who Joachim names Ayman, “blessed.”

His fourth year, at the urging of his Mentor, Professor Solomon, Joachim Keeps a first-year student, June. This is Year 17; around them the world is ending. Seanán is born at the end of Year 17.

Joachim has a bad time of it out in the world; he survives a year before being felled down by a monster. Three cy’Luca sorts from Addergoole avenge him, but they have no healer with him.

Ayman
Ayman is raised by his mother, who finds/helps create one of the fae-friendly compounds on the west coast. He goes to school in the year 34, where he is promptly Kept by the fourth-year student Aaricia. As is becoming more common, Aaricia chooses to stay an extra year, and Ayman stays under the collar until the end of his second year.

They have one child, part-way into his second year, Roxanne. Ayman spends his third year and fourth year hiding, not doing much and trying to stay out of trouble, and in his fifth year, Keeps Sonja.

He does his best to be good to her, and sticks around the Village afterwards until she graduates – both to learn more skills and to, when she leaves, help her raise her children. They have one son together, Dierck.

Seanán

Seanán goes to school in Year 36, having grown up in the Village. Nobody can Keep him and, indeed, nobody can stop him. His first two years are constant fights and near-constant Challenges.

It takes ’til his third year for someone to explain to him about the grad requirements, and that makes things even worse. He’s a creep and a jerk through most of that year, managing, somehow, to impregnate a 37th-Cohort girl named Fila.

He names their daughter Filly and wants nothing to do with her. His fourth year, he is shanghaied by seven of his classmates into a collar for a 39th-Cohort girl, Dilys. He leaves the school woobie-headed and not sure what to do with his life, but first he fathers a son, Phillip, on Dilys.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663521.html. You can comment here or there.

Bully for You

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole, Year 15

Addergoole has a landing page here.

“I don’t need another school. I’m going to the community college with everyone else.”

Thus had started an argument with Lor’s parents that had lasted the entire school year, past graduation, over the summer, and right up until the moment the short guy with the amazingly strong grip had picked Lor up and dragged him away from his friend Joe’s parents’ house and to the underground bunker that was supposed to be a “finishing” school. Like Lor needed finishing. He was plenty done already.

Then he’d actually gotten to the school, and Lor had changed his mind. The classes were hard, sure, but Lor had never minded a little challenge. And his classmates were no challenge it all.

It took him four days to get little Andreas – technically a year above Lor, but shorter and younger than him; everyone here was shorter and younger than Lor, it was awesome – to get Andreas doing his math and science homework, and two more days to get cute Candy doing his English homework and a few things on the side. Somewhere in there, people showed off some tentacles and horns, but Lor shrugged it off. Apply a little pressure and, elf or fairy or human, everyone bent.

Up until this point, he’d mostly been picking on “upperclassmen,” just for the humor value. There was Pano, of course, who he’d managed to get to do his homework, but that was it. It took him halfway through the second week of school to get another kid in his year, skinny guy named Kelsey, to start hauling his lunch for him. It was a pretty sweet deal, and he was beginning to thing his dad was right, and a finishing school was totally the way to do.

And everything was sweet until a skinny girl showed up at his lunch table with her hands on her hips. “That,” she declared, “is my brother.“

“And? S’my bitch now.”

“And I’m not okay with that.”

“Cytherea, Cy, it’s okay.” Kelsey squirmed in his chair; Lor’s smile just got bigger.

“Listen to your brother, Cy.”

“No. Lor, I challenge you.”

Next: Dance the Dance

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/663159.html. You can comment here or there.

Do-Gooders

Feb10

This is to [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.

Addergoole/Fae Apoc Post-apocalypse.

Addergoole has a landing page here; Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here;

Jaenelle knew there was going to be trouble the minute the little group drove into their town.

Drove, for one. It was 2019; things had started blowing up in 2011. There were plenty of cars, sure, but who could find gas? And people who could find gas either drove something tiny and fuel-efficient, or a truck for hauling things around. Not a bus.

And, of course, they were teens or twenty-somethings. Nobody adult rode around like that, fresh-faced and smiling and with a bus full of children and, what, miracle supplies? Perfectly clean things that they’d gotten from somewhere?

