Coffee, 2T half-and-Half, 1 teas sugar
Clementine
Coco multigrain pop cake, x2
egg salad w/ tomato and lettuce (the tomato and lettuce helped a lot!)
Puffed grain cake x2
tiny apples
Cake – one piece of carrot cake
Gym!
Butternut et Spinach Colbeth
Abuelita
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/681769.html. You can comment here or there.
So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, has a writing-inspiration e-mail that Ri sends out, which includes a writing prompt.
This week’s prompt:
I have a personal obsession with sideline characters, and making sure that everyone has a story and a background, no matter how little of it you see. So: Choose (or make up) a character that is the least developed right now, or would not be a major part in the plot of their story. Fashion a series of ten-minute exploratory exercises for them both in and out of the story frame. For example, write a pivotal childhood memory for the character that could have ramifications within the context of the story currently being written/drafted.
I sort of took it sideways.
My three questions:
1. How did they get their name?
2. Why do they dress in the manner they do?
3. If you asked them, would there be a pivotal moment in their life that brought them to this particular interaction with the MC?
And the character:
Teswarnen Eshmarn, the Second Circle Deputy Oligarch of New Indapala
How did they get their name?
In New Indapala and the Circled Plain, names begin with an initial syllable, the rest you earn.
The teenager Teswar, born in the outer circle of New Indapala, earned the neuter-gender -nen when she chose to become ri*; she had started a business out of her mother’s house, hiring other children and teens to do manual labor and contracting them to adults. That earned her her admittance to the next-inner circle, her first proper job, and the -nen.
In ri’s twenties, Teswarnen continued contracting and sometimes selling ri’s peers, climbing ever higher up the Ladder and becoming ever richer as ri went. The Esh came when ri finally made it to the Second Circle; the marn when ri was recognized as Deputy Oligarch for ri’s Circle.
Why do they dress in the manner they do>
(And what manner is that?)
Teswarnen dresses lavishly but not wildly; there is a conservative cut to almost every piece of expensive clothing ri wears: high-necked tunics, long flowing pants, colors that are rich but not bright or screaming.
Teswarnen grew up in one of the poorest areas of New Indapala, and worked ri’s way up through the Circles to affluence; however, the inner circles of the Circled Plain are often unwelcoming to those who actually came from the outer circles, however much it’s the tenant the entire system is based on. Dressing conservatively helps Teswarnen glide through the upper crust society without sticking out – which is very much what ri wants.
If you asked them, would there be a pivotal moment in their life that brought them to this particular interaction with the MC?
Teswarnen Eshmarn leaned back in ri’s chair and looked out the window over the city. From here, you could see all the way down to the Tenth Circle and the wall-builders working on the new walls. It was a beautiful – from here, with a light coating of mist and distance covering up all the dirt and pain.
A ten-year-old had pushed a five-year-old Tes in the dirt, down there and all those years ago, and Tes had stood up and paid her last cent to a twelve-year-old to repay the bully tenfold. Everything since then – every purchase, every sale, every wall scaled, every time Tes had fallen – everything had been because of that moment.
Tes brushed mud that wasn’t there off immaculate silk and stood, turning an elegant and, above all, clean back on the illusion of the beautiful. There were beauties that were real, inside.
* ri, ri’s, riself – the pronoun used for those who have chosen the neuter gender in the Circled Plain. Ix is the honorific (equivalent to sir or ma’am).
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/681611.html. You can comment here or there.
To ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rix_scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of Unwelcome Guests & Unwelcome Guests, Part II
(I should pay a little more attention to my list; this was for longfic)
Baram and his family are part of the “Baram’s House Elves” sub-series of the Addergoole ‘verse, which can be found here; Baram is also a background character in Addergoole.
“Girls.” Baram nodded at Via and Aly the second he heard the “basement” door shut.
“On it already, boss. Jaelie’s down with the kids and Aloysius. And Aly’s been waking up the rest of the defenses. Now she can swap with Jae and Jae can get the trees ready.”
