Archive | June 2014

Take Me, a ficlet of Unicorn/Factory for the giraffe call

Jun9

I asked for prompts regarding Variants here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Ysabet’s Prompt here.

It doesn’t properly have an ending, because I could not make it come to an end.

Content warning – suicidal/depressed thoughts and intentions.

She went down to the river on what her gran called a bad day, a grey-clouds-in-the-sun day. She made herself get dressed because she would have to answer questions if she walked down the path in her shift, and she smiled at the villagers she passed, because they knew, by now, that if she could not smile, that she might need to be stopped, to be coddled, to be chivied back to her room.

Smiling felt like pasting a bright paper flower on funeral greys, but she did it anyway. She had learned how to step through life without touching too much, how to slide through the crowd and not really be seen.

If her Gran had seen her, her Gran might have known. But her Gran had found solace in her own way, and, today at least, did not see.

Kayla was supposed to go down to the river; she had drawn the lot, and her family had four daughter still living, including her. But they had lost Lize to the river the year past, and Kayla, Kayla was bright and smiled like the sunlight, like flowers all over and your name-day dress, and Kayla loved Tobert, with eyes like the sky.

So she went down instead, Jiranne with eyes like a storm and a smile that was never real. She took the back path, moving as fast as she could make her plodding feet go, and she knelt in the mud, staying clear of the altar. You could see the altar from the town square, if you knew where you were looking. They had built it that way, to remind them all of the price.

The unicorn surged from the river like he lived there, like he had been born from its current. He glared at Jiranne, and huffed out air and water droplets.

The ones they didn’t like, they savaged. It would be slow – but it would pay the price whether they liked her or not. “Take me.” One thing she could do right, because even failing would do it. “I am the price for the river, the price for the air. Take me.” She had heard the words every year, every cousin and sister and friend. “Take me, as the price for your works.”

The horn glinted wickedly in the sunlight. The stallion dropped to its knees. Was it supposed to do that? Was it supposed to… “Take me,” she cried. “I am giving myself to you freely. Please…”

The stallion rested its head in her lap, its wicked horn just barely missing her. It whickered, softly, and because there was nothing else to do, she petted its mane.

“Take me?” she whispered. The stallion huffed breath at her in reply.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/730853.html. You can comment here or there.

Repentance – teaser, a fragment of Boom

Jun9

This is another teaser, in the same story as this one. The story took a left turn and now it’s going to have to be twice as long!

It took less than a half hour for a carriage to ride up to her. The vehicle – you had to call it carriage because horse-drawn pickup truck just sounded wrong – was pulled by two of the biggest horses Cynara had ever seen, and piloted by a lean, grizzled man wielding a shotgun. Cya stopped on the side of the road and made sure he could see her clearly.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/730408.html. You can comment here or there.

A Game, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jun9

I asked for prompts regarding Variants here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to Kelkyag’s Prompt here.

Whenever Asata traveled to a new place, she included in her weight allowance a proper set of Chatha pieces. The board was woven cloth, the tokens polymer scrimshaw, and the cards tissue-thin, but she had yet to find a place where it did not pass muster as a Chatha set.

It lived nestled in her always-on bag, next to the first-aid kit, the wrinkle-free change of clothing, the emergency rations, and the treesilk towel-slash-sarong-slash-hijab. And she’d found that, of every item in the little bag, she’d gotten the most use out of the Chatha set.

The game in its core was simple, but nobody – except people like Asata, interstellar anthropological diplomats – played it in its core format. Every town, every colony, every station had their own variation, and every variation told you something about the people playing the game.

In Hosier and Calbranta, none of the pieces were female, and the female cards were replaced – with trees on Hosier and with animals on Calbranta. Landri and Tolmecha did the opposite, replacing male cards with minerals in one case and more females in the other case. Asata’s deck had new cards for every variation she encountered, and her notes on the culture began, each time, with at least four games of Chatha.