The girl had bounced out of the van and waved at the gate like there weren’t monsters everywhere and they weren’t making a scene. “I’m Berry; we’re here to help.”

Help. Like they needed help. Jaenelle talked to Farah and they talked to Bob and Angus and they talked to Constance and Miranda and their husbands John and Jon, and they talked to Keith, who was serving as mayor because they felt like, even if there were only thirty of them left, they needed some pretense at government.

But by that point, Jody and her feel-good husband Frank had let in the van full of children (with their children), and blankets and booze had done what blankets and booze did throughout history. The kids, Berry and Hawthorn and Zahavi they called themselves, as if their names weren’t probably Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed, were into everything. They took over the farming, first, and then the doctor’s station, as if some teenager knew better than Bob and Farah who had been emergency room doctors before the Fall. They took over the school, like they knew more than Constance, and even the general store.

“I told you,” Jaenelle told Keith, when he was suddenly no longer mayor. “And what happens when they leave?” Half their thirty-adult town was deferring to these children for everything, and the other half was close behind.

Keith looked far too thoughtful. “What if they never leave?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662975.html. You can comment here or there.

Hard Choices

Feb10

Written to [personal profile] kay_brooke‘s prompt to my Giraffe Call here.

Names from Fourteen Minutes and Seventh Sanctum

Content warning: Creepy. Implied slow murder.

“I want you to know, I think this is disgusting.”

The tall woman liked to talk. It was generally an unfortunate habit in bad guys, at least in movies, but this was, sadly, not a movie. This was Londi’s life or, from the looks of things, the end thereof.

“I think it’s pretty disgusting, too.” Londi struggled – uselessly, of course – against the buckles and straps holding her to the table. “So why do you, you know, not do it?”

The tall woman – Eldalene, she’d said her name was Eldalene, although, if she was who Londi thought she was, the papers had been calling her Fang the Frigid – shook her head. “They need to understand. They’re not going to understand without a sacrifice. And if I don’t do it with you, I’m just going to have to do it with someone else.”

“Someone else is okay.” Londi shook her head, or at least tried to. There was even a strap holding down her forehead. “No, no, I don’t really mean that. Not someone else. God. If you have to do this to someone…”

“Very noble.” Eldalene sighed. “So very sweet and so very noble. If there were more people like you out there, this wouldn’t be a problem. They would just see the issue and understand it.”

“What… Oh, you drugged me, didn’t you?” Her tongue was getting heavy. “What do you want them to see?”

“That life is about hard choices. Of course I drugged you. There’s no reason for you to suffer.“

“You’re talking about dissecting me. I think I’m going to suffer in the long run.”

“Hard choices.” There was a dull feeling in Londi’s gut, and she could no longer see the tall woman. “That’s what this is about. The rest of the world is going to see what happens when they ‘refuse to negotiate.’ Again. But you’re prettier than he was.”

“He?” Londi struggled to hold on to consciousness, but Eldalene’s answer was lost in a slow buzzing in her ears.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662560.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call OPEN

Feb10

My Giraffe Call is open for twenty-four more hours here.

The theme is bad guys and villains. Please stop by and leave a prompt!

We’re just $5 from everyone who donates getting a second prompt $10 from a livewrite, which means that your donation has an immediate effect:


Saturday, I wrote nothing, because we were out wine tasting and, while wine puts me in the mood to write, it’s not really the place for it. (Note to self: take laptop, find cafes. Taste, write, taste, write, etc.)

Sunday, I wrote:
By the Time Anyone Noticed (and on LJ) – Addergoole Post Apoc
The Good Fight (and on LJ)
Back Around Again (and on LJ) – Addergoole, Ardell & Delaney
(funny how Addergoole comes to mind when thinking of villains… 😉

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662421.html. You can comment here or there.

Proper Direction Again (A Weight Loss Blog)

Feb10

174.2 That’s more like it.

And last week, while better than the week before it, wasn’t stellar. Less tracking. So, It’s Monday. Gym tonight, and back on track with tracking.

I can do this.

(I feel less heavy, which is sort of weird.)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/662149.html. You can comment here or there.