“Good.” Baram paced out onto the front walk. There wasn’t much to pretend to do here, but he could still pace.
Behind him, the girls moved. This was not their first attack, not by far. They knew what they were doing.
The walls shifted. They weren’t awake, whatever Viatrix had said, but they were ready, braced, and stronger than they normally were.
“Precious cargo tucked in.” Jaelie touched Baram’s shoulder. “Aloysius has rear guard.”
“Good.” Baram didn’t have to like the useless thing to admit he could come in handy. “Trees?”
“They’re good trees, aren’t they?” She stroked the trunk of one of the front-gate flanking plants. “My favorite trees.”
Baram suppressed a shudder. Hawthorn trees weren’t supposed to be that big, and they were not suppose to /purr./ “Good trees,” he agreed. “Almost here.” The dust was rising on the horizon. “Inside.”
“Boss…”
“Inside. Might not be a fight, best to find out.”
She sighed. “Inside, yes, boss.” She slipped out of sight just as the motorcycles roared into view.
Baram did his best to look casual. There was a bolt that needed fixing on the gate, anyway.
There were six of them, four males, two females; four warriors, two bitches, if Baram was reading them right, but they didn’t split along gender lines. They were wearing leather, which might mean they were young – or might mean they were pragmatic. Baram had met Aelfgar and his soldiers; Baram sometimes remembered, in dreams, flashes of being a soldier.
Take nothing for granted. They could even, he supposed, be just wandering through. Since the world had started ending, they had definitely seen odder things.
“Afternoon.” He nodded at them, doing his best to seem normal-and-human. Normal-and-human was not an easy setting for him, but these were people riding large motorcycles and hung with weapons. Their bar was a little lower than people in suits in glassy offices.
“We’re looking for a pair.” The leader – probably female, hard to tell, didn’t matter much in this case anyway – snarled it out without even bothering with the pretense. “One male, one female, skinny. They came this way.”
Baram shook his head. “Haven’t seen anyone like that.”
The leader narrowed her eyes and glanced, briefly, at the man Baram had tagged as her bitch. He paled, closed his eyes, and murmured incoherently.
“They’re near. I promise it, I swear it.”
“You lie.” It wasn’t clear whether the woman was talking to the man or to Baram. It didn’t matter; she was drawing a weapon. “You. Tell me again. One man, one woman.”
Baram shook his head. “Bad idea. Ride away now.”
“You, you are not going to tell me what to do.” She dismounted, and took steps towards the front gate. “Tell me. One man, one woman. And I might let you live.”
“Last chance.” He still hadn’t drawn steel. He didn’t need to. “Ride away. Now.”
“You fucking deaf or just stupid? Give us our prey and we’ll let you live.”
Baram found himself roaring, just as the trees by the gate found they could reach the woman. “This. This is a Safe. House.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/681233.html. You can comment here or there.
Coffee, 2T whole milk, 1t sugar, splenda
Clementine
Cheerios, 1/2 cup
Coco multigrain pop cake, x3
egg salad
Puffed grain cake x2
Peanut Butter, 1T
Yogurt, Siggi’s, Strawberry
Muesli 1T
Gym! 30 minutes treadmill
Enchiladas
Tofu Fries
Wine, 6 fl oz
Another day of really-really hungry.
Tomorrow I’m going to put lettuce and tomato on my egg salad sandwich, and see how that does.
Enchiladas were rice-and-tomato base. Tasty, normally very filling.
hopefully, the hormone spike settles soon and my body believes that we’re not going to starve.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/681183.html. You can comment here or there.
For kelkyag‘s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “Anniversary” square.
Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here.
Content warning: implied rape.
An hour afterwards, she lay in the river, the blood washing away in the water. She stared up at the setting sun and wondered if she would ever move again.
A day afterwards, she curled up in her bed in her mother’s house, her entire body awash with pain. She stared at the wall because she could not sleep, and wondered if she would ever leave the house again.
A week later, she limped slowly out into the town circle, where girls of a certain age often gathered to do their work. She brought with her the wool of her family’s sheep and, carefully wrapped in her mother’s wedding hankie, two cards’ worth of unicorn hair.