And now she was landing on a new colony, a Lost Colony that the Federated Empire was only now re-contacting with. They were not first down, but her team would be the second contact the colony had with the greater space-faring humanity.

And it would begin with a game of Chatha. Asata studied the first-down team’s notes, and got ready to play.

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Escape From Rochester (Camp Nano July’14 project) Prequel Vignette: Jennifer

Jun9

Third in a series of stories leading up to my Camp Nano Project – this one features Jennifer and is a practice at finding Raven’s First-person voice.

Jennifer made it first to the Thursday Fire this week, which was a first. She’d been coming to my gatherings – and other people’s – for almost a year, but this was the first time I’d actually been alone with her.

“I brought bitch beers.” She held up the six-packs: Mike’s Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice. “And a bunch of stuff.”

“Stuff?” I popped open the cooler for the beer, and tried, “You’re here early.”

“I know.” She flopped into a chair to my left and started unpacking a Wegman’s bag onto the ground. “But I had to hit the bakery before it closed, so I thought I’d just come here. Hope you don’t mind.” She glanced over at me, her hair falling into her face and making her look, for once, a little bit vulnerable.

“Not at all.” It wasn’t a lie, not really, even it it wasn’t the whole truth. “Just, ah, surprised me.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m not really good at the whole social thing, you know…”

“That’s the point, more or less.” I gave her a smile, one of the sort that at least mostly feels genuine. “None of us really are.”

“You started a social gathering for people who are bad at being social?”

“Well, technically, I started hanging out with Ess and ‘Nelle, and ‘Nelle collects people…”

“Looks to me like you collect people.” She popped open a bottle of the lemonade. “Want one?”

“Sure.” I couldn’t get drunk that easily, anyway. And Ess and everyone should be here soon… hopefully. “Nah. Anelle collects. I just.. hunh. Coordinate.”

I liked that. Coordinate.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/730033.html. You can comment here or there.

The Collar Job, Part XV

Jun9

This is an ongoing Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction crossover.

Table of Contents here

Fade back in from commercial. Lady Anastasia is sitting on the edge of her bed, a corner of a sheet barely covering her; Eliot is propped up on one elbow, watching her.

A knock sounds on the bedroom door. “Lady Anastasia? You have company.”

Ana slides on a shirt, then swoops up Eliot’s pants with her toes and tosses them at him. “Who is it?”

“The Lord Lorcan ap Malaney, Baron of Red Bluff, and his guest.” There’s a tone to the voice, now, as if the person knocking is quite put out by being asked. Ana sighs.

“One moment, please. If you’ll settle Lord Lorcan and his guest in my sitting room, I’ll be right out.” She opens her dresser and pulls out two weapons holsters – one a knife sheath heavy with blades, the other a cross-draw gun holster.

“As you wish, Lady Anastasia.” Yes, the speaker is definitely put out. “Your guests will be in your sitting room, waiting.”

Ana rolls her eyes as she straps on her holsters, slides home a pistol, and finishes dressing herself. “I think I have…” Her voice has dropped to a murmur. “No better clothes for you yet, sadly.”

“I can live with these.” Eliot’s put on the thin pants while Ana was equipping herself. “You expecting trouble?”

“I always expect trouble.” She rolls her shoulders in something that’s almost a shrug. “It’s saved my life a few times. Here.” She passes him a sheathed knife. “It won’t hide well, but that’s all right.”

“Thanks.” The sheath and belt vanish beneath the thin pants, leaving a dark line on his thigh. “Who’s Lord Lorcan, anyway?”

“Small time only child of a Baroness on the other side of the Duchy.”
She puts on a smile that transforms her face, making her look slightly vapid and not at all deadly. “Ready?”

He braces his shoulders. “Ready.”

Ana’s sitting room

“So, why are you helping us again?” Parker is perched on the edge of a chair, stage-whispering into Lord Lorcan’s ear. He doesn’t seem bothered by her at all.