The unicorn hair, they spun into a fine, fine yarn, and from it they knit the tiniest baby hat, all of them, in turn, handling the fine stuff.
A month later, she knew that the unicorn’s horn had done its work. All its work. She kept knitting, tiny things of linen and wool and every last scrap of the unicorn hair. She sat in the town circle and spun, and knit, and spun, and knit, and wondered if she could sit here forever.
Eight months later, she brought forth a son, down in the river. The unicorns stood in attendance, their horns in the water, and the infant’s first touch was from a unicorn’s careful hooves. She lay in the water, her infant balanced on her chest, and thought about staying here forever.
A year after she had gone down to the river, she sat with her son by the sun-dappled banks and brushed the most patient unicorn-father with her cleanest curry-comb. She could stay here, forever, watching the sun on the pearly horn, watching their child play with the wispy strands of unicorn hair.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/680727.html. You can comment here or there.
This is to rix_scaedu‘s prompt here to my February Giraffe Call.
Arinyanka et al are characters in Reiassan. This is set before the Rin/Girey story.
Disclaimer: I wanted to write this and didn’t want to go back and check details, so, well, some details will probably be wrong.
“We’re so glad you could make it home for the holiday, Arinya.” Arinyanka’s mother, Inatalana, encompassed her in a hug that seemed to pull her all the way from University back to the palace and anchor her there. “Most of the rest of your siblings couldn’t make it, but Edietzhyavie is home, and so is Obezrezob. And the whole city is all decorated; it’s going to be a whole week of celebrations.”
“It’s not every day an Emperor manages to survive for fifty years on the throne.” Arinyanka’s father Egarengar was a little more reserved about the whole thing, although he did pat his youngest daughter’s shoulder. Then again, it would have been hard to be less reserved than Inatalana. “You can’t move around here without running into some sort of bunting.”
“Don’t be so dreary, Eren, you sound like a North-coaster. Come on, Arinya, it’s lovely to have you back in the Palace.” Inatalana punctuated her remark with another rib-bruising hug. “If only for a few days. You’d think the University could give you more time off.”
“It’s not-” A scream and a shout from the hallway cut them both off. Arinyanka found herself pushing her mother and father behind her and reaching for a weapon she didn’t carry within the Emperor’s Palace walls. “Is that becoming normal?”
“We are quite capable of protecting ourselves, Arinya, I do hope you realize.” Egarengar clucked, sounding mostly amused. “Especially from what sounds like one of your cousins having a problem with her festival tunic.”
Another scream cut through the hallways. Arinyanka shared a glance with her mother; both of them glared at her father.
“That’s not a tunic argument.” Inatalana’s tone booked no argument.
Egarengar shook his head. “No. It sounds like someone doesn’t want the Emperor to make it to the fifty-year mark.”
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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/680695.html. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been working on beating 2013’s wordcount per month in 2014.
January’s goal was to beat 38,615 – I wrote 48,724.
February’s goal was to beat 28,822 – I’ve written 33,400 as of this post.
March might be harder.
To beat March, I need to write more than 58,837 words.
Of course, to still be beating 2013 at the end of March, I only need to write more than 44,150 words. That’s a little more do-able.
~~
In the MEANTIME, March is an odd-numbered month, which means it’s Pirate Nano time again.
This month, the Nano goal is “finish Addergoole: book One” (about 5000 words) and then plow through a lot of Rin & Girey – Into Lannamer, for a total of 25,00 words, with an additional “at least 250 other words/weekday” on obligations & submissions
~
What are your writing goals?
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/680445.html. You can comment here or there.
anke commissioned this continuation of By the Time Anyone Noticed, a story of a former-Addergoole-student mother from the February Giraffe Call.
The Addergoole setting has a landing page here, although Cleone is a new character.
Short summary of the setting: there is magic and people who can use magic (modern fantasy, and then post-apoc fantasy after, well, the apoc) The school, Addergoole, has a long-standing contract by which students tend to graduate with two children who then go to Addergoole themselves in their late teens.
This is placed somewhere after the apocalypse… since I haven’t determined the year, the year notations are x’d out
By the time anyone noticed, it was far too late for them to stop her.
Or so she hoped.
The letter arrived via courier, the way they did these days.
Dagmar, child of Cleone, it is our pleasure to admit you to the [xxty-xth] year of the Addergoole school. Classes will begin on the [xth] of September [xxxx].
Should you require transportation…
Cleone burned the letter and locked Dagmar, along with her younger son, in the panic room in the center back of her house. She whispered words here and shouted words there and above all she kept things going on as normally as possible – except that her children were now locked in a tower. Which, because this was Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement, her tower and her children, nobody thought was that abnormal, and nobody asked a single question about.
It was, wholly and entirely, Cleone’s town and Cleone’s settlement. Her home and the surrounding buildings had tidy walls that kept out marauders. Her collection of humans who worked in the fields were drilled in weapons, so that they could fend off wild animals or fae-born monsters. The Addergoole students who had come and never left, they had continued to train in all those skills their alma mater was so good at instilling. It had all made so much sense when she explained it to her townspeople. Nobody had ever questioned it.
Another letter came for Dagmar. Cleone shredded this one and fed it to the pigs. She made sure the gates were sound; she made sure the ballistas were in good repair.
She made sure everything was as normal and innocent and benign as she could make it, that her routines were routine, even as she braced for the impact that was coming.
One of her Addergoole grads tried to leave, a week after the second letter’s arrival. They did try, from time to time; they snuck out at night or they slipped out while working or, sometimes, they just walked out the gate as if they were allowed to leave. Gilana had always been trouble, from the day she and her three children showed up at Cleone’s halfway house.
Cleone did what she had to. She locked those three children in the tower with her own two, locked Gilana in the hawthorn-and-rowan-lined basement dungeon, and kept on pretending nothing was wrong. When Dustin, the probably-human serving as de facto Mayor of Cleoneville, began to ask questions, she gave him the same line she always did.
“I do what is needful to keep us safe. Right now, this is what is needful to keep us safe.”
Dustin clearly considered asking more questions, and then just as clearly thought about the people who had, in the past, asked too many questions. Safe, in this day and age, was a motivator for most people, at least those still alive to be motivated.
Nobody else asked any questions. Knowing where Gilana was – and where her children were – made certain nobody else tried to leave, either. Everything was fine, everything was normal, and everyone was armed to the teeth.
They were waiting when the people from Addergoole came to take Dagmar off to school.
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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/680047.html. You can comment here or there.
Prompt Calls!
The Mephit is having a prompt call here. The theme is resolution.
kay_brooke is having a prompt call here. The theme is new beginnings.
K.A. Webb is having a prompt call here. The theme is mysteries, enigmas, and that which has been lost.
The writer who dwells in my attic, K Orion Fray is having a prompt call here. The theme is Magic, Elves, and Faeries.
Leaving a prompt takes just a minute, and it helps out these writers; leaving a tip costs not much more than a Starbucks latte, and those tips add up, guys.
Support your local crowdfunded writer with comments, prompts, and, if you can, tips!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/679882.html. You can comment here or there.
In which I was hungry all day…
Coffee, 1/4c 2% milk, 1t sugar
Cardio Shopping, 15 minutes
Cheerios, 1/2 cup
Clementine x2 (3?) Then another one at home
Banana
Puffed grain cake
Coco multigrain pop cake, x3
(these were an experiment. They taste… okay.)
(satisfying crunch, though)
egg salad, Weight watchers recipe, 1/2 cup
Tinyapple
Puffed grain cake x2
Peanut Butter, 1T
Salad, doctored, with bacon, pepperoni, tomato, pepper, and so on
Small Batch Mississippi Mud Cake
(This was delicious, and about 1″ x the bottom of a bread pan. Super rich)
Edited to add
Hormone level: irritable and 1-3 days from my period. No wonder I’m hungry!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/679474.html. You can comment here or there.