“As I said, I find ‘Charlotte’s’ little games to be very fun, and I haven’t had fun in quite a while. Besides, if I help you, you’re less likely to make a mess of the Duchy, and that benefits all of us.”

“Hunh.” Parker leans back. “How long are they going to…” The door swings open. Lady Anastasia walks out, impeccably suited as if coming out of a business meeting and not her bedroom. Eliot, collared and shirtless, follows. As the door swings closed, the ropes hanging from the bed are clearly visible.

“Lord Lorcan.” Ana’s eyes trail over the rest of the team. “I see you brought… friends.” Behind her, Eliot sighs.

Cut to commercial.

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Escape From Rochester (Camp Nano July’14 project) Character Profile 12

Jun8

This is the twelfth in a series of character profiles for my upcoming July Camp Nano Project.

As the gods attack Rochester, a group of R.I.T. students and their friends must get out of the city, before it’s too late.

Rebecca James, Political Science

Faith isn’t something that’s always come easily to Rebecca. Her family was always religious, although not often devout; the disparity between the show of faith required and the behaviors beyond that show of faith dispirited a teenage Rebecca and sent her away from the church for a while.

In her first year at R.I.T, finding herself surrounded by illegal and immoral – and, more importantly, non-conducive to studying – behaviors, Rebecca turned to her faith as a way to cope. She found the Interfaith Council, where she met Juan and Pauline, and found there what she’d been missing in her family’s religious practices.

She’s a senior now, and has ended up the de facto leader of the group – their nominal head rarely makes it to meetings, and it is assumed he has the position because his father is their staff adviser. It’s the same sort of thing that bothered Rebecca in her church back home – but her time in the Interfaith Council and her own renewed faith have allowed her to handle it much better; she works around other people’s lack of belief and does not expect them to be more pious than they are.

Rebecca is medium-height, 5’4″ tall, round in all the right places, with an easy smile that contrasts with her often-studious expression. She has warm brown skin and hair a couple shades darker; her hair falls in loose curls to mid-back when she wears it down, which is rarely. She moves like she belongs wherever she is, a trick she learned from her father.

She’s gotten into marathon running in the last two years, adding an amazing stamina and rock-hard muscles to her curvy frame. When she’s not studying – Dean’s List and a 3.98 GPA – she’s often finding new uses for discarded things – in a rich-student school like RIT, there’s no dearth of that. If she had the time, she’d probably minor in sculptural art.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/729572.html. You can comment here or there.

Also, I need some gods, please –

Jun6

Specifically, gods that might be attracted to Rochester, NY and points directly-ish East of there.

Fae Apoc gods, when they returned, tended to pick personalities from old myths (or to be personalities from old myths; that’s still up in the air). The cities they gravitated to were ones where they felt welcome – Irish-myth-gods to Irish-heavy cities, Polish-gods to Polish-heavy cities – either in Europe or in the U.S.

One source lists Rochester as – Ancestries: German (10.3%), Irish (8.6%), Italian (7.9%), English (6.2%), Polish (2.6%), West Indian (1.8%).

(Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Rochester-New-York.html#ixzz33svaWrLh)

(sort of a weird listing – because the fact that the city is 38.1% black is listed in a different chart. I apologize; easily-accessible data does not nicely list African nationality of ancestry the way it does European)

From growing up in Rochester-area, I’d say that fits the feel of the city, although I can’t vouch for actual numbers.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/729292.html. You can comment here or there.

Think Before You Deal

Jun6

First – “So, Who are You?”
Previous – Bug

Graduation Requirements? Blaecleah looked between Sedge-too-tall and ‘Obe-Horned-person. The conversation just kept getting weirder, and all he really knew was that he had dived in way over his head way too fast.

And ‘Obe was sighing. “Some day…” The frown was morphing into a smile. “Some day, Sedge, you’ll learn to figure out your deals before you make them. So. Yes, I can help you find a nice girl to help you with the requirements.”

“That’s not what you said! That’s not…”

“Well, we didn’t shake on it nor did either of us promise, for one.” She shifted her weight to her front foot and ticked off points on her fingers. “So I’m under no obligation. For second, I didn’t say I’d do the deed with you – I’ve never said I’d do the deed.”

Sedge’s expression darkened. “It’s not like I’m ugly.”

Wait, what? Blaecleah looked back and forth between them. Were they talking about…

“No.” The smile slipped for a moment. “You’re certainly not. It’s just that I have two more years after this, and this is your last year, and I just don’t want to, right now.”

Sedge sighed, the sort of put-upon full body sigh that Blaecleah had seen younger kids do when they were told they could’t have ice cream before dinner. “Fine. So… you’ll help? Just not… help?“

Were they really still talking about… well, and if they were? People had weirder euphemisms.

“Well, you did manage to get the Easter Egg. I really didn’t think you’d be able to pull that off. So, yeah. I’ll help with the grad requirements.”

Something went a little limp in too-tall-Sedge. “Thanks, Niobe.”

Niobe! That was a more reasonable name than ‘Obe. And she was smiling a sort of sad older-sister smile. “You had reasonable expectation that I would help you, even if your listening skills are in doubt. What are you going to do with the kid, now?”

With the… she meant him. Blaecleah looked up at Sedge. There was a feeling in his throat like he was going to puke, and he didn’t understand why.

The look on the tall guy’s face didn’t help, either. He looked down at Blaecleah and sighed, all put-upon no-ice-cream again. “Damn, I don’t know. Do you want him?”

Next – Change of Plans


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The Collar Job, Part XIV

Jun6

This is … *cough* Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction crossover.

♪♪ I think this line’s mostly filler…♫

Table of Contents here

“It seems like you’re having some trouble with the Alpha Sisters.” Lord Lorcan is every inch the Californian male – sleek and well-groomed and exquisitely dressed, short, slender, and ginger.

“The Alpha Sisters?” Hardison’s voice is flatter than it should be, and his eyes on the little Lord are not kind. “What do you mean?”

“Alessia, Anastasia, Adalia. The Alpha sisters is what we called them when we were growing up. Of course, there were more of them, back then.” The flop Lorcan makes with his hand has to be affected, nobody is quite that… that on their own. But he seemed to be oblivious both to his own mannerisms and to the way it affects Hardison. “So that’s obviously Anastasia up on your screen, but she’s not really the power in the family. Well, I mean – she’s the power but not the power, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, Lorcan, don’t be obscure.” Sophie pats him on the shoulder. “What sort of power isn’t she?”

“She’s not a political power. As far as we can tell, she never wanted it. Did her time in the service, the way we all do – even me, I can see that look, you know – and just stayed for a while.”

“So her sister is the one interested in the power, then? Alessia?” Sophie has gotten her body between Lorcan and Hardison’s monitors, which lets Hardison change the screen to something innocuous. “She’s the oldest, right?”

“She is. The problem is Adalia has as much ambition as Anastasia. It’s a mess, really.” Lorcan’s vapid smile suddenly gets sharp. “So what’s your problem with them, Charlotte? You’ve never been all that interested in Californian politics before – and you’ve never brought a whole team for a little ol’ grift.”

“He knows me so well.” Sophie pats Lorcan’s arm helplessly.

Anastasia’s Rooms

Ana untangles herself from Eliot and from the long snake of sheet wrapped around them. “I could wish that you wanted to stay. But…”

“But?” Eliot props himself up on one elbow. The sheet that half-covers Ana is not up to the task of covering much of Eliot, but neither of them appear to mind. At the moment, neither of them appear to mind much at all.

“But if you were the sort of man who would want to stay here, in my collar, you wouldn’t be the sort of man that was so much fun with.” She pats his bicep gently. “I’ll have to live with a couple weeks.”

A knock sounds at the bedroom door. “Lady Anastasia? You have company.”

Cut to commercial.

Next: Xv